ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

DEDICATION. 

TO HENRY FYNES CLINTON, ESQ. , etc. , etc. AUTHOR OF "THE FASTIHELLENICI. "

My Dear Sir, I am not more sensible of the distinction conferred upon me when youallowed me to inscribe this history with your name, than pleased withan occasion to express my gratitude for the assistance I have derivedthroughout the progress of my labours from that memorable work, inwhich you have upheld the celebrity of English learning, and affordedso imperishable a contribution to our knowledge of the Ancient World. To all who in history look for the true connexion between causes andeffects, chronology is not a dry and mechanical compilation of barrendates, but the explanation of events and the philosophy of facts. Andthe publication of the Fasti Hellenici has thrown upon those times, inwhich an accurate chronological system can best repair what isdeficient, and best elucidate what is obscure in the scantyauthorities bequeathed to us, all the light of a profound anddisciplined intellect, applying the acutest comprehension to therichest erudition, and arriving at its conclusions according to thetrue spirit of inductive reasoning, which proportions the completenessof the final discovery to the caution of the intermediate process. Myobligations to that learning and to those gifts which you haveexhibited to the world are shared by all who, in England or in Europe, study the history or cultivate the literature of Greece. But, in thepatient kindness with which you have permitted me to consult youduring the tedious passage of these volumes through the press--in thecareful advice--in the generous encouragement--which have so oftensmoothed the path and animated the progress--there are obligationspeculiar to myself; and in those obligations there is so much thathonours me, that, were I to enlarge upon them more, the world mightmistake an acknowledgment for a boast. 

 With the highest consideration and esteem, Believe me, my dear sir, Most sincerely and gratefully yours, EDWARD LYTTON BULWER London, March, 1837. 

ADVERTISEMENT. 

The work, a portion of which is now presented to the reader, hasoccupied me many years--though often interrupted in its progress, either by more active employment, or by literary undertakings of acharacter more seductive. These volumes were not only written, butactually in the hands of the publisher before the appearance, andeven, I believe, before the announcement of the first volume of Mr. Thirlwall's History of Greece, or I might have declined going over anyportion of the ground cultivated by that distinguished scholar [1]. As it is, however, the plan I have pursued differs materially fromthat of Mr. Thirlwall, and I trust that the soil is sufficientlyfertile to yield a harvest to either labourer. 

Since it is the letters, yet more than the arms or the institutions ofAthens, which have rendered her illustrious, it is my object tocombine an elaborate view of her literature with a complete andimpartial account of her political transactions. The two volumes nowpublished bring the reader, in the one branch of my subject, to thesupreme administration of Pericles; in the other, to a criticalanalysis of the tragedies of Sophocles. Two additional volumes will, I trust, be sufficient to accomplish my task, and close the records ofAthens at that period when, with the accession of Augustus, the annalsof the world are merged into the chronicle of the Roman empire. Inthese latter volumes it is my intention to complete the history of theAthenian drama--to include a survey of the Athenian philosophy--todescribe the manners, habits, and social life of the people, and toconclude the whole with such a review of the facts and events narratedas may constitute, perhaps, an unprejudiced and intelligibleexplanation of the causes of the rise and fall of Athens. 

As the history of the Greek republics has been too often corruptlypressed into the service of heated political partisans, may I bepardoned the precaution of observing that, whatever my own politicalcode, as applied to England, I have nowhere sought knowingly topervert the lessons of a past nor analogous time to fugitive interestsand party purposes. Whether led sometimes to censure, or more oftento vindicate the Athenian people, I am not conscious of any otherdesire than that of strict, faithful, impartial justice. Restlesslyto seek among the ancient institutions for illustrations (rarelyapposite) of the modern, is, indeed, to desert the character of ajudge for that of an advocate, and to undertake the task of thehistorian with the ambition of the pamphleteer. Though designing thiswork not for colleges and cloisters, but for the general andmiscellaneous public, it is nevertheless impossible to pass over insilence some matters which, if apparently trifling in themselves, haveacquired dignity, and even interest, from brilliant speculations orcelebrated disputes. In the history of Greece (and Athenian historynecessarily includes nearly all that is valuable in the annals of thewhole Hellenic race) the reader must submit to pass through much thatis minute, much that is wearisome, if he desire to arrive at last atdefinite knowledge and comprehensive views. In order, however, tointerrupt as little as possible the recital of events, I haveendeavoured to confine to the earlier portion of the work such detailsof an antiquarian or speculative nature as, while they may afford tothe general reader, not, indeed, a minute analysis, but perhaps asufficient notion of the scholastic inquiries which have engaged theattention of some of the subtlest minds of Germany and England, mayalso prepare him the better to comprehend the peculiar character andcircumstances of the people to whose history he is introduced: and itmay be well to warn the more impatient that it is not till the secondbook (vol. I. , p. 181) that disquisition is abandoned for narrative. There yet remain various points on which special comment would beincompatible with connected and popular history, but on which Ipropose to enlarge in a series of supplementary notes, to be appendedto the concluding volume. These notes will also comprise criticismsand specimens of Greek writers not so intimately connected with theprogress of Athenian literature as to demand lengthened and elaboratenotice in the body of the work. Thus, when it is completed, it is myhope that this book will combine, with a full and complete history ofAthens, political and moral, a more ample and comprehensive view ofthe treasures of the Greek literature than has yet been afforded tothe English public. I have ventured on these remarks because I thoughtit due to the reader, no less than to myself, to explain the plan andoutline of a design at present only partially developed. 

London, March, 1837. 

CONTENTS. 

 BOOK I

 CHAPTER

 I Situation and Soil of Attica. --The Pelasgians its earliest Inhabitants. --Their Race and Language akin to the Grecian. -- Their varying Civilization and Architectural Remains. -- Cecrops. --Were the earliest Civilizers of Greece foreigners or Greeks?--The Foundation of Athens. --The Improvements attributed to Cecrops. --The Religion of the Greeks cannot be reduced to a simple System. --Its Influence upon their Character and Morals, Arts and Poetry. --The Origin of Slavery and Aristocracy. 

 II The unimportant consequences to be deduced from the admission that Cecrops might be Egyptian. --Attic Kings before Theseus. --The Hellenes. --Their Genealogy. --Ionians and Achaeans Pelasgic. --Contrast between Dorians and Ionians. -- Amphictyonic League. 

 III The Heroic Age. --Theseus. --His legislative Influence upon Athens. --Qualities of the Greek Heroes. --Effect of a Traditional Age upon the Character of a People. 

 IV The Successors of Theseus. --The Fate of Codrus. --The Emigration of Nileus. --The Archons. --Draco. 

 V A General Survey of Greece and the East previous to the Time of Solon. --The Grecian Colonies. --The Isles. --Brief account of the States on the Continent. --Elis and the Olympic Games. 

 VI Return of the Heraclidae. --The Spartan Constitution and Habits. --The first and second Messenian War. 

 VII Governments in Greece. 

 VIII Brief Survey of Arts, Letters, and Philosophy in Greece, prior to the Legislation of Solon. 

 BOOK II

 CHAPTER

 I The Conspiracy of Cylon. --Loss of Salamis. --First Appearance of Solon. --Success against the Megarians in the Struggle for Salamis. --Cirrhaean War. --Epimenides. --Political State of Athens. --Character of Solon. --His Legislation. --General View of the Athenian Constitution. 

 II The Departure of Solon from Athens. --The Rise of Pisistratus. --Return of Solon. --His Conduct and Death. --The Second and Third Tyranny of Pisistratus. --Capture of Sigeum. --Colony In the Chersonesus founded by the first Miltiades. --Death of Pisistratus. 

 III The Administration of Hippias. --The Conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogiton. --The Death of Hipparchus. --Cruelties of Hippias. --The young Miltiades sent to the Chersonesus. --The Spartans Combine with the Alcmaeonidae against Hippias. --The fall of the Tyranny. --The Innovations of Clisthenes. --His Expulsion and Restoration. --Embassy to the Satrap of Sardis. --Retrospective View of the Lydian, Medean, and Persian Monarchies. --Result of the Athenian Embassy to Sardis. -- Conduct of Cleomenes. --Victory of the Athenians against the Boeotians and Chalcidians. --Hippias arrives at Sparta. --The Speech of Sosicles the Corinthian. --Hippias retires to Sardis. 

 IV Histiaeus, Tyrant of Miletus, removed to Persia. --The Government of that City deputed to Aristagoras, who invades Naxos with the aid of the Persians. --Ill Success of that Expedition. --Aristagoras resolves upon Revolting from the Persians. --Repairs to Sparta and to Athens. --The Athenians and Eretrians induced to assist the Ionians. --Burning of Sardis. --The Ionian War. --The Fate of Aristagoras. --Naval Battle of Lade. --Fall of Miletus. --Reduction of Ionia. -- Miltiades. --His Character. --Mardonius replaces Artaphernes in the Lydian Satrapy. --Hostilities between Aegina and Athens. --Conduct of Cleomenes. --Demaratus deposed. --Death Of Cleomenes. --New Persian Expedition. 

 V The Persian Generals enter Europe. --Invasion of Naxos, Carystus, Eretria. --The Athenians Demand the Aid of Sparta. --The Result of their Mission and the Adventure of their Messenger. --The Persians advance to Marathon. --The Plain Described. --Division of Opinion in the Athenian Camp. --The Advice of Miltiades prevails. --The Drear of Hippias. --The Battle of Marathon. 

 BOOK III

 CHAPTER

 I The Character and Popularity of Miltiades. --Naval expedition. --Siege of Paros. --Conduct of Miltiades. --He is Accused and Sentenced. --His Death. 

 II The Athenian Tragedy. --Its Origin. --Thespis. --Phrynichus. -- Aeschylus. --Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus. 

 III Aristides. --His Character and Position. --The Rise of Themistocles. --Aristides is Ostracised. --The Ostracism examined. --The Influence of Themistocles increases. --The Silver--mines of Laurion. --Their Product applied by Themistocles to the Increase of the Navy. --New Direction given to the National Character. 

 IV The Preparations of Darius. --Revolt of Egypt. --Dispute for The Succession to the Persian Throne. --Death of Darius. -- Brief Review of the leading Events and Characteristics of his Reign. 

 V Xerxes conducts an Expedition into Egypt. --He finally resolves on the Invasion of Greece. --Vast Preparations for the Conquest of Europe. --Xerxes arrives at Sardis. --Despatches Envoys to the Greek States, demanding Tribute. --The Bridge of the Hellespont. --Review of the Persian Armament at Abydos. --Xerxes encamps at Therme. 

 VI The Conduct of the Greeks. --The Oracle relating to Salamis. -- Art of Themistocles. --The Isthmian Congress. --Embassies to Argos, Crete, Corcyra, and Syracuse. --Their ill Success. -- The Thessalians send Envoys to the Isthmus. --The Greeks advance to Tempe, but retreat. --The Fleet despatched to Artemisium, and the Pass of Thermopylae occupied. --Numbers of the Grecian Fleet. --Battle of Thermopylae. 

 VII The Advice of Demaratus to Xerxes. --Themistocles. --Actions off Artemisium. --The Greeks retreat. --The Persians invade Delphi, and are repulsed with great Loss. --The Athenians, unaided by their Allies, abandon Athens, and embark for Salamis. --The irresolute and selfish Policy of the Peloponnesians. --Dexterity and Firmness of Themistocles. -- Battle of Salamis. --Andros and Carystus besieged by the Greeks. --Anecdotes of Themistocles. --Honours awarded to him in Sparta. --Xerxes returns to Asia. --Olynthus and Potidaea besieged by Artabazus. --The Athenians return Home. --The Ostracism of Aristides is repealed. 

 VIII Embassy of Alexander of Macedon to Athens. --The Result of his Proposals. --Athenians retreat to Salamis. --Mardonius occupies Athens. --The Athenians send Envoys to Sparta. -- Pausanias succeeds Cleombrotus as Regent of Sparta. --Battle of Plataea. --Thebes besieged by the Athenians. --Battle of Mycale. --Siege of Sestos. --Conclusion of the Persian War. 

 BOOK IV

 CHAPTER

 I Remarks on the Effects of War. --State of Athens. --Interference of Sparta with respect to the Fortifications of Athens. -- Dexterous Conduct of Themistocles. --The New Harbour of the Piraeus. --Proposition of the Spartans in the Amphictyonic Council defeated by Themistocles. --Allied Fleet at Cyprus and Byzantium. --Pausanias. --Alteration in his Character. -- His ambitious Views and Treason. --The Revolt of the Ionians from the Spartan Command. --Pausanias recalled. --Dorcis replaces him. --The Athenians rise to the Head of the Ionian League. --Delos made the Senate and Treasury of the Allies. -- Able and prudent Management of Aristides. --Cimon succeeds To the Command of the Fleet. --Character of Cimon. --Eion besieged. --Scyros colonized by Atticans. --Supposed Discovery of the Bones of Theseus. --Declining Power of Themistocles. --Democratic Change in the Constitution. --Themistocles ostracised. --Death of Aristides. 

 II Popularity and Policy of Cimon. --Naxos revolts from the Ionian League. --Is besieged by Cimon. --Conspiracy and Fate of Pausanias. --Flight and Adventures of Themistocles. --His Death. 

 III Reduction of Naxos. --Actions off Cyprus. --Manners of Cimon. --Improvements in Athens. --Colony at the Nine Ways. --Siege of Thasos. --Earthquake in Sparta. --Revolt of Helots, Occupation of Ithome, and Third Messenian War. --Rise and Character of Pericles. --Prosecution and Acquittal of Cimon. --The Athenians assist the Spartans at Ithome. --Thasos Surrenders. --Breach between the Athenians and Spartans. -- Constitutional Innovations at Athens. --Ostracism of Cimon. 

 IV War between Megara and Corinth. --Megara and Pegae garrisoned by Athenians. --Review of Affairs at the Persian Court. -- Accession of Artaxerxes. --Revolt of Egypt under Inarus. -- Athenian Expedition to assist Inarus. --Aegina besieged. --The Corinthians defeated. --Spartan Conspiracy with the Athenian Oligarchy. --Battle of Tanagra. --Campaign and Successes of Myronides. --Plot of the Oligarchy against the Republic. -- Recall of Cimon. --Long Walls completed. --Aegina reduced. -- Expedition under Tolmides. --Ithome surrenders. --The Insurgents are settled at Naupactus. --Disastrous Termination of the Egyptian Expedition. --The Athenians march into Thessaly to restore Orestes the Tagus. --Campaign under Pericles. --Truce of five Years with the Peloponnesians. -- Cimon sets sail for Cyprus. --Pretended Treaty of Peace with Persia. --Death of Cimon. 

 V Change of Manners in Athens. --Begun under the Pisistratidae. -- Effects of the Persian War, and the intimate Connexion with Ionia. --The Hetaerae. --The Political Eminence lately acquired by Athens. --The Transfer of the Treasury from Delos to Athens. --Latent Dangers and Evils. --First, the Artificial Greatness of Athens not supported by Natural Strength. -- Secondly, her pernicious Reliance on Tribute. --Thirdly, Deterioration of National Spirit commenced by Cimon in the Use of Bribes and Public Tables. --Fourthly, Defects in Popular Courts of Law. --Progress of General Education. -- History. --Its Ionian Origin. --Early Historians. --Acusilaus. --Cadmus. --Eugeon. --Hellanicus. --Pherecides. --Xanthus. --View of the Life and Writings of Herodotus. --Progress of Philosophy since Thales. --Philosophers of the Ionian and Eleatic Schools. --Pythagoras. --His Philosophical Tenets and Political Influence. --Effect of these Philosophers on Athens. --School of Political Philosophy continued in Athens from the Time of Solon. --Anaxagoras. --Archelaus. --Philosophy not a thing apart from the ordinary Life of the Athenians. 

 BOOK V

 CHAPTER

 I Thucydides chosen by the Aristocratic Party to oppose Pericles. --His Policy. --Munificence of Pericles. --Sacred War. --Battle of Coronea. --Revolt of Euboea and Megara-- Invasion and Retreat of the Peloponnesians. --Reduction of Euboea. --Punishment of Histiaea. --A Thirty Years' Truce concluded with the Peloponnesians. --Ostracism of Thucydides. 

 II Causes of the Power of Pericles. --Judicial Courts of the dependant Allies transferred to Athens. --Sketch of the Athenian Revenues. --Public Buildings the Work of the People rather than of Pericles. --Vices and Greatness of Athens had the same Sources. --Principle of Payment characterizes the Policy of the Period. --It is the Policy of Civilization. -- Colonization, Cleruchia. 

 III Revision of the Census. --Samian War. --Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Athenian Comedy to the Time of Aristophanes. 

 IV The Tragedies of Sophocles. 

ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL

BOOK I. 

CHAPTER I. 

Situation and Soil of Attica. --The Pelasgians its earliestInhabitants. --Their Race and Language akin to the Grecian. --Theirvarying Civilization and Architectural Remains. --Cecrops. --Were theearliest Civilizers of Greece foreigners or Greeks?--The Foundation ofAthens. --The Improvements attributed to Cecrops. --The Religion of theGreeks cannot be reduced to a simple System. --Its Influence upon theirCharacter and Morals, Arts and Poetry. --The Origin of Slavery andAristocracy. 

I. To vindicate the memory of the Athenian people, without disguisingthe errors of Athenian institutions;--and, in narrating alike thetriumphs and the reverses--the grandeur and the decay--of the mosteminent of ancient states, to record the causes of her imperishableinfluence on mankind, not alone in political change or the fortunes offluctuating war, but in the arts, the letters, and the social habits, which are equal elements in the history of a people;--this is theobject that I set before me;--not unreconciled to the toil of years, if, serving to divest of some party errors, and to diffuse through awider circle such knowledge as is yet bequeathed to us of a time andland, fertile in august examples and in solemn warnings--consecratedby undying names and memorable deeds. 

II. In that part of earth termed by the Greeks Hellas, and by theRomans Graecia [2], a small tract of land known by the name of Attica, extends into the Aegaean Sea--the southeast peninsula of Greece. Inits greatest length it is about sixty, in its greatest breadth abouttwenty-four, geographical miles. In shape it is a rude triangle, --ontwo sides flows the sea--on the third, the mountain range of Parnesand Cithaeron divides the Attic from the Boeotian territory. It isintersected by frequent but not lofty hills, and, compared with therest of Greece, its soil, though propitious to the growth of theolive, is not fertile or abundant. In spite of painful and elaborateculture, the traces of which are yet visible, it never produced asufficiency of corn to supply its population; and this, thecomparative sterility of the land, may be ranked among the causeswhich conduced to the greatness of the people. The principalmountains of Attica are, the Cape of Sunium, Hymettus, renowned forits honey, and Pentelicus for its marble; the principal streams whichwater the valleys are the capricious and uncertain rivulets ofCephisus and Ilissus [3], --streams breaking into lesser brooks, deliciously pure and clear. The air is serene--the climate healthful--the seasons temperate. Along the hills yet breathe the wild thyme, and the odorous plants which, everywhere prodigal in Greece, are moreespecially fragrant in that lucid sky;--and still the atmospherecolours with peculiar and various taints the marble of the existenttemples and the face of the mountain landscapes. 

III. I reject at once all attempt to penetrate an unfathomableobscurity for an idle object. I do not pause to inquire whether, after the destruction of Babel, Javan was the first settler in Attica, nor is it reserved for my labours to decide the solemn controversywhether Ogyges was the contemporary of Jacob or of Moses. Neithershall I suffer myself to be seduced into any lengthened considerationof those disputes, so curious and so inconclusive, relative to theorigin of the Pelasgi (according to Herodotus the earliest inhabitantsof Attica), which have vainly agitated the learned. It may amuse theantiquary to weigh gravely the several doubts as to the derivation oftheir name from Pelasgus or from Peleg--to connect the scatteredfragments of tradition--and to interpret either into history ormythology the language of fabulous genealogies. But our subtlesthypotheses can erect only a fabric of doubt, which, while it istempting to assault, it is useless to defend. All that it seems to menecessary to say of the Pelasgi is as follows:--They are the earliestrace which appear to have exercised a dominant power in Greece. Theirkings can be traced by tradition to a time long prior to the recordedgenealogy of any other tribe, and Inachus, the father of the PelasgianPhoroneus, is but another name for the remotest era to which Grecianchronology can ascend [4]. Whether the Pelasgi were anciently aforeign or a Grecian tribe, has been a subject of constant andcelebrated discussion. Herodotus, speaking of some settlements heldto be Pelaigic, and existing in his time, terms their language"barbarous;" but Mueller, nor with argument insufficient, considersthat the expression of the historian would apply only to a peculiardialect; and the hypothesis is sustained by another passage inHerodotus, in which he applies to certain Ionian dialects the sameterm as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the Pelasgicsettlements. In corroboration of Mueller's opinion we may alsoobserve, that the "barbarous-tongued" is an epithet applied by Homerto the Carians, and is rightly construed by the ancient critics asdenoting a dialect mingled and unpolished, certainly not foreign. Norwhen the Agamemnon of Sophocles upbraids Teucer with "his barbaroustongue, " [6] would any scholar suppose that Teucer is upbraided withnot speaking Greek; he is upbraided with speaking Greek inelegantlyand rudely. It is clear that they who continued with the leastadulteration a language in its earliest form, would seem to utter astrange and unfamiliar jargon to ears accustomed to its more modernconstruction. And, no doubt, could we meet with a tribe retaining theEnglish of the thirteenth century, the language of our ancestors wouldbe to most of us unintelligible, and seem to many of us foreign. But, however the phrase of Herodotus be interpreted, it would still beexceedingly doubtful whether the settlements he refers to were reallyand originally Pelasgic, and still more doubtful whether, if Pelasgiathey had continued unalloyed and uncorrupted their ancestral language. I do not, therefore, attach any importance to the expression ofHerodotus. I incline, on the contrary, to believe, with the moreeminent of English scholars, that the language of the Pelasgicontained at least the elements of that which we acknowledge as theGreek;--and from many arguments I select the following:

1st. Because, in the states which we know to have been peopled by thePelasgi (as Arcadia and Attica), and whence the population were notexpelled by new tribes, the language appears no less Greek than thatof those states from which the Pelasgi were the earliest driven. Hadthey spoken a totally different tongue from later settlers, I conceivethat some unequivocal vestiges of the difference would have beenvisible even to the historical times. 

2dly. Because the Hellenes are described as few at first--theirprogress is slow--they subdue, but they do not extirpate; in suchconquests--the conquests of the few settled among the many--thelanguage of the many continues to the last; that of the few wouldinfluence, enrich, or corrupt, but never destroy it. 

3dly. Because, whatever of the Grecian language pervades the Latin[7], we can only ascribe to the Pelasgic colonizers of Italy. Inthis, all ancient writers, Greek and Latin, are agreed. The few wordstransmitted to us as Pelasgic betray the Grecian features, and theLamina Borgiana (now in the Borgian collection of Naples, anddiscovered in 1783) has an inscription relative to the Siculi orSicani, a people expelled from their Italian settlements before anyreceived date of the Trojan war, of which the character is Pelasgic--the language Greek. 

IV. Of the moral state of the Pelasgi our accounts are imperfect andcontradictory. They were not a petty horde, but a vast race, doubtless divided, like every migratory people, into numerous tribes, differing in rank, in civilization [8], and in many peculiarities ofcharacter. The Pelasgi in one country might appear as herdsmen or assavages; in another, in the same age, they might appear collected intocities and cultivating the arts. The history of the East informs uswith what astonishing rapidity a wandering tribe, once settled, grewinto fame and power; the camp of to-day--the city of to-morrow--andthe "dwellers in the wilderness setting up the towers and the palacesthereof. " [9] Thus, while in Greece this mysterious people are oftenrepresented as the aboriginal race, receiving from Phoenician andEgyptian settlers the primitive blessings of social life, in Italy webehold them the improvers in agriculture [10] and first teachers ofletters. [11]

Even so early as the traditional appearance of Cecrops among thesavages of Attica, the Pelasgians in Arcadia had probably advancedfrom the pastoral to the civil life; and this, indeed, is the dateassigned by Pausanias to the foundation of that ancestral Lycosura, inwhose rude remains (by the living fountain and the waving oaks of themodern Diaphorte) the antiquary yet traces the fortifications of "thefirst city which the sun beheld. " [12] It is in their buildings thatthe Pelasgi have left the most indisputable record of their name. Their handwriting is yet upon their walls! A restless and variouspeople--overrunning the whole of Greece, found northward in Dacia, Illyria, and the country of the Getae, colonizing the coasts of Ionia, and long the master-race of the fairest lands of Italy, --they havepassed away amid the revolutions of the elder earth, their ancestryand their descendants alike unknown;--yet not indeed the last, if myconclusions are rightly drawn: if the primitive population of Greece--themselves Greek--founding the language, and kindred with the blood, of the later and more illustrious Hellenes--they still made the greatbulk of the people in the various states, and through their mostdazzling age: Enslaved in Laconia--but free in Athens--it was theirposterity that fought the Mede at Marathon and Plataea, --whomMiltiades led, --for whom Solon legislated, --for whom Plato thought, --whom Demosthenes harangued. Not less in Italy than in Greece theparents of an imperishable tongue, and, in part, the progenitors of aglorious race, we may still find the dim track of their existencewherever the classic civilization flourished, --the classic geniusbreathed. If in the Latin, if in the Grecian tongue, are yet theindelible traces of the language of the Pelasgi, the literature of theancient, almost of the modern world, is their true descendant!

V. Despite a vague belief (referred to by Plato) of a remote andperished era of civilization, the most popular tradition asserts thePelasgic inhabitants of Attica to have been sunk into the deepestignorance of the elements of social life, when, either from Sais, anEgyptian city, as is commonly supposed, or from Sais a province inUpper Egypt, an Egyptian characterized to posterity by the name ofCecrops is said to have passed into Attica with a band of adventurousemigrants. 

The tradition of this Egyptian immigration into Attica was longimplicitly received. Recently the bold skepticism of German scholars--always erudite--if sometimes rash--has sufficed to convince us ofthe danger we incur in drawing historical conclusions from times towhich no historical researches can ascend. The proofs upon which restthe reputed arrival of Egyptian colonizers, under Cecrops, in Attica, have been shown to be slender--the authorities for the assertion to becomparatively modern--the arguments against the probability of such animmigration in such an age, to be at least plausible and important. Not satisfied, however, with reducing to the uncertainty of conjecturewhat incautiously had been acknowledged as fact, the assailants of theEgyptian origin of Cecrops presume too much upon their victory, whenthey demand us to accept as a counter fact, what can be, after all, but a counter conjecture. To me, impartially weighing the argumentsand assertions on either side, the popular tradition of Cecrops andhis colony appears one that can neither be tacitly accepted ashistory, nor contemptuously dismissed as invention. It would be, however, a frivolous dispute, whether Cecrops were Egyptian orAttican, since no erudition can ascertain that Cecrops ever existed, were it not connected with a controversy of some philosophicalimportance, viz. , whether the early civilizers of Greece wereforeigners or Greeks, and whether the Egyptians more especiallyassisted to instruct the ancestors of a race that have become theteachers and models of the world, in the elements of religion, ofpolity, and the arts. 

Without entering into vain and futile reasonings, derived from thescattered passages of some early writers, from the ambiguous silenceof others--and, above all, from the dreams of etymological analogy ormythological fable, I believe the earliest civilizers of Greece tohave been foreign settlers; deducing my belief from the observationsof common sense rather than from obscure and unsatisfactory research. I believe it, First--Because, what is more probable than that at very early periodsthe more advanced nations of the East obtained communication with theGrecian continent and isles? What more probable than that themaritime and roving Phoenicians entered the seas of Greece, and weretempted by the plains, which promised abundance, and the mountains, which afforded a fastness? Possessed of a superior civilization tothe hordes they found, they would meet rather with veneration thanresistance, and thus a settlement would be obtained by aninconsiderable number, more in right of intelligence than of conquest. 

But, though this may be conceded with respect to the Phoenicians, itis asserted that the Egyptians at least were not a maritime orcolonizing people: and we are gravely assured, that in those distanttimes no Egyptian vessel had entered the Grecian seas. But of theremotest ages of Egyptian civilization we know but little. On theirearliest monuments (now their books!) we find depicted naval as wellas military battles, in which the vessels are evidently those employedat sea. According to their own traditions, they colonized in a remoteage. They themselves laid claim to Danaus: and the mythus of theexpedition of Osiris is not improbably construed into a figurativerepresentation of the spread of Egyptian civilization by the means ofcolonies. Besides, Egypt was subjected to more than one revolution, by which a large portion of her population was expelled the land, andscattered over the neighbouring regions [13]. And even granting thatEgyptians fitted out no maritime expedition--they could easily havetransplanted themselves in Phoenician vessels, or Grecian rafts--fromAsia into Greece. Nor can we forget that Egypt [14] for a time wasthe habitation, and Thebes the dominion, of the Phoenicians, and thathence, perhaps, the origin of the dispute whether certain of the firstforeign civilizers of Greece were Phoenicians or Egyptians: Thesettlers might come from Egypt, and be by extraction Phoenicians: orEgyptian emigrators might well have accompanied the Phoenician. [15]

2dly. By the evidence of all history, savage tribes appear to owetheir first enlightenment to foreigners: to be civilized, they conqueror are conquered--visit or are visited. For a fact which contains sostriking a mystery, I do not attempt to account. I find in thehistory of every other part of the world, that it is by the colonizeror the conqueror that a tribe neither colonizing nor conquering isredeemed from a savage state, and I do not reject so probable anhypothesis for Greece. 

3dly. I look to the various arguments of a local or special nature, by which these general probabilities may be supported, and I find themunusually strong: I cast my eyes on the map of Greece, and I see thatit is almost invariably on the eastern side that these easterncolonies are said to have been founded: I turn to chronology, and Ifind the revolutions in the East coincide in point of accredited datewith the traditional immigrations into Greece: I look to the historyof the Greeks, and I find the Greeks themselves (a people above allothers vain of aboriginal descent, and contemptuous of foreign races)agreed in according a general belief to the accounts of theirobligations to foreign settlers; and therefore (without additional butdoubtful arguments from any imaginary traces of Eastern, Egyptian, Phoenician rites and fables in the religion or the legends of Greecein her remoter age) I see sufficient ground for inclining to the lessmodern, but mere popular belief, which ascribes a foreign extractionto the early civilizers of Greece: nor am I convinced by thereasonings of those who exclude the Egyptians from the list of theseprimitive benefactors. 

It being conceded that no hypothesis is more probable than that theearliest civilizers of Greece were foreign, and might be Egyptian, Ido not recognise sufficient authority for rejecting the Attictraditions claiming Egyptian civilizers for the Attic soil, inarguments, whether grounded upon the fact that such traditions, unreferred to by the more ancient, were collected by the more modern, of Grecian writers--or upon plausible surmises as to the habits of theEgyptians in that early age. Whether Cecrops were the first--whetherhe were even one--of these civilizers, is a dispute unworthy ofphilosophical inquirers [16]. But as to the time of Cecrops arereferred, both by those who contend for his Egyptian, and those whoassert his Attic origin, certain advances from barbarism, and certaininnovations in custom, which would have been natural to a foreigner, and almost miraculous in a native, I doubt whether it would not be ourwiser and more cautious policy to leave undisturbed a long accreditedconjecture, rather than to subscribe to arguments which, howeverstartling and ingenious, not only substitute no unanswerablehypothesis, but conduce to no important result. [17]

VI. If Cecrops were really the leader of an Egyptian colony, it ismore than probable that he obtained the possession of Attica by othermeans than those of force. To savage and barbarous tribes, the firstappearance of men, whose mechanical inventions, whose superiorknowledge of the arts of life--nay, whose exterior advantages of garband mien [18] indicate intellectual eminence, till then neither knownnor imagined, presents a something preternatural and divine. Theimagination of the wild inhabitants is seduced, their superstitionsaroused, and they yield to a teacher--not succumb to an invader. Itwas probably thus, then, that Cecrops with his colonists would haveoccupied the Attic plain--conciliated rather than subdued theinhabitants, and united in himself the twofold authority exercised byprimeval chiefs--the dignity of the legislator, and the sanctity ofthe priest. It is evident that none of the foreign settlers broughtwith them a numerous band. The traditions speak of them withgratitude as civilizers, not with hatred as conquerors. And they didnot leave any traces in the establishment of their language:--a proofof the paucity of their numbers, and the gentle nature of theirinfluence--the Phoenician Cadmus, the Egyptian Cecrops, the PhrygianPelops, introduced no separate and alien tongue. Assisting tocivilize the Greeks, they then became Greeks; their posterity mergedand lost amid the native population. 

VII. Perhaps, in all countries, the first step to social improvementis in the institution of marriage, and the second is the formation ofcities. As Menes in Egypt, as Fohi in China, so Cecrops at Athens issaid first to have reduced into sacred limits the irregularintercourse of the sexes [19], and reclaimed his barbarous subjectsfrom a wandering and unprovidential life, subsisting on thespontaneous produce of no abundant soil. High above the plain, andfronting the sea, which, about three miles distant on that side, sweeps into a bay peculiarly adapted for the maritime enterprises ofan earlier age, we still behold a cragged and nearly perpendicularrock. In length its superficies is about eight hundred, in breadthabout four hundred, feet [20]. Below, on either side, flow theimmortal streams of the Ilissus and Cephisus. From its summit you maysurvey, here, the mountains of Hymettus, Pentelicus, and, far away, "the silver-bearing Laurium;" below, the wide plain of Attica, brokenby rocky hills--there, the islands of Salamis and Aegina, with theopposite shores of Argolis, rising above the waters of the SaronicBay. On this rock the supposed Egyptian is said to have built afortress, and founded a city [21]; the fortress was in later timesstyled the Acropolis, and the place itself, when the buildings ofAthens spread far and wide beneath its base, was still designatedpolis, or the CITY. By degrees we are told that he extended, fromthis impregnable castle and its adjacent plain, the limit of hisrealm, until it included the whole of Attica, and perhaps Boeotia[22]. It is also related that he established eleven other towns orhamlets, and divided his people into twelve tribes, to each of whichone of the towns was apportioned--a fortress against foreign invasion, and a court of justice in civil disputes. 

If we may trust to the glimmering light which, resting for a moment, uncertain and confused, upon the reign of Cecrops, is swallowed up inall the darkness of fable during those of his reputed successors, --itis to this apocryphal personage that we must refer the elements bothof agriculture and law. He is said to have instructed the Atheniansto till the land, and to watch the produce of the seasons; to haveimported from Egypt the olive-tree, for which the Attic soil wasafterward so celebrated, and even to have navigated to Sicily and toAfrica for supplies of corn. That such advances from a primitive andsavage state were not made in a single generation, is sufficientlyclear. With more probability, Cecrops is reputed to have imposed uponthe ignorance of his subjects and the license of his followers thecurb of impartial law, and to have founded a tribunal of justice(doubtless the sole one for all disputes), in which after timesimagined to trace the origin of the solemn Areopagus. 

VIII. Passing from these doubtful speculations on the detailedimprovements effected by Cecrops in the social life of the Atticpeople, I shall enter now into some examination of two subjects farmore important. The first is the religion of the Athenians in commonwith the rest of Greece; and the second the origin of the institutionof slavery. 

The origin of religion in all countries is an inquiry of the deepestinterest and of the vaguest result. For, the desire of the pious totrace throughout all creeds the principles of the one they themselvesprofess--the vanity of the learned to display a various and reconditeerudition--the passion of the ingenious to harmonize conflictingtraditions--and the ambition of every speculator to say something newupon an ancient but inexhaustible subject, so far from enlightening, only perplex our conjectures. Scarcely is the theory of to-dayestablished, than the theory of to-morrow is invented to oppose it. With one the religion of the Greeks is but a type of the mysteries ofthe Jews, the event of the deluge, and the preservation of the ark;with another it is as entirely an incorporation of the metaphysicalsolemnities of the Egyptian;--now it is the crafty device of priests, now the wise invention of sages. It is not too much to say, thatafter the profoundest labours and the most plausible conjectures ofmodern times, we remain yet more uncertain and confused than we werebefore. It is the dark boast of every pagan mythology, as one of theeldest of the pagan deities, that "none among mortals hath lifted upits veil!"

After, then, some brief and preliminary remarks, tending to suchhypotheses as appear to me most probable and simple, I shall hastenfrom unprofitable researches into the Unknown, to useful deductionsfrom what is given to our survey--in a word, from the origin of theGrecian religion to its influence and its effects; the first is theprovince of the antiquary and the speculator; the last of thehistorian and the practical philosopher. 

IX. When Herodotus informs us that Egypt imparted to Greece the namesof almost all her deities, and that his researches convinced him thatthey were of barbarous origin, he exempts from the list of theEgyptian deities, Neptune, the Dioscuri, Juno, Vesta, Themis, theGraces, and the Nereids [23]. From Africa, according to Herodotus, came Neptune, from the Pelasgi the rest of the deities disclaimed byEgypt. According to the same authority, the Pelasgi learned not theirdeities, but the names of their deities (and those at a later period), from the Egyptians [24]. But the Pelasgi were the first knowninhabitants of Greece--the first known inhabitants of Greece hadtherefore their especial deities, before any communication with Egypt. For the rest we must accept the account of the simple and credulousHerodotus with considerable caution and reserve. Nothing is morenatural--perhaps more certain--than that every tribe [25], even ofutter savages, will invent some deities of their own; and as thesedeities will as naturally be taken from external objects, common toall mankind, such as the sun or the moon, the waters or the earth, andhonoured with attributes formed from passions and impressions no lessuniversal;--so the deities of every tribe will have something kindredto each other, though the tribes themselves may never have come intocontact or communication. 

The mythology of the early Greeks may perhaps be derived from thefollowing principal sources:--First, the worship of natural objects;--and of divinities so formed, the most unequivocally national willobviously be those most associated with their mode of life and theinfluences of their climate. When the savage first intrusts the seedto the bosom of the earth--when, through a strange and unaccountableprocess, he beholds what he buried in one season spring forth theharvest of the next--the EARTH itself, the mysterious garner, thebenign, but sometimes the capricious reproducer of the treasurescommitted to its charge--becomes the object of the wonder, the hope, and the fear, which are the natural origin of adoration and prayer. Again, when he discovers the influence of the heaven upon the growthof his labour--when, taught by experience, he acknowledges its powerto blast or to mellow--then, by the same process of ideas, the HEAVENalso assumes the character of divinity, and becomes a new agent, whosewrath is to be propitiated, whose favour is to be won. What commonsense thus suggests to us, our researches confirm, and we findaccordingly that the Earth and the Heaven are the earliest deities ofthe agricultural Pelasgi. As the Nile to the fields of the Egyptian--earth and heaven to the culture of the Greek. The effects of the SUNupon human labour and human enjoyment are so sensible to the simplestunderstanding, that we cannot wonder to find that glorious luminaryamong the most popular deities of ancient nations. Why search throughthe East to account for its worship in Greece? More easy to supposethat the inhabitants of a land, whom the sun so especially favoured--saw and blessed it, for it was good, than, amid innumerablecontradictions and extravagant assumptions, to decide upon thatremoter shore, whence was transplanted a deity, whose effects were sobenignant, whose worship was so natural, to the Greeks. And in themore plain belief we are also borne out by the more sound inductionsof learning. For it is noticeable that neither the moon nor thestars--favourite divinities with those who enjoyed the serene nights, or inhabited the broad plains of the East--were (though probablyadmitted among the Pelasgic deities) honoured with that intense andreverent worship which attended them in Asia and in Egypt. To thePelasgi, not yet arrived at the intellectual stage of philosophicalcontemplation, the most sensible objects of influence would be themost earnestly adored. What the stars were to the East, their ownbeautiful Aurora, awaking them to the delight of their genial andtemperate climate, was to the early Greeks. 

Of deities, thus created from external objects, some will rise out (ifI may use the expression) of natural accident and local circumstance. An earthquake will connect a deity with the earth--an inundation withthe river or the sea. The Grecian soil bears the marks of maritimerevolution; many of the tribes were settled along the coast, andperhaps had already adventured their rafts upon the main. A deity ofthe sea (without any necessary revelation from Africa) is, therefore, among the earliest of the Grecian gods. The attributes of each deitywill be formed from the pursuits and occupations of the worshippers--sanguinary with the warlike--gentle with the peaceful. The pastoralPelasgi of Arcadia honoured the pastoral Pan for ages before he wasreceived by their Pelasgic brotherhood of Attica. And theagricultural Demeter or Ceres will be recognised among many tribes ofthe agricultural Pelasgi, which no Egyptian is reputed, even bytradition [26], to have visited. 

The origin of prayer is in the sense of dependance, and in theinstinct of self-preservation or self-interest. The first objects ofprayer to the infant man will be those on which by his localities hebelieves himself to be most dependant for whatever blessing his modeof life inclines him the most to covet, or from which may comewhatever peril his instinct will teach him the most to deprecate andfear. It is this obvious truth which destroys all the erudite systemsthat would refer the different creeds of the heathen to some singleorigin. Till the earth be the same in each region--till the samecircumstances surround every tribe--different impressions, in nationsyet unconverted and uncivilized, produce different deities. Naturesuggests a God, and man invests him with attributes. Nature and man, the same as a whole, vary in details; the one does not everywheresuggest the same notions--the other cannot everywhere imagine the sameattributes. As with other tribes, so with the Pelasgi or primitiveGreeks, their early gods were the creatures of their own earlyimpressions. 

As one source of religion was in external objects, so another is to befound in internal sensations and emotions. The passions are sopowerful in their effects upon individuals and nations, that we can belittle surprised to find those effects attributed to the instigationand influence of a supernatural being. Love is individualized andpersonified in nearly all mythologies; and LOVE therefore ranks amongthe earliest of the Grecian gods. Fear or terror, whose influence isoften so strange, sudden, and unaccountable--seizing even the bravest--spreading through numbers with all the speed of an electric sympathy--and deciding in a moment the destiny of an army or the ruin of atribe--is another of those passions, easily supposed the afflatus ofsome preternatural power, and easily, therefore, susceptible ofpersonification. And the pride of men, more especially if habituallycourageous and warlike, will gladly yield to the credulities whichshelter a degrading and unwonted infirmity beneath the agency of asuperior being. TERROR, therefore, received a shape and found analtar probably as early at least as the heroic age. According toPlutarch, Theseus sacrificed to Terror previous to his battle with theAmazons;--an idle tale, it is true, but proving, perhaps, theantiquity of a tradition. As society advanced from barbarism arosemore intellectual creations--as cities were built, and as in theconstant flux and reflux of martial tribes cities were overthrown, theelements of the social state grew into personification, to whichinfluence was attributed and reverence paid. Thus were fixed intodivinity and shape, ORDER, PEACE, JUSTICE, and the stern and gloomyORCOS [27], witness of the oath, avenger of the perjury. 

This, the second source of religion, though more subtle and refined inits creations, had still its origin in the same human causes as thefirst, viz. , anticipation of good and apprehension of evil. Ofdeities so created, many, however, were the inventions of poets--(poetic metaphor is a fruitful mother of mythological fable)--manyalso were the graceful refinements of a subsequent age. But some (andnearly all those I have enumerated) may be traced to the earliestperiod to which such researches can ascend. It is obvious that theeldest would be connected with the passions--the more modern with theintellect. 

It seems to me apparent that almost simultaneously with deities ofthese two classes would arise the greater and more influential classof personal divinities which gradually expanded into the heroicdynasty of Olympus. The associations which one tribe, or onegeneration, united with the heaven, the earth, or the sun, anothermight obviously connect, or confuse, with a spirit or geniusinhabiting or influencing the element or physical object which excitedtheir anxiety or awe: And, this creation effected--so what one tribeor generation might ascribe to the single personification of apassion, a faculty, or a moral and social principle, another wouldjust as naturally refer to a personal and more complex deity:--thatwhich in one instance would form the very nature of a superior being, in the other would form only an attribute--swell the power and amplifythe character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in thenature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy thanabstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions. Thus, deities of this class would gradually rise into pre-eminence andpopularity above those more vague and incorporeal--and (though I guardmyself from absolutely solving in this manner the enigma of ancienttheogonies) the family of Jupiter could scarcely fail to possessthemselves of the shadowy thrones of the ancestral Earth and theprimeval Heaven. 

A third source of the Grecian, as of all mythologies, was in theworship of men who had actually existed, or been supposed to exist. For in this respect errors might creep into the calendar of heroes, asthey did into the calendar of saints (the hero-worship of themoderns), which has canonized many names to which it is impossible tofind the owners. This was probably the latest, but perhaps inafter-times the most influential and popular addition to the aboriginalfaith. The worship of dead men once established, it was natural to apeople so habituated to incorporate and familiarize religiousimpressions--to imagine that even their primary gods, first formedfrom natural impressions (and, still more, those deities they hadborrowed from stranger creeds)--should have walked the earth. Andthus among the multitude in the philosophical ages, even the loftiestof the Olympian dwellers were vaguely supposed to have knownhumanity;--their immortality but the apotheosis of the benefactor orthe hero. 

X. The Pelasgi, then, had their native or aboriginal deities(differing in number and in attributes with each different tribe), andwith them rests the foundation of the Greek mythology. They requiredno Egyptian wisdom to lead them to believe in superior powers. Naturewas their primeval teacher. But as intercourse was opened with theEast from the opposite Asia--with the North from the neighbouringThrace, new deities were transplanted and old deities receivedadditional attributes and distinctions, according as the fancy of thestranger found them assimilate to the divinities he had beenaccustomed to adore. It seems to me, that in Saturn we may trace thepopular Phoenician deity--in the Thracian Mars, the fierce war-god ofthe North. But we can scarcely be too cautious how far we allowourselves to be influenced by resemblance, however strong, between aGrecian and an alien deity. Such a resemblance may not only be formedby comparatively modern innovations, but may either be resolved tothat general likeness which one polytheism will ever bear towardsanother, or arise from the adoption of new attributes and strangetraditions;--so that the deity itself may be homesprung andindigenous, while bewildering the inquirer with considerablesimilitude to other gods, from whose believers the native worshipmerely received an epithet, a ceremony, a symbol, or a fable. Andthis necessity of caution is peculiarly borne out by thecontradictions which each scholar enamoured of a system gives to thelabours of the speculator who preceded him. What one research woulddiscover to be Egyptian, another asserts to be Phoenician; a thirdbrings from the North; a fourth from the Hebrews; and a fifth, withyet wilder imagination, from the far and then unpenetrated caves andwoods of India. Accept common sense as our guide, and thecontradictions are less irreconcilable--the mystery less obscure. Ina deity essentially Greek, a Phoenician colonist may discoversomething familiar, and claim an ancestral god. He imparts to thenative deity some Phoenician features--an Egyptian or an Asiaticsucceeds him--discovers a similar likeness--introduces similarinnovations. The lively Greek receives--amalgamates--appropriatesall: but the aboriginal deity is not the less Greek. Each speculatormay be equally right in establishing a partial resemblance, preciselybecause all speculators are wrong in asserting a perfect identity. 

It follows as a corollary from the above reasonings, that the religionof Greece was much less uniform than is popularly imagined; 1st, because each separate state or canton had its own peculiar deity;2dly, because, in the foreign communication of new gods, each strangerwould especially import the deity that at home he had more especiallyadored. Hence to every state its tutelary god--the founder of itsgreatness, the guardian of its renown. Even in the petty and limitedterritory of Attica, each tribe, independent of the public worship, had its peculiar deities, honoured by peculiar rites. 

The deity said to be introduced by Cecrops is Neith, or more properlyNaith [28]--the goddess of Sais, in whom we are told to recognise theAthene, or Minerva of the Greeks. I pass over as palpably absurd anyanalogy of names by which the letters that compose the word Keith areinverted to the word Athene. The identity of the two goddesses mustrest upon far stronger proof. But, in order to obtain this proof, wemust know with some precision the nature and attributes of thedivinity of Sais--a problem which no learning appears to mesatisfactorily to have solved. It would be a strong, and, I think, aconvincing argument, that Athene is of foreign origin, could we becertain that her attributes, so eminently intellectual, so thoroughlyout of harmony with the barbarism of the early Greeks, were accordedto her at the commencement of her worship. But the remotest traditions(such as her contest with Neptune for the possession of the soil), ifwe take the more simple interpretation, seem to prove her to have beenoriginally an agricultural deity, the creation of which would havebeen natural enough to the agricultural Pelasgi;--while her supposedinvention of some of the simplest and most elementary arts aresufficiently congenial to the notions of an unpolished and infant eraof society. Nor at a long subsequent period is there much resemblancebetween the formal and elderly goddess of Daedalian sculpture and theglorious and august Glaucopis of Homer--the maiden of celestial beautyas of unrivalled wisdom. I grant that the variety of her attributesrenders it more than probable that Athene was greatly indebted, perhaps to the "Divine Intelligence, " personified in the EgyptianNaith--perhaps also, as Herodotus asserts, to the warlike deity ofLibya--nor less, it may be, to the Onca of the Phoenicians [29], fromwhom in learning certain of the arts, the Greeks might simultaneouslylearn the name and worship of the Phoenician deity, presiding oversuch inventions. Still an aboriginal deity was probably the nucleus, round which gradually gathered various and motley attributes. Andcertain it is, that as soon as the whole creation rose into distinctlife, the stately and virgin goddess towers, aloof and alone, the mostnational, the most majestic of the Grecian deities--rising above allcomparison with those who may have assisted to decorate and robe her, embodying in a single form the very genius, multiform, yet individualas it was, of the Grecian people--and becoming among all the deitiesof the heathen heaven what the Athens she protected became upon theearth. 

XI. It may be said of the Greeks, that there never was a people whoso completely nationalized all that they borrowed from a foreignsource. And whatever, whether in a remoter or more recent age, itmight have appropriated from the creed of Isis and Osiris, one causealone would have sufficed to efface from the Grecian the peculiarcharacter of the Egyptian mythology. 

The religion of Egypt, as a science, was symbolical--it denotedelementary principles of philosophy; its gods were enigmas. It hasbeen asserted (on very insufficient data) that in the earliest ages ofthe world, one god, of whom the sun was either the emblem or theactual object of worship, was adored universally throughout the East, and that polytheism was created by personifying the properties andattributes of the single deity: "there being one God, " says Aristotle, finely, "called by many names, from the various effects which hisvarious power produces. " [30] But I am far from believing that asymbolical religion is ever the earliest author of polytheism; for asymbolical religion belongs to a later period of civilization, whensome men are set apart in indolence to cultivate their imagination, inorder to beguile or to instruct the reason of the rest. Priests arethe first philosophers--a symbolical religion the first philosophy. But faith precedes philosophy. I doubt not, therefore, thatpolytheism existed in the East before that age when the priests ofChaldea and of Egypt invested it with a sublimer character bysummoning to the aid of invention a wild and speculative wisdom--byrepresenting under corporeal tokens the revolutions of the earth, theseasons, and the stars, and creating new (or more probably adaptingold and sensual) superstitions, as the grosser and more external typesof a philosophical creed [31]. But a symbolical worship--the creationof a separate and established order of priests--never is, and nevercan be, the religion professed, loved, and guarded by a people. Themultitude demand something positive and real for their belief--theycannot worship a delusion--their reverence would be benumbed on theinstant if they could be made to comprehend that the god to whom theysacrificed was no actual power able to effect evil and good, but thetype of a particular season of the year, or an unwholesome principlein the air. Hence, in the Egyptian religion, there was one creed forthe vulgar and another for the priests. Again, to invent and toperpetuate a symbolical religion (which is, in fact, an hereditaryschool of metaphysics) requires men set apart for the purpose, whoseleisure tempts them to invention, whose interest prompts them toimposture. A symbolical religion is a proof of a certain refinementin civilization--the refinement of sages in the midst of a subservientpeople; and it absorbs to itself those meditative and imaginativeminds which, did it not exist, would be devoted to philosophy. Now, even allowing full belief to the legends which bring the Egyptiancolonists into Greece, it is probable that few among them wereacquainted with the secrets of the symbolical mythology theyintroduced. Nor, if they were so, is it likely that they would havecommunicated to a strange and a barbarous population the profound andlatent mysteries shrouded from the great majority of Egyptiansthemselves. Thus, whatever the Egyptian colonizers might haveimported of a typical religion, the abstruser meaning would become, either at once or gradually, lost. Nor can we--until the recent ageof sophists and refiners--clearly ascertain any period in which didnot exist the indelible distinction between the Grecian and Egyptianmythology: viz. --that the first was actual, real, corporeal, household; the second vague, shadowy, and symbolical. This might nothave been the case had there been established in the Grecian, as inthe Egyptian cities, distinct and separate colleges of priests, havingin their own hands the sole care of the religion, and forming aprivileged and exclusive body of the state. But among the Greeks (andthis should be constantly borne in mind) there never was, at any knownhistorical period, a distinct caste of priests [32]. We may perceive, indeed, that the early colonizers commenced with approaches to thatprinciple, but it was not prosecuted farther. There were sacredfamilies in Athens from which certain priesthoods were to be filled--but even these personages were not otherwise distinguished; theyperformed all the usual offices of a citizen, and were not unitedtogether by any exclusiveness of privilege or spirit of party. Amongthe Egyptian adventurers there were probably none fitted by previouseducation for the sacred office; and the chief who had obtained thedominion might entertain no irresistible affection for a caste whichin his own land he had seen dictating to the monarch and interferingwith the government. [33]

Thus, among the early Greeks, we find the chiefs themselves werecontented to offer the sacrifice and utter the prayer; and thoughthere were indeed appointed and special priests, they held noimperious or commanding authority. The Areopagus at Athens had thecare of religion, but the Areopagites were not priests. This absenceof a priestly caste had considerable effect upon the flexile andfamiliar nature of the Grecian creed, because there were noneprofessionally interested in guarding the purity of the religion, inpreserving to what it had borrowed, symbolical allusions, and inforbidding the admixture of new gods and heterogeneous creeds. Themore popular a religion, the more it seeks corporeal representations, and avoids the dim and frigid shadows of a metaphysical belief. [34]

The romantic fables connected with the Grecian mythology were, somehome-sprung, some relating to native heroes, and incorporating nativelegends, but they were also, in great measure, literal interpretationsof symbolical types and of metaphorical expressions, or erroneousperversions of words in other tongues. The craving desire to accountfor natural phenomena, common to mankind--the wish to appropriate tonative heroes the wild tales of mariners and strangers natural to avain and a curious people--the additions which every legend wouldreceive in its progress from tribe to tribe--and the constantembellishments the most homely inventions would obtain from thecompetition of rival poets, rapidly served to swell and enrich theseprimary treasures of Grecian lore--to deduce a history from anallegory--to establish a creed in a romance. Thus the early mythologyof Greece is to be properly considered in its simple and outwardinterpretations. The Greeks, as yet in their social infancy, regardedthe legends of their faith as a child reads a fairy tale, credulous ofall that is supernatural in the agency--unconscious of all that may bephilosophical in the moral. 

It is true, indeed, that dim associations of a religion, sabaean andelementary, such as that of the Pelasgi (but not therefore foreign andphilosophical), with a religion physical and popular, are, here andthere, to be faintly traced among the eldest of the Grecian authors. We may see that in Jupiter they represented the ether, and in Apollo, and sometimes even in Hercules, the sun. But these authors, while, perhaps unconsciously, they hinted at the symbolical, fixed, by thevitality and nature of their descriptions, the actual images of thegods and, reversing the order of things, Homer created Jupiter! [35]

But most of the subtle and typical interpretations of the Grecianmythology known to us at present were derived from the philosophy of alater age. The explanations of religious fables--such, for instance, as the chaining of Saturn by Jupiter, and the rape of Proserpine byPluto, in which Saturn is made to signify the revolution of theseasons, chained to the courses of the stars, to prevent tooimmoderate a speed, and the rape of Proserpine is refined into anallegory that denotes the seeds of corn that the sovereign principleof the earth receives and sepulchres [36];--the moral or physicalexplanation of legends like these was, I say, the work of the few, reduced to system either from foreign communication or acuteinvention. For a symbolical religion, created by the priests of oneage, is reinstated or remodelled after its corruption by thephilosophers of another. 

XII. We may here pause a moment to inquire whence the Greeks derivedthe most lovely and fascinating of their mythological creations--thoselesser and more terrestrial beings--the spirits of the mountain, thewaters, and the grove. 

Throughout the East, from the remotest era, we find that mountainswere nature's temples. The sanctity of high places is constantlyrecorded in the scriptural writings. The Chaldaean, the Egyptian, andthe Persian, equally believed that on the summit of mountains theyapproached themselves nearer to the oracles of heaven. But thefountain, the cavern, and the grove, were no less holy than themountain-top in the eyes of the first religionists of the East. Streams and fountains were dedicated to the Sun, and their exhalationswere supposed to inspire with prophecy, and to breathe of the god. The gloom of caverns, naturally the brooding-place of awe, was deemeda fitting scene for diviner revelations--it inspired unearthlycontemplation and mystic revery. Zoroaster is supposed by Porphyry(well versed in all Pagan lore, though frequently misunderstanding itsproper character) to have first inculcated the worship of caverns[37]; and there the early priests held a temple, and primevalphilosophy its retreat [38]. Groves, especially those in high places, or in the neighbourhood of exhaling streams, were also appropriate toworship, and conducive to the dreams of an excited and credulousimagination; and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, burnt incense, not onlyon the hills, but "under every green tree. " [39]

These places, then--the mountain, the forest, the stream, and thecavern, were equally objects of sanctity and awe among the ancientnations. 

But we need not necessarily suppose that a superstition so universalwas borrowed, and not conceived, by the early Greeks. The same causeswhich had made them worship the earth and the sea, extended theirfaith to the rivers and the mountains, which in a spirit of naturaland simple poetry they called "the children" of those elementarydeities. The very soil of Greece, broken up and diversified by somany inequalities, stamped with volcanic features, profuse in streamsand mephitic fountains, contributed to render the feeling of localdivinity prevalent and intense. Each petty canton had its own Nile, whose influence upon fertility and culture was sufficient to becomeworthy to propitiate, and therefore to personify. Had Greece beenunited under one monarchy, and characterized by one common monotony ofsoil, a single river, a single mountain, alone might have been deemeddivine. It was the number of its tribes--it was the variety of itsnatural features, which produced the affluence and prodigality of itsmythological creations. Nor can we omit from the causes of theteeming, vivid, and universal superstition of Greece, the accidents ofearthquake and inundation, to which the land appears early and oftento have been exposed. To the activity and caprice of nature--to thefrequent operation of causes, unrecognised, unforeseen, unguessed, theGreeks owed much of their disposition to recur to mysterious andsuperior agencies--and that wonderful poetry of faith which delightedto associate the visible with the unseen. The peculiar character notonly of a people, but of its earlier poets--not only of its soil, butof its air and heaven, colours the superstition it creates: and mostof the terrestrial demons which the gloomier North clothed with terrorand endowed with malice, took from the benignant genius and theenchanting climes of Greece the gentlest offices and the fairestforms;--yet even in Greece itself not universal in their character, but rather the faithful reflections of the character of each class ofworshippers: thus the graces [40], whose "eyes" in the minstrelsey ofHesiod "distilled care-beguiling love, " in Lacedaemon were the nymphsof discipline and war!

In quitting this subject, be one remark permitted in digression: thelocal causes which contributed to superstition might conduct in aftertimes to science. If the Nature that was so constantly in strange andfitful action, drove the Greeks in their social infancy to seek agentsfor the action and vents for their awe, so, as they advanced tomaturer intellect, it was in Nature herself that they sought thecauses of effects that appeared at first preternatural. And, ineither stage, their curiosity and interest aroused by the phenomenaaround them--the credulous inventions of ignorance gave way to theeager explanations of philosophy. Often, in the superstition of oneage, lies the germe that ripens into the inquiry of the next. 

XIII. Pass we now to some examination of the general articles offaith among the Greeks; their sacrifices and rites of worship. 

In all the more celebrated nations of the ancient world, we findestablished those twin elements of belief by which religion harmonizesand directs the social relations of life, viz. , a faith in a futurestate, and in the providence of superior powers, who, surveying asjudges the affairs of earth, punish the wicked and reward the good[41]. It has been plausibly conjectured that the fables of Elysium, the slow Cocytus, and the gloomy Hades, were either invented orallegorized from the names of Egyptian places. Diodorus assures usthat by the vast catacombs of Egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead--were the temple and stream, both called Cocytus, the foul canal ofAcheron, and the Elysian plains [42]; and, according to the sameequivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across thewaters by a pilot, termed Charon in the Egyptian tongue. But, previous to the embarcation, appointed judges on the margin of theAcheron listened to whatever accusations were preferred by the livingagainst the deceased, and if convinced of his misdeeds, deprived himof the rites of sepulture. Hence it was supposed that Orpheustransplanted into Greece the fable of the infernal regions. But thereis good reason to look on this tale with distrust, and to believe thatthe doctrine of a future state was known to the Greeks without anytuition from Egypt;--while it is certain that the main moral of theEgyptian ceremony, viz. , the judgment of the dead, was not familiar tothe early doctrine of the Greeks. They did not believe that the goodwere rewarded and the bad punished in that dreary future, which theyimbodied in their notions of the kingdom of the shades. [43]

XIV. Less in the Grecian deities than in the customs in their honour, may we perceive certain traces of oriental superstition. We recognisethe usages of the elder creeds in the chosen sites of their temples--the habitual ceremonies of their worship. It was to the east that thesupplicator turned his face, and he was sprinkled, as a necessarypurification, with the holy water often alluded to by sacred writersas well as profane--a typical rite entailed from Paganism on thegreater proportion of existing Christendom. Nor was any oblation dulyprepared until it was mingled with salt--that homely and immemorialoffering, ordained not only by the priests of the heathen idols, butalso prescribed by Moses to the covenant of the Hebrew God. [44]

XV. We now come to those sacred festivals in celebration of religiousmysteries, which inspire modern times with so earnest an interest. Perhaps no subject connected with the religion of the ancients hasbeen cultivated with more laborious erudition, attended with morebarren result. And with equal truth and wit, the acute and searchingLobeck has compared the schools of Warburton and St. Croix to theSabines, who possessed the faculty of dreaming what they wished. According to an ancient and still popular account, the dark enigmas ofEleusis were borrowed from Egypt;--the drama of the Anaglyph [45]. But, in answer to this theory, we must observe, that even if really, at their commencement, the strange and solemn rites which they areasserted to have been--mystical ceremonies grow so naturally out ofthe connexion between the awful and the unknown--were found sogenerally among the savages of the ancient world--howsoever dispersed--and still so frequently meet the traveller on shores to which it isindeed a wild speculation to assert that the oriental wisdom everwandered, that it is more likely that they were the offspring of thenative ignorance [46], than the sublime importation of a symbolicalphilosophy utterly ungenial to the tribes to which it wascommunicated, and the times to which the institution is referred. Andthough I would assign to the Eleusinian Mysteries a much earlier datethan Lobeck is inclined to affix [47], I search in vain for a moreprobable supposition of the causes of their origin than that which hesuggests, and which I now place before the reader. We have seen thateach Grecian state had its peculiar and favourite deities, propitiatedby varying ceremonies. The early Greeks imagined that their godsmight be won from them by the more earnest prayers and the moresplendid offerings of their neighbours; the Homeric heroes found theirclaim for divine protection on the number of the offerings they haverendered to the deity they implore. And how far the jealous desire toretain to themselves the favour of tutelary gods was entertained bythe Greeks, may be illustrated by the instances specially alluding tothe low and whispered voice in which prayers were addressed to thesuperior powers, lest the enemy should hear the address, and vie withinterested emulation for the celestial favour. The Eleusinians, infrequent hostilities with their neighbours, the Athenians, might veryreasonably therefore exclude the latter from the ceremonies institutedin honour of their guardian divinities, Demeter and Persephone (i. E. , Ceres and Proserpine). And we may here add, that secrecy onceestablished, the rites might at a very early period obtain, andperhaps deserve, an enigmatic and mystic character. But when, after asignal defeat of the Eleusinians, the two states were incorporated, the union was confirmed by a joint participation in the ceremony [48]to which a political cause would thus give a more formal and solemndignity. This account of the origin of the Eleusinian Mysteries isnot indeed capable of demonstration, but it seems to me at least themost probable in itself, and the most conformable to the habits of theGreeks, as to those of all early nations. 

Certain it is that for a long time the celebration of the Eleusinianceremonies was confined to these two neighbouring states, until, asvarious causes contributed to unite the whole of Greece in a commonreligion and a common name, admission was granted all Greeks of allranks, male and female, --provided they had committed no inexpiableoffence, performed the previous ceremonies required, and wereintroduced by an Athenian citizen. 

With the growing flame and splendour of Athens, this institution roseinto celebrity and magnificence, until it appears to have become themost impressive spectacle of the heathen world. It is evident that apeople so imitative would reject no innovations or additions thatcould increase the interest or the solemnity of exhibition; and stillless such as might come (through whatsoever channel) from that antiqueand imposing Egypt, which excited so much of their veneration andwonder. Nor do I think it possible to account for the greatsimilarity attested by Herodotus and others, between the mysteries ofIsis and those of Ceres, as well as for the resemblance in lesscelebrated ceremonies between the rites of Egypt and of Greece, without granting at once, that mediately, or even immediately, thesuperstitious of the former exercised great influence upon, andimparted many features to, those of the latter. But the age in whichthis religious communication principally commenced has been a matterof graver dispute than the question merits. A few solitary andscattered travellers and strangers may probably have given rise to itat a very remote period; but, upon the whole, it appears to me that, with certain modifications, we must agree with Lobeck, and the morerational schools of inquiry, that it was principally in the intervalbetween the Homeric age and the Persian war that mysticism passed intoreligion--that superstition assumed the attributes of a science--andthat lustrations, auguries, orgies, obtained method and system fromthe exuberant genius of poetical fanaticism. 

That in these august mysteries, doctrines contrary to the popularreligion were propounded, is a theory that has, I think, beenthoroughly overturned. The exhibition of ancient statues, relics, andsymbols, concealed from daily adoration (as in the Catholic festivalsof this day), probably, made a main duty of the Hierophant. But in aceremony in honour of Ceres, the blessings of agriculture, and itsconnexion with civilization, were also very naturally dramatized. Thevisit of the goddess to the Infernal Regions might form an imposingpart of the spectacle: spectral images--alternations of light anddarkness--all the apparitions and effects that are said to haveimparted so much awe to the mysteries, may well have harmonized with, not contravened, the popular belief. And there is no reason tosuppose that the explanations given by the priests did more thanaccount for mythological stories, agreeably to the spirit and form ofthe received mythology, or deduce moral maxims from therepresentation, as hackneyed, as simple, and as ancient, as thegenerality of moral aphorisms are. But, as the intellectual progressof the audience advanced, philosophers, skeptical of the popularreligion, delighted to draw from such imposing representations athousand theories and morals utterly unknown to the vulgar; and thefancies and refinements of later schoolmen have thus been mistaken forthe notions of an early age and a promiscuous multitude. The singlefact (so often insisted upon), that all Greeks were admissible, issufficient alone to prove that no secrets incompatible with the commonfaith, or very important in themselves, could either have beenpropounded by the priests or received by the audience. And it may befurther observed, in corroboration of so self-evident a truth, that itwas held an impiety to the popular faith to reject the initiation ofthe mysteries--and that some of the very writers, most superstitiouswith respect to the one, attach the most solemnity to the ceremoniesof the other. 

XVI. Sanchoniathon wrote a work, now lost, on the worship of theserpent. This most ancient superstition, found invariably in Egyptand the East, is also to be traced through many of the legends andmany of the ceremonies of the Greeks. The serpent was a frequentemblem of various gods--it was often kept about the temples--it wasintroduced in the mysteries--it was everywhere considered sacred. Singular enough, by the way, that while with us the symbol of the evilspirit, the serpent was generally in the East considered a benefactor. In India, the serpent with a thousand heads; in Egypt, the serpentcrowned with the lotos-leaf, is a benign and paternal deity. It wasnot uncommon for fable to assert that the first civilizers of earthwere half man, half serpent. Thus was Fohi of China [49] represented, and thus Cecrops of Athens. 

XVII. But the most remarkable feature of the superstition of Greecewas her sacred oracles. And these again bring our inquiries back toEgypt. Herodotus informs us that the oracle of Dodona was by far themost ancient in Greece [50], and he then proceeds to inform us of itsorigin, which he traces to Thebes in Egypt. But here we are beset bycontradictions: Herodotus, on the authority of the Egyptian priests, ascribes the origin of the Dodona and Lybian oracles to twopriestesses of the Theban Jupiter--stolen by Phoenician pirates--oneof whom, sold into Greece, established at Dodona an oracle similar tothat which she had served at Thebes. But in previous passagesHerodotus informs us, 1st, that in Egypt, no priestesses served thetemples of any deity, male or female; and 2dly, that when theEgyptians imparted to the Pelasgi the names of their divinities, thePelasgi consulted the oracle of Dodona on the propriety of adoptingthem; so that that oracle existed before even the first andfundamental revelations of Egyptian religion. It seems to me, therefore, a supposition that demands less hardy assumption, and isequally conformable with the universal superstitions of mankind (sincesimilar attempts at divination are to be found among so many nationssimilarly barbarous) to believe that the oracle arose from theimpressions of the Pelasgi [51] and the natural phenomena of the spot;though at a subsequent period the manner of the divination was veryprobably imitated from that adopted by the Theban oracle. And inexamining the place it indeed seems as if Nature herself had been theEgyptian priestess! Through a mighty grove of oaks there ran astream, whose waters supplied a fountain that might well appear, toignorant wonder, endowed with preternatural properties. At a certainhour of noon it was dry, and at midnight full. Such springs haveusually been deemed oracular, not only in the East, but in almostevery section of the globe. 

At first, by the murmuring of waters, and afterward by noises amongthe trees, the sacred impostors interpreted the voice of the god. Itis an old truth, that mystery is always imposing and often convenient. To plain questions were given dark answers, which might admit ofinterpretation according to the event. The importance attached to theoracle, the respect paid to the priest, and the presents heaped on thealtar, indicated to craft and ambition a profitable profession. Andthat profession became doubly alluring to its members, because itproffered to the priests an authority in serving the oracles whichthey could not obtain in the general religion of the people. Oraclesincreased then, at first slowly, and afterward rapidly, until theygrew so numerous that the single district of Boeotia contained no lessthan twenty-five. The oracle of Dodona long, however, maintained itspre-eminence over the rest, and was only at last eclipsed by that ofDelphi [52], where strong and intoxicating exhalations from aneighbouring stream were supposed to confer prophetic phrensy. Experience augmented the sagacity of the oracles, and the priests, nodoubt, intimately acquainted with all the affairs of the statesaround, and viewing the living contests of action with the coolness ofspectators, were often enabled to give shrewd and sensibleadmonitions, --so that the forethought of wisdom passed for theprescience of divinity. Hence the greater part of their predictionswere eminently successful; and when the reverse occurred, the faultwas laid on the blind misconstruction of the human applicant. Thus nogreat design was executed, no city founded, no colony planted, no warundertaken, without the advice of an oracle. In the famine, thepestilence, and the battle, the divine voice was the assuager ofterror and the inspirer of hope. All the instincts of our frailernature, ever yearning for some support that is not of the world, wereenlisted in behalf of a superstition which proffered solutions todoubt, and remedies to distress. 

Besides this general cause for the influence of oracles, there wasanother cause calculated to give to the oracles of Greece a marked andpopular pre-eminence over those in Egypt. A country divided intoseveral small, free, and warlike states, would be more frequently inwant of the divine advice, than one united under a single monarchy, orsubmitted to the rigid austerity of castes and priestcraft; and inwhich the inhabitants felt for political affairs all the languidindifference habitual to the subjects of a despotic government. Halfa century might pass in Egypt without any political event that wouldsend anxious thousands to the oracle; but in the wonderful ferment, activity, and restlessness of the numerous Grecian towns, every month, every week, there was some project or some feud for which the adviceof a divinity was desired. Hence it was chiefly to a political causethat the immortal oracle of Delphi owed its pre-eminent importance. The Dorian worshippers of Apollo (long attached to that oracle, thencomparatively obscure), passing from its neighbourhood and befriendedby its predictions, obtained the mastership of the Peloponnesus;--their success was the triumph of the oracle. The Dorian Sparta (longthe most powerful of the Grecian states), inviolably faithful to theDelphian god, upheld his authority, and spread the fame of hisdecrees. But in the more polished and enlightened times, thereputation of the oracle gradually decayed; it shone the brightestbefore and during the Persian war;--the appropriate light of an age ofchivalry fading slowly as philosophy arose!

XVIII. But the practice of divination did not limit itself to thesemore solemn sources--its enthusiasm was contagious--its assistance wasever at hand [53]. Enthusiasm operated on the humblest individuals. One person imagined himself possessed by a spirit actually passinginto his soul--another merely inspired by the divine breath--a thirdwas cast into supernatural ecstasies, in which he beheld the shadow ofevents, or the visions of a god--a threefold species of divinepossession, which we may still find recognised by the fanatics of agraver faith! Nor did this suffice: a world of omens surrounded everyman. There were not only signs and warnings in the winds, theearthquake, the eclipse of the sun or moon, the meteor, or thethunderbolt--but dreams also were reduced to a science [54]; theentrails of victims were auguries of evil or of good; the flights ofbirds, the motions of serpents, the clustering of bees, had theirmystic and boding interpretations. Even hasty words, an accident, afall on the earth, a sneeze (for which we still invoke the ancientblessing), every singular or unwonted event, might become portentous, and were often rendered lucky or unlucky according to the dexterity ordisposition of the person to whom they occurred. 

And although in later times much of this more frivolous superstitionpassed away--although Theophrastus speaks of such lesser omens withthe same witty disdain as that with which the Spectator ridicules ourfears at the upsetting of a salt-cellar, or the appearance of awinding-sheet in a candle, --yet, in the more interesting period ofGreece, these popular credulities were not disdained by the nobler orwiser few, and to the last they retained that influence upon the masswhich they lost with individuals. And it is only by constantlyremembering this universal atmosphere of religion, that we can imbueourselves with a correct understanding of the character of the Greeksin their most Grecian age. Their faith was with them ever--in sorrowor in joy--at the funeral or the feast--in their uprisings and theirdownsittings--abroad and at home--at the hearth and in themarket-place--in the camp or at the altar. Morning and night all thegreater tribes of the elder world offered their supplications on high:and Plato has touchingly insisted on this sacred uniformity of custom, when he tells us that at the rising of the moon and at the dawning ofthe sun, you may behold Greeks and barbarians--all the nations of theearth--bowing in homage to the gods. 

XIX. To sum up, the above remarks conduce to these principalconclusions; First, that the Grecian mythology cannot be moulded intoany of the capricious and fantastic systems of erudite ingenuity: as awhole, no mythology can be considered more strikingly original, notonly because its foundations appear indigenous, and based upon thecharacter and impressions of the people--not only because at no oneperiod, from the earliest even to the latest date, whatever occasionalresemblances may exist, can any identify be established between itsmost popular and essential creations, and those of any other faith;but because, even all that it borrowed it rapidly remodelled andnaturalized, growing yet more individual from its very complexity, yetmore original from the plagiarisms which it embraced; Secondly, thatit differed in many details in the different states, but under thedevelopment of a general intercourse, assisted by a common language, the plastic and tolerant genius of the people harmonized all discords--until (catholic in its fundamental principles) her religion unitedthe whole of Greece in indissoluble bonds of faith and poetry--ofdaily customs and venerable traditions; Thirdly, that the influence ofother creeds, though by no means unimportant in amplifying thecharacter, and adding to the list of the primitive deities, appearsfar more evident in the ceremonies and usages than the personalcreations of the faith. We may be reasonably skeptical as to whatHerodotus heard of the origin of rites or gods from Egyptian priests;but there is no reason to disbelieve the testimony of his experience, when he asserts, that the forms and solemnities of one worship closelyresemble those of another; the imitation of a foreign ceremony isperfectly compatible with the aboriginal invention of a national god. For the rest, I think it might be (and by many scholars appears to meto have been) abundantly shown, that the Phoenician influences uponthe early mythology of the Greeks were far greater than the Egyptian, though by degrees, and long after the heroic age, the latter becamemore eagerly adopted and more superficially apparent. 

In quitting this part of our subject, let it be observed, as anadditional illustration of the remarkable nationality of the Grecianmythology, that our best light to the manners of the Homeric men, isin the study of the Homeric gods. In Homer we behold the mythology ofan era, for analogy to which we search in vain the records of theEast--that mythology is inseparably connected with the constitution oflimited monarchies, --with the manners of an heroic age:--the power ofthe sovereign of the aristocracy of heaven is the power of a Grecianking over a Grecian state:--the social life of the gods is the lifemost coveted by the Grecian heroes;--the uncertain attributes of thedeities, rather physical or intellectual than moral--strength andbeauty, sagacity mixed with cunning--valour with ferocity--inclinationto war, yet faculties for the inventions of peace; such were theattributes most honoured among men, in the progressive, but stilluncivilized age which makes the interval so pre-eminently Grecian--between the mythical and historic times. Vain and impotent are allattempts to identify that religion of Achaian warriors with thereligion of oriental priests. It was indeed symbolical--but of thecharacter of its believers; typical--but of the restless, yetpoetical, daring, yet graceful temperament, which afterward conductedto great achievements and imperishable arts: the coming events ofglory cast their shadows before, in fable. 

XX. There now opens to us a far more important inquiry than that intothe origin and form of the religion of the Greeks; namely, theinfluences of that religion itself upon their character--their morals--their social and intellectual tendencies. 

The more we can approach the Deity to ourselves--the more we caninvest him with human attributes--the more we can connect him with theaffairs and sympathies of earth, the greater will be his influenceupon our conduct--the more fondly we shall contemplate his attributes, the more timidly we shall shrink from his vigilance, the moreanxiously we shall strive for his approval. When Epicurus allowed thegods to exist, but imagined them wholly indifferent to the concerns ofmen, contemplating only their own happiness, and regardless alike ofour virtues or our crimes;--with that doctrine he robbed man of thedivinity, as effectually as if he had denied his existence. The fearof the gods could not be before the eyes of votaries who believed thatthe gods were utterly careless of their conduct; and not only theawful control of religion was removed from their passions, but themore beautiful part of its influence, resulting not from terror butfrom hope, was equally blasted and destroyed: For if the fear of thedivine power serves to restrain the less noble natures, so, on theother hand, with such as are more elevated and generous, there is nopleasure like the belief that we are regarded with approbation andlove by a Being of ineffable majesty and goodness--who compassionatesour misfortunes--who rewards our struggles with ourselves. It is thishope which gives us a pride in our own natures, and which not onlyrestrains us from vice, but inspires us with an emulation to arousewithin us all that is great and virtuous, in order the more to deservehis love, and feel the image of divinity reflected upon the soul. Itis for this reason that we are not contented to leave the character ofa God uncertain and unguessed, shrouded in the darkness of his owninfinite power; we clothe him with the attributes of human excellence, carried only to an extent beyond humanity; and cannot conceive a deitynot possessed of the qualities--such as justice, wisdom, andbenevolence--which are most venerated among mankind. But if webelieve that he has passed to earth--that he has borne our shape, thathe has known our sorrows--the connexion becomes yet more intimate andclose; we feel as if he could comprehend us better, and compassionatemore benignly our infirmities and our griefs. The Christ that haswalked the earth, and suffered on the cross, can be more readilypictured to our imagination, and is more familiarly before us, thanthe Dread Eternal One, who hath the heaven for his throne, and theearth only for his footstool [55]. And it is this very humanness ofconnexion, so to speak, between man and the Saviour, which gives tothe Christian religion, rightly embraced, its peculiar sentiment ofgentleness and of love. 

But somewhat of this connexion, though in a more corrupt degree, marked also the religion of the Greeks; they too believed (at leastthe multitude) that most of the deities had appeared on earth, andbeen the actual dispensers of the great benefits of social life. Transferred to heaven, they could more readily understand that thosedivinities regarded with interest the nations to which they had beenmade visible, and exercised a permanent influence over the earth, which had been for a while their home. 

Retaining the faith that the deities had visited the world, the Greeksdid not however implicitly believe the fables which degraded them byour weaknesses and vices. They had, as it were--and this seems not tohave been rightly understood by the moderns--two popular mythologies--the first consecrated to poetry, and the second to actual life. If aman were told to imitate the gods, it was by the virtues of justice, temperance, and benevolence [56]; and had he obeyed the mandate byemulating the intrigues of Jupiter, or the homicides of Mars, he wouldhave been told by the more enlightened that those stories were theinventions of the poets; and by the more credulous that gods might beemancipated from laws, but men were bound by them--"Superis sea jura"[57]--their own laws to the gods! It is true, then, that those fableswere preserved--were held in popular respect, but the reverence theyexcited among the Greeks was due to a poetry which flattered theirnational pride and enchained their taste, and not to the seriousdoctrines of their religion. Constantly bearing this distinction inmind, we shall gain considerable insight, not only into theirreligion, but into seeming contradictions in their literary history. They allowed Aristophanes to picture Bacchus as a buffoon, andHercules as a glutton, in the same age in which they persecutedSocrates for neglect of the sacred mysteries and contempt of thenational gods. To that part of their religion which belonged to thepoets they permitted the fullest license; but to the graver portion ofreligion--to the existence of the gods--to a belief in theircollective excellence, and providence, and power--to the sanctity ofasylums--to the obligation of oaths--they showed the most jealous andinviolable respect. The religion of the Greeks, then, was a greatsupport and sanction to their morals; it inculcated truth, mercy, justice, the virtues most necessary to mankind, and stimulated to themby the rigid and popular belief that excellence was approved and guiltwas condemned by the superior powers [58]. And in that beautifulprocess by which the common sense of mankind rectifies the errors ofimagination--those fables which subsequent philosophers rightly deemeddishonourable to the gods, and which the superficial survey of modernhistorians has deemed necessarily prejudicial to morals--had nounworthy effect upon the estimate taken by the Greeks whether of humanactions or of heavenly natures. 

XXI. For a considerable period the Greeks did not carry the notion ofdivine punishment beyond the grave, except in relation to thoseaudacious criminals who had blasphemed or denied the gods; it was bypunishments in this world that the guilty were afflicted. And thisdoctrine, if less sublime than that of eternal condemnation, was, Iapprehend, on regarding the principles of human nature, equallyeffective in restraining crime: for our human and short-sighted mindsare often affected by punishments, in proportion as they are human andspeedy. A penance in the future world is less fearful and distinct, especially to the young and the passionate, than an unavoidableretribution in this. Man, too fondly or too vainly, hopes, bypenitence at the close of life, to redeem the faults of thecommencement, and punishment deferred loses more than half itsterrors, and nearly all its certainty. 

As long as the Greeks were left solely to their mythology, their viewsof a future state were melancholy and confused. Death was an evil, not a release. Even in their Elysium, their favourite heroes seem toenjoy but a frigid and unenviable immortality. Yet this saddeningprospect of the grave rather served to exhilarate life, and stimulateto glory:--"Make the most of existence, " say their early poets, "forsoon comes the dreary Hades!" And placed beneath a delightfulclimate, and endowed with a vivacious and cheerful temperament, theyyielded readily to the precept. Their religion was eminently glad andjoyous; even the stern Spartans lost their austerity in their sacredrites, simple and manly though they were--and the gayer Athenianspassed existence in an almost perpetual circle of festivals andholydays. 

This uncertainty of posthumous happiness contributed also to thedesire of earthly fame. For below at least, their heroes taught them, immortality was not impossible. Bounded by impenetrable shadows tothis world, they coveted all that in this world was most to be desired[59]. A short life is acceptable to Achilles, not if it lead toElysium, but if it be accompanied with glory. By degrees, however, prospects of a future state, nobler and more august, were opened bytheir philosophers to the hopes of the Greeks. Thales was asserted tobe the first Greek who maintained the immortality of the soul, andthat sublime doctrine was thus rather established by the philosopherthan the priest. [60]

XXII. Besides the direct tenets of religion, the mysteries of theGreeks exercised an influence on their morals, which, though greatlyexaggerated by modern speculators, was, upon the whole, beneficial, though not from the reasons that have been assigned. As they grew upinto their ripened and mature importance--their ceremonial, ratherthan their doctrine, served to deepen and diffuse a reverence forreligious things. Whatever the licentiousness of other mysteries(especially in Italy), the Eleusinian rites long retained their renownfor purity and decorum; they were jealously watched by the Athenianmagistracy, and one of the early Athenian laws enacted that the senateshould assemble the day after their celebration to inquire into anyabuse that might have sullied their sacred character. Nor is it, perhaps, without justice in the later times, that Isocrates laudstheir effect on morality, and Cicero their influence on civilizationand the knowledge of social principles. The lustrations andpurifications, at whatever period their sanctity was generallyacknowledged, could scarcely fail of salutary effects. They weresupposed to absolve the culprit from former crimes, and restore him, anew man, to the bosom of society. This principle is a great agent ofmorality, and was felt as such in the earlier era of Christianity: nocorrupter is so deadly as despair; to reconcile a criminal withself-esteem is to readmit him, as it were, to virtue. 

Even the fundamental error of the religion in point of doctrine, viz. , its polytheism, had one redeeming consequence in the toleration whichit served to maintain--the grave evils which spring up from the fierceantagonism of religious opinions, were, save in a few solitary anddubious instances, unknown to the Greeks. And this generaltoleration, assisted yet more by the absence of a separate caste ofpriests, tended to lead to philosophy through the open andunchallenged portals of religion. Speculations on the gods connectedthemselves with bold inquiries into nature. Thought let loose in thewide space of creation--no obstacle to its wanderings--no monopoly ofits commerce--achieved, after many a wild and fruitless voyage, discoveries unknown to the past--of imperishable importance to thefuture. The intellectual adventurers of Greece planted the first flagupon the shores of philosophy; for the competition of errors isnecessary to the elucidation of truths; and the imagination indicatesthe soil which the reason is destined to culture and possess. 

XXIII. While such was the influence of their religion on the moralsand the philosophy of the Greeks, what was its effect upon theirnational genius?

We must again remember that the Greeks were the only nation among themore intellectual of that day, who stripped their deities ofsymbolical attributes, and did not aspire to invent for gods shapesdiffering (save in loftier beauty) from the aspect and form of man. And thus at once was opened to them the realm of sculpture. Thepeople of the East, sometimes indeed depicting their deities in humanforms, did not hesitate to change them into monsters, if the additionof another leg or another arm, a dog's head or a serpent's tail, couldbetter express the emblem they represented. They perverted theirimages into allegorical deformities; and receded from the beautiful inproportion as they indulged their false conceptions of the sublime. Besides, a painter or a sculptor must have a clear idea presented tohim, to be long cherished and often revolved, if we desire to callforth all the inspiration of which his genius may be capable; but howcould the eastern artist form a clear idea of an image that shouldrepresent the sun entering Aries, or the productive principle ofnature? Such creations could not fail of becoming stiff orextravagant, deformed or grotesque. But to the Greek, a god wassomething like the most majestic or the most beautiful of his ownspecies. He studied the human shape for his conceptions of thedivine. Intent upon the natural, he ascended to the ideal. [61]

If such the effect of the Grecian religion upon sculpture, similar andequal its influence upon poetry. The earliest verses of the Greeksappear to have been of a religious, though I see no sufficient reasonfor asserting that they were therefore of a typical and mystic, character. However that be, the narrative succeeding to the sacredpoetry materialized all it touched. The shadows of Olympus receivedthe breath of Homer, and the gods grew at once life-like and palpableto men. The traditions which connected the deities with humanity--thegenius which divested them of allegory--gave at once to the epic andthe tragic poet the supernatural world. The inhabitants of heavenitself became individualized--bore each a separate character--could berendered distinct, dramatic, as the creatures of daily life. Thus--anadvantage which no moderns ever have possessed--with all the ineffablegrandeur of deities was combined all the familiar interest of mortals;and the poet, by preserving the characteristics allotted to each god, might make us feel the associations and sympathies of earth, even whenhe bore us aloft to the unknown Olympus, or plunged below amid theshades of Orcus. 

The numerous fables mixed with the Grecian creed, sufficientlyvenerable, as we have seen, not to be disdained, but not so sacred asto be forbidden, were another advantage to the poet. For thetraditions of a nation are its poetry! And if we moderns, in theGerman forest, or the Scottish highlands, or the green English fields, yet find inspiration in the notions of fiend, and sprite, and fairy, not acknowledged by our religion, not appended as an apocryphaladjunct to our belief, how much more were those fables adapted topoetry, which borrowed not indeed an absolute faith, but a certainshadow, a certain reverence and mystery, from religion! Hence we findthat the greatest works of imagination which the Greeks have left us, whether of Homer, of Aeschylus, or of Sophocles, are deeply indebtedto their mythological legends. The Grecian poetry, like the Grecianreligion, was at once half human, half divine--majestic, vast, august--household, homely, and familiar. If we might borrow an illustrationfrom the philosophy of Democritus, its earthlier dreams anddivinations were indeed the impressions of mighty and spectral imagesinhabiting the air. [62]

XXIV. Of the religion of Greece, of its rites and ceremonies, and ofits influence upon the moral and intellectual faculties--this--already, I fear, somewhat too prolixly told--is all that at present Ideem it necessary to say. [63]

We have now to consider the origin of slavery in Greece, an inquiryalmost equally important to our accurate knowledge of her polity andmanners. 

XXV. Wherever we look--to whatsoever period of history--conquest, orthe settlement of more enlightened colonizers amid a barbarous tribe, seems the origin of slavery--modified according to the spirit of thetimes, the humanity of the victor, or the policy of the lawgiver. Theaboriginals of Greece were probably its earliest slaves [64], --yet theaboriginals might be also its earliest lords. Suppose a certain tribeto overrun a certain country--conquer and possess it: new settlers arealmost sure to be less numerous than the inhabitants they subdue; inproportion as they are the less powerful in number are they likely tobe the more severe in authority: they will take away the arms of thevanquished--suppress the right of meetings--make stern and terribleexamples against insurgents--and, in a word, quell by the moralconstraint of law those whom it would be difficult to control merelyby, physical force;--the rigidity of the law being in ratio to thedeficiency of the force. In times semi-civilized, and evencomparatively enlightened, conquerors have little respect for theconquered--an immense and insurmountable distinction is at once madebetween the natives and their lords. All ancient nations seem to haveconsidered that the right of conquest gave a right to the lands of theconquered country. William dividing England among his Normans is butan imitator of every successful invader of ancient times. Thenew-comers having gained the land of a subdued people, that people, inorder to subsist, must become the serfs of the land [65]. The moreformidable warriors are mostly slain, or exiled, or conciliated bysome remains of authority and possessions; the multitude remain thelabourers of the soil, and slight alterations of law willimperceptibly convert the labourer into the slave. The earliestslaves appear chiefly to have been the agricultural population. Ifthe possession of the government were acquited by colonizers [66], --not so much by the force of arms as by the influence of superior arts--the colonizers would in some instances still establish servitude forthe multitude, though not under so harsh a name. The laws they wouldframe for an uncultured and wretched population, would distinguishbetween the colonizers and the aboriginals (excepting perhaps only thenative chiefs, accustomed arbitrarily to command, though notsystematically to enslave the rest). The laws for the aboriginalpopulation would still be an improvement on their previous savage andirregulated state--and generations might pass before they would attaina character of severity, or before they made the final andineffaceable distinction between the freeman and the slave. Theperturbed restlessness and constant migration of tribes in Greece, recorded both by tradition and by history, would consequently tend ata very remote period to the institution and diffusion of slavery andthe Pelasgi of one tribe would become the masters of the Pelasgi ofanother. There is, therefore, no necessity to look out of Greece forthe establishment of servitude in that country by conquest and war. But the peaceful colonization of foreign settlers would (as we haveseen) lead to it by slower and more gentle degrees. And the piraciesof the Phoenicians, which embraced the human species as an article oftheir market, would be an example, more prevalent and constant thantheir own, to the piracies of the early Greeks. The custom ofservitude, thus commenced, is soon fed by new sources. Prisoners ofwar are enslaved, or, at the will of the victor, exchanged as anarticle of commerce. Before the interchange of money, we havenumerous instances of the barter of prisoners for food and arms. Andas money became the medium of trade, so slaves became a regulararticle of sale and purchase. Hence the origin of the slave-market. Luxury increasing slaves were purchased not merely for the purposes oflabour, but of pleasure. The accomplished musician of the beautifulvirgin was an article of taste or a victim of passion. Thus, what itwas the tendency of barbarism to originate, it became the tendency ofcivilization to increase. 

Slavery, then, originated first in conquest and war, piracy, orcolonization: secondly, in purchase. There were two other andsubordinate sources of the institution--the first was crime, thesecond poverty. If a free citizen committed a heinous offence, hecould be degraded into a slave--if he were unable to pay his debts, the creditor could claim his person. Incarceration is merely aremnant and substitute of servitude. The two latter sources failed asnations became more free. But in Attica it was not till the time ofSolon, several centuries after the institution of slavery at Athens, that the right of the creditor to the personal services of the debtorwas formally abolished. 

A view of the moral effects of slavery--of the condition of the slavesat Athens--of the advantages of the system and its evils--of the lightin which it was regarded by the ancients themselves, other and morefitting opportunities will present to us. 

XXVI. The introduction of an hereditary aristocracy into a particularcountry, as yet uncivilized, is often simultaneous with that ofslavery. A tribe of warriors possess and subdue a territory;--theyshare its soil with the chief in proportion to their connexion withhis person, or their military services and repute--each becomes thelord of lands and slaves--each has privileges above the herd of theconquered population. Suppose again, that the dominion is acquired bycolonizers rather than conquerors; the colonizers, superior incivilization to the natives, --and regarded by the latter withreverence and awe, would become at once a privileged and noble order. Hence, from either source, an aristocracy permanent and hereditary[67]. If founded on conquest, in proportion to the number of thevictors, is that aristocracy more or less oligarchical. The extremepaucity of force with which the Dorians conquered their neighbours, was one of the main causes why the governments they established wererigidly oligarchical. 

XXVII. Proceeding onward, we find that in this aristocracy, arepreserved the seeds of liberty and the germe of republicanism. Theseconquerors, like our feudal barons, being sharers of the profit of theconquest and the glory of the enterprise, by no means allow undividedand absolute authority to their chiefs. Governed by separate laws--distinguished by separate privileges from the subdued community, theyare proud of their own freedom, the more it is contrasted with theservitude of the population: they preserve liberty for themselves--they resist the undue assumptions of the king [68]--and keep alivethat spirit and knowledge of freedom which in after times (as theirnumbers increase, and they become a people, distinct still from theaboriginal natives, who continue slaves) are transfused from thenobles to the multitude. In proportion as the new race are warlikewill their unconscious spirit be that of republicanism; the connexionbetween martial and republican tendencies was especially recognised byall ancient writers: and the warlike habits of the Hellenes were thecradle of their political institutions. Thus, in conquest (orsometimes in immigration) we may trace the origin of an aristocracy[69], as of slavery, and thus, by a deeper inquiry, we may find alsothat the slavery of a population and the freedom of a state have theirdate, though dim and undeveloped, in the same epoch. 

XXVIII. I have thought that the supposed Egyptian colonization ofAttica under Cecrops afforded the best occasion to treat of the abovematters, not so much in reference to Cecrops himself as to themigration of Eastern and Egyptian adventurers. Of such migrations thedates may be uncertain--of such adventurers the names may be unknown. But it seems to me impossible to deny the fact of foreign settlementsin Greece, in her remoter and more barbarous era, though we maydispute as to the precise amount of the influence they exercised, andthe exact nature of the rites and customs they established. 

A belief in the early connexion between the Egyptians and Athenians, encouraged by the artful vanity of the one, was welcomed by the livelycredulity of the other. Many ages after the reputed sway of themythical Cecrops, it was fondly imagined that traces of their originfrom the solemn Egypt [70] were yet visible among the graceful andversatile people, whose character was as various, yet asindividualized, as their religion--who, viewed in whatsoever aspect oftheir intellectual history, may appear constantly differing, yetremain invariably Athenian. Whether clamouring in the Agora--whetherloitering in the Academe--whether sacrificing to Hercules in thetemple--whether laughing at Hercules on the stage--whether withMiltiades arming against the Mede--whether with Demosthenes declaimingagainst the Macedonian--still unmistakeable, unexampled, original, andalone--in their strength or their weakness, their wisdom or theirfoibles their turbulent action, their cultivated repose. 

CHAPTER II. 

The unimportant consequences to be deduced from the admission thatCecrops might be Egyptian. --Attic Kings before Theseus. --TheHellenes. --Their Genealogy. --Ionians and Achaeans Pelasgic. --Contrastbetween Dorians and Ionians. --Amphictyonic League. 

I. In allowing that there does not appear sufficient evidence toinduce us to reject the tale of the Egyptian origin of Cecrops, itwill be already observed, that I attach no great importance to thedispute: and I am not inclined reverently to regard the innumerabletheories that have been built on so uncertain a foundation. AnEgyptian may have migrated to Attica, but Egyptian influence in Atticawas faint and evanescent;--arrived at the first dawn of historicalfact, it is with difficulty that we discover the most dubious andshadowy vestiges of its existence. Neither Cecrops nor any otherEgyptian in those ages is recorded to have founded a dynasty inAttica--it is clear that none established a different language--andall the boasted analogies of religion fade, on a close examination, into an occasional resemblance between the symbols and attributes ofEgyptian and Grecian deities, or a similarity in mystic ceremonies andsolemn institutions, which, for the most part, was almost indisputablyformed by intercourse between Greece and Egypt in a far later age. Taking the earliest epoch at which history opens, and comparing thewhole character of the Athenian people--moral, social, religious, andpolitical--with that of any Egyptian population, it is not possible toselect a more startling contrast, or one in which national characterseems more indelibly formed by the early and habitual adoption ofutterly opposite principles of thought and action. [71]

I said that Cecrops founded no dynasty: the same traditions that bringhim from Egypt give him Cranaus, a native, for his successor. Thedarkness of fable closes over the interval between the reign ofCranaus and the time of Theseus: if tradition be any guide whatsoever, the history of that period was the history of the human race--it wasthe gradual passage of men from a barbarous state to the dawn ofcivilization--and the national mythi only gather in wild and beautifulfictions round every landmark in their slow and encumbered progress. 

It would be very possible, by a little ingenious application of thevarious fables transmitted to us, to construct a history of imaginedconquests and invented revolutions; and thus to win the unmeritedpraise of throwing a new light upon those remote ages. But when fableis our only basis--no fabric we erect, however imposing in itself, canbe rightly entitled to the name of history. And, as in certainancient chronicles it is recorded merely of undistinguished monarchsthat they "lived and died, " so such an assertion is precisely thatwhich it would be the most presumptuous to make respecting the shadowykings who, whether in Eusebius or the Parian marble, give dates andchronicles to the legendary gloom which preceded the heroic age. 

The principal event recorded in these early times, for which thereseems some foundation, is a war between Erechtheus of Athens and theEleusinians;--the last assisted or headed by the Thracian Eumolpus. Erechtheus is said to have fallen a victim in this contest. But atreaty afterward concluded with the Eleusinians confirmed theascendency of Athens, and, possibly, by a religious ceremonial, laidthe foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries. In this contest isintroduced a very doubtful personage, under the appellation of Ion (towhom I shall afterward recur), who appears on the side of theAthenians, and who may be allowed to have exercised a certaininfluence over them, whether in religious rites or politicalinstitutions, though he neither attained to the throne, nor seems tohave exceeded the peaceful authority of an ally. Upon the dim andconfused traditions relative to Ion, the wildest and most luxuriantspeculations have been grafted--prolix to notice, unnecessary tocontradict. 

II. During this period there occurred--not rapidly, but slowly--themost important revolution of early Greece, viz. , the spread of thattribe termed the Hellenes, who gradually established theirpredominance throughout the land, impressed indelible traces on thenational character, and finally converted their own into the nationalname. 

I have already expressed my belief that the Pelasgi were not abarbarous race, speaking a barbarous tongue, but that they were akinto the Hellenes, who spoke the Grecian language, and are consideredthe proper Grecian family. Even the dubious record of genealogy(which, if fabulous in itself, often under the names of individualstypifies the affinity of tribes) makes the Hellenes kindred to thePelasgi. Deucalion, the founder of the Hellenes, was of Pelasgicorigin--son of Prometheus, and nephew of Atlas, king of the PelasgicArcadia. 

However this may be, we find the Hellenes driven from Phocis, theirearliest recorded seat, by a flood in the time of Deucalion. Migrating into Thessaly, they expelled the Pelasgi; and afterwardspreading themselves through Greece, they attained a generalascendency over the earlier habitants, enslaving, doubtless, the bulkof the population among which they formed a settlement, but ejectingnumbers of the more resolute or the more noble families, and causingthose celebrated migrations by which the Pelasgi carried their nameand arts into Italy, as well as into Crete and various other isles. On the continent of Greece, when the revolution became complete, thePelasgi appear to have retained only Arcadia, the greater part ofThessaly [72], the land of Dodona, and Attica. 

There is no reason to suppose the Hellenes more enlightened andcivilized than the Pelasgi; but they seem, if only by the record oftheir conquests, to have been a more stern, warlike, and adventurousbranch of the Grecian family. I conclude them, in fact, to have beenthat part of the Pelasgic race who the longest retained the fierce andvigorous character of a mountain tribe, and who found the nations theyinvaded in that imperfect period of civilization which is sofavourable to the designs of a conqueror--when the first warlikenature of a predatory tribe is indeed abandoned--but before thediscipline, order, and providence of a social community are acquired. Like the Saxons into Britain, the Hellenes were invited [73] by thedifferent Pelasgic chiefs as auxiliaries, and remained as conquerors. But in other respects they rather resembled the more knightly andenergetic race by whom in Britain the Saxon dynasty was overturned:--the Hellenes were the Normans of antiquity. It is impossible todecide the exact date when the Hellenes obtained the generalascendency or when the Greeks received from that Thessalian tribetheir common appellation. The Greeks were not termed Hellenes in thetime in which the Iliad was composed--they were so termed in the timeof Hesiod. But even in the Iliad, the word Panhellenes, applied tothe Greeks, testifies the progress of the revolution [74], and in theOdyssey, the Hellenic name is no longer limited to the dominion ofAchilles. 

III. The Hellenic nation became popularly subdivided into fourprincipal families, viz. , the Dorians, the Aeolians, the Ionians, andAchaeans, of which I consider the former two alone genuinely Hellenic. The fable which makes Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus, the sons of Helen, declares that while Dorus was sent forth to conquer other lands, Aeolus succeeded to the domain of Phthiotis, and records no conquestsof his own; but attributes to his sons the origin of most of theprincipal families of Greece. If rightly construed, this accountwould denote that the Aeolians remained for a generation at leastsubsequent to the first migration of the Dorians, in their Thessalianterritories; and thence splitting into various hordes, descended aswarriors and invaders upon the different states of Greece. Theyappear to have attached themselves to maritime situations, and thewealth of their early settlements is the theme of many a legend. Theopulence of Orchomenus is compared by Homer to that of EgyptianThebes. And in the time of the Trojan war, Corinth was already termed"the wealthy. " By degrees the Aeolians became in a great measureblended and intermingled with the Dorians. Yet so intimatelyconnected are the Hellenes and Pelasgi, that even these, the linealdescendants of Helen through the eldest branch, are no less confoundedwith the Pelasgic than the Dorian race. Strabo and Pausanias alikeaffirm the Aeolians to be Pelasgic, and in the Aeolic dialect weapproach to the Pelasgic tongue. 

The Dorians, first appearing in Phthiotis, are found two generationsafterward in the mountainous district of Histiaeotis, comprisingwithin their territory, according to Herodotus, the immemorial Vale ofTempe. Neighboured by warlike hordes, more especially the heroicLapithae, with whom their earliest legends record fierce and continuedwar, this mountain tribe took from nature and from circumstance theirhardy and martial character. Unable to establish secure settlementsin the fertile Thessalian plains, and ranging to the defiles throughwhich the romantic Peneus winds into the sea, several of the tribemigrated early into Crete, where, though forming only a part of thepopulation of the isle, they are supposed by some to have establishedthe Doric constitution and customs, which in their later settlementsserved them for a model. Other migrations marked their progress tothe foot of Mount Pindus; thence to Dryopis, afterward called Doris;and from Dryopis to the Peloponnesus; which celebrated migration, under the name of the "Return of the Heraclidae, " I shall hereaftermore especially describe. I have said that genealogy attributes theorigin of the Dorians and that of the Aeolians to Dorus and Aeolus, sons of Helen. This connects them with the Hellenes and with eachother. The adventures of Xuthus, the third son of Helen, are notrecorded by the legends of Thessaly, and he seems merely a fictitiouscreation, invented to bring into affinity with the Hellenes thefamilies, properly Pelasgic, of the Achaeans and Ionians. It is bywriters comparatively recent that we are told that Xuthus was drivenfrom Thessaly by his brothers--that he took refuge in Attica, and onthe plains of Marathon built four towns--Oenoe, Marathon, Probalinthus, and Tricorythus [75], and that he wedded Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Attica, and that by her he had twosons, Achaeus and Ion. By some we are told that Achaeus, entering theeastern side of Peloponnesus, founded a dominion in Laconia andArgolis; by others, on the contrary, that he conducted a band, partlyAthenian, into Thessaly, and recovered the domains of which his fatherhad been despoiled [76]. Both these accounts of Achaeus, as therepresentative of the Achaeans, are correct in this, that theAchaeans, had two settlements from remote periods--the one in thesouth of Thessaly--the other in the Peloponnesus. 

The Achaeans were long the most eminent of the Grecian tribes. Possessed of nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus, except, by asingular chance, that part which afterward bore their name, theyboasted the warlike fame of the opulent Menelaus and the haughtyAgamemnon, the king of men. The dominant tribe of the heroic age, theAchaeans form the kindred link between the several epochs of thePelasgic and Hellenic sway--their character indeed Hellenic, but theirdescent apparently Pelasgic. Dionysius of Halicarnassus derives themfrom Pelasgus himself, and they existed as Achaeans before theHellenic Xuthus was even born. The legend which makes Achaeus thebrother of Ion, tends likewise to prove, that if the Ionians wereoriginally Pelasgic, so also were the Achaeans. Let us then come toIon. 

Although Ion is said to have given the name of Ionians to theAtticans, yet long before his time the Iaones were among the ancientinhabitants of the country; and Herodotus (the best authority on thesubject) declares that the Ionians were Pelasgic and indigenous. There is not sufficient reason to suppose, therefore, that they wereHellenic conquerors or Hellenic settlers. They appear, on thecontrary, to have been one of the aboriginal tribes of Attica:--a partof them proceeded into the Peloponnesus (typified under the migrationthither of Xuthus), and these again returning (as typified by thearrival of Ion at Athens), in conjunction with such of theirfraternity as had remained in their native settlement, became the mostpowerful and renowned of the several divisions of the Atticpopulation. Their intercourse with the Peloponnesians would lead theIonians to establish some of the political institutions and religiousrites they had become acquainted with in their migration; and thus maywe most probably account for the introduction of the worship of Apollointo Attica, and for that peaceful political influence which themythical Ion is said to have exercised over his countrymen. 

At all events, we cannot trace, any distinct and satisfactoryconnexion between this, the most intellectual and brilliant tribe ofthe Grecian family, and that roving and fortunate Thessalian horde towhich the Hellenes gave the general name, and of which the Dorianswere the fittest representative and the most powerful section. Nor, despite the bold assumptions of Mueller, is there any evidence of aHellenic conquest in Attica. [77]

And that land which, according to tradition and to history, was theearly refuge of exiles, derived from the admission and intercourse ofstrangers and immigrants those social and political improvements whichin other states have been wrought by conquest. 

IV. After the Dorians obtained possession of the Peloponnesus, thewhole face of Greece was gradually changed. The return of theHeraclidae was the true consummation of the Hellenic revolution. Thetribes hitherto migratory became fixed in the settlements theyacquired. The Dorians rose to the rank of the most powerful race ofGreece: and the Ionians, their sole rivals, possessed only on thecontinent the narrow soil of Attica, though their colonies covered thefertile coast of Asia Minor. Greece thus reduced to two main tribes, the Doric and the Ionian, historians have justly and generallyconcurred in noticing between them the strongest and most markeddistinctions, --the Dorians grave, inflexible, austere, --the Ionianslively, versatile, prone to change. The very dialect of the one wasmore harsh and masculine than that of the other; and the music, thedances of the Dorians, bore the impress of their severe simplicity. The sentiment of veneration which pervaded their national charactertaught the Dorians not only, on the one hand, the firmest allegianceto the rites of religion--and a patriarchal respect for age--but, onthe other hand, a blind and superstitious attachment to institutionsmerely on account of their antiquity--and an almost servile regard forbirth, producing rather the feelings of clanship than the sympathy ofcitizens. We shall see hereafter, that while Athens establishedrepublics, Sparta planted oligarchies. The Dorians were proud ofindependence, but it was the independence of nobles rather than of apeople. Their severity preserved them long from innovation--no lessby what was vicious in its excess than by what was wise in itsprinciple. With many great and heroic qualities, they were yet harshto enemies--cruel to dependants--selfish to allies. Their wholepolicy was to preserve themselves as they were; if they knew not therash excesses, neither were they impelled by the generous emotions, which belong to men whose constant aspirations are to be better and tobe greater;--they did not desire to be better or to be greater; theironly wish was not to be different. They sought in the future nothingbut the continuance of the past; and to that past they boundthemselves with customs and laws of iron. The respect in which theyheld their women, as well as their disdain of pleasure, preserved themin some measure from the licentiousness common to states in whichwomen are despised; but the respect had little of the delicacy andsentiment of individual attachment--attachment was chiefly for theirown sex [78]. The Ionians, on the contrary, were susceptible, flexile, and more characterized by the generosity of modern knighthoodthan the sternness of ancient heroism. Them, not the past, but thefuture, charmed. Ever eager to advance, they were impatient even ofthe good, from desire of the better. Once urged to democracy--democracy fixed their character, as oligarchy fixed the Spartan. For, to change is the ambition of a democracy--to conserve of an oligarchy. The taste, love, and intuition of the beautiful stamped the Greeksabove all nations, and the Ionians above all the Greeks. It was notonly that the Ionians were more inventive than their neighbours, butthat whatever was beautiful in invention they at once seized andappropriated. Restless, inquisitive, ardent, they attempted allthings, and perfected art--searched into all things, and consummatedphilosophy. 

The Ionic character existed everywhere among Ionians, but the Doricwas not equally preserved among the Dorians. The reason is evident. The essence of the Ionian character consisted in the spirit of change--that of the Dorian in resistance to innovation. When any Doricstate abandoned its hereditary customs and institutions, it soon lostthe Doric character--became lax, effeminate, luxurious--a corruptionof the character of the Ionians; but no change could assimilate theIonian to the Doric; for they belonged to different eras ofcivilization--the Doric to the elder, the Ionian to the more advanced. The two races of Scotland have become more alike than heretofore; butit is by making the highlander resemble the lowlander--and not byconverting the lowland citizen into the mountain Gael. The habits ofcommerce, the substitution of democratic for oligarchic institutions, were sufficient to alter the whole character of the Dorians. Thevoluptuous Corinth--the trading Aegina (Doric states)--infinitely moreresembled Athens than Sparta. 

It is, then, to Sparta, that in the historical times we must lookchiefly for the representative of the Doric tribe, in its proper andelementary features; and there, pure, vigorous, and concentrated, theDoric character presents a perpetual contrast to the Athenian. Thiscontrast continued so long as either nation retained a character toitself;--and (no matter what the pretences of hostility) was the realand inevitable cause of that enmity between Athens and Sparta, theresults of which fixed the destiny of Greece. 

Yet were the contests of that enmity less the contests betweenopposing tribes than between those opposing principles which everynation may be said to nurse within itself; viz. , the principle tochange, and the principle to preserve; the principle to popularize, and the principle to limit the governing power; here the genius of anoligarchy, there of a people; here adherence to the past, there desireof the future. Each principle produced its excesses, and furnishes asalutary warning. The feuds of Sparta and Athens may be regarded ashistorical allegories, clothing the moral struggles, which, with alltheir perils and all their fluctuations, will last to the end of time. 

V. This period is also celebrated for the supposed foundation of thatassembly of the Grecian states, called the Amphictyonic Confederacy. Genealogy attributes its origin to a son of Deucalion, calledAmphictyon. [79]

This fable would intimate a Hellenic origin, since Deucalion is thefabled founder of the Hellenes; but out of twelve tribes whichcomposed the confederacy, only three were Hellenic, and the restPelasgic. But with the increasing influence of the Dorian oracle ofDelphi, with which it was connected, it became gradually considered aHellenic institution. It is not possible to decipher the firstintention of this league. The meeting was held at two places, nearAnthela, in the pass of Thermopylae, and Delphi; at the latter placein the spring, at the former in the autumn. If tradition imputed toAmphictyon the origin of the council, it ascribed to Acrisius, kingof Argos [80], the formation of its proper power and laws. He is saidto have founded one of the assemblies, either that in Delphi orThermopylae (accounts vary), and to have combined the two, increasedthe number of the members, and extended the privileges of the body. We can only interpret this legend by the probable supposition, thatthe date of holding the same assembly at two different places, atdifferent seasons of the year, marks the epoch of some importantconjunction of various tribes, and, it may be, of deities hithertodistinct. It might be an attempt to associate the Hellenes with thePelasgi, in the early and unsettled power of the former race: and thissupposition is rendered the more plausible by the evident union of theworship of the Dorian Apollo at Delphi with that of the PelasgianCeres at Thermopylae [81]. The constitution of the league was this--each city belonging to an Amphictyonic state sent usually twodeputies--the one called Pylagoras, the other Hieromnemon. Thefunctions of the two deputies seem to have differed, and those of thelatter to have related more particularly to whatsoever appertained toreligion. On extraordinary occasions more than one pylagoras wasdeputed--Athens at one time sent no less than three. But the numberof deputies sent did not alter the number of votes in the council. Each city had two votes and no more, no matter how many delegates itemployed. 

All the deputies assembled, --solemn sacrifices were offered at Delphito Apollo, Diana, Latona, and Minerva; at Thermopylae to Ceres. Anoath was then administered, the form of which is preserved to us byAeschines. 

"I swear, " runs the oath, "never to subvert any Amphictyonic city--never to stop the courses of its waters in peace or in war. Those whoattempt such outrages I will oppose by arms; and the cities that sooffend I will destroy. If any ravages be committed in the territoryof the god, if any connive at such a crime, if any conceive a designhostile to the temple, against them will I use my hands, my feet, mywhole power and strength, so that the offenders may be brought topunishment. "

Fearful and solemn imprecations on any violation of this engagementfollowed the oath. 

These ceremonies performed, one of the hieromnemons [82] presided overthe council; to him were intrusted the collecting the votes, thereporting the resolutions, and the power of summoning the generalassembly, which was a convention separate from the council, held onlyon extraordinary occasions, and composed of residents and strangers, whom the solemnity of the meeting congregated in the neighbourhood. 

VI. Throughout the historical times we can trace in this league noattempt to combine against the aggression of foreign states, exceptfor the purposes of preserving the sanctity of the temple. Thefunctions of the league were limited to the Amphictyonic tribes andwhether or not its early, and undefined, and obscure purpose, was tocheck wars among the confederate tribes, it could not attain even thatobject. Its offices were almost wholly confined to religion. Theleague never interfered when one Amphictyonic state exercised theworst severities against the other, curbing neither the ambition ofthe Athenian fleet nor the cruelties of the Spartan sword. But, uponall matters relative to religion, especially to the worship of Apollo, the assembly maintained an authority in theory supreme--in practice, equivocal and capricious. 

As a political institution, the league contained one vice which couldnot fail to destroy its power. Each city in the twelve Amphictyonictribes, the most unimportant as the most powerful, had the same numberof votes. This rendered it against the interest of the greater states(on whom its consideration necessarily depended) to cement or increaseits political influence and thus it was quietly left to its naturaltendency to sacred purposes. Like all institutions which bestow uponman the proper prerogative of God, and affect authority over religiousand not civil opinions, the Amphictyonic council was not veryefficient in good: even in its punishment of sacrilege, it was onlydignified and powerful whenever the interests of the Delphic templewere at stake. Its most celebrated interference was with the town ofCrissa, against which the Amphictyons decreed war B. C. 505; theterritory of Crissa was then dedicated to the god of the temple. 

VII. But if not efficient in good, the Amphictyonic council was notactive in evil. Many causes conspired to prevent the worst excessesto which religious domination is prone, --and this cause in particular. It was not composed of a separate, interested, and permanent class, but of citizens annually chosen from every state, who had a muchgreater interest in the welfare of their own state than in theincreased authority of the Amphictyonic council [83]. They werepriests but for an occasion--they were citizens by profession. Thejealousies of the various states, the constant change in thedelegates, prevented that energy and oneness necessary to any settleddesign of ecclesiastical ambition. Hence, the real influence of theAmphictyonic council was by no means commensurate with its graverenown; and when, in the time of Philip, it became an importantpolitical agent, it was only as the corrupt and servile tool of thatable monarch. Still it long continued, under the panoply of a greatreligious name, to preserve the aspect of dignity and power, until, atthe time of Constantine, it fell amid the ruins of the faith it hadaspired to protect. The creed that became the successor of thereligion of Delphi found a mightier Amphictyonic assembly in theconclaves of Rome. The papal institution possessed precisely thosequalities for directing the energies of states, for dictating to theambition of kings, for obtaining temporal authority under spiritualpretexts--which were wanting to the pagan. 

CHAPTER III. 

The Heroic Age. --Theseus. --His legislative Influence upon Athens. --Qualities of the Greek Heroes. --Effect of a Traditional Age upon theCharacter of a People. 

I. As one who has been journeying through the dark [84] begins atlength to perceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so thatthe forms of things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume anexaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amid the clouds, --so now, through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outlineof the HEROIC AGE. The careful and skeptical Thucydides has left us, in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture ofthe manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates thepossessor to the rank of a demigod; times of unsettled law andindistinct control;--of adventure--of excitement;--of daring qualitiesand lofty crime. We recognise in the picture features familiar to theNorth: the roving warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the seas, descended upon unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of plunder aprofession of honour, remind us of the exploits of the ScandinavianHer-Kongr, and the boding banners of the Dane. The seas of Greecetempted to piratical adventures: their numerous isles, their windingbays, and wood-clad shores, proffered ample enterprise to the bold--ample booty to the rapacious; the voyages were short for theinexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. In early ages, valour is the true virtue--it dignifies the pursuits in which it isengaged, and the profession of a pirate was long deemed as honourablein the Aegean as among the bold rovers of the Scandinavian race [85]. If the coast was thus exposed to constant incursion and alarm, neitherwere the interior recesses of the country more protected from theviolence of marauders. The various tribes that passed into Greece, tocolonize or conquer, dislodged from their settlements many of theinhabitants, who, retreating up the country, maintained themselves byplunder, or avenged themselves by outrage. The many crags andmountains, the caverns and the woods, which diversify the beautifulland of Greece, afforded their natural fortresses to these barbaroushordes. The chief who had committed a murder, or aspiredunsuccessfully to an unsteady throne, betook himself, with hisfriends, to some convenient fastness, made a descent on thesurrounding villages, and bore off the women or the herds, as lust orwant excited to the enterprise. No home was safe, no journey freefrom peril, and the Greeks passed their lives in armour. Thus, gradually, the profession and system of robbery spread itselfthroughout Greece, until the evil became insufferable--until thepublic opinion of all the states and tribes, in which society hadestablished laws, was enlisted against the freebooter--until it grewan object of ambition to rid the neighbourhood of a scourge--and thesuccess of the attempt made the glory of the adventurer. Thennaturally arose the race of heroes--men who volunteered to seek therobber in his hold--and, by the gratitude of a later age, the courageof the knight-errant was rewarded with the sanctity of the demigod. At that time, too, internal circumstances in the different states--whether from the predominance of, or the resistance to, the warlikeHellenes, had gradually conspired to raise a military and fiercearistocracy above the rest of the population; and as arms became theinstruments of renown and power, so the wildest feats would lead tothe most extended fame. 

II. The woods and mountains of Greece were not then cleared of thefirst rude aboriginals of nature--wild beasts lurked within itscaverns;--wolves abounded everywhere--herds of wild bulls, the largehorns of which Herodotus names with admiration, were common; and eventhe lion himself, so late as the invasion of Xerxes, was found in widedistricts from the Thracian Abdera to the Acarnanian Achelous. Thus, the feats of the early heroes appear to have been mainly directedagainst the freebooter or the wild beast; and among the triumphs ofHercules are recorded the extermination of the Lydian robbers, thedeath of Cacus, and the conquest of the lion of Nemea and the boar ofErymanthus. 

Hercules himself shines conspicuously forth the great model of theseuseful adventurers. There is no doubt that a prince [86], so named, actually existed in Greece; and under the title of the ThebanHercules, is to be carefully distinguished, both from the god of Egyptand the peaceful Hercules of Phoenicia [87], whose worship was notunknown to the Greeks previous to the labours of his namesake. As thename of Hercules was given to the Theban hero (originally calledAlcaeus), in consequence of his exploits, it may be that hiscountrymen recognised in his character or his history somethinganalogous to the traditional accounts of the Eastern god. It was thecustom of the early Greeks to attribute to one man the actions whichhe performed in concert with others, and the reputation of Herculeswas doubtless acquired no less as the leader of an army than by theachievements of his personal prowess. His fame and his successexcited the emulation of his contemporaries, and pre-eminent amongthese ranks the Athenian Theseus. 

III. In the romance which Plutarch has bequeathed to us, under thetitle of a "History of Theseus, " we seem to read the legends of ourown fabulous days of chivalry. The adventures of an Amadis or aPalmerin are not more knightly nor more extravagant. 

According to Plutarch, Aegeus, king of Athens, having no children, went to Delphi to consult the oracle how that misfortune might berepaired. He was commanded not to approach any woman till he returnedto Athens; but the answer was couched in mystic and allegorical terms, and the good king was rather puzzled than enlightened by the reply. He betook himself therefore to Troezene, a small town in Peloponnesus, founded by Pittheus, of the race of Pelops, a man eminent in that dayfor wisdom and sagacity. He communicated to him the oracle, andbesought his interpretation. Something there was in the divine answerwhich induced Pittheus to draw the Athenian king into an illicitintercourse with his own daughter, Aethra. The princess became withchild; and, before his departure from Troezene, Aegeus deposited asword and a pair of sandals in a cavity concealed by a huge stone[88], and left injunctions with Aethra that, should the fruit of theirintercourse prove a male child, and able, when grown up, to remove thestone, she should send him privately to Athens with the sword andsandals in proof of his birth; for Aegeus had a brother named Pallas, who, having a large family of sons, naturally expected, from thefailure of the direct line, to possess himself or his children of theAthenian throne; and the king feared, should the secret of hisintercourse with Aethra be discovered before the expected child hadarrived to sufficient strength to protect himself, that either bytreason or assassination the sons of Pallas would despoil the rightfulheir of his claim to the royal honours. Aethra gave birth to Theseus, and Pittheus concealed the dishonour of his family by asserting thatNeptune, the god most honoured at Troezene, had condescended to be thefather of the child:--the gods were very convenient personages inthose days. As the boy grew up, he evinced equal strength of body andnobleness of mind; and at length the time arrived when Aethracommunicated to him the secret of his birth, and led him to the stonewhich concealed the tokens of his origin. He easily removed it, andrepaired by land to Athens. 

At that time, as I have before stated, Greece was overrun by robbers:Hercules had suppressed them for awhile; but the Theban hero was nowat the feet of the Lydian Omphale, and the freebooters had reappearedalong the mountainous recesses of the Peloponnesus; the journey byland was therefore not only longer, but far more perilous, than avoyage by sea, and Pittheus earnestly besought his grandson to preferthe latter. But it was the peril of the way that made its charm inthe eyes of the young hero, and the fame of Hercules had long inspiredhis dreams by night [89], and his thoughts by day. With his father'ssword, then, he repaired to Athens. Strange and wild were theadventures that befell him. In Epidauria he was attacked by acelebrated robber, whom he slew, and whose club he retained as hisfavourite weapon. In the Isthmus, Sinnis, another bandit, who hadbeen accustomed to destroy the unfortunate travellers who fell in hisway by binding them to the boughs of two pine trees (so that when thetrees, released, swung back to their natural position, the victim wastorn asunder, limb by limb), was punished by the same death he haddevised for others; and here occurs one of those anecdotesillustrative of the romance of the period, and singularly analogous tothe chivalry of Northern fable, which taught deference to women, andrewarded by the smiles of the fair the exploits of the bold. Sinnis, "the pine bender, " had a daughter remarkable for beauty, whoconcealed herself amid the shrubs and rushes in terror of the victor. Theseus discovered her, praying, says Plutarch, in childish innocenceor folly, to the plants and bushes, and promising, if they wouldshelter her, never to destroy or burn them. A graceful legend, thatreminds us of the rich inventions of Spenser. But Theseus, with allgentle words and soothing vows, allured the maiden from her retreat, and succeeded at last in obtaining her love and its rewards. 

Continued adventures--the conquest of Phaea, a wild sow (or a femalerobber, so styled from the brutality of her life)--the robber Scironcast headlong from a precipice--Procrustes stretched on his own bed--attested the courage and fortune of the wanderer, and at length hearrived at the banks of the Cephisus. Here he was saluted by some ofthe Phytalidae, a sacred family descended from Phytalus, the belovedof Ceres, and was duly purified from the blood of the savages he hadslain. Athens was the first place at which he was hospitablyentertained. He arrived at an opportune moment; the Colchian Medea, of evil and magic fame, had fled from Corinth and taken refuge withAegeus, whose affections she had insnared. By her art she promisedhim children to supply his failing line, and she gave full trial tothe experiment by establishing herself the partner of the royal couch. But it was not likely that the numerous sons of Pallas would regardthis connexion with indifference, and faction and feud reignedthroughout the city. Medea discovered the secret of the birth ofTheseus; and, resolved by poison to rid herself of one who wouldnaturally interfere with her designs on Aegeus, she took advantage ofthe fear and jealousies of the old king, and persuaded him to becomeher accomplice in the premeditated crime. A banquet, according to thewont of those hospitable times, was given to the stranger. The kingwas at the board, the cup of poison at hand, when Theseus, wishing toprepare his father for the welcome news he had to divulge, drew thesword or cutlass which Aegeus had made the token of his birth, andprepared to carve with it the meat that was set before him. The swordcaught the eye of the king--he dashed the poison to the ground, andafter a few eager and rapid questions, recognised his son in hisintended victim. The people were assembled--Theseus was acknowledgedby the king, and received with joy by the multitude, who had alreadyheard of the feats of the hero. The traditionary place where thepoison fell was still shown in the time of Plutarch. The sons ofPallas ill brooked the arrival and acknowledgment of this unexpectedheir to the throne. They armed themselves and their followers, andprepared for war. But one half of their troops, concealed in ambush, were cut off by Theseus (instructed in their movements by thetreachery of a herald), and the other half, thus reduced, were obligedto disperse. So Theseus remained the undisputed heir to the Athenianthrone. 

IV. It would be vain for the historian, but delightful for the poet, to follow at length this romantic hero through all his reputedenterprises. I can only rapidly sketch the more remarkable. I pass, then, over the tale how he captured alive the wild bull of Marathon, and come at once to that expedition to Crete, which is indissolublyintwined with immortal features of love and poetry. It is relatedthat Androgeus, a son of Minos, the celebrated King of Crete, and byhis valour worthy of such a sire, had been murdered in Attica; somesuppose by the jealousies of Aegeus, who appears to have had asingular distrust of all distinguished strangers. Minos retaliated bya war which wasted Attica, and was assisted in its ravages by thepestilence and the famine. The oracle of Apollo, which often laudablyreconciled the quarrels of princes, terminated the contest byenjoining the Athenians to appease the just indignation of Minos. They despatched, therefore, ambassadors to Crete, and consented, intoken of submission, to send every ninth year a tribute of sevenvirgins and seven young men. The little intercourse that then existedbetween states, conjoined with the indignant grief of the parents atthe loss of their children, exaggerated the evil of the tribute. Thehostages were said by the Athenians to be exposed in an intricatelabyrinth, and devoured by a monster, the creature of unnaturalintercourse, half man half bull; but the Cretans, certainly the bestauthority in the matter, stripped the account of the fable, anddeclared that the labyrinth was only a prison in which the youths andmaidens were confined on their arrival--that Minos instituted games inhonour of Androgeus, and that the Athenian captives were the prize ofthe victors. The first victor was the chief of the Cretan army, namedTaurus, and he, being fierce and unmerciful, treated the slaves hethus acquired with considerable cruelty. Hence the origin of thelabyrinth and the Minotaur. And Plutarch, giving this explanation ofthe Cretans, cites Aristotle to prove that the youths thus sent werenot put to death by Minos, but retained in servile employments, andthat their descendants afterward passed into Thrace, and were calledBottiaeans. We must suppose, therefore, in consonance not only withthese accounts, but the manners of the age, that the tribute wasmerely a token of submission, and the objects of it merely consideredas slaves. [90]

Of Minos himself all accounts are uncertain. There seems nosufficient ground to doubt, indeed, his existence, nor the extendedpower which, during his reign, Crete obtained in Greece. It is mostprobable that it was under Phoenician influence that Crete obtainedits maritime renown; but there is no reason to suppose Minos himselfPhoenician. 

After the return of Theseus, the time came when the tribute to Cretewas again to be rendered. The people murmured their dissatisfaction. "It was the guilt of Aegeus, " said they, "which caused the wrath ofMinos, yet Aegeus alone escaped its penalty; their lawful childrenwere sacrificed to the Cretan barbarity, but the doubtful andillegitimate stranger, whom Aegeus had adopted, went safe and free. "Theseus generously appeased these popular tumults: he insisted onbeing himself included in the seven. 

V. Twice before had this human tribute been sent to Crete; and intoken of the miserable and desperate fate which, according to vulgarbelief, awaited the victims, a black sail had been fastened to theship. 

But this time, Aegeus, inspired by the cheerful confidence of his son, gave the pilot a white sail, which he was to hoist, if, on his return, he bore back Theseus in safety: if not, the black was once more to bethe herald of an unhappier fate. It is probable that Theseus did notesteem this among the most dangerous of his adventures. At the courtof the wise Pittheus, or in the course of his travels, he haddoubtless heard enough of the character of Minos, the greatest andmost sagacious monarch of his time, to be convinced that the son ofthe Athenian king would have little to fear from his severity. Hearrived at Crete, and obtained the love of Ariadne, the daughter ofMinos. Now follows a variety of contradictory accounts, the mostprobable and least poetical of which are given by Plutarch; but as heconcludes them all by the remark that none are of certainty, it is aneedless task to repeat them: it suffices to relate, that either withor without the consent of Minos, Theseus departed from Crete, incompany with Ariadne, and that by one means or the other hethenceforth freed the Athenians from the payment of the accustomedtribute. As it is obvious that with the petty force with which, byall accounts, he sailed to Crete, he could not have conquered thepowerful Minos in his own city, so it is reasonable to conclude, asone of the traditions hath it, that the king consented to his alliancewith his daughter, and, in consequence of that marriage, waived allfarther claim to the tribute of the Athenians. [91]

Equal obscurity veils the fate of the loving Ariadne; but thesupposition which seems least objectionable is, that Theseus wasdriven by storm either on Cyprus or Naxos, and Ariadne being then withchild, and rendered ill by the violence of the waves, was left onshore by her lover while he returned to take charge of his vessel;that she died in childbed, and that Theseus, on his return, wasgreatly afflicted, and instituted an annual festival in her honour. While we adopt the story most probable in itself, and most honourableto the character of the Athenian hero, we cannot regret the variousromance which is interwoven with the tale of the unfortunate Cretan, since it has given us some of the most beautiful inventions ofpoetry;--the Labyrinth love-lighted by Ariadne--the Cretan maiddeserted by the stranger with whom she fled--left forlorn and alone onthe Naxian shore--and consoled by Bacchus and his satyr horde. 

VI. Before he arrived at Athens, Theseus rested at Delos, where he issaid to have instituted games, and to have originated the custom ofcrowning the victor with the palm. Meanwhile Aegeus waited the returnof his son. On the Cecropian rock that yet fronts the sea, he watchedthe coming of the vessel and the waving of the white sail: the mastsappeared--the ship approached--the white sail was not visible: in thejoy and the impatience of the homeward crew, the pilot had forgottento hoist the appointed signal, and the old man in despair threwhimself from the rock and was dashed to pieces. Theseus received thenews of his father's death with sorrow and lamentation. His triumphand return were recorded by periodical festivals, in which the fate ofAegeus was typically alluded to, and the vessel of thirty oars withwhich he had sailed to Crete was preserved by the Athenians to thetimes of Demetrius the Phalerean--so often new-pieced and repaired, that it furnished a favourite thesis to philosophical disputants, whether it was or was not the same vessel which Theseus had employed. 

VII. Possessed of the supreme power, Theseus now bent his genius tothe task of legislation, and in this part of his life we tread uponfirmer ground, because the most judicious of the ancient historians[92] expressly attributes to the son of Aegeus those enactments whichso mainly contributed to consolidate the strength and union of theAthenian people. 

Although Cecrops is said to have brought the tribes of Attica underone government, yet it will be remembered that he had divided theterritory into twelve districts, with a fortress or capital to each. By degrees these several districts had become more and more distinctfrom each other, and in many cases of emergency it was difficult toobtain a general assembly or a general concurrence of the people; nay, differences had often sprung up between the tribes, which had beenadjusted, not as among common citizens, by law, but as among jealousenemies, by arms and bloodshed. It was the master policy of Theseusto unite these petty commonwealths in one state. He applied inperson, and by all the arte of persuasion, to each tribe: the poor hefound ready enough to listen to an invitation which promised them theshelter of a city, and the protection of a single government from theoutrage of many tyrants: the rich and the powerful were more jealousof their independent, scattered, and, as it were, feudal life. Butthese he sought to conciliate by promises that could not but flatterthat very prejudice of liberty which naturally at first induced themto oppose his designs. He pledged his faith to a constitution whichshould leave the power in the hands of the many. He himself, asmonarch, desired only the command in war, and in peace theguardianship of laws he was equally bound to obey. Some were inducedby his persuasions, others by the fear of his power, until at lengthhe obtained his object. By common consent he dissolved thetowns'-corporations and councils in each separate town, and built inAthens one common prytaneum or council-hall, existent still in the timeof Plutarch. He united the scattered streets and houses of the citadel, and the new town that had grown up along the plain, by the common nameof "Athens, " and instituted the festival of the Panathenaea, in honourof the guardian goddess of the city, and as a memorial of theconfederacy. Adhering then to his promises, he set strict and narrowlimits to the regal power, created, under the name of eupatrids orwell-born, an hereditary nobility, and divided into two orders (thehusbandmen and mechanics) the remainder of the people. The care ofreligion, the explanation of the laws, and the situations ofmagistrates, were the privilege of the nobles. He thus laid thefoundation of a free, though aristocratic constitution--according toAristotle, the first who surrendered the absolute sway of royalty, andreceiving from the rhetorical Isocrates the praise that it was a contestwhich should give most, the people of power, or the king of freedom. Asan extensive population was necessary to a powerful state, so Theseusinvited to Athens all strangers willing to share in the benefits of itsprotection, granting them equal security of life and law; and he set ademarcation to the territory of the state by the boundary of a pillarerected in the Isthmus, dividing Ionia from Peloponnesus. The Isthmiangames in honour of Neptune were also the invention of Theseus. 

VIII. Such are the accounts of the legislative enactments of Theseus. But of these we must reject much. We may believe from the account ofThucydides that jealousies among some Attic towns--which might eitherpossess, or pretend to, an independence never completely annihilatedby Cecrops and his successors, and which the settlement of foreignersof various tribes and habits would have served to increase--were sofar terminated as to induce submission to the acknowledged supremacyof Athens as the Attic capital; and that the right of justice, andeven of legislation, which had before been the prerogative of eachseparate town (to the evident weakening of the supreme and regalauthority), was now concentrated in the common council-house ofAthens. To Athens, as to a capital, the eupatrids of Attica wouldrepair as a general residence [93]. The city increased in populationand importance, and from this period Thucydides dates the enlargementof the ancient city, by the addition of the Lower Town. That Theseusvoluntarily lessened the royal power, it is not necessary to believe. In the heroic age a warlike race had sprung up, whom no Grecianmonarch appears to have attempted to govern arbitrarily in peace, though they yielded implicitly to his authority in war. Himself on anewly-won and uncertain throne, it was the necessity as well as thepolicy of Theseus to conciliate the most powerful of his subjects. Itmay also be conceded, that he more strictly defined the distinctionsbetween the nobles and the remaining classes, whether yeomen orhusbandmen, mechanics or strangers; and it is recorded that thehonours and the business of legislation were the province of theeupatrids. It is possible that the people might be occasionallyconvened--but it is clear that they had little, if any, share in thegovernment of the state. But the mere establishment and confirmationof a powerful aristocracy, and the mere collection of the populationinto a capital, were sufficient to prepare the way for far moredemocratic institutions than Theseus himself contemplated or designed. For centuries afterward an oligarchy ruled in Athens; but, freeitself, that oligarchy preserved in its monopoly the principles ofliberty, expanding in their influence with the progress of society. The democracy of Athens was not an ancient, yet not a sudden, constitution. It developed itself slowly, unconsciously, continuously--passing the allotted orbit of royalty, oligarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, tyranny, till at length it arrived at itsdazzling zenith, blazed--waned--and disappeared. 

After the successful issue of his legislative attempts, we next hearof Theseus less as the monarch of history than as the hero of song. On these later traditions, which belong to fable, it is not necessaryto dwell. Our own Coeur de Lion suggests no improbable resemblance toa spirit cast in times yet more wild and enterprising, and withoutseeking interpretations, after the fashion of allegory or system, ofeach legend, it is the most simple hypothesis, that Theseus reallydeparted in quest of adventure from a dominion that afforded no scopefor a desultory and eager ambition; and that something of truth lurksbeneath many of the rich embellishments which his wanderings andexploits received from the exuberant poetry and the rude credibilityof the age. During his absence, Menestheus, of the royal race ofAttica, who, Plutarch simply tells us, was the first of mankind thatundertook the profession of a demagogue, ingratiated himself with thepeople, or rather with the nobles. The absence of a king is alwaysthe nurse of seditions, and Menestheus succeeded in raising sopowerful a faction against the hero, that on his return Theseus wasunable to preserve himself in the government, and, pouring forth asolemn curse on the Athenians, departed to Scyros, where he eitherfell by accident from a precipice, or was thrown down by the king. His death at first was but little regarded; in after-times, to appeasehis ghost and expiate his curse, divine honours were awarded to hismemory; and in the most polished age of his descendants, his supposedremains, indicated by an eagle in the skeleton of a man of giantstature, with a lance of brass and a sword by his side, were broughtto Athens in the galley of Cimon, hailed by the shouts of a joyousmultitude, "as if the living Theseus were come again. "

X. I have not altogether discarded, while I have abridged, thelegends relating to a hero who undoubtedly exercised considerableinfluence over his country and his time, because in those legends wetrace, better than we could do by dull interpretations equallyunsatisfactory though more prosaic, the effigy of the heroic age--notunillustrative of the poetry and the romance which at once formed andindicated important features in the character of the Athenians. Muchof the national spirit of every people, even in its most civilizedepochs, is to be traced to the influence of that age which may becalled the heroic. The wild adventurers of the early Greece tended tohumanize even in their excesses. It is true that there are manyinstances of their sternness, ferocity, and revenge;--they wereinsolent from the consciousness of surpassing strength;--often cruelfrom that contempt of life common to the warlike. But the darker sideof their character is far less commonly presented to us than thebrighter--they seem to have been alive to generous emotions morereadily than any other race so warlike in an age so rude--theiraffections were fervid as their hatreds--their friendships moreremarkable than their feuds. Even their ferocity was not, as with theScandinavian heroes, a virtue and a boast--their public opinionhonoured the compassionate and the clement. Thus Hercules is saidfirst to have introduced the custom of surrendering to the enemy thecorpses of their slain; and mildness, justice, and courtesy are noless his attributes than invincible strength and undaunted courage. Traversing various lands, these paladins of an elder chivalry acquiredan experience of different governments and customs, which assisted ontheir return to polish and refine the admiring tribes which theirachievements had adorned. Like the knights of a Northern mythus, their duty was to punish the oppressor and redress the wronged, andthey thus fixed in the wild elements of unsettled opinion a recognisedstandard of generosity and of justice. Their deeds became the themeof the poets, who sought to embellish their virtues and extenuatetheir offences. Thus, certain models, not indeed wholly pure orexcellent, but bright with many of those qualities which ennoble anational character, were set before the emulation of the aspiring andthe young:--and the traditional fame of a Hercules or a Theseus assistedto inspire the souls of those who, ages afterward, broke the Mede atMarathon, and arrested the Persian might in the Pass of Thermopylae. For, as the spirit of a poet has its influence on the destiny andcharacter of nations, so TIME itself hath his own poetry, precedingand calling forth the poetry of the human genius, and breathinginspirations, imaginative and imperishable, from the great deeds andgigantic images of an ancestral and traditionary age. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Successors of Theseus. --The Fate of Codrus. --The Emigration ofNileus. --The Archons. --Draco. 

I. The reputed period of the Trojan war follows close on the age ofHercules and Theseus; and Menestheus, who succeeded the latter hero onthe throne of Athens, led his countrymen to the immortal war. Plutarch and succeeding historians have not failed to notice theexpression of Homer, in which he applies the word demus or "people" tothe Athenians, as a proof of the popular government established inthat state. But while the line has been considered an interpolation, as late at least as the time of Solon, we may observe that it wasnever used by Homer in the popular and political sense it afterwardreceived. And he applies it not only to the state of Athens, but tothat of Ithaca, certainly no democracy. [94]

The demagogue king appears to have been a man of much warlike renownand skill, and is mentioned as the first who marshalled an army inrank and file. Returning from Troy, he died in the Isle of Melos, andwas succeeded by Demophoon, one of the sons of Theseus, who had alsofought with the Grecian army in the Trojan siege. In his time adispute between the Athenians and Argives was referred to fiftyarbiters of each nation, called Ephetae, the origin of the court sostyled, and afterward re-established with new powers by Draco. 

To Demophoon succeeded his son Oxyntes, and to Oxyntes, Aphidas, murdered by his bastard brother Thymaetes. Thymaetes was the last ofthe race of Theseus who reigned in Athens. A dispute arose betweenthe Boeotians and the Athenians respecting the confines of theirseveral territories; it was proposed to decide the difference by asingle combat between Thymaetes and the King of the Boeotians. Thymaetes declined the contest. A Messenian exile, named Melanthus, accepted it, slew his antagonist by a stratagem, and, deposing thecowardly Athenian, obtained the sovereignty of Athens. WithMelanthus, who was of the race of Nestor, passed into Athens twonobles of the same house, Paeon and Alcmaeon, who were the founders ofthe Paeonids and Alcmaeonids, two powerful families, whose names oftenoccur in the subsequent history of Athens, and who, if they did notcreate a new order of nobility, at least sought to confine to theirown families the chief privileges of that which was established. 

II. Melanthus was succeeded by his son Codrus, a man whose fame findsmore competitors in Roman than Grecian history. During his reign theDorians invaded Attica. They were assured of success by the Delphianoracle, on condition that they did not slay the Athenian king. Informed of the response, Codrus disguised himself as a peasant, and, repairing to the hostile force, sought a quarrel with some of thesoldiers, and was slain by them not far from the banks of the Ilissus[95]. The Athenians sent to demand the body of their king; and theDorians, no longer hoping of success, since the condition of theoracle was thus violated, broke up their encampment and relinquishedtheir design. Some of the Dorians had already by night secretlyentered the city and concealed themselves within its walls; but, asthe day dawned, and they found themselves abandoned by theirassociates and surrounded by the foe, they fled to the Areopagus andthe altars of the Furies; the refuge was deemed inviolable, and theDorians were dismissed unscathed--a proof of the awe already attachedto the rites of sanctuary [96]. Still, however, this invasion wasattended with the success of what might have been the principal objectof the invaders. Megara [97], which had hitherto been associated withAttica, was now seized by the Dorians, and became afterward a colonyof Corinth. This gallant but petty state had considerable influenceon some of the earlier events of Athenian history. 

III. Codrus was the last of the Athenian kings. The Atheniansaffected the motives of reverence to his memory as an excuse forforbidding to the illustrious martyr the chance of an unworthysuccessor. But the aristocratic constitution had been morallystrengthened by the extinction of the race of Theseus and the jealousyof a foreign line; and the abolition of the monarchy was rather causedby the ambition of the nobles than the popular veneration for thepatriotism of Codrus. The name of king was changed into that ofarchon (magistrate or governor); the succession was still madehereditary, but the power of the ruler was placed under new limits, and he was obliged to render to the people, or rather to theeupatrids, an account of his government whenever they deemed itadvisable to demand it. 

IV. Medon, the son of Codrus, was the first of these perpetualarchons. In that age bodily strength was still deemed an essentialvirtue in a chief; and Nileus, a younger brother of Medon, attemptedto depose the archon on no other pretence than that of his lameness. 

A large portion of the people took advantage of the quarrel betweenthe brothers to assert that they would have no king but Jupiter. Atlength Medon had recourse to the oracle, which decided in his favour;and Nileus, with all the younger sons of Codrus, and accompanied by anumerous force, departed from Athens, and colonized that part of AsiaMinor celebrated in history under the name of Ionia. The rise, power, and influence of these Asiatic colonies we shall find a moreconvenient opportunity to notice. Medon's reign, thus freed from themore stirring spirits of his time, appears to have been prosperous andpopular; it was an era in the ancient world, when the lameness of aruler was discovered to be unconnected with his intellect! Thenfollows a long train of archons--peaceable and obscure. During aperiod estimated at three hundred years, the Athenians performedlittle that has descended to posterity--brief notices of pettyskirmishes, and trivial dissensions with their neighbours, alonediversify that great interval. Meanwhile, the Ionian colonies riserapidly into eminence and power. At length, on the death of Alcmaeon--the thirteenth and last perpetual archon--a new and more popularchange was introduced into the government. The sway of the archon waslimited to ten years. This change slowly prepared the way to changesstill more important. Hitherto the office had been confined to thetwo Neleid houses of Codrus and Alcmaeon;--in the archonship ofHippomenes it was thrown open to other distinguished families; and atlength, on the death of Eryxias, the last of the race of Codrus, thefailure of that ancient house in its direct line (indirectly it stillcontinued, and the blood of Codrus flowed through the veins of Solon)probably gave excuse and occasion for abolishing the investment of thesupreme power in one magistrate; nine were appointed, each with thetitle of archon (though the name was more emphatically given to thechief of the number), and each with separate functions. Thisinstitution continued to the last days of Athenian freedom. Thischange took place in the 24th Olympiad. 

V. In the 39th Olympiad, Draco, being chief archon, was deputed toinstitute new laws in B. C. 621. He was a man concerning whom historyis singularly brief; we know only that he was of a virtuous andaustere renown--that he wrote a great number of verses, as littledurable as his laws [98]. As for the latter--when we learn that theywere stern and bloody beyond precedent--we have little difficulty inbelieving that they were inefficient. 

VI. I have hastened over this ambiguous and uninteresting period witha rapidity I trust all but antiquaries will forgive. Hitherto we havebeen in the land of shadow--we approach the light. The empty names ofapocryphal beings which we have enumerated are for the most part asspectres, so dimly seen as to be probably delusions--invoked to pleasea fanciful curiosity, but without an object to satisfy the reason orexcuse the apparition. If I am blamed for not imitating those whohave sought, by weaving together disconnected hints and subtleconjectures, to make a history from legends, to overturn what has beenpopularly believed, by systems equally contradictory, though morelearnedly fabricated;--if I am told that I might have made thechronicle thus briefly given extend to a greater space, and sparklewith more novel speculation, I answer that I am writing the history ofmen and not of names--to the people and not to scholars--and that noresearches however elaborate, no conjectures however ingenious, coulddraw any real or solid moral from records which leave us ignorant bothof the characters of men and the causes of events. What matters whowas Ion, or whence the first worship of Apollo? what matterrevolutions or dynasties, ten or twelve centuries before Athensemerged from a deserved obscurity?--they had no influence upon herafter greatness; enigmas impossible to solve--if solved, butscholastic frivolities. 

Fortunately, as we desire the history of a people, so it is when theAthenians become a people, that we pass at once from tradition intohistory. 

I pause to take a brief survey of the condition of the rest of Greeceprior to the age of Solon. 

CHAPTER V. 

A General Survey of Greece and the East previous to the time ofSolon. --The Grecian Colonies. --The Isles. --Brief account of the Stateson the Continent. --Elis and the Olympic Games. 

I. On the north, Greece is separated from Macedonia by the Cambunianmountains; on the west spreads the Ionian, on the south and east theAegean Sea. Its greatest length is two hundred and twentygeographical miles; its greatest width one hundred and forty. Nocontrast can be more startling than the speck of earth which Greeceoccupies in the map of the world, compared to the space claimed by theGrecian influences in the history of the human mind. In that contrastitself is the moral which Greece has left us--nor can volumes moreemphatically describe the triumph of the Intellectual over theMaterial. But as nations, resembling individuals, do not becomeillustrious from their mere physical proportions; as in both, renownhas its moral sources; so, in examining the causes which conduced tothe eminence of Greece, we cease to wonder at the insignificance ofits territories or the splendour of its fame. Even in geographicalcircumstance Nature had endowed the country of the Hellenes with giftswhich amply atoned the narrow girth of its confines. The mostsouthern part of the continent of Europe, it contained within itselfall the advantages of sea and land; its soil, though unequal in itsproduct, is for the most part fertile and abundant; it is intersectedby numerous streams, and protected by chains of mountains; its plainsand valleys are adapted to every product most necessary to the supportof the human species; and the sun that mellows the fruits of nature issufficiently tempered not to relax the energies of man. Bordered onthree sides by the sea, its broad and winding extent of coast earlyconduced to the spirit of enterprise; and, by innumerable bays andharbours, proffered every allurement to that desire of gain which isthe parent of commerce and the basis of civilization. At the periodin which Greece rose to eminence it was in the very centre of the mostadvanced and flourishing states of Europe and of Asia. The attentionof its earlier adventurers was directed not only to the shores ofItaly, but to the gorgeous cities of the East, and the wise and hoaryinstitutions of Egypt. If from other nations they borrowed less thanhas been popularly supposed, the very intercourse with those nationsalone sufficed to impel and develop the faculties of an imitative andyouthful people;--while, as the spirit of liberty broke out in all theGrecian states, producing a restless competition both among thecitizens in each city and the cities one with another, no energy wasallowed to sleep until the operations of an intellect, perpetuallyroused and never crippled, carried the universal civilization to itsheight. Nature herself set the boundaries of the river and themountain to the confines of the several states--the smallness of eachconcentrated power into a focus--the number of all heightenedemulation to a fever. The Greek cities had therefore, above all othernations, the advantage of a perpetual collision of mind--a perpetualintercourse with numerous neighbours, with whom intellect was ever atwork--with whom experiment knew no rest. Greece, taken collectively, was the only free country (with the exception of Phoenician states andcolonies perhaps equally civilized) in the midst of enlighteneddespotisms; and in the ancient world, despotism invented and shelteredthe arts which liberty refined and perfected [99]: Thus considered, her greatness ceases to be a marvel--the very narrowness of herdominions was a principal cause of it--and to the most favourablecircumstances of nature were added circumstances the most favourableof time. 

If, previous to the age of Solon, we survey the histories of Asia, wefind that quarter of the globe subjected to great and terriblerevolutions, which confined and curbed the power of its variousdespotisms. Its empires for the most part built up by the successfulinvasions of Nomad tribes, contained in their very vastness theelements of dissolution. The Assyrian Nineveh had been conquered bythe Babylonians and the Medes (B. C. 606); and Babylon, under the newChaldaean dynasty, was attaining the dominant power of western Asia. The Median monarchy was scarce recovering from the pressure ofbarbarian foes, and Cyrus had not as yet arisen to establish thethrone of Persia. In Asia Minor, it is true, the Lydian empire hadattained to great wealth and luxury, and was the most formidable enemyof the Asiatic Greeks, yet it served to civilize them even while itawed. The commercial and enterprising Phoenicians, now foreboding themarch of the Babylonian king, who had "taken counsel against Tyre, thecrowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are thehonourable of the earth, " at all times were precluded from the desireof conquest by their divided states [100], formidable neighbours, andtrading habits. 

In Egypt a great change had operated upon the ancient character; thesplendid dynasty of the Pharaohs was no more. The empire, rent intoan oligarchy of twelve princes, had been again united under thesceptre of one by the swords of Grecian mercenaries (B. C. 616); andNeco, the son of the usurper--a man of mighty intellect and vastdesigns--while he had already adulterated the old Egyptian customswith the spirit of Phoenician and Greek adventure, found his field ofaction only in the East (defeats Josiah B. C. 609). As yet, then, noforeign enemy had disturbed the early rise of the several states ofGreece; they were suffered to form their individual demarcationstranquilly and indelibly; and to progress to that point between socialamenities and chivalric hardihood, when, while war is the most sternlyencountered, it the most rapidly enlightens. The peace that followsthe first war of a half-civilized nation is usually the great era ofits intellectual eminence. 

II. At this time the colonies in Asia Minor were far advanced incivilization beyond the Grecian continent. Along the western coast ofthat delicious district--on a shore more fertile, under a heaven morebright, than those of the parent states--the Aeolians, Ionians, andDorians, in a remoter age, had planted settlements and founded cities(probably commenced under Penthilus, son of Orestes, about B. C. 1068). The Aeolian colonies (the result of the Dorian immigrations)[101] occupied the coasts of commenced Mysia and Caria--on themainland twelve cities--the most renowned of which were Cyme andSmyrna; and the islands of the Heccatonnesi, Tenedos, and Lesbos, thelast illustrious above the rest, and consecrated by the muses ofSappho and Alcaeus. They had also settlements about Mount Ida. Theirvarious towns were independent of each other; but Mitylene, in theIsle of Lesbos, was regarded as their common capital. The trade ofMitylene was extensive--its navy formidable. 

The Ionian colonies (probably commenced about 988 B. C. ), foundedsubsequently to the Aeolian, but also (though less immediately) aconsequence of the Dorian revolution, were peopled not only byIonians, but by various nations, led by the sons of Codrus. In theislands of Samos and Chios, on the southern coast of Lydia, whereCaria stretches to the north, they established their voluptuoussettlements known by the name "Ionia. " Theirs were the cities ofMyus, and Priene, Colophon, Ephesus, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomene, Erythrae, Phocae, and Miletus:--in the islands of Samos and Chios weretwo cities of the same name as the isles themselves. The chief of theIonian cities at the time on which we enter, and second perhaps intrade and in civilization to none but the great Phoenician states, wasthe celebrated Miletus--founded first by the Carians--exalted to herrenown by the Ionians (Naval dominion of Miletus commenced B. C. 750). Her streets were the mart of the world; along the Euxine and the PalusMaeotis, her ships rode in the harbours of a hundred of her colonies. Here broke the first light of the Greek philosophy. But if inferiorto this, their imperial city, each of the Ionian towns had its titleto renown. Here flourished already music, and art, and song. Thetrade of Phocae extended to the coasts of Italy and Gaul. Ephesus hadnot yet risen to its meridian--it was the successor of Miletus andPhocaea. These Ionian states, each independent of the other, wereunited by a common sanctuary--the Panionium (Temple of Neptune), whichmight be seen far off on the headland of that Mycale afterward thewitness of one of the proudest feats of Grecian valour. Long free, Ionia became tributary to the Lydian kings, and afterward to the greatPersian monarchy. 

In the islands of Cos and Rhodes, and on the southern shores of Caria, spread the Dorian colonies--planted subsequently to the Ionian bygradual immigrations. If in importance and wealth the Aeolian wereinferior to the Ionian colonies, so were the Dorian colonies to theAeolian. Six cities (Ialyssus, Camirus, and Lindus, in Rhodes; inCos, a city called from the island; Cnidus and Halicarnassus, on themainland) were united, like the Ionians, by a common sanctuary--theTemple of Apollo Triopius. 

Besides these colonies--the Black Sea, the Palus Maeotis, thePropontis, the coasts of Lower Italy, the eastern and southern shoresof Sicily [102], Syracuse, the mightiest of Grecian offspring, and thedaughter of Corinth, --the African Cyrene, --not enumerating settlementsmore probably referable to a later date, attested the active spiritand extended navigation of early Greece. 

The effect of so vast and flourishing a colonization was necessarilyprodigious upon the moral and intellectual spirit of the mother land. The seeds scattered over the earth bore their harvests to her garner. 

III. Among the Grecian isles, the glory of Minos had long passed fromCrete (about 800 B. C. ). The monarchical form of government hadyielded to the republican, but in its worst shape--the oligarchic. But the old Cretan institutions still lingered in the habits ofprivate life;--while the jealousies and commotions of its severalcities, each independent, exhausted within itself those powers which, properly concentrated and wisely directed, might have placed Crete atthe head of Greece. 

Cyprus, equally favoured by situation with Crete, and civilized by theconstant influence of the Phoenicians, once its masters, was attachedto its independence, but not addicted to warlike enterprise. It was, like Crete, an instance of a state which seemed unconscious of thefacilities for command and power which it had received from nature. The Island of Corcyra (a Corinthian colony) had not yet arrived at itsday of power. This was reserved for that period when, after thePersian war, it exchanged an oligarchic for a democratic action, whichwore away, indeed, the greatness of the country in its struggles forsupremacy, obstinately and fatally resisted by the antagonistprinciple. 

Of the Cyclades--those beautiful daughters of Crete--Delos, sacred toApollo, and possessed principally by the Ionians, was the mosteminent. But Paros boasted not only its marble quarries, but thevalour of its inhabitants, and the vehement song of Archilochus. 

Euboea, neighbouring Attica, possessed two chief cities, Eretria andChalcis, governed apparently by timocracies, and frequently at warwith each other. Though of importance as connected with thesubsequent history of Athens, and though the colonization of Chalciswas considerable, the fame of Euboea was scarcely proportioned to itsextent as one of the largest islands of the Aegean; and was faroutshone by the small and rocky Aegina--the rival of Athens, and atthis time her superior in maritime power and commercial enterprise. Colonized by Epidaurus, Aegina soon became independent; but theviolence of party, and the power of the oligarchy, while feeding itsenergies, prepared its downfall. 

IV. As I profess only to delineate in this work the rise and fall ofthe Athenians, so I shall not deem it at present necessary to do morethan glance at the condition of the continent of Greece previous tothe time of Solon. Sparta alone will demand a more attentive survey. 

Taking our station on the citadel of Athens, we behold, far projectinginto the sea, the neighbouring country of Megaris, with Megara for itscity. It was originally governed by twelve kings; the last, Hyperion, being assassinated, its affairs were administered by magistrates, andit was one of the earliest of the countries of Greece which adoptedrepublican institutions. Nevertheless, during the reigns of theearlier kings of Attica, it was tributary to them [103]. We have seenhow the Dorians subsequently wrested it from the Athenians [104]; andit underwent long and frequent warfare for the preservation of itsindependence from the Dorians of Corinth. About the year 640, apowerful citizen named Theagenes wrested the supreme power from thestern aristocracy which the Dorian conquest had bequeathed, though theyoke of Corinth was shaken off. The tyrant--for such was theappellation given to a successful usurper--was subsequently deposed, and the democratic government restored; and although that democracywas one of the most turbulent in Greece, it did not prevent thislittle state from ranking among the most brilliant actors in thePersian war. 

V. Between Attica and Megaris we survey the Isle of Salamis--theright to which we shall find contested both by Athens and theMegarians. 

VI. Turning our eyes now to the land, we may behold, borderingAttica--from which a mountainous tract divides it--the mythologicalBoeotia, the domain of the Phoenician Cadmus, and the birthplace ofPolynices and Oedipus. Here rise the immemorial mountains of Heliconand Cithaeron--the haunt of the muses; here Pentheus fell beneath theraging bands of the Bacchanals, and Actaeon endured the wrath of theGoddess of the Woods; here rose the walls of Thebes to the harmony ofAmphion's lyre--and still, in the time of Pausanias, the Thebansshowed, to the admiration of the traveller, the place where Cadmussowed the dragon-seed--the images of the witches sent by Juno tolengthen the pains of Alcmena--the wooden statue wrought by Daedalus--and the chambers of Harmonia and of Semele. No land was moresanctified by all the golden legends of poetry--and of all Greece nopeople was less alive to the poetical inspiration. Devoted, for themost part, to pastoral pursuits, the Boeotians were ridiculed by theirlively neighbours for an inert and sluggish disposition--a reproachwhich neither the song of Hesiod and Pindar, nor the glories of Thebesand Plataea, were sufficient to repel. As early as the twelfthcentury (B. C. ) royalty was abolished in Boeotia--its territory wasdivided into several independent states, of which Thebes was theprincipal, and Plataea and Cheronaea among the next in importance. Each had its own peculiar government; and, before the Persian war, oligarchies had obtained the ascendency in these several states. Theywere united in a league, of which Thebes was the head; but theambition and power of that city kept the rest in perpetual jealousy, and weakened, by a common fear and ill-smothered dissensions, acountry otherwise, from the size of its territories [105] and thenumber of its inhabitants, calculated to be the principal power ofGreece. Its affairs were administered by eleven magistrates, orboeotarchs, elected by four assemblies held in the four districts intowhich Boeotia was divided. 

VII. Beyond Boeotia lies Phocis, originally colonized, according tothe popular tradition, by Phocus from Corinth. Shortly after theDorian irruption, monarchy was abolished and republican institutionssubstituted. In Phocis were more than twenty states independent ofthe general Phocian government, but united in a congress held atstated times on the road between Daulis and Delphi. Phocis containedalso the city of Crissa, with its harbour and the surroundingterritory inhabited by a fierce and piratical population, and thesacred city of Delphi, on the southwest of Parnassus. 

VIII. Of the oracle of Delphi I have before spoken--it remains onlynow to point out to the reader the great political cause of its riseinto importance. It had been long established, but without anybrilliant celebrity, when happened that Dorian revolution which iscalled the "Return of the Heraclidae. " The Dorian conquerors hadearly steered their course by the advice of the Delphian oracle, whichappeared artfully to favour their pretensions, and which, adjoiningthe province of Doris, had imposed upon them the awe, and perhaps feltfor them the benevolence, of a sacred neighbour. Their ultimatetriumph not only gave a striking and supreme repute to the oracle, butsecured the protection and respect of a race now become the mostpowerful of Greece. From that time no Dorian city ever undertook anenterprise without consulting the Pythian voice; the example becamegeneral, and the shrine of the deity was enriched by offerings notonly from the piety of Greece, but the credulous awe of barbariankings. Perhaps, though its wealth was afterward greater, itsauthority was never so unquestioned as for a period dating from abouta century preceding the laws of Solon to the end of the Persian war. Delphi was wholly an independent state, administered by a rigidaristocracy [106]; and though protected by the Amphictyonic council, received from its power none of those haughty admonitions with whichthe defenders of a modern church have often insulted their charge. The temple was so enriched by jewels, statues, and vessels of gold, that at the time of the invasion of Xerxes its wealth was said toequal in value the whole of the Persian armament and so wonderful wasits magnificence, that it appeared more like the Olympus of the godsthan a human temple in their honour. On the ancient Delphi stands nowthe monastery of Kastri. But still you discover the terraces oncecrowded by fans--still, amid gloomy chasms, bubbles the Castalianspring--and yet permitted to the pilgrim's gaze is the rocky bath ofthe Pythia, and the lofty halls of the Corycian Cave. 

IX. Beyond Phocis lies the country of the Locrians, divided intothree tribes independent of each other--the Locri Ozolae, the LocriOpuntii, the Locri Epicnemidii. The Locrians (undistinguished inhistory) changed in early times royal for aristocratic institutions. 

The nurse of the Dorian race--the small province of Doris--borders theLocrian territory to the south of Mount Oeta; while to the west ofLocris spreads the mountainous Aetolia, ranging northward from Pindusto the Ambracian Bay. Aetolia gave to the heroic age the names ofMeleager and Diomed, but subsequently fell into complete obscurity. The inhabitants were rude and savage, divided into tribes, nor emergedinto importance until the latest era of the Grecian history. Thepolitical constitution of Aetolia, in the time referred to, isunknown. 

X. Acarnania, the most western country of central Greece, appearslittle less obscure at this period than Aetolia, on which it borders;with Aetolia it arose into eminence in the Macedonian epoch of Greekhistory. 

XI. Northern Greece contains two countries--Thessaly and Epirus. 

In Thessaly was situated the long and lofty mountain of the divineOlympus, and to the more southern extreme rose Pindus and Oeta. Itsinhabitants were wild and hardy, and it produced the most celebratedbreed of horses in Greece. It was from Thessaly that the Hellenescommenced their progress over Greece--it was in the kingdoms ofThessaly that the race of Achilles held their sway; but its laterhistory was not calculated to revive the fame of the Homeric hero; itappears to have shared but little of the republican spirit of the morefamous states of Greece. Divided into four districts (Thessaliotis, Pelasgiotis, Phthiotis, and Hestiaeotis), the various states ofThessaly were governed either by hereditary princes or nobles of vastpossessions. An immense population of serfs, or penestae, contributedto render the chiefs of Thessaly powerful in war and magnificent inpeace. Their common country fell into insignificance from the want ofa people--but their several courts were splendid from the wealth of anobility. 

XII. Epirus was of somewhat less extent than Thessaly, and far lessfertile; it was inhabited by various tribes, some Greek, somebarbarian, the chief of which was the Molossi, governed by kings whoboasted their descent from Achilles. Epirus has little importance orinterest in history until the sun of Athens had set, during theascendency of the Macedonian kings. It contained the independentstate of Ambracia, peopled from Corinth, and governed by republicaninstitutions. Here also were the sacred oaks of the oracular Dodona. 

XIII. We now come to the states of the Peloponnesus, which containedeight countries. 

Beyond Megaris lay the territory of Corinth: its broad bay adapted itfor commerce, of which it availed itself early; even in the time ofHomer it was noted for its wealth. It was subdued by the Dorians, andfor five generations the royal power rested with the descendants ofAletes [107], of the family of the Heraclidae. By a revolution, thecauses of which are unknown to us, the kingdom then passed to Bacchis, the founder of an illustrious race (the Bacchiadae), who reigned firstas kings, and subsequently as yearly magistrates, under the name ofPrytanes. In the latter period the Bacchiadae were certainly not asingle family, but a privileged class--they intermarried only witheach other, --the administrative powers were strictly confined to them--and their policy, if exclusive, seems to have been vigorous andbrilliant. This government was destroyed, as under its sway thepeople increased in wealth and importance; a popular movement, headedby Cypselus, a man of birth and fortune, replaced an able oligarchy byan abler demagogue (B. C. 655). Cypselus was succeeded by thecelebrated Heriander (B. C. 625), a man, whose vices were perhapsexaggerated, whose genius was indisputable. Under his nephewPsammetichus, Corinth afterward regained its freedom. TheCorinthians, in spite of every change in the population, retainedtheir luxury to the last, and the epistles of Alciphron, in the secondcentury after Christ, note the ostentation of the few and the povertyof the many. At the time now referred to, Corinth--the Genoa ofGreece--was high in civilization, possessed of a considerable navalpower, and in art and commerce was the sole rival on the Greciancontinent to the graceful genius and extensive trade of the Ioniancolonies. 

XIV. Stretching from Corinth along the coast opposite Attica, webehold the ancient Argolis. Its three principal cities were Argos, Mycenae, and Epidaurus. Mycenae, at the time of the Trojan war, wasthe most powerful of the states of Greece; and Argos, next to Sicyori, was reputed the most ancient. Argolis suffered from the Dorianrevolution, and shortly afterward the regal power, graduallydiminishing, lapsed into republicanism [108]. Argolis containedvarious independent states--one to every principal city. 

XV. On the other side of Corinth, almost opposite Argolis, we findthe petty state of Sicyon. This was the most ancient of the Grecianstates, and was conjoined to the kingdom of Agamemnon at the Trojanwar. At first it was possessed by Ionians, expelled subsequently bythe Dorians, and not long after seems to have lapsed into a democraticrepublic. A man of low birth, Orthagoras, obtained the tyranny, andit continued in his family for a century, the longest tyranny inGreece, because the gentlest. Sicyon was of no marked influence atthe period we are about to enter, though governed by an able tyrant, Clisthenes, whose policy it was to break the Dorian nobility, whileuniting, as in a common interest, popular laws and regal authority. 

XVI. Beyond Sicyon we arrive at Achaia. We have already seen thatthis district was formerly possessed by the Ionians, who were expelledby some of the Achaeans who escaped the Dorian yoke. Governed firstby a king, it was afterward divided into twelve republics, leaguedtogether. It was long before Achaia appeared on that heated stage ofaction, which allured the more restless spirits of Athens andLacedaemon. 

XVII. We now pause at Elis, which had also felt the revolution of theHeraclidae, and was possessed by their comrades the Aetolians. 

The state of Elis underwent the general change from monarchy torepublicanism; but republicanism in its most aristocratic form;--growing more popular at the period of the Persian wars, but, withoutthe convulsions which usually mark the progress of democracy. Themagistrates of the commonwealth were the superintendents of the SacredGames. And here, diversifying this rapid, but perhaps to the generalreader somewhat tedious survey of the political and geographicalaspect of the states of Greece, we will take this occasion to examinethe nature and the influence of those celebrated contests, which gaveto Elis its true title to immortality. 

XVIII. The origin of the Olympic Games is lost in darkness. Thelegends which attribute their first foundation to the times ofdemigods and heroes, are so far consonant with truth, that exhibitionsof physical strength made the favourite diversion of that wild andbarbarous age which is consecrated to the heroic. It is easy toperceive that the origin of athletic games preceded the date ofcivilization; that, associated with occasions of festival, they, likefestivals, assumed a sacred character, and that, whether firstinstituted in honour of a funeral, or in celebration of a victory, orin reverence to a god, --religion combined with policy to transmit aninspiring custom to a more polished posterity. And though we cannotliterally give credit to the tradition which assigns the restorationof these games to Lycurgus, in concert with Iphitus, king of Elis, andCleosthenes of Pisa, we may suppose at least that to Elis, to Pisa, and to Sparta, the institution was indebted for its revival. 

The Dorian Oracle of Delphi gave its sanction to a ceremony, therestoration of which was intended to impose a check upon the wars anddisorders of the Peloponnesus. Thus authorized, the festival wassolemnized at the temple of Jupiter, at Olympia, near Pisa, a town inElis. It was held every fifth year; it lasted four days. Itconsisted in the celebration of games in honour of Jupiter andHercules. The interval between each festival was called, an Olympiad. After the fiftieth Olympiad (B. C. 580), the whole management of thegames, and the choice of the judges, were monopolized by the Eleans. Previous to each festival, officers, deputed by the Eleans, proclaimeda sacred truce. Whatever hostilities were existent in Greece, terminated for the time; sufficient interval was allowed to attend andto return from the games. [109]

During this period the sacred territory of Elis was regarded as underthe protection of the gods--none might traverse it armed. The Eleansarrogated indeed the right of a constant sanctity to perpetual peace;and the right, though sometimes invaded, seems generally to have beenconceded. The people of this territory became, as it were, theguardians of a sanctuary; they interfered little in the turbulentcommotions of the rest of Greece; they did not fortify their capital;and, the wealthiest people of the Peloponnesus, they enjoyed theiropulence in tranquillity;--their holy character contenting theirambition. And a wonderful thing it was in the midst of those warlike, stirring, restless tribes--that solitary land, with its plane grovebordering the Alpheus, adorned with innumerable and hallowed monumentsand statues--unvisited by foreign wars and civil commotion--a wholestate one temple!

At first only the foot-race was exhibited; afterward were addedwrestling, leaping, quoiting, darting, boxing, a more complicatedspecies of foot-race (the Diaulus and Dolichus), and the chariot andhorse-races. The Pentathlon was a contest of five gymnastic exercisescombined. The chariot-races [110] preceded those of the ridinghorses, as in Grecian war the use of chariots preceded the morescientific employment of cavalry, and were the most attractive andsplendid part of the exhibition. Sometimes there were no less thanforty chariots on the ground. The rarity of horses, and the expenseof their training, confined, without any law to that effect, thechariot-race to the highborn and the wealthy. It was consistent withthe vain Alcibiades to decline the gymnastic contests in which hisphysical endowments might have ensured him success, because hiscompetitors were not the equals to the long-descended heir of theAlcmaeonidae. In the equestrian contests his success wasunprecedented. He brought seven chariots into the field, and bore offat the same time the first, second, and fourth prize [111]. Althoughwomen [112], with the exception of the priestesses of the neighbouringfane of Ceres, were not permitted to witness the engagements, theywere yet allowed to contend by proxy in the chariot-races; and theladies of Macedon especially availed themselves of the privilege. Nosanguinary contest with weapons, no gratuitous ferocities, no strugglebetween man and beast (the graceless butcheries of Rome), polluted thefestival dedicated to the Olympian god. Even boxing with the cestuswas less esteemed than the other athletic exercises, and was excludedfrom the games exhibited by Alexander in his Asiatic invasions [113]. Neither did any of those haughty assumptions of lineage or knightlyblood, which characterize the feudal tournament, distinguish betweenGreek and Greek. The equestrian contests were indeed, from theirexpense, limited to the opulent, but the others were impartially freeto the poor as to the rich, the peasant as the noble, --the Greeksforbade monopoly in glory. But although thus open to all Greeks, thestadium was impenetrably closed to barbarians. Taken from his plough, the boor obtained the garland for which the monarchs of the East wereheld unworthy to contend, and to which the kings of the neighbouringMacedon were forbidden to aspire till their Hellenic descent had beenclearly proved [114]. Thus periodically were the several statesreminded of their common race, and thus the national name andcharacter were solemnly preserved: yet, like the Amphictyonic league, while the Olympic festival served to maintain the great distinctionbetween foreigners and Greeks, it had but little influence inpreventing the hostile contests of Greeks themselves. The veryemulation between the several states stimulated their jealousy of eachother: and still, if the Greeks found their countrymen in Greeks theyfound also in Greeks their rivals. 

We can scarcely conceive the vast importance attached to victory inthese games [115]; it not only immortalized the winner, it shed gloryupon his tribe. It is curious to see the different honourscharacteristically assigned to the conqueror in different states. IfAthenian, he was entitled to a place by the magistrates in thePrytaneum; if a Spartan, to a prominent station in the field. Toconquer at Elis was renown for life, "no less illustrious to a Greekthan consulship to a Roman!" [116] The haughtiest nobles, thewealthiest princes, the most successful generals, contended for theprize [117]. And the prize (after the seventh Olympiad) was a wreathof the wild olive!

Numerous other and similar games were established throughout Greece. Of these, next to the Olympic, the most celebrated, and the onlynational ones, were the Pythian at Delphi, the Nemean in Argolis, theIsthmian in Corinth; yet elsewhere the prize was of value; at all thenational ones it was but a garland--a type of the eternal truth, thatpraise is the only guerdon of renown. The olive-crown was nothing!--the shouts of assembled Greece--the showers of herbs and flowers--thebanquet set apart for the victor--the odes of imperishable poets--thepublic register which transmitted to posterity his name--the privilegeof a statue in the Altis--the return home through a breach in thewalls (denoting by a noble metaphor, "that a city which boasts suchmen has slight need of walls" [118]), the first seat in all publicspectacles; the fame, in short, extended to his native city--bequeathed to his children--confirmed by the universal voice whereverthe Greek civilization spread; this was the true olive-crown to theOlympic conqueror!

No other clime can furnish a likeness to these festivals: born of asavage time, they retained the vigorous character of an age of heroes, but they took every adjunct from the arts and the graces ofcivilization. To the sacred ground flocked all the power, and therank, and the wealth, and the intellect, of Greece. To that gorgeousspectacle came men inspired by a nobler ambition than that of thearena. Here the poet and the musician could summon an audience totheir art. If to them it was not a field for emulation [119], it wasat least a theatre of display. 

XIX. The uses of these games were threefold;--1st, The uniting allGreeks by one sentiment of national pride, and the memory of a commonrace; 2dly, The inculcation of hardy discipline--of physical educationthroughout every state, by teaching that the body had its honours aswell as the intellect--a theory conducive to health in peace--and inthose ages when men fought hand to hand, and individual strength andskill were the nerves of the army, to success in war; but, 3dly, andprincipally, its uses were in sustaining and feeding as a passion, asa motive, as an irresistible incentive--the desire of glory! Thatdesire spread through all classes--it animated all tribes--it taughtthat true rewards are not in gold and gems, but in men's opinions. The ambition of the Altis established fame as a common principle ofaction. What chivalry did for the few, the Olympic contests effectedfor the many--they made a knighthood of a people. 

If, warmed for a moment from the gravity of the historic muse, wemight conjure up the picture of this festival, we would invoke theimagination of the reader to that sacred ground decorated with theprofusest triumphs of Grecian art--all Greece assembled from hercontinent, her colonies, her isles--war suspended--a Sabbath ofsolemnity and rejoicing--the Spartan no longer grave, the Athenianforgetful of the forum--the highborn Thessalian, the gay Corinthian--the lively gestures of the Asiatic Ionian;--suffering the variousevents of various times to confound themselves in one recollection ofthe past, he may see every eye turned from the combatants to onemajestic figure--hear every lip murmuring a single name [120]--glorious in greater fields: Olympia itself is forgotten. Who is thespectacle of the day? Themistocles, the conqueror of Salamis, and thesaviour of Greece! Again--the huzzas of countless thousands followingthe chariot-wheels of the competitors--whose name is shouted forth, the victor without a rival!--it is Alcibiades, the destroyer ofAthens! Turn to the temple of the Olympian god, pass the brazengates, proceed through the columned aisles [121], what arrests the aweand wonder of the crowd! Seated on a throne of ebon and of ivory, ofgold and gems--the olive-crown on his head, in his right hand thestatue of Victory, in his left; wrought of all metals, thecloud-compelling sceptre, behold the colossal masterpiece of Phidias, theHomeric dream imbodied [122]--the majesty of the Olympian Jove! Enterthe banquet-room of the conquerors--to whose verse, hymned in a solemnand mighty chorus, bends the listening Spartan--it is the verse of theDorian Pindar! In that motley and glittering space (the fair ofOlympia, the mart of every commerce, the focus of all intellect), jointhe throng, earnest and breathless, gathered round that sunburnttraveller;--now drinking in the wild account of Babylonian gardens, orof temples whose awful deity no lip may name--now, with clinched handsand glowing cheeks, tracking the march of Xerxes along exhaustedrivers, and over bridges that spanned the sea--what moves, what hushesthat mighty audience? It is Herodotus reading his history! [123]

Let us resume our survey. 

XX. Midland, in the Peloponnesus, lies the pastoral Arcady. Besidesthe rivers of Alpheus and Erymanthus, it is watered by the gloomystream of Styx; and its western part, intersected by innumerablebrooks, is the land of Pan. Its inhabitants were long devoted to thepursuits of the herdsman and the shepherd, and its ancient governmentwas apparently monarchical. The Dorian irruption spared this land ofpoetical tradition, which the oracle of Delphi took under nounsuitable protection, and it remained the eldest and most unviolatedsanctuary of the old Pelasgic name. But not very long after thereturn of the Heraclidae, we find the last king stoned by hissubjects, and democratic institutions established. It was thenparcelled out into small states, of which Tegea and Mantinea were thechief. 

XXI. Messenia, a fertile and level district, which lies to the westof Sparta, underwent many struggles with the latter power; and thispart of its history, which is full of interest, the reader will findbriefly narrated in that of the Spartans, by whom it was finallysubdued. Being then incorporated with that country, we cannot, at theperiod of history we are about to enter, consider Messenia as aseparate and independent state. [124]

And now, completing the survey of the Peloponnesus, we rest atLaconia, the country of the Spartans. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Return of the Heraclidae. --The Spartan Constitution and Habits. --Thefirst and second Messenian War. 

I. We have already seen, that while the Dorians remained in Thessaly, the Achaeans possessed the greater part of the Peloponnesus. But, under the title of the Return of the Heraclidae (or the descendants ofHercules), an important and lasting revolution established the Doriansin the kingdoms of Agamemnon and Menelaus. The true nature of thisrevolution has only been rendered more obscure by modern ingenuity, which has abandoned the popular accounts for suppositions still moreimprobable and romantic. The popular accounts run thus:--Persecutedby Eurystheus, king of Argos, the sons of Hercules, with their friendsand followers, are compelled to take refuge in Attica. Assisted bythe Athenians, they defeat and slay Eurystheus, and regain thePeloponnesus. A pestilence, regarded as an ominous messenger fromoffended heaven, drives them again into Attica. An oracle declaresthat they shall succeed after the third fruit by the narrow passage atsea. Wrongly interpreting the oracle, in the third year they make forthe Corinthian Isthmus. At the entrance of the Peloponnesus they aremet by the assembled arms of the Achaeans, Ionians, and Arcadians. Hyllus, the eldest son of Hercules, proposes the issue of a singlecombat. Echemus, king of Tegea, is selected by the Peloponnesians. He meets and slays Hyllus, and the Heraclidae engage not to renew theinvasion for one hundred years. Nevertheless, Cleodaeus, the son, andAristomachus, the grandson, of Hyllus, successively attempt to renewthe enterprise, and in vain. The three sons of Aristomachus(Aristodemus, Temenus, and Cresphontes), receive from Apollo himselfthe rightful interpretation of the oracle. It was by the Straits ofRhium, across a channel which rendered the distance between theopposing shores only five stadia, that they were ordained to pass; andby the Return of the third fruit, the third generation was denoted. The time had now arrived:--with the assistance of the Dorians, theAetolians, and the Locrians, the descendants of Hercules crossed thestrait, and established their settlement in Peloponnesus (B. C. 1048). 

II. Whether in the previous expeditions the Dorians had assisted theHeraclidae, is a matter of dispute--it is not a matter of importance. Whether these Heraclidae were really descendants of the Achaeanprince, and the rightful heritors of a Peloponnesian throne, is apoint equally contested and equally frivolous. It is probable enoughthat the bold and warlike tribe of Thessaly might have been easilyallured, by the pretext of reinstating the true royal line, into anenterprise which might plant them in safer and more wide domains, andthat while the prince got the throne, the confederates obtained thecountry [125]. All of consequence to establish is, that the Doriansshared in the expedition, which was successful--that by time andvalour they obtained nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus--that theytransplanted the Doric character and institutions to their newpossessions, and that the Return of the Heraclidae is, in fact, thepopular name for the conquest of the Dorians. Whatever distinctionexisted between the Achaean Heraclidae and the Doric race, hadprobably been much effaced during the long absence of the former amongforeign tribes, and after their establishment in the Peloponnesus itsoon became entirely lost. But still the legend that assigned theblood of Hercules to the royalty of Sparta received early and implicitcredence, and Cleomenes, king of that state, some centuries afterward, declared himself not Doric, but Achaean. 

Of the time employed in consummating the conquest of the invaders weare unable to determine--but, by degrees, Sparta, Argos, Corinth, andMessene, became possessed by the Dorians; the Aetolian confederatesobtained Elis. Some of the Achaeans expelled the Ionians from theterritory they held in the Peloponnesus, and gave to it the name itafterward retained, of Achaia. The expelled Ionians took refuge withthe Athenians, their kindred race. 

The fated house of Pelops swept away by this irruption, Sparta fell tothe lot of Procles and Eurysthenes [126], sons of Aristodemus, fifthin descent from Hercules; between these princes the royal power wasdivided, so that the constitution always acknowledged two kings--onefrom each of the Heracleid families. The elder house was called theAgids, or descendants of Agis, son of Eurysthenes; the latter, theEurypontids, from Eurypon, descendant of Procles. Although Sparta, under the new dynasty, appears to have soon arrogated the pre-eminenceover the other states of the Peloponnesus, it was long before sheachieved the conquest even of the cities in her immediateneighbourhood. The Achaeans retained the possession of Amyclae, builtupon a steep rock, and less than three miles from Sparta, for morethan two centuries and a half after the first invasion of the Dorians. And here the Achaeans guarded the venerable tombs of Cassandra andAgamemnon. 

III. The consequences of the Dorian invasion, if slowly developed, were great and lasting. That revolution not only changed thecharacter of the Peloponnesus--it not only called into existence theiron race of Sparta--but the migrations which it caused made theorigin of the Grecian colonies in Asia Minor. It developed also thoseseeds of latent republicanism which belonged to the Dorianaristocracies, and which finally supplanted the monarchicalgovernment--through nearly the whole of civilized Greece. Therevolution once peacefully consummated, migrations no longer disturbedto any extent the continent of Greece, and the various tribes becamesettled in their historic homes. 

IV. The history of Sparta, till the time of Lycurgus, is that of astate maintaining itself with difficulty amid surrounding and hostileneighbours; the power of the chiefs diminished the authority of thekings; and while all without was danger, all within was turbulence. Still the very evils to which the Spartans were subjected--theirpaucity of numbers--their dissensions with their neighbours--theirpent up and encompassed situation in their mountainous confines--eventhe preponderating power of the warlike chiefs, among whom the unequaldivisions of property produced constant feuds--served to keep alivethe elements of the great Doric character; and left it the task of thefirst legislative genius rather to restore and to harmonize, than toinvent and create. 

As I am writing the history, not of Greece, but of Athens, I do notconsider it necessary that I should detail the legendary life ofLycurgus. Modern writers have doubted his existence, but withoutsufficient reason:--such assaults on our belief are but the amusementsof skepticism. All the popular accounts of Lycurgus agree in this--that he was the uncle of the king (Charilaus, an infant), and held therank of protector--that unable successfully to confront a powerfulfaction raised against him, he left Sparta and travelled into Crete, where all the ancient Doric laws and manners were yet preserved, vigorous and unadulterated. There studying the institutions of Minos, he beheld the model for those of Sparta. Thence he is said to havepassed into Asia Minor, and to have been the first who collected andtransported to Greece the poems of Homer [127], hitherto onlypartially known in that country. According to some writers, hetravelled also into Egypt; and could we credit one authority, whichdoes not satisfy even the credulous Plutarch, he penetrated into Spainand Libya, and held converse with the Gymnosophists of India. 

Returned to Sparta, after many solicitations, he found the state indisorder: no definite constitution appears to have existed; no lawswere written. The division of the regal authority between two kingsmust have produced jealousy--and jealousy, faction. And the power sodivided weakened the monarchic energy without adding to the libertiesof the people. A turbulent nobility--rude, haughty mountain chiefs--made the only part of the community that could benefit by the weaknessof the crown, and feuds among themselves prevented their power frombecoming the regular and organized authority of a government [128]. Such disorders induced prince and people to desire a reform; theinterference of Lycurgus was solicited; his rank and his travels gavehim importance; and he had the wisdom to increase it by obtaining fromDelphi (the object of the implicit reverence of the Dorians) an oraclein his favour. 

Thus called upon and thus encouraged, Lycurgus commenced his task. Ienter not into the discussion whether he framed an entirely newconstitution, or whether he restored the spirit of one common to hisrace and not unfamiliar to Sparta. Common sense seems to mesufficient to assure us of the latter. Let those who please believethat one man, without the intervention of arms--not as a conqueror, but a friend--could succeed in establishing a constitution, restingnot upon laws, but manners--not upon force, but usage--utterly hostileto all the tastes, desires, and affections of human nature: mouldingevery the minutest detail of social life into one system--that systemoffering no temptation to sense, to ambition, to the desire ofpleasure, or the love of gain, or the propensity to ease--but painful, hard, steril, and unjoyous;--let those who please believe that asystem so created could at once be received, be popularly embraced, and last uninterrupted, unbroken, and without exciting even the desireof change for four hundred years, without having had any previousfoundation in the habits of a people--without being previously rootedby time, custom, superstition, and character into their breasts. Formy part, I know that all history furnishes no other such example; andI believe that no man was ever so miraculously endowed with the powerto conquer nature. [129]

But we have not the smallest reason, the slightest excuse, for sopliant a credulity. We look to Crete, in which, previous to Lycurgus, the Dorians had established their laws and customs, and we see at oncethe resemblance to the leading features of the institutions ofLycurgus; we come with Aristotle to the natural conclusion, that whatwas familiar to the Dorian Crete was not unknown to the Dorian Sparta, and that Lycurgus did not innovate, but restore and develop, the lawsand the manners which, under domestic dissensions, might haveundergone a temporary and superficial change, but which were deeplyimplanted in the national character and the Doric habits. That theregulations of Lycurgus were not regarded as peculiar to Sparta, butas the most perfect development of the Dorian constitution, we learnfrom Pindar [130], when he tells us that "the descendants of Pamphylusand of the Heraclidae wish always to retain the Doric institutions ofAegimius. " Thus regarded, the legislation of Lycurgus loses itsmiraculous and improbable character, while we still acknowledgeLycurgus himself as a great and profound statesman, adopting the onlytheory by which reform can be permanently wrought, and suiting thespirit of his laws to the spirit of the people they were to govern. When we know that his laws were not written, that he preferredengraving them only on the hearts of his countrymen, we know at oncethat he must have legislated in strict conformity to their earlyprepossessions and favourite notions. That the laws were unwrittenwould alone be a proof how little he introduced of what was alien andunknown. 

V. I proceed to give a brief, but I trust a sufficient outline, ofthe Spartan constitution, social and political, without entering intoprolix and frivolous discussions as to what was effected or restoredby Lycurgus--what by a later policy. 

There was at Sparta a public assembly of the people (called alia), ascommon to other Doric states, which usually met every full moon--upongreat occasions more often. The decision of peace and war--the finalratification of all treaties with foreign powers--the appointment tothe office of counsellor, and other important dignities--theimposition of new laws--a disputed succession to the throne, --wereamong those matters which required the assent of the people. Thusthere was the show and semblance of a democracy, but we shall findthat the intention and origin of the constitution were far fromdemocratic. "If the people should opine perversely, the elders andthe princes shall dissent. " Such was an addition to the Rhetra ofLycurgus. The popular assembly ratified laws, but it could proposenone--it could not even alter or amend the decrees that were laidbefore it. It appears that only the princes, the magistrates, andforeign ambassadors had the privilege to address it. 

The main business of the state was prepared by the Gerusia, or councilof elders, a senate consisting of thirty members, inclusive of the twokings, who had each but a simple vote in the assembly. This councilwas in its outline like the assemblies common to every Dorian state. Each senator was required to have reached the age of sixty; he waschosen by the popular assembly, not by vote, but by acclamation. Themode of election was curious. The candidates presented themselvessuccessively before the assembly, while certain judges were enclosedin an adjacent room where they could hear the clamour of the peoplewithout seeing the person, of the candidate. On him whom theyadjudged to have been most applauded the election fell. A mode ofelection open to every species of fraud, and justly condemned byAristotle as frivolous and puerile [131]. Once elected, the senatorretained his dignity for life: he was even removed from allresponsibility to the people. That Mueller should consider this anadmirable institution, "a splendid monument of early Grecian customs, "seems to me not a little extraordinary. I can conceive no electivecouncil less practically good than one to which election is for life, and in which power is irresponsible. That the institution was felt tobe faulty is apparent, not because it was abolished, but because itsmore important functions became gradually invaded and superseded by athird legislative power, of which I shall speak presently. 

The original duties of the Gerusia were to prepare the decrees andbusiness to be submitted to the people; they had the power ofinflicting death or degradation without written laws, they interpretedcustom, and were intended to preserve and transmit it. The power ofthe kings may be divided into two heads--power at home--power abroad:power as a prince--power as a general. In the first it was limitedand inconsiderable. Although the kings presided over a separatetribunal, the cases brought before their court related only to repairsof roads, to the superintendence of the intercourse with other states, and to questions of inheritance and adoption. 

When present at the council they officiated as presidents, but withoutany power of dictation; and, if absent, their place seems easily tohave been supplied. They united the priestly with the regalcharacter; and to the descendants of a demigod a certain sanctity wasattached, visible in the ceremonies both at demise and at theaccession to the throne, which appeared to Herodotus to savour ratherof Oriental than Hellenic origin. But the respect which the Spartanmonarch received neither endowed him with luxury nor exempted him fromcontrol. He was undistinguished by his garb--his mode of life, fromthe rest of the citizens. He was subjected to other authorities, could be reprimanded, fined, suspended, exiled, put to death. If hewent as ambassador to foreign states, spies were not unfrequently sentwith him, and colleagues the most avowedly hostile to his personassociated in the mission. Thus curbed and thus confined was hisauthority at home, and his prerogative as a king. But by law he wasthe leader of the Spartan armies. He assumed the command--he crossedthe boundaries, and the limited magistrate became at once an imperialdespot! [132] No man could question--no law circumscribed his power. He raised armies, collected money in foreign states, and condemned todeath without even the formality of a trial. Nothing, in short, curbed his authority, save his responsibility on return. He might bea tyrant as a general; but he was to account for the tyranny when herelapsed into a king. But this distinction was one of the wisestparts of the Spartan system; for war requires in a leader all thelicense of a despot; and triumph, decision, and energy can only besecured by the unfettered exercise of a single will. Nor did earlyRome owe the extent of her conquests to any cause more effective thanthe unlicensed discretion reposed by the senate in the general. [133]

VI. We have now to examine the most active and efficient part of thegovernment, viz. , the Institution of the Ephors. Like the othercomponents of the Spartan constitution, the name and the office ofephor were familiar to other states in the great Dorian family; but inSparta the institution soon assumed peculiar features, or rather, while the inherent principles of the monarchy and the gerusia remainedstationary, those of the ephors became expanded and developed. It isclear that the later authority of the ephors was never designed byLycurgus or the earlier legislators. It is entirely at variance withthe confined aristocracy which was the aim of the Spartan, and ofnearly every genuine Doric [134] constitution. It made a democracy asit were by stealth. This powerful body consisted of five persons, chosen annually by the people. In fact, they may be called therepresentatives of the popular will--the committee, as it were, of thepopular council. Their original power seems to have been imperfectlydesigned; it soon became extensive and encroaching. At first theephoralty was a tribunal for civil, as the gerusia was for criminal, causes; it exercised a jurisdiction over the Helots and Perioeci, overthe public market, and the public revenue. But its characterconsisted in this:--it was strictly a popular body, chosen by thepeople for the maintenance of their interests. Agreeably to thischaracter, it soon appears arrogating the privilege of instituting aninquiry into the conduct of all officials except the counsellors. Every eighth year, selecting a dark night when the moon withheld herlight, the ephors watched the aspect of the heavens, and if anyshooting star were visible in the expanse, the kings were adjudged tohave offended the Deity and were suspended from their office untilacquitted of their guilt by the oracle of Delphi or the priests atOlympia. Nor was this prerogative of adjudging the descendants ofHercules confined to a superstitious practice: they summoned the kingbefore them, no less than the meanest of the magistrates, to accountfor imputed crimes. In a court composed of the counsellors (orgerusia), and various other magistrates, they appeared at once asaccusers and judges; and, dispensing with appeal to a popularassembly, subjected even royalty to a trial of life and death. Beforethe Persian war they sat in judgment on the King Cleomenes for anaccusation of bribery;--just after the Persian war, they resolved uponthe execution of the Regent Pausanias. In lesser offences they actedwithout the formality of this council, and fined or reprimanded theirkings for the affability of their manners, or the size [135] of theirwives. Over education--over social habits-over the regulationsrelative to ambassadors and strangers--over even the marshalling ofarmies and the number of troops, they extended their inquisitorialjurisdiction. They became, in fact, the actual government of thestate. 

It is easy to perceive that it was in the nature of things that theinstitution of the ephors should thus encroach until it became theprevalent power. Its influence was the result of the viciousconstitution of the gerusia, or council. Had that assembly beenproperly constituted, there would have been no occasion for theephors. The gerusia was evidently meant, by the policy of Lycurgus, and by its popular mode of election, for the only representativeassembly. But the absurdity of election for life, with irresponsiblepowers, was sufficient to limit its acceptation among the people. Oftwo assemblies--the ephors and the gerusia--we see the one electedannually, the other for life--the one responsible to the people, theother not--the one composed of men, busy, stirring, ambitious, in thevigour of life--the other of veterans, past the ordinary stimulus ofexertion, and regarding the dignity of office rather as the reward ofa life than the opening to ambition. Of two such assemblies it iseasy to foretell which would lose, and which would augment, authority. It is also easy to see, that as the ephors increased in importance, they, and not the gerusia, would become the check to the kinglyauthority. To whom was the king accountable? To the people:--theephors were the people's representatives! This part of the Spartanconstitution has not, I think, been sufficiently considered in whatseems to me its true light; namely, that of a representativegovernment. The ephoralty was the focus of the popular power. Likean American Congress or an English House of Commons, it prevented theaction of the people by acting in behalf of the people. Torepresentatives annually chosen, the multitude cheerfully left themanagement of their interests [136]. Thus it was true that the ephorsprevented the encroachments of the popular assembly;--but how? byencroaching themselves, and in the name of the people! When we aretold that Sparta was free from those democratic innovations constantin Ionian states, we are not told truly. The Spartan populace wasconstantly innovating, not openly, as in the noisy Agora of Athens, but silently and ceaselessly, through their delegated ephors. Andthese dread and tyrant FIVE--an oligarchy constructed upon principlesthe most liberal--went on increasing their authority, as civilization, itself increasing, rendered the public business more extensive andmultifarious, until they at length became the agents of that fatewhich makes the principle of change at once the vital and theconsuming element of states. The ephors gradually destroyed theconstitution of Sparta; but, without the ephors, it may be reasonablydoubted whether the constitution would have survived half as long. Aristotle (whose mighty intellect is never more luminously displayedthan when adjudging the practical workings of various forms ofgovernment) paints the evils of the ephoral magistrature, butacknowledges that it gave strength and durability to the state. "For, " [137] he says, "the people were contented on account of theirephors, who were chosen from the whole body. " He might have added, that men so chosen, rarely too selected from the chiefs, but oftenfrom the lower ranks, were the ablest and most active of thecommunity, and that the fewness of their numbers gave energy and unityto their councils. Had the other part of the Spartan constitution(absurdly panegyrized) been so formed as to harmonize with, even inchecking, the power of the ephors; and, above all, had it not been forthe lamentable errors of a social system, which, by seeking to excludethe desire of gain, created a terrible reaction, and made the Spartanmagistrature the most venal and corrupt in Greece--the ephors mighthave sufficed to develop all the best principles of government. Forthey went nearly to recognise the soundest philosophy of therepresentative system, being the smallest number of representativeschosen, without restriction, from the greatest number of electors, forshort periods, and under strong responsibilities. [138]

I pass now to the social system of the Spartans. 

VII. If we consider the situation of the Spartans at the time ofLycurgus, and during a long subsequent period, we see at once that toenable them to live at all, they must be accustomed to the life of acamp;--they were a little colony of soldiers, supporting themselves, hand and foot, in a hostile country, over a population that detestedthem. In such a situation certain qualities were not praiseworthyalone--they were necessary. To be always prepared for a foe--to beconstitutionally averse to indolence--to be brave, temperate, andhardy, were the only means by which to escape the sword of theMessenian and to master the hatred of the Helot. Sentinels they were, and they required the virtues of sentinels: fortunately, thesenecessary qualities were inherent in the bold mountain tribes that hadlong roved among the crags of Thessaly, and wrestled for life with themartial Lapithae. But it now remained to mould these qualities into asystem, and to educate each individual in the habits which could bestpreserve the community. Accordingly the child was reared, from theearliest age, to a life of hardship, discipline, and privation; he wasstarved into abstinence;--he was beaten into fortitude;--he waspunished without offence, that he might be trained to bear without agroan;--the older he grew, till he reached manhood, the severer thediscipline he underwent. The intellectual education was littleattended to: for what had sentinels to do with the sciences or thearts? But the youth was taught acuteness, promptness, anddiscernment--for such are qualities essential to the soldier. He wasstimulated to condense his thoughts, and to be ready in reply; to saylittle, and to the point. An aphorism bounded his philosophy. Suchan education produced its results in an athletic frame, in simple andhardy habits--in indomitable patience--in quick sagacity. But therewere other qualities necessary to the position of the Spartan, andthose scarce so praiseworthy--viz. , craft and simulation. He was oneof a scanty, if a valiant, race. No single citizen could be sparedthe state: it was often better to dupe than to fight an enemy. Accordingly, the boy was trained to cunning as to courage. He wasdriven by hunger, or the orders of the leader over him, to obtain hisfood, in house or in field, by stealth;--if undiscovered, he wasapplauded; if detected, punished. Two main-springs of action wereconstructed within him--the dread of shame and the love of country. These were motives, it is true, common to all the Grecian states, butthey seem to have been especially powerful in Sparta. But the lastproduced its abuse in one of the worst vices of the nationalcharacter. The absorbing love for his native Sparta rendered thecitizen singularly selfish towards other states, even kindred to thatwhich he belonged to. Fearless as a Spartan, --when Sparta wasunmenaced he was lukewarm as a Greek. And this exaggerated yetsectarian patriotism, almost peculiar to Sparta, was centred, not onlyin the safety and greatness of the state, but in the inalienablepreservation of its institutions;--a feeling carefully sustained by apolicy exceedingly jealous of strangers [139]. Spartans were notpermitted to travel. Foreigners were but rarely permitted a residencewithin the city: and the Spartan dislike to Athens arose rather fromfear of the contamination of her principles than from envy at thelustre of her fame. When we find (as our history proceeds) theSpartans dismissing their Athenian ally from the siege of Ithome, werecognise their jealousy of the innovating character of theirbrilliant neighbour;--they feared the infection of the democracy ofthe Agora. This attachment to one exclusive system of governmentcharacterized all the foreign policy of Sparta, and crippled thenational sense by the narrowest bigotry and the obtusest prejudice. Wherever she conquered, she enforced her own constitution, no matterhow inimical to the habits of the people, never dreaming that what wasgood for Sparta might be bad for any other state. Thus, when sheimposed the Thirty Tyrants on Athens, she sought, in fact, toestablish her own gerusia; and, no doubt, she imagined it wouldbecome, not a curse, but a blessing to a people accustomed to thewildest freedom of a popular assembly. Though herself, through thetyranny of the ephors, the unconscious puppet of the democraticaction, she recoiled from all other and more open forms of democracyas from a pestilence. The simple habits of the Spartan life assistedto confirm the Spartan prejudices. A dinner, a fine house, thesesturdy Dorians regarded as a pitiable sign of folly. They had norespect for any other cultivation of the mind than that which producedbold men and short sentences. Them, nor the science of Aristotle, northe dreams of Plato were fitted to delight. Music and dancing wereindeed cultivated among them, and with success and skill; but themusic and the dance were always of one kind--it was a crime to vary anair [140] or invent a measure. A martial, haughty, and superstitioustribe can scarcely fail to be attached to poetry, --war is ever theinspiration of song, --and the eve of battle to a Spartan was theseason of sacrifice to the Muses. The poetical temperament seems tohave been common among this singular people. But the dread ofinnovation, when carried to excess, has even worse effect uponliterary genius than legislative science; and though Sparta produced afew poets gifted, doubtless, with the skill to charm the audience theyaddressed, not a single one of the number has bequeathed to us anyother memorial than his name. Greece, which preserved, as in a commontreasury, whatever was approved by her unerring taste, her wonderfulappreciation of the beautiful, regarded the Spartan poetry with anindifference which convinces us of its want of value. Thebes, and notSparta, has transmitted to us the Dorian spirit in its noblest shape:and in Pindar we find how lofty the verse that was inspired by itspride, its daring, and its sublime reverence for glory and the gods. As for commerce, manufactures, agriculture, --the manual arts--suchpeaceful occupations were beneath the dignity of a Spartan--they werestrictly prohibited by law as by pride, and were left to the Perioecior the Helots. 

VIII. It was evidently necessary to this little colony to be united. Nothing unites men more than living together in common. The syssitia, or public tables, an institution which was common in Crete, in Corinth[141], and in Megara, effected this object in a mode agreeable to theDorian manners. The society at each table was composed of menbelonging to the same tribe or clan. New members could only beelected by consent of the rest. Each head of a family in Sparta paidfor his own admission and that of the other members of his house. Menonly belonged to them. The youths and boys had their own separatetable. The young children, however, sat with their parents on lowstools, and received a half share. Women were excluded. Despite thecelebrated black broth, the table seems to have been sufficiently, ifnot elegantly, furnished. And the second course, consisting ofvoluntary gifts, which was supplied by the poorer members from theproduce of the chase--by the wealthier from their flocks, orchards, poultry, etc. , furnished what by Spartans were considered dainties. Conversation was familiar, and even jocose, and relieved by songs. Thus the public tables (which even the kings were ordinarily obligedto attend) were rendered agreeable and inviting by the attractions ofintimate friendship and unrestrained intercourse. 

IX. The obscurest question relative to the Spartan system is thatconnected with property. It was evidently the intention of Lycurgusor the earlier legislators to render all the divisions of land andwealth as equal as possible. But no law can effect what societyforbids. The equality of one generation cannot be transmitted toanother. It may be easy to prevent a great accumulation of wealth, but what can prevent poverty? While the acquisition of lands bypurchase was forbidden, no check was imposed on its acquisition bygift or testament; and in the time of Aristotle land had become themonopoly of the few. Sparta, like other states, had consequently herinequalities--her comparative rich and her positive poor--from anearly period in her known history. As land descended to women, somarriages alone established great disparities of property. "Were thewhole territory, " says Aristotle, "divided into five portions, twowould belong to the women. " The regulation by which the man who couldnot pay his quota to the syssitia was excluded from the public tables, proves that it was not an uncommon occurrence to be so excluded; andindeed that exclusion grew at last so common, that the public tablesbecame an aristocratic instead of a democratic institution. Aristotle, in later times, makes it an objection to the ephoralgovernment that poor men were chosen ephors, and that their venalityarose from their indigence--a moral proof that poverty in Sparta musthave been more common than has generally been supposed [142];--men ofproperty would not have chosen their judges and dictators in paupers. Land was held and cultivated by the Helots, who paid a certain fixedproportion of the produce to their masters. It is said that Lycurgusforbade the use of gold and silver, and ordained an iron coinage; butgold and silver were at that time unknown as coins in Sparta, and ironwas a common medium of exchange throughout Greece. The interdictionof the precious metals was therefore of later origin. It seems tohave only related to private Spartans. For those who, not beingSpartans of the city--that is to say, for the Laconians or Perioeci--engaged in commerce, the interdiction could not have existed. A morepernicious regulation it is impossible to conceive. While iteffectually served to cramp the effects of emulation--to stint thearts--to limit industry and enterprise--it produced the direct objectit was intended to prevent;--it infected the whole state with thedesire of gold--it forbade wealth to be spent, in order that wealthmight be hoarded; every man seems to have desired gold preciselybecause he could make very little use of it! From the king to theHelot [143], the spirit of covetousness spread like a disease. Nostate in Greece was so open to bribery--no magistracy so corrupt asthe ephors. Sparta became a nation of misers precisely because itcould not become a nation of spendthrifts. Such are the results whichman produces when his legislation deposes nature!

X. In their domestic life the Spartans, like the rest of the Greeks, had but little pleasure in the society of their wives. At first theyoung husband only visited his bride by stealth--to be seen in companywith her was a disgrace. But the women enjoyed a much greater freedomand received a higher respect in Sparta than elsewhere; the softAsiatic distinctions in dignity between the respective sexes did notreach the hardy mountaineers of Lacedaemon; the wife was the mother ofmen! Brought up in robust habits, accustomed to athletic exercises, her person exposed in public processions and dances, which, but forthe custom that made decorous even indecency itself, would have beenindeed licentious, the Spartan maiden, strong, hardy, and half apartaker in the ceremonies of public life, shared the habits, aidedthe emulation, imbibed the patriotism, of her future consort. And, byher sympathy with his habits and pursuits, she obtained an influenceand ascendency over him which was unknown in the rest of Greece. Dignified on public occasions, the Spartan matron was deemed, however, a virago in private life; and she who had no sorrow for a slaughteredson, had very little deference for a living husband. Her obedience toher spouse appears to have been the most cheerfully rendered uponthose delicate emergencies when the service of the state required hersubmission to the embraces of another! [144]

XI. We now come to the most melancholy and gloomy part of the Spartansystem--the condition of the Helots. 

The whole fabric of the Spartan character rested upon slavery. If itwere beneath a Spartan to labour--to maintain himself--to cultivateland--to build a house--to exercise an art;--to do aught else than tofight an enemy--to choose an ephor--to pass from the chase or thepalaestra to the public tables--to live a hero in war--an aristocratin peace, --it was clearly a supreme necessity to his very existence asa citizen, and even as a human being, that there should be asubordinate class of persons employed in the occupations rejected byhimself, and engaged in providing for the wants of this privilegedcitizen. Without Helots the Spartan was the most helpless of humanbeings. Slavery taken from the Spartan state, the state would fall atonce! It is no wonder, therefore, that this institution should havebeen guarded with an extraordinary jealousy--nor that extraordinaryjealousy should have produced extraordinary harshness. It is exactlyin proportion to the fear of losing power that men are generallytyrannical in the exercise of it. Nor is it from cruelty ofdisposition, but from the anxious curse of living among men whomsocial circumstances make his enemies because his slaves, that adespot usually grows ferocious, and that the urgings of suspicioncreate the reign of terror. Besides the political necessity of astrict and unrelaxed slavery, a Spartan would also be callous to thesufferings, from his contempt for the degradation, of the slave; as hedespised the employments abandoned to the Helot, even so would hedespise the wretch that exercised them. Thus the motives that renderpower most intolerant combined in the Spartan in his relations to theHelot--viz. , 1st, necessity for his services, lost perhaps if the curbwere ever relaxed--2dly, consummate contempt for the individual hedebased. The habit of tyranny makes tyranny necessary. When theslave has been long maddened by your yoke, if you lighten it for amoment he rebels. He has become your deadliest foe, andself-preservation renders it necessary that him whom you provoke tovengeance you should crush to impotence. The longer, therefore, theSpartan government endured, the more cruel became the condition of theHelots. Not in Sparta were those fine distinctions of rank whichexist where slavery is unknown, binding class with class by ties ofmutual sympathy and dependance--so that Poverty itself may be abenefactor to Destitution. Even among the poor the Helot had nobrotherhood! he was as necessary to the meanest as to the highestSpartan--his wrongs gave its very existence to the commonwealth. Wecannot, then, wonder at the extreme barbarity with which the Spartanstreated this miserable race; and we can even find something of excusefor a cruelty which became at last the instinct of self-preservation. Revolt and massacre were perpetually before a Spartan's eyes; and whatman will be gentle and unsuspecting to those who wait only the momentto murder him?

XII. The origin of the Helot race is not clearly ascertained: thepopular notion that they were the descendants of the inhabitants ofHelos, a maritime town subdued by the Spartans, and that they weredegraded to servitude after a revolt, is by no means a conclusiveaccount. Whether, as Mueller suggests, they were the original slavepopulation of the Achaeans, or whether, as the ancient authoritiesheld, they were such of the Achaeans themselves as had mostobstinately resisted the Spartan sword, and had at last surrenderedwithout conditions, is a matter it is now impossible to determine. For my own part, I incline to the former supposition, partly becauseof the wide distinction between the enslaved Helots and the (merely)inferior Perioeci, who were certainly Achaeans; a distinction which Ido not think the different manner in which the two classes wereoriginally subdued would suffice to account for; partly because Idoubt whether the handful of Dorians who first fixed their dangeroussettlement in Laconia could have effectually subjugated the Helots, ifthe latter had not previously been inured to slavery. The objectionto this hypothesis--that the Helots could scarcely have so hated theSpartans if they had merely changed masters, does not appear to mevery cogent. Under the mild and paternal chiefs of the Homeric age[145], they might have been subjected to a much gentler servitude. Accustomed to the manners and habits of their Achaean lords, theymight have half forgotten their condition; and though governed bySpartans in the same external relations, it was in a very differentspirit. The sovereign contempt with which the Spartans regarded theHelots, they would scarcely have felt for a tribe distinguished fromthe more honoured Perioeci only by a sterner valour and a greaterregard for freedom; while that contempt is easily accounted for, ifits objects were the previously subdued population of a country theSpartans themselves subdued. 

The Helots were considered the property of the state--but they wereintrusted and leased, as it were, to individuals; they were bound tothe soil; even the state did not arrogate the power of selling themout of the country; they paid to their masters a rent in corn--thesurplus profits were their own. It was easier for a Helot than for aSpartan to acquire riches--but riches were yet more useless to him. Some of the Helots attended their masters at the public tables, andothers were employed in all public works: they served in the field aslight-armed troops: they were occasionally emancipated, but there wereseveral intermediate grades between the Helot and the freeman; theirnominal duties were gentle indeed when compared with the spirit inwhich they were regarded and the treatment they received. That muchexaggeration respecting the barbarity of their masters existed isprobable enough; but the exaggeration itself, among writers accustomedto the institution of slavery elsewhere, and by no means addicted toan overstrained humanity, is a proof of the manner in which thetreatment of the Helots was viewed by the more gentle slave-masters ofthe rest of Greece. They were branded with ineffaceable dishonour: noHelot might sing a Spartan song; if he but touched what belonged to aSpartan it was profaned--he was the Pariah of Greece. The ephors--thepopular magistrates--the guardians of freedom--are reported byAristotle to have entered office in making a formal declaration of waragainst the Helots--probably but an idle ceremony of disdain andinsult. We cannot believe with Plutarch, that the infamous cryptiawas instituted for the purpose he assigns--viz. , that it was anambuscade of the Spartan youths, who dispersed themselves through thecountry, and by night murdered whomsoever of the Helots they couldmeet. But it is certain that a select portion of the younger Spartansranged the country yearly, armed with daggers, and that with theobject of attaining familiarity with military hardships was associatedthat of strict, stern, and secret surveillance over the Helotpopulation. No Helot, perhaps, was murdered from mere wantonness; butwho does not see how many would necessarily have been butchered at theslightest suspicion of disaffection, or for the faintest utility ofexample? These miserable men were the objects of compassion to allGreece. "It was the common opinion, " says Aelian, "that theearthquake in Sparta was a judgment from the gods upon the Spartaninhumanity to the Helots. " And perhaps in all history (not evenexcepting that awful calmness with which the Italian historiansnarrate the cruelties of a Paduan tyrant or a Venetian oligarchy)there is no record of crime more thrilling than that dark and terriblepassage in Thucydides which relates how two thousand Helots, the bestand bravest of their tribe, were selected as for reward and freedom, how they were led to the temples in thanksgiving to the gods--and howthey disappeared, their fate notorious--the manner of it a mystery!

XIII. Besides the Helots, the Spartans exercised an authority overthe intermediate class called the Perioeci. These were indubitablythe old Achaean race, who had been reduced, not to slavery, but todependance. They retained possession of their own towns, estimated innumber, after the entire conquest of Messenia, at one hundred. Theyhad their own different grades and classes, as the Saxons retainedtheirs after the conquest of the Normans. Among these were thetraders and manufacturers of Laconia; and thus whatever art attainedof excellence in the dominions of Sparta was not Spartan but Achaean. They served in the army, sometimes as heavy-armed, sometimes aslight-armed soldiery, according to their rank or callings; and one ofthe Perioeci obtained the command at sea. They appear, indeed, to havebeen universally acknowledged throughout Greece as free citizens, yetdependant subjects. But the Spartans jealously and sternly maintainedthe distinction between exemption from the servitude of a Helot, andparticipation in the rights of a Dorian: the Helot lost his personalliberty--the Perioecus his political. 

XIV. The free or purely Spartan population (as not improbably withevery Doric state) was divided into three generic tribes--the Hyllean, the Dymanatan, and the Pamphylian: of these the Hyllean (the reputeddescendants of the son of Hercules) gave to Sparta both her kings. Besides these tribes of blood or race, there were also five localtribes, which formed the constituency of the ephors, and thirtysubdivisions called obes--according to which the more aristocraticoffices appear to have been elected. There were also recognised inthe Spartan constitution two distinct classes--the Equals and theInferiors. Though these were hereditary divisions, merit mightpromote a member of the last--demerit degrade a member of the first. The Inferiors, though not boasting the nobility of the Equals, oftenpossessed men equally honoured and powerful: as among the commoners ofEngland are sometimes found persons of higher birth and more importantstation than among the peers--(a term somewhat synonymous with thatof Equal. ) But the higher class enjoyed certain privileges which wecan but obscurely trace [146]. Forming an assembly among themselves, it may be that they alone elected to the senate; and perhaps they werealso distinguished by some peculiarities of education--an assertionmade by Mr. Mueller, but not to my mind sufficiently established. With respect to the origin of this distinction between the Inferiorsand the Equals, my own belief is, that it took place at some period(possibly during the Messenian wars) when the necessities of a failingpopulation induced the Spartans to increase their number by theadmixture either of strangers, but (as that hypothesis is scarceagreeable to Spartan manners) more probably of the Perioeci; the newcitizens would thus be the Inferiors. Among the Greek settlements inItaly, it was by no means uncommon for a colony, once sufficientlyestablished, only to admit new settlers even from the parent stateupon inferior terms; and in like manner in Venice arose thedistinction between the gentlemen and the citizens; for when to thatsea-girt state many flocked for security and refuge, it seemed butjust to give to the prior inhabitants the distinction of hosts, and toconsider the immigrators as guests;--to the first a share in theadministration and a superior dignity--to the last only shelter andrepose. 

XV. Such are the general outlines of the state and constitution ofSparta--the firmest aristocracy that perhaps ever existed, for it wasan aristocracy on the widest base. If some Spartans were noble, everySpartan boasted himself gentle. His birth forbade him to work, andhis only profession was the sword. The difference between the meanestSpartan and his king was not so great as that between a Spartan and aPerioecus. Not only the servitude of the Helots, but the subjectionof the Perioeci, perpetually nourished the pride of the superior race;and to be born a Spartan was to be born to power. The sense ofsuperiority and the habit of command impart a certain elevation to themanner and the bearing. There was probably more of dignity in thepoorest Spartan citizen than in the wealthiest noble of Corinth--themost voluptuous courtier of Syracuse. And thus the reserve, thedecorum, the stately simplicity of the Spartan mien could not butimpose upon the imagination of the other Greeks, and obtain the creditfor correspondent qualities which did not always exist beneath thatlofty exterior. To lively nations, affected by externals, there wasmuch in that sedate majesty of demeanour; to gallant nations, much inthat heroic valour; to superstitious nations, much in that proverbialregard to religious rites, which characterized the Spartan race. Declaimers on luxury admired their simplicity--the sufferers frominnovation, their adherence to ancient manners. Many a victim of theturbulence of party in Athens sighed for the repose of theLacedaemonian city; and as we always exaggerate the particular evilswe endure, and admire most blindly the circumstances most opposite tothose by which we are affected, so it was often the fashion of moreintellectual states to extol the institutions of which they saw onlyfrom afar and through a glass the apparent benefits, without examiningthe concomitant defects. An Athenian might laud the Spartanausterity, as Tacitus might laud the German barbarism; it was thepanegyric of rhetoric and satire, of wounded patriotism ordisappointed ambition. Although the ephors made the government reallyand latently democratic, yet the concentration of its action made itseemingly oligarchic; and in its secrecy, caution, vigilance, andenergy, it exhibited the best of the oligarchic features. Whateverwas democratic by law was counteracted in its results by all that wasaristocratic in custom. It was a state of political freedom, but ofsocial despotism. This rigidity of ancient usages was binding longafter its utility was past. For what was admirable at one time becamepernicious at another; what protected the infant state fromdissension, stinted all luxuriance of intellect in the more maturedcommunity. It is in vain that modern writers have attempted to denythis fact--the proof is before us. By her valour Sparta was long themost eminent state of the most intellectual of all countries; and whenwe ask what she has bequeathed to mankind--what she has left us inrivalry to that Athens, whose poetry yet animates, whose philosophyyet guides, whose arts yet inspire the world--we find only the namesof two or three minor poets, whose works have perished, and some halfa dozen pages of pithy aphorisms and pointed repartees!

XVI. My object in the above sketch has been to give a general outlineof the Spartan character and the Spartan system during the earlier andmore brilliant era of Athenian history, without entering intounnecessary conjectures as to the precise period of each law and eachchange. The social and political state of Sparta became fixed by herconquest of Messenia. It is not within the plan of my undertaking toretail at length the legendary and for the most part fabulous accountsof the first and second Messenian wars. The first was dignified bythe fate of the Messenian hero Aristodemus, and the fall of the rockyfortress of Ithome; its result was the conquest of Messenia (probablybegun 743 B. C. , ended 723); the inhabitants were compelled to an oathof submission, and to surrender to Sparta half their agriculturalproduce. After the first Messenian war, Tarentum was founded by aSpartan colony, composed, it is said, of youths [147], the offspringof Spartan women and Laconian men, who were dissatisfied with theirexclusion from citizenship, and by whom the state was menaced with aformidable conspiracy shared by the Helots. Meanwhile, theMessenians, if conquered, were not subdued. Years rolled away, andtime had effaced the remembrance of the past sufferings, but not ofthe ancient [148] liberties. 

It was among the youth of Messenia that the hope of the nationaldeliverance was the most intensely cherished. At length, in Andania, the revolt broke forth. A young man, pre-eminent above the rest forbirth, for valour, and for genius, was the head and the soul of theenterprise (probably B. C. 679). His name was Aristomenes. Formingsecret alliances with the Argives and Arcadians, he at length venturedto raise his standard, and encountered at Dera, on their own domains, the Spartan force. The issue of the battle was indecisive; still, however, it seems to have seriously aroused the fears of Sparta: nofurther hostilities took place till the following year; the oracle atDelphi was solemnly consulted, and the god ordained the Spartans toseek their adviser in an Athenian. They sent to Athens and obtainedTyrtaeus. A popular but fabulous account [149] describes him as alame teacher of grammar, and of no previous repute. His songs and hisexhortations are said to have produced almost miraculous effects. Iomit the romantic adventures of the hero Aristomenes, though it may bedoubted whether all Grecian history can furnish passages that surpassthe poetry of his reputed life. I leave the reader to learn elsewherehow he hung at night a shield in the temple of Chalcioecus, in thevery city of the foe, with the inscription, that Aristomenes dedicatedto the goddess that shield from the spoils of the Spartans--how hepenetrated the secret recesses of Trophonius--how he was deterred fromentering Sparta by the spectres of Helen and the Dioscuri--how, takenprisoner in an attempt to seize the women of Aegila, he was releasedby the love of the priestess of Ceres--how, again made captive, andcast into a deep pit with fifty of his men, he escaped by seizing holdof a fox (attracted thither by the dead bodies), and suffering himselfto be drawn by her through dark and scarce pervious places to a holethat led to the upper air. These adventures, and others equallyromantic, I must leave to the genius of more credulous historians. 

All that seems to me worthy of belief is, that after stern butunavailing struggles, the Messenians abandoned Andania, and took theirlast desperate station at Ira, a mountain at whose feet flows theriver Neda, separating Messenia from Triphylia. Here, fortified alikeby art and nature, they sustained a siege of eleven years. But withthe eleventh the term of their resistance was completed. The slave ofa Spartan of rank had succeeded in engaging the affections of aMessenian woman who dwelt without the walls of the mountain fortress. One night the guilty pair were at the house of the adulteress--thehusband abruptly returned--the slave was concealed, and overheardthat, in consequence of a violent and sudden storm, the Messenianguard had deserted the citadel, not fearing attack from the foe on sotempestuous a night, and not anticipating the inspection ofAristomenes, who at that time was suffering from a wound. The slaveoverheard--escaped--reached the Spartan camp--apprized his masterEmperamus (who, in the absence of the kings, headed the troops) of thedesertion of the guard:--an assault was agreed on: despite thedarkness of the night, despite the violence of the rain, the Spartansmarched on:--scaled the fortifications:--were within the walls. Thefulfilment of dark prophecies had already portended the fate of thebesieged; and now the very howling of the dogs in a strange andunwonted manner was deemed a prodigy. Alarmed, aroused, theMessenians betook themselves to the nearest weapons within theirreach. Aristomenes, his son Gorgus, Theoclus, the guardian prophet ofhis tribe (whose valour was equal to his science), were among thefirst to perceive the danger. Night passed in tumult and disorder. Day dawned, but rather to terrify than encourage--the storm increased--the thunder burst--the lightning glared. What dismayed the besiegedencouraged the besiegers. Still, with all the fury of despair, theMessenians fought on: the very women took part in the contest; deathwas preferable, even in their eyes, to slavery and dishonour. But theSpartans were far superior in number, and, by continual reliefs, thefresh succeeded to the weary. In arms for three days and three nightswithout respite, worn out with watching, with the rage of theelements, with cold, with hunger, and with thirst, no hope remainedfor the Messenians: the bold prophet declared to Aristomenes that thegods had decreed the fall of Messene, that the warning oracles werefulfilled. "Preserve, " he cried, "what remain of your forces--saveyourselves. Me the gods impel to fall with my country!" Thus saying, the soothsayer rushed on the enemy, and fell at last covered withwounds and satiated with the slaughter himself had made. Aristomenescalled the Messenians round him; the women and the children wereplaced in the centre of the band, guarded by his own son and that ofthe prophet. Heading the troop himself, he rushed on the foe, and byhis gestures and the shaking of his spear announced his intention toforce a passage, and effect escape. Unwilling yet more to exasperatemen urged to despair, the Spartans made way for the rest of thebesieged. So fell Ira! (probably B. C. 662). [150] The braveMessenians escaped to Mount Lyceum in Arcadia, and afterward thegreater part, invited by Anaxilaus, their own countryman, prince ofthe Dorian colony at Rhegium in Italy, conquered with him theZanclaeans of Sicily, and named the conquered town Messene. It stillpreserves the name [151]. But Aristomenes, retaining indomitablehatred to Sparta, refused to join the colony. Yet hoping a day ofretribution, he went to Delphi. What counsel he there received isunrecorded. But the deity ordained to Damagetes, prince of Jalysus inRhodes, to marry the daughter of the best man of Greece. Such a manthe prince esteemed the hero of the Messenians, and wedded the thirddaughter of Aristomenes. Still bent on designs against the destroyersof his country, the patriot warrior repaired to Rhodes, where deathdelivered the Spartans from the terror of his revenge. A monument wasraised to his memory, and that memory, distinguished by publichonours, long made the boast of the Messenians, whether those indistant exile, or those subjected to the Spartan yoke. Thus ended thesecond Messenian war. Such of the Messenians as had not abandonedtheir country were reduced to Helotism. The Spartan territoryextended, and the Spartan power secured, that haughty state roseslowly to pre-eminence over the rest of Greece; and preserved, amidthe advancing civilization and refinement of her neighbours, the sternand awing likeness of the heroic age:--In the mountains of thePeloponnesus, the polished and luxurious Greeks beheld, retained fromchange as by a spell, the iron images of their Homeric ancestry!

CHAPTER VII. 

Governments in Greece. 

I. The return of the Heraclidae occasioned consequences of which themost important were the least immediate. Whenever the Dorians forceda settlement, they dislodged such of the previous inhabitants asrefused to succumb. Driven elsewhere to seek a home, the exiles foundit often in yet fairer climes, and along more fertile soils. Theexample of these involuntary migrators became imitated whereverdiscontent prevailed or population was redundant: and hence, as I havealready recorded, first arose those numerous colonies, which along theAsiatic shores, in the Grecian isles, on the plains of Italy, and evenin Libya and in Egypt, were destined to give, as it were, a secondyouth to the parent states. 

II. The ancient Greek constitution was that of an aristocracy, with aprince at the head. Suppose a certain number of men, thus governed, to be expelled their native soil, united by a common danger and commonsuffering, to land on a foreign shore, to fix themselves with pain andlabour in a new settlement--it is quite clear that a popular principlewould insensibly have entered the forms of the constitution theytransplanted. In the first place, the power of the prince would bemore circumscribed--in the next place, the free spirit of thearistocracy would be more diffused: the first, because the authorityof the chief would rarely be derived from royal ancestry, or hallowedby prescriptive privilege; in most cases he was but a noble, selectedfrom the ranks, and crippled by the jealousies, of his order: thesecond, because all who shared in the enterprise would in one respectrise at once to an aristocracy--they would be distinguished from thepopulation of the state they colonized. Misfortune, sympathy, andchange would also contribute to sweep away many demarcations; andauthority was transmuted from a birthright into a trust, the moment itwas withdrawn from the shelter of ancient custom, and made the gift ofthe living rather than a heritage from the dead. It was probable, too, that many of such colonies were founded by men, among whom wasbut little disparity of rank: this would be especially the case withthose which were the overflow of a redundant population; the great andthe wealthy are never redundant!--the mass would thus ordinarily becomposed of the discontented and the poor, and even where thearistocratic leaven was most strong, it was still the aristocracy ofsome defeated and humbled faction. So that in the average equality ofthe emigrators were the seeds of a new constitution; and if theytransplanted the form of monarchy, it already contained the genius ofrepublicanism. Hence, colonies in the ancient, as in the modernworld, advanced by giant strides towards popular principles. Maintaining a constant intercourse with their father-land, their ownconstitutions became familiar and tempting to the population of thecountries they had abandoned; and much of whatsoever advantages werederived from the soil they selected, and the commerce they foundwithin their reach, was readily attributed only to their more popularconstitutions; as, at this day, we find American prosperity held outto our example, not as the result of local circumstances, but as thecreature of political institutions. 

One principal cause of the republican forms of government that began(as, after the Dorian migration, the different tribes became settledin those seats by which they are historically known) to spreadthroughout Greece, was, therefore, the establishment of coloniesretaining constant intercourse with the parent states. A second causeis to be found in the elements of the previous constitutions of theGrecian states themselves, and the political principles which existeduniversally, even in the heroic ages: so that, in fact, the changefrom monarchy to republicanism was much less violent than at the firstglance it would seem to our modern notions. The ancient kings, asdescribed by Homer, possessed but a limited authority, like that ofthe Spartan kings--extensive in war, narrow in peace. It wasevidently considered that the source of their authority was in thepeople. No notion seems to have been more universal among the Greeksthan that it was for the community that all power was to be exercised. In Homer's time popular assemblies existed, and claimed the right ofconferring privileges on rank. The nobles were ever jealous of theprerogative of the prince, and ever encroaching on his accidentalweakness. In his sickness, his age, or his absence, the power of thestate seems to have been wrested from his hands--the prey of thechiefs, or the dispute of contending factions. Nor was there inGreece that chivalric fealty to a person which characterizes theNorth. From the earliest times it was not the MONARCH, that calledforth the virtue of devotion, and inspired the enthusiasm of loyalty. Thus, in the limited prerogative of royalty, in the jealousy of thechiefs, in the right of popular assemblies, and, above all, in thesilent and unconscious spirit of political theory, we may recognise inthe early monarchies of Greece the germes of their inevitabledissolution. Another cause was in that singular separation of tribes, speaking a common language, and belonging to a common race, whichcharacterized the Greeks. Instead of overrunning a territory in onevast irruption, each section seized a small district, built a city, and formed an independent people. Thus, in fact, the Hellenicgovernments were not those of a country, but of a town; and the words"state" and "city" were synonymous [152]. Municipal constitutions, intheir very nature, are ever more or less republican; and, as in theItalian states, the corporation had only to shake off some powerunconnected with, or hostile to it, to rise into a republic. To thisit may be added, that the true republican spirit is more easilyestablished among mountain tribes imperfectly civilized, and yet freshfrom the wildness of the natural life, than among old states, whereluxury leaves indeed the desire, but has enervated the power ofliberty, "as the marble from the quarry may be more readily wroughtinto the statue, than that on which the hand of the workman hasalready been employed. " [153]

III. If the change from monarchy to republicanism was not veryviolent in itself, it appears to have been yet more smoothed away bygradual preparations. Monarchy was not abolished, it declined. Thedirect line was broken, or some other excuse occurred for exchangingan hereditary for an elective monarchy; then the period of powerbecame shortened, and from monarchy for life it was monarchy only fora certain number of years: in most cases the name too (and how much isthere in names!) was changed, and the title of ruler or magistratesubstituted for that of king. 

Thus, by no sudden leap of mind, by no vehement and short-livedrevolutions, but gradually, insensibly, and permanently, monarchyceased--a fashion, as it were, worn out and obsolete--andrepublicanism succeeded. But this republicanism at first was probablyin no instance purely democratic. It was the chiefs who were thevisible agents in the encroachments on the monarchic power--it was anaristocracy that succeeded monarchy. Sometimes this aristocracy wasexceedingly limited in number, or the governing power was usurped by aparticular faction or pre-eminent families; then it was called anOLIGARCHY. And this form of aristocracy appears generally to havebeen the most immediate successor to royalty. "The first polity, "says Aristotle [154], "that was established in Greece after the lapseof monarchies, was that of the members of the military class, andthose wholly horsemen, " . . . . . "such republics, though calleddemocracies, had a strong tendency to oligarchy, and even to royalty. "[155] But the spirit of change still progressed: whether they werefew or many, the aristocratic governors could not fail to open thedoor to further innovations. For, if many, they were subjected todissensions among themselves--if few, they created odium in all whowere excluded from power. Thus fell the oligarchies of Marseilles, Ister, and Heraclea. In the one case they were weakened by their ownjealousies, in the other by the jealousies of their rivals. Theprogress of civilization and the growing habits of commerce graduallyintroduced a medium between the populace and the chiefs. The MIDDLECLASS slowly rose, and with it rose the desire of extended libertiesand equal laws. [156]

IV. Now then appeared the class of DEMAGOGUES. The people had beenaccustomed to change. They had been led against monarchy, and foundthey had only resigned the one master to obtain the many:--A demagoguearose, sometimes one of their own order, more often a dissatisfied, ambitious, or empoverished noble. For they who have wasted theirpatrimony, as the Stagirite shrewdly observes, are great promoters ofinnovation! Party ran high--the state became divided--passions werearoused--and the popular leader became the popular idol. His life wasprobably often in danger from the resentment of the nobles, and it wasalways easy to assert that it was so endangered. --He obtained a guardto protect him, conciliated the soldiers, seized the citadel, and roseat once from the head of the populace to the ruler of the state. Suchwas the common history of the tyrants of Greece, who never supplantedthe kingly sway (unless in the earlier ages, when, born to a limitedmonarchy, they extended their privileges beyond the law, as Pheidon ofArgos), but nearly always aristocracies or oligarchies [157]. I needscarcely observe that the word "tyrant" was of very differentsignification in ancient times from that which it bears at present. It more nearly corresponded to our word "usurper, " and denoted onewho, by illegitimate means, whether of art or force, had usurped thesupreme authority. A tyrant might be mild or cruel, the father of thepeople, or their oppressor; he still preserved the name, and it wastransmitted to his children. The merits of this race of rulers, andthe unconscious benefits they produced, have not been justlyappreciated, either by ancient or modern historians. Without hertyrants, Greece might never have established her democracies. As maybe readily supposed, the man who, against powerful enemies, often froma low origin and with empoverished fortunes, had succeeded inascending a throne, was usually possessed of no ordinary abilities. It was almost vitally necessary for him to devote those abilities tothe cause and interests of the people. Their favour had alone raisedhim--numerous foes still surrounded him--it was on the people alonethat he could depend. 

The wiser and more celebrated tyrants were characterized by an extrememodesty of deportment--they assumed no extraordinary pomp, no loftytitles--they left untouched, or rendered yet more popular, the outwardforms and institutions of the government--they were not exacting intaxation--they affected to link themselves with the lowest orders, andtheir ascendency was usually productive of immediate benefit to theworking classes, whom they employed in new fortifications or newpublic buildings; dazzling the citizens by a splendour that seemedless the ostentation of an individual than the prosperity of a state. But the aristocracy still remained their enemies, and it was againstthem, not against the people, that they directed their acutesagacities and unsparing energies. Every more politic tyrant was aLouis the Eleventh, weakening the nobles, creating a middle class. Heeffected his former object by violent and unscrupulous means. Heswept away by death or banishment all who opposed his authority orexcited his fears. He thus left nothing between the state and ademocracy but himself; himself removed, democracy ensued naturally andof course. There are times in the history of all nations when libertyis best promoted--when civilization is most rapidly expedited--whenthe arts are most luxuriantly nourished by a strict concentration ofpower in the hands of an individual--and when the despot is but therepresentative of the popular will [158]. At such times did thetyrannies in Greece mostly flourish, and they may almost be said tocease with the necessity which called them forth. The energy of thesemasters of a revolution opened the intercourse with other states;their interests extended commerce; their policy broke up the sullenbarriers of oligarchical prejudice and custom; their fears foundperpetual vent for the industry of a population whom they dreaded toleave in indolence; their genius appreciated the arts--their vanityfostered them. Thus they interrupted the course of liberty only toimprove, to concentre, to advance its results. Their dynasty neverlasted long; the oldest tyranny in Greece endured but a hundred years[159]--so enduring only from its mildness. The son of the tyrantrarely inherited his father's sagacity and talents: he sought tostrengthen his power by severity; discontent ensued, and his fall wassudden and complete. Usually, then, such of the aristocracy as hadbeen banished were recalled, but not invested with their formerprivileges. The constitution became more or less democratic. It istrue that Sparta, who lent her powerful aid in destroying tyrannies, aimed at replacing them by oligarchies--but the effort seldom produceda permanent result: the more the aristocracy was narrowed, the morecertain was its fall. If the middle class were powerful--if commercethrived in the state--the former aristocracy of birth was soonsucceeded by an aristocracy of property (called a timocracy), and thiswas in its nature certain of democratic advances. The moment youwiden the suffrage, you may date the commencement of universalsuffrage. He who enjoys certain advantages from the possession of tenacres, will excite a party against him in those who have nine; and thearguments that had been used for the franchise of the one are equallyvalid for the franchise of the other. Limitations of power byproperty are barriers against a tide which perpetually advances. Timocracy, therefore, almost invariably paved the way to democracy. But still the old aristocratic faction, constantly invaded, remainedpowerful, stubborn, and resisting, and there was scarcely a state inGreece that did not contain the two parties which we find to-day inEngland, and in all free states--the party of the movement to thefuture, and the party of recurrence to the past; I say the past, forin politics there is no present! Wherever party exists, if the onedesire fresh innovations, so the other secretly wishes not to preservewhat remains, but to restore what has been. This fact it is necessaryalways to bear in mind in examining the political contests of theAthenians. For in most of their domestic convulsions we find thecause in the efforts of the anti-popular party less to resist newencroachments than to revive departed institutions. But though inmost of the Grecian states were two distinct orders, and theEupatrids, or "Well-born, " were a class distinct from, and superiorto, that of the commonalty, we should err in supposing that theseparate orders made the great political divisions. As in England themore ancient of the nobles are often found in the popular ranks, so inthe Grecian states many of the Eupatrids headed the democratic party. And this division among themselves, while it weakened the power of thewell-born, contributed to prevent any deadly or ferocious revolutions:for it served greatly to soften the excesses of the predominantfaction, and every collision found mediators between the contendingparties in some who were at once friends of the people and members ofthe nobility. Nor should it be forgotten that the triumph of thepopular party was always more moderate than that of the antagonistfaction--as the history of Athens will hereafter prove. 

V. The legal constitutions of Greece were four--Monarchy, Oligarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy; the illegal, was Tyranny in a twofoldshape, viz. , whether it consisted in an usurped monarchy or an usurpedoligarchy. Thus the oligarchy of the Thirty in Athens was no less atyranny than the single government of Pisistratus. Even democracy hadits illegal or corrupt form--in OCHLOCRACY or mob rule; for democracydid not signify the rule of the lower orders alone, but of all thepeople--the highest as the lowest. If the highest became by lawexcluded--if the populace confined the legislative and executiveauthorities to their own order--then democracy, or the government of awhole people, virtually ceased, and became the government of a part ofthe people--a form equally unjust and illegitimate--equally an abusein itself, whether the dominant and exclusive portion were the noblesor the mechanics. Thus in modern yet analogous history, when themiddle class of Florence expelled the nobles from any share of thegovernment, they established a monopoly under the name of liberty; andthe resistance of the nobles was the lawful struggle of patriots andof freemen for an inalienable privilege and a natural right. 

VI. We should remove some very important prejudices from our minds, if we could once subscribe to a fact plain in itself, but which thecontests of modern party have utterly obscured--that in the mere formsof their government, the Greek republics cannot fairly be pressed intothe service of those who in existing times would attest the evils, orproclaim the benefits, of constitutions purely democratic. In thefirst place, they were not democracies, even in their most democraticshape:--the vast majority of the working classes were the enslavedpopulation. And, therefore, to increase the popular tendencies of therepublic was, in fact, only to increase the liberties of the few. Wemay fairly doubt whether the worst evils of the ancient republics, inthe separation of ranks, and the war between rich and poor, were notthe necessary results of slavery. We may doubt, with equalprobability, whether much of the lofty spirit, and the universalpassion for public affairs, whence emanated the enterprise, thecompetition, the patriotism, and the glory of the ancient cities, could have existed without a subordinate race to carry on thedrudgeries of daily life. It is clear, also, that much of theintellectual greatness of the several states arose from the exceedingsmallness of their territories--the concentration of internal power, and the perpetual emulation with neighbouring and kindred statesnearly equal in civilization; it is clear, too, that much of thevicious parts of their character, and yet much of their morebrilliant, arose from the absence of the PRESS. Their intellectualstate was that of men talked to, not written to. Their imaginationwas perpetually called forth--their deliberative reason rarely;--theywere the fitting audience for an orator, whose art is effective inproportion to the impulse and the passion of those he addresses. Normust it be forgotten that the representative system, which is theproper conductor of the democratic action, if not wholly unknown tothe Greeks [160], and if unconsciously practised in the Spartanephoralty, was at least never existent in the more democratic states. And assemblies of the whole people are compatible only with thosesmall nations of which the city is the country. Thus, it would beimpossible for us to propose the abstract constitution of any ancientstate as a warning or an example to modern countries which possessterritories large in extent--which subsist without a slave population--which substitute representative councils for popular assemblies--andwhich direct the intellectual tastes and political habits of a people, not by oratory and conversation, but through the more calm anddispassionate medium of the press. This principle settled, it mayperhaps be generally conceded, that on comparing the democracies ofGreece with all other contemporary forms of government, we find themthe most favourable to mental cultivation--not more exposed thanothers to internal revolutions--usually, in fact, more durable, --moremild and civilized in their laws--and that the worst tyranny of theDemus, whether at home or abroad, never equalled that of an oligarchyor a single ruler. That in which the ancient republics are properlymodels to us, consists not in the form, but the spirit of theirlegislation. They teach us that patriotism is most promoted bybringing all classes into public and constant intercourse--thatintellect is most luxuriant wherever the competition is widest andmost unfettered--and that legislators can create no rewards and inventno penalties equal to those which are silently engendered by societyitself--while it maintains, elaborated into a system, the desire ofglory and the dread of shame. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Brief Survey of Arts, Letters, and Philosophy in Greece, prior to theLegislation of Solon. 

I. Before concluding this introductory portion of my work, it will benecessary to take a brief survey of the intellectual state of Greeceprior to that wonderful era of Athenian greatness which commenced withthe laws of Solon. At this period the continental states of Greecehad produced little in that literature which is now the heirloom ofthe world. Whether under her monarchy, or the oligarchicalconstitution that succeeded it, the depressed and languid genius ofAthens had given no earnest of the triumphs she was afterward destinedto accomplish. Her literature began, though it cannot be said to haveceased, with her democracy. The solitary and doubtful claim of thebirth--but not the song--of Tyrtaeus (fl. B. C. 683), is the highestliterary honour to which the earlier age of Attica can pretend; andmany of the Dorian states--even Sparta itself--appear to have beenmore prolific in poets than the city of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Butthroughout all Greece, from the earliest time, was a general passionfor poetry, however fugitive the poets. The poems of Homer are themost ancient of profane writings--but the poems of Homer themselvesattest that they had many, nor ignoble, precursors. Not only do theyattest it in their very excellence--not only in their reference toother poets--but in the general manner of life attributed to chiefsand heroes. The lyre and the song afford the favourite entertainmentat the banquet [161]. And Achilles, in the interval of his indignantrepose, exchanges the deadly sword for the "silver harp, "

 "And sings The immortal deeds of heroes and of kings. " [162]

II. Ample tradition and the internal evidence of the Homeric poemsprove the Iliad at least to have been the composition of an AsiaticGreek; and though the time in which he flourished is yet warmlydebated, the most plausible chronology places him about the time ofthe Ionic migration, or somewhat less than two hundred years after theTrojan war. The following lines in the speech of Juno in the fourthbook of the Iliad are supposed by some [163] to allude to the returnof the Heraclidae and the Dorian conquests in the Peloponnesus:--

 "Three towns are Juno's on the Grecian plains, More dear than all th' extended earth contains-- Mycenae, Argos, and the Spartan Wall-- These mayst thou raze, nor I forbid their fall; 'Tis not in me the vengeance to remove; The crime's sufficient that they share my love. " [164]

And it certainly does seem to me that in a reference so distinct tothe three great Peloponnesian cities which the Dorians invaded andpossessed, Homer makes as broad an allusion to the conquests of theHeraclidae, not only as would be consistent with the pride of an IonicGreek in attesting the triumphs of the national Dorian foe, but as thenature of a theme cast in a distant period, and remarkably removed, inits general conduct, from the historical detail of subsequent events, would warrant to the poet [165]. And here I may observe, that if thedate thus assigned to Homer be correct, the very subject of the Iliadmight have been suggested by the consequences of the Dorian irruption. Homer relates, "Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered. "

But Achilles is the native hero of that Thessalian district, which wasthe earliest settlement of the Dorian family. Agamemnon, whoseinjuries he resents, is the monarch of the great Achaean race, whosedynasty and dominion the Dorians are destined to overthrow. It istrue that at the time of the Trojan war the Dorians had migrated fromPhthiotis to Phocis--it is true that Achilles was not of Dorianextraction; still there would be an interest attached to the singularcoincidence of place; as, though the English are no descendants fromthe Britons, we yet associate the British history with our own: henceit seems to me, though I believe the conjecture is new, that it is notthe whole Trojan war, but that episode in the Trojan war (otherwiseunimportant) illustrated by the wrath of Achilles, which awakens theinspiration of the poet. In fact, if under the exordium of the Iliadthere lurk no typical signification, the exordium is scarceappropriate to the subject. For the wrath of Achilles did not bringupon the Greeks woes more mighty than the ordinary course of war wouldhave destined them to endure. But if the Grecian audience (exiles, and the posterity of exiles), to whom, on Asiatic shores, Homerrecited his poem, associated the hereditary feud of Achilles andAgamemnon with the strife between the ancient warriors of Phthiotisand Achaia; then, indeed, the opening lines assume a solemn andprophetic significance, and their effect must have been electricalupon a people ever disposed to trace in the mythi of their ancestrythe legacies of a dark and ominous fatality, by which each presentsuffering was made the inevitable result of an immemorial cause. [166]

III. The ancients unanimously believed the Iliad the production of asingle poet; in recent times a contrary opinion has been started; andin Germany, at this moment, the most fashionable belief is, that thatwonderful poem was but a collection of rhapsodies by various poets, arranged and organized by Pisistratus and the poets of his day; atheory a scholar may support, but which no poet could ever haveinvented! For this proposition the principal reasons alleged arethese:--It is asserted as an "indisputable fact, " "that the art ofwriting, and the use of manageable writing materials, were entirely, or all but entirely, unknown in Greece and its islands at the supposeddate of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey; that, if so, thesepoems could not have been committed to writing during the time of suchtheir composition; that, in a question of comparative probabilitieslike this, it is a much grosser improbability that even the singleIliad, amounting, after all curtailments and expungings, to upwards of15, 000 hexameter lines, should have been actually conceived andperfected in the brain of one man, with no other help but his own orothers' memory, than that it should in fact be the result of thelabours of several distinct authors; that if the Odyssey be counted, the improbability is doubled; that if we add, upon the authority ofThucydides and Aristotle, the Hymns and Margites, not to say theBatrachomyomachia, that which was improbable becomes morallyimpossible! that all that has been so often said as to the fact of asmany verses or more having been committed to memory, is beside thepoint in question, which is not whether 15, 000 or 30, 000 lines may notbe learned by heart from print or manuscript, but whether one man canoriginally compose a poem of that length, which, rightly or not, shallbe thought to be a perfect model of symmetry and consistency of parts, without the aid of writing materials;--that, admitting the superiorprobability of such an achievement in a primitive age, we know nothingactually similar or analogous to it; and that it so transcends thecommon limits of intellectual power, as at the least to merit, with asmuch justice as the opposite opinion, the character of improbability. "[167]

And upon such arguments the identity of Homer is to be destroyed! Letus pursue them seriatim. 

1st. "The art and the use of manageable writing materials wereentirely, or all but entirely, unknown in Greece and its islands atthe supposed date of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey. "

The whole argument against the unity of Homer rests upon thisassertion; and yet this assertion it is impossible to prove! It isallowed, on the contrary, that alphabetical characters were introducedin Greece by Cadmus--nay, inscriptions believed by the bestantiquaries to bear date before the Trojan war are found even amongthe Pelasgi of Italy. Dionysius informs us that the Pelasgi firstintroduced letters into Italy. But in answer to this, it is said thatletters were used only for inscriptions on stone or wood, and not forthe preservation of writings so voluminous. If this were the case, Iscarcely see why the Greeks should have professed so grateful areminiscence of the gift of Cadmus, the mere inscription of a fewwords on stone would not be so very popular or beneficial aninvention! But the Phoenicians had constant intercourse with theEgyptians and Hebrews; among both those nations the art and materialsof writing were known. The Phoenicians, far more enterprising thaneither, must have been fully acquainted with their means of writtencommunication--and indeed we are assured that they were so. Now, if aPhoenician had imparted so much of the art to Greece as the knowledgeof a written alphabet, is it probable that he would have suffered thecommunication to cease there! The Phoenicians were a commercialpeople--their colonies in Greece were for commercial purposes, --wouldthey have wilfully and voluntarily neglected the most convenient modeof commercial correspondence?--importing just enough of the art tosuffice for inscriptions of no use but to the natives, would they havestopped short precisely at that point when the art became useful tothemselves? And in vindicating that most able people from so wilful afolly, have we no authority in history as well as common sense? Wehave the authority of Herodotus! When he informs us that thePhoenicians communicated letters to the Ionians, he adds, that by avery ancient custom the Ionians called their books diptherae, orskins, because, at a time when the plant of the bibles or papyrus wasscarce [168], they used instead of it the skins of goats and sheep--acustom he himself witnessed among barbarous nations. Were suchmaterials used only for inscriptions relative to a religiousdedication, or a political compact? NO; for then, wood or stone--thetemple or the pillar--would have been the material for theinscription, --they must, then, have been used for a more literarypurpose; and verse was the first form of literature. I grant thatprior, and indeed long subsequent to the time of Homer, the art ofwriting (as with us in the dark ages) would be very partially known--that in many parts of Greece, especially European Greece, it mightscarcely ever be used but for brief inscriptions. But that is nothingto the purpose;--if known at all--to any Ionian trader--even to anyneighbouring Asiatic--even to any Phoenician settler--there is everyreason to suppose that Homer himself, or a contemporary disciple andreciter of his verses, would have learned both the art and the use ofthe materials which could best have ensured the fame of the poet, orassisted the memory of the reciter. And, though Plutarch in himselfalone is no authority, he is not to be rejected as a corroborativetestimony when he informs us that Lycurgus collected and transcribedthe poems of Homer; and that writing was then known in Greece isevident by the very ordinance of Lycurgus that his laws should not bewritten. But Lycurgus is made by Apollodorus contemporary with Homerhimself; and this belief appears, to receive the sanction of the mostlaborious and profound of modern chronologers [169]. I might adducevarious other arguments in support of those I have already advanced;but I have said enough already to show that it is not an "indisputablefact" that Homer could not have been acquainted with writingmaterials; and that the whole battery erected to demolish the fame ofthe greatest of human geniuses has been built upon a most uncertainand unsteady foundation. It may be impossible to prove that Homer'spoems were written, but it is equally impossible to prove that theywere not--and if it were necessary for the identity of Homer that hispoems should have been written, that necessity would have been one ofthe strongest proofs, not that Homer did not exist, but that writingdid!

But let us now suppose it proved that writing materials for a literarypurpose were unknown, and examine the assertions built upon thathypothesis. 

2d. "That if these poems could not have been committed to writingduring the time of their composition, it is a much grosserimprobability that even the single Iliad, amounting, after allcurtailments and expungings, to upwards of 15, 000 hexameter lines, should have been actually conceived and perfected in the brain of oneman, with no other help but his own or others' memory, than that itshould, in fact, be the result of the labours of several distinctauthors. "

I deny this altogether. "The improbability" might be "grosser" if theIliad had been composed in a day! But if, as any man of common sensewould acknowledge, it was composed in parts or "fyttes" of moderatelength at a time, no extraordinary power of memory, or tension ofthought, would have been required by the poet. Such parts, oncerecited and admired, became known and learned by a hundredprofessional bards, and were thus orally published, as it were, indetached sections, years perhaps before the work was completed. Allthat is said, therefore, about the difficulty of composing so long apoem without writing materials is but a jargon of words. Suppose nowriting materials existed, yet, as soon as portions of a few hundredlines at a time were committed to the memory of other minstrels, theauthor would, in those minstrels, have living books whereby to refreshhis memory, and could even, by their help, polish and amend what wasalready composed. It would not then have been necessary for the poethimself perfectly and verbally to remember the whole work. He had histablets of reference in the hearts and lips of others, and even, if itwere necessary that he himself should retain the entire composition, the constant habit of recital, the constant exercise of memory, wouldrender such a task by no means impracticable or unprecedented. As forthe unity of the poem, thus composed, it would have been, as it is, the unity, not of technical rules and pedantic criticism, but theunity of interest, character, imagery, and thought--a unity whichrequired no written references to maintain it, but which was theessential quality of one master-mind, and ought to be, to all plainmen, an irrefragable proof that one mind alone conceived and executedthe work. 

IV. So much for the alleged improbability of one author for theIliad. But with what face can these critics talk of "probability, "when, in order to get rid of one Homer, they ask us to believe intwenty! Can our wildest imagination form more monstrous hypothesesthan these, viz. --that several poets, all possessed of the veryhighest order of genius (never before or since surpassed), lived inthe same age--that that genius was so exactly similar in each, that wecannot detect in the thoughts, the imagery, the conception andtreatment of character, human and divine, as manifest in each, theleast variety in these wonderful minds--that out of the immense storeof their national legends, they all agreed in selecting one subject, the war of Troy--that of that subject they all agreed in selectingonly one portion of time, from the insult of Achilles to theredemption of the body of Hector--that their different mosaics sonicely fitted one into the other, that by the mere skill of an ableeditor they were joined into a whole, so symmetrical that the acutestingenuity of ancient Greece could never discover the imposture [170]--and that, of all these poets, so miraculous in their genius, no singlename, save that of Homer, was recorded by the general people to whomthey sung, or claimed by the peculiar tribe whose literature theyought to have immortalized? If everything else were wanting to provethe unity of Homer, this prodigious extravagance of assumption, intowhich a denial of that unity has driven men of no common learning andintellect, would be sufficient to establish it. 

3d. "That if the Odyssey be counted, the improbability is doubled;that if we add, upon the authority of Thucydides and Aristotle, theHymns and Margites, not to say the Batrachomyomachia, that which wasimprobable becomes morally impossible. "

Were these last-mentioned poems Homer's, there would yet be nothingimprobable in the invention and composition of minor poems withoutwriting materials; and the fact of his having composed one long poem, throws no difficulty in the way of his composing short ones. We havealready seen that the author need not himself have remembered them allhis life. But this argument is not honest, for the critics who haveproduced it agree in the same breath, when it suits their purpose, that the Hymns, etc. , are not Homer's--and in this I concur withtheir, and the almost universal, opinion. 

The remaining part of the analysis of the hostile argument has alreadybeen disposed of in connexion with the first proposition. 

It now remains to say a few words upon the authorship of the Odyssey. 

V. The question, whether or not the two epics of the Iliad andOdyssey were the works of the same poet, is a very different one fromthat which we have just discussed. Distinct and separate, indeed, arethe inquiries whether Greece might produce, at certain intervals oftime, two great epic poets, selecting opposite subjects--and whetherGreece produced a score or two of great poets, from whose desultoryremains the mighty whole of the Iliad was arranged. Even the ancientsof the Alexandrine school did not attribute the Odyssey to the authorof the Iliad. The theme selected--the manners described--themythological spirit--are all widely different in the two works, andone is evidently of more recent composition than the other. But, formy own part, I do not think it has been yet clearly established thatall these acknowledged differences are incompatible with the sameauthorship. If the Iliad were written in youth, the travels of thepoet, the change of mind produced by years and experience, thefacility with which an ancient Greek changed or remodelled his pliantmythology, the rapidity with which (in the quick development ofcivilization in Greece) important changes in society and manners werewrought, might all concur in producing, from the mature age of thepoet, a poem very different to that which he composed in youth. Andthe various undetected interpolations and alterations supposed to befoisted into the Odyssey may have originated such detailed points ofdifference as present the graver obstacles to this conjecture. Regarding the Iliad and Odyssey as wholes, they are so analogous inall the highest and rarest attributes of genius, that it is almost asimpossible to imagine two Homers as it is two Shakspeares. Nor isthere such a contrast between the Iliad and the Odyssey as there isbetween any one play of Shakspeare's and another [171]. Still, Ishould warn the general reader, that the utmost opposition that canreasonably and effectually be made to those who assign to differentauthors these several epics, limits itself rather to doubt than todenial. 

VI. It is needless to criticise these immortal masterpieces; not thatcriticism upon them is yet exhausted--not that a most useful, and evennovel analysis of their merits and character may not yet be performed, nor that the most striking and brilliant proofs of the unity of eachpoem, separately considered, may not be established by one who shall, with fitting powers, undertake the delightful task of deducing theindividuality of the poet from the individualizing character of hiscreations, and the peculiar attributes of his genius. With humanworks, as with the divine, the main proof of the unity of the authoris in his fidelity to himself:--Not then as a superfluous, but as fartoo lengthened and episodical a labour, if worthily performed, do Iforego at present a critical survey of the two poems popularlyascribed to Homer. 

The early genius of Greece devoted itself largely to subjects similarto those which employed the Homeric muse. At a later period--probablydating at the Alexandrian age--a vast collection of ancient poems wasarranged into what is termed the "Epic Cycle;" these commenced at theTheogony, and concluded with the adventures of Telemachus. Though nolonger extant, the Cyclic poems enjoyed considerable longevity. Thegreater part were composed between the years 775 B. C. And 566 B. C. They were extant in the time of Proclus, A. D. 450; the eldest, therefore, endured at least twelve, the most recent ten centuries;--save a few scattered lines, their titles alone remain, solitarytokens, yet floating above the dark oblivion which has swept over theepics of thirty bards! But, by the common assent, alike of thecritics and the multitude, none of these approached the remote age, still less the transcendent merits, of the Homeric poems. 

VII. But, of earlier date than these disciples of Homer, is a poetryof a class fundamentally distinct from the Homeric, viz. , thecollection attributed to Hesiod. Of one of these only, a rustic andhomely poem called "Works and Days, " was Hesiod considered the authorby his immediate countrymen (the Boeotians of Helicon); but the moregeneral belief assigned to the fertility of his genius a variety ofother works, some of which, if we may judge by the titles, aimed at aloftier vein [172]. And were he only the author of the "Works andDays"--a poem of very insignificant merit [173]--it would be scarcelypossible to account for the high estimation in which Hesiod was heldby the Greeks, often compared, and sometimes preferred, to the mightyand majestic Homer. We must either, then, consider Hesiod as theauthor of many writings superior perhaps to what we now possess, or, as is more plausibly and popularly supposed by modern critics, therepresentative and type, as it were, of a great school of nationalpoetry. And it has been acutely suggested that, viewing the pastoraland lowly occupation he declares himself to pursue [174], combinedwith the subjects of his muse, and the place of his birth, we maybelieve the name of Hesiod to have been the representative of thepoetry, not of the victor lords, but of the conquered people, expressive of their pursuits, and illustrative of their religion. This will account for the marked and marvellous difference between themartial and aristocratic strain of Homer and the peaceful and rusticverse of Hesiod [175], as well as for the distinction no less visiblebetween the stirring mythology of the one and the thoughtful theogonyof the other. If this hypothesis be accepted, the Hesiodic era mightvery probably have commenced before the Homeric (although what is nowascribed to Hesiod is evidently of later date than the Iliad and theOdyssey). And Hesiod is to Homer what the Pelasgic genius was to theHellenic. [176]

VIII. It will be obvious to all who study what I may call the naturalhistory of poetry, that short hymns or songs must long have precededthe gigantic compositions of Homer. Linus and Thamyris, and, moredisputably, Orpheus, are recorded to have been the precursors ofHomer, though the poems ascribed to them (some of which still remain)were of much later date. Almost coeval with the Grecian gods weredoubtless religious hymns in their honour. And the germe of the greatlyrical poetry that we now possess was, in the rude chants of thewarlike Dorians, to that Apollo who was no less the Inspirer than theProtector. The religion of the Greeks preserved and dignified thepoetry it created; and the bard, "beloved by gods as men, " becameinvested, as well with a sacred character as a popular fame. Beneaththat cheerful and familiar mythology, even the comic genius shelteredits license, and found its subjects. Not only do the earliest of thecomic dramatists seem to have sought in mythic fables their charactersand plots, but, far before the DRAMA itself arose in any of theGrecian states, comic recital prepared the way for comicrepresentation. In the eighth book of the Odyssey, the splendidAlcinous and the pious Ulysses listen with delight to the story, evenbroadly ludicrous, how Vulcan nets and exposes Venus and her war-godlover--

 "All heaven beholds imprisoned as they lie, And unextinguished laughter shakes the sky. "

And this singular and well-known effusion shows, not only how graveand reverent an example Epicharmus had for his own audaciousportraiture of the infirmities of the Olympian family, but howimmemorially and how deeply fixed in the popular spirit was thedisposition to draw from the same source the elements of humour and ofawe. 

But, however ancient the lyrical poetry of Greece, its masterpieces ofart were composed long subsequent to the Homeric poems; and, no doubt, greatly influenced by acquaintance with those fountains of universalinspiration. I think it might be shown that lyrical poetry developeditself, in its more elaborate form, earliest in those places where thepoems of Homer are most likely to have been familiarly known. 

The peculiar character of the Greek lyrical poetry can only beunderstood by remembering its inseparable connexion with music; andthe general application of both, not only to religious but politicalpurposes. The Dorian states regarded the lyre and the song aspowerful instruments upon the education, the manners, and the nationalcharacter of their citizens. With them these arts were watched andregulated by the law, and the poet acquired something of the socialrank, and aimed at much of the moral design, of a statesman and alegislator: while, in the Ionian states, the wonderful stir andagitation, the changes and experiments in government, the rapid growthof luxury, commerce, and civilization, afforded to a poetry which wasnot, as with us, considered a detached, unsocial, and solitary art, but which was associated with every event of actual life--occasions ofvast variety--themes of universal animation. The eloquence of poetrywill always be more exciting in its appeals--the love for poetryalways more diffused throughout a people, in proportion as it is lesswritten than recited. How few, even at this day, will read a poem!--what crowds will listen to a song! Recitation transfers the stage ofeffect from the closet to the multitude--the public becomes anaudience, the poet an orator. And when we remember that the poetry, thus created, imbodying the most vivid, popular, animated subjects ofinterest, was united with all the pomp of festival and show--all thegrandest, the most elaborate, and artful effects of music--we mayunderstand why the true genius of lyrical composition has passed forever away from the modern world. 

As early as between 708 and 665 B. C. , Archilochus brought toperfection a poetry worthy of loftier passions than those which mostlyanimated his headstrong and angry genius. In 625 (thirty-one yearsbefore the legislation of Solon) flourished Arion, the Lesbian, who, at Corinth, carried, to extraordinary perfection the heroic adaptationof song to choral music. In 611 flourished the Sicilian, Stersichorus--no unworthy rival of Arion; while simultaneously, in strains lessnational and Grecian, and more resembling the inspiration of modernminstrels, Alcaeus vented his burning and bitter spirit;--and Sappho(whose chaste and tender muse it was reserved for the chivalry of anorthern student, five-and-twenty centuries after the hand was coldand the tongue was mute, to vindicate from the longest-continuedcalumny that genius ever endured) [177] gave to the most ardent ofhuman passions the most delicate colouring of female sentiment. Perhaps, of all that Greece has bequeathed to us, nothing is soperfect in its concentration of real feeling as the fragments ofSappho. In one poem of a few lines--nor that, alas! transmitted to uscomplete--she has given a picture of the effect of love upon one wholoves, to which volumes of the most eloquent description couldscarcely add a single new touch of natural pathos--so subtle is it, yet so simple. I cannot pass over in silence the fragments ofMimnermus (fl. B. C. 630)--they seem of an order so little akin to theusual character of Grecian poetry; there is in them a thoughtfulthough gloomy sadness, that belongs rather to the deep northernimagination than the brilliant fancies of the west; their melancholyis mixed with something half intellectual--half voluptuous--indicativeof the mournful but interesting wisdom of satiety. Mimnermus is aprincipal model of the Latin elegiac writers--and Propertius compareshis love verses with those of Homer. Mimnermus did not invent theelegiac form (for it was first applied to warlike inspiration byanother Ionian poet, Callinus); but he seems the founder of what wenow call the elegiac spirit in its association of the sentiment ofmelancholy with the passion of love. 

IX. While such was the state of POETRY in Greece--torpid in theIonian Athens, but already prodigal in her kindred states of Asia andthe Isles; gravely honoured, rather than produced, in Sparta;--splendidly welcomed, rather than home-born, in Corinth;--the Asiaticcolonies must also claim the honour of the advance of the sister arts. But in architecture the Dorian states of European Greece, Sicyon, Aegina, and the luxurious Corinth, were no unworthy competitors withIonia. 

In the heroic times, the Homeric poems, especially the Odyssey, attestthe refinement and skill to which many of the imitative arts ofGrecian civilization had attained. In embroidery, the high-bornoccupation of Helen ad Penelope, were attempted the most complex anddifficult designs; and it is hard to suppose that these subjects couldhave been wrought upon garments with sufficient fidelity to warrantthe praise of a poet who evidently wrote from experience of what hehad seen, if the art of DRAWING had not been also carried to someexcellence--although to PAINTING itself the poet makes none butdubious and obscure allusions. Still, if, on the one hand [178], inembroidery, and upon arms (as the shield of Achilles), delineation inits more complex and minute form was attempted, --and if, on the otherhand, the use of colours was known (which it was, as applied not onlyto garments but to ivory), it could not have been long before two suchkindred elements of the same art were united. Although it iscontended by many that rude stones or beams were the earliest objectsof Grecian worship, and though it is certain that in several placessuch emblems of the Deity preceded the worship of images, yet to thesuperstitious art of the rude Pelasgi in their earliest age, uncouthand half-formed statues of Hermes are attributed, and the idol iscommemorated by traditions almost as antique as those which attest thesanctity of the fetiche [179]. In the Homeric age, SCULPTURE inmetals, and on a large scale, was certainly known. By the door ofAlcinous, the king of an island in the Ionian Sea, stand rows of dogsin gold and silver--in his hall, upon pedestals, are golden statues ofboys holding torches; and that such sculpture was even then dedicatedto the gods is apparent by a well-known passage in the earlier poem ofthe Iliad; which represents Theano, the Trojan priestess of Minerva, placing the offering of Hecuba upon the knees of the statue of thegoddess. How far, however, such statues could be called works of art, or how far they were wrought by native Greeks, it is impossible todetermine [180]. Certain it is that the memorable and giganticadvance in the art of SCULPTURE was not made till about the 50thOlympiad (B. C. 580), when Dipaenus and Scyllis first obtainedcelebrity in works in marble (wood and metals were the earliestmaterials of sculpture). The great improvements in the art seem tohave been coeval with the substitution of the naked for the drapedfigure. Beauty, and ease, and grace, and power, were the result ofthe anatomical study of the human form. ARCHITECTURE has bequeathedto us, in the Pelasgic and Cyclopean remains, sufficient to indicatethe massive strength it early acquired in parts of Greece. In theHomeric times, the intercourse with Asia had already given somethingof lightness to the elder forms. Columns are constantly introducedinto the palaces of the chiefs, profuse metallic ornaments decoratethe walls; and the Homeric palaces, with their cornices gaylyinwrought with blue--their pillars of silver on bases of brass, risingamid vines and fruit-trees, --even allowing for all the exaggerationsof the poet, --dazzle the imagination with much of the gaudiness andglitter of an oriental city [181]. At this period Athens receivesfrom Homer the epithet of "broad-streeted:" and it is by no meansimprobable that the city of the Attic king might have presented to atraveller, in the time of Homer, a more pleasing general appearancethan in its age of fame, when, after the Persian devastations, itsstately temples rose above narrow and irregular streets, and thejealous effects of democracy forbade to the mansions of individualnobles that striking pre-eminence over the houses of the commonaltywhich would naturally mark the distinction of wealth and rank, in amonarchical, or even an oligarchical government. 

X. About the time on which we now enter, the extensive commerce andfree institutions of the Ionian colonies had carried all the arts justreferred to far beyond the Homeric time. And, in addition to theactivity and development of the intellect in all its faculties whichprogressed with the extensive trade and colonization of Miletus(operating upon the sensitive, inquiring, and poetical temperament ofthe Ionian population), a singular event, which suddenly opened toGreece familiar intercourse with the arts and lore of Egypt, gaveconsiderable impetus to the whole Grecian MIND. 

In our previous brief survey of the state of the Oriental world, wehave seen that Egypt, having been rent into twelve principalities, hadbeen again united under a single monarch. The ambitious and fortunatePsammetichus was enabled, by the swords of some Ionian and Carianadventurers (who, bound on a voyage of plunder, had been driven uponthe Egyptian shores), not only to regain his own dominion, from whichhe had been expelled by the jealousy of his comrades, but to acquirethe sole sovereignty of Egypt (B. C. 670). In gratitude for theirservices, Psammetichus conferred upon his wild allies certain lands atthe Pelusian mouth of the Nile, and obliged some Egyptian children tolearn the Grecian language;--from these children descended a class ofinterpreters, that long afterward established the facilities offamiliar intercourse between Greece and Egypt. Whatever, before thattime, might have been the migrations of Egyptians into Greece, thesewere the first Greeks whom the Egyptians received among themselves. Thence poured into Greece, in one full and continuous stream, theEgyptian influences, hitherto partial and unfrequent. [182]

In the same reign, according to Strabo, the Asiatic Greeks obtained asettlement at Naucratis, the ancient emporium of Egypt; and thecommunication, once begun, rapidly increased, until in the subsequenttime of Amasis (B. C. 569) we find the Ionians, the Dorians, theAeolians of Asia, and even the people of Aegina and Samos [183], building temples and offering worship amid the jealous and mysticpriestcrafts of the Nile. This familiar and advantageous intercoursewith a people whom the Greeks themselves considered the wisest on theearth, exercised speedy and powerful effect upon their religion andtheir art. In the first it operated immediately upon their modes ofdivination and their mystic rites--in the last, the influence was lessdirect. It is true that they probably learned from the Egyptians manytechnical rules in painting and in sculpture; they learned how to cutthe marble and to blend the colours, but their own genius taught themhow to animate the block and vivify the image. We have seen already, that before this event, art had attained to a certain eminence amongthe Greeks--fortunately, therefore, what they now acquired was not thefoundation of their lore. Grafted on a Grecian stock, every shootbore Grecian fruit: and what was borrowed from mechanism wasreproduced in beauty [184]. As with the arts, so with the SCIENCES;we have reason to doubt whether the Egyptian sages, whose minds wereswathed and bandaged in the cerements of hereditary rules, never toswell out of the slavery of castes, had any very sound and enlightenedphilosophy to communicate: their wisdom was probably exaggerated bythe lively and credulous Greeks, awed by the mysticism of the priests, the grandeur of the cities, the very rigidity, so novel to them, ofimposing and antique custom. What, then, was the real benefit of theintercourse? Not so much in satisfying as in arousing and stimulatingthe curiosity of knowledge. Egypt, to the Greeks, was as America toEurope--the Egyptians taught them little, but Egypt much. And thatwhat the Egyptians did directly communicate was rather the materialfor improvement than the improvement itself, this one gift is anindividual example and a general type;--the Egyptians imparted to theGreeks the use of the papyrus--the most easy and popular material forwriting; we are thus indebted to Egypt for a contrivance that has donemuch to preserve to us--much, perhaps, to create for us--a Plato andan Aristotle; but for the thoughts of Aristotle and Plato we areindebted to Greece alone:--the material Egyptian--the manufactureGreek. 

XI. The use of the papyrus had undoubtedly much effect upon theformation of prose composition in Greece, but it was by no means aninstantaneous one. At the period on which we now enter (about B. C. 600), the first recorded prose Grecian writer had not composed hisworks. The wide interval between prose in its commencement and poetryin its perfection is peculiarly Grecian; many causes conspired toproduce it, but the principal one was, that works, if written, beingnot the less composed to be recited, not read--were composed tointerest and delight, rather than formally to instruct. Poetry was, therefore, so obviously the best means to secure the end of theauthor, that we cannot wonder to find that channel of appealuniversally chosen; the facility with which the language formed itselfinto verse, and the license that appears to have been granted to thegravest to assume a poetical diction without attempting the poeticalspirit, allowed even legislators and moralists to promulgate preceptsand sentences in the rhythm of a Homer and a Hesiod. And since lawswere not written before the time of Draco, it was doubly necessarythat they should be cast in that fashion by which words are mostdurably impressed on the memory of the multitude. Even on Solon'sfirst appearance in public life, when he inspires the Athenians toprosecute the war with Megara, he addresses the passions of the crowd, not by an oration, but a poem; and in a subsequent period, when prosecomposition had become familiar, it was still in verse that Hipparchuscommunicated his moral apothegms. The origin of prose in Greece is, therefore, doubly interesting as an epoch, not only in theintellectual, but also in the social state. It is clear that it wouldnot commence until a reading public was created; and until, amid thepoetical many, had sprung up the grave and studious few. Accordingly, philosophy, orally delivered, preceded prose composition--and Thalestaught before Pherecydes wrote [185]. To the superficial it may seemsurprising that literature, as distinct from poetry, should commencewith the most subtle and laborious direction of the human intellect:yet so it was, not only in Greece, but almost universally. In nearlyall countries, speculative conjecture or inquiry is the firstsuccessor to poetry. In India, in China, in the East, some dimphilosophy is the characteristic of the earliest works--sometimesinculcating maxims of morality--sometimes allegorically shadowingforth, sometimes even plainly expressing, the opinions of the authoron the mysteries of life--of nature--of the creation. Even with themoderns, the dawn of letters broke on the torpor of the dark ages ofthe North in speculative disquisition; the Arabian and theAristotelian subtleties engaged the attention of the earliestcultivators of modern prose (as separated from poetic fiction), andthe first instinct of the awakened reason was to grope through themisty twilight after TRUTH. Philosophy precedes even history; menwere desirous of solving the enigmas of the world, before theydisentangled from tradition the chronicles of its former habitants. 

If we examine the ways of an infant we shall cease to wonder at thoseof an infant civilization. Long before we can engage the curiosity ofthe child in the History of England--long before we can induce him tolisten with pleasure to our stories even of Poictiers and Cressy--and(a fortiori) long before he can be taught an interest in Magna Chartaand the Bill of Rights, he will of his own accord question us of thephenomena of nature--inquire how he himself came into the world--delight to learn something of the God we tell him to adore--and findin the rainbow and the thunder, in the meteor and the star, a thousandsubjects of eager curiosity and reverent wonder. The why perpetuallytorments him;--every child is born a philosopher!--the child is theanalogy of a people yet in childhood. [186]

XII. It may follow as a corollary from this problem, that the Greeksof themselves arrived at the stage of philosophical inquiry withoutany very important and direct assistance from the lore of Egypt andthe East. That lore, indeed, awakened the desire, but it did notguide the spirit of speculative research. And the main cause whyphilosophy at once assumed with the Greeks a character distinct fromthat of the Oriental world, I have already intimated [187], in theabsence of a segregated and privileged religious caste. Philosophythus fell into the hands of sages, not of priests. And whatever theIonian states (the cradle of Grecian wisdom) received from Egypt orthe East, they received to reproduce in new and luxuriant prodigality. The Ionian sages took from an elder wisdom not dogmas never to bequestioned, but suggestions carefully to be examined. It thusfortunately happened that the deeper and maturer philosophy of Greeceproper had a kind of intermedium between the systems of other nationsand its own. The Eastern knowledge was borne to Europe through theGreek channels of Asiatic colonies, and became Hellenized as itpassed. Thus, what was a certainty in the East, became a propositionin Ionia, and ultimately a doubt, at Athens. In Greece, indeed, aseverywhere, religion was connected with the first researches ofphilosophy. From the fear of the gods, to question of the nature ofthe gods, is an easy transition. The abundance and variety of popularsuperstitions served but to stimulate curiosity as to their origin;and since in Egypt the sole philosophers were the priests, a Greekcould scarcely converse with an Egyptian on the articles of hisreligion without discussing also the principles of his philosophy. Whatever opinions the Greek might then form and promulge, beingsheltered beneath no jealous and prescriptive priestcraft, all hadunfettered right to canvass and dispute them, till by little andlittle discussion ripened into science. 

The distinction, in fine, between the Greeks and their contemporarieswas this: if they were not the only people that philosophized, theywere the only people that said whatever they pleased about philosophy. Their very plagiarism from the philosophy of other creeds wasfortunate, inasmuch as it presented nothing hostile to the nationalsuperstition. Had they disputed about the nature of Jupiter, or theexistence of Apollo, they might have been persecuted, but they couldstart at once into disquisitions upon the eternity of matter, or theprovidence of a pervading mind. 

XIII. This spirit of innovation and discussion, which made thecharacteristic of the Greeks, is noted by Diodorus. "Unlike theChaldaeans, " he observes, "with whom philosophy is delivered from sireto son, and all other employment rejected by its cultivators, theGreeks come late to the science--take it up for a short time--desertit for a more active means of subsistence--and the few who surrenderthemselves wholly to it practise for gain, innovate the most importantdoctrines, pay no reverence to those that went before, create newsects, establish new theorems, and, by perpetual contradictions, entail perpetual doubts. " Those contradictions and those doubts madeprecisely the reason why the Greeks became the tutors of the world!

There is another characteristic of the Greeks indicated by this remarkof Diodorus. Their early philosophers, not being exempted from otheremployments, were not the mere dreamers of the closet and the cell. They were active, practical, stirring men of the world. They werepoliticians and moralists as well as philosophers. The practicalpervaded the ideal, and was, in fact, the salt that preserved it fromdecay. Thus legislation and science sprung simultaneously into life, and the age of Solon is the age of Thales. 

XIV. Of the seven wise men (if we accept that number) who flourishedabout the same period, six were rulers and statesmen. They wereeminent, not as physical, but as moral, philosophers; and their wisdomwas in their maxims and apothegms. They resembled in much the waryand sagacious tyrants of Italy in the middle ages--masters of men'sactions by becoming readers of their minds. Of these seven, Perianderof Corinth (began to reign B. C. 625, died B. C. 585) and Cleobulus ofLindus (fl. B. C. 586), tyrants in their lives, and cruel in theiractions, were, it is said, disowned by the remaining five [188]. Butgoodness is not the necessary consequence of intellect, and, despitetheir vices, these princes deserved the epithet of wise. Of Cleobuluswe know less than of Periander; but both governed with prosperity, anddied in old age. If we except Pisistratus, Periander was the greatestartist of all that able and profound fraternity, who, under the nameof tyrants, concentred the energies of their several states, andprepared the democracies by which they were succeeded. Periander'sreputed maxims are at variance with his practice; they breathe aspirit of freedom and a love of virtue which may render us suspiciousof their authenticity--the more so as they are also attributed toothers. Nevertheless, the inconsistency would be natural, for reasonmakes our opinions, and circumstance shapes our actions. "A democracyis better than a tyranny, " is an aphorism imputed to Periander: butwhen asked why he continued tyrant, he answered, "Because it isdangerous willingly to resist, or unwillingly to be deposed. " Hisprinciples were republican, his position made him a tyrant. He issaid to have fallen into extreme dejection in his old age; perhapsbecause his tastes and his intellect were at war with his life. Chilo, the Lacedaemonian ephor, is placed also among the seven. Hismaxims are singularly Dorian--they breathe reverence of the dead andsuspicion of the living. "Love, " he said (if we may take theauthority of Aulus Gellius, fl. B. C. 586), "as if you might hereafterhate, and hate as if you might hereafter love. " Another favouritesentence of his was, "to a surety loss is at hand. " [189] A third, "we try gold by the touchstone. Gold is the touchstone of the mind. "Bias, of Priene in Ionia, is quoted, in Herodotus, as the author of anadvice to the Ionians to quit their country, and found a common cityin Sardinia (B. C. 586). He seems to have taken an active part in allcivil affairs. His reputed maxims are plain and homely--theelementary principles of morals. Mitylene in Lesbos boasted thecelebrated Pittacus (began to govern B. C. 589, resigned 579, died569). He rose to the tyranny of the government by the free voice ofthe people; enjoyed it ten years, and voluntarily resigned it, ashaving only borne the dignity while the state required the directionof a single leader. It was a maxim with him, for which he is reprovedby Plato, "That to be good is hard. " His favourite precept was, "Knowoccasion:" and this he amplified in another (if rightly attributed tohim), "To foresee and prevent dangers is the province of the wise--todirect them when they come, of the brave. "

XV. Of Solon, the greatest of the seven, I shall hereafter speak atlength. I pass now to Thales (born B. C. 639);--the founder ofphilosophy, in its scientific sense--the speculative incontradistinction to the moral: Although an ardent republican, Thalesalone, of the seven sages, appears to have led a private and studiouslife. He travelled, into Crete, Asia, and at a later period intoEgypt. According to Laertius, Egypt taught him geometry. He issupposed to have derived his astrological notions from Phoenicia. Butthis he might easily have done without visiting the Phoenician states. Returning to Miletus, he obtained his title of Wise [190]. Muchlearning has been exhausted upon his doctrines to very little purpose. They were of small value, save as they led to the most valuable of allphilosophies--that of experiment. They were not new probably even inGreece [191], and of their utility the following brief sketch willenable the reader to judge for himself. 

He maintained that water, or rather humidity, was the origin of allthings, though he allowed mind or intellect (nous) to be the impellingprinciple. And one of his arguments in favour of humidity, asrendered to us by Plutarch and Stobaeus, is pretty nearly as follows:--"Because fire, even in the sun and the stars, is nourished byvapours proceeding from humidity, --and therefore the whole worldconsists of the same. " Of the world, he supposed the whole to beanimated by, and full of, the Divinity--its Creator--that in it was novacuum--that matter was fluid and variable. [192]

He maintained the stars and sun to be earthly, and the moon of thesame nature as the sun, but illumined by it. Somewhat more valuablewould appear to have been his geometrical science, could we withaccuracy attribute to Thales many problems claimed also, and moreprobably, by Pythagoras and later reasoners. He is asserted to havemeasured the pyramids by their shadows. He cultivated astronomy andastrology; and Laertius declares him to have been the first Greek thatforetold eclipses. The yet higher distinction has been claimed forThales of having introduced among his countrymen the doctrine of theimmortality of the soul. But this sublime truth, though connectedwith no theory of future rewards and punishments, was received inGreece long before his time. Perhaps, however, as the expressions ofCicero indicate, Thales might be the first who attempted to givereasons for what was believed. His reasons were, nevertheless, sufficiently crude and puerile; and having declared it the property ofthe soul to move itself, and other things, he was forced to give asoul to the loadstone, because it moved iron!

These fantastic doctrines examined, and his geometrical orastronomical discoveries dubious, it may be asked, what did Thaleseffect for philosophy? Chiefly this: he gave reasons for opinions--hearoused the dormant spirit of inquiry--he did for truths what thelegislators of his age did for the people--left them active andstirring to free and vigorous competition. He took Wisdom out ofdespotism, and placed her in a republic--he was in harmony with thegreat principle of his age, which was investigation, and nottradition; and thus he became the first example of that great truth--that to think freely is the first step to thinking well. Itfortunately happened, too, that his moral theories, howeverinadequately argued upon, were noble and exalting. He contended forthe providence of a God, as well as for the immortality of man. Heasserted vice to be the most hateful, virtue the most profitable ofall things [193]. He waged war on that vulgar tenacity of life whichis the enemy to all that is most spiritual and most enterprising inour natures, and maintained that between life and death there is nodifference--the fitting deduction from a belief in the continuousexistence of the soul [194]. His especial maxim was the celebratedprecept, "Know thyself. " His influence was vigorous and immediate. How far he created philosophy may be doubtful, but he createdphilosophers. From the prolific intelligence which his fame andresearches called into being, sprang a new race of thoughts, whichcontinued in unbroken succession until they begat descendantsillustrious and immortal. Without the hardy errors of Thales, Socrates might have spent his life in spoiling marble, Plato mighthave been only a tenth-rate poet, and Aristotle an intriguingpedagogue. 

XVI. With this I close my introductory chapters, and proceed fromdissertation into history;--pleased that our general survey of Greeceshould conclude with an acknowledgment of our obligations to theIonian colonies. Soon, from the contemplation of those enchantingclimes; of the extended commerce and the brilliant genius of thepeople--the birthplace of the epic and the lyric muse, the first homeof history, of philosophy, of art;--soon, from our survey of the riseand splendour of the Asiatic Ionians, we turn to the agony of theirstruggles--the catastrophe of their fall. Those wonderful children ofGreece had something kindred with the precocious intellect that isoften the hectic symptom of premature decline. Originating, advancingnearly all which the imagination or the reason can produce, while yetin that social youth which promised a long and a yet more gloriousexistence--while even their great parent herself had scarcely emergedfrom the long pupilage of nations, they fell into the feebleness ofage! Amid the vital struggles, followed by the palsied and prostrateexhaustion of her Ionian children, the majestic Athens suddenly arosefrom the obscurity of the past to an empire that can never perish, until heroism shall cease to warm, poetry to delight, and wisdom toinstruct the future. 

BOOK II. 

FROM THE LEGISLATION OF SOLON TO THE BATTLE OF MARATHON, B. C. 594-490. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Conspiracy of Cylon. --Loss of Salamis. --First Appearance ofSolon. --Success against the Megarians in the Struggle for Salamis. --Cirrhaean War. --Epimenides. --Political State of Athens. --Character ofSolon. --His Legislation. --General View of the Athenian Constitution. 

I. The first symptom in Athens of the political crisis (B. C. 621)which, as in other of the Grecian states, marked the transition ofpower from the oligarchic to the popular party, may be detected in thelaws of Draco. Undue severity in the legislature is the ordinaryproof of a general discontent: its success is rarely lasting enough toconfirm a government--its failure, when confessed, invariablystrengthens a people. Scarcely had these laws been enacted (B. C. 620) when a formidable conspiracy broke out against the reigningoligarchy [195]. It was during the archonship of Megacles (a scion ofthe great Alcmaeonic family, which boasted its descent from Nestor)that the aristocracy was menaced by the ambition of an aristocrat. 

Born of an ancient and powerful house, and possessed of considerablewealth, Cylon, the Athenian, conceived the design of seizing thecitadel, and rendering himself master of the state. He had wedded thedaughter of Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, and had raised himself intopopular reputation several years before, by a victory in the Olympicgames (B. C. 640). The Delphic oracle was supposed to have inspiredhim with the design; but it is at least equally probable that theoracle was consulted after the design had been conceived. The divinevoice declared that Cylon should occupy the citadel on the greatestfestival of Jupiter. By the event it does not appear, however, thathe selected the proper occasion. Taking advantage of an Olympic year, when many of the citizens were gone to the games, and assisted withtroops by his father-in-law, he seized the citadel. Whatever mighthave been his hopes of popular support--and there is reason to believethat he in some measure calculated upon it--the time was evidentlyunripe for the convulsion, and the attempt was unskilfully planned. The Athenians, under Megacles and the other archons, took the alarm, and in a general body blockaded the citadel. But they grew weary ofthe length of the siege; many of them fell away, and the contest wasabandoned to the archons, with full power to act according to theirjudgment. So supine in defence of the liberties of the state are apeople who have not yet obtained liberty for themselves!

II. The conspirators were reduced by the failure of food and water. Cylon and his brother privately escaped. Of his adherents, someperished by famine, others betook themselves to the altars in thecitadel, claiming, as suppliants, the right of sanctuary. The guardsof the magistrates, seeing the suppliants about to expire fromexhaustion, led them from the altar and put them to death. But someof the number were not so scrupulously slaughtered--massacred aroundthe altars of the furies. The horror excited by a sacrilege soatrocious, may easily be conceived by those remembering the humane andreverent superstition of the Greeks:--the indifference of the peopleto the contest was changed at once into detestation of the victors. Aconspiracy, hitherto impotent, rose at once into power by thecircumstances of its defeat. Megacles--his whole house--all who hadassisted in the impiety, were stigmatized with the epithet of"execrable. " The faction, or friends of Cylon, became popular fromthe odium of their enemies--the city was distracted by civilcommotion--by superstitious apprehensions of the divine anger--and, asthe excesses of one party are the aliment of the other, so theabhorrence of sacrilege effaced the remembrance of a treason. 

III. The petty state of Megara, which, since the earlier ages, had, from the dependant of Athens, grown up to the dignity of her rival, taking advantage of the internal dissensions in the latter city, succeeded in wresting from the Athenian government the Isle ofSalamis. It was not, however, without bitter and repeated strugglesthat Athens at last submitted to the surrender of the isle. But, after signal losses and defeats, as nothing is ever more odious to themultitude than unsuccessful war, so the popular feeling was such as toinduce the government to enact a decree, by which it was forbidden, upon pain of death, to propose reasserting the Athenian claims. But alaw, evidently the offspring of a momentary passion of disgust ordespair, and which could not but have been wrung with reluctance froma government, whose conduct it tacitly arraigned, and whose militarypride it must have mortified, was not likely to bind, for any lengthof time, a gallant aristocracy and a susceptible people. Many of theyounger portion of the community, pining at the dishonour of theircountry, and eager for enterprise, were secretly inclined tocountenance any stratagem that might induce the reversal of thedecree. 

At this time there went a report through the city, that a man ofdistinguished birth, indirectly descended from the last of theAthenian kings, had incurred the consecrating misfortune of insanity. Suddenly this person appeared in the market-place, wearing thepeculiar badge that distinguished the sick [196]. His friends were, doubtless, well prepared for his appearance--a crowd, some predisposedto favour, others attracted by curiosity, were collected round him--and, ascending to the stone from which the heralds made theirproclamations, he began to recite aloud a poem upon the loss ofSalamis, boldly reproving the cowardice of the people, and incitingthem again to war. His supposed insanity protected him from the law--his rank, reputation, and the circumstance of his being himself anative of Salamis, conspired to give his exhortations a powerfuleffect, and the friends he had secured to back his attempt loudlyproclaimed their applauding sympathy with the spirit of the address. The name of the pretended madman was Solon, son of Execestides, thedescendant of Codrus. 

Plutarch (followed by Mr. Milford, Mr. Thirlwall, and other modernhistorians) informs us that the celebrated Pisistratus then proceededto exhort the assembly, and to advocate the renewal of the war--anaccount that is liable to this slight objection, that Pisistratus atthat time was not born! [197]

IV. The stratagem and the eloquence of Solon produced its naturaleffect upon his spirited and excitable audience, and the publicenthusiasm permitted the oligarchical government to propose and effectthe repeal of the law [198]. An expedition was decreed and planned, and Solon was invested with its command. It was but a brief struggleto recover the little island of Salamis: with one galley of thirtyoars and a number of fishing-craft, Solon made for Salamis, took avessel sent to reconnoitre by the Megarians, manned it with his ownsoldiers, who were ordered to return to the city with such caution asmight prevent the Megarians discovering the exchange, on board, offoes for friends; and then with the rest of his force he engaged theenemy by land, while those in the ship captured the city. Inconformity with this version of the campaign (which I have selected inpreference to another recorded by Plutarch), an Athenian ship once ayear passed silently to Salamis--the inhabitants rushed clamouringdown to meet it--an armed man leaped ashore, and ran shouting to thePromontory of Sciradium, near which was long existent a temple erectedand dedicated to Mars by Solon. 

But the brave and resolute Megarians were not men to be disheartenedby a single reverse; they persisted in the contest--losses weresustained on either side, and at length both states agreed to refertheir several claims on the sovereignty of the island to the decisionof Spartan arbiters. And this appeal from arms to arbitration is aproof how much throughout Greece had extended that spirit ofcivilization which is but an extension of the sense of justice. Bothparties sought to ground their claims upon ancient and traditionalrights. Solon is said to have assisted the demand of his countrymenby a quotation, asserted to have been spuriously interpolated fromHomer's catalogue of the ships, which appeared to imply the ancientconnexion of Salamis and Athens (199); and whether or not this wasactually done, the very tradition that it was done, nearly half acentury before the first usurpation of Pisistratus, is a proof of thegreat authority of Homer in that age, and how largely the servicesrendered by Pisistratus, many years afterward, to the Homeric poems, have been exaggerated and misconstrued. The mode of burial inSalamis, agreeable to the custom of the Athenians and contrary to thatof the Megarians, and reference to certain Delphic oracles, in whichthe island was called "Ionian, " were also adduced in support of theAthenian claims. The arbitration of the umpires in favour of Athensonly suspended hostilities; and the Megarians did not cease to watch(and shortly afterward they found) a fitting occasion to regain asettlement so tempting to their ambition. 

V. The credit acquired by Solon in this expedition was shortlyafterward greatly increased in the estimation of Greece. In the Bayof Corinth was situated a town called Cirrha, inhabited by a fierceand lawless race, who, after devastating the sacred territories ofDelphi, sacrilegiously besieged the city itself, in the desire topossess themselves of the treasures which the piety of Greece hadaccumulated in the temple of Apollo. Solon appeared at theAmphictyonic council, represented the sacrilege of the Cirrhaeans, andpersuaded the Greeks to arm in defence of the altars of their tutelarygod. Clisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, was sent as commander-in-chiefagainst the Cirrhaeans (B. C. 595); and (according to Plutarch) therecords of Delphi inform us that Alcmaeon was the leader of theAthenians. The war was not very successful at the onset; the oracleof Apollo was consulted, and the answer makes one of the most amusinganecdotes of priestcraft. The besiegers were informed by the god thatthe place would not be reduced until the waves of the Cirrhaean Seawashed the territories of Delphi. The reply perplexed the army; butthe superior sagacity of Solon was not slow in discovering that theholy intention of the oracle was to appropriate the land of theCirrhaeans to the profit of the temple. He therefore advised thebesiegers to attack and to conquer Cirrha, and to dedicate its wholeterritory to the service of the god. The advice was adopted--Cirrhawas taken (B. C. 586); it became thenceforth the arsenal of Delphi, and the insulted deity had the satisfaction of seeing the sacred landswashed by the waves of the Cirrhaean Sea. An oracle of this naturewas perhaps more effectual than the sword of Clisthenes in preventingfuture assaults on the divine city! The Pythian games commenced, orwere revived, in celebration of this victory of the Pythian god. 

VI. Meanwhile at Athens--the tranquillity of the state was stilldisturbed by the mortal feud between the party of Cylon and theadherents of the Alcmaeonidae--time only served to exasperate thedesire of vengeance in the one, and increase the indisposition tojustice in the other. Fortunately, however, the affairs of the statewere in that crisis which is ever favourable to the authority of anindividual. There are periods in all constitutions when, amid theexcesses of factions, every one submits willingly to an arbiter. Withthe genius that might have made him the destroyer of the liberties ofhis country, Solon had the virtue to constitute himself their saviour. He persuaded the families stigmatized with the crime of sacrilege, andthe epithet of "execrable, " to submit to the forms of trial; they wereimpeached, judged, and condemned to exile; the bodies of those whomdeath had already summoned to a sterner tribunal were disinterred, andremoved beyond the borders of Attica. Nevertheless, the superstitionsof the people were unappeased. Strange appearances were beheld in theair, and the augurs declared that the entrails of the victims denotedthat the gods yet demanded a fuller expiation of the national crime. 

At this time there lived in Crete one of those remarkable men commonto the early ages of the world, who sought to unite with the honoursof the sage the mysterious reputation of the magician. Epimenides, numbered by some among the seven wise men, was revered throughoutGreece as one whom a heavenlier genius animated and inspired. Devotedto poetry, this crafty impostor carried its prerogatives of fictioninto actual life; and when he declared--in one of his verses, quotedby St. Paul in his Epistle to Titus--that "the Cretans were greatliars, " we have no reason to exempt the venerable accuser from his ownunpatriotic reproach. Among the various legends which attach to hismemory is a tradition that has many a likeness both in northern andeastern fable:--he is said to have slept forty-seven [200] years in acave, and on his waking from that moderate repose, to have been notunreasonably surprised to discover the features of the countryperfectly changed. Returning to Cnossus, of which he was a citizen, strange faces everywhere present themselves. At his father's door heis asked his business, and at length, with considerable difficulty. He succeeds in making himself known to his younger brother, whom hehad left a boy, and now recognised in an old decrepit man. "Thisstory, " says a philosophical biographer, very gravely, "made aconsiderable sensation"--an assertion not to be doubted; but those whowere of a more skeptical disposition, imagined that Epimenides hadspent the years of his reputed sleep in travelling over foreigncountries, and thus acquiring from men those intellectual acquisitionswhich he more piously referred to the special inspiration of the gods. Epimenides did not scruple to preserve the mysterious reputation heobtained from this tale by fables equally audacious. He endeavouredto persuade the people that he was Aeacus, and that he frequentlyvisited the earth: he was supposed to be fed by the nymphs--was neverseen to eat in public--he assumed the attributes of prophecy--anddying in extreme old age: was honoured by the Cretans as a god. 

In addition to his other spiritual prerogatives, this reviler of"liars" boasted the power of exorcism; was the first to introduce intoGreece the custom of purifying public places and private abodes, andwas deemed peculiarly successful in banishing those ominous phantomswhich were so injurious to the tranquillity of the inhabitants ofAthens. Such a man was exactly the person born to relieve the fearsof the Athenians, and accomplish the things dictated by the pantingentrails of the sacred victims. Accordingly (just prior to theCirrhaean war, B. C. 596), a ship was fitted out, in which an Atheniannamed Nicias was sent to Crete, enjoined to bring back the purifyingphilosopher, with all that respectful state which his celebritydemanded. Epimenides complied with the prayer of the Athenians hearrived at Athens, and completed the necessary expiation in a mannersomewhat simple for so notable an exorcist. He ordered several sheep, some black and some white, to be turned loose in the Areopagus, directed them to be followed, and wherever they lay down, a sacrificewas ordained in honour of some one of the gods. "Hence, " says thehistorian of the philosophers, "you may still see throughout Athensanonymous altars (i. E. Altars uninscribed to a particular god), thememorials of that propitiation. "

The order was obeyed--the sacrifice performed--and the phantoms wereseen no more. Although an impostor, Epimenides was a man of sagacityand genius. He restrained the excess of funeral lamentation, whichoften led to unseasonable interruptions of business, and conduced tofallacious impressions of morality; and in return he accustomed theAthenians to those regular habits of prayer and divine worship, whichever tend to regulate and systematize the character of a people. Heformed the closest intimacy with Solon, and many of the subsequentlaws of the Athenian are said by Plutarch to have been suggested bythe wisdom of the Cnossian sage. When the time arrived for thedeparture of Epimenides, the Athenians would have presented him with atalent in reward of his services, but the philosopher refused theoffer; he besought the Athenians to a firm alliance with hiscountrymen; accepted of no other remuneration than a branch of thesacred olive which adorned the citadel, and was supposed the primevalgift of Minerva, and returned to his native city, --proving that a manin those days might be an impostor without seeking any other rewardthan the gratuitous honour of the profession. 

VII. With the departure of Epimenides, his spells appear to haveceased; new disputes and new factions arose; and, having no othercrimes to expiate, the Athenians fell with one accord upon those ofthe government. Three parties--the Mountaineers, the Lowlanders, andthe Coastmen--each advocating a different form of constitution, distracted the state by a common discontent with the constitution thatexisted, the three parties, which, if we glance to the experience ofmodern times, we might almost believe that no free state can ever bewithout--viz. , the respective advocates of the oligarchic, the mixed, and the democratic government. The habits of life ever produce amongclasses the political principles by which they are severallyregulated. The inhabitants of the mountainous district, free, rude, and hardy, were attached to a democracy; the possessors of the plainswere the powerful families who inclined to an oligarchy, although, asin all aristocracies, many of them united, but with more moderateviews, in the measures of the democratic party; and they who, livingby the coast, were engaged in those commercial pursuits which at onceproduce an inclination to liberty, yet a fear of its excess, ajealousy of the insolence of the nobles, yet an apprehension of thelicentiousness of the mob, arrayed themselves in favour of that mixedform of government--half oligarchic and half popular--which is usuallythe most acceptable to the middle classes of an enterprising people. But there was a still more fearful division than these, the threelegitimate parties, now existing in Athens: a division, not ofprinciple, but of feeling--that menacing division which, like thecracks in the soil, portending earthquake, as it gradually widens, isthe symptom of convulsions that level and destroy, --the division, inone word, of the rich and the poor--the Havenots and the Haves. Underan oligarchy, that most griping and covetous of all forms ofgovernment, the inequality of fortunes had become intolerablygrievous; so greatly were the poor in debt to the rich, that [201]they were obliged to pay the latter a sixth of the produce of theland, or else to engage their personal labour to their creditors, whomight seize their persons in default of payment. Some were thusreduced to slavery, others sold to foreigners. Parents disposed oftheir children to clear their debts, and many, to avoid servitude, instealth deserted the land. But a large body of the distressed, menmore sturdy and united, resolved to resist the iron pressure of thelaw: they formed the design of abolishing debts--dividing the land--remodelling the commonwealth: they looked around for a leader, andfixed their hopes on Solon. In the impatience of the poor, in theterror of the rich, liberty had lost its charms, and it was nouncommon nor partial hope that a monarchy might be founded on theruins of an oligarchy already menaced with dissolution. 

VIII. Solon acted during these disturbances with more than his usualsagacity, and therefore, perhaps, with less than his usual energy. Heheld himself backward and aloof, allowing either party to interpret, as it best pleased, ambiguous and oracular phrases, obnoxious to none, for he had the advantage of being rich without the odium of extortion, and popular without the degradation of poverty. "Phanias the Lesbian"(so states the biographer of Solon) "asserts, that to save the statehe intrigued with both parties, promising to the poor a division ofthe lands, to the rich a confirmation of their claims;" an assertionhighly agreeable to the finesse and subtlety of his character. Appearing loath to take upon himself the administration of affairs, itwas pressed upon him the more eagerly; and at length he was elected tothe triple office of archon, arbitrator, and lawgiver; the destiniesof Athens were unhesitatingly placed within his hands; all men hopedfrom him all things; opposing parties concurred in urging him toassume the supreme authority of king; oracles were quoted in hisfavour, and his friends asserted, that to want the ambition of amonarch was to fail in the proper courage of a man. Thus supported, thus encouraged, Solon proceeded to his august and immortal task oflegislation. 

IX. Let us here pause to examine, by such light as is bequeathed us, the character of Solon. Agreeably to the theory of his favouritemaxim, which made moderation the essence of wisdom, he seems to havegenerally favoured, in politics, the middle party, and, in his ownactions, to have been singular for that energy which is theequilibrium of indifference and of rashness. Elevated into supremeand unquestioned power--urged on all sides to pass from the office ofthe legislator to the dignity of the prince--his ambition never passedthe line which his virtue dictated to his genius. "Tyranny, " saidSolon, "is a fair field, but it has no outlet. " A subtle, as well asa noble saying; it implies that he who has once made himself themaster of the state has no option as to the means by which he mustcontinue his power. Possessed of that fearful authority, his firstobject is to rule, and it becomes a secondary object to rule well. "Tyranny has, indeed, no outlet!" The few, whom in modern times wehave seen endowed with a similar spirit of self-control, haveattracted our admiration by their honesty rather than their intellect;and the skeptic in human virtue has ascribed the purity of Washingtonas much to the mediocrity of his genius as to the sincerity of hispatriotism:--the coarseness of vulgar ambition can sympathize butlittle with those who refuse a throne. But in Solon there is nodisparity between the mental and the moral, nor can we account for themoderation of his views by affecting doubt of the extent of hispowers. His natural genius was versatile and luxuriant. As anorator, he was the first, according to Cicero, who originated thelogical and brilliant rhetoric which afterward distinguished theAthenians. As a poet, we have the assurance of Plato that, could hehave devoted himself solely to the art, even Homer would not haveexcelled him. And though these panegyrics of later writers are to bereceived with considerable qualification--though we may feel assuredthat Solon could never have been either a Demosthenes or a Homer, yetwe have sufficient evidence in his history to prove him to have beeneloquent--sufficient in the few remains of his verses to attestpoetical talent of no ordinary standard. As a soldier, he seems tohave been a dexterous master of the tactics of that primitive day inwhich military science consisted chiefly in the stratagems of a readywit and a bold invention. As a negotiator, the success with which, out of elements so jarring and distracted, he created an harmonioussystem of society and law, is an unanswerable evidence not more of thesoundness of his theories than of his practical knowledge of mankind. The sayings imputed to him which can be most reasonably consideredauthentic evince much delicacy of observation. Whatever his ideal ofgood government, he knew well that great secret of statesmanship, never to carry speculative doctrines too far beyond the reach of theage to which they are to be applied. Asked if he had given theAthenians the best of laws, his answer was, "The best laws they arecapable of receiving. " His legislation, therefore, was no vaguecollection of inapplicable principles. While it has been the originof all subsequent law, --while, adopted by the Romans, it makes at thisday the universal spirit which animates the codes and constitutions ofEurope--it was moulded to the habits, the manners, and the conditionof the people whom it was intended to enlighten, to harmonize, and toguide. He was no gloomy ascetic, such as a false philosophy produces, affecting the barren sublimity of an indolent seclusion; open ofaccess to all, free and frank of demeanour, he found wisdom as much inthe market-place as the cell. He aped no coxcombical contempt ofpleasure, no fanatical disdain of wealth; hospitable, and evensumptuous, in his habits of life, he seemed desirous of proving thattruly to be wise is honestly to enjoy. The fragments of his verseswhich have come down to us are chiefly egotistical: they refer to hisown private sentiments, or public views, and inform us with a noblepride, "that, if reproached with his lack of ambition, he finds akingdom in the consciousness of his unsullied name. " With all thesequalities, he apparently united much of that craft and spirit ofartifice which, according to all history, sacred as well as profane, it was not deemed sinful in patriarch or philosopher to indulge. Where he could not win his object by reason, he could stoop to attainit by the affectation of madness. And this quality of craft wasnecessary perhaps, in that age, to accomplish the full utilities ofhis career. However he might feign or dissimulate, the end before himwas invariably excellent and patriotic; and the purity of his privatemorals harmonized with that of his political ambition. What Socrateswas to the philosophy of reflection, Solon was to the philosophy ofaction. 

X. The first law that Solon enacted in his new capacity was bold anddecisive. No revolution can ever satisfy a people if it does notlessen their burdens. Poverty disposes men to innovation only becauseinnovation promises relief. Solon therefore applied himselfresolutely, and at once, to the great source of dissension between therich and the poor--namely, the enormous accumulation of debt which hadbeen incurred by the latter, with slavery, the penalty of default. Heinduced the creditors to accept the compromise of their debts: whetherabsolutely cancelling the amount, or merely reducing the interest anddebasing the coin, is a matter of some dispute; the greater number ofauthorities incline to the former supposition, and Plutarch quotes thewords of Solon himself in proof of the bolder hypothesis, althoughthey by no means warrant such an interpretation. And to remove forever the renewal of the greatest grievance in connexion with the pastdistresses, he enacted a law that no man hereafter could sell himselfin slavery for the discharge of a debt. Even such as were alreadyenslaved were emancipated, and those sold by their creditors intoforeign countries were ransomed, and restored to their native land, But, though (from the necessity of the times) Solon went to thisdesperate extent of remedy, comparable in our age only to the formalsanction of a national bankruptcy, he rejected with firmness the wilddesire of a division of lands. There may be abuses in the contractionof debts which require far sterner alternatives than the inequalitiesof property. He contented himself in respect to the latter with a lawwhich set a limit to the purchase of land--a theory of legislation notsufficiently to be praised, if it were possible to enforce it [202]. At first, these measures fell short of the popular expectation, excited by the example of Sparta into the hope of an equality offortunes: but the reaction soon came. A public sacrifice was offeredin honour of the discharge of debt, and the authority of the lawgiverwas corroborated and enlarged. Solon was not one of those politicianswho vibrate alternately between the popular and the aristocraticprinciples, imagining that the concession of to-day ought necessarilyto father the denial of to-morrow. He knew mankind too deeply not tobe aware that there is no statesman whom the populace suspect like theone who commences authority with a bold reform, only to continue itwith hesitating expedients. His very next measure was more vigorousand more unexceptionable than the first. The evil of the laws ofDraco was not that they were severe, but that they were inefficient. In legislation, characters of blood are always traced upon tablets ofsand. With one stroke Solon annihilated the whole of these laws, withthe exception of that (an ancient and acknowledged ordinance) whichrelated to homicide; he affixed, in exchange, to various crimes--totheft, to rape, to slander, to adultery--punishments proportioned tothe offence. It is remarkable that in the spirit of his laws heappealed greatly to the sense of honour and the fear of shame, andmade it one of his severest penalties to be styled atimos orunhonoured--a theory that, while it suited the existent, went far toennoble the future, character of the Athenians. In the same spiritthe children of those who perished in war were educated at the publiccharge--arriving at maturity, they were presented with a suit ofarmour, settled in their respective callings, and honoured withprincipal seats in all public assemblies. That is a wise principle ofa state which makes us grateful to its pensioners, and bids us regardin those supported at the public charge the reverent memorials of thepublic service [203]. Solon had the magnanimity to preclude, by hisown hand, a dangerous temptation to his own ambition, and assigneddeath to the man who aspired to the sole dominion of the commonwealth. He put a check to the jobbing interests and importunate canvass ofindividuals, by allowing no one to propose a law in favour of a singleperson, unless he had obtained the votes of six thousand citizens; andhe secured the quiet of a city exposed to the license of powerfulfactions, by forbidding men to appear armed in the streets, unless incases of imminent exigence. 

XI. The most memorable of Solon's sayings illustrates the theory ofthe social fabric he erected. When asked how injustice should bebanished from a commonwealth, he answered, "by making all meninterested in the injustice done to each;" an answer imbodying thewhole soul of liberty. His innovations in the mere forms of theancient constitution do not appear to have been considerable; herather added than destroyed. Thus he maintained or revived the senateof the aristocracy; but to check its authority he created a people. The four ancient tribes [204], long subdivided into minor sections, were retained. Foreigners, who had transported for a permanence theirproperty and families to Athens, and abandoned all connexion withtheir own countries, were admitted to swell the numbers of the freepopulation. This made the constituent body. At the age of eighteen, each citizen was liable to military duties within the limits ofAttica; at the age of twenty he attained his majority, and becameentitled to a vote in the popular assembly, and to all the otherrights of citizenship. Every free Athenian of the age of twenty wasthus admitted to a vote in the legislature. But the possession of avery considerable estate was necessary to the attainment of the higheroffices. Thus, while the people exercised universal suffrage invoting, the choice of candidates was still confined to an oligarchy. Four distinct ranks were acknowledged; not according, as hitherto, tohereditary descent, but the possession of property. They whose incomeyielded five hundred measures in any commodity, dry or liquid, wereplaced in the first rank, under the title of Pentacosiomedimnians. The second class, termed Hippeis, knights or horsemen, was composed ofthose whose estates yielded three hundred measures. Each manbelonging to it was obliged to keep a horse for the public service, and to enlist himself, if called upon, in the cavalry of the militaryforces (the members of either of these higher classes were exempt, however, from serving on board ship, or in the infantry, unlessintrusted with some command. ) The third class was composed of thosepossessing two hundred [205] measures, and called Zeugitae; and thefourth and most numerous class comprehended, under the name of Thetes, the bulk of the non-enslaved working population, whose property fellshort of the qualification required for the Zeugitae. Glancing overthese divisions, we are struck by their similarity to the ranks amongour own northern and feudal ancestry, corresponding to the nobles, theknights, the burgesses, and the labouring classes, which have so longmade, and still constitute, the demarcations of society in modernEurope. The members of the first class were alone eligible to thehighest offices as archons, those of the three first classes to thepolitical assembly of the four hundred (which I shall presentlydescribe), and to some minor magistracies; the members of the fourthclass were excluded from all office, unless, as they voted in thepopular assembly, they may be said to have had a share in thelegislature, and to exercise, in extraordinary causes, judicialauthority. At the same time no hereditary barrier excluded them fromthe hopes so dear to human aspirations. They had only to acquire thenecessary fortune in order to enjoy the privileges of their superiors. And, accordingly, we find, by an inscription on the Acropolis, recorded in Pollux, that Anthemion, of the lowest class, was suddenlyraised to the rank of knight. [206]

XII. We perceive, from these divisions of rank, that the mainprinciple of Solon's constitution was founded, not upon birth, butwealth. He instituted what was called a timocracy, viz. , anaristocracy of property; based upon democratic institutions of popularjurisdiction, election, and appeal. Conformably to the principlewhich pervades all states, that make property the qualification foroffice, to property the general taxation was apportioned. And this, upon a graduated scale, severe to the first class, and completelyexonerating the lowest. The ranks of the citizens thus established, the constitution acknowledged three great councils or branches oflegislature. The first was that of the venerable Areopagus. We havealready seen that this institution had long existed among theAthenians; but of late it had fallen into some obscurity or neglect, and was not even referred to in the laws of Draco. Solon continuedthe name of the assembly, but remodelled its constitution. Ancientlyit had probably embraced all the Eupatrids. Solon defined the claimsof the aspirants to that official dignity, and ordained that no oneshould be admitted to the areopagus who had not filled the situationof archon--an ordeal which implied not only the necessity of thehighest rank, but, as I shall presently note, of sober character andunblemished integrity. 

The remotest traditions clothed the very name of this assembly withmajesty and awe. Holding their council on the sacred hill consecratedto Mars, fable asserted that the god of battle had himself beenarraigned before its tribunal. Solon exerted his imagination tosustain the grandeur of its associations. Every distinction waslavished upon senators, who, in the spirit of his laws, could onlypass from the temple of virtue to that of honour. Before theirjurisdiction all species of crime might be arraigned--they had equalpower to reward and to punish. From the guilt of murder to thenegative offence of idleness [207], their control extended--theconsecration of altars to new deities, the penalties affixed toimpiety, were at their decision, and in their charge. Theirs was theillimitable authority to scrutinize the lives of men--they attendedpublic meetings and solemn sacrifices, to preserve order by themajesty of their presence. The custody of the laws and the managementof the public funds, the superintendence of the education of youth, were committed to their care. Despite their power, they interferedbut little in the management of political affairs, save in cases ofimminent danger. Their duties, grave, tranquil, and solemn, held themaloof from the stir of temporary agitation. They were the last greatrefuge of the state, to which, on common occasions, it was almostprofanity to appeal. Their very demeanour was modelled to harmonizewith the reputation of their virtues and the dignity of their office. It was forbidden to laugh in their assembly--no archon who had beenseen in a public tavern could be admitted to their order [208], andfor an areopagite to compose a comedy was a matter of specialprohibition [209]. They sat in the open air, in common with allcourts having cognizance of murder. If the business before them wasgreat and various, they were wont to divide themselves intocommittees, to each of which the several causes were assigned by lot, so that no man knowing the cause he was to adjudge could be assailedwith the imputation of dishonest or partial prepossession. After dulyhearing both parties, they gave their judgment with proverbial gravityand silence. The institution of the ballot (a subsequent custom)afforded secrecy to their award--a proceeding necessary amid thejealousy and power of factions, to preserve their judgment unbiased bypersonal fear, and the abolition of which, we shall see hereafter, wasamong the causes that crushed for a while the liberties of Athens. Abrazen urn received the suffrages of condemnation--one of wood thoseof acquittal. Such was the character and constitution of theAREOPAGUS. [210]

XIII. The second legislative council ordained or revived by Solon, consisted of a senate, composed, first of four hundred, and many yearsafterward of five hundred members. To this council all, save thelowest and most numerous class, were eligible, provided they hadpassed or attained the age of thirty. It was rather a chance assemblythan a representative one. The manner of its election appears notmore elaborate than clumsy. To every ward there was a president, called phylarchus. This magistrate, on a certain day in the year, gave in the names of all the persons within his district entitled tothe honour of serving in the council, and desirous of enjoying it. These names were inscribed on brazen tablets, and cast into a certainvessel. In another vessel was placed an equal number of beans;supposing the number of candidates to be returned by each tribe to be(as it at first was) a hundred, there were one hundred white beans putinto the vessel--the rest were black. Then the names of thecandidates and the beans were drawn out one by one; and each candidatewho had the good fortune to have his name drawn out together with awhite bean, became a member of the senate. Thus the constitution ofeach succeeding senate might differ from the last--might, so far fromrepresenting the people, contradict their wishes--was utterly a matterof hazard and chance; and when Mr. Mitford informs us that theassembly of the people was the great foundation of evil in theAthenian constitution, it appears that to the capricious andunsatisfactory election of this council we may safely impute many ofthe inconsistencies and changes which that historian attributesentirely to the more popular assembly [211]. To this council wereintrusted powers less extensive in theory than those of the Areopagus, but far more actively exerted. Its members inspected the fleet (whena fleet was afterward established)--they appointed jailers of prisons--they examined the accounts of magistrates at the termination oftheir office; these were minor duties; to them was allotted also anauthority in other departments of a much higher and more complicatednature. To them was given the dark and fearful extent of power whichenabled them to examine and to punish persons accused of offencesunspecified by any peculiar law [212]--an ordinance than which, hadless attention been paid to popular control, the wildest ambition ofdespotism would have required no broader base for its designs. Apower to punish crimes unspecified by law is a power above law, andignorance or corruption may easily distort innocence itself intocrime. But the main duty of the Four Hundred was to prepare the lawsto be submitted to the assembly of the people--the great populartribunal which we are about presently to consider. Nor could any law, according to Solon, be introduced into that assembly until it hadundergone the deliberation, and received the sanction, of thispreliminary council. With them, therefore, was THE ORIGIN OF ALLLEGISLATION. In proportion to these discretionary powers was theexamination the members of the council underwent. Previous to theadmission of any candidate, his life, his character, and his actionswere submitted to a vigorous scrutiny [213]. The senators then took asolemn oath that they would endeavour to promote the public good, andthe highest punishment they were allowed to inflict was a penalty offive hundred drachma. If that punishment were deemed by theminsufficient, the criminal was referred to the regular courts of law. At the expiration of their trust, which expired with each year, thesenators gave an account of their conduct, and the senate itselfpunished any offence of its members; so severe were its inflictions, that a man expelled from the senate was eligible as a judge--a proofthat expulsion was a punishment awarded to no heinous offence. [214]

The members of each tribe presided in turn over the rest [215] underthe name of prytanes. It was the duty of the prytanes to assemble thesenate, which was usually every day, and to keep order in the greatassembly of the people. These were again subdivided into the proedri, who presided weekly over the rest, while one of this number, appointedby lot, was the chief president (or Epistates) of the whole council;to him were intrusted the keys of the citadel and the treasury, and awholesome jealousy of this twofold trust limited its exercise to asingle day. Each member gave notice in writing of any motion heintended to make--the prytanes had the prior right to propound thequestion, and afterward it became matter of open discussion--theydecided by ballot whether to reject or adopt it; if accepted, it wasthen submitted to the assembly of the people, who ratified or refusedthe law which they might not originate. 

Such was the constitution of the Athenian council, one resembling inmany points to the common features of all modern legislativeassemblies. 

XIV. At the great assembly of the people, to which we now arrive, allfreemen of the age of discretion, save only those branded by law withthe opprobrium of atimos (unhonoured) [216], were admissible. At thetime of Solon, this assembly was by no means of the importance towhich it afterward arose. Its meetings were comparatively rare, andno doubt it seldom rejected the propositions of the Four Hundred. Butwhenever different legislative assemblies exist, and popular controlis once constitutionally acknowledged, it is in the nature of thingsthat the more democratic assembly should absorb the main business ofthe more aristocratic. A people are often enslaved by the accident ofa despot, but almost ever gain upon the checks which the constitutionis intended habitually to oppose. In the later time, the assembly metfour times in five weeks (at least, during the period in which thetribes were ten in number), that is, during the presidence of eachprytanea. The first time of their meeting they heard matters ofgeneral import, approved or rejected magistrates, listened toaccusations of grave political offences [217], as well as theparticulars of any confiscation of goods. The second time wasappropriated to affairs relative as well to individuals as thecommunity; and it was lawful for every man either to present apetition or share in a debate. The third time of meeting was devotedto the state audience of ambassadors. The fourth, to matters ofreligious worship or priestly ceremonial. These four periodicalmeetings, under the name of Curia, made the common assembly, requiringno special summons, and betokening no extraordinary emergency. Butbesides these regular meetings, upon occasions of unusual danger, orin cases requiring immediate discussion, the assembly of the peoplemight also be convened by formal proclamation; and in this case it wastermed "Sugkletos, " which we may render by the word convocation. Theprytanes, previous to the meeting of the assembly, always placarded insome public place a programme of the matters on which the people wereto consult. The persons presiding over the meeting were proedri, chosen by lot from the nine tribes, excluded at the time being fromthe office of prytanes; out of their number a chief president (orepistates) was elected also by lot. Every effort was made to compel anumerous attendance, and each man attending received a small coin forhis trouble [218], a practice fruitful in jests to the comedians. Theprytanes might forbid a man of notoriously bad character to speak. The chief president gave the signal for their decision. In ordinarycases they held up their hands, voting openly; but at a later period, in cases where intimidation was possible, such as in the offences ofmen of power and authority, they voted in secret. They met usually inthe vast arena of their market-place. [219]

XV. Recapitulating the heads of that complex constitution I have thusdetailed, the reader will perceive that the legislative power restedin three assemblies--the Areopagus, the Council, and the Assembly ofthe People--that the first, notwithstanding its solemn dignity andvast authority, seldom interfered in the active, popular, and dailypolitics of the state--that the second originated laws, which thethird was the great Court of Appeal to sanction or reject. The greatimprovement of modern times has been to consolidate the two lattercourts in one, and to unite in a representative senate the sagacity ofa deliberative council with the interests of a popular assembly;--themore closely we blend these objects, the more perfectly, perhaps, weattain, by the means of wisdom, the ends of liberty. 

XVI. But although in a senate composed by the determinations ofchance, and an assembly which from its numbers must ever have beenexposed to the agitation of eloquence and the caprices of passion, there was inevitably a crude and imperfect principle, --although twocourts containing in themselves the soul and element of contradictionnecessarily wanted that concentrated oneness of purpose propitious tothe regular and majestic calmness of legislation, we cannot but allowthe main theory of the system to have been precisely that mostfavourable to the prodigal exuberance of energy, of intellect, and ofgenius. Summoned to consultation upon all matters, from the greatestto the least, the most venerable to the most trite--to-day deciding onthe number of their war-ships, to-morrow on that of a tragic chorus;now examining with jealous forethought the new harriers tooligarchical ambition;--now appointing, with nice distinction, tovarious service the various combinations of music [220];--nowwelcoming in their forum-senate the sober ambassadors of Lacedaemon orthe jewelled heralds of Persia, now voting their sanction to newtemples or the reverent reforms of worship; compelled to a lively andunceasing interest in all that arouses the mind, or elevates thepassions, or refines the taste;--supreme arbiters of the art of thesculptor, as the science of the lawgiver, --judges and rewarders of thelimner and the poet, as of the successful negotiator or the prosperoussoldier; we see at once the all-accomplished, all-versatile genius ofthe nation, and we behold in the same glance the effect and thecause:--every thing being referred to the people, the people learnedof every thing to judge. Their genius was artificially forced, and ineach of its capacities. They had no need of formal education. Theirwhole life was one school. The very faults of their assembly, in itsproneness to be seduced by extraordinary eloquence, aroused theemulation of the orator, and kept constantly awake the imagination ofthe audience. An Athenian was, by the necessity of birth, what Miltondreamed that man could only become by the labours of completesteducation: in peace a legislator, in war a soldier, --in all times, onall occasions, acute to judge and resolute to act. All that caninspire the thought or delight the leisure were for the people. Theirs were the portico and the school--theirs the theatre, thegardens, and the baths; they were not, as in Sparta, the tools of thestate--they were the state! Lycurgus made machines and Solon men. InSparta the machine was to be wound up by the tyranny of a fixedprinciple; it could not dine as it pleased--it could not walk as itpleased--it was not permitted to seek its she machine save by stealthand in the dark; its children were not its own--even itself had noproperty in self. Sparta incorporated, under the name of freedom, theworst complexities, the most grievous and the most frivolousvexations, of slavery. And therefore was it that Lacedaemonflourished and decayed, bequeathing to fame men only noted for hardyvalour, fanatical patriotism, and profound but dishonourable craft--attracting, indeed, the wonder of the world, but advancing no claim toits gratitude, and contributing no single addition to its intellectualstores. But in Athens the true blessing of freedom was rightlyplaced--in the opinions and the soul. Thought was the common heritagewhich every man might cultivate at his will. This unshackled libertyhad its convulsions and its excesses, but producing unceasingemulation and unbounded competition, an incentive to every effort, atribunal to every claim, it broke into philosophy with the one--intopoetry with the other--into the energy and splendour of unexampledintelligence with all. Looking round us at this hour, more thanfour-and-twenty centuries after the establishment of the constitution wehave just surveyed, --in the labours of the student--in the dreams of thepoet--in the aspirations of the artist--in the philosophy of thelegislator--we yet behold the imperishable blessings we derive from theliberties of Athens and the institutions of Solon. The life of Athensbecame extinct, but her soul transfused itself, immortal andimmortalizing, through the world. 

XVII. The penal code of Solon was founded on principles whollyopposite to those of Draco. The scale of punishment was moderate, though sufficiently severe. One distinction will suffice to give usan adequate notion of its gradations. Theft by day was not a capitaloffence, but if perpetrated by night the felon might lawfully be slainby the owner. The tendency to lean to the side of mercy in all casesmay be perceived from this--that if the suffrages of the judges wereevenly divided, it was the custom in all the courts of Athens toacquit the accused. The punishment of death was rare; that of atimiasupplied its place. Of the different degrees of atimia it is not mypurpose to speak at present. By one degree, however, the offender wasmerely suspended from some privilege of freedom enjoyed by thecitizens generally, or condemned to a pecuniary fine; the seconddegree allowed the confiscation of goods; the third for ever deprivedthe criminal and his posterity of the rights of a citizen: this lastwas the award only of aggravated offences. Perpetual exile was asentence never passed but upon state criminals. The infliction offines, which became productive of great abuse in later times, wasmoderately apportioned to offences in the time of Solon, partly fromthe high price of money, but partly, also, from the wise moderation ofthe lawgiver. The last grave penalty of death was of various kinds, as the cross, the gibbet, the precipice, the bowl--afflictions seldomin reserve for the freemen. 

As the principle of shame was a main instrument of the penal code ofthe Athenians, so they endeavoured to attain the same object by thesublimer motive of honour. Upon the even balance of rewards thatstimulate, and penalties that deter, Solon and his earlier successorsconceived the virtue of the commonwealth to rest. A crown presentedby the senate or the people--a public banquet in the hall of state--the erection of a statue in the thoroughfares (long a most raredistinction)--the privilege of precedence in the theatre or assembly--were honours constantly before the eyes of the young and the hopes ofthe ambitious. The sentiment of honour thus became a guidingprinciple of the legislation, and a large component of the characterof the Athenians. 

XVIII. Judicial proceedings, whether as instituted by Solon or ascorrupted by his successors, were exposed to some grave and vitalevils hereafter to be noticed. At present I content myself withobserving, that Solon carried into the judicial the principles, of hislegislative courts. It was his theory, that all the citizens shouldbe trained to take an interest in state. Every year a body of sixthousand citizens was chosen by lot; no qualification save that ofbeing thirty years of age was demanded in this election. The bodythus chosen, called Heliaea, was subdivided into smaller courts, before which all offences, but especially political ones, might betried. Ordinary cases were probably left by Solon to the ordinarymagistrates; but it was not long before the popular jurors drew tothemselves the final trial and judgment of all causes. This judicialpower was even greater than the legislative; for if an act had passedthrough all the legislative forms, and was, within a year of the date, found inconsistent with the constitution or public interests, thepopular courts could repeal the act and punish its author. In Athensthere were no professional lawyers; the law being supposed the commoninterest of citizens, every encouragement was given to the prosecutor--every facility to the obtaining of justice. 

Solon appears to have recognised the sound principle, that thestrength of law is in the public disposition to cherish and revereit, --and that nothing is more calculated to make permanent the generalspirit of a constitution than to render its details flexile and opento reform. Accordingly, he subjected his laws to the vigilance ofregular and constant revision. Once a year, proposals for alteringany existent law might be made by any citizen--were debated--and, ifapproved, referred to a legislative committee, drawn by lot from thejurors. The committee then sat in judgment on the law; five advocateswere appointed to plead for the old law; if unsuccessful, the new lawcame at once into operation. In addition to this precaution, six ofthe nine archons (called Thesmothetae), whose office rendered themexperienced in the defects of the law, were authorized to review thewhole code, and to refer to the legislative committee theconsideration of any errors or inconsistencies that might requireamendment. [221]

XIX. With respect to the education of youth, the wise Athenian didnot proceed upon the principles which in Sparta attempted to transferto the state the dearest privileges of a parent. From the age ofsixteen to eighteen (and earlier in the case of orphans) the law, indeed, seems to have considered that the state had a right to prepareits citizens for its service; and the youth was obliged to attendpublic gymnastic schools, in which, to much physical, someintellectual, discipline was added, under masters publicly nominated. But from the very circumstance of compulsory education at that age, and the absence of it in childhood, we may suppose that there hadalready grown up in Athens a moral obligation and a general custom, toprepare the youth of the state for the national schools. 

Besides the free citizens, there were two subordinate classes--thealiens and the slaves. By the first are meant those composed ofsettlers, who had not relinquished connexion with their nativecountries. These, as universally in Greece, were widely distinguishedfrom the citizens; they paid a small annual sum for the protection ofthe state, and each became a kind of client to some individualcitizen, who appeared for him in the courts of justice. They werealso forbidden to purchase land; but for the rest, Solon, himself amerchant, appears to have given to such aliens encouragements in tradeand manufacture not usual in that age; and most of their disabilitieswere probably rather moral or imaginary than real and daily causes ofgrievance. The great and paramount distinction was between thefreeman and the slave. No slave could be admitted as a witness, except by torture; as for him there was no voice in the state, so forhim there was no tenderness in the law. But though the slave mightnot avenge himself on the master, the system of slavery avenged itselfon the state. The advantages to the intellect of the free citizensresulting from the existence of a class maintained to relieve themfrom the drudgeries of life, were dearly purchased by the constantinsecurity of their political repose. The capital of the rich couldnever be directed to the most productive of all channels--the labourof free competition. The noble did not employ citizens--he purchasedslaves. Thus the commonwealth derived the least possible advantagefrom his wealth; it did not flow through the heart of the republic, employing the idle and feeding the poor. As a necessary consequence, the inequalities of fortune were sternly visible and deeply felt. Therich man had no connexion with the poor man--the poor man hated himfor a wealth of which he did not (as in states where slavery does notexist) share the blessings--purchasing by labour the advantages offortune. Hence the distinction of classes defied the harmonizingeffects of popular legislation. The rich were exposed to unjust andconstant exactions; and society was ever liable to be disorganized byattacks upon property. There was an eternal struggle between thejealousies of the populace and the fears of the wealthy; and many ofthe disorders which modern historians inconsiderately ascribe to theinstitutions of freedom were in reality the growth of the existence ofslavery. 

CHAPTER II. 

The Departure of Solon from Athens. --The Rise of Pisistratus. --Returnof Solon. --His Conduct and Death. --The Second and Third Tyranny ofPisistratus. --Capture of Sigeum. --Colony in the Chersonesus founded bythe first Miltiades. --Death of Pisistratus. 

I. Although the great constitutional reforms of Solon were no doubtcarried into effect during his archonship, yet several of hislegislative and judicial enactments were probably the work of years. When we consider the many interests to conciliate, the many prejudicesto overcome, which in all popular states cripple and delay theprogress of change in its several details, we find little difficultyin supposing, with one of the most luminous of modern scholars [222], that Solon had ample occupation for twenty years after the date of hisarchonship. During this period little occurred in the foreign affairsof Athens save the prosperous termination of the Cirrhaean war, asbefore recorded. At home the new constitution gradually took root, although often menaced and sometimes shaken by the storms of party andthe general desire for further innovation. 

The eternal consequence of popular change is, that while it irritatesthe party that loses power, it cannot content the party that gains. It is obvious that each concession to the people but renders thembetter able to demand concessions more important. The theories ofsome--the demands of others--harassed the lawgiver, and threatened thesafety of the laws. Solon, at length, was induced to believe that hisordinances required the sanction and repose of time, and that absence--that moral death--would not only free himself from importunity, buthis infant institutions from the frivolous disposition of change. Inhis earlier years he had repaired, by commercial pursuits, estatesthat had been empoverished by the munificence of his father; and, still cultivating the same resources, he made pretence of his vocationto solicit permission for an absence of ten years. He is said tohave obtained a solemn promise from the people to alter none of hisinstitutions during that period [223]; and thus he departed from thecity (probably B. C. 575), of whose future glories he had laid thesolid foundation. Attracted by his philosophical habits to thatsolemn land, beneath whose mysteries the credulous Greeks revered thesecrets of existent wisdom, the still adventurous Athenian repaired tothe cities of the Nile, and fed the passion of speculative inquiryfrom the learning of the Egyptian priests. Departing thence toCyprus, he assisted, as his own verses assure us, in the planning of anew city, founded by one of the kings of that beautiful island, andafterward invited to the court of Croesus (associated with his fatherAlyattes, then living), he imparted to the Lydian, amid the splendoursof state and the adulation of slaves, that well-known lesson on theuncertainty of human grandeur, which, according to Herodotus, Croesusso seasonably remembered at the funeral pile. [224]

II. However prudent had appeared to Solon his absence from Athens, itis to be lamented that he did not rather brave the hazards from whichhis genius might have saved the state, than incur those which the veryremoval of a master-spirit was certain to occasion. We may bind mennot to change laws, but we cannot bind the spirit and the opinion, from which laws alone derive cogency or value. We may guard againstthe innovations of a multitude, which a wise statesman sees afar off, and may direct to great ends; but we cannot guard against thatdangerous accident--not to be foreseen, not to be directed--theambition of a man of genius! During the absence of Solon there roseinto eminence one of those remarkable persons who give to viciousdesigns all the attraction of individual virtues. Bold, generous, affable, eloquent, endowed with every gift of nature and fortune--kinsman to Solon, but of greater wealth and more dazzling qualities--the young Pisistratus, son of Hippocrates, early connected himselfwith the democratic or highland party. The Megarians, who had neverrelinquished their designs on Salamis, had taken an opportunity, apparently before the travels, and, according to Plutarch, even beforethe legislation of Solon, to repossess themselves of the island. Whenthe Athenians were enabled to extend their energies beyond their owngreat domestic revolution, Pisistratus obtained the command of anexpedition against these dangerous neighbours, which was attended withthe most signal success. A stratagem referred to Solon by Plutarch, who has with so contagious an inaccuracy blended into one the twoseveral and distinct expeditions of Pisistratus and Solon, oughtrather to be placed to the doubtful glory of the son of Hippocrates[225]. A number of young men sailed with Pisistratus to Colias, andtaking the dress of women, whom they there seized while sacrificing toCeres, a spy was despatched to Salamis, to inform the Megarian guardthat many of the principal Athenian matrons were at Colias, and mightbe easily captured. The Megarians were decoyed, despatched a body ofmen to the opposite shore, and beholding a group in women's attiredancing by the strand, landed confusedly to seize the prize. Thepretended females drew forth their concealed weapons, and theMegarians, surprised and dismayed, were cut off to a man. The victorslost no time in setting sail for Salamis, and easily regained theisle. Pisistratus carried the war into Megara itself, and capturedthe port of Nisaea. These exploits were the foundation of his aftergreatness; and yet young, at the return of Solon, he was already atthe head of the democratic party. But neither his rank, his genius, nor his popular influence sufficed to give to his faction a decidedeminence over those of his rivals. The wealthy nobles of the lowlandswere led by Lycurgus--the moderate party of the coastmen by Megacles, the head of the Alcmaeonidae. And it was in the midst, of the strifeand agitation produced by these great sections of the people thatSolon returned to Athens. 

III. The venerable legislator was received with all the gratefulrespect he deserved; but age had dimmed the brilliancy of his powers. His voice could no longer penetrate the mighty crowds of themarket-place. New idols had sprung up--new passions were loosed--newinterests formed, and amid the roar and stir of the eternal movement, it was in vain for the high-hearted old man to recall those rushing onthe future to the boundaries of the past. If unsuccessful in public, he was not discouraged from applying in private to the leaders of theseveral parties. Of all those rival nobles, none deferred to hisadvice with so marked a respect as the smooth and plausiblePisistratus. Perhaps, indeed, that remarkable man contemplated thesame objects as Solon himself, --although the one desired to effect bythe authority of the chief, the order and the energy which the otherwould have trusted to the development of the people. But, masking hismore interested designs, Pisistratus outbid all competition in hisseeming zeal for the public welfare. The softness of his manners--hisprofuse liberality--his generosity even to his foes--the splendidqualities which induced Cicero to compare him to Julius Cesar [226], charmed the imagination of the multitude, and concealed theselfishness of his views. He was not a hypocrite, indeed, as to hisvirtues--a dissembler only in his ambition. Even Solon, inendeavouring to inspire him with a true patriotism, acknowledged histalents and his excellences. "But for ambition, " said he, "Athenspossesses no citizen worthier than Pisistratus. " The time became ripefor the aspiring projects of the chief of the democracy. 

IV. The customary crowd was swarming in the market-place, whensuddenly in the midst of the assembly appeared the chariot ofPisistratus. The mules were bleeding--Pisistratus himself waswounded. In this condition the demagogue harangued the people. Hedeclared that he had just escaped from the enemies of himself and thepopular party, who (under the auspices of the Alcmaeonidae) hadattacked him in a country excursion. He reminded the crowd of hisservices in war--his valour against the Megarians--his conquest ofNisaea. He implored their protection. Indignant and inflamed, thefavouring audience shouted their sympathy with his wrongs. "Son ofHippocrates, " said Solon, advancing to the spot, and with bitter wit, "you are but a bad imitator of Ulysses. He wounded himself to deludehis enemies--you to deceive your countrymen. " [227] The sagacity ofthe reproach was unheeded by the crowd. A special assembly of thepeople was convened, and a partisan of the demagogue moved that abody-guard of fifty men, armed but with clubs, should be assigned tohis protection. Despite the infirmities of his age, and the decreaseof his popular authority, Solon had the energy to oppose the motion, and predict its results. The credulous love of the people swept awayall precaution--the guard was granted. Its number did not longcontinue stationary; Pisistratus artfully increased the amount, tillit swelled to the force required by his designs. He then seized thecitadel--the antagonist faction of Megacles fled--and Pisistratus wasmaster of Athens. Amid the confusion and tumult of the city, Solonretained his native courage. He appeared in public--harangued thecitizens--upbraided their blindness--invoked their courage. In hisspeeches he bade them remember that if it be the more easy task toprevent tyranny, it is the more glorious achievement to destroy it. In his verses [228] he poured forth the indignant sentiment which athousand later bards have borrowed and enlarged; "Blame not Heaven foryour tyrants, blame yourselves. " The fears of some, the indifferenceof others, rendered his exhortations fruitless! The brave old mansorrowfully retreated to his house, hung up his weapons without hisdoor, and consoled himself with the melancholy boast that "he had doneall to save his country, and its laws. " This was his last publiceffort against the usurper. He disdained flight; and, asked by hisfriends to what he trusted for safety from the wrath of the victor, replied, "To old age, "--a sad reflection, that so great a man shouldfind in infirmity that shelter which he claimed from glory. 

V. The remaining days and the latter conduct of Solon are involved inobscurity. According to Plutarch, he continued at Athens, Pisistratusshowing him the utmost respect, and listening to the counsel whichSolon condescended to bestow upon him: according to Diogenes Laertius, he departed again from his native city [229], indignant at itssubmission, and hopeless of its freedom, refusing all overtures fromPisistratus, and alleging that, having established a free government, he would not appear to sanction the success of a tyrant. Eitheraccount is sufficiently probable. The wisdom of Solon might consentto mitigate what he could not cure, or his patriotism might urge himto avoid witnessing the changes he had no power to prevent. Thedispute is of little importance. At his advanced age he could nothave long survived the usurpation of Pisistratus, nor can we find anyauthority for the date of his death so entitled to credit as that ofPhanias, who assigns it to the year following the usurpation ofPisistratus. The bright race was already run. According to the graveauthority of Aristotle, the ashes of Solon were scattered over theIsle of Salamis, which had been the scene of his earlier triumphs; andAthens, retaining his immortal, boasted not his perishable remains. 

VI. Pisistratus directed with admirable moderation the courses of therevolution he had produced. Many causes of success were combined inhis favour. His enemies had been the supposed enemies of the people, and the multitude doubtless beheld the flight of the Alcmaeonidae(still odious in their eyes by the massacre of Cylon) as the defeat ofa foe, while the triumph of the popular chief was recognised as thevictory of the people. In all revolutions the man who has sided withthe people is permitted by the people the greatest extent of license. It is easy to perceive, by the general desire which the Athenians hadexpressed for the elevation of Solon to the supreme authority that thenotion of regal authority was not yet hateful to them, and that theywere scarcely prepared for the liberties with which they wereintrusted. But although they submitted thus patiently to theascendency of Pisistratus, it is evident that a less benevolent orless artful tyrant would not have been equally successful. Raisedabove the law, that subtle genius governed only by the law; nay, heaffected to consider its authority greater than his own. He assumedno title--no attribute of sovereignty. He was accused of murder, andhe humbly appeared before the tribunal of the Areopagus--a proof notmore of the moderation of the usurper than of the influence of publicopinion. He enforced the laws of Solon, and compelled the unrulytempers of his faction to subscribe to their wholesome rigour. Theone revolution did not, therefore, supplant, it confirmed, the other. "By these means, " says Herodotus, "Pisistratus mastered Athens, andyet his situation was far from secure. " [230]

VII. Although the heads of the more moderate party, under Megacles, had been expelled from Athens, yet the faction, equally powerful andequally hostile, headed by Lycurgus, and embraced by the bulk of thenobles, still remained. For a time, extending perhaps to five or sixyears, Pisistratus retained his power; but at length, Lycurgus, uniting with the exiled Alcmaeonidae, succeeded in expelling him fromthe city. But the union that had led to his expulsion ceased withthat event. The contests between the lowlanders and the coastmen wereonly more inflamed by the defeat of the third party, which hadoperated as a balance of power, and the broils of their severalleaders were fed by personal ambition as by hereditary animosities. Megacles, therefore, unable to maintain equal ground with Lycurgus, turned his thoughts towards the enemy he had subdued, and sentproposals to Pisistratus, offering to unite their forces, and tosupport him in his pretensions to the tyranny, upon condition that theexiled chief should marry his daughter Coesyra. Pisistratus readilyacceded to the terms, and it was resolved by a theatrical pageant toreconcile his return to the people. In one of the boroughs of thecity there was a woman named Phya, of singular beauty and loftystature. Clad in complete armour, and drawn in a chariot, this womanwas conducted with splendour and triumph towards the city. By herside rode Pisistratus--heralds preceded their march, and proclaimedher approach, crying aloud to the Athenians "to admit Pisistratus, thefavourite of Minerva, for that the goddess herself had come to earthon his behalf. "

The sagacity of the Athenians was already so acute, and the artificeappeared to Herodotus so gross, that the simple Halicarnassean couldscarcely credit the authenticity of this tale. But it is possiblethat the people viewed the procession as an ingenious allegory, to theadaptation of which they were already disposed; and that, like thepopulace of a later and yet more civilized people, they hailed thegoddess while they recognised the prostitute [231]. Be that as itmay, the son of Hippocrates recovered his authority, and fulfilled histreaty with Megacles by a marriage with his daughter. Between thecommencement of his first tyranny and the date of his second return, there was probably an interval of twelve years. His sons were alreadyadults. Partly from a desire not to increase his family, partly fromsome superstitious disinclination to the blood of the Alcmaeonidae, which the massacre of Cylon still stigmatized with contamination, Pisistratus conducted himself towards the fair Coesyra with a chastityeither unwelcome to her affection, or afflicting to her pride. Theunwedded wife communicated the mortifying secret to her mother, fromwhose lips it soon travelled to the father. He did not view thepurity of Pisistratus with charitable eyes. He thought it an affrontto his own person that that of his daughter should be so tranquillyregarded. He entered into a league with his former opponents againstthe usurper, and so great was the danger, that Pisistratus (despitehis habitual courage) betook himself hastily to flight:--a strangeinstance of the caprice of human events, that a man could with agreater impunity subdue the freedom of his country, than affront thevanity of his wife! [232]

VIII. Pisistratus, his sons and partisans, retired to Eretria inEuboea: there they deliberated as to their future proceedings--shouldthey submit to their exile, or attempt to retrieve, their power? Thecouncils of his son Hippias prevailed with Pisistratus; it wasresolved once more to attempt the sovereignty of Athens. Theneighbouring tribes assisted the exiles with forage and shelter. Manycities accorded the celebrated noble large sums of money, and theThebans outdid the rest in pernicious liberality. A troop of Argiveadventurers came from the Peloponnesus to tender to the baffledusurper the assistance of their swords, and Lygdamis, an individual ofNaxos, himself ambitious of the government of his native state, increased his resources both by money and military force. At length, though after a long and tedious period of no less than eleven years, Pisistratus resolved to hazard the issue of open war. At the head ofa foreign force he advanced to Marathon, and pitched his tents uponits immortal plain. Troops of the factious or discontented throngedfrom Athens to his camp, while the bulk of the citizens, unaffected aysuch desertions, viewed his preparations with indifference. Atlength, when they heard that Pisistratus had broken up his encampment, and was on his march to the city, the Athenians awoke from theirapathy, and collected their forces to oppose him. He continued toadvance his troops, halted at the temple of Minerva, whose earthlyrepresentative had once so benignly assisted him, and pitched histents opposite the fane. He took advantage of that time in which theAthenians, during the heats of the day, were at their entertainments, or indulging the noontide repose, still so grateful to the inhabitantsof a warmer climate, to commence his attack. He soon scattered thefoe, and ordered his sons to overtake them in their flight, to bidthem return peacefully to their employments, and fear nothing from hisvengeance. His clemency assisted the effect of his valour, and oncemore the son of Hippocrates became the master of the Atheniancommonwealth. 

IX. Pisistratus lost no time in strengthening himself by formidablealliances. He retained many auxiliary troops, and provided largepecuniary resources [233]. He spared the persons of his opponents, but sent their children as hostages to Naxos, which he first reducedand consigned to the tyranny of his auxiliary, Lygdamis. Many of hisinveterate enemies had perished on the field--many fled from the fearof his revenge. He was undisturbed in the renewal of his sway, andhaving no motive for violence, pursued the natural bent of a mild andgenerous disposition, ruling as one who wishes men to forget the meansby which his power has been attained. Pisistratus had that passionfor letters which distinguished most of the more brilliant Athenians. Although the poems of Homer were widely known and deeply veneratedlong before his time, yet he appears, by a more accurate collectionand arrangement of them, and probably by bringing them into a moregeneral and active circulation in Athens, to have largely added to thewonderful impetus to poetical emulation, which those immortal writingswere calculated to give. 

When we consider how much, even in our own times, and with all theadvantages of the press, the diffused fame and intellectual influenceof Shakspeare and Milton have owed to the praise and criticism ofindividuals, we may readily understand the kind of service rendered byPisistratus to Homer. The very example of so eminent a man would havedrawn upon the poet a less vague and more inquiring species ofadmiration; the increased circulation of copies--the more frequentpublic recitals--were advantages timed at that happy season when thepeople who enjoyed them had grown up from wondering childhood toimitative and studious youth. And certain it is, that from thisperiod we must date the marked and pervading influence of Homer uponAthenian poetry; for the renown of a poet often precedes by manygenerations the visible influence of his peculiar genius. It ischiefly within the last seventy years that we may date the wonderfuleffect that Shakspeare was destined to produce upon the universalintellect of Europe. The literary obligations of Athens toPisistratus were not limited to his exertions on behalf of Homer: heis said to have been the first in Greece who founded a public library, rendering its treasures accessible to all. And these two benefitsunited, justly entitle the fortunate usurper to the praise of firstcalling into active existence that intellectual and literary spiritwhich became diffused among the Athenian people, and originated themodels and masterpieces of the world. It was in harmony with thispart of his character that Pisistratus refitted the taste andsocialized the habits of the citizens, by the erection of buildingsdedicated to the public worship, or the public uses, and laid out thestately gardens of the Lyceum--(in after-times the favourite haunt ofphilosophy), by the banks of the river dedicated to song. Pisistratusdid thus more than continue the laws of Solon--he inculcated theintellectual habits which the laws were designed to create. And as inthe circle of human events the faults of one man often confirm whatwas begun by the virtues of another, so perhaps the usurpation ofPisistratus was necessary to establish the institutions of Solon. Itis clear that the great lawgiver was not appreciated at the close ofhis life; as his personal authority had ceased to have influence, sopossibly might have soon ceased the authority of his code. Thecitizens required repose to examine, to feel, to estimate theblessings of his laws--that repose they possessed under Pisistratus. Amid the tumult of fierce and equipoised factions it might befortunate that a single individual was raised above the rest, who, having the wisdom to appreciate the institutions of Solon, had theauthority to enforce them. Silently they grew up under his usurpedbut benignant sway, pervading, penetrating, exalting the people, andfitting them by degrees to the liberty those institutions wereintended to confer. If the disorders of the republic led to theascendency of Pisistratus, so the ascendency of Pisistratus paved theway for the renewal of the republic. As Cromwell was therepresentative of the very sentiments he appeared to subvert--asNapoleon in his own person incorporated the principles of therevolution of France, so the tyranny of Pisistratus concentrated andimbodied the elements of that democracy he rather wielded thanoverthrew. 

X. At home, time and tranquillity cemented the new laws; poetry setbefore the emulation of the Athenians its noblest monument in theepics of Homer; and tragedy put forth its first unmellowed fruits inthe rude recitations of Thespis (B. C. 535). [234] Pisistratus soughtalso to counterbalance the growing passion for commerce by peculiarattention to agriculture, in which it is not unlikely that he wasconsiderably influenced by early prepossessions, for his party hadbeen the mountaineers attached to rural pursuits, and his adversariesthe coastmen engaged in traffic. As a politician of great sagacity, he might also have been aware, that a people accustomed toagricultural employments are ever less inclined to democraticinstitutions than one addicted to commerce and manufactures; and if hewere the author of a law, which at all events he more rigidlyenforced, requiring every citizen to give an account of his mode oflivelihood, and affixing punishments to idleness, he could not havetaken wiser precautions against such seditions as are begot by povertyupon indolence, or under a juster plea have established thesuperintendence of a concealed police. We learn from Aristotle thathis policy consisted much in subjecting and humbling the pediaei, orwealthy nobles of the lowlands. But his very affection to agriculturemust have tended to strengthen an aristocracy, and his humility to theAreopagus was a proof of his desire to conciliate the least democraticof the Athenian courts. He probably, therefore, acted only againstsuch individual chiefs as had incurred his resentment, or as menacedhis power; nor can we perceive in his measures the systematic anddeliberate policy, common with other Greek tyrants, to break up anaristocracy and create a middle class. 

XI. Abroad, the ambition of Pisistratus, though not extensive, wassuccessful. There was a town on the Hellespont called Sigeum, whichhad long been a subject of contest between the Athenians and theMitylenaeans. Some years before the legislation of Solon, theAthenian general, Phryno, had been slain in single combat by Pittacus, one of the seven wise men, who had come into the field armed like theRoman retiarius, with a net, a trident, and a dagger. This feud wasterminated by the arbitration of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, whoawarded Sigeum to the Athenians, which was then in their possession, by a wise and plausible decree, that each party should keep what ithad got. This war was chiefly remarkable for an incident thatintroduces us somewhat unfavourably to the most animated of the lyricpoets. Alcaeus, an eminent citizen of Mitylene, and, according toancient scandal, the unsuccessful lover of Sappho, conceived a passionfor military fame: in his first engagement he seems to have discoveredthat his proper vocation was rather to sing of battles than to sharethem. He fled from the field, leaving his arms behind him, which theAthenians obtained, and suspended at Sigeum in the temple of Minerva. Although this single action, which Alcaeus himself recorded, cannot befairly held a sufficient proof of the poet's cowardice, yet hischaracter and patriotism are more equivocal than his genius. Of thelast we have ample testimony, though few remains save in the frigidgrace of the imitations of Horace. The subsequent weakness and civildissensions of Athens were not favourable to the maintenance of thisdistant conquest--the Mitylenaeans regained Sigeum. Against this townPisistratus now directed his arms--wrested it from the Mitylenaeans--and, instead of annexing it to the republic of Athens, assigned itsgovernment to the tyranny of his natural son, Hegesistratus, --a stormydominion, which the valour of the bastard defended against repeatedassaults. [235]

XII. But one incident, the full importance of which the reader mustwait a while to perceive, I shall in this place relate. Among themost powerful of the Athenians was a noble named Miltiades, son ofCypselus. By original descent he was from the neighbouring island ofAegina, and of the heroic race of Aeacus; but he dated theestablishment of his house in Athens from no less distant a founderthan the son of Ajax. Miltiades had added new lustre to his name by avictory at the Olympic games. It was probably during the firsttyranny of Pisistratus [236] that an adventure, attended with vastresults to Greece, befell this noble. His family were among theenemies of Pisistratus, and were regarded by that sagacious usurperwith a jealous apprehension which almost appears prophetic. Miltiadeswas, therefore, uneasy under the government of Pisistratus, anddiscontented with his position in Athens. One day, as he sat beforehis door (such is the expression of the enchanting Herodotus, unconscious of the patriarchal picture he suggests [237]), Miltiadesobserved certain strangers pass by, whose garments and spears denotedthem to be foreigners. The sight touched the chief, and he offeredthe strangers the use of his house, and the rites of hospitality. They accepted his invitation, were charmed by his courtesy, andrevealed to him the secret of their travel. In that narrow territorywhich, skirting the Hellespont, was called the Chersonesus, orPeninsula, dwelt the Doloncians, a Thracian tribe. Engaged in anobstinate war with the neighbouring Absinthians, the Doloncians hadsent to the oracle of Delphi to learn the result of the contest. ThePythian recommended the messengers to persuade the first man who, ontheir quitting the temple, should offer them the rites of hospitality, to found a colony in their native land. Passing homeward throughPhocis and Boeotia, and receiving no such invitation by the way, themessengers turned aside to Athens; Miltiades was the first who offeredthem the hospitality they sought; they entreated him now to complywith the oracle, and assist their countrymen; the discontented noblewas allured by the splendour of the prospect--he repaired in person toDelphi--consulted the Pythian--received a propitious answer--andcollecting all such of the Athenians as his authority could enlist, ortheir own ambition could decoy, he repaired to the Chersonesus(probably B. C. 559). There he fortified a great part of the isthmus, as a barrier to the attacks of the Absinthians: but shortly afterward, in a feud with the people of Lampsacus, he was taken prisoner by theenemy. Miltiades, however, had already secured the esteem andprotection of Croesus; and the Lydian monarch remonstrated with theLampsacenes in so formidable a tone of menace, that the Athenianobtained his release, and regained his new principality. In themeanwhile, his brother Cimon (who was chiefly remarkable for hissuccess at the Olympic games), sharing the political sentiments of hishouse, had been driven into exile by Pisistratus. By a transfer tothe brilliant tyrant of a victory in the Olympic chariot-race, he, however, propitiated Pisistratus, and returned to Athens. 

VIII. Full of years, and in the serene enjoyment of power, Pisistratus died (B. C. 527). His character may already be gatheredfrom his actions: crafty in the pursuit of power, but magnanimous inits possession, we have only, with some qualification, to repeat theeulogium on him ascribed to his greater kinsman, Solon--"That he wasthe best of tyrants, and without a vice save that of ambition. "

CHAPTER III. 

The Administration of Hippias. --The Conspiracy of Harmodius andAristogiton. --The Death of Hipparchus. --Cruelties of Hippias. --Theyoung Miltiades sent to the Chersonesus. --The Spartans Combine withthe Alcmaeonidae against Hippias. --The fall of the Tyranny. --TheInnovations of Clisthenes. --His Expulsion and Restoration. --Embassy tothe Satrap of Sardis. --Retrospective View of the Lydian, Medean, andPersian Monarchies. --Result of the Athenian Embassy to Sardis. --Conduct of Cleomenes. --Victory of the Athenians against the Boeotiansand Chalcidians. --Hippias arrives at Sparta. --The Speech of Sosiclesthe Corinthian. --Hippias retires to Sardis. 

I. Upon the death of Pisistratus, his three sons, Hipparchus, Hippias, and Thessalus, succeeded to the government. Nor, thoughHippias was the eldest, does he seem to have exercised a moreprominent authority than the rest--since, in the time of Thucydides, and long afterward, it was the popular error to consider Hipparchusthe first-born. Hippias was already of mature age; and, as we haveseen, it was he who had counselled his father not to despair, afterhis expulsion from Athens. He was a man of courage and ability worthyof his race. He governed with the same careful respect for the lawswhich had distinguished and strengthened the authority of hispredecessor. He even rendered himself yet more popular thanPisistratus by reducing one half the impost of a tithe on the produceof the land, which that usurper had imposed. Notwithstanding thisrelief, he was enabled, by a prudent economy, to flatter the nationalvanity by new embellishments to the city. In the labours of hisgovernment he was principally aided by his second brother, Hipparchus, a man of a yet more accomplished and intellectual order of mind. Butalthough Hippias did not alter the laws, he chose his own creatures toadminister them. Besides, whatever share in the government wasintrusted to his brothers, Hipparchus and Thessalus, his son andseveral of his family were enrolled among the archons of the city. And they who by office were intended for the guardians of liberty werethe necessary servants of the tyrant. 

II. If we might place unhesitating faith in the authenticity of thedialogue attributed to Plato under the title of "Hipparchus, " weshould have, indeed, high authority in favour of the virtues and thewisdom of that prince. And by whomsoever the dialogue was written, itrefers to facts, in the passage relative to the son of Pisistratus, ina manner sufficiently positive to induce us to regard that portion ofit with some deference. According to the author, we learn thatHipparchus, passionately attached to letters, brought Anacreon toAthens, and lived familiarly with Simonides. He seems to have beeninspired with the ambition of a moralist, and distributed Hermae, orstone busts of Mercury, about the city and the public roads, which, while answering a similar purpose to our mile-stones, arrested the eyeof the passenger with pithy and laconic apothegms in verse; such as, "Do not deceive your friend, " and "Persevere in affection tojustice;"--proofs rather of the simplicity than the wisdom of theprince. It is not by writing the decalogue upon mile-stones that therobber would be terrified, or the adulterer converted. 

It seems that the apothegmatical Hipparchus did not associate withAnacreon more from sympathy with his genius than inclination to thesubjects to which it was devoted. He was addicted to pleasure; nordid he confine its pursuits to the more legitimate objects of sensualaffection. Harmodius, a young citizen of no exalted rank, but muchpersonal beauty, incurred the affront of his addresses [238]. Harmodius, in resentment, confided the overtures of the moralist tohis friend and preceptor, Aristogiton. While the two were broodingover the outrage, Hipparchus, in revenge for the disdain of Harmodius, put a public insult upon the sister of that citizen, a young maiden. She received a summons to attend some public procession, as bearer ofone of the sacred vessels: on presenting herself she was abruptlyrejected, with the rude assertion that she never could have beenhonoured with an invitation of which she was unworthy. This affrontrankled deeply in the heart of Harmodius, but still more in that ofthe friendly Aristogiton, and they now finally resolved upon revenge. At the solemn festival of Panathenaea, (in honour of Minerva), it wasthe custom for many of the citizens to carry arms in the procession:for this occasion they reserved the blow. They intrusted theirdesigns to few, believing that if once the attempt was begun thepeople would catch the contagion, and rush spontaneously to theassertion of their freedom. The festival arrived. Bent against theelder tyrant, perhaps from nobler motives than those which urged themagainst Hipparchus [239], each armed with a dagger concealed in thesacred myrtle bough which was borne by those who joined theprocession, the conspirators advanced to the spot in the suburbs whereHippias was directing the order of the ceremonial. To their dismay, they perceived him conversing familiarly with one of their ownpartisans, and immediately suspected that to be the treason of theirfriend which in reality was the frankness of the affable prince. Struck with fear, they renounced their attempt upon Hippias, suddenlyretreated to the city, and, meeting with Hipparchus, rushed upon him, wounded, and slew him. Aristogiton turned to fly--he escaped theguards, but was afterward seized, and "not mildly treated" [240] bythe tyrant. Such is the phrase of Thucydides, which, if we may takethe interpretation of Justin and the later writers, means that, contrary to the law, he was put to the torture [241]. Harmodius wasslain upon the spot. The news of his brother's death was brought toHippias. With an admirable sagacity and presence of mind, herepaired, not to the place of the assassination, but towards theprocession itself, rightly judging that the conspiracy had only brokenout in part. As yet the news of the death of Hipparchus had notreached the more distant conspirators in the procession, and Hippiasbetrayed not in the calmness of his countenance any signs of hissorrow or his fears. He approached the procession, and with acomposed voice commanded them to deposite their arms, and file offtowards a place which he indicated. They obeyed the order, imagininghe had something to communicate to them. Then turning to his guards, Hippias bade them seize the weapons thus deposited, and he himselfselected from the procession all whom he had reason to suspect, or onwhose persons a dagger was found, for it was only with the openweapons of spear and shield that the procession was lawfully to bemade. Thus rose and thus terminated that conspiracy which gave to thenoblest verse and the most enduring veneration the names of Harmodiusand Aristogiton. [242]

III. The acutest sharpener of tyranny is an unsuccessful attempt todestroy it--to arouse the suspicion of power is almost to compel it tocruelty. Hitherto we have seen that Hippias had graced his authoritywith beneficent moderation; the death of his brother filled him withsecret alarm; and the favour of the populace at the attempted escapeof Aristogiton--the ease with which, from a personal affront to anobscure individual, a formidable conspiracy had sprung up into life, convinced him that the arts of personal popularity are only to berelied on when the constitution of the government itself is popular. 

It is also said that, when submitted to the torture, Aristogiton, withall the craft of revenge, asserted the firmest friends of Hippias tohave been his accomplices. Thus harassed by distrust, Hippiasresolved to guard by terror a power which clemency had failed torender secure. He put several of the citizens to death. According tothe popular traditions of romance, one of the most obnoxious acts ofhis severity was exercised upon a woman worthy to be the mistress ofAristogiton. Leaena, a girl of humble birth, beloved by thatadventurous citizen, was sentenced to the torture, and, that the painmight not wring from her any confession of the secrets of theconspiracy, she bit out her tongue. The Athenians, on afterwardrecovering their liberties, dedicated to the heroine a brazen lioness, not inappropriately placed in the vicinity of a celebrated statue ofVenus [243]. No longer depending on the love of the citizens, Hippiasnow looked abroad for the support of his power; he formed an alliancewith Hippoclus, the prince of Lampsacus, by marrying his daughter withthe son of that tyrant, who possessed considerable influence at thePersian court, to which he already directed his eyes--whether as asupport in the authority of the present, or an asylum against thereverses of the future. [244]

It was apparently about a year before the death of Hipparchus, thatStesagoras, the nephew and successor of that Miltiades who departedfrom Athens to found a colony in the Thracian Chersonesus, perished byan assassin's blow. Hippias, evidently deeming he had the right, assovereign of the parent country, to appoint the governor of thecolony, sent to the Chersonesus in that capacity the brother of thedeceased, a namesake of the first founder, whose father, Cimon, fromjealousy of his power or repute, had been murdered by the sons ofPisistratus [245]. The new Miltiades was a man of consummate talents, but one who scrupled little as to the means by which to accomplish hisobjects. Arriving at his government, he affected a deep sorrow forthe loss of his brother; the principal nobles of the various cities ofthe Chersonesus came in one public procession to condole with him; thecrafty chief seized and loaded them with irons, and, having thusinsnared the possible rivals of his power, or enemies of his designs, he secured the undisputed possession of the whole Chersonesus, andmaintained his civil authority by a constant military force. Amarriage with Hegesipyle, a daughter of one of the Thracian princes, at once enhanced the dignity and confirmed the sway of the young andaspiring chief. Some years afterward, we shall see in this Miltiadesthe most eminent warrior of his age--at present we leave him to anunquiet and perilous power, and return to Hippias. 

IV. A storm gathered rapidly on against the security and ambition ofthe tyrant. The highborn and haughty family of the Alcmaeonids hadbeen expelled from Athens at the victorious return of Pisistratus--their estates in Attica confiscated--their houses razed--their verysepulchres destroyed. After fruitless attempts against theoppressors, they had retired to Lipsydrium, a fortress on the heightsof Parnes, where they continued to cherish the hope of return and thedesire of revenge. Despite the confiscation of their Attic estates, their wealth and resources, elsewhere secured, were enormous. Thetemple of Delphi having been destroyed by fire, they agreed with theAmphictyons to rebuild it, and performed the holy task with amagnificent splendour far exceeding the conditions of the contract. But in that religious land, wealth, thus lavished, was no unprofitableinvestment. The priests of Delphi were not insensible of theliberality of the exiles, and Clisthenes, the most eminent and able ofthe Alcmaeonidae, was more than suspected of suborning the Pythian. Sparta, the supporter of oligarchies, was the foe of tyrants, andevery Spartan who sought the oracle was solemnly involved to aid theglorious enterprise of delivering the Eupatrids of Athens from theyoke of the Pisistratidae. 

The Spartans were at length moved by instances so repeatedly urged. Policy could not but soften that jealous state to such appeals to hersuperstition. Under the genius of the Pisistratidae, Athens hadrapidly advanced in power, and the restoration of the Alcmaeonidaemight have seemed to the Spartan sagacity but another term for theestablishment of that former oligarchy which had repressed theintellect and exhausted the resources of an active and aspiringpeople. Sparta aroused herself, then, at length, and "though inviolation. " says Herodotus, "of some ancient ties of hospitality, "despatched a force by sea against the Prince of Athens. That alertand able ruler lost no time in seeking assistance from his allies, theThessalians; and one of their powerful princes led a thousand horsemenagainst the Spartans, who had debarked at Phalerum. Joined by theseallies, Hippias engaged and routed the enemy, and the Spartan leaderhimself fell upon the field of battle. His tomb was long visible inCynosarges, near the gates of Athens--a place rendered afterward moreillustrious by giving name to the Cynic philosophers. [246]

Undismayed by their defeat, the Spartans now despatched a moreconsiderable force against the tyrant, under command of their kingCleomenes. This army proceeded by land--entered Attica--encountered, defeated, the Thessalian horse [247], --and marched towards the gatesof Athens, joined, as they proceeded, by all those Athenians whohoped, in the downfall of Hippias, the resurrection of theirliberties. The Spartan troops hastened to besiege the Athenian princein the citadel, to which he retired with his forces. But Hippias hadprovided his refuge with all the necessaries which might maintain himin a stubborn and prolonged resistance. The Spartans were unpreparedfor the siege--the blockade of a few days sufficed to dishearten them, and they already meditated a retreat. A sudden incident opening to usin the midst of violence one of those beautiful glimpses of humanaffection which so often adorn and sanctify the darker pages ofhistory, unexpectedly secured the Spartan triumph. Hippias and hisfriends, fearing the safety of their children in the citadel, resolvedto dismiss them privately to some place of greater security. Unhappily, their care was frustrated, and the children fell into thehands of the enemy. All the means of success within their reach (thefoe wearied--the garrison faithful), the parents yet resignedthemselves at once to the voluntary sacrifice of conquest andambition. 

Upon the sole condition of recovering their children, Hippias and hispartisans consented to surrender the citadel, and quit the territoriesof Attica within five days. Thus, in the fourth year from the deathof Hipparchus (B. C. 510), and about fifty years after the firstestablishment of the tyranny under its brilliant founder, the dominionof Athens passed away from the house of Pisistratus. 

V. The party of Hippias, defeated, not by the swords of the enemy, but by the soft impulses of nature, took their way across the streamof the immemorial Scamander, and sought refuge at Sigeum, still underthe government of Hegesistratus, the natural brother of the exiledprince. 

The instant the pressure of one supreme power was removed, the twoparties imbodying the aristocratic and popular principles rose intoactive life. The state was to be a republic, but of whatdenomination? The nobles naturally aspired to the predominance--attheir head was the Eupatrid Isagoras; the strife of party always tendsto produce popular results, even from elements apparently the mosthostile. Clisthenes, the head of the Alcmaeonidae, was by birth evenyet more illustrious than Isagoras; for, among the nobles, theAlcmaeonid family stood pre-eminent. But, unable to attain the solepower of the government, Clisthenes and his party were unwilling toyield to the more numerous faction of an equal. The exile andsufferings of the Alcmaeonids had, no doubt, secured to them much ofthe popular compassion; their gallant struggles against, theirultimate victory over the usurper, obtained the popular enthusiasm;thus it is probable, that an almost insensible sympathy had sprung upbetween this high-born faction and the people at large; and when, unable to cope with the party of the nobles, Clisthenes attachedhimself to the movement of the commons, the enemy of the tyrantappeared in his natural position--at the head of the democracy. Clisthenes was, however, rather the statesman of a party than thelegislator for a people--it was his object permanently to break up thepower of the great proprietors, not as enemies of the commonwealth, but as rivals to his faction. The surest way to diminish theinfluence of property in elections is so to alter the constituenciesas to remove the electors from the immediate control of individualproprietors. Under the old Ionic and hereditary divisions of fourtribes, many ancient associations and ties between the poorer and thenobler classes were necessarily formed. By one bold innovation, thewhole importance of which was not immediately apparent, Clisthenesabolished these venerable divisions, and, by a new geographicalsurvey, created ten tribes instead of the former four. These wereagain subdivided into districts, or demes; the number seems to havevaried, but at the earliest period they were not less than onehundred--at a later period they exceeded one hundred and seventy. Tothese demes were transferred all the political rights and privilegesof the divisions they supplanted. Each had a local magistrate andlocal assemblies. Like corporations, these petty courts oflegislature ripened the moral spirit of democracy while fitting menfor the exercise of the larger rights they demanded. A consequence ofthe alteration of the number of the tribes was an increase in thenumber that composed the senate, which now rose from four to fivehundred members. 

Clisthenes did not limit himself to this change in the constituentbodies--he increased the total number of the constituents; newcitizens were made--aliens were admitted--and it is supposed by some, though upon rather vague authorities, that several slaves wereenfranchised. It was not enough, however, to augment the number ofthe people, it was equally necessary to prevent the ascension of asingle man. Encouraged by the example in other states of Greece, forewarned by the tyranny of Pisistratus, Clisthenes introduced theinstitution of the Ostracism [248]. Probably about the same period, the mode of election to public office generally was altered from thepublic vote to the secret lot [249]. It is evident that thesechanges, whether salutary or pernicious, were not wanton or uncalledfor. The previous constitution had not sufficed to protect therepublic from a tyranny: something deficient in the machinery ofSolon's legislation had for half a century frustrated its practicalintentions. A change was, therefore, necessary to the existence ofthe free state; and the care with which that change was directedtowards the diminution of the aristocratic influence, is in itself aproof that such influence had been the shelter of the defeatedtyranny. The Athenians themselves always considered the innovationsof Clisthenes but as the natural development of the popularinstitutions of Solon; and that decisive and energetic noble seemsindeed to have been one of those rude but serviceable instruments bywhich a more practical and perfect action is often wrought out fromthe incompleted theories of greater statesmen. 

VI. Meanwhile, Isagoras, thus defeated by his rival, had the meanambition to appeal to the Spartan sword. Ancient scandal attributesto Cleomenes, king of Sparta, an improper connexion with the wife ofIsagoras, and every one knows that the fondest friend of the cuckoldis invariably the adulterer;--the national policy of foundingaristocracies was doubtless, however, a graver motive with the Spartanking than his desire to assist Isagoras. Cleomenes by a public heraldproclaimed the expulsion of Clisthenes, upon a frivolous pretence thatthe Alcmaeonidae were still polluted by the hereditary sacrilege ofCylon. Clisthenes privately retired from the city, and the Spartanking, at the head of an inconsiderable troop, re-entered Athens--expelled, at the instance of Isagoras, seven hundred Athenianfamilies, as inculpated in the pretended pollution of Clisthenes--dissolved the senate--and committed all the offices of the state to anoligarchy of three hundred (a number and a council founded upon theDorian habits), each of whom was the creature of Isagoras. But thenoble assembly he had thus violently dissolved refused obedience tohis commands; they appealed to the people, whom the valour of libertysimultaneously aroused, and the citadel, of which Isagoras and theSpartans instantly possessed themselves, was besieged by the wholepower of Athens. The conspirators held out only two days; on thethird, they accepted the conditions of the besiegers, and departedpeaceably from the city. Some of the Athenians, who had shared thetreason without participating in the flight, were justly executed. Clisthenes, with the families expelled by Cleomenes, was recalled, andthe republic of Athens was thus happily re-established. 

VII. But the iron vengeance of that nation of soldiers, thus farsuccessfully braved, was not to be foreboded without alarm by theAthenians. They felt that Cleomenes had only abandoned his designs toreturn to them more prepared for contest; and Athens was not yet in acondition to brave the determined and never-sparing energies ofSparta. The Athenians looked around the states of Greece--many inalliance with Lacedaemon--some governed by tyrants--others distractedwith their own civil dissensions; there were none from whom the newcommonwealth could hope for a sufficient assistance against therevenge of Cleomenes. In this dilemma, they resorted to the only aidwhich suggested itself, and sought, across the boundaries of Greece, the alliance of the barbarians. They adventured a formal embassy toArtaphernes, satrap of Sardis, to engage the succour of Darius, kingof Persia. 

Accompanying the Athenians in this mission, full of interest, for itwas the first public transaction between that republic and the throneof Persia, I pause to take a rapid survey of the origin of that mightyempire, whose destinies became thenceforth involved in the history ofGrecian misfortunes and Grecian fame. That survey commences with thefoundation of the Lydian monarchy. 

VIII. Amid the Grecian colonies of Asia whose rise we havecommemorated, around and above a hill commanding spacious and fertileplains watered by the streams of the Cayster and Maeander; an ancientPelasgic tribe called the Maeonians had established their abode. According to Herodotus, these settlers early obtained the name ofLydians, from Lydus, the son of Atys. The Dorian revolution did notspare these delightful seats, and an Heraclid dynasty is said to havereigned five hundred years over the Maeonians; these in their turnwere supplanted by a race known to us as the Mermnadae, the founder ofwhom, Gyges, murdered and dethroned the last of the Heraclidae; andwith a new dynasty seems to have commenced a new and less Asiaticpolicy. Gyges, supported by the oracle of Delphi, was the firstbarbarian, except one of the many Phrygian kings claiming the name ofMidas, who made votive offerings to that Grecian shrine. From histime this motley tribe, the link between Hellas and the East, cameinto frequent collision with the Grecian colonies. Gyges himself madewar with Miletus and Smyrna, and even captured Colophon. WithMiletus, indeed, the hostility of the Lydians became hereditary, andwas renewed with various success by the descendants of Gyges, until, in the time of his great-grandson Alyattes, a war of twelve years withthat splendid colony was terminated by a solemn peace and a strictalliance. Meanwhile, the petty but warlike monarchy founded by Gygeshad preserved the Asiatic Greeks from dangers yet more formidable thanits own ambition. From a remote period, savage and ferocious tribes, among which are pre-eminent the Treres and Cimmerians, had oftenravaged the inland plains--now for plunder, now for settlement. Magnesia had been entirely destroyed by the Treres--even Sardis, thecapital of the Mermnadae, had been taken, save the citadel, by theCimmerians. It was reserved for Alyattes to terminate theseformidable irruptions, and Asia was finally delivered by his arms froma people in whom modern erudition has too fondly traced the ancestorsof the Cymry, or ancient Britons [250]. To this enterprising and ableking succeeded a yet more illustrious monarch, who ought to have foundin his genius the fame he has derived from his misfortunes. At theage of thirty-five Croesus ascended the Lydian throne. Beforeassociated in the government with his father, he had rendered himselfdistinguished in military service; and, wise, accomplished, butgrasping and ambitious, this remarkable monarch now completed thedesigns of his predecessors. Commencing with Ephesus, he succeeded inrendering tributary every Grecian colony on the western coast of Asia;and, leaving to each state its previous institutions, he kept bymoderation what he obtained by force. 

Croesus was about to construct a fleet for the purpose of adding tohis dominions the isles of the Aegaean, but is said to have beendissuaded from his purpose by a profound witticism of one of the sevenwise men of Greece. "The islanders, " said the sage, "are about tostorm you in your capital of Sardis, with ten thousand cavalry. "--"Nothing could gratify me more, " said the king, "than to see theislanders invading the Lydian continent with horsemen. "--"Right, "replied the wise man, "and it will give the islanders equalsatisfaction to find the Lydians attacking them by a fleet. Torevenge their disasters on the land, the Greeks desire nothing betterthan to meet you on the ocean. " The answer enlightened the king, and, instead of fitting out his fleet, he entered into amicable alliancewith the Ionians of the isles [251]. But his ambition was onlythwarted in one direction to strike its roots in another; and heturned his invading arms against his neighbours on the continent, until he had progressively subdued nearly all the nations, save theLycians and Cilicians, westward to the Halys. And thus rapidly andmajestically rose from the scanty tribe and limited territory of theold Maeonians the monarchy of Asia Minor. 

IX. The renown of Croesus established, his capital of Sardis becamethe resort of the wise and the adventurous, whether of Asia or ofGreece. In many respects the Lydians so closely resembled the Greeksas to suggest the affinity which historical evidence scarcely sufficesto permit us absolutely to affirm. The manners and the customs ofeither people did not greatly differ, save that with the Lydians, asstill throughout the East, but little consideration was attached towomen;--they were alike in their cultivation of the arts, and theirrespect for the oracles of religion--and Delphi, in especial, wasinordinately enriched by the prodigal superstition of the Lydiankings. 

The tradition which ascribes to the Lydians the invention of coinedmoney is a proof of their commercial habits. The neighbouring Tmolusteemed with gold, which the waters of the Pactolus bore into the verystreets of the city. Their industry was exercised in the manufactureof articles of luxury rather than those of necessity. Their purplegarments. -their skill in the workmanship of metals--their marts forslaves and eunuchs--their export trade of unwrought gold--aresufficient evidence both of the extent and the character of theircivilization. Yet the nature of the oriental government did not failto operate injuriously on the more homely and useful directions oftheir energy. They appear never to have worked the gold-mines, whoseparticles were borne to them by the careless bounty of the Pactolus. Their early traditional colonies were wafted on Grecian vessels. Thegorgeous presents with which they enriched the Hellenic temples seemto have been fabricated by Grecian art, and even the advantages ofcommerce they seem rather to have suffered than to have sought. Butwhat a people so suddenly risen into splendour, governed by a wiseprince, and stimulated perhaps to eventual liberty by the example ofthe European Greeks, ought to have become, it is impossible toconjecture; perhaps the Hellenes of the East. 

At this period, however, of such power--and such promise, the fall ofthe Lydian empire was decreed. Far from the fertile fields andgorgeous capital of Lydia, amid steril mountains, inhabited by asimple and hardy race, rose the portentous star of the Persian Cyrus. 

X. A victim to that luxury which confirms a free but destroys adespotic state, the vast foundations of the Assyrian empire werecrumbling into decay, when a new monarchy, destined to become itssuccessor, sprung up among one of its subject nations. Divided intovarious tribes, each dependant upon the Assyrian sceptre, was awarlike, wandering, and primitive race, known to us under the name ofMedes. Deioces, a chief of one of the tribes, succeeded in unitingthese scattered sections into a single people, built a city, andfounded an independent throne. His son, Phraortes, reduced thePersians to his yoke--overran Asia--advanced to Nineveh--andultimately perished in battle with a considerable portion of his army. Succeeded by his son Cyaxares, that monarch consummated the ambitiousdesigns of his predecessors. He organized the miscellaneous hordesthat compose an oriental army into efficient and formidablediscipline, vanquished the Assyrians, and besieged Nineveh, when amighty irruption of the Scythian hordes called his attention homeward. A defeat, which at one blow robbed this great king of the dominion ofAsia, was ultimately recovered by a treacherous massacre of theScythian leaders (B. C. 606). The Medes regained their power andprosecuted their conquests--Nineveh fell--and through the wholeAssyrian realm, Babylon alone remained unsubjugated by the Mede. Tothis new-built and wide-spread empire succeeded Astyages, son of thefortunate Cyaxares. But it is the usual character of a conqueringtribe to adopt the habits and be corrupted by the vices of the subduednations among which the invaders settle; and the peaceful reign ofAstyages sufficed to enervate that vigilant and warlike spirit in thevictor race, by which alone the vast empires of the East can bepreserved from their natural tendency to decay. The Persians, subduedby the grandsire of Astyages, seized the occasion to revolt. Amongthem rose up a native hero, the Gengis-khan of the ancient world. Through the fables which obscure his history we may be allowed toconjecture, that Cyrus, or Khosroo, was perhaps connected by bloodwith Astyages, and, more probably, that he was intrusted with commandamong the Persians by that weak and slothful monarch. Be that as itmay, he succeeded in uniting under his banners a martial anduncorrupted population, overthrew the Median monarchy, and transferredto a dynasty, already worn out with premature old age, the vigorousand aspiring youth of a mountain race. Such was the formidable foethat now menaced the rising glories of the Lydian king. 

XI. Croesus was allied by blood with the dethroned Astyages, andindividual resentment at the overthrow of his relation co-operatedwith his anxious fears of the ambition of the victor. A lesssagacious prince might easily have foreseen that the Persians wouldscarcely be secure in their new possessions, ere the wealth anddomains of Lydia would tempt the restless cupidity of their chief. After much deliberation as to the course to be pursued, Croesusresorted for advice to the most celebrated oracles of Greece, and evento that of the Libyan Ammon. The answer he received from Delphiflattered, more fatally than the rest, the inclinations of the king. He was informed "that if he prosecuted a war with Persia a mightyempire would be overthrown, and he was advised to seek the alliance ofthe most powerful states of Greece. " Overjoyed with a response towhich his hopes gave but one interpretation, the king prodigalizedfresh presents on the Delphians, and received from them in return, forhis people and himself, the honour of priority above all other nationsin consulting the oracle, a distinguished seat in the temple, and theright of the citizenship of Delphi. Once more the fated monarchsought the oracle, and demanded if his power should ever fail. Thusreplied the Pythian: "When a mule shall sit enthroned over the Medes, fly, soft Lydian, across the pebbly waters of the Hermus. " Theingenuity of Croesus could discover in this reply no reason for alarm, confident that a mule could never be the sovereign of the Medes. Thusanimated, and led on, the son of Alyattes prepared to oppose, while itwas yet time, the progress of the Persian arms. He collected all theforce he could summon from his provinces--crossed the Halys--enteredCappadocia--devastated the surrounding country--destroyed severaltowns--and finally met on the plains of Pteria the Persian army. Thevictory was undecided; but Croesus, not satisfied with the force heled, which was inferior to that of Cyrus, returned to Sardis, despatched envoys for succour into Egypt and to Babylon, anddisbanded, for the present, the disciplined mercenaries whom he hadconducted into Cappadocia. But Cyrus was aware of the movements ofthe enemy, and by forced and rapid marches arrived at Sardis, andencamped before its walls. His army dismissed--his allies scarcelyreached by his embassadors--Croesus yet showed himself equal to theperil of his fortune. His Lydians were among the most valiant of theAsiatic nations--dexterous in their national weapon, the spear, andrenowned for the skill and prowess of their cavalry. 

XII. In a wide plain, in the very neighbourhood of the royal Sardis, and watered "by the pebbly stream of the Hermus, " the cavalry of Lydiamet, and were routed by the force of Cyrus. The city was besieged andtaken, and the wisest and wealthiest of the Eastern kings sunkthenceforth into a petty vassal, consigned as guest or prisoner to aMedian city near Ecbatana [252]. The prophecy was fulfilled, and amighty empire overthrown. [253]

The Grecian colonies of Asia, during the Lydian war, had resisted theovertures of Cyrus, and continued faithful to Croesus; they had nowcause to dread the vengeance of the conqueror. The Ionians andAeolians sent to demand the assistance of Lacedaemon, pledged equallywith themselves to the Lydian cause. But the Spartans, yet morecautious than courageous, saw but little profit in so unequal analliance. They peremptorily refused the offer of the colonists, but, after their departure, warily sent a vessel of fifty oars to watch theproceedings of Cyrus, and finally deputed Latrines, a Spartan ofdistinction, to inform the monarch of the Persian, Median, and Lydianempires, that any injury to the Grecian cities would be resented bythe Spartans. Cyrus asked with polite astonishment of the Greeksabout him, "Who these Spartans were?" and having ascertained as muchas he could comprehend concerning their military force and theirsocial habits, replied, "That men who had a large space in the middleof their city for the purpose of cheating one another, could not be tohim an object of terror:" so little respect had the hardy warrior forthe decent frauds of oratory and of trade. Meanwhile, he obliginglyadded, "that if he continued in health, their concern for the Ioniantroubles might possibly be merged in the greatness of their own. "Soon afterward Cyrus swept onwards in the prosecution of his vastdesigns, overrunning Assyria, and rushing through the channels ofEuphrates into the palaces of Babylon, and the halls of the scripturalBelshazzar. His son, Cambyses, added the mystic Egypt to the vastconquests of Cyrus--and a stranger to the blood of the great victor, by means of superstitious accident or political intrigue, ascended thethrone of Asia, known to European history under the name of Darius. The generals of Cyrus had reduced to the Persian yoke the Ioniancolonies; the Isle of Samos (the first of the isles subjected) wasafterward conquered by a satrap of Sardis, and Darius, who, impelledby the ambition of his predecessors, had led with no similar success avast armament against the wandering Scythians, added, on his return, Lesbos, Chios, and other isles in the Aegaean, to the new monarchy ofthe world. As, in the often analogous history of Italian republics, we find in every incursion of the German emperor that some craftynoble of a free state joined the banner of a Frederick or a Henry inthe hope of receiving from the imperial favour the tyranny of his owncity--so there had not been wanting in the Grecian colonies men ofboldness and ambition, who flocked to the Persian standard, and, ingratitude for their services against the Scythian, were rewarded withthe supreme government of their native cities. Thus was raised Coes, a private citizen, to the tyranny of Mitylene--and thus Histiaeus, already possessing, was confirmed by Darius in, that of Miletus. Meanwhile Megabazus, a general of the Persian monarch, at the head ofan army of eighty thousand men, subdued Thrace, and made Macedoniatributary to the Persian throne. Having now established, as he deemedsecurely, the affairs of the empire in Asia Minor, Darius placed hisbrother Artaphernes in the powerful satrapy of Sardis, and returned tohis capital of Susa. 

XIII. To this satrap, brother of that mighty monarch, came theambassadors of Athens. Let us cast our eyes along the map of theancient world--and survey the vast circumference of the Persian realm, stretching almost over the civilized globe. To the east no boundarywas visible before the Indus. To the north the empire extended to theCaspian and the Euxine seas, with that steep Caucasian range, neverpassed even by the most daring of the early Asiatic conquerors. Eastward of the Caspian, the rivers of Oxus and Iaxartes divided thesubjects of the great king from the ravages of the Tartar; the Arabianpeninsula interposed its burning sands, a barrier to the south--whilethe western territories of the empire, including Syria, Phoenicia, thefertile satrapies of Asia Minor, were washed by the Mediterraneanseas. Suddenly turning from this immense empire, let us nextendeavour to discover those dominions from which the Athenianambassadors were deputed: far down in a remote corner of the earth weperceive at last the scarce visible nook of Attica, with its capitalof Athens--a domain that in its extremest length measured sixtygeographical miles! We may now judge of the condescending wonder withwhich the brother of Darius listened to the ambassadors of a people, by whose glory alone his name is transmitted to posterity. Yet wasthere nothing unnatural or unduly arrogant in his reply. "SendDarius, " said the satrap, affably, "earth and water (the accustomedsymbols of homage), and he will accept your alliance. " The ambassadorsdeliberated, and, impressed by the might of Persia, and the sense oftheir own unfriended condition, they accepted the proposals. 

If, fresh from our survey of the immeasurable disparity of powerbetween the two states, we cannot but allow the answer of the satrapwas such as might be expected, it is not without a thrill of sympathyand admiration we learn, that no sooner had the ambassadors returnedto Athens, than they received from the handful of its citizens asevere reprimand for their submission. Indignant at the proposal ofthe satrap, that brave people recurred no more to the thought of thealliance. In haughty patience, unassisted and alone, they awaited theburst of the tempest which they foresaw. 

XIV. Meanwhile, Cleomenes, chafed at the failure of his attempt onthe Athenian liberties, and conceiving, in the true spirit ofinjustice, that he had been rather the aggrieved than the aggressor, levied forces in different parts of the Peloponnesus, but withoutdivulging the object he had in view [254]. That object was twofold--vengeance upon Athens, and the restoration of Isagoras. At length hethrew off the mask, and at the head of a considerable force seizedupon the holy city of Eleusis. Simultaneously, and in concert withthe Spartan, the Boeotians forcibly took possession of Oenoe andHysix--two towns on the extremity of Attica while from Chalcis (theprincipal city of the Isle of Euboea which fronted the Attic coast) aformidable band ravaged the Athenian territories. Threatened by thisthreefold invasion, the measures of the Athenians were prompt andvigorous. They left for the present unavenged the incursions of theBoeotians and Chalcidians, and marched with all the force they couldcollect against Cleomenes at Eleusis. The two armies were preparedfor battle, when a sudden revolution in the Spartan camp delivered theAthenians from the most powerful of their foes. The Corinthians, insnared by Cleomenes into measures, of the object of which they hadfirst been ignorant, abruptly retired from the field. Immediatelyafterward a dissension broke out between Cleomenes and Demaratus, theother king of Sparta, who had hitherto supported his colleague in allhis designs, and Demaratus hastily quitted Eleusis, and returned toLacedaemon. At this disunion between the kings of Sparta, accompanied, as it was, by the secession of the Corinthians, the otherconfederates broke up the camp, returned home, and left Cleomenes withso scanty a force that he was compelled to forego his resentment andhis vengeance, and retreat from the sacred city. The Athenians nowturned their arms against the Chalcidians, who had retired to Euboea;but, encountering the Boeotians, who were on their march to assisttheir island ally, they engaged and defeated them with a considerableslaughter. Flushed by their victory, the Athenians rested not upontheir arms--on the same day they crossed that narrow strait whichdivided them from Euboea, and obtained a second and equally signalvictory over the Chalcidians. There they confirmed their conquest bythe establishment of four thousand colonists [255] in the fertilemeadows of Euboea, which had been dedicated by the islanders to thepasturage of their horses. The Athenians returned in triumph to theircity. At the price of two minae each, their numerous prisoners wereransomed, and the captive chains suspended from the walls of thecitadel. A tenth part of the general ransom was consecrated, andapplied to the purchase of a brazen chariot, placed in the entrance ofthe citadel, with an inscription which dedicated it to the tutelarygoddess of Athens. 

"Not from the example of the Athenians only, " proceeds the father ofhistory, "but from universal experience, do we learn that an equalform of government is the best. While in subjection to tyrants theAthenians excelled in war none of their neighbours--delivered from theoppressor, they excelled them all; an evident proof that, controlledby one man they exerted themselves feebly, because exertion was for amaster; regaining liberty, each man was made zealous, because his zealwas for himself, and his individual interest was the common weal. "[256] Venerable praise and accurate distinction! [257]

XV. The Boeotians, resentful of their defeat, sent to the Pythianoracle to demand the best means of obtaining revenge. The Pythianrecommended an alliance with their nearest neighbours. The Boeotians, who, although the inspiring Helicon hallowed their domain, wereesteemed but a dull and obtuse race, interpreted this response infavour of the people of the rocky island of Aegina--certainly nottheir nearest neighbours, if the question were to be settled bygeographers. The wealthy inhabitants of that illustrious isle, which, rising above that part of the Aegean called Sinus Saronicus, we mayyet behold in a clear sky from the heights of Phyle, --had longentertained a hatred against the Athenians. They willingly embracedthe proffered alliance of the Boeotians, and the two states ravaged inconcert the coast of Attica. While the Athenians were preparing toavenge the aggression, they received a warning from the Delphicoracle, enjoining them to refrain from all hostilities with the peopleof Aegina for thirty years, at the termination of which period theywere to erect a fane to Aeacus (the son of Jupiter, from whom, according to tradition, the island had received its name), and thenthey might commence war with success. The Athenians, on hearing theresponse, forestalled the time specified by the oracle by erecting atonce a temple to Aeacus in their forum. After-circumstances did notallow them to delay to the end of thirty years the prosecution of thewar. Meanwhile the unsleeping wrath of their old enemy, Cleomenes, demanded their full attention. In the character of that fierce andrestless Spartan, we recognise from the commencement of his career thetaint of that insanity to which he subsequently fell a victim [258]. In his earlier life, in a war with the Argives, he had burnt fivethousand fugitives by setting fire to the grove whither they had fled--an act of flagrant impiety, no less than of ferocious cruelty, according to the tender superstition of the Greeks. During hisoccupation of Eleusis, he wantonly violated the mysterious sanctuaryof Orgas--the place above all others most consecrated to theEleusinian gods. His actions and enterprises were invariablyinconsistent and vague. He enters Athens to restore her liberties--joins with Isagoras to destroy them; engages in an attempt torevolutionize that energetic state without any adequate preparation--seizes the citadel to-day to quit it disgracefully to-morrow; invadesEleusis with an army he cannot keep together, and, in the ludicrouscunning common to the insane, disguises from his allies the very enemyagainst whom they are to fight, in order, as common sense might haveexpected, to be deserted by them in the instant of battle. And now, prosecuting still further the contradictory tenour of his conduct, hewho had driven Hippias from Athens persuades the Spartan assembly torestore the very tyrant the Spartan arms had expelled. In order tostimulate the fears of his countrymen, Cleomenes [259] asserted, thathe had discovered in the Athenian citadel certain oracularpredictions, till then unknown, foreboding to the Spartans many darkand strange calamities from the hands of the Athenians [260]. Theastute people whom the king addressed were more moved by politicalinterests than religious warnings. They observed, that when oppressedby tyranny, the Athenians had been weak and servile, but, if admittedto the advantages of liberty, would soon grow to a power equal totheir own [261]: and in the restoration of a tyrant, their sagacityforeboded the depression of a rival. 

XVI. Hippias, who had hitherto resided with his half-brother atSigeum, was invited to Lacedaemon. He arrived--the Spartans assembledthe ambassadors of their various tribes--and in full council thusspoke the policy of Sparta. 

"Friends and allies, we acknowledge that we have erred; misled bydeceiving oracles, we have banished from Athens men united to us byancient hospitality. We restored a republican government to anungrateful people, who, forgetful that to us they owed their liberty, expelled from among them our subjects and our king. Every day theyexhibit a fiercer spirit--proofs of which have been alreadyexperienced by the Boeotians, the Chalcidians, and may speedily extendto others, unless they take in time wise and salutary precautions. Wehave erred--we are prepared to atone for our fault, and to aid you inthe chastisement of the Athenians. With this intention we havesummoned Hippias and yourselves, that by common counsel and unitedarms we may restore to the son of Pisistratus the dominion and thedignity of which we have deprived him. "

The sentiments of the Spartans received but little favour in theassembly. After a dead and chilling silence, up rose Sosicles, theambassador for Corinth, whose noble reply reveals to us the true causeof the secession of the Corinthians at Eleusis. 

"We may expect, " said he, with indignant eloquence, "to see the earthtake the place of heaven, since you, oh Spartans, meditate thesubversion of equal laws and the restoration of tyrannicalgovernments--a design than which nothing can be more unjust, nothingmore wicked. If you think it well that states should be governed bytyrants, Spartans, before you establish tyranny for others, establishit among yourselves! You act unworthily with your allies. You, whoso carefully guard against the intrusion of tyranny in Sparta--had youknown it as we have done, you would be better sensible of thecalamities it entails: listen to some of its effects. " (Here theambassador related at length the cruelties of Periander, the tyrant ofCorinth. ) "Such, " said he, in conclusion, "such is a tyrannicalgovernment--such its effects. Great was our marvel when we learnedthat it was you, oh Spartans, who had sent for Hippias, --at yoursentiments we marvel more. Oh! by the gods, the celestial guardiansof Greece, we adjure you not to build up tyrannies in our cities. Ifyou persevere in your purpose--if, against all justice, you attemptthe restoration of Hippias, know, at least, that the Corinthians willnever sanction your designs. "

It was in vain that Hippias, despite his own ability, despite theapproval of the Spartans, endeavoured to counteract the impression ofthis stern harangue, --in vain he relied on the declarations of theoracles, --in vain appealed to the jealousy of the Corinthians, andassured them of the ambition of Athens. The confederates with oneaccord sympathized with the sentiments of Sosicles, and adjured theSpartans to sanction no innovations prejudicial to the liberties of asingle city of Greece. 

XVII. The failure of propositions so openly made is a fresh proof ofthe rash and unthinking character of Cleomenes--eager as usual forall designs, and prepared for none. The Spartans abandoned theirdesign, and Hippias, discomfited but not dispirited, quitted theLacedaemonian capital. Some of the chiefs of Thessaly, as well as theprince of Macedon, offered him an honourable retreat in theirdominions. But it was not an asylum, it was an ally, that theunyielding ambition of Hippias desired to secure. He regained Sigeum, and thence, departing to Sardis, sought the assistance of the satrap, Artaphernes. He who in prosperity was the tyrant, became, inadversity, the traitor of his country; and the son of Pisistratusexerted every effort of his hereditary talent of persuasion to inducethe satrap not so much to restore the usurper as to reduce theAthenian republic to the Persian yoke [262]. The arrival and theintrigues of this formidable guest at the court of Sardis soon reachedthe ears of the vigilant Athenians; they sent to Artaphernes, exhorting him not to place confidence in those whose offences hadbanished them from Athens. "If you wish for peace, " returned thesatrap, "recall Hippias. " Rather than accede to this condition, thatbrave people, in their petty share of the extremity of Greece, choseto be deemed the enemies of the vast monarchy of Persia. [263]

CHAPTER IV. 

Histiaeus, Tyrant of Miletus, removed to Persia. --The Government ofthat City deputed to Aristagoras, who invades Naxos with the aid ofthe Persians. --Ill Success of that Expedition. --Aristagoras resolvesupon Revolting from the Persians. --Repairs to Sparta and to Athens. --The Athenians and Eretrians induced to assist the Ionians. --Burning ofSardis. --The Ionian War. --The Fate of Aristagoras. --Naval Battle ofLade. --Fall of Miletus. --Reduction of Ionia. --Miltiades. --HisCharacter. --Mardonius replaces Artaphernes in the Lydian Satrapy. --Hostilities between Aegina and Athens. --Conduct of Cleomenes. --Demaratus deposed. --Death of Cleomenes. --New Persian Expedition. 

I. We have seen that Darius rewarded with a tributary command theservices of Grecian nobles during his Scythian expedition. The mostremarkable of these deputy tyrants was Histiaeus, the tyrant ofMiletus. Possessed of that dignity prior to his connexion withDarius, he had received from the generosity of the monarch a tract ofland near the river Strymon, in Thrace, sufficing for the erection ofa city called Myrcinus. To his cousin, Aristagoras, he committed thegovernment of Miletus--repaired to his new possession, and employedhimself actively in the foundations of a colony which promised to beone of the most powerful that Miletus had yet established. The siteof the infant city was selected with admirable judgment upon anavigable river, in the vicinity of mines, and holding the key ofcommercial communication between the long chain of Thracian tribes onthe one side, and the trading enterprise of Grecian cities on theother. Histiaeus was describing the walls with which the ancientcities were surrounded, when Megabazus, commander of the forcesintended to consummate the conquest of Thrace, had the sagacity towarn the Persian king, then at Sardis, of the probable effects of theregal donation. "Have you, sire, done wisely, " said he, "inpermitting this able and active Greek to erect a new city in Thrace?Know you not that that favoured land, abounding in mines of silver, possesses, also, every advantage for the construction and equipment ofships; wild Greeks and roving barbarians are mingled there, ripe forenterprise--ready to execute the commands of any resolute and aspiringleader! Fear the possibility of a civil war--prevent the chances ofthe ambition of Histiaeus, --have recourse to artifice rather than toforce, get him in your power, and prevent his return to Greece. "

Darius followed the advice of his general, sent for Histiaeus, loadedhim with compliments, and, pretending that he could not live withouthis counsels, carried him off from his Thracian settlement to thePersian capital of Susa. His kinsman, Aristagoras, continued topreside over the government of Miletus, then the most haughty andflourishing of the Ionian states; but Naxos, beneath it in power, surpassed it in wealth; the fertile soil of that fair isle--itsnumerous population--its convenient site--its abundant resources, attracted the cupidity of Aristagoras; he took advantage of a civilcommotion, in which many of the nobles were banished by the people--received the exiles--and, under the pretence of restoring them, meditated the design of annexing the largest of the Cyclades to thetyranny of Miletus. 

He persuaded the traitorous nobles to suffer him to treat withArtaphernes--successfully represented to that satrap the advantages ofannexing the gem of the Cyclades to the Persian diadem--and Darius, listening to the advice of his delegate, sent two hundred vessels tothe invasion of Naxos (B. C. 501), under the command of his kinsman, Megabates. A quarrel ensued, however, between the Persian general andthe governor of Miletus. Megabates, not powerful enough to crush thetyrant, secretly informed the Naxians of the meditated attack; and, thus prepared for the assault, they so well maintained themselves intheir city, that, after a siege of four months, the pecuniaryresources, not only of Megabates, but of Aristagoras, were exhausted, and the invaders were compelled to retreat from the island. Aristagoras now saw that he had fallen into the pit he had digged forothers: his treasury was drained--he had incurred heavy debts with thePersian government, which condemned him to reimburse the whole expenseof the enterprise--he feared the resentment of Megabates and thedisappointment of Artaphernes--and he foresaw that his ill successmight be a reasonable plea for removing him from the government ofMiletus. While he himself was meditating the desperate expedient of arevolt, a secret messenger from Histiaeus suddenly arrived at Miletus. That wily Greek, disgusted with his magnificent captivity, had hadrecourse to a singular expedient: selecting the most faithful of hisslaves, he shaved his scull, wrote certain characters on the surface, and, when the hair was again grown, dismissed this living letter toAristagoras [264]. The characters commanded the deputy to commence arevolt; for Histiaeus imagined that the quiet of Miletus was thesentence of his exile. 

II. This seasonable advice, so accordant with his own views, charmedAristagoras: he summoned the Milesians, and, to engage their zealousassistance, he divested himself of the tyranny, and established arepublic. It was a mighty epoch that, for the stir of thought!--everywhere had awakened a desire for free government and equal laws;and Aristagoras, desirous of conciliating the rest of Ionia, assistedher various states in the establishment of republican institutions. Coes, the tyrant of Mitylene, perished by the hands of the people; inthe rest of Ionia, the tyrants were punished but by exile. Thus aspark kindled the universal train already prepared in thought, and theselfish ambition of Aristagoras forwarded the march of a revolution infavour of liberty that embraced all the cities of Ionia. ButAristagoras, evidently a man of a profound, though tortuous policy, was desirous of engaging not only the colonies of Greece, but themother country also, in the great and perilous attempt to resist thePersian. High above all the states of the elder Greece soared themilitary fame of Sparta; and that people the scheming Milesianresolved first to persuade to his daring project. 

Trusting to no ambassador, but to his own powers of eloquence, hearrived in person at Sparta. With a brazen chart of the world, asthen known, in his hand, he sought to inspire the ambition ofCleomenes by pointing out the wide domains--the exhaustless treasuresof the Persian realm. He depreciated the valour of its people, ridiculed their weapons, and urged him to the vast design ofestablishing, by Spartan valour, the magnificent conquest of Asia. The Spartans, always cold to the liberty of other states, were no lessindifferent to the glory of barren victories; and when Aristagoras toohonestly replied, in answer to a question of the king, that from theIonian sea to Susa, the Persian capital, was a journey of threemonths, Cleomenes abruptly exclaimed, "Milesian, depart from Spartabefore sunset;--a march of three months from the sea!--the Spartanswill never listen to so frantic a proposal!" Aristagoras, notdefeated, sought a subsequent interview, in which he attempted tobribe the king, who, more accustomed to bribe others than be bribed, broke up the conference, and never afterward would renew it. 

III. The patient and plotting Milesian departed thence to Athens(B. C. 500): he arrived there just at the moment when the Athenianambassadors had returned from Sardis, charged with the haughty replyof Artaphernes to the mission concerning Hippias. The citizens werearoused, excited, inflamed; equally indignant at the insolence, andfearful of the power, of the satrap. It was a favourable occasion forAristagoras!

To the imagination of the reader this passage in history presents astriking picture. We may behold the great assembly of that lively, high-souled, sensitive, and inflammable people. There is the Agora;there the half-built temple to Aeacus;--above, the citadel, where yethang the chains of the captive enemy;--still linger in the ears of thepopulace, already vain of their prowess, and haughty in their freedom, the menace of the Persian--the words that threatened them with therestoration of the exiled tyrant; and at this moment, and in thisconcourse, we see the subtle Milesian, wise in the experience ofmankind, popular with all free states, from having restored freedom tothe colonies of Ionia--every advantage of foreign circumstance andintrinsic ability in his favour, --about to address the breathless andexcited multitude. He rose: he painted, as he had done to Cleomenes, in lively colours, the wealth of Asia, the effeminate habits of itspeople--he described its armies fighting without spear or shield--heinvoked the valour of a nation already successful in war against hardyand heroic foes--he appealed to old hereditary ties; the people ofMiletus had been an Athenian colony--should not the parent protect thechild in the greatest of all blessings--the right to liberty? Now heentreats--now he promises, --the sympathy of the free, the enthusiasmof the brave, are alike aroused. He succeeds: the people accede tohis views. "It is easier, " says the homely Herodotus, "to gain (ordelude) a multitude than an individual; and the eloquence which hadfailed with Cleomenes enlisted thirty thousand Athenians. " [265]

IV. The Athenians agreed to send to the succour of their owncolonists, the Ionians, twenty vessels of war. Melanthius, a man ofamiable character and popular influence, was appointed the chief. This was the true commencement of the great Persian war. 

V. Thus successful, Aristagoras departed from Athens. Arriving atMiletus, he endeavoured yet more to assist his design, by attemptingto arouse a certain colony in Phrygia, formed of Thracian captives[266] taken by Megabazus, the Persian general. A great proportion ofthese colonists seized the occasion to return to their native land--baffled the pursuit of the Persian horse--reached the shore--and weretransported in Ionian vessels to their ancient home on the banks ofthe Strymon. Meanwhile, the Athenian vessels arrived at Miletus, joined by five ships, manned by Eretrians of Euboea, mindful of formerassistance from the Milesians in a war with their fellow-islanders, the Chalcidians, nor conscious, perhaps, of the might of the enemythey provoked. 

Aristagoras remained at Miletus, and delegated to his brother thecommand of the Milesian forces. The Greeks then sailed to Ephesus, debarked at Coressus, in its vicinity, and, under the conduct ofEphesian guides, marched along the winding valley of the Cayster--whose rapid course, under a barbarous name, the traveller yet traces, though the swans of the Grecian poets haunt its waves no more--passedover the auriferous Mount of Tmolus, verdant with the vine, andfragrant with the saffron--and arrived at the gates of the voluptuousSardis. They found Artaphernes unprepared for this sudden invasion--they seized the city (B. C. 499). --the satrap and his troops retreatedto the citadel. 

The houses of Sardis were chiefly built of reeds, and the same slightand inflammable material thatched the roofs even of the few mansionsbuilt of brick. A house was set on fire by a soldier--the flamesspread throughout the city. In the midst of the conflagration despairgave valour to the besieged--the wrath of man was less fearful thanthat of the element; the Lydians, and the Persians who were in thegarrison, rushed into the market-place, through which flowed the riverof Pactolus. There they resolved to encounter the enemy. Theinvaders were seized with a sudden panic, possibly as much occasionedby the rage of the conflagration as the desperation of the foe; and, retiring to Mount Tmolus, took advantage of the night to retrace theirmarch along the valley of the Cayster. 

VI. But the Ionians were not fated to return in safety: from theborders of the river Halys a troop of Persians followed their retreat, and overtaking them when the Ephesian territory was already gained, defeated the Ionians with a great slaughter, amid which fell theleader of the Eretrians. 

The Athenians were naturally disappointed with the result of thisexpedition. Returning home, they refused all the overtures ofAristagoras to renew their incursions into Asia. The gallant Ionianscontinued, however, the hostilities they had commenced against Darius. They sailed to the Hellespont, and reduced Byzantium, with theneighbouring cities. Their forces were joined by the Cyprians, aroused against the Persian yoke by Onesilus, a bold usurper, who haddethroned his brother, the prince of Salamis, in Cyprus; and theconflagration of Sardis dazzling the Carians, hitherto lukewarm, united to the Ionian cause the bulk of that hardy population. Therevolt now assumed a menacing and formidable aspect. Informed ofthese events, Darius summoned Histiaeus: "The man, " said he, "whom youappointed to the government of Miletus has rebelled against me. Assisted by the Ionians, whom I shall unquestionably chastise, he hasburnt Sardis. Had he your approbation? Without it would he havedared such treason? Beware how you offend a second time against myauthority. " Histiaeus artfully vindicated himself from the suspicionsof the king. He attributed the revolt of the Ionians to his ownabsence, declared that if sent into Ionia he would soon restore itsinhabitants to their wonted submission, and even promised to renderthe Island of Sardinia tributary to Persia. 

VII. Deluded by these professions, Darius dismissed the tyrant ofMiletus, requiring only his return on the fulfilment of his promises. Meanwhile, the generals of Darius pressed vigorously on theinsurgents. Against Onesilus, then engaged in reducing Amathus (thesingle city in Cyprus opposed to him), Artybius, a Persian officer, conducted a formidable fleet. The Ionians hastened to the succour oftheir Cyprian ally--a battle ensued both by land and sea: in thelatter the Ionians defeated, after a severe contest, the Phoenicianauxiliaries of Persia--in the former, a treacherous desertion of someof the Cyprian troops gave a victory to the Persian. The braveOnesilus, who had set his fate upon the issue of the field, was amongthe slain. The Persians proceeded to blockade, and ultimately toregain, the Cyprian cities: of these, Soli, which withstood a siege offive months, proffered the most obdurate resistance; with thesurrender of that gallant city, Cyprus once more, after a year ofliberty, was subjected to the dominion of the great king. 

This success was increased by the reduction of several towns on theHellespont, and two signal defeats over the Carians (B. C. 498), inthe last of which, the Milesians, who had joined their ally, suffereda prodigious loss. The Carians, however, were not subdued, and in asubsequent engagement they effected a great slaughter among thePersians, the glory of which was enhanced by the death of Daurises, general of the barbarians, and son-in-law to Darius. But this actionwas not sufficiently decisive to arrest the progress of the Persianarms. Artaphernes, satrap of Sardis, and Otanes, the third general incommand, led their forces into Ionia and Aeolia:--the IonianClazomenae, the Aeolian Cuma, were speedily reduced. 

VIII. The capture of these places, with the general fortunes of thewar, disheartened even the patient and adventurous Aristagoras. Hecould not but believe that all attempts against the crushing power ofDarius were in vain. He assembled the adherents yet faithful to hisarms, and painted to them the necessity of providing a new settlement. Miletus was no longer secure, and the vengeance of Darius wasgathering rapidly around them. After some consultation they agreed torepair to that town and territory in Thrace which had been given byDarius to Histiaeus [267]. Miletus was intrusted to the charge of apopular citizen named Pythagoras, and these hardy and restlessadventurers embarked for Thrace. Aristagoras was fortunate enough toreach in safety the settlement which had seemed so formidable apossession to the Persian general; but his usual scheming and boldambition, not contented with that domain, led him to the attack of atown in its vicinity. The inhabitants agreed to resign it into hishands, and, probably lulled into security by this concession, he wassuddenly, with his whole force, cut off by an incursion of theThracian foe. So perished (B. C. 497) the author of many subsequentand mighty events, and who, the more we regard his craft, his courage, his perseverance, and activity, the vastness of his ends, and theperseverance with which he pursued them, must be regarded by thehistorian as one of the most stirring and remarkable spirits of thatenterprising age. 

IX. The people of Miletus had not, upon light grounds or with feebleminds, embarked in the perilous attempt to recover their liberties. Deep was the sentiment that inspired--solemn and stern the energywhich supported them. The Persian generals now collected in one bodytheir native and auxiliary force. The Cyprians, lately subdued (B. C. 496), were compelled to serve. Egypt and Cilicia swelled thearmament, and the skill of the Phoenicians rendered yet moreformidable a fleet of six hundred vessels. With this power thebarbarians advanced upon Miletus. Most, if not all, of the Ionianstates prepared themselves for the struggle--delegates met at thePanionium--it was agreed to shun the Persians upon land--to leave tothe Milesians the defence of their city--to equip the utmost navalforce they could command--and, assembling in one fleet off the smallisle of Lade, opposite to Miletus, to hazard the battle upon the seas. Three hundred and fifty triremes were provided, and met at theappointed place. The discipline of the navy was not equal to thevalour of the enterprise; Dionysius, commander of the Phocaeans, attempted, perhaps too rigorously, to enforce it;--jealousy anddisgust broke out among the troops--and the Samian leaders, whetherdispleased with their allies, or tempted by the Persians, who, throughthe medium of the exiled tyrants of Greece, serving with them, maintained correspondence with the Ionians, secretly agreed to desertin the midst of the ensuing battle. This compact made, thePhoenicians commenced the attack, and the Ionians, unsuspicious oftreachery, met them with a contracted line. In the beginning of theengagement, the Samians, excepting only eleven ships (whose captainswere afterward rewarded by a public column in their nativemarket-place), fulfilled their pledge, and sailed away to Samos. TheLesbians, stationed next them, followed their example, and confusionand flight became contagious. The Chians alone redeemed the characterof the allies, aided, indeed, by Dionysius the Phocaean, who, aftertaking three of the enemy's ships, refused to retreat till the day wasgone, and then, sailing to Phoenicia, sunk several trading vessels, enriched himself with their spoil, and eventually reaching Sicily, became renowned as a pirate, formidable to the Carthaginian andTyrsenian families of the old Phoenician foe, but holding his Greciancountrymen sacred from his depredations. 

The Persian armament now bent all its vengeance on Miletus; theybesieged it both by land and by sea--every species of military machinethen known was directed against its walls, and, in the sixth yearafter the revolt of Aristagoras, Miletus fell (B. C. 494)--Miletus, the capital of Ionia--the mother of a hundred colonies! Pittacus, Thales, Arctinus, were among the great names she gave to science andto song. Worthy of her renown, she fell amid the ruins of thatfreedom which she showed how nobly she could have continued to adornby proving how sternly she could defend. The greater part of thecitizens were slain--those who remained, with the women and thechildren, were borne into slavery by the victors. Their valour andrenown touched the heart of Darius, and he established the captives ina city by that part of the Erythraean Sea which receives the waters ofthe Barbarian Tigris. Their ancient territories were portioned outbetween the Persians and the Carians of Pedasa. 

X. The Athenians received the news of this fatal siege with thedeepest sorrow, and Herodotus records an anecdote illustrative of thecharacter of that impassioned people, and interesting to the historyof their early letters. Phrynichus, a disciple of Thespis, represented on the stage the capture of Miletus, and the wholeaudience burst into tears. The art of the poet was consideredcriminal in thus forcibly reminding the Athenians of a calamity whichwas deemed their own: he was fined a thousand drachmae, and therepetition of the piece forbidden--a punishment that was but aglorious homage to the genius of the poet and the sensibility of thepeople. 

After innumerable adventures, in which he exhibited considerable butperverted abilities, Histiaeus fell into the hands of Artaphernes, anddied upon the cross. Darius rebuked the zeal of the satrap, andlamented the death of a man, whose situation, perhaps, excused hisartifices. 

And now the cloud swept onward--one after one the Ionian cities werereduced--the islands of Chios, Lesbos, Tenedos, depopulated; and allIonia subjugated and enslaved. The Persian fleet proceeded to subdueall the towns and territories to the left of the Hellespont. At thistime their success in the Chersonesus drove from that troubled isthmusa chief, whose acute and dauntless faculties made him subsequently thescourge of Persia and the deliverer of Greece. 

XI. We have seen Miltiades, nephew to the first of that name, arriveat the Chersonesus--by a stroke of dexterous perfidy, seize thepersons of the neighbouring chieftains--attain the sovereignty of thatpeninsula, and marry the daughter of a Thracian prince. In hischaracter was united, with much of the intellect, all the duplicity ofthe Greek. During the war between Darius and the Scythians, whileaffecting to follow the Persian army, he had held traitorousintercourse with the foe. And proposed to the Grecian chiefs todestroy the bridge of boats across the Danube confided to theircharge; so that, what with the force of the Scythians and the pressureof famine, the army of Darius would have perished among the Scythianwastes, and a mighty enemy have been lost to Greece--a scheme that, but for wickedness, would have been wise. With all his wiles, and allhis dishonesty, Miltiades had the art, not only of rendering authorityfirm, but popular. Driven from his state by the Scythian Nomades, hewas voluntarily recalled by the very subjects over whom he hadestablished an armed sovereignty--a rare occurrence in that era ofrepublics. Surrounded by fierce and restless foes, and exercised inconstant, if petty warfare, Miltiades had acquired as much theexperience of camps as the subtleties of Grecian diplomacy; yet, likemany of the wise of small states, he seems to have been more craftythan rash--the first for flight wherever flight was the better policy--but the first for battle if battle were the more prudent. He had inhim none of the inconsiderate enthusiasm of the hero--none of theblind but noble subservience to honour. Valour seems to have been forhis profound intellect but the summation of chances, and when weafterward find him the most daring soldier, it is only because he wasthe acutest calculator. 

On seeing the Phoenician fleet, raider Persia, arrive off the Isle ofTenedos, which is opposite the Chersonesus, Miltiades resolved not towait the issue of a battle: as before he had fled the Scythian, sonow, without a struggle, he succumbed to the Phoenician sword. Heloaded five vessels with his property--with four he eluded the hostilefleet--the fifth, commanded by his eldest son, was pursued and taken[268]. In triumphant safety the chief of the Chersonesus arrived atAthens. He arrived at that free state to lose the dignity of aThracian prince, and suddenly to be reminded that he was an Atheniancitizen. He was immediately prosecuted for the crime of tyranny. Hisinfluence or his art, admiration of his genius, or compassion of hisreverses, however, procured him an acquittal. We may well supposethat, high-born and wealthy, he lost no occasion of cementing hispopularity in his native state. 

XII. Meanwhile, the Persians suspended for that year all furtherhostilities against the Ionians. Artaphernes endeavoured toconciliate the subdued colonies by useful laws, impartial taxes, andbenign recommendations to order and to peace. The next year, however, that satrap was recalled (B. C. 492), and Mardonius, a very youngnoble, the son-in-law of Darius, was appointed, at the head of aconsiderable naval and military force, to the administration of theaffairs in that part of the Persian empire. Entering Ionia, heexecuted a novel, a daring, but no unstatesman-like stroke of policy. He removed all the Ionian tyrants, and everywhere restored republicanforms of government; deeming, unquestionably, that he is the securestmaster of distant provinces who establishes among them theinstitutions which they best love. Then proceeding to the Hellespont, Mardonius collected his mighty fleets and powerful army, and passedthrough Europe towards the avowed objects of the Persian vengeance--the cities of Eretria and Athens. 

From the time that the Athenians had assisted the forces of Miletusand long in the destruction of Sardis, their offence had rankled inthe bosom of Darius. Like most monarchs, he viewed as more heinousoffenders the foreign abetters of rebellion, than the rebelsthemselves. Religion, no doubt, conspired to augment his indignation. In the conflagration of Sardis the temple of the great Persian deityhad perished, and the inexpiated sacrilege made a duty of revenge. Sokeenly, indeed, did Darius resent the share that the remote Athenianshad taken in the destruction of his Lydian capital, that, on receivingthe intelligence, he is said to have called for his bow, and, shootingan arrow in the air, to have prayed for vengeance against theoffenders; and three times every day, as he sat at table, hisattendants were commanded to repeat to him, "Sir, remember theAthenians. "

XIII. But the design of Mardonius was not only directed against theAthenians and the state of Eretria, it extended also to the rest ofGreece: preparations so vast were not meant to be wasted upon foesapparently insignificant, but rather to consolidate the Persianconquests on the Asiatic coasts, and to impress on the neighbouringcontinent of Europe adequate conceptions of the power of the greatking. By sea, Mardonius subdued the islanders of Thasus, wealthy inits gold-mines; by land he added to the Persian dependances in Thraceand Macedonia. But losses, both by storm and battle, drove him backto Asia, and delayed for a season the deliberate and organizedinvasion of Greece. 

In the following year (B. C. 491), while the tributary citiesMardonius had subdued were employed in constructing vessels of war andtransports for cavalry, ambassadors were despatched by Darius to thevarious states of Greece, demanding the homage of earth and water--apreliminary calculated to ascertain who would resist, who submit to, his power--and certain to afford a pretext, in the one case forempire, in the other for invasion. Many of the cities of thecontinent, and all the islands visited by the ambassadors, had thetimidity to comply with the terms proposed. Sparta and Athens, hitherto at variance, united at once in a haughty and indignantrefusal. To so great a height was the popular rage in either statearoused by the very demand, that the Spartans threw the ambassadorsinto their wells, and the Athenians, into their pit of punishment, bidding them thence get their earth and water; a singular coincidenceof excess in the two states--to be justified by no pretence--to beextenuated only by the reflection, that liberty ever becomes a speciesof noble madness when menaced by foreign danger. [269]

XIV. With the rest of the islanders, the people of Aegina, lessresolute than their near neighbours and ancient foes, the Athenians, acceded to the proposal of tribute. This, more than the pusillanimityof the other states, alarmed and inflamed the Athenians; theysuspected that the aeginetans had formed some hostile alliance againstthem with the Persians, and hastened to accuse them to Sparta ofbetraying the liberties of Greece. Nor was there slight ground forthe suspicions of the Athenians against Aegina. The people of thatisland had hereditary and bitter feuds with the Athenians, datingalmost from their independence of their parent state of Epidaurus;mercantile jealousies were added to ancestral enmity, and the wares ofAthens were forbidden all application to sacred uses in Aegina. Wehave seen the recent occasion on which Attica was invaded by thesehostile neighbours, then allied with Thebes: and at that period thenaval force of gins was such as to exceed the unconscious and untriedresources of the Athenians. The latter had thus cause at once to hateand to dread a rival placed by nature in so immediate a vicinity tothemselves, that the submission of Aegina to the Persian seemed initself sufficient for the destruction of Athens. 

XV. The Athenian ambassadors met with the most favourable receptionat Sparta. The sense of their common danger, and sympathy in theirmutual courage, united at once these rival states; even the rash andhitherto unrelenting Cleomenes eagerly sought a reconciliation withhis former foe. That prince went in person to Aegina, determined toascertain the authors of the suspected treachery;--with thatcharacteristic violence which he never provided the means to support, and which so invariably stamps this unable and headstrong Spartan, asone who would have been a fool, if he had not been a madman--Cleomenesendeavoured to seize the persons of the accused. He was stoutlyresisted, and disgracefully baffled, in this impotent rashness; andhis fellow-king, Demaratus, whom we remember to have suddenly desertedCleomenes at Eleusis, secretly connived with the Aeginetans in theiropposition to his colleague, and furnished them with an excuse, byinsinuating that Cleomenes had been corrupted by the Athenians. ButDemaratus was little aware of the dark and deadly passions whichCleomenes combined with his constitutional insanity. Revenge made agreat component of his character, and the Grecian history records fewinstances of a nature more vehemently vindictive. 

There had been various rumours at Sparta respecting the legitimacy ofDemaratus. Cleomenes entered into a secret intrigue with a kinsman ofhis colleague, named Leotychides, who cherished an equal hatredagainst Demaratus [270]; the conditions between them were, thatCleomenes should assist in raising Leotychides to the throne ofDemaratus, and Leotychides should assist Cleomenes in his vengeanceagainst Aegina. No sooner was this conspiracy agreed upon thanLeotychides propagated everywhere the report that the birth ofDemaratus was spurious. The Spartans attached the greatest value tolegitimacy, --they sent to consult the Pythian--and Cleomenes, throughthe aid of Colon, a powerful citizen of Delphi, bribed the oracle toassert the illegitimacy of his foe. Demaratus was deposed. Sinkingat once into the rank of a private citizen, he was elected to someinferior office. His enemy, Leotychides, now upon his throne, senthim, by way of insult, a message to demand which he preferred--hispast or his present dignity. Demaratus was stung, and answered, thatthe question might fix the date of much weal or much wo to Sparta;saying this, he veiled his head--sought his home--sacrificed toJupiter--and solemnly adjured his mother to enlighten him as to hislegitimacy. The parental answer was far from unequivocal, and thematron appeared desirous of imputing the distinction of his birth tothe shade of an ancient Spartan hero, Astrobachus, rather than to theearthly embrace of her husband. Demaratus heard, and formed hisdecision: he escaped from Sparta, baffled his pursuers, and fled intoAsia, where he was honourably received and largely endowed by thebeneficent Darius. 

XVI. Leotychides, elected to the regal dignity, accompanied Cleomenesto Aegina: the people of that isle yielded to the authority they couldnot effectually resist; and ten of their most affluent citizens weresurrendered as hostages to Athens. But, in the meanwhile, thecollusion of Cleomenes with the oracle was discovered--the priestesswas solemnly deposed--and Cleomenes dreaded the just indignation ofhis countrymen. He fled to Thessaly, and thence passing among theArcadians, he endeavoured to bind that people by the darkest oaths totake arms against his native city--so far could hatred stimulate a manconsistent only in his ruling passion of revenge. But the mightypower of Persia now lowering over Lacedaemon, the Spartan citizensresolved to sacrifice even justice to discretion: it was not a time todistract their forces by new foes, and they invited Cleomenes back toSparta, with the offer of his former station. He returned, but hisviolent career, happily for all, was now closed; his constitutionalmadness, no longer confined to doubtful extravagance, burst forth intoincontrollable excess. He was put under confinement, and obtaining asword from a Helot, who feared to disobey his commands, hedeliberately destroyed himself--not by one wound, but slowly gashingthe flesh from his limbs until he gradually ascended to the nobler andmore mortal parts. This ferocious suicide excited universal horror, and it was generally deemed the divine penalty of his numerous andsacrilegious crimes: the only dispute among the Greeks was, to whichof his black offences the wrath of Heaven was the most justly due. [271]

XVII. No sooner did the news of his suicide reach the Aeginetans thanthose proud and wealthy islanders sought, by an embassy to Sparta, toregain their hostages yet detained at Athens. With the death ofCleomenes, the anger of Sparta against Aegina suddenly ceased--or, rather, we must suppose that a new party, in fellowship with theAeginetan oligarchy, came into power. The Spartans blamed Leotychidesfor his co-operation with Cleomenes; they even offered to give him upto the Aeginetans--and it was finally agreed that he should accompanythe ambassadors of Aegina to Athens, and insist on the surrender ofthe hostages. But the Athenians had now arrived at that spirit ofindependence, when nor the deadly blows of Persia, nor the iron swordof Sparta, nor the treacherous hostilities of their nearest neighbour, could quell their courage or subdue their pride. They disregarded thepresence and the orations of Leotychides, and peremptorily refusedto surrender their hostages. Hostilities between Aegina and Athenswere immediately renewed. The Aeginetans captured (B. C. 494) thesacred vessel then stationed at Sunium, in which several of the mosteminent Athenians were embarked for the festival of Apollo; nor couldthe sanctity of the voyage preserve the captives from the ignominy ofirons. The Athenians resolved upon revenge, and a civil dissension inAegina placed it in their power. An Aeginetan traitor, namedNicodromus, offered them his assistance, and, aided by the popularparty opposed to the oligarchical government, he seized the citadel. With twenty ships from Corinth, and fifty of their own, the Atheniansinvaded Aegina; but, having been delayed in making the adequatepreparations, they arrived a day later than had been stipulated. Nicodromus fled; the oligarchy restored, took signal and barbarousvengeance upon such of their insurgent countrymen as fell into theirhands. Meanwhile, the Athenian fleet obtained a victory at sea, andthe war still continued. 

XVIII. While, seemingly unconscious of greater dangers, Athens thuspractised her rising energies against the little island of Aegina, thrice every day the servants of the Persian king continued toexclaim, "Sir, remember the Athenians!" [272] The traitor, Hippias, constantly about the person of the courteous monarch, never failed tostimulate still further his vengeance by appealing to his ambition. At length, Darius resolved no longer to delay the accomplishment ofhis designs. He recalled Mardonius, whose energy, indeed, had notbeen proportioned to his powers, and appointed two other generals--Datis, a native of the warlike Media, and Artaphernes, his own nephew, son to the former satrap of that name. These were expressly orderedto march at once against Eretria and Athens. And Hippias, now brokenin frame, advanced in age [273], and after an exile of twenty years, accompanied the Persian army--sanguine of success, and grasping, atthe verge of life the shadow of his former sceptre. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Persian Generals enter Europe. --Invasion of Naxos, Carystus, Eretria. --The Athenians Demand the Aid of Sparta. --The Result of theirMission and the Adventure of their Messenger. --The Persians advance toMarathon. --The Plain Described. --Division of Opinion in the AthenianCamp. --The Advice of Miltiades prevails. --The Dream of Hippias. --TheBattle of Marathon. 

I. On the Cilician coast the Persian armament encamped--thence, in afleet of six hundred triremes, it sailed to Samos (B. C. 490)--passedthrough the midst of the clustering Cyclades, and along that part ofthe Aegaean Sea called "the Icarian, " from the legendary fate of theson of Daedalus--invaded Naxos--burnt her town and temples, andsparing the sacred Delos, in which the Median Datis reverenced thetraditionary birthplace of two deities analogous to those mosthonoured in the Persian creed [274]--awed into subjection the variousisles, until it arrived at Euboea, divided but by a strait fromAttica, and containing the city of the Eretrians. The fleet firstassailed Carystus, whose generous citizens refused both to aid againsttheir neighbours, and to give hostages for their conduct. Closelybesieged, and their lands wasted, they were compelled, however, tosurrender to the Persians. Thence the victorious armament passed toEretria. The Athenians had sent to the relief of that city the fourthousand colonists whom they had established in the island--but fear, jealousy, division, were within the walls. Ruin seemed certain, and achief of the Eretrians urged the colonists to quit a city which theywere unable to save. They complied with the advice, and reachedAttica in safety. Eretria, however, withstood a siege of six days; onthe seventh the city was betrayed to the barbarians by two of thatfatal oligarchical party, who in every Grecian city seem to haveconsidered no enemy so detestable as the majority of their owncitizens; the place was pillaged--the temples burnt--the inhabitantsenslaved. Here the Persians rested for a few days ere they embarkedfor Attica. 

II. Unsupported and alone, the Athenians were not dismayed. Aswift-footed messenger was despatched to Sparta, to implore its promptassistance. On the day after his departure from Athens, he reachedhis destination, went straight to the assembled magistrates, and thusaddressed them:

"Men of Lacedaemon, the Athenians supplicate your aid; suffer not themost ancient of the Grecian cities to be enslaved by the barbarian. Already Eretria is subjected to their yoke, and all Greece isdiminished by the loss of that illustrious city. "

The resource the Athenians had so much right to expect failed them. The Spartans, indeed, resolved to assist Athens, but not untilassistance would have come too late. They declared that theirreligion forbade them to commence a march till the moon was at herfull, and this was only the ninth day of the month [275]. With thisunsatisfying reply, the messenger returned to Athens. But, employedin this arduous enterprise--his imagination inflamed by the greatnessof the danger--and its workings yet more kindled by the loneliness ofhis adventure and the mountain stillness of the places through whichhe passed, the Athenian messenger related, on his return, a visionless probably the creation of his invention than of his excited fancy. Passing over the Mount Parthenius, amid whose wild recesses gloomedthe antique grove dedicated to Telephus, the son of Hercules [276], the Athenian heard a voice call to him aloud, and started to beholdthat mystic god to whom, above the rest of earth, were dedicated thehills and woods of Arcady--the Pelasgic Pan. The god bade him "ask atAthens why the Athenians forgot his worship--he who loved them well--and might yet assist them at their need. "

Such was the tale of the messenger. The lively credulities of thepeople believed its truth, and in calmer times dedicated a temple tothe deity, venerated him with annual sacrifices, and the race oftorches. 

III. While the Athenians listened to the dreams of this poeticalsuperstition, the mighty thousands of the Mede and Persian landed onthe Attic coast, and, conducted by Hippias among their leaders, marched to the plain of Marathon, which the traveller still beholdsstretching wide and level, amid hills and marshes, at the distance ofonly ten miles from the gates of Athens. Along the shore the plainextends to the length of six miles--inland it exceeds two. He whosurveys it now looks over a dreary waste, whose meager and aridherbage is relieved but by the scanty foliage of unfrequent shrubs orpear-trees, and a few dwarf pines drooping towards the sea. Here andthere may be seen the grazing buffalo, or the peasant bending at hisplough:--a distant roof, a ruined chapel, are not sufficient evidencesof the living to interpose between the imagination of the spectatorand the dead. Such is the present Marathon--we are summoned back tothe past. 

IV. It will be remembered that the Athenians were divided into tentribes at the instigation of Clisthenes. Each of these tribesnominated a general; there were therefore ten leaders to the Athenianarmy. Among them was Miltiades, who had succeeded in ingratiatinghimself with the Athenian people, and obtained from their suffrages acommand. [277]

Aided by a thousand men from Plataea, then on terms of intimatefriendship with the Athenians, the little army marched from the city, and advanced to the entrance of the plain of Marathon. Here theyarrayed themselves in martial order, near the temple of Hercules, tothe east of the hills that guard the upper part of the valley. Thusencamped, and in sight of the gigantic power of the enemy, darkeningthe long expanse that skirts the sea, divisions broke out among theleaders;--some contended that a battle was by no means to be riskedwith such inferior forces--others, on the contrary, were for givingimmediate battle. Of this latter advice was Miltiades--he wassupported by a man already of high repute, though now first presentedto our notice, and afterward destined to act a great and splendid partin the drama of his times. Aristides was one of the generals of thearmy [278], and strenuously co-operated with Miltiades in the policyof immediate battle. 

Despite, however, the military renown of the one, and the civileminence of the other, the opposite and more tame opinion seemedlikely to prevail, when Miltiades suddenly thus addressed thePolemarch Callimachus. That magistrate, the third of the ninearchons, was held by virtue of his office equal in dignity to themilitary leaders, and to him was confided the privilege of a castingvote. 

"On you, Callimachus, " said the chief of the Chersonese, "on you itrests, whether Athens shall be enslaved, or whether from age to ageyour country, freed by your voice, shall retain in yours a name dearerto her even than those of Aristogiton and Harmodius [279]. Neversince the foundation of Athens was she placed in so imminent a peril. If she succumb to the Mede, she is rendered again to the tyranny ofHippias--but if she conquer, she may rise to the first eminence amongthe states of Greece. How this may be accomplished, and how upon yourdecision rests the event, I will at once explain. The sentiments ofour leaders are divided--these are for instant engagement, those forprocrastination. Depend upon it, if we delay, some sedition, sometumult will break out among the Athenians, and may draw a part of themto favour the Medes; but if we engage at once, and before a singledissension takes from us a single man, we may, if the gods give usequal fortune, obtain the victory. Consider the alternative--ourdecision depends on you. "

V. The arguments of Miltiades convinced Callimachus, who knew wellthe many divisions of the city, the strength which Hippias and thePisistratidae still probably possessed within its walls, and who couldnot but allow that a superior force becomes ever more fearful the moredeliberately it is regarded. He interposed his authority. It wasdecided to give battle. Each general commanded in turn his singleday. When it came to the turn of Aristides, he gave up his right toMiltiades, showing his colleagues that it was no disgrace to submit tothe profound experience of another. The example once set wasuniversally followed, and Miltiades was thus left in absolute andundivided command. But that able and keen-sighted chief, fearingperhaps that if he took from another his day of command, jealousymight damp the ardour of the general thus deprived, and, as it were, degraded, waited till his own appointed day before he commenced theattack. 

VI. On the night before Hippias conducted the barbarians to theplains of Marathon, he is said to have dreamed a dream. He thought hewas with his mother! In the fondness of human hopes he interpretedthe vision favourably, and flattered himself that he should regain hisauthority, and die in his own house of old age. The morning nowarrived (B. C. 490) that was to attest the veracity of hisinterpretation. 

VII. To the left of the Athenians was a low chain of hills, clothedwith trees (and which furnished them timber to break the charge of thePersian horse)--to their right a torrent;--their front was long, for, to render it more imposing in extent, and to prevent being outflankedby the Persian numbers, the centre ranks were left weak and shallow, but on either wing the troops were drawn up more solidly and strong. Callimachus, the polemarch, commanded the right wing--the Plataeansformed the left. They had few, if any, horsemen or archers. Thedetails which we possess of their arms and military array, if not inthis, in other engagements of the same period, will complete thepicture. We may behold them clad in bright armour, well proof andtempered, which covered breast and back--the greaves, so oftenmentioned by Homer, were still retained--their helmets were wroughtand crested, the cones mostly painted in glowing colours, and theplumage of feathers or horse-hair rich and waving, in proportion tothe rank of the wearer. Broad, sturdy, and richly ornamented weretheir bucklers--the pride and darling of their arms, the loss of whichwas the loss of honour; their spears were ponderous, thick, and long--a chief mark of contradistinction from the slight shaft of Persia--and, with their short broadsword, constituted their main weapons ofoffence. No Greek army marched to battle without vows, and sacrifice, and prayer--and now, in the stillness of the pause, the soothsayersexamined the entrails of the victims--they were propitious, andCallimachus solemnly vowed to Diana a victim for the slaughter ofevery foe. Loud broke the trumpets [280]--the standards wrought withthe sacred bird of Athens were raised on high [281];--it was thesignal of battle--and the Athenians rushed with an impetuous vehemenceupon the Persian power. "The first Greeks of whom I have heard, " saysthe simple Halicarnassean, "who ever ran to attack a foe--the first, too, who ever beheld without dismay the garb and armour of the Medes;for hitherto in Greece the very name of Mede had excited terror. "

VIII. When the Persian army, with its numerous horse, animal as wellas man protected by plates of mail [283]--its expert bowmen--its linesand deep files of turbaned soldiers, gorgeous with many a blazingstandard, --headed by leaders well hardened, despite their gay garbsand adorned breastplates, in many a more even field;--when, I say, this force beheld the Athenians rushing towards them, they consideredthem, thus few, and destitute alike of cavalry and archers [284], asmadmen hurrying to destruction. But it was evidently not withoutdeliberate calculation that Miltiades had so commenced the attack. The warlike experience of his guerilla life had taught him to know thefoe against whom he fought. To volunteer the assault was to forestalland cripple the charge of the Persian horse--besides, the long lances, the heavy arms, the hand-to-hand valour of the Greeks, must have beenno light encounter to the more weakly mailed and less formidably-armedinfantry of the East. Accustomed themselves to give the charge, itwas a novelty and a disadvantage to receive it. Long, fierce, andstubborn was the battle. The centre wing of the barbarians, composedof the Sacians and the pure Persian race, at length pressed hard uponthe shallow centre of the Greeks, drove them back into the country, and, eager with pursuit, left their own wings to the charge ofCallimachus on the one side and the Plataean forces on the other. Thebrave polemarch, after the most signal feats of valour, fell fightingin the field; but his troops, undismayed, smote on with spear andsword. The barbarians retreated backward to the sea, where swamps andmarshes encumbered their movements, and here (though the Athenians didnot pursue them far) the greater portion were slain, hemmed in by themorasses, and probably ridden down by their own disordered cavalry. Meanwhile, the two tribes that had formed the centre, one of which wascommanded by Aristides [285], retrieved themselves with a mightyeffort, and the two wings, having routed their antagonists, nowinclining towards each other, intercepted the barbarian centre, which, thus attacked, front and rear (large trees felled and scattered overthe plain obstructing the movements of their cavalry), was defeatedwith prodigious slaughter. Evening came on [286]:--confused anddisorderly, the Persians now only thought of flight: the whole armyretired to their ships, hard chased by the Grecian victors, who, amidthe carnage, fired the fleet. Cynaegirus, brother to Aeschylus, thetragic poet (himself highly distinguished for his feats that day), seized one of the vessels by the poop: his hand was severed by an axe;he died gloriously of his wounds. But to none did the fortunes ofthat field open a more illustrious career than to a youth of the tribeLeontis, in whom, though probably then but a simple soldier in theranks, was first made manifest the nature and the genius destined tocommand. The name of that youth was Themistocles [287]. Sevenvessels were captured--six thousand four hundred of the barbariansfell in the field--the Athenians and their brave ally lost only onehundred and ninety-two; but among them perished many of their bravestnobles. It was a superstition not uncharacteristic of thatimaginative people, and evincing how greatly their ardour was aroused, that many of them (according to Plutarch) fancied they beheld thegigantic shade of their ancestral Theseus, completely armed, andbearing down before them upon the foe. 

So perished the hopes of the unfortunate Hippias; obscure andinglorious in his last hour, the exiled prince fell confounded amidthe general slaughter. [288]

IX. Despite the capture of some vessels, and the conflagration ofothers, the Persians still retained a considerable fleet, and, succeeding in boarding their Eretrian plunder (which they had left onthe Euboean Isle), they passed thence the promontory of Sunium, withthe intention of circumventing the Athenians, and arriving at Athensbefore them--a design which it was supposed they were induced to formby the treachery of some one suspected, without sufficient proof, tobelong to the house of the Alcmaeonids, who held up a shield as asignal to the Persians while they were under sail [289]. But theAthenians were under a prompt and vigilant commander, and while thebarbarian fleet doubled the Cape of Sunium, they reached their city, and effectually prevented the designs of the foe. Aristides, with thetribe under his command, was left on the field to guard the prisonersand the booty, and his scrupulous honesty was evinced by his jealouscare over the scattered and uncounted treasure [290]. The painter ofthe nobler schools might find perhaps few subjects worthier of his artthan Aristides watching at night amid the torches of his men over theplains of Marathon, in sight of the blue Aegean, no longer crowdedwith the barbarian masts;--and the white columns of the temple ofHercules, beside which the Athenians had pitched their camp. 

The Persian fleet anchored off Phalerum, the Athenian harbour, andremaining there, menacing but inactive, a short time, sailed back toAsia. 

X. The moon had passed her full, when two thousand Spartans arrivedat Athens: the battle was over and the victory won; but so great wastheir desire to see the bodies of the formidable Medes, that theyproceeded to Marathon, and, returning to Athens, swelled the triumphof her citizens by their applause and congratulations. 

XI. The marble which the Persians had brought with them, in order toerect as a trophy of the victory they anticipated, was, at asubsequent period, wrought by Phidias into a statue of Nemesis. Apicture of the battle, representing Miltiades in the foremost place, and solemnly preserved in public, was deemed no inadequate reward tothat great captain; and yet, conspicuous above the level plain ofMarathon, rises a long barrow, fifteen feet in height, the supposedsepulchre of the Athenian heroes. Still does a romantic legend, notunfamiliar with our traditions of the north, give a supernaturalterror to the spot. Nightly along the plain are yet heard bysuperstition the neighings of chargers and the rushing shadows ofspectral war [291]. And still, throughout the civilized world(civilized how much by the arts and lore of Athens!) men of everyclime, of every political persuasion, feel as Greeks at the name ofMarathon. Later fields have presented the spectacle of an equalvalour, and almost the same disparities of slaughter; but never, inthe annals of earth, were united so closely in our applause, admiration for the heroism of the victors, and sympathy for theholiness of their cause. It was the first great victory of OPINION!and its fruits were reaped, not by Athens only, but by all Greecethen, as by all time thereafter, in a mighty and imperishableharvest, --the invisible not less than the actual force of despotismwas broken. Nor was it only that the dread which had hung upon theMedian name was dispelled--nor that free states were taught theirpre-eminence over the unwieldy empires which the Persian conquerors haddestroyed, --a greater lesson was taught to Greece, when she discoveredthat the monarch of Asia could not force upon a petty state thefashion of its government, or the selection of its rulers. The defeatof Hippias was of no less value than that of Darius; and the same blowwhich struck down the foreign invader smote also the hopes of domestictyrants. 

One successful battle for liberty quickens and exalts that proud andemulous spirit from which are called forth the civilization and thearts that liberty should produce, more rapidly than centuries ofrepose. To Athens the victory of Marathon was a second Solon. 

FOOTNOTES. 

[1] In their passage through the press I have, however, had manyopportunities to consult and refer to Mr. Thirlwall's able and carefulwork. 

[2] The passage in Aristotle (Meteorol. , l. I, c. 14), in which, speaking of the ancient Hellas (the country about Dodona and the riverAchelous), the author says it was inhabited by a people (along withthe Helli, or Selli) then called Graeci, now Hellenes (tote menGraikoi, nun de Hellaenes) is well known. The Greek chronicle on theArundel marbles asserts, that the Greeks were called Graeci beforethey were called Hellenes; in fact, Graeci was most probably once aname for the Pelasgi, or for a powerful, perhaps predominant, tribe ofthe Pelasgi widely extended along the western coast--by them the namewas borne into Italy, and (used indiscriminately with that of Pelasgi)gave the Latin appellation to the Hellenic or Grecian people. 

[3] Modern travellers, in their eloquent lamentations over the nowniggard waters of these immortal streams, appear to forget that Straboexpressly informs us that the Cephisus flowed in the manner of atorrent, and failed altogether in the summer. "Much the same, " headds, "was the Ilissus. " A deficiency of water was always a principalgrievance in Attica, as we may learn from the laws of Solon relativeto wells. 

[4] Platon. Timaeus. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. I. , p. 5. 

[5] According to some they were from India, to others from Egypt, toothers again from Phoenicia. They have been systematized intoBactrians, and Scythians, and Philistines--into Goths, and into Celts;and tracked by investigations as ingenious as they are futile, beyondthe banks of the Danube to their settlements in the Peloponnese. Noerudition and no speculation can, however, succeed in proving theirexistence in any part of the world prior to their appearance inGreece. 

[6] Sophoc. Ajax, 1251. 

[7] All those words (in the Latin) which make the foundation of alanguage, expressive of the wants or simple relations of life, arealmost literally Greek--such as pater, frater, aratrum, bos, ager, etc. For the derivation of the Latin from the Aeolic dialect ofGreece, see "Scheid's Prolegomena to Lennep's Etymologicon LinguaeGrecae. "

[8] The Leleges, Dryopes, and most of the other hordes prevalent inGreece, with the Pelasgi, I consider, with Mr. Clinton, but as tribesbelonging to the great Pelasgic family. One tribe would evidentlybecome more civilized than the rest, in proportion to the social stateof the lands through which it migrated--its reception of strangersfrom the more advanced East--or according as the circumstances of thesoil in which it fixed its abode stimulated it to industry, or forcedit to invention. The tradition relative to Pelasgus, that while itasserts him to have been the first that dwelt in Arcadia, declaresalso that he first taught men to build huts, wear garments of skins, and exchange the yet less nutritious food of herbs and roots for thesweet and palatable acorns of the "fagus, " justly puzzled Pausanias. Such traditions, if they prove any thing, which I more than doubt, tend to prove that the tribe personified by the word "Pelasgus, "migrated into that very Arcadia alleged to have been their aboriginalhome, and taught their own rude arts to the yet less cultivatedpopulation they found there. 

[9] See Isaiah xxiii. 

[10] The received account of the agricultural skill of the Pelasgi istolerably well supported. Dionysius tells us that the Aboriginalshaving assigned to those Pelasgi, whom the oracle sent from Dodonainto Italy, the marshy and unprofitable land called Velia, they soondrained the fen:--their love of husbandry contributed, no doubt, toform the peculiar character of their civilization and religion. 

[11] Solinus and Pliny state that the Pelasgi first brought lettersinto Italy. Long the leading race of Italy, their power declined, according to Dionysius, two generations before the Trojan war. 

[12] Paus. Arcad. , c. Xxxviii. In a previous chapter (II. ) thataccomplished antiquary observes, that it appeared to him that Cecropsand Lycaon (son of Pelasgus and founder of Lycosura) werecontemporaries. By the strong and exaggerating expression ofPausanias quoted in the text, we must suppose, not that he consideredLycosura the first town of the earth, but the first walled andfortified city. The sons of Lycaon were great builders of cities, andin their time rapid strides in civilization appear by tradition tohave been made in the Peloponnesus. The Pelasgic architecture isoften confounded with the Cyclopean. The Pelasgic masonry ispolygonal, each stone fitting into the other without cement; thatcalled the Cyclopean, and described by Pausanias, is utterlydifferent, being composed by immense blocks of stone, with smallpebbles inserted in the interstices. (See Gell's Topography of Romeand its Vicinity. ) By some antiquaries, who have not made the mistakeof confounding these distinct orders of architecture, the Cyclopeanhas been deemed more ancient than the Pelasgic, --but this also is anerror. Lycosura was walled by the Pelasgians between four and fivecenturies prior to the introduction of the Cyclopean masonry--in thebuilding of the city of Tiryns. Sir William Gell maintains thepossibility of tracing the walls of Lycosura near the place now calledSurias To Kastro. 

[13] The expulsion of the Hyksos, which was not accomplished by onesudden, but by repeated revolutions, caused many migrations; amongothers, according to the Egyptians, that of Danaus. 

[14] The Egyptian monarchs, in a later age, employed the Phoeniciansin long and adventurous maritime undertakings. At a comparativelyrecent date, Neco, king of Egypt, despatched certain Phoenicians on noless an enterprise than that of the circumnavigation of Africa. [Herod. , iv. , 12. Rennell. , Geog. Of Herod. ] That monarch was indeedfitted for great designs. The Mediterranean and the Red Sea alreadyreceived his fleets, and he had attempted to unite them by a canalwhich would have rendered Africa an island. [Herod. , ii. , 158, 159. Heeren. , Phoenicians, c. Iii. See also Diodorus. ]

[15] The general habits of a people can in no age preclude exceptionsin individuals. Indian rajahs do not usually travel, but we had anIndian rajah for some years in the Regent's Park; the Chinese are notin the habit of visiting England, but a short time ago some Chinesewere in London. Grant that Phoenicians had intercourse with Egypt andwith Greece, and nothing can be less improbable than that a Phoenicianvessel may have contained some Egyptian adventurers. They mightcertainly be men of low rank and desperate fortunes--they might befugitives from the law--but they might not the less have seemedprinces and sages to a horde of Pelasgic savages. 

[16] The authorities in favour of the Egyptian origin of Cecropsare. --Diod. , lib. I. ; Theopomp. ; Schol. Aristoph. ; Plot. ; Suidas. Plato speaks of the ancient connexion between Sais and Athens. Solonfinds the names of Erechtheus and Cecrops in Egypt, according to thesame authority, I grant a doubtful one (Plat. Critias. ) The bestpositive authority of which I am aware in favour of the contrarysupposition that Cecrops was indigenous, is Apollodorus. 

[17] To enter into all the arguments that have been urged on eitherside relative to Cecrops would occupy about two hundred pages of thiswork, and still leave the question in dispute. Perhaps two hundredpages might be devoted to subjects more generally instructive. 

[18] So, in the Peruvian traditions, the apparition of two persons ofmajestic form and graceful garments, appearing alone and unarmed onthe margin of the Lake Titiaca, sufficed to reclaim a naked andwretched horde from their savage life, to inculcate the elements ofthe social union, and to collect a people in establishing a throne. 

[19] "Like the Greeks, " says Herodotus (book ii. , c. 112), "theEgyptians confine themselves to one wife. " Latterly, this among theGreeks, though a common, was not an invariable, restraint; but more onthis hereafter. 

[20] Hobhouse's Travels, Letter 23. 

[21] It is by no means probable that this city, despite its fortress, was walled like Lycosura. 

[22] At least Strabo assigns Boeotia to the government of Cecrops. But I confess, that so far from his incorporating Boeotia with Attica, I think that traditions relative to his immediate successors appear toindicate that Attica itself continued to retain independent tribes--soon ripening, if not already advanced, to independent states. 

[23] Herod. , ii. , c. I. 

[24] Ibid. , ii. , c. Liii. 

[25] That all the Pelasgi--scattered throughout Greece, divided amongthemselves--frequently at war with each other, and certainly in nohabits of peaceful communication--each tribe of different modes oflife, and different degrees of civilization, should have concurred ingiving no names to their gods, and then have equally concurred inreceiving names from Egypt, is an assertion so preposterous, that itcarries with it its own contradiction. Many of the mistakes relativeto the Pelasgi appear to have arisen from supposing the common nameimplied a common and united tribe, and not a vast and dispersedpeople, subdivided into innumerable families, and diversified byinnumerable influences. 

[26] The connexion of Ceres with Isis was a subsequent innovation. 

[27] Orcos was the personification of an oath, or the sanctity of anoath. 

[28] Naith in the Doric dialect. 

[29] If Onca, or Onga, was the name of the Phoenician goddess!--Inthe "Seven against Thebes, " the chorus invoke Minerva under the nameof Onca--and there can be no doubt that the Grecian Minerva issometimes called Onca; but it is not clear to me that the Phoenicianshad a deity of that name--nor can I agree with those who insist uponreading Onca for Siga in Pausanias (lib. Ix. , chap. 12), where he saysSiga was the name of the Phoenician Minerva. The Phoeniciansevidently had a deity correspondent with the Greek Minerva; but thatit was named Onca, or Onga, is by no means satisfactorily proved; andthe Scholiast, on Pindar, derives the epithet as applies to Minervafrom a Boeotian village. 

[30] De Mundo, c. 7. 

[31] The Egyptians supposed three principles: 1st. One benevolent anduniversal Spirit. 2d. Matter coeval with eternity. 3d. Natureopposing the good of the universal Spirit. We find these principlesin a variety of shapes typified through their deities. Besides theirtypes of nature, as the Egyptians adopted hero gods, typical fableswere invented to conceal their humanity, to excuse their errors, or todignify their achievements. 

[32] See Heeren's Political History of Greece, in which this point isluminously argued. 

[33] Besides, it is not the character of emigrants from a peopleaccustomed to castes, to propagate those castes superior to then own, of which they have exported no representatives. Suppose none of thatprivileged and noble order, called the priests, to have accompaniedthe Egyptian migrators, those migrators would never have dreamed ofinstituting that order in their new settlement any more than a colonyof the warrior caste in India would establish out of their own order aspurious and fictitious caste of Bramins. 

[34] When, in a later age, Karmath, the impostor of the East, soughto undermine Mahometanism, his most successful policy was in declaringits commands to be allegories. 

[35] Herodotus (b. Ii, c. 53) observes, that it is to Hesiod andHomer the Greeks owe their theogony; that they gave the gods theirtitles, fixed their ranks, and described their shapes. And althoughthis cannot be believed literally, in some respects it maymetaphorically. Doubtless the poets took their descriptions frompopular traditions; but they made those traditions immortal. Jupitercould never become symbolical to a people who had once pictured tothemselves the nod and curls of the Jupiter of Homer. 

[36] Cicero de Natura Deorum, b. Ii. --Most of the philosophicalinterpretations of the Greek mythology were the offspring of theAlexandrine schools. It is to the honour of Aristarchus that hecombated a theory that very much resembles the philosophy that wouldconvert the youthful readers of Mother Bunch into the inventors ofallegorical morality. 

[37] But the worship can be traced to a much earlier date than thatthe most plausibly ascribed to the Persian Zoroaster. 

[38] So Epimenides of Crete is said to have spent forty-five years ina cavern, and Minos descends into the sacred cave of Jupiter toreceive from him the elements of law. The awe attached to woods andcaverns, it may be observed, is to be found in the Northern as well asEastern superstitions. And there is scarcely a nation on the earth inwhich we do not find the ancient superstition has especially attacheditself to the cavern and the forest, peopling them with peculiardemons. Darkness, silence, and solitude are priests that eternallyspeak to the senses; and few of the most skeptical of us have beenlost in thick woods, or entered lonely caverns, without acknowledgingtheir influence upon the imagination: "Ipsa silentia, " saysbeautifully the elder Pliny, "ipsa silentia adoramus. " The effect ofstreams and fountains upon the mind seems more unusual and surprising. Yet, to a people unacquainted with physics, waters imbued with mineralproperties, or exhaling mephitic vapours, may well appear possessed ofa something preternatural. Accordingly, at this day, among manysavage tribes we find that such springs are regarded with venerationand awe. The people of Fiji, in the South Seas, have a well whichthey imagine the passage to the next world, they even believe that youmay see in its waters the spectral images of things rolling on toeternity. Fountains no less than groves, were objects of venerationwith our Saxon ancestors. --See Meginhard, Wilkins, etc. 

[39] 2 Kings xvi. , 4. 

[40] Of the three graces, Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia, theSpartans originally worshipped but one--(Aglaia, splendour) under thename of Phaenna, brightness: they rejected the other two, whose namessignify Joy and Pleasure, and adopted a substitute in one whose namewas Sound (Cletha, )--a very common substitute nowadays!

[41] The Persian creed, derived from Zoroaster, resembled the most tothat of Christianity. It inculcated the resurrection of the dead, theuniversal triumph of Ormuzd, the Principle of Light--the destructionof the reign of Ahrimanes, the Evil Principle. 

[42] Wherever Egyptian, or indeed Grecian colonies migrated, nothingwas more natural than that, where they found a coincidence of scene, they should establish a coincidence of name. In Epirus were also theAcheron and Cocytus; and Campania contains the whole topography of theVirgilian Hades. 

[43] See sect. Xxi. , p. 77. 

[44] Fire was everywhere in the East a sacred symbol--though itcannot be implicitly believed that the Vulcan or Hephaistus of theGreeks has his prototype or original in the Egyptian Phta or Phtas. The Persian philosophy made fire a symbol of the Divine intelligence--the Persian credulity, like the Grecian, converted the symbol into thegod (Max. Tyr. , Dissert. 38; Herod. , lib. 3, c. 16). The Jewsthemselves connected the element with their true Deity. It is in firethat Jehovah reveals himself. A sacred flame was burnt unceasingly inthe temples of Israel, and grave the punishment attached to theneglect which suffered its extinction. --(Maimonides, Tract. Vi. )

[45] The Anaglyph expressed the secret writings of the Egyptians, known only to the priests. The hieroglyph was known generally to theeducated. 

[46] In Gaul, Cesar finds some tribes more civilized than the rest, cultivating the science of sacrifice, and possessed of the darkphilosophy of superstitious mysteries; but in certain other and moreuncivilized tribes only the elements and the heavenly luminaries (quoscernunt et quorum opibus aperte juvantur) were worshipped, and thelore of sacrifice was unstudied. With the Pelasgi as with the Gauls, I believe that such distinctions might have been found simultaneouslyin different tribes. 

[47] The arrival of Ceres in Attica is referred to the time ofPandion by Apollodorus. 

[48] When Lobeck desires to fix the date of this religious union atso recent an epoch as the time of Solon, in consequence of a solitarypassage in Herodotus, in which Solon, conversing with Croesus, speaksof hostilities between the Athenians and Eleusinians, he seems to meto fail in sufficient ground for the assumption. The rite might havebeen instituted in consequence of a far earlier feud and league--eventhat traditionally recorded in the Mythic age of Erechtheus andEumolpus, but could not entirely put an end to the struggles ofEleusis for independence, or prevent the outbreak of occasionaljealousy and dissension. 

[49] Kneph, the Agatho demon, or Good Spirit of Egypt, had his symbolin the serpent. It was precisely because sacred with the rest of theworld that the serpent would be an object of abhorrence with the Jews. But by a curious remnant of oriental superstition, the earlyChristians often represented the Messiah by the serpent--and theemblem of Satan became that of the Saviour. 

[50] Lib. Ii. , c. 52, 4. 

[51] And this opinion is confirmed by Dionysius and Strabo, whoconsider the Dodona oracle originally Pelasgic. 

[52] Also Pelasgic, according to Strabo. 

[53] "The Americans did not long suppose the efficacy of conjurationto be confined to one subject--they had recourse to it in everysituation of danger or distress. ------From this weakness proceededlikewise the faith of the Americans in dreams, their observation ofomens, their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries ofanimals, all which they supposed to be indications of future events. "--Robertson's History of America, book iv. 

Might not any one imagine that he were reading the character of theancient Greeks? This is not the only point of resemblance between theAmericans (when discovered by the Spaniards) and the Greeks in theirearly history; but the resemblance is merely that of a civilization insome respects equally advanced. 

[54] The notion of Democritus of Abdera, respecting the origin ofdreams and divination, may not be uninteresting to the reader, partlyfrom something vast and terrible in the fantasy, partly as a proof ofthe strange, incongruous, bewildered chaos of thought, from which atlast broke the light of the Grecian philosophy. He introduced thehypothesis of images (eidola, ), emanating as it were from externalobjects, which impress our sense, and whose influence createssensation and thought. Dreams and divination he referred to theimpressions communicated by images of gigantic and vast stature, whichinhabited the air and encompassed the world. Yet this philosopher isthe original of Epicurus, and Epicurus is the original of the modernUtilitarians!

[55] Isaiah lxvi. I. 

[56] This Lucian acknowledges unawares, when, in deriding the popularreligion, he says that a youth who reads of the gods in Homer orHesiod, and finds their various immoralities so highly renowned, wouldfeel no little surprise when he entered the world, to discover thatthese very actions of the gods were condemned and punished by mankind. 

[57] Ovid. Metam. , lib. Ix. 

[58] So the celebrated preamble to the laws for the Locrians of Italy(which, though not written by Zaleucus, was, at all events, composedby a Greek) declares that men must hold their souls clear from everyvice; that the gods did not accept the offerings of the wicked, butfound pleasure only in the just and beneficent actions of the good. --See Diod. Siculus, lib. 8. 

[59] A Mainote hearing the Druses praised for their valour, said, with some philosophy, "They would fear death more if they believed inan hereafter!"

[60] In the time of Socrates, we may suspect, from a passage inPlato's Phaedo, that the vulgar were skeptical of the immortality ofthe soul, and it may be reasonably doubted whether the views ofSocrates and his divine disciple were ever very popularly embraced. 

[61] It is always by connecting the divine shape with the human thatwe exalt our creations--so, in later times, the saints, the Virgin, and the Christ, awoke the genius of Italian art. 

[62] See note [54]. 

[63] In the later age of philosophy I shall have occasion to return tothe subject. And in the Appendix, with which I propose to completethe work, I may indulge in some conjectures relative to the CorybantesCuretes, Teichines, etc. 

[64] Herodotus (I. Vi. , c. 137) speaks of a remote time when theAthenians had no slaves. As we have the authority of Thucydides forthe superior repose which Attica enjoyed as compared with the rest ofGreece--so (her population never having been conquered) slavery inAttica was probably of later date than elsewhere, and we may doubtwhether in that favoured land the slaves were taken from anyconsiderable part of the aboriginal race. I say considerable part, for crime or debt would have reduced some to servitude. The assertionof Herodotus that the Ionians were indigenous (and not conquerors asMueller pretends), is very strongly corroborated by the absence inAttica of a class of serfs like the Penestae of Thessaly and theHelots of Laconia. A race of conquerors would certainly have produceda class of serfs. 

[65] Or else the land (properly speaking) would remain with theslaves, as it did with the Messenians an Helots--but certainproportions of the produce would be the due of the conquerors. 

[66] Immigration has not hitherto been duly considered as one of theoriginal sources of slavery. 

[67] In a horde of savages never having held communication orintercourse with other tribes, there would indeed be men who, by asuperiority of physical force, would obtain an ascendency over therest; but these would not bequeath to their descendants distinctprivileges. Exactly because physical power raised the father intorank--the want of physical power would merge his children among theherd. Strength and activity cannot be hereditary. With individualsof a tribe as yet attaching value only to a swift foot or a strongarm, hereditary privilege is impossible. But if one such barbaroustribe conquer another less hardy, and inhabit the new settlement, --then indeed commences an aristocracy--for amid communities, though notamong individuals, hereditary physical powers can obtain. One man maynot leave his muscles to his son; but one tribe of more powerfulconformation than another would generally contrive to transmit thatadvantage collectively to their posterity. The sense of superiorityeffected by conquest soon produces too its moral effects--elevatingthe spirit of the one tribe, depressing that of the other, fromgeneration to generation. Those who have denied in conquest orcolonization the origin of hereditary aristocracy, appear to me tohave founded their reasonings upon the imperfectness of theirknowledge of the savage states to which they refer for illustration. 

[68] Accordingly we find in the earliest records of Greek history--inthe stories of the heroic and the Homeric age--that the king possessedbut little authority except in matters of war: he was in every senseof the word a limited monarch, and the Greeks boasted that they hadnever known the unqualified despotism of the East. The more, indeed, we descend from the patriarchal times; the more we shall find thatcolonists established in their settlements those aristocraticinstitutions which are the earliest barriers against despotism. Colonies are always the first teachers of free institutions. There isno nation probably more attached to monarchy than the English, yet Ibelieve that if, according to the ancient polity, the English were tomigrate into different parts, and establish, in colonizing, their ownindependent forms of government; there would scarcely be a single suchcolony not republican!

[69] In Attica, immigration, not conquest, must have led to theinstitution of aristocracy. Thucydides observes, that owing to therepose in Attica (the barren soil of which presented no temptation tothe conqueror), the more powerful families expelled from the otherparts of Greece, betook themselves for security and refuge to Athens. And from some of these foreigners many of the noblest families in thehistorical time traced their descent. Before the arrival of theseGrecian strangers, Phoenician or Egyptian settlers had probablyintroduced an aristocratic class. 

[70] Modern inquirers pretend to discover the Egyptian features inthe effigy of Minerva on the earliest Athenian coins. Even the goldengrasshopper, with which the Athenians decorated their hair, and whichwas considered by their vanity as a symbol of their descent from thesoil, has been construed into an Egyptian ornament--a symbol of theinitiated. --(Horapoll. Hierogl. , lib. Ii. , c. 55. ) "They are the onlyGrecian people, " says Diodorus, "who swear by Isis, and their mannersare very conformable to those of the Egyptians; and so much truth wasthere at one time (when what was Egyptian became the fashion) in thisremark, that they were reproached by the comic writer that their citywas Egypt and not Athens. " But it is evident that all suchresemblance as could have been derived from a handful of Egyptians, previous to the age of Theseus, was utterly obliterated before the ageof Solon. Even if we accord to the tale of Cecrops all implicitfaith, the Atticans would still remain a Pelasgic population, of whicha few early institutions--a few benefits of elementary civilization--and, it may be, a few of the nobler families, were probably ofEgyptian origin. 

[71] It has been asserted by some that there is evidence in ancientAttica of the existence of castes similar to those in Egypt and thefarther East. But this assertion has been so ably refuted that I donot deem it necessary to enter at much length into the discussion. Itwill be sufficient to observe that the assumption is founded upon theexistence of four tribes in Attica, the names of which etymologicalerudition has sought to reduce to titles denoting the differentprofessions of warriors, husbandmen, labourers, and (the last muchmore disputable and much more disputed) priests. In the first place, it has been cogently remarked by Mr. Clinton (F. H. , vol. I. , p. 54), that this institution of castes has been very inconsistentlyattributed to the Greek Ion, --not (as, if Egyptian, it would havebeen) to the Egyptian Cecrops. 2dly, If rightly referred to Ion, whodid not long precede the heroic age, how comes it that in that age aspirit the most opposite to that of castes universally prevailed--asall the best authenticated enactments of Theseus abundantly prove?Could institutions calculated to be the most permanent thatlegislation ever effected, and which in India have resisted everyinnovation of time, every revolution of war, have vanished from Atticain the course of a few generations? 3dly, It is to be observed, thatprevious to the divisions referred to Ion, we find the same number offour tribes under wholly different names;--under Cecrops, underCranaus, under Ericthonius or Erectheus, they received successivechanges of appellations, none of which denoted professions, but weremoulded either from the distinctions of the land they inhabited, orthe names of deities they adored. If remodelled by Ion to correspondwith distinct professions and occupations (and where is that socialstate which does not form different classes--a formation widelyopposite to that of different castes?) cultivated by the majority ofthe members of each tribe, the name given to each tribe might be but ageneral title by no means applicable to every individual, andcertainly not implying hereditary and indelible distinctions. 4thly, In corroboration of this latter argument, there is not a singleevidence--a single tradition, that such divisions ever werehereditary. 5thly, In the time of Solon and the Pisistratida we findthe four Ionic tribes unchanged, but without any features analogous tothose of the Oriental castes. --(Clinton, F. H. , vol. I. , p. 55. )6thly, I shall add what I have before intimated (see note [33]), thatI do not think it the character of a people accustomed to castes toestablish castes mock and spurious in any country which a few of themmight visit or colonize. Nay, it is clearly and essentially contraryto such a character to imagine that a handful of wandering Egyptians, even supposing (which is absurd) that their party contained members ofeach different caste observed by their countrymen, would haveincorporated with such scanty specimens of each caste any of thebarbarous natives--they would leave all the natives to a caste bythemselves. And an Egyptian hierophant would as little have thoughtof associating with himself a Pelasgic priest, as a Bramin would dreamof making a Bramin caste out of a set of Christian clergymen. But ifno Egyptian hierophant accompanied the immigrators, doubly ridiculousis it to suppose that the latter would have raised any of their ownbody, to whom such a change of caste would be impious, and still lessany of the despised savages, to a rank the most honoured and the mostreverent which Egyptian notions of dignity could confer. Even thevery lowest Egyptians would not touch any thing a Grecian knife hadpolluted--the very rigidity with which caste was preserved in Egyptwould forbid the propagation of castes among barbarians so much belowthe very lowest caste they could introduce. So far, therefore, fromEgyptian adventurers introducing such an institution among the generalpopulation, their own spirit of caste must rapidly have died away asintermarriage with the natives, absence from their countrymen, and theactive life of an uncivilized home, mixed them up with the blood, thepursuits, and the habits of their new associates. Lastly, If thesearguments (which might be easily multiplied) do not suffice, I say itis not for me more completely to destroy, but for those of a contraryopinion more completely to substantiate, an hypothesis so utterly atvariance with the Athenian character--the acknowledged data ofAthenian history; and which would assert the existence of institutionsthe most difficult to establish;--when established, the most difficultto modify, much more to efface. 

[72] The Thessali were Pelasgic. 

[73] Thucyd. , lib. I. 

[74] Homer--so nice a discriminator that he dwells upon the barbaroustongue even of the Carians--never seems to intimate any distinctionbetween the language and race of the Pelasgi and Hellenes, yet hewrote in an age when the struggle was still unconcluded, and whentraces of any marked difference must have been sufficiently obvious todetect--sufficiently interesting to notice. 

[75] Strabo, viii. 

[76] Pausan. , viii. 

[77] With all my respect for the deep learning and acute ingenuity ofMueller, it is impossible not to protest against the spirit in whichmuch of the History of the Dorians is conceived--a spirit than whichnothing can be more dangerous to sound historical inquiry. A vaguetradition, a doubtful line, suffice the daring author for proof of aforeign conquest, or evidence of a religious revolution. There areGerman writers who seem to imagine that the new school of history isbuilt on the maxim of denying what is, and explaining what is not?Ion is never recorded as supplanting, or even succeeding, an Atticking. He might have introduced the worship of Apollo; but, as Mr. Clinton rightly observes, that worship never superseded the worship ofMinerva, who still remained the tutelary divinity of the city. However vague the traditions respecting Ion, they all tend to prove analliance with the Athenians, viz. , precisely the reverse of a conquestof them. 

[78] That connexion which existed throughout Greece, sometimes pure, sometimes perverted, was especially and originally Doric. 

[79] Prideaux on the Marbles. The Iones are included in thisconfederacy; they could not, then, have taken their name from theHellenic Ion, for Ion was not born at the time of Amphictyon. Thename Amphictyon is, however, but a type of the thing amphictyony, orassociation. Leagues of this kind were probably very common overGreece, springing almost simultaneously out of the circumstancescommon to numerous tribes, kindred with each other, yet often atvariance and feud. A common language led them to establish, by amutual adoption of tutelary deities, a common religious ceremony, which remained in force after political considerations died away. Itake the Amphictyonic league to be one of the proofs of the affinityof language between the Pelasgi and Hellenes. It was evidently madewhile the Pelasgi were yet powerful and unsubdued by Hellenicinfluences, and as evidently it could not have been made if thePelasgi and Hellenes were not perfectly intelligible to each other. Mr. Clinton (F. H. , vol. I. , 66), assigns a more recent date than hasgenerally been received to the great Amphictyonic league, placing itbetween the sixtieth and the eightieth year from the fall of Troy. His reason for not dating it before the former year is, that untilthen the Thessali (one of the twelve nations) did not occupy Thessaly. But, it may be observed consistently with the reasonings of that greatauthority, first, that the Thessali are not included in the lists ofthe league given by Harpocratio and Libanius; and, secondly, that evengranting that the great Amphictyonic assembly of twelve nations didnot commence at an earlier period, yet that that more celebratedamphictyony might have been preceded by other and less effectualattempts at association, agreeably to the legends of the genealogy. And this Mr. Clinton himself implies. 

[80] Strabo, lib. Ix. 

[81] Mueller's Dorians, vol. I. 

[82] Probably chosen in rotation from the different cities. 

[83] Even the bieromnemons (or deputies intrusted with religiouscares) must have been as a class very inferior in ability to thepylagorae; for the first were chosen by lot, the last by carefulselection. And thus we learn, in effect, that while the hieromnemonhad the higher grade of dignity, the pylagoras did the greater shareof business. 

[84] Milton, Hist. Of Eng. , book i. 

[85] No man of rank among the old northern pirates was deemedhonourable if not a pirate, gloriam sibi acquirens, as the Vatzdaelahath it. 

[86] Most probably more than one prince. Greece has threewell accredited pretenders to the name and attributes even of theGrecian Hercules. 

[87] Herodotus marks the difference between the Egyptian and Greciandeity, and speaks of a temple erected by the Phoenicians to Hercules, when they built Thasus, five hundred years before the son ofAmphitryon was known to the Greeks. The historian commends such ofthe Greeks as erected two temples to the divinity of that name, worshipping in the one as to a god, but in the other observing onlythe rites as to a hero. -B. Ii. , c. 13, 14. 

[88] Plot. In Vit. Thes. --Apollod. , l. 3. This story is oftenborrowed by the Spanish romance-writers, to whom Plutarch was acopious fountain of legendary fable. 

[89] Plut. In Vit. Thes. 

[90] Mr. Mueller's ingenious supposition, that the tribute was infact a religious ceremony, and that the voyage of Theseus hadoriginally no other meaning than the landings at Naxos and Delos, iscertainly credible, but not a whit more so than, and certainly not sosimple as, the ancient accounts in Plutarch; as with mythological, sowith historical legends, it is better to take the plain and popularinterpretation whenever it seems conformable to the manners of thetimes, than to construe the story by newly-invented allegories. It isvery singular that that is the plan which every writer on the earlychronicles of France and England would adopt, --and yet which so fewwriters agree to*****[three illegible words in the print copy]*****the obscure records of the Greeks. 

[91] Plutarch cites Clidemus in support of another version of thetale, somewhat less probable, viz. , that, by the death of Minos andhis son Deucalion, Ariadne became possessed of the throne, and thatshe remitted the tribute. 

[92] Thucydides, b. Ii. , c. 15. 

[93] But many Athenians preferred to a much later age the custom ofliving without the walls--scattered over the country. --(Thucyd. , lib. Ii. , 15. ) We must suppose it was with them as with the moderns--therich and the great generally preferred the capital, but there weremany exceptions. 

[94] For other instances in which the same word is employed by Homer, see Clinton's Fast Hell. , vol. I. , introduction, ix. 

[95] Paus. , l. I. , c. 19; l. Ii. , c. 18. 

[96] Paus. , l. Vii. , c. 25. An oracle of Dodona had forewarned theAthenians of the necessity of sparing the suppliants. 

[97] Herod. (lib. V. , 76) cites this expedition of the Dorians forthe establishment of a colony at Megara as that of their firstincursion into Attica. 

[98] Suidas. One cannot but be curious as to the motives and policyof a person, virtuous as a man, but so relentless as a lawgiver. Although Draco was himself a noble, it is difficult to suppose thatlaws so stern and impartial would not operate rather against the moreinsolent and encroaching class than against the more subordinate ones. The attempt shows a very unwholesome state of society, and went far toproduce the democratic action which Solon represented rather thancreated. 

[99] Hume utters a sentiment exactly the reverse: "To expect, " sayshe, in his Essay on the rise of Arts and Sciences, "that the arts andsciences should take their first rise in a monarchy, is to expect acontradiction;" and he holds, in a subsequent part of the same essay, that though republics originate the arts and sciences, they may betransferred to a monarchy. Yet this sentiment is utterly at variancewith the fact; in the despotic monarchies of the East were theelements of the arts and sciences; it was to republics they weretransferred, and republics perfected them. Hume, indeed, is often themost incautious and uncritical of all writers. What can we think ofan author who asserts that a refined taste succeeds best inmonarchies, and then refers to the indecencies of Horace and Ovid asan example of the reverse in a republic--as if Ovid and Horace had notlived under a monarchy! and throughout the whole of this theory he isas thoroughly in the wrong. By refined taste he signifies anavoidance of immodesty of style. Beaumont and Fletcher, Rochester, Dean Swift, wrote under monarchies--their pruriencies are not excelledby any republican authors of ancient times. What ancient authorsequal in indelicacy the French romances from the time of the Regent ofOrleans to Louis XVI. ? By all accounts, the despotism of China is thevery sink of indecencies, whether in pictures or books. Still more, what can we think of a writer who says, that "the ancients have notleft us one piece of pleasantry that is excellent, unless one mayexcept the Banquet of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Lucian?" What!has he forgotten Aristophanes? Has he forgotten Plautus! No--buttheir pleasantry is not excellent to his taste; and he tacitly agreeswith Horace in censuring the "coarse railleries and cold jests" of theGreat Original of Moliere!

[100] Which forbade the concentration of power necessary to greatconquests. Phoenicia was not one state, it was a confederacy ofstates; so, for the same reason, Greece, admirably calculated toresist, was ill fitted to invade. 

[101] For the dates of these migrations, see Fast. Hell. , vol. I. 

[102] To a much later period in the progress of this work I reserve asomewhat elaborate view of the history of Sicily. 

[103] Pausanias, in corroboration of this fact, observes, thatPeriboea, the daughter of Alcathous, was sent with Theseus withtribute into Crete. 

[104] When, according to Pausanias, it changed its manners and itslanguage. 

[105] In length fifty-two geographical miles, and about twenty-eightto thirty-two broad. 

[106] A council of five presided over the business of the oracle, composed of families who traced their descent from Deucalion. 

[107] Great grandson to Antiochus, son of Hercules. --Pausanias, l. 2, c. 4. 

[108] But at Argos, at least, the name, though not the substance, ofthe kingly government was extant as late as the Persian war. 

[109] Those who meant to take part in the athletic exercises wererequired to attend at Olympia thirty days previous to the games, forpreparation and practice. 

[110] It would appear by some Etruscan vases found at Veii, that theEtruscans practised all the Greek games--leaping, running, cudgel-playing, etc. , and were not restricted, as Niebuhr supposes, to boxing and chariot-races. 

[111] It however diminishes the real honour of the chariot-race, thatthe owner of horses usually won by proxy. 

[112] The indecorum of attending contests where the combatants wereunclothed, was a sufficient reason for the exclusion of females. Thepriestess of Ceres, the mighty mother, was accustomed to regard allsuch indecorums as symbolical, and had therefore refined away anyremarkable indelicacy. 

[113] Plut. In Alex. When one of the combatants with the cestuskilled his antagonist by running the ends of his fingers through hisribs, he was ignominiously expelled the stadium. The cestus itselfmade of thongs of leather, was evidently meant not to increase theseverity of the blow, but for the prevention of foul play by theantagonists laying hold of each other, or using the open hand. Ibelieve that the iron bands and leaden plummets were Roman inventions, and unknown at least till the later Olympic games. Even in thepancratium, the fiercest of all the contests--for it seems to haveunited wrestling with boxing (a struggle of physical strength, withoutthe precise and formal laws of the boxing and wrestling matches), itwas forbidden to kill an enemy, to injure his eyes, or to use theteeth. 

[114] Even to the foot-race, in which many of the competitors were ofthe lowest rank, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedon, was not admittedtill he had proved an Argive descent. He was an unsuccessfulcompetitor. 

[115] Herodotus relates an anecdote, that the Eleans sent deputies toEgypt, vaunting the glories of the Olympic games, and inquiring if theEgyptians could suggest any improvement. The Egyptians asked if thecitizens of Elis were allowed to contend, and, on hearing that theywere, declared it was impossible they should not favour their owncountrymen, and consequently that the games must lead to injustice--asuspicion not verified. 

[116] Cic. Quaest. Tusc. , II, 17. 

[117] Nero (when the glory had left the spot) drove a chariot of tenhorses in Olympia, out of which he had the misfortune to tumble. Heobtained other prizes in other Grecian games, and even contended withthe heralds as a crier. The vanity of Nero was astonishing, but sowas that of most of his successors. The Roman emperors were thesublimest coxcombs in history. In men born to stations which arebeyond ambition, all aspirations run to seed. 

[118] Plut. In Sympos. 

[119] It does not appear that at Elis there were any of the actualcontests in music and song which made the character of the Pythiangames. But still it was a common exhibition for the cultivation ofevery art. Sophist, and historian, and orator, poet and painter foundtheir mart in the Olympic fair. 

[120] Plut. In vita Them. 

[121] Pausanias, lib. V. 

[122] When Phidias was asked on what idea he should form his statue, he answered by quoting the well-known verses of Homer, on the curlsand nod of the thunder god. 

[123] I am of course aware that the popular story that Herodotus readportions of his history at Olympia has been disputed--but I own Ithink it has been disputed with very indifferent success against thetestimony of competent authorities, corroborated by the generalpractice of the time. 

[124] We find, indeed, that the Messenians continued to struggleagainst their conquerors, and that about the time of the battle ofMarathon they broke out into a resistance sometimes called the thirdwar. --Plato, Leg. III. 

[125] Suppose Vortigern to have been expelled by the Britons, and tohave implored the assistance of the Saxons to reinstate him in histhrone, the Return of Vortigern would have been a highly popular namefor the invasion of the Saxons. So, if the Russians, after Waterloo, had parcelled out France, and fixed a Cossack settlement in her"violet vales, " the destruction of the French would have been stillurbanely entitled "The Return of the Bourbons. "

[126] According to Herodotus, the Spartan tradition assigned thethrone to Aristodemus himself, and the regal power was not dividedtill after his death. 

[127] He wrote or transcribed them, is the expression of Plutarch, which I do not literally translate, because this touches upon verydisputed ground. 

[128] "Sometimes the states, " says Plutarch, "veered to democracy--sometimes to arbitrary power;" that is, at one time the nobles invokedthe people against the king; but if the people presumed too far, theysupported the king against the people. If we imagine a confederacy ofHighland chiefs even a century or two ago--give them a nominal king--consider their pride and their jealousy--see them impatient ofauthority in one above them, yet despotic to those below--quarrellingwith each other--united only by clanship, never by citizenship;--andplace them in a half-conquered country, surrounded by hostileneighbours and mutinous slaves--we may then form, perhaps, some ideaof the state of Sparta previous to the legislation of Lycurgus. 

[129] When we are told that the object of Lycurgus was to root outthe luxury and effeminacy existent in Sparta, a moment's reflectiontells us that effeminacy and luxury could not have existed. A tribeof fierce warriors, in a city unfortified--shut in by rocks--harassedby constant war--gaining city after city from foes more civilized, stubborn to bear, and slow to yield--maintaining a perilous yoke overthe far more numerous races they had subdued--what leisure, whatoccasion had such men to become effeminate and luxurious?

[130] See Mueller's Dorians, vol. Ii. , p. 12 (Translation). 

[131] In the same passage Aristotle, with that wonderful sympathy inopinion between himself and the political philosophers of our own day, condemns the principle of seeking and canvassing for suffrages. 

[132] In this was preserved the form of royalty in the heroic times. Aristotle well remarks, that in the council Agamemnon bears reproachand insult, but in the field he becomes armed with authority over lifeitself--"Death is in his hand. "

[133] Whereas the modern republics of Italy rank among the causeswhich prevented their assuming a widely conquering character, theirextreme jealousy of their commanders, often wisely ridiculed by thegreat Italian historians; so that a baggage-cart could scarcely move, or a cannon be planted, without an order from the senate!

[134] Mueller rightly observes, that though the ephoralty was acommon Dorian magistrature, "yet, considered as an office, opposed tothe king and council, it is not for that reason less peculiar to theSpartans; and in no Doric, nor even in any Grecian state is there anything which exactly corresponds with it. "

[135] They rebuked Archidamus for having married too small a wife. See Mueller's Dorians, vol. Ii. (Translation), p. 124, and theauthorities he quotes. 

[136] Aristot. Pol. , lib. Ii. , c. 9. 

[137] Idem. 

[138] These remarks on the democratic and representative nature ofthe ephoralty are only to be applied to it in connexion with theSpartan people. It must be remembered that the ephors represented thewill of that dominant class, and not of the Laconians or Perioeci, whomade the bulk of the non-enslaved population; and the democracy oftheir constitution was therefore but the democracy of an oligarchy. 

[139] Machiavel (Discourses on the first Decade of Livy, b. I. , c. Vi. ), attributes the duration of the Spartan government to two maincauses--first, the fewness of the body to be governed, allowingfewness in the governors; and secondly, the prevention of all thechanges and corruption which the admission of strangers would haveoccasioned. He proceeds then to show that for the long duration of aconstitution the people should be few in number, and all popularimpulse and innovation checked; yet that, for the splendour andgreatness of a state, not only population should be encouraged, buteven political ferment and agitation be leniently regarded. Sparta ishis model for duration, republican Rome for progress and empire. "Tomy judgment, " the Florentine concludes, "I prefer the latter, and forthe strife and emulation between the nobles and the people, they areto be regarded indeed as inconveniences, but necessary to a state thatwould rise to the Roman grandeur. "

[140] Plut. De Musica. 

[141] At Corinth they were abolished by Periander as favourable to anaristocracy, according to Aristotle; but a better reason might be thatthey were dangerous to tyranny. 

[142] "Yet, although goods were appropriated, their uses, " saysAristotle, "were freely communicated, --a Spartan could use the horses, the slaves, the dogs, and carriages of another. " If this were to betaken literally, it is difficult to see how a Spartan could be poor. We must either imagine that different times are confounded, or thatlimitations with which we are unacquainted were made in this system ofborrowing. 

[143] See, throughout the Grecian history, the Helots collecting theplunder of the battle-field, hiding it from the gripe of their lords, and selling gold at the price of brass!

[144] Aristotle, who is exceedingly severe on the Spartan ladies, says very shrewdly, that the men were trained to submission to a civilby a military system, while the women were left untamed. A Spartanhero was thus made to be henpecked. Yet, with all the allegedseverity of the Dorian morals, these sturdy matrons rather discardedthe graces than avoided the frailties of their softer contemporaries. Plato [Plat. De legibus, lib. I. And lib. Vi. ] and Aristotle [Aristot. Repub. , lib. Ii. ] give very unfavourable testimonials of theirchastity. Plutarch, the blind panegyrist of Sparta, observes withamusing composure, that the Spartan husbands were permitted to lendtheir wives to each other; and Polybius (in a fragment of the 12thbook) [Fragm. Vatican. , tom. Ii. , p. 384. ] informs us that it was anold-fashioned and common custom in Sparta for three or four brothersto share one wife. The poor husbands!--no doubt the lady was a matchfor them all! So much for those gentle creatures whom that graveGerman professor, M. Mueller, holds up to our admiration and despair. 

[145] In Homer the condition of the slave seems, everywhere, temperedby the kindness and indulgence of the master. 

[146] Three of the equals always attended the king's person in war. 

[147] The institution of the ephors has been, with probability, referred to this epoch--chosen at first as the viceroys in the absenceof the kings. 

[148] Pausanias, Messenics. 

[149] See Mueller's Dorians, vol. I. , p. 172, and Clinton's Fast. Hell. Vol. I. , p. 183. 

[150] For the dates here given of the second Messenian war see Fast. Hell. , vol. I. , 190, and Appendix 2. 

[151] Now called Messina. 

[152] In Phocis were no less than twenty-two states (poleis); inBoeotia, fourteen; in Achaia, ten. The ancient political theoristsheld no community too small for independence, provided the numberssufficed for its defence. We find from Plato that a society of fivethousand freemen capable of bearing arms was deemed powerful enough toconstitute an independent state. One great cause of the ascendency ofAthens and Sparta was, that each of those cities had from an earlyperiod swept away the petty independent states in their severalterritories of Attica and Laconia. 

[153] Machiavel (Discor. , lib. I. , c. Ii. ). 

[154] Lib. Iv. , c. 13. 

[155] Aristotle cites among the advantages of wealth, that of beingenabled to train horses. Wherever the nobility could establish amongthemselves a cavalry, the constitution was oligarchical. Yet, even instates which did not maintain a cavalry (as Athens previous to theconstitution of Solon), an oligarchy was the first form of governmentthat rose above the ruins of monarchy. 

[156] One principal method of increasing the popular action was byincorporating the neighbouring villages or wards in one municipalitywith the capital. By this the people gained both in number and inunion. 

[157] Sometimes in ancient Greece there arose a species of lawfultyrants, under the name of Aesymnetes. These were voluntarily chosenby the people, sometimes for life, sometimes for a limited period, andgenerally for the accomplishment of some particular object. Thus wasPittacus of Mitylene elected to conduct the war against the exiles. With the accomplishment of the object he abdicated his power. But theappointment of Aesymnetes can hardly be called a regular form ofgovernment. They soon became obsolete--the mere creatures ofoccasion. While they lasted, they bore a strong resemblance to theRoman dictators--a resemblance remarked by Dionysius, who quotesTheophrastus as agreeing with Aristotle in his account of theAesymnetes. 

[158] For, as the great Florentine has well observed, "To found wella government, one man is the best--once established, the care andexecution of the laws should be transferred to many. "--(Machiavel. Discor. , lib. I. , c. 9. ) And thus a tyranny builds the edifice, whichthe republic hastens to inhabit. 

[159] That of Orthagoras and his sons in Sicyon. "Of allgovernments, " says Aristotle, "that of an oligarchy, or of a tyrant, is the least permanent. " A quotation that cannot be too often pressedon the memory of those reasoners who insist so much on the briefduration of the ancient republics. 

[160] Besides the representation necessary to confederacies--such asthe Amphictyonic League, etc. , a representative system was adopted atMantinea, where the officers were named by deputies chosen by thepeople. "This form of democracy, " says Aristotle, "existed among theshepherds and husbandmen of Arcadia;" and was probably not uncommonwith the ancient Pelasgians. But the myrioi of Arcadia had not thelegislative power. 

[161] "Then to the lute's soft voice prolong the night, Music, the banquet's most refined delight. " Pope's Odyssey, book xxi. , 473. 

It is stronger in the original--

 Moltae kai phormingi tu gar t'anathaemata daitos. 

[162] Iliad, book ix. , Pope's translation, line 250. 

[163] Heyne, F. Clinton, etc. 

[164] Pope's translation, b. Iv. , line 75, etc. 

[165] At least this passage is sufficient to refute the arguments ofMr. Mitford, and men more learned than that historian, who, in takingfor their premises as an indisputable fact the extraordinaryassumption, that Homer never once has alluded to the return of theHeraclidae, arrive at a conclusion very illogical, even if thepremises were true, viz. , that therefore Homer preceded the date ofthat great revolution. 

[166] I own that this seems to me the most probable way of accountingfor the singular and otherwise disproportioned importance attached bythe ancient poets to that episode in the Trojan war, which relates tothe feud of Achilles and Agamemnon. As the first recorded enmitybetween the great Achaeans and the warriors of Phthiotis, it wouldhave a solemn and historical interest both to the conquering Doriansand the defeated Achaeans, flattering to the national vanity of eitherpeople. 

[167] I adopt the analysis of the anti-Homer arguments so clearlygiven by Mr. Coleridge in his eloquent Introduction to the Study ofthe Greek Poets. Homer, p. 39. 

[168] en spanei biblon, are the words of Herodotus. Leaves and thebark of trees were also used from a very remote period previous to thecommon use of the papyrus, and when we are told that leaves would notsuffice for works of any length or duration, it must not be forgottenthat in a much later age it was upon leaves (and mutton bones) thatthe Koran was transcribed. The rudest materials are sufficient forthe preservation of what men deem it their interest to preserve!

[169] See Clinton's F. H. , vol. I. , p. 145. 

[170] Critics, indeed, discover some pretended gaps andinterpolations; but these, if conceded, are no proof against the unityof Homer; the wonder is, that there should be so few of suchinterpolations, considering the barbarous age which intervened betweentheir composition and the time in which they were first carefullyedited and collected. With more force it is urged against theargument in favour of the unity of Homer, derived from the unity ofthe style and character, that there are passages which modern criticsagree to be additions to the original poems, made centuries afterward, and yet unsuspected by the ancients; and that in these additions--suchas the last books of the Iliad, with many others less important--theHomeric unity of style and character is still sustained. We mayanswer, however, that, in the first place, we have a right to beskeptical as to these discoveries--many of them rest on veryinsufficient critical grounds; in the second place, if we grant them, it is one thing whether a forged addition be introduced into a poem, and another thing whether the poem be all additions; in the thirdplace, we may observe, that successful imitations of the style andcharacters of an author, however great, may be made many centuriesafterward with tolerable ease, and by a very inferior genius, although, at the time he wrote or sung, it is not easy to suppose thathalf a dozen or more poets shared his spirit or style. It is a verycommon scholastic trick to imitate, nowadays, and with considerablefelicity, the style of the greatest writers, ancient and modern. Butthe unity of Homer does not depend on the question whether imitativeforgeries were introduced into a great poem, but whether a multitudeof great poets combined in one school on one subject. An ingeniousstudent of Shakspeare, or the elder dramatists, might impose upon thepublic credulity a new scene, or even a new play, as belonging toShakspeare, but would that be any proof that a company of Shakspearescombined in the production of Macbeth? I own, by-the-way, that I am alittle doubtful as to our acumen in ascertaining what is Homeric andwhat is not, seeing that Schlegel, after devoting half a life toShakspeare (whose works are composed in a living language, theauthenticity of each of which works a living nation can attest), nevertheless attributes to that poet a catalogue of plays of whichShakspeare is perfectly innocent!--but, to be sure, Steevens does thesame!

[171] That Pisistratus or his son, assisted by the poets of his day, did more than collect, arrange, and amend poems already in highrepute, we have not only no authority to suppose, but much evidence tocontradict. Of the true services of Pisistratus to Homer, morehereafter. 

[172] "The descent of Theseus with Pirithous into hell, " etc. --Paus. , ix. , c. 31. 

[173] Especially if with the Boeotians we are to consider the mostpoetical passage (the introductory lines to the muses) a spuriousinterpolation. 

[174] A herdsman. 

[175] I cannot omit a tradition recorded by Pausanias. A leadentable near the fountain was shown by the Boeotians as that on whichthe "Works and Days" was written. The poems of Hesiod certainly donot appear so adapted to recital as perusal. Yet, by the mostplausible chronology, they were only composed about one hundred yearsafter those of Homer!

[176] The Aones, Hyantes, and other tribes, which I consider part ofthe great Pelasgic family, were expelled from Boeotia by Thracianhordes. [They afterward returned in the time of the Dorianemigration. ] Some of the population must, however, have remained--thepeasantry of the land; and in Hesiod we probably possess the nationalpoetry, and arrive at the national religion, of the old Pelasgi. 

[177] Welcker. 

[178] The deadly signs which are traced by Praetus on the tablets ofwhich Bellerophon was the bearer, and which are referred to in theIliad, are generally supposed by the learned to have been pictorial, and, as it were, hieroglyphical figures; my own belief, and theeasiest interpretation of the passage, is, that they were alphabeticalcharacters--in a word, writing, not painting. 

[179] Pausanias, lib. I. , c. 27, speaks of a wooden statue in theTemple of Pohas, in Athens, said to have been the gift of Cecrops;and, with far more claim to belief, in the previous chapter he tellsus that the most holy of all the images was a statue of Minerva, which, by the common consent of all the towns before incorporated inone city, was dedicated in the citadel, or polis. Tradition, therefore, carried the date of this statue beyond the time of Theseus. Plutarch also informs us that Theseus himself, when he ordained divinehonours to be paid to Ariadne, ordered two little statues to be madeof her--one of silver and one of brass. 

[180] All that Homer calls the work of Vulcan, such as the dogs inthe palace of Alcinous, etc. , we may suppose to be the work offoreigners. A poet could scarcely attribute to the gods a work thathis audience knew an artificer in their own city had made!

[181] See Odyssey, book vii. 

[182] The effect of the arts, habits, and manners of a foreigncountry is immeasurably more important upon us if we visit thatcountry, than if we merely receive visits from its natives. Forexample, the number of French emigrants who crowded our shores at thetime of the French revolution very slightly influenced Englishcustoms, etc. But the effect of the French upon us when, after thepeace, our own countrymen flocked to France, was immense. 

[183] Herod. , lib. Ii. , c. 178. 

[184] Grecian architecture seems to have been more free fromobligation to any technical secrets of Egyptian art than Grecianstatuary or painting. For, in the first place, it is more thandoubtful whether the Doric order was not invented in European Greecelong prior to the reign of Psammetichus [The earliest known temple atCorinth is supposed by Col. Leake to bear date B. C. 800, about onehundred and thirty years before the reign of Psammetichus in Egypt. ];and, in the second place, it is evident that the first hints andrudiments both of the Doric and the Ionic order were borrowed, notfrom buildings of the massive and perennial materials of Egyptianarchitecture, but from wooden edifices; growing into perfection asstone and marble were introduced, and the greater difficulty andexpense of the workmanship insensibly imposed severer thought and moreelaborate rules upon the architect. But I cannot agree with Muellerand others, that because the first hints of the Doric order were takenfrom wooden buildings, therefore the first invention was necessarilywith the Dorians, since many of the Asiatic cities were built chieflyof wood. It seems to me most probable that Asia gave the firstnotions of these beautiful forms, and that the Greeks carried them toperfection before the Asiatics, not only from their keen perception ofthe graceful, but because they earlier made a general use of stone. We learn from Herodotus that the gorgeous Sardis was built chiefly ofwood, at a time when the marble of Paros was a common material of theGrecian temples. 

[185] Thales was one of the seven wise men, B. C. 586, whenPherecydes of Syrus, the first prose writer, was about fourteen yearsold. Mr. Clinton fixes the acme of Pherecydes about B. C. 572. Cadmus of Miletus flourished B. C. 530. 

[186] To this solution of the question, why literature shouldgenerally commence with attempts at philosophy, may be added another:--When written first breaks upon oral communication, the readingpublic must necessarily be extremely confined. In many early nations, that reading public would be composed of the caste of priests; in thiscase philosophy would be cramped by superstition. In Greece, therebeing no caste of priests, philosophy embraced those studious mindsaddicted to a species of inquiry which rejected the poetical form, aswell as the poetical spirit. It may be observed, that the morelimited the reading public, the more abstruse are generally prosecompositions; as readers increase, literature goes back to the fashionof oral communication; for if the reciter addressed the multitude inthe earlier age, so the writer addresses a multitude in the later;literature, therefore, commences with poetical fiction, and usuallyterminates with prose fiction. It was so in the ancient world--itwill be so with England and France. The harvest of novels is, I fear, a sign of the approaching exhaustion of the soil. 

[187] See chapter i. 

[188] Instead of Periander of Corinth, is (by Plato, and therefore)more popularly, but less justly, ranked Myson of Chene. 

[189] Attributed also to Thales; Stob. Serm. 

[190] Aristotle relates (Pol. , lib. I. ) a singular anecdote of themeans whereby this philosopher acquired wealth. His skill inmeteorology made him foresee that there would be one season anextraordinary crop of olives. He hired during the previous winter allthe oil-presses in Chios and Miletus, employing his scanty fortune inadvances to the several proprietors. When the approaching seasonshowed the ripening crops, every man wished to provide olive-pressesas quickly as possible; and Thales, having them all, let them at ahigh price. His monopoly made his fortune, and he showed to hisfriends, says Aristotle, that it was very easy for philosophers to berich if they desire it, though such is not their principal desire;--philosophy does not find the same facilities nowadays. 

[191] Thus Homer is cited in proof of the progenital humidity, "'Okeanos hosper ginesis pantos tet ktai;"

The Bryant race of speculators would attack us at once with "thespirit moving on the face of the waters. " It was not an uncommonopinion in Greece that chaos was first water settling into slime, andthen into earth; and there are good but not sufficient reasons toattribute a similar, and of course earlier, notion to the Phoenicians, and still more perhaps to the Indians. 

[192] Plut. De Plac. Phil. 

[193] Ap. Stob. Serm. 

[194] Laert. 

[195] According to Clinton's chronology, viz. , one year after thelegislation of Draco. This emendation of dates formerly receivedthrows considerable light upon the causes of the conspiracy, whichperhaps took its strength from the unpopularity and failure of Draco'slaws. Following the very faulty chronology which pervades his wholework, Mr. Mitford makes the attempt of Cylon precede the legislationof Draco. 

[196] A cap. 

[197] The expedition against Salamis under Solon preceded the arrivalof Epimenides at Athens, which was in 596. The legislation of Solonwas B. C. 594--the first tyranny of Pisistratus B. C. 560: viz. , thirty-four years after Solon's legislation, and at least thirty-sevenyears after Solon's expedition to Salamis. But Pisistratus livedthirty-three years after his first usurpation, so that, if he hadacted in the first expedition to Salamis, he would have lived to anage little short of one hundred, and been considerably past eighty atthe time of his third most brilliant and most energetic government!The most probable date for the birth of Pisistratus is that assignedby Mr. Clinton, about B. C. 595, somewhat subsequent to Solon'sexpedition to Salamis, and only about a year prior to Solon'slegislation. According to this date, Pisistratus would have beenabout sixty-eight at the time of his death. The error of Plutarchevidently arose from his confounding two wars with Megara for Salamis, attended with similar results--the first led by Solon, the second byPisistratus. I am the more surprised that Mr. Thirlwall should havefallen into the error of making Pisistratus contemporary with Solon inthis affair, because he would fix the date of the recovery of Salamisat B. C. 604 (see note to Thirlwall's Greece, p. 25, vol. Ii. ), andwould suppose Solon to be about thirty-two at that time (viz. , twenty-six years old in 612 B. C. ). (See Thirlwall, vol. Ii. , p. 23, note. ) Now, as Pisistratus could not have been well less thantwenty-one, to have taken so prominent a share as that ascribed to himby Plutarch and his modern followers, in the expedition, he must, according to such hypothesis, have been only eleven years younger thanSolon, have perpetrated his first tyranny just before Solon died of oldage, and married a second wife when he was near eighty! Had this beenthe case, the relations of the lady could not reasonably have been angrythat the marriage was not consummated!

[198] We cannot suppose, as the careless and confused Plutarch wouldimply, that the people, or popular assembly, reversed the decree; thegovernment was not then democratic, but popular assemblies existed, which, in extraordinary cases--especially, perhaps, in the case ofwar--it was necessary to propitiate, and customary to appeal to. Imake no doubt that it was with the countenance and consent of thearchons that Solon made his address to the people, preparing them toreceive the repeal of the decree, which, without their approbation, itmight be unsafe to propose. 

[199] As the quotation from Homer is extremely equivocal, merelystating that Ajax joined the ships that he led from Salamis with thoseof the Athenians, one cannot but suppose, that if Solon had reallytaken the trouble to forge a verse, he would have had the common senseto forge one much more decidedly in favour of his argument. 

[200] Fifty-seven, according to Pliny. 

[201] Plut. In Vit. Sol. 

[202] Arist. Pol. , lib. Ii. , c. 8. 

[203] This regulation is probably of later date than the time ofSolon. To Pisistratus is referred a law for disabled citizens, thoughits suggestion is ascribed to Solon. It was, however, a law thatevidently grew out of the principles of Solon. 

[204] A tribe contained three phratries, or fraternities--a phratrycontained three genes or clans--a genos or clan was composed of thirtyheads of families. As the population, both in the aggregate and inthese divisions, must have been exposed to constant fluctuations, theaforesaid numbers were most probably what we may describe as a fictionin law, as Boeckh (Pol. Econ. Of Athens, vol. I. , p. 47, Englishtranslation) observes, "in the same manner that the Romans called thecaptain a centurion, even if he commanded sixty men, so a family mighthave been called a triakas (i. E. , a thirtiad), although it containedfifty or more persons. " It has been conjectured indeed by some, thatfrom a class not included in these families, vacancies in thephratries were filled up; but this seems to be a less probablesupposition than that which I have stated above. If the numbers inPollux were taken from a census in the time of Solon, the four tribesat that time contained three hundred and sixty families, each familyconsisting of thirty persons; this would give a total population often thousand eight hundred free citizens. It was not long before thatpopulation nearly doubled itself, but the titles of the subdivisionsremained the same. I reserve for an appendix a more detailed andcritical view of the vehement but tedious disputes of the learned onthe complicated subject of the Athenian tribes and families. 

[205] Boeckh (Pub. Econ. Of Athens, book iv. , chap. V. ) contends, from a law preserved by Demosthenes, that the number of measures forthe zeugitae was only one hundred and fifty. But his argument, derived from the analogy of the sum to be given to an heiress by hernearest relation, if he refused to marry her, is by no meansconvincing enough to induce us to reject the proportion of two hundredmeasures, "preserved (as Boeckh confesses) by all writers, " especiallyas in the time of Demosthenes. Boeckh himself, in a subsequentpassage, rightly observes, that the names of zeugitae, etc. , couldonly apply to new classes introduced in the place of those institutedby Solon. 

[206] With respect to the value of "a measure" in that time, it wasestimated at a drachma, and a drachma was the price of a sheep. 

[207] The law against idleness is attributable rather to Pisistratusthan Solon. 

[208] Athenaeus, lib. Xiv. 

[209] Plutarch de Gloria Athen. I do not in this sketch entirelyconfine myself to Solon's regulations respecting the areopagus. 

[210] The number of the areopagites depending upon the number of thearchons, was necessarily fluctuating and uncertain. An archon was notnecessarily admitted to the areopagus. He previously underwent arigorous and severe examination of the manner in which he haddischarged the duties of his office, and was liable to expulsion uponproofs of immorality or unworthiness. 

[211] Some modern writers have contended that at the time of Solonthe members of the council were not chosen by lot; their arguments arenot to me very satisfactory. But if merely a delegation of theEupatrids, as such writers suppose, the council would be still morevicious in its constitution. 

[212] Pollux. 

[213] Aeschines in Timarch. 

[214] Each member was paid (as in England once, as in America at thisday) a moderate sum (one drachma) for his maintenance, and at thetermination of his trust, peculiar integrity was rewarded with moneyfrom the public treasury. 

[215] When there were ten tribes, each tribe presided thirty-fivedays, or five weeks; when the number was afterward increased totwelve, the period of the presidency was one month. 

[216] Atimos means rather unhonoured than dishonoured. He to whom, in its milder degree, the word was applied, was rather withdrawn (asit were) from honour than branded with disgrace. By rapid degrees, however, the word ceased to convey its original meaning; it wasapplied to offences so ordinary and common, that it sunk into a merelegal term. 

[217] The more heinous of the triple offences, termed eisangelia. 

[218] This was a subsequent law; an obolus, or one penny farthing, was the first payment; it was afterward increased to three oboli, orthreepence three farthings. 

[219] Sometimes, also, the assembly was held in the Pnyx, afterwardso celebrated: latterly, also (especially in bad weather), in thetemple of Bacchus;--on extraordinary occasions, in whatever place wasdeemed most convenient or capacious. 

[220] Plato de Legibus. 

[221] Plutarch assures us that Solon issued a decree that his lawswere to remain in force a hundred years: an assertion which modernwriters have rejected as incompatible with their constant revision. It was not, however, so contradictory a decree as it seems at firstglance--for one of the laws not to be altered was this power ofamending and revising the laws. And, therefore, the enactment indispute would only imply that the constitution was not to be alteredexcept through the constitutional channel which Solon had appointed. 

[222] See Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , 276. 

[223] Including, as I before observed, that law which provided forany constitutional change in a constitutional manner. 

[224] "Et Croesum quem vox justi facunda Solonis Respicere ad longae jussit spatia ultima vitae. " Juv. , Sat. X. , s. 273. 

The story of the interview and conversation between Croesus and Solonis supported by so many concurrent authorities, that we cannot butfeel grateful to the modern learning, which has removed the onlyobjection to it in an apparent contradiction of dates. If, ascontended for by Larcher, still more ably by Wesseling, and since byMr. Clinton, we agree that Croesus reigned jointly with his fatherAlyattes, the difficulty vanishes at once. 

[225] Plutarch gives two accounts of the recovery of Salamis bySolon; one of them, which is also preferred by Aelian (var. C. Xix. , lib. Vii. ), I have adopted and described in my narrative of thatexpedition: the second I now give, but refer to Pisistratus, notSolon: in support of which opinion I am indebted to Mr. Clinton forthe suggestion of two authorities. Aeneas Tacticus, in his Treatiseon Sieges, chap. Iv. , and Frontinus de Stratagem. , lib. Iv. , cap. Vii. --Justin also favours the claim of Pisistratus to this stratagem, lib. Xi. , c. Viii. 

[226] The most sanguine hope indeed that Cicero seems to have formedwith respect to the conduct of Cesar, was that he might deserve thetitle of the Pisistratus of Rome. 

[227] If we may, in this anecdote, accord to Plutarch (de Vit. Sol. )and Aelian (Var. Lib. Viii. , c. Xvi. ) a belief which I see no reasonfor withholding. 

[228] His own verses, rather than the narrative of Plutarch, are theevidence of Solon's conduct on the usurpation of Pisistratus. 

[229] This historian fixes the date of Solon's visit to Croesus andto Cyprus (on which island he asserts him to have died), not duringhis absence of ten years, but during the final exile for which hecontends. 

[230] Herod. , l. I. , c. 49. 

[231] The procession of the goddess of Reason in the first Frenchrevolution solves the difficulty that perplexed Herodotus. 

[232] Mr. Mitford considers this story as below the credit ofhistory. He gives no sufficient reason against its reception, andwould doubtless have been less skeptical had he known more of thesocial habits of that time, or possessed more intimate acquaintancewith human nature generally. 

[233] Upon which points, of men and money, Mr. Mitford, who isanxious to redeem the character of Pisistratus from the stain oftyranny, is dishonestly prevaricating. Quoting Herodotus, whoespecially insists upon these undue sources of aid, in the followingwords--'Errixose taen tyrannida, epikouroisi te polloisi kaichraematon synodoisi, ton men, autothen, ton de, apo Strumanos potamousynionton: this candid historian merely says, "A particular interestwith the ruling parties in several neighbouring states, especiallyThebes and Argos, and a wise and liberal use of a very great privateproperty, were the resources in which besides he mostly relied. " Whyhe thus slurs over the fact of the auxiliary forces will easily beperceived. He wishes us to understand that the third tyranny ofPisistratus, being wholesome, was also acceptable to the Athenians, and not, as it in a great measure was, supported by borrowed treasureand foreign swords. 

[234] Who, according to Plutarch, first appeared at the return ofSolon; but the proper date for his exhibitions is ascertained (Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , p. 11) several years after Solon's death. 

[235] These two wars, divided by so great an interval of time, --theone terminated by Periander of Corinth, the other undertaken byPisistratus, --are, with the usual blundering of Mr. Mitford, jumbledtogether into the same event. He places Alcaeus in the war followingthe conquest of Sigeum by Pisistratus. Poor Alcaeus! the poetflourished Olym. 42 (611 B. C. ); the third tyranny of Pisistratus maydate somewhere about 537 B. C. , so that Alcaeus, had he been alive inthe time ascribed by Mr. Mitford to his warlike exhibitions, wouldhave been (supposing him to be born twenty-six years before the dateof his celebrity in 611) just a hundred years old--a fitting age tocommence the warrior! The fact is, Mr. Mitford adopted the ratherconfused account of Herodotus, without taking the ordinary pains toascertain dates, which to every one else the very names of Perianderand Alcaeus would have suggested. 

[236] For the reader will presently observe the share taken byCroesus in the affairs of this Miltiades during his government in theChersonesus; now Croesus was conquered by Cyrus about B. C. 546--itmust, therefore, have been before that period. But the third tyrannyof Pisistratus appears to have commenced nine years afterward, viz. , B. C. 537. The second tyranny probably commenced only two yearsbefore the fall of the Lydian monarchy, and seems to have lasted onlya year, and during that period Croesus no longer exercised over thecities of the coast the influence he exerted with the people ofLampsacus on behalf of Miltiades; the departure of Miltiades, son ofCypselus, must therefore have been in the first tyranny, in theinterval 560 B. C. --554 B. C. , and probably at the very commencementof the reign--viz. , about 550 B. C. 

[237] In the East, the master of the family still sits before thedoor to receive visiters or transact business. 

[238] Thucydides, b. Vi. , c. 54. The dialogue of Hipparchus, ascribed to Plato, gives a different story, but much of the samenature. In matters of history, we cannot doubt which is the bestauthority, Thucydides or Plato, --especially an apocryphal Plato. 

[239] Although it is probable that the patriotism of Aristogiton andHarmodius "the beloved" has been elevated in after times beyond itsreal standard, yet Mr. Mitford is not justified in saying that it wasprivate revenge, and not any political motive, that induced them toconspire the death of Hippias and Hipparchus. Had it been so, whystrike at Hippias at all?--why attempt to make him the first andprincipal victim?--why assail Hipparchus (against whom only they had aprivate revenge) suddenly, by accident, and from the impulse of themoment, after the failure of their design on the tyrant himself, withwhom they had no quarrel? It is most probable that, as in otherattempts at revolution, that of Masaniello--that of Rienzi--publicpatriotism was not created--it was stimulated and made passion byprivate resentment. 

[240] Mr. Mitford has most curiously translated this passage thus:"Aristogiton escaped the attending guards, but, being taken by thepeople (!!!) was not mildly treated. So Thucydides has expressedhimself. " Now Thucydides says quite the reverse: he says that, owingto the crowd of the people, the guard could not at first seize him. How did Mr. Mitford make this strange blunder? The most charitablesupposition is, that, not reading the Greek, he was misled by an errorof punctuation in the Latin version. 

[241] "Qui cum per tormenta conscios caedis nominare cogeretur, " etc. (Justin. , lib. Ii. , chap. Ix. ) This author differs from the elderwriters as to the precise cause of the conspiracy. 

[242] Herodotus says they were both Gephyraeans by descent; a race, according to him, originally Phoenician. --Herod. B. V. , c. 57. 

[243] Mr. Mitford too hastily and broadly asserts the whole story ofLeaena to be a fable: if, as we may gather from Pausanias, the statueof the lioness existed in his time, we may pause before we deny allauthenticity to a tradition far from inconsonant with the manners ofthe time or the heroism of the sex. 

[244] Thucyd. , b. Vi. , c. 59. 

[245] Herodotus, b. Vi. , c. 103. In all probability, the samejealousy that murdered the father dismissed the son. Hippias was fartoo acute and too fearful not to perceive the rising talents anddaring temper of Miltiades. By-the-way, will it be believed thatMitford, in is anxiety to prove Hippias and Hipparchus the mostadmirable persons possible, not only veils the unnatural passions ofthe last, but is utterly silent about the murder of Cimon, which isascribed to the sons of Pisistratus by Herodotus, in the strongest andgravest terms. --Mr. Thirlwall (Hist. Of Greece, vol. Ii. , p. 223)erroneously attributes the assassination of Cimon to Pisistratushimself. 

[246] Suidas. Laertius iv. , 13, etc. Others, as Ammonius andSimplicius ad Aristotelem, derive the name of Cynics given to thesephilosophers from the ridicule attached to their manners. 

[247] Whose ardour appears to have been soon damped. They lost butforty men, and then retired at once to Thessaly. This reminds us ofthe wars between the Italian republics, in which the loss of a singlehorseman was considered no trifling misfortune. The value of thesteed and the rank of the horseman (always above the vulgar) made thecavalry of Greece easily discouraged by what appears to us aninconsiderable slaughter. 

[248] Aelian. V. Hist. Xiii. , 24. 

[249] Wachsm, l. I. , p. 273. Others contend for a later date to thismost important change; but, on the whole, it seems a necessaryconsequence of the innovations of Clisthenes, which were all modelledupon the one great system of breaking down the influence of thearistocracy. In the speech of Otanes (Herod. , lib. Iii. , c. 80), itis curious to observe how much the vote by lot was identified with arepublican form of government. 

[250] See Sharon Turner, vol. I. , book i. 

[251] Herod. , b. I. , c. Xxvi. 

[252] Ctesias. Mr. Thirlwall, in my judgment, very properly contentshimself with recording the ultimate destination of Croesus as we findit in Ctesias, to the rejection of the beautiful romance of Herodotus. Justin observes that Croesus was so beloved among the Grecian cities, that, had Cyrus exercised any cruelty against him, the Persian herowould have drawn upon himself a war with Greece. 

[253] After his fall, Croesus is said by Herodotus to have reproachedthe Pythian with those treacherous oracles that conduced to the lossof his throne, and to have demanded if the gods of Greece were usuallydelusive and ungrateful. True to that dark article of Grecian faithwhich punished remote generations for ancestral crimes, the Pythianreplied, that Croesus had been fated to expiate in his own person thecrimes of Gyges, the murderer of his master;--that, for the rest, thedeclarations of the oracle had been verified; the mighty empire, denounced by the divine voice, had been destroyed, for it was his own, and the mule, Cyrus, was presiding over the Lydian realm: a mule mightthe Persian hero justly be entitled, since his parents were ofdifferent ranks and nations. His father a low-born Persian--hismother a Median princess. Herodotus assures us that Croesus wascontent with the explanation--if so, the god of song was morefortunate than the earthly poets he inspires, who have indeed often, imitating his example, sacrificed their friends to a play upon words, without being so easily able to satisfy their victims. 

[254] Herod. , l. V. , c. 74. 

[255] If colonists they can properly be called--they retained theirconnexion with Athens, and all their rights of franchise. 

[256] Herod. , l. V. , c. 78. 

[257] Mr. Mitford, constantly endeavouring to pervert the simplehonesty of Herodotus to a sanction of despotic governments, carefullyslurs over this remarkable passage. 

[258] Pausanias, b. Iii. , c. 5 and 6. 

[259] Mr. Mitford, always unduly partial to the Spartan policy, styles Cleomenes "a man violent in his temper, but of considerableabilities. " There is no evidence of his abilities. His restlessnessand ferocity made him assume a prominent part which he was neveradequate to fulfil: he was, at best, a cunning madman. 

[260] Why, if discovered so long since by Cleomenes, were theyconcealed till now? The Spartan prince, afterward detected in bribingthe oracle itself, perhaps forged these oracular predictions. 

[261] Herod. , b. V. C. 91. 

[262] What is the language of Mr. Mitford at this treason? "We haveseen, " says that historian, "the democracy of Athens itself settingthe example (among the states of old Greece) of soliciting Persianprotection. Will, then, the liberal spirit of patriotism and equalgovernment justify the prejudices of Athenian faction (!!!) and doomHippias to peculiar execration, because, at length, he also, with manyof his fellow-citizens, despairing of other means for ever returningto their native country, applied to Artaphernes at Sardis?" It isdifficult to know which to admire most, the stupidity or dishonesty ofthis passage. The Athenian democracy applied to Persia for reliefagainst the unjust invasion of their city and liberties by a foreignforce; Hippias applied to Persia, not only to interfere in thedomestic affairs of a free state, but to reduce that state, his nativecity, to the subjection of the satrap. Is there any parallel betweenthese cases? If not, what dulness in instituting it! But thedishonesty is equal to the dulness. Herodotus, the only author Mr. Mitford here follows, expressly declares (I. V. , c. 96) that Hippiassought to induce Artaphernes to subject Athens to the sway of thesatrap and his master, Darius; yet Mr. Mitford says not a syllable ofthis, leaving his reader to suppose that Hippias merely sought to berestored to his country through the intercession of the satrap. 

[263] Herod. , l. V. , c. 96. 

[264] Aulus Gellius, who relates this anecdote with more detail thanHerodotus, asserts that the slave himself was ignorant of thecharacters written on his scull, that Histiaeus selected a domesticwho had a disease in his eyes--shaved him, punctured the skin, andsending him to Miletus when the hair was grown, assured the credulouspatient that Aristagoras would complete the cure by shaving him asecond time. According to this story we must rather admire thesimplicity of the slave than the ingenuity of Histiaeus. 

[265] Rather a hyperbolical expression--the total number of freeAthenians did not exceed twenty thousand. 

[266] The Paeonians. 

[267] Hecataeus, the historian of Miletus, opposed the retreat toMyrcinus, advising his countrymen rather to fortify themselves in theIsle of Leros, and await the occasion to return to Miletus. Thisearly writer seems to have been one of those sagacious men who rarelyobtain their proper influence in public affairs, because they addressthe reason in opposition to the passions of those they desire to lead. Unsuccessful in this proposition, Hecataeus had equally failed on twoformer occasions;--first, when he attempted to dissuade the Milesiansfrom the revolt of Aristagoras: secondly, when, finding them bent uponit, he advised them to appropriate the sacred treasures in the templeat Branchidae to the maintenance of a naval force. On each occasionhis advice failed precisely because given without prejudice orpassion. The successful adviser must appear to sympathize even withthe errors of his audience. 

[268] The humane Darius--whose virtues were his own, his faults ofhis station--treated the son of Miltiades with kindness and respect, married him to a Persian woman, and endowed him with an estate. Itwas the habitual policy of that great king to attach to his dominionsthe valour and the intellect of the Greeks. 

[269] Pausanias says, that Talthybius afterward razed the house ofMiltiades, because that chief instigated the Athenians to theexecution of the Persian envoys. 

[270] Demaratus had not only prevented the marriage of Leotychideswith a maiden named Percalos, but, by a mixture of violence andartifice, married her himself. Thus, even among the sober andunloving Spartans, woman could still be the author of revolutions. 

[271] The national pride of the Spartans would not, however, allowthat their king was the object of the anger of the gods, andascribing his excesses to his madness, accounted for the lastby a habit of excessive drinking which he had acquired from theScythians

[272] Herod. , l. 6, c. 94. 

[273] Ibid. , l. 6, c. 107. 

[274] The sun and moon. 

[275] In his attack upon Herodotus, Plutarch asserts that theSpartans did make numerous military excursions at the beginning of themonth; if this be true, so far from excusing the Spartans, it onlycorroborates the natural suspicion that they acted in accordance, notwith superstition, but with their usual calculating and selfish policy--ever as slow to act in the defence of other states as prompt toassert the independence of their own. 

[276] Paus. , l. 8, c. 5. 

[277] The exact number of the Athenians is certainly doubtful. Herodotus does not specify it. Justin estimates the number ofcitizens at ten thousand, besides a thousand Plataeans: Nepos at tenthousand in all; Pausanias at nine thousand. But this total, furnished by authorities so equivocal, seems incredibly small. Thefree population could have been little short of twenty thousand. Wemust add the numbers, already great, of the resident aliens and theslaves, who, as Pausanias tells us, were then for the first timeadmitted to military service. On the other hand it is evident, fromthe speech of Miltiades to Callimachus, and the supposed treachery ofthe Alcmaeonidae, that some, nor an inconsiderable, force, was left inreserve at Athens for the protection of the city. Let us suppose, however, that two thirds of the Athenian citizens of military age, viz. , between the ages of twenty and sixty, marched to Marathon (andthis was but the common proportion on common occasions), the totalforce, with the slaves, the settlers, and the Plataean auxiliaries, could not amount to less than fifteen or sixteen thousand. Butwhatever the precise number of the heroes of Marathon, we have ampletestimony for the general fact that it was so trifling when comparedwith the Persian armament, as almost to justify the exaggeration oflater writers. 

[278] Plut. In Vit. Aris. Aristid. , pro Quatuor Vias, vol. Ii. , p. 222, edit. Dindorf. 

[279] In his graceful work on Athens and Attica, Mr. Wordsworth haswell observed the peculiar propriety of this reference to the examplesof Harmodius and Aristogiton, as addressed to Callimachus. They werefrom the same borough (aphidnae) as the polemarch himself. 

[280] The goddess of Athens was supposed to have invented a peculiartrumpet used by her favoured votaries. 

[281] To raise the standard was the sign of battle. --Suidas, Thucyd. Schol. , c. 1. On the Athenian standard was depicted the owl ofMinerva. --Plut. In Vit. Lysand. 

[282] Aeschyl. Persae. 

[283] Ibid. 

[284] Herod. , l. 6. , c. Xii. 

[285] Plut. In Vit. Aristid. 

[286] Roos hespera. Aristoph. , Vesp 1080. 

[287] Justin, lib. Ii. , c. Ix. 

[288] According, however, to Suidas, he escaped and died at Lemnos. 

[289] This incident confirms the expressed fear of Miltiades, thatdelay in giving battle might produce division and treachery among someof the Athenians. Doubtless his speech referred to some particularfaction or individuals. 

[290] Plut. In Vit. Arist. 

[291] These apparitions, recorded by Pausanias, l. I. , c. 33, arestill believed in by the peasantry. 

END OF THE ORIGINAL PRINT VOLUME I. 

ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

VOLUME II. 

CONTENTS. 

 BOOK III

 CHAPTER

 I The Character and Popularity of Miltiades. --Naval expedition. --Siege of Paros. --Conduct of Miltiades. --He is Accused and Sentenced. --His Death. 

 II The Athenian Tragedy. --Its Origin. --Thespis. --Phrynichus. -- Aeschylus. --Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus. 

 III Aristides. --His Character and Position. --The Rise of Themistocles. --Aristides is Ostracised. --The Ostracism examined. --The Influence of Themistocles increases. --The Silver--mines of Laurion. --Their Product applied by Themistocles to the Increase of the Navy. --New Direction given to the National Character. 

 IV The Preparations of Darius. --Revolt of Egypt. --Dispute for The Succession to the Persian Throne. --Death of Darius. -- Brief Review of the leading Events and Characteristics of his Reign. 

 V Xerxes conducts an Expedition into Egypt. --He finally resolves on the Invasion of Greece. --Vast Preparations for the Conquest of Europe. --Xerxes arrives at Sardis. --Despatches Envoys to the Greek States, demanding Tribute. --The Bridge of the Hellespont. --Review of the Persian Armament at Abydos. --Xerxes encamps at Therme. 

 VI The Conduct of the Greeks. --The Oracle relating to Salamis. -- Art of Themistocles. --The Isthmian Congress. --Embassies to Argos, Crete, Corcyra, and Syracuse. --Their ill Success. -- The Thessalians send Envoys to the Isthmus. --The Greeks advance to Tempe, but retreat. --The Fleet despatched to Artemisium, and the Pass of Thermopylae occupied. --Numbers of the Grecian Fleet. --Battle of Thermopylae. 

 VII The Advice of Demaratus to Xerxes. --Themistocles. --Actions off Artemisium. --The Greeks retreat. --The Persians invade Delphi, and are repulsed with great Loss. --The Athenians, unaided by their Allies, abandon Athens, and embark for Salamis. --The irresolute and selfish Policy of the Peloponnesians. --Dexterity and Firmness of Themistocles. -- Battle of Salamis. --Andros and Carystus besieged by the Greeks. --Anecdotes of Themistocles. --Honours awarded to him in Sparta. --Xerxes returns to Asia. --Olynthus and Potidaea besieged by Artabazus. --The Athenians return Home. --The Ostracism of Aristides is repealed. 

 VIII Embassy of Alexander of Macedon to Athens. --The Result of his Proposals. --Athenians retreat to Salamis. --Mardonius occupies Athens. --The Athenians send Envoys to Sparta. -- Pausanias succeeds Cleombrotus as Regent of Sparta. --Battle of Plataea. --Thebes besieged by the Athenians. --Battle of Mycale. --Siege of Sestos. --Conclusion of the Persian War. 

 BOOK IV

 CHAPTER

 I Remarks on the Effects of War. --State of Athens. --Interference of Sparta with respect to the Fortifications of Athens. -- Dexterous Conduct of Themistocles. --The New Harbour of the Piraeus. --Proposition of the Spartans in the Amphictyonic Council defeated by Themistocles. --Allied Fleet at Cyprus and Byzantium. --Pausanias. --Alteration in his Character. -- His ambitious Views and Treason. --The Revolt of the Ionians from the Spartan Command. --Pausanias recalled. --Dorcis replaces him. --The Athenians rise to the Head of the Ionian League. --Delos made the Senate and Treasury of the Allies. -- Able and prudent Management of Aristides. --Cimon succeeds To the Command of the Fleet. --Character of Cimon. --Eion besieged. --Scyros colonized by Atticans. --Supposed Discovery of the Bones of Theseus. --Declining Power of Themistocles. --Democratic Change in the Constitution. --Themistocles ostracised. --Death of Aristides. 

 II Popularity and Policy of Cimon. --Naxos revolts from the Ionian League. --Is besieged by Cimon. --Conspiracy and Fate of Pausanias. --Flight and Adventures of Themistocles. --His Death. 

 III Reduction of Naxos. --Actions off Cyprus. --Manners of Cimon. --Improvements in Athens. --Colony at the Nine Ways. --Siege of Thasos. --Earthquake in Sparta. --Revolt of Helots, Occupation of Ithome, and Third Messenian War. --Rise and Character of Pericles. --Prosecution and Acquittal of Cimon. --The Athenians assist the Spartans at Ithome. --Thasos Surrenders. --Breach between the Athenians and Spartans. -- Constitutional Innovations at Athens. --Ostracism of Cimon. 

 IV War between Megara and Corinth. --Megara and Pegae garrisoned by Athenians. --Review of Affairs at the Persian Court. -- Accession of Artaxerxes. --Revolt of Egypt under Inarus. -- Athenian Expedition to assist Inarus. --Aegina besieged. --The Corinthians defeated. --Spartan Conspiracy with the Athenian Oligarchy. --Battle of Tanagra. --Campaign and Successes of Myronides. --Plot of the Oligarchy against the Republic. -- Recall of Cimon. --Long Walls completed. --Aegina reduced. -- Expedition under Tolmides. --Ithome surrenders. --The Insurgents are settled at Naupactus. --Disastrous Termination of the Egyptian Expedition. --The Athenians march into Thessaly to restore Orestes the Tagus. --Campaign under Pericles. --Truce of five Years with the Peloponnesians. -- Cimon sets sail for Cyprus. --Pretended Treaty of Peace with Persia. --Death of Cimon. 

 V Change of Manners in Athens. --Begun under the Pisistratidae. -- Effects of the Persian War, and the intimate Connexion with Ionia. --The Hetaerae. --The Political Eminence lately acquired by Athens. --The Transfer of the Treasury from Delos to Athens. --Latent Dangers and Evils. --First, the Artificial Greatness of Athens not supported by Natural Strength. -- Secondly, her pernicious Reliance on Tribute. --Thirdly, Deterioration of National Spirit commenced by Cimon in the Use of Bribes and Public Tables. --Fourthly, Defects in Popular Courts of Law. --Progress of General Education. -- History. --Its Ionian Origin. --Early Historians. --Acusilaus. --Cadmus. --Eugeon. --Hellanicus. --Pherecides. --Xanthus. --View of the Life and Writings of Herodotus. --Progress of Philosophy since Thales. --Philosophers of the Ionian and Eleatic Schools. --Pythagoras. --His Philosophical Tenets and Political Influence. --Effect of these Philosophers on Athens. --School of Political Philosophy continued in Athens from the Time of Solon. --Anaxagoras. --Archelaus. --Philosophy not a thing apart from the ordinary Life of the Athenians. 

 BOOK V

 CHAPTER

 I Thucydides chosen by the Aristocratic Party to oppose Pericles. --His Policy. --Munificence of Pericles. --Sacred War. --Battle of Coronea. --Revolt of Euboea and Megara-- Invasion and Retreat of the Peloponnesians. --Reduction of Euboea. --Punishment of Histiaea. --A Thirty Years' Truce concluded with the Peloponnesians. --Ostracism of Thucydides. 

 II Causes of the Power of Pericles. --Judicial Courts of the dependant Allies transferred to Athens. --Sketch of the Athenian Revenues. --Public Buildings the Work of the People rather than of Pericles. --Vices and Greatness of Athens had the same Sources. --Principle of Payment characterizes the Policy of the Period. --It is the Policy of Civilization. -- Colonization, Cleruchia. 

 III Revision of the Census. --Samian War. --Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Athenian Comedy to the Time of Aristophanes. 

 IV The Tragedies of Sophocles. 

ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL. 

BOOK III. 

FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE BATTLES OF PLATAEA AND MYCALE, B. C. 490--B. C. 479. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Character and Popularity of Miltiades. --Naval Expedition. --Siegeof Paros. --Conduct of Miltiades. --He is Accused and Sentenced. --HisDeath. 

I. History is rarely more than the biography of great men. Through asuccession of individuals we trace the character and destiny ofnations. THE PEOPLE glide away from us, a sublime but intangibleabstraction, and the voice of the mighty Agora reaches us only throughthe medium of its representatives to posterity. The more democraticthe state, the more prevalent this delegation of its history to thefew; since it is the prerogative of democracies to give the widestcompetition and the keenest excitement to individual genius: and thetrue spirit of democracy is dormant or defunct, when we find no oneelevated to an intellectual throne above the rest. In regarding thecharacters of men thus concentrating upon themselves our survey of anation, it is our duty sedulously to discriminate between theirqualities and their deeds: for it seldom happens that their renown inlife was unattended with reverses equally signal--that the popularityof to-day was not followed by the persecution of to-morrow: and inthese vicissitudes, our justice is no less appealed to than our pity, and we are called upon to decide, as judges, a grave and solemn causebetween the silence of a departed people, and the eloquence ofimperishable names. 

We have already observed in the character of Miltiades that astute andcalculating temperament common to most men whose lot it has been tostruggle for precarious power in the midst of formidable foes. Wehave seen that his profound and scheming intellect was not accompaniedby any very rigid or high-wrought principle; and placed, as the chiefof the Chersonese had been from his youth upward, in situations ofgreat peril and embarrassment, aiming always at supreme power, and, inhis harassed and stormy domain, removed far from the public opinion ofthe free states of Greece, it was natural that his political codeshould have become tempered by a sinister ambition, and that thecitizen of Athens should be actuated by motives scarcely moredisinterested than those which animated the tyrant of the Chersonese. The ruler of one district may be the hero, but can scarcely be thepatriot, of another. The long influence of years and custom--theunconscious deference to the opinion of those whom our youth has beentaught to venerate, can alone suffice to tame down an enterprising andgrasping mind to objects of public advantage, in preference to designsfor individual aggrandizement: influence of such a nature had neveroperated upon the views and faculties of the hero of Marathon. Habituated to the enjoyment of absolute command, he seemed incapableof the duties of civil subordination; and the custom of a life urgedhim onto the desire of power [1]. These features of his characterfairly considered, we shall see little to astonish us in the laterreverses of Miltiades, and find additional causes for the popularsuspicions he incurred. 

II. But after the victory of Marathon, the power of Miltiades was atits height. He had always possessed the affection of the Athenians, which his manners as well as his talents contributed to obtain forhim. Affable and courteous--none were so mean as to be excluded fromhis presence; and the triumph he had just achieved so largely swelledhis popularity, that the most unhesitating confidence was placed inall his suggestions. 

In addition to the victory of Marathon, Miltiades, during his tyrannyin the Chersonese, had gratified the resentment and increased thedominion of the Athenians. A rude tribe, according to all authority, of the vast and varied Pelasgic family, but essentially foreign to, and never amalgamated with, the indigenous Pelasgians of the Atheniansoil, had in very remote times obtained a settlement in Attica. Theyhad assisted the Athenians in the wall of their citadel, whichconfirmed, by its characteristic masonry, the general tradition oftheir Pelasgic race. Settled afterward near Hymettus, they refused toblend with the general population--quarrels between neighbours so nearnaturally ensued--the settlers were expelled, and fixed themselves inthe Islands of Lemnos and Imbros--a piratical and savage horde. Theykept alive their ancient grudge with the Athenians, and, in one oftheir excursions, landed in Attica, and carried off some of the womenwhile celebrating a festival of Diana. These captives they subjectedto their embraces, and ultimately massacred, together with theoffspring of the intercourse. "The Lemnian Horrors" became aproverbial phrase--the wrath of the gods manifested itself in thecurse of general sterility, and the criminal Pelasgi were commanded bythe oracle to repair the heinous injury they had inflicted on theAthenians. The latter were satisfied with no atonement less than thatof the surrender of the islands occupied by the offenders. Traditionthus reported the answer of the Pelasgi to so stern a demand--"Whenever one of your vessels, in a single day and with a northernwind, makes its passage to us, we will comply. "

Time passed on, the injury was unatoned, the remembrance remained--when Miltiades (then in the Chersonese) passed from Elnos in a singleday and with a north wind to the Pelasgian Islands, avenged the causeof his countrymen, and annexed Lemnos and Imbros to the Athenian sway. The remembrance of this exploit had from the first endeared Miltiadesto the Athenians, and, since the field of Marathon, he united inhimself the two strongest claims to popular confidence--he was thedeliverer from recent perils, and the avenger of hereditary wrongs. 

The chief of the Chersonese was not slow to avail himself of theadvantage of his position. He promised the Athenians a yet morelucrative, if less glorious enterprise than that against the Persians, and demanded a fleet of seventy ships, with a supply of men and money, for an expedition from which he assured them he was certain to returnladen with spoil and treasure. He did not specify the places againstwhich the expedition was to be directed; but so great was the beliefin his honesty and fortune, that the Athenians were contented to granthis demand. The requisite preparations made, Miltiades set sail. Assuming the general right to punish those islands which had sidedwith the Persian, he proceeded to Paros, which had contributed atrireme to the armament of Datis. But beneath the pretext of nationalrevenge, Miltiades is said to have sought the occasion to prosecute aselfish resentment. During his tyranny in the Chersonese, a Parian, named Lysagoras, had sought to injure him with the Persian government, and the chief now wreaked upon the island the retaliation due to anindividual. 

Such is the account of Herodotus--an account not indeed inconsistentwith the vindictive passions still common to the inhabitants of thewestern clime, but certainly scarce in keeping with the calculatingand politic character of Miltiades: for men go backward in the careerof ambition when revenging a past offence upon a foe that is no longerformidable. 

Miltiades landed on the island, laid vigorous siege to the principalcity, and demanded from the inhabitants the penalty of a hundredtalents. The besieged refused the terms, and worked day and night atthe task of strengthening the city for defence. Nevertheless, Miltiades succeeded in cutting off all supplies, and the city was onthe point of yielding; when suddenly the chief set fire to thefortifications he had erected, drew off his fleet, and returned toAthens, not only without the treasure he had promised, but with anignominious diminution of the glory he had already acquired. The mostprobable reason for a conduct [2] so extraordinary was, that by someaccident a grove on the continent was set on fire--the flame, visibleequally to the besiegers and the besieged, was interpreted alike byboth: each party imagined it a signal from the Persian fleet--the onewas dissuaded from yielding, and the other intimidated fromcontinuing the siege. An additional reason for the retreat was asevere wound in the leg which Miltiades had received, either in thecourse of the attack, or by an accident he met with when attemptingwith sacrilegious superstition to consult the infernal deities onground dedicated to Ceres. 

III. We may readily conceive the amazement and indignation withwhich, after so many promises on the one side, and such unboundedconfidence on the other, the Athenians witnessed the return of thisfruitless expedition. No doubt the wily and equivocal parts of thecharacter of Miltiades, long cast in shade by his brilliant qualities, came now more obviously in view. He was impeached capitally byXanthippus, an Athenian noble, the head of that great aristocraticfaction of the Alcmaeonids, which, inimical alike to the tyrant andthe demagogue, brooked neither a master of the state nor a hero withthe people. Miltiades was charged with having accepted a bribe fromthe Persians [3], which had induced him to quit the siege of Paros atthe moment when success was assured. 

The unfortunate chief was prevented by his wound from pleading his owncause--he was borne into the court stretched upon his couch, while hisbrother, Tisagoras, conducted his defence. Through the medium of hisadvocate, Miltiades seems neither vigorously to have refuted theaccusation of treason to the state, nor satisfactorily to haveexplained his motives for raising the siege. His glory was hisdefence; and the chief answer to Xanthippus was "Marathon and Lemnos. "The crime alleged against him was of a capital nature; but, despitethe rank of the accuser, and the excitement of his audience, thepeople refused to pronounce sentence of death upon so illustrious aman. They found him guilty, it is true--but they commuted the capitalinfliction to a fine of fifty talents. Before the fine was paid, Miltiades expired of the mortification of his wound. The fine wasafterward paid by his son, Cimon. Thus ended a life full of adventureand vicissitude. 

The trial of Miltiades has often been quoted in proof of theingratitude and fickleness of the Athenian people. No charge was evermore inconsiderately made. He was accused of a capital crime, not bythe people, but by a powerful noble. The noble demanded his death--appears to have proved the charge--to have had the law which imposeddeath wholly on his side--and "the favour of the people it was, " saysHerodotus, expressly, "which saved his life. " [4] When we considerall the circumstances of the case--the wound to the popular vanity--the disappointment of excited expectation--the unaccountable conductof Miltiades himself--and then see his punishment, after a convictionwhich entailed death, only in the ordinary assessment of a pecuniaryfine [5], we cannot but allow that the Athenian people (even whilevindicating the majesty of law, which in all civilized communitiesmust judge offences without respect to persons) were not in thisinstance forgetful of the services nor harsh to the offences of theirgreat men. 

CHAPTER II. 

The Athenian Tragedy. --Its Origin. --Thespis. --Phrynichus. --Aeschylus. --Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus. 

I. From the melancholy fate of Miltiades, we are now invited to asubject no less connected with this important period in the history ofAthens. The interval of repose which followed the battle of Marathonallows us to pause, and notice the intellectual state to which theAthenians had progressed since the tyranny of Pisistratus and hissons. 

We have remarked the more familiar acquaintance with the poems ofHomer which resulted from the labours and example of Pisistratus. This event (for event it was), combined with other causes, --thefoundation of a public library, the erection of public buildings, andthe institution of public gardens--to create with apparent suddenness, among a susceptible and lively population, a general cultivation oftaste. The citizens were brought together in their hours ofrelaxation [6], by the urbane and social manner of life, underporticoes and in gardens, which it was the policy of a graceful andbenignant tyrant to inculcate; and the native genius, hithertodormant, of the quick Ionian race, once awakened to literary andintellectual objects, created an audience even before it foundexpression in a poet. The elegant effeminacy of Hipparchuscontributed to foster the taste of the people--for the example of thegreat is nowhere more potent over the multitude than in thecultivation of the arts. Patronage may not produce poets, but itmultiplies critics. Anacreon and Simonides, introduced among theAthenians by Hipparchus, and enjoying his friendship, no doubt addedlargely to the influence which poetry began to assume. The peculiarsweetness of those poets imbued with harmonious contagion the geniusof the first of the Athenian dramatists, whose works, alas! are lostto us, though evidence of their character is preserved. About thesame time the Athenians must necessarily have been made moreintimately acquainted with the various wealth of the lyric poets ofIonia and the isles. Thus it happened that their models in poetrywere of two kinds, the epic and the lyric; and, in the naturalconnexion of art, it was but the next step to accomplish a species ofpoetry which should attempt to unite the two. Happily, at this time, Athens possessed a man of true genius, whose attention earlycircumstances had directed to a rude and primitive order of histrionicrecitation:--Phrynichus, the poet, was a disciple of Thespis, themime: to him belongs this honour, that out of the elements of thebroadest farce he conceived the first grand combinations of the tragicdrama. 

II. From time immemorial--as far back, perhaps, as the grovepossessed an altar, and the waters supplied a reed for the pastoralpipe--Poetry and Music had been dedicated to the worship of the godsof Greece. At the appointed season of festival to each several deity, his praises were sung, his traditionary achievements were recited. One of the divinities last introduced into Greece--the mystic andenigmatical Dionysos, or Bacchus, received the popular andenthusiastic adoration naturally due to the God of the Vineyard, andthe "Unbinder of galling cares. " His festival, celebrated at the mostjoyous of agricultural seasons [7], was associated also with the mostexhilarating associations. Dithyrambs, or wild and exulting songs, atfirst extemporaneous, celebrated the triumphs of the god. By degrees, the rude hymn swelled into prepared and artful measures, performed bya chorus that danced circling round the altar; and the dithyrambassumed a lofty and solemn strain, adapted to the sanctity ofsacrifice and the emblematic majesty of the god. At the same time, another band (connected with the Phallic procession, which, howeveroutwardly obscene, betokened only, at its origin, the symbol offertility, and betrays the philosophy of some alien and eastern creed[8]) implored in more lively and homely strains the blessing of theprodigal and jovial deity. These ceremonial songs received a wantonand wild addition, as, in order, perhaps, more closely to representand personify the motley march of the Liber Pater, the chorus-singersborrowed from the vine-browsing goat which they sacrificed the hidesand horns, which furnished forth the merry mimicry of the satyr andthe faun. Under license of this disguise, the songs became moreobscene and grotesque, and the mummers vied with each other inobtaining the applause of the rural audience by wild buffoonery andunrestricted jest. Whether as the prize of the winner or as theobject of sacrifice, the goat (tragos in the Greek) was a sufficientlyimportant personage to bestow upon the exhibition the homely name ofTRAGEDY, or GOATSONG, destined afterward to be exalted by associationwith the proudest efforts of human genius. And while the DITHYRAMB, yet amid the Dorian tribes, retained the fire and dignity of itshereditary character--while in Sicyon it rose in stately and mournfulmeasures to the memory of Adrastus, the Argive hero--while in Corinth, under the polished rule of Periander, Arion imparted to the antiquehymn a new character and a more scientific music [9], --gradually, inAttica, it gave way before the familiar and fantastic humours of thesatyrs, sometimes abridged to afford greater scope to theirexhibitions--sometimes contracting the contagion of their burlesque. Still, however, the reader will observe, that the tragedy, orgoatsong, consisted of two parts--first, the exhibition of themummers, and, secondly, the dithyrambic chorus, moving in a circleround the altar of Bacchus. It appears on the whole most probable, though it is a question of fierce dispute and great uncertainty, thatnot only this festive ceremonial, but also its ancient name oftragedy, or goatsong, had long been familiar in Attica [10], when, about B. C. 535, during the third tyranny of Pisistratus, a skilfuland ingenious native of Icaria, an Attic village in which theEleutheria, or Bacchic rites, were celebrated with peculiar care, surpassed all competitors in the exhibition of these rusticentertainments. He relieved the monotonous pleasantries of thesatyric chorus by introducing, usually in his own person, a histrionictale-teller, who, from an elevated platform, and with the livelygesticulations common still to the popular narrators of romance on theMole of Naples, or in the bazars of the East, entertain the audiencewith some mythological legend. It was so clear that during thisrecital the chorus remained unnecessarily idle and superfluous, thatthe next improvement was as natural in itself, as it was important inits consequences. This was to make the chorus assist the narrator byoccasional question or remark. 

The choruses themselves were improved in their professional art byThespis. He invented dances, which for centuries, retained theirpopularity on the stage, and is said to have given histrionic disguiseto his reciter--at first, by the application of pigments to the face;and afterward, by the construction of a rude linen mask. 

III. These improvements, chiefly mechanical, form the boundary to theachievements of Thespis. He did much to create a stage--little tocreate tragedy, in the proper acceptation of the word. Hisperformances were still of a ludicrous and homely character, and muchmore akin to the comic than the tragic. Of that which makes theessence of the solemn drama of Athens--its stately plot, its giganticimages, its prodigal and sumptuous poetry, Thespis was not in any waythe inventor. But PHRYNICHUS, the disciple of Thespis, was a poet; hesaw, though perhaps dimly and imperfectly, the new career opened tothe art, and he may be said to have breathed the immortal spirit intothe mere mechanical forms, when he introduced poetry into the burstsof the chorus and the monologue of the actor. Whatever elsePhrynichus effected is uncertain. The developed plot--theintroduction of regular dialogue through the medium of a second actor--the pomp and circumstance--the symmetry and climax of the drama--donot appear to have appertained to his earlier efforts; and the greatartistical improvements which raised the simple incident to anelaborate structure of depicted narrative and awful catastrophe, areascribed, not to Phrynichus, but Aeschylus. If the later works ofPhrynichus betrayed these excellences, it is because Aeschylus hadthen become his rival, and he caught the heavenly light from the newstar which was destined to eclipse him. But every thing essential wasdone for the Athenian tragedy when Phrynichus took it from the satyrand placed it under the protection of the muse--when, forsaking thehumours of the rustic farce, he selected a solemn subject from theserious legends of the most vivid of all mythologies--when he breathedinto the familiar measures of the chorus the grandeur and sweetness ofthe lyric ode--when, in a word, taking nothing from Thespis but thestage and the performers, he borrowed his tale from Homer and hismelody from Anacreon. We must not, then, suppose, misled by thevulgar accounts of the Athenian drama, that the contest for the goat, and the buffooneries of Thespis, were its real origin; born of theepic and the lyric song, Homer gave it character, and the lyristslanguage. Thespis and his predecessors only suggested the form towhich the new-born poetry should be applied. 

IV. Thus, under Phrynichus, the Thespian drama rose into poetry, worthy to exercise its influence upon poetical emulation, when a youngman of noble family and sublime genius, rendered perhaps morethoughtful and profound by the cultivation of a mystical philosophy[11], which had lately emerged from the primitive schools of Ionianwisdom, brought to the rising art the united dignity of rank, philosophy, and genius. Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, born at EleusisB. C. 525, early saturated a spirit naturally fiery and exalted withthe vivid poetry of Homer. While yet a boy, and probably about thetime when Phrynichus first elevated the Thespian drama, he is said tohave been inspired by a dream with the ambition to excel in thedramatic art. But in Homer he found no visionary revelation to assurehim of those ends, august and undeveloped, which the actor and thechorus might be made the instruments to effect. For when the idea ofscenic representation was once familiar, the epics of Homer suggestedthe true nature of the drama. The great characteristic of that poetis individuality. Gods or men alike have their separate, unmistakeable attributes and distinctions--they converse in dialogue--they act towards an appointed end. Bring Homer on the stage, andintroduce two actors instead of a narrator, and a drama is at onceeffected. If Phrynichus from the first borrowed his story from Homer, Aeschylus, with more creative genius and more meditative intellect, saw that there was even a richer mine in the vitality of the Homericspirit--the unity of the Homeric designs. Nor was Homer, perhaps, hissole though his guiding inspiration. The noble birth of Aeschylus nodoubt gave him those advantages of general acquaintance with thepoetry of the rest of Greece, which an education formed under thelettered dynasty of the Pisistratidae would naturally confer on thewell-born. We have seen that the dithyramb, debased in Attica to theThespian chorus, was in the Dorian states already devoted to sublimethemes, and enriched by elaborate art; and Simonides, whose elegies, peculiar for their sweetness, might have inspired the "ambrosial"Phrynichus, perhaps gave to the stern soul of Aeschylus, as to his ownpupil Pindar, the model of a loftier music, in his dithyrambic odes. 

V. At the age of twenty-five, the son of Euphorion produced his firsttragedy. This appears to have been exhibited in the year after theappearance of Aristagoras at Athens, --in that very year so eventfuland important, when the Athenians lighted the flames of the Persianwar amid the blazing capital of Sardis. He had two competitors inPratinas and Choerilus. The last, indeed, preceded Phrynichus, butmerely in the burlesques of the rude Thespian stage; the example ofPhrynichus had now directed his attention to the new species of drama, but without any remarkable talent for its cultivation. Pratinas, thecontemporary of Aeschylus, did not long attempt to vie with his mightyrival in his own line [12]. Recurring to the old satyr-chorus, hereduced its unmeasured buffooneries into a regular and systematicform; he preserved the mythological tale, and converted it into anartistical burlesque. This invention, delighting the multitude, as itadapted an ancient entertainment to the new and more critical taste, became so popular that it was usually associated with the gravertragedy; when the last becoming a solemn and gorgeous spectacle, thepoet exhibited a trilogy (or three tragedies) to his mighty audience, while the satyric invention of Pratinas closed the whole, and answeredthe purpose of our modern farce [13]. Of this class of the Greciandrama but one specimen remains, in the Cyclops of Euripides. It isprobable that the birth, no less than the genius of Aeschylus, enabledhim with greater facility to make the imposing and costly additions tothe exhibition, which the nature of the poetry demanded--since, whilethese improvements were rapidly proceeding, the poetical fame ofAeschylus was still uncrowned. Nor was it till the fifteenth yearafter his first exhibition that the sublimest of the Greek poetsobtained the ivy chaplet, which had succeeded to the goat and the ox, as the prize of the tragic contests. In the course of a few years, aregular stage, appropriate scenery and costume, mechanical inventionsand complicated stage machinery, gave fitting illusion to therepresentation of gods and men. To the monologue of Phrynichus, Aeschylus added a second actor [14]; he curtailed the choruses, connected them with the main story, and, more important than all else, reduced to simple but systematic rules the progress and development ofa poem, which no longer had for its utmost object to please the ear ordivert the fancy, but swept on its mighty and irresistible march, tobesiege passion after passion, and spread its empire over the wholesoul. 

An itinerant platform was succeeded by a regular theatre of wood--thetheatre of wood by a splendid edifice, which is said to have held noless an audience than thirty thousand persons [15]. Theatricalcontests became a matter of national and universal interest. Thesecontests occurred thrice a year, at three several festivals of Bacchus[16]. But it was at the great Dionysia, held at the end of March andcommencement of April, that the principal tragic contests took place. At that period, as the Athenian drama increased in celebrity, andAthens herself in renown, the city was filled with visiters, not onlyfrom all parts of Greece, but almost from every land in which theGreek civilization was known. The state took the theatre under itsprotection, as a solemn and sacred institution. So anxious were thepeople to consecrate wholly to the Athenian name the glory of thespectacle, that at the great Dionysia no foreigner, nor even anymetoecus (or alien settler), was permitted to dance in the choruses. The chief archon presided, over the performances; to him was awardedthe selection of the candidates for the prize. Those chosen wereallowed three actors [17] by lot and a chorus, the expense of whichwas undertaken by the state, and imposed upon one of the principalpersons of each tribe, called choragus. Thus, on one occasion, Themistocles was the choragus to a tragedy by Phrynichus. The immensetheatre, crowded by thousands, tier above tier, bench upon bench, wasopen to the heavens, and commanded, from the sloping hill on which itwas situated, both land and sea. The actor apostrophized no mimicpasteboard, but the wide expanse of Nature herself--the living sun, the mountain air, the wide and visible Aegaean. All was proportionedto the gigantic scale of the theatre, and the mighty range of theaudience. The form was artificially enlarged and heightened; masks ofexquisite art and beauty brought before the audience the ideal imagesof their sculptured gods and heroes, while (most probably) mechanicalinventions carried the tones of the voice throughout the various tiersof the theatre. The exhibitions took place in the open day, and thelimited length of the plays permitted the performance of probably noless than ten or twelve before the setting of the sun. The sanctityof their origin, and the mythological nature of their stories, addedsomething of religious solemnity to these spectacles, which wereopened by ceremonial sacrifice. Dramatic exhibitions, at least for aconsiderable period, were not, as with us, made hackneyed by constantrepetition. They were as rare in their recurrence as they wereimposing in their effect; nor was a drama, whether tragic or comic, that had gained the prize, permitted a second time to be exhibited. Aspecial exemption was made in favour of Aeschylus, afterward extendedto Sophocles and Euripides. The general rule was necessarilystimulant of renewed and unceasing exertion, and was, perhaps, theprincipal cause of the almost miraculous fertility of the Atheniandramatists. 

VI. On the lower benches of the semicircle sat the archons andmagistrates, the senators and priests; while apart, but in seatsequally honoured, the gaze of the audience was attracted, from time totime, to the illustrious strangers whom the fame of their poets andtheir city had brought to the Dionysia of the Athenians. The youthsand women [18] had their separate divisions; the rest of the audiencewere ranged according to their tribes, while the upper galleries werefilled by the miscellaneous and impatient populace. 

In the orchestra (a space left by the semicircular benches, with wingsstretching to the right and left before the scene), a small squareplatform served as the altar, to which moved the choral dances, stillretaining the attributes of their ancient sanctity. The coryphaeus, or leader of the chorus, took part in the dialogue as therepresentative of the rest, and, occasionally, even several of thenumber were excited into exclamations by the passion of the piece. But the principal duty of the chorus was to diversify the dialogue byhymns and dirges, to the music of flutes, while, in dances far moreartful than those now existent, they represented by their movementsthe emotions that they sung [19], --thus bringing, as it were, intoharmony of action the poetry of language. Architecturalembellishments of stone, representing a palace, with three entrances, the centre one appropriated to royalty, the others to subordinaterank, usually served for the scene. But at times, when the plotdemanded a different locality, scenes painted with the utmost art andcost were easily substituted; nor were wanting the modern contrivancesof artificial lightning and thunder--the clouds for the gods--avariety of inventions for the sudden apparition of demon agents, whether from above or below--and all the adventitious and effectiveaid which mechanism lends to genius. 

VII. Thus summoning before us the external character of the Atheniandrama, the vast audience, the unroofed and enormous theatre, theactors themselves enlarged by art above the ordinary proportions ofmen, the solemn and sacred subjects from which its form and spiritwere derived, we turn to Aeschylus, and behold at once the fittingcreator of its grand and ideal personifications. I have said thatHomer was his original; but a more intellectual age than that of theGrecian epic had arrived, and with Aeschylus, philosophy passed intopoetry. The dark doctrine of fatality imparted its stern and awfulinterest to the narration of events--men were delineated, not as mereself-acting and self-willed mortals, but as the agents of a destinyinevitable and unseen--the gods themselves are no longer the gods ofHomer, entering into the sphere of human action for petty motives andfor individual purposes--drawing their grandeur, not from the partthey perform, but from the descriptions of the poet;--they appear nowas the oracles or the agents of fate--they are visiters from anotherworld, terrible and ominous from the warnings which they convey. Homer is the creator of the material poetry, Aeschylus of theintellectual. The corporeal and animal sufferings of the Titan in theepic hell become exalted by tragedy into the portrait of moralfortitude defying physical anguish. The Prometheus of Aeschylus isthe spirit of a god disdainfully subjected to the misfortunes of aman. In reading this wonderful performance, which in pure andsustained sublimity is perhaps unrivalled in the literature of theworld, we lose sight entirely of the cheerful Hellenic worship; andyet it is in vain that the learned attempt to trace its vague andmysterious metaphysics to any old symbolical religion of the East. More probably, whatever theological system it shadows forth, wasrather the gigantic conception of the poet himself, than the imperfectrevival of any forgotten creed, or the poetical disguise of anyexistent philosophy. However this be, it would certainly seem, that, in this majestic picture of the dauntless enemy of Jupiter, punishedonly for his benefits to man, and attracting all our sympathies by hiscourage and his benevolence, is conveyed something of disbelief ordefiance of the creed of the populace--a suspicion from whichAeschylus was not free in the judgment of his contemporaries, andwhich is by no means inconsonant with the doctrines of Pythagoras. 

VIII. The conduct of the fable is as follows: two vast demons, Strength and Force, accompanied by Vulcan, appear in a remote plain ofearth--an unpeopled desert. There, on a steril and lofty rock, hardby the sea, Prometheus is chained by Vulcan--"a reward for hisdisposition to be tender to mankind. " The date of this doom is castfar back in the earliest dawn of time, and Jupiter has but justcommenced his reign. While Vulcan binds him, Prometheus utters nosound--it is Vulcan, the agent of his punishment, that alonecomplains. Nor is it till the dread task is done, and the ministersof Jupiter have retired, that "the god, unawed by the wrath of gods, "bursts forth with his grand apostrophe--

 "Oh Air divine! Oh ye swift-winged Winds-- Ye sources of the Rivers, and ye Waves, That dimple o'er old Ocean like his smiles-- Mother of all--oh Earth! and thou the orb, All-seeing, of the Sun, behold and witness What I, a god, from the stern gods endure. 

 * * * * * *

 When shall my doom be o'er?--Be o'er!--to me The Future hides no riddle--nor can wo Come unprepared! It fits me then to brave That which must be: for what can turn aside The dark course of the grim Necessity?"

While thus soliloquizing, the air becomes fragrant with odours, andfaintly stirs with the rustling of approaching wings. The Daughtersof Ocean, aroused from their grots below, are come to console theTitan. They utter many complaints against the dynasty of Jove. Prometheus comforts himself by the prediction that the Olympian shallhereafter require his services, and that, until himself released fromhis bondage, he will never reveal to his tyrant the danger thatmenaces his realm; for the vanquished is here described as of amightier race than the victor, and to him are bared the mysteries ofthe future, which to Jupiter are denied. The triumph of Jupiter isthe conquest of brute force over knowledge. 

Prometheus then narrates how, by means of his counsels, Jupiter hadgained his sceptre, and the ancient Saturn and his partisans beenwhelmed beneath the abyss of Tartarus--how he alone had interferedwith Jupiter to prevent the extermination of the human race (whomalone the celestial king disregarded and condemned)--how he hadimparted to them fire, the seed of all the arts, and exchanged intheir breasts the terrible knowledge of the future for the beguilingflatteries of hope and hence his punishment. 

At this time Ocean himself appears: he endeavours unavailingly topersuade the Titan to submission to Jupiter. The great spirit ofPrometheus, and his consideration for others, are beautifullyindividualized in his answers to his consoler, whom he warns not toincur the wrath of the tyrant by sympathy with the afflicted. Aloneagain with the Oceanides, the latter burst forth in fresh strains ofpity. 

 "The wide earth echoes wailingly, Stately and antique were thy fallen race, The wide earth waileth thee! Lo! from the holy Asian dwelling-place, Fall for a godhead's wrongs, the mortals' murmuring tears, They mourn within the Colchian land, The virgin and the warrior daughters, And far remote, the Scythian band, Around the broad Maeotian waters, And they who hold in Caucasus their tower, Arabia's martial flower Hoarse-clamouring 'midst sharp rows of barbed spears. 

 One have I seen with equal tortures riven-- An equal god; in adamantine chains Ever and evermore The Titan Atlas, crush'd, sustains The mighty mass of mighty Heaven, And the whirling cataracts roar, With a chime to the Titan's groans, And the depth that receives them moans; And from vaults that the earth are under, Black Hades is heard in thunder; While from the founts of white-waved rivers flow Melodious sorrows, wailing with his wo. "

Prometheus, in his answer, still farther details the benefits he hadconferred on men--he arrogates to himself their elevation to intellectand reason [20]. He proceeds darkly to dwell on the power ofNecessity, guided by "the triform fates and the unforgetful Furies, "whom he asserts to be sovereign over Jupiter himself. He declaresthat Jupiter cannot escape his doom: "His doom, " ask the daughters ofOcean, "is it not evermore to reign?"--"That thou mayst not learn, "replies the prophet; "and in the preservation of this secret dependsmy future freedom. "

The rejoinder of the chorus is singularly beautiful, and it is with apathos not common to Aeschylus that they contrast their presentmournful strain with that which they poured

 "What time the silence, erst was broken, Around the baths, and o'er the bed To which, won well by many a soft love-token, And hymn'd by all the music of delight, Our Ocean-sister, bright Hesione, was led!"

At the end of this choral song appears Io, performing her mysticpilgrimage [21]. The utter wo and despair of Io are finely contrastedwith the stern spirit of Prometheus. Her introduction gives rise tothose ancestral and traditionary allusions to which the Greeks were soattached. In prophesying her fate, Prometheus enters into muchbeautiful descriptive poetry, and commemorates the lineage of theArgive kings. After Io's departure, Prometheus renews his defiance toJupiter, and his stern prophecies, that the son of Saturn shall be"hurled from his realm, a forgotten king. " In the midst of theseweird denunciations, Mercury arrives, charged by Jupiter to learn thenature of that danger which Prometheus predicts to him. The Titanbitterly and haughtily defies the threats and warnings of the herald, and exults, that whatever be his tortures, he is at least immortal, --to be afflicted, but not to die. Mercury at length departs--themenace of Jupiter is fulfilled--the punishment is consummated--and, amid storm and earthquake, both rock and prisoner are struck by thelightnings of the god into the deep abyss. 

 "The earth is made to reel, and rumbling by, Bellowing it rolls, the thunder's gathering wrath! And the fierce fires glare livid; and along The rocks the eddies of the sands whirl high, Borne by the hurricane, and all the blasts Of all the winds leap forth, each hurtling each Met in the wildness of a ghastly war, The dark floods blended with the swooping heaven. It comes--it comes! on me it speeds--the storm, The rushing onslaught of the thunder-god; Oh, majesty of earth, my solemn mother! And thou that through the universal void, Circlest sweet light, all blessing; EARTH AND ETHER, YE I invoke, to know the wrongs I suffer. "

IX. Such is the conclusion of this unequalled drama, epitomizedsomewhat at undue length, in order to show the reader how much thephilosophy that had awakened in the age of Solon now actuated thecreations of poetry. Not that Aeschylus, like Euripides, deals indidactic sentences and oracular aphorisms. He rightly held suchpedantries of the closet foreign to the tragic genius [22]. Hisphilosophy is in the spirit, and not in the diction of his works--invast conceptions, not laconic maxims. He does not preach, but heinspires. The "Prometheus" is perhaps the greatest moral poem in theworld--sternly and loftily intellectual--and, amid its darker and lesspalpable allegories, presenting to us the superiority of an immortalbeing to all mortal sufferings. Regarded merely as poetry, theconception of the Titan of Aeschylus has no parallel except in theFiend of Milton. But perhaps the representation of a benevolentspirit, afflicted, but not accursed--conquered, but not subdued by apower, than which it is elder, and wiser, and loftier, is yet moresublime than that of an evil demon writhing under the penancedeservedly incurred from an irresistible God. The one is intenselymoral--at once the more moral and the more tragic, because thesufferings are not deserved, and therefore the defiance commands oursympathy as well as our awe; but the other is but the picture of arighteous doom, borne by a despairing though stubborn will; it affordsno excitement to our courage, and forbids at once our admiration andour pity. 

X. I do not propose to conduct the reader at length through the othertragedies of Aeschylus; seven are left to us, to afford the moststriking examples which modern or ancient literature can produce ofwhat perhaps is the true theory of the SUBLIME, viz. , the elevatingthe imagination by means of the passions, for a moral end. 

Nothing can be more grand and impressive than the opening of the"Agamemnon, " with the solitary watchman on the tower, who, for tenlong years, has watched nightly for the beacon-fires that are toannounce the fall of Ilion, and who now beholds them blaze at last. The description which Clytemnestra gives of the progress of thesebeacon-fires from Troy to Argos is, for its picturesque animation, oneof the most celebrated in Aeschylus. The following lines will conveyto the general reader a very inadequate reflection, though not anunfaithful paraphrase, of this splendid passage [23]. Clytemnestrahas announced to the chorus the capture of Troy. The chorus, halfincredulous, demand what messenger conveyed the intelligence. Clytemnestra replies:--

 "A gleam--a gleam--from Ida's height, By the fire--god sent, it came; From watch to watch it leap'd that light, As a rider rode the flame! It shot through the startled sky; And the torch of that blazing glory Old Lemnos caught on high, On its holy promontory, And sent it on, the jocund sign, To Athos, mount of Jove divine. Wildly the while it rose from the isle, So that the might of the journeying light Skimm'd over the back of the gleaming brine! Farther and faster speeds it on, Till the watch that keep Macistus steep-- See it burst like a blazing sun! Doth Macistus sleep On his tower--clad steep? No! rapid and red doth the wild-fire sweep It flashes afar, on the wayward stream Of the wild Euripus, the rushing beam! It rouses the light on Messapion's height, And they feed its breath with the withered heath. But it may not stay! And away--away It bounds in its freshening might. Silent and soon, Like a broadened moon, It passes in sheen, Asopus green, [24] And bursts on Cithaeron gray. The warder wakes to the signal rays, And it swoops from the hill with a broader blaze, On--on the fiery glory rode-- Thy lonely lake, Gorgopis, glowed-- To Megara's Mount it came; They feed it again, And it streams amain A giant beard of flame! The headland cliffs that darkly down O'er the Saronic waters frown, Are pass'd with the swift one's lurid stride, And the huge rock glares on the glaring tide, With mightier march and fiercer power It gain'd Arachne's neighbouring tower-- Thence on our Argive roof its rest it won, Of Ida's fire the long-descended son Bright harbinger of glory and of joy! So first and last with equal honour crown'd, In solemn feasts the race-torch circles round. And these my heralds! this my SIGN OF PEACE! Lo! while we breathe, the victor lords of Greece, Stalk, in stern tumult, through the halls of Troy!" [25]

In one of the earlier choruses, in which is introduced an episodicalallusion to the abduction of Helen, occurs one of those soft passagesso rare in Aeschylus, nor less exquisite than rare. The chorussuppose the minstrels of Menelaus thus to lament the loss of Helen:--

 "And wo the halls, and wo the chiefs, And wo the bridal bed! And we her steps--for once she loved The lord whose love she fled! Lo! where, dishonour yet unknown, He sits--nor deems his Helen flown, Tearless and voiceless on the spot; All desert, but he feels it not! Ah! soon alive, to miss and mourn The form beyond the ocean borne Shall start the lonely king! And thought shall fill the lost one's room, And darkly through the palace gloom Shall stalk a ghostly thing. [26] Her statues meet, as round they rise, The leaden stare of lifeless eyes. Where is their ancient beauty gone?-- Why loathe his looks the breathing stone? Alas! the foulness of disgrace Hath swept the Venus from her face! And visions in the mournful night Shall dupe the heart to false delight, A false and melancholy; For naught with sadder joy is fraught, Than things at night by dreaming brought, The wish'd for and the holy. Swift from the solitary side, The vision and the blessing glide, Scarce welcomed ere they sweep, Pale, bloodless, dreams, aloft On wings unseen and soft, Lost wanderers gliding through the paths of sleep. "

But the master-terror of this tragedy is in the introduction ofCassandra, who accompanies Agamemnon, and who, in the very hour of hisreturn, amid the pomp and joy that welcome the "king of men, " isseized with the prophetic inspiration, and shrieks out those ominouswarnings, fated ever to be heard in vain. It is she who recalls tothe chorus, to the shuddering audience, that it is the house of thelong-fated Atridae, to which their descendant has returned--"thathuman shamble-house--that bloody floor--that dwelling, abhorred byHeaven, privy to so many horrors against the most sacred ties;" thedoom yet hangs over the inexpiable threshold; the curse passes fromgeneration to generation; Agamemnon is the victim of his sires. 

Recalling the inhuman banquet served by Atreus to Thyestes of his ownmurdered children, she starts from the mangled spectres on thethreshold:

 "See ye those infants crouching by the floor, Like phantom dreams, pale nurslings, that have perish'd By kindred hands. "

Gradually her ravings become clear and clearer, until at last shescents the "blood-dripping slaughter within;" a vapour rises to hernostrils as from a charnel house--her own fate, which she foresees athand, begins to overpower her--her mood softens, and she enters thepalace, about to become her tomb, with thoughts in which franticterror has yielded to solemn and pathetic resignation:

 "Alas for mortals!--what their power and pride? A little shadow sweeps it from the earth! And if they suffer--why, the fatal hour Comes o'er the record like a moistened sponge, And blots it out; _methinks this latter lot Affects me deepest--Well! 'tis pitiful!"_ [27]

Scarcely has the prophetess withdrawn than we hear behind the scenethe groans of the murdered king, the palace behind is opened, andClytemnestra is standing, stern and lofty, by the dead body of herlord. The critics have dwelt too much on the character ofClytemnestra--it is that of Cassandra which is the masterpiece of thetragedy. 

XI. The story, which is spread throughout three plays (forming acomplete trilogy), continues in the opening of the Choephori, withOrestes mourning over his father's tomb. If Clytemnestra hasfurnished would-be critics with a comparison with Lady Macbeth, for noother reason than that one murdered her husband, and the otherpersuaded her husband to murder somebody else, so Orestes may withmore justice be called the Hamlet of the Greeks; but though thecharacter itself of Orestes is not so complex and profound as that ofHamlet, nor the play so full of philosophical beauties as the moderntragedy, yet it has passages equally pathetic, and more sternly andterribly sublime. The vague horror which in the commencement of theplay prepares us for the catastrophe by the dream of Clytemnestra--howa serpent lay in swaddling-clothes like an infant, and she placed itin her breast, and it drew blood; the brief and solemn answer ofOrestes--

 "Man's visions never come to him in vain;"

the manner in which the avenging parricide interrupts the dream, sothat (as in Macbeth) the prediction inspires the deed that itforetells; the dauntless resolution of Clytemnestra, when she hears, inthe dark sayings of her servant, that "the dead are slaying theliving" (i. E. , that through the sword of Orestes Agamemnon is avengedon Aegisthus), calls for a weapon, royal to the last, wishing only to

 "Know which shall be the victor or the vanquished-- Since that the crisis of the present horror;"

the sudden change from fierce to tender as Orestes bursts in, and, thinking only of her guilty lover, she shrieks forth, "Ah! thou art then no more, beloved Aegisthus;"

the advance of the threatening son, the soft apostrophe of the motheras she bares her bosom--

 "Hold! and revere this breast on which so oft Thy young cheek nestled--cradle of thy sleep, And fountain of thy being;"

the recoil of Orestes--the remonstrance of Pylades--the renewedpassion of the avenger--the sudden recollection of her dream, whichthe murderess scarcely utters than it seems to confirm Orestes to itsfulfilment, and he pursues and slays her by the side of the adulterer;all these passages are full of so noble a poetry, that I do not thinkthe parallel situations in Hamlet equal their sustained and solemngrandeur. But the sublimest effort of the imagination is in theconclusion. While Orestes is yet justifying the deed that avenged afather, strange and confused thoughts gradually creep over him. Noeyes see them but his own--there they are, "the Gorgons, in vestmentsof sable, their eyes dropping loathly blood!" Slowly they multiply, they approach, still invisible but to their prey--"the angryhell-hounds of his mother. " He flies, the fresh blood yet drippingfrom his hands. This catastrophe--the sudden apparition of the Furiesideally imaged forth to the parricide alone--seems to me greater inconception than the supernatural agency in Hamlet. The visible ghostis less awful than the unseen Furies. 

The plot is continued through the third piece of the trilogy (theEumenides), and out of Aeschylus himself, no existing tragedy presentsso striking an opening--one so terrible and so picturesque. It is thetemple of Apollo at Delphi. The priestess, after a short invocation, enters the sacred edifice, but suddenly returns. "A man, " she says, "is at the marble seat, a suppliant to the god--his bloody hands holda drawn sword and a long branch of olive. But around the man sleep awondrous and ghastly troop, not of women, but of things woman-like, yet fiendish; harpies they seem, but are not; black-robed andwingless, and their breath is loud and baleful, and their eyes dropvenom--and their garb is neither meet for the shrines of God nor thehabitations of men. Never have I seen (saith the Pythian) a nationwhich nurtured such a race. " Cheered by Apollo, Orestes flies whilethe dread sisters yet sleep; and now within the temple we behold theFuries scattered around, and a pale and lofty shape, the ghost ofClytemnestra, gliding on the stage, awakens the agents of hervengeance. They break forth as they rouse themselves, "Seize--seize--seize. " They lament--they bemoan the departure of their victim, theyexpostulate with Apollo, who expels them from his temple. The scenechanges; Orestes is at Athens, --he pleads his cause before the templeof Minerva. The contest is now shared by gods; Apollo and the Furiesare the pleaders--Pallas is the umpire, the Areopagites are thejudges. Pallas casts in her vote in favour of Orestes--the lots areequal--he is absolved; the Furies, at first enraged, are soothed byMinerva, and, invited to dwell in Athens, pour blessings on the land. A sacred but joyous procession crowns the whole. Thus theconsummation of the trilogy is cheerful, though each of the two formerpieces is tragic; and the poet artfully conduces the poem to thehonour of his native Athens and the venerable Areopagus. Regardingthe three as one harmonious and united performance, altogether not solong as one play of Shakspeare's, they are certainly not surpassed ingreatness of thought, in loftiness of conception, and in sustainedvigour of execution, by any poem in the compass of literature; nor, observing their simple but compact symmetry as a whole, shall we doright to subscribe to those who deny to Aeschylus the skill of theartist, while they grant him the faculty of the poet. 

The ingenious Schlegel attributes to these tragedies symbolicalinterpretations, but to my judgment with signal ill-success. Thesefour tragedies--the Prometheus, the Agamemnon, the Choephori, and theEumenides--are in grandeur immeasurably superior to the remainingthree. 

XII. Of these last, the Seven against Thebes is the best. Thesubject was one peculiarly interesting to Greece; the War of the Sevenwas the earliest record of a league among the Grecian princes, and ofan enterprise carried on with a regular and systematic design. Thecatastrophe of two brothers falling by each other's hand is terribleand tragic, and among the most national of the Grecian legends. Thefierce and martial spirit of the warrior poet runs throughout theplay; his descriptions are animated as with the zeal and passion ofbattle; the chorus of Theban virgins paint in the most glowing coloursthe rush of the adverse hosts--the prancing of the chargers--the soundof their hoofs, "rumbling as a torrent lashing the side of cliffs;" wehear the creak of the heavy cars--the shrill whiz of the javelins, "maddening the very air"--the showers of stones crashing over thebattlements--the battering at the mighty gates--the uproar of thecity--the yells of rapine--the shrieks of infants "strangled by thebubbling blood. " Homer himself never accumulated more striking imagesof horror. The description of Tydeus is peculiarly Homeric--

 "Three shadowy crests, the honours of his helm, Wave wild, and shrilly from his buckler broad The brazen bell rings terror. On the shield He bears his haughty ensign--typed by stars Gleaming athwart the sky, and in the midst Glitters the royal Moon--the Eye of Night. Fierce in the glory of his arms, his voice Roars by the river banks; and drunk with war He pants, as some wild charger, when the trump Clangs ringing, as he rushes on the foe. "

The proud, dauntless, and warlike spirit of Eteocles which is designedand drawn with inconceivable power, is beautifully characterized inhis reply to the above description:

 "Man hath no armour, war hath no array, At which this heart can tremble; no device Nor blazonry of battle can inflict The wounds they menace; crests and clashing bells Without the spear are toothless, and the night, Wrought on yon buckler with the stars of heaven, Prophet, perchance, his doom; and if dark Death Close round his eyes, are but the ominous signs Of the black night that waits him. "

The description of each warrior stationed at each gate is all in thegenius of Homer, closing as it does with that of Polynices, thebrother of the besieged hero, whom, when he hears his name, Eteocleshimself resolves to confront. At first, indeed, the latter breaks outinto exclamations which denote the awe and struggle of the abhorrentnature; forebodings of his own doom flit before him, he feels thecurses of his sire are ripening to their fruit, and that the laststorm is yet to break upon the house of Oedipus. Suddenly he checksthe impulse, sensible of the presence of the chorus. He passes on toreason with himself, through a process of thought which Shakspearecould not have surpassed. He conjures up the image of that brother, hateful and unjust from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood up to youth--he assures himself that justice would be forsworn if this foe shouldtriumph--and rushes on to his dread resolve. 

 "'Tis I will face this warrior; who can boast A right to equal mine? Chief against chief-- Foe against foe!--and brother against brother. What, ho! my greaves, my spear, my armour proof Against this storm of stones! My stand is chosen. "

Eteocles and his brother both perish in the unnatural strife, and thetragedy ends with the decree of the senators to bury Eteocles with duehonours, and the bold resolution of Antigone (the sister of the dead)to defy the ordinance which forbids a burial to Polynices--

 "For mighty is the memory of the womb From which alike we sprung--a wretched mother!"

The same spirit which glows through the "Seven against Thebes" is alsovisible in the "Persians, " which, rather picturesque than dramatic, istragedy brought back to the dithyrambic ode. It portrays the defeatof Xerxes, and contains one of the most valuable of historicaldescriptions, in the lines devoted to the battle of Salamis. Thespeech of Atossa (the mother of Xerxes), in which she enumerates theofferings to the shade of Darius, is exquisitely beautiful. 

 "The charms that sooth the dead: White milk, and lucid honey, pure-distill'd By the wild bee--that craftsman of the flowers; The limpid droppings of the virgin fount, And this bright liquid from its mountain mother Born fresh--the joy of the time--hallowed vine; The pale-green olive's odorous fruit, whose leaves Live everlastingly--and these wreathed flowers, The smiling infants o' the prodigal earth. "

Nor is there less poetry in the invocation of the chorus to the shadeof Darius, which slowly rises as they conclude. But the purpose forwhich the monarch returns to earth is scarcely sufficient to justifyhis appearance, and does not seem to be in accordance with the powerover our awe and terror which the poet usually commands. Darius hearsthe tale of his son's defeat--warns the Persians against interferingwith the Athenians--tells the mother to comfort and console her son--bids the chorus (who disregard his advice) give themselves to mirth, even though in affliction, "for to the dead riches are no advantage"--and so returns to his repose, which seems very unnecessarilydisturbed. 

"The Suppliants, " which Schlegel plausibly conjectures to have beenthe intermediate piece of a trilogy, is chiefly remarkable as a proofof the versatility of the poet. All horror has vanished from thescene; the language is soft when compared with the usual diction ofAeschylus; the action is peaceful, and the plot extremely simple, being merely the protection which the daughters of Danaus obtain atthe court of Pelasgus from the pursuit of the sons of Aegyptus. Theheroines of the play, the Danaides, make the chorus, and this servesto render the whole, yet more than the Persians, a lyric rather than atragedy. The moral of the play is homely and primitive, and seemsconfined to the inculcation of hospitality to strangers, and theinviolable sanctity of the shrine. I do not know any passages in "TheSuppliants" that equal in poetry the more striking verses of "ThePersians, " or "The Seven against Thebes. "

XIII. Attempts have been made to convey to modern readers a morefamiliar notion of Aeschylus by comparisons with modern poets. Onecritic likens him to Dante, another to Milton--but he resemblesneither. No modern language can convey a notion of the wonderfulstrength of his diction--no modern poet, of the stern sublimity of hisconceptions. The French tragedians may give some weak reflection ofEuripides or even of Sophocles, but none have ventured upon the sacredterritory of the father of the tragic drama. He defies all imitation. His genius is so near the verge of bombast, that to approach hissublime is to rush into the ridiculous. [28]

Aeschylus never once, in the plays that have come down to us, delineates love, except by an expression or two as regards the passionof Clytemnestra for Aegisthus [29]. It was emblematic of a new stateof society when Euripides created the Phaedra and the Medea. Hisplots are worked out by the simplest and the fewest positions. But hehad evidently his own theory of art, and studied with care such stageeffects as appeared to him most striking and impressive. Thus, in theburlesque contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, in the comedy of"The Frogs, " the former is censured, not for too rude a neglect, butfor too elaborate a cultivation, of theatrical craft--such asintroducing his principal characters, his Niobe and Achilles [30], with their faces hid, and preserving long and obstinate silence, inorder by that suspense to sharpen the expectation of the audience. Aeschylus, in fact, contrary to the general criticism, was as earnestand thoughtful an artist as Sophocles himself. There was thisdifference, it is true; one invented the art and the other perfected. 

But the first requires as intense a study as the last; and they whotalk of the savage and untutored genius of Aeschylus, are no wiserthan the critics who applied the phrase of "native wood-notes wild" tothe consummate philosophy of "Hamlet, " the anatomical correctness of"Othello, " the delicate symmetry of "The Tempest. " With respect tothe language of Aeschylus, ancient critics unite with the modern incondemning the straining of his metaphors, and the exaggeration of hisimages; yet they appear to me a necessary part of his genius, and ofthe effect it produces. But nothing can be more unsatisfactory andinconclusive than the theory of Schlegel, that such metaphors andimages, such rugged boldness and irregular fire, are thecharacteristics of a literature in its infancy. On the contrary, aswe have already seen, Phrynichus, the predecessor of Aeschylus, was asmuch characterized by sweetness and harmony, as Aeschylus by grandeurand headlong animation. In our own time, we have seen the coldclassic school succeeded by one full of the faults which the German, eloquent but superficial, would ascribe to the infancy of literature. The diction of Aeschylus was the distinction of himself, and not ofhis age; if it require an apology, let us not seek it in falsepretences; if he had written after Euripides, his diction would havebeen equally startling, and his metaphors equally lofty. His geniuswas one of those which, in any age, can form an era, and not thatwhich an era necessarily forms. He might have enriched his music fromthe strains of the Dorian lyres, but he required only one poet to havelived before him. The rest of the Greek dramatists requiredAeschylus--Aeschylus required only Homer. 

The POET is, indeed, the creator, not of images solely, but of men--not of one race of ideas and characters, but of a vast andinterminable posterity scattered over the earth. The origin of whatwonderful works, in what distant regions, in what various time, may betraced, step by step, from influence to influence, till we arrive atHomer! Such is the vitality of genius. The true spiritualtransmigrator--it passes through all shapes--losing identity, but notlife--and kindred to the GREAT INTELLIGENCE, which is the soul ofmatter--departing from one form only to animate another. 

CHAPTER III. 

Aristides. --His Character and Position. --The Rise of Themistocles. --Aristides is Ostracised. --The Ostracism examined. --The Influence ofThemistocles increases. --The Silver-mines of Laurion. --Their Productapplied by Themistocles to the Increase of the Navy. --New Directiongiven to the National Character. 

I. While the progress of the drama and the genius of Aeschyluscontributed to the rising renown of Athens, there appeared on thesurface of her external affairs two rival and principal actors, oftalents and designs so opposite, that it soon became evident that thetriumph of one could be only in the defeat of the other. Before thebattle of Marathon, Aristides had attained a very considerableinfluence in Athens. His birth was noble--his connexions wealthy--hisown fortune moderate. He had been an early follower and admirer ofClisthenes, the establisher of popular institutions in Athens afterthe expulsion of the Pisistratidae, but he shared the predilection ofmany popular chieftains, and while opposing the encroachments of atyranny, supported the power of an aristocracy. The system ofLycurgus was agreeable to his stern and inflexible temper. Hisintegrity was republican--his loftiness of spirit was patrician. Hehad all the purity, the disinterestedness, and the fervour of apatriot--he had none of the suppleness or the passion of a demagogue;on the contrary, he seems to have felt much of that high-spiriteddisdain of managing a people which is common to great minds consciousthat they are serving a people. His manners were austere, and herather advised than persuaded men to his purposes. He pursued notortuous policy, but marched direct to his object, fronting, and notundermining, the obstacles in his path. His reputation for truth anduprightness was proverbial, and when some lines in Aeschylus wererecited on the stage, implying that "to be, and not to seem, hiswisdom was, " the eyes of the spectators were fixed at once uponAristides. His sternness was only for principles--he had no harshnessfor men. Priding himself on impartiality between friends and foes, hepleaded for the very person whom the laws obliged him to prosecute;and when once, in his capacity of arbiter between two private persons, one of the parties said that his opponent had committed many injuriesagainst Aristides, he rebuked him nobly: "Tell me not, " he said, "ofinjuries against myself, but against thee. It is thy cause I amadjudging, and not my own. " It may be presumed, that with thesesingular and exalted virtues, he did not seek to prevent the woundsthey inflicted upon the self-love of others, and that the qualities ofa superior mind were displayed with the bearing of a haughty spirit. He became the champion of the aristocratic party, and before thebattle of Marathon he held the office of public treasurer. In thiscapacity Plutarch asserts that he was subjected to an accusation byThemistocles, and even intimates that Themistocles himself had beenhis predecessor in that honourable office [31]. But the youth ofThemistocles contradicts this statement; and though his restless andambitious temper had led him already into active life, and he mighthave combined with others more influential against Aristides, it canscarcely be supposed that, possessing no advantages of birth, he roseinto much power or distinction, till he won sudden and popularapplause by his gallantry at Marathon. 

II. Themistocles was of illegitimate birth, according to the Athenianprejudice, since his mother was a foreigner. His father, thoughconnected with the priestly and high-born house of the Lycomedae, wasnot himself a Eupatrid. The young Themistocles had many of thequalities which the equivocal condition of illegitimacy often educesfrom active and stirring minds--insolence, ostentation, the desire toshine, and the invincible ambition to rise. He appears, by a populartale, to have early associated with his superiors, and to have evincedbetimes the art and address which afterward distinguished him. At ameeting of all the illegitimate youths assembled at the wrestling-ringat Cynosarges, dedicated to Hercules, he persuaded some of the youngnobles to accompany him, so as to confound as it were the distinctionbetween the legitimate and the baseborn. His early disposition wasbold, restless, and impetuous. He paid little attention to thesubtleties of schoolmen, or the refinements of the arts; but even inboyhood devoted himself to the study of politics and the arts ofgovernment. He would avoid the sports and occupations of hisschoolfellows, and compose declamations, of which the subject was theimpeachment or defence of some of his young friends. His dispositionsprophesied of his future career, and his master was wont to say, "thathe was born to be a blessing or a curse to the commonwealth. " Hisstrange and precocious boyhood was followed by a wild and licentiousyouth. He lived in extremes, and alternated between the loosestpleasures [32] and the most daring ambition. Entering prematurelyinto public life, either his restless disposition or his politicalprinciples embroiled him with men of the highest rank. Fearless andsanguine, he cared not whom he attacked, or what he adventured; and, whatever his conduct before the battle of Marathon, the popularopinions he embraced could not but bring him, after that event, inconstant opposition to Aristides, the champion of the Areopagus. 

That splendid victory which gave an opening to his career sharpenedhis ambition. The loud fame of Miltiades, yet unconscious of reverse, inspired him with a lofty envy. He seems from that period to haveforsaken his more youthful excesses. He abstained from his wontedpursuits and pleasures--he indulged much in solitary and abstractedthought--he watched whole nights. His friends wondered at the change, and inquired the cause. "The trophies of Miltiades, " said he, "willnot suffer me to sleep. " From these meditations, which are common tomost men in the interval between an irregular youth and an aspiringmanhood, he soon seems to have awakened with fixed objects andexpanded views. Once emerged from the obscurity of his birth, hissuccess was rapid, for he possessed all the qualities which the peopledemanded in a leader--not only the talents and the courage, but theaffability and the address. He was an agreeable and boon companion--he committed to memory the names of the humblest citizens--hisversatility enabled him to be all things to all men. Without thelofty spirit and beautiful mind of Pericles, without the prodigal buteffeminate graces of Alcibiades--without, indeed, any of theirAthenian poetry in his intellectual composition, he yet possessed muchof their powers of persuasion, their ready talent for business, andtheir genius of intrigue. But his mind, if coarser than that ofeither of his successors, was yet perhaps more masculine anddetermined; nothing diverted him from his purpose--nothing arrestedhis ambition. His ends were great, and he associated the rise of hiscountry with his more selfish objects, but he was unscrupulous as tohis means. Avid of glory, he was not keenly susceptible to honour. He seems rather not to have comprehended, than comprehending, to havedisdained the limits which principle sets to action. Remarkablyfar-sighted, he possessed, more than any of his contemporaries, theprophetic science of affairs: patient, vigilant, and profound, he wasalways energetic, because always prepared. 

Such was the rival of Aristides, and such the rising leader of thepopular party at Athens. 

III. History is silent as to the part taken by Aristides in theimpeachment of Miltiades, but there is no reason to believe that heopposed the measure of the Alcmaeonid party with which he acted, andwhich seems to have obtained the ascendency after the death ofMiltiades. In the year following the battle of Marathon, we findAristides in the eminent dignity of archon. In this office he becamegenerally known by the title of the Just. His influence, his officialrank, the power of the party that supported him, soon rendered him theprincipal authority of Athens. The courts of the judges weredeserted, every litigant repaired to his arbitration--hisadministration of power obtained him almost the monopoly of it. Still, however, he was vigorously opposed by Themistocles and thepopular faction led by that aspiring rival. 

By degrees; various reasons, the chief of which was his own highposition, concurred to diminish the authority of Aristides; even amonghis own partisans he lost ground, partly by the jealousy of themagistrates, whose authority he had superseded--and partly, doubtless, from a maxim more dangerous to a leader than any he can adopt, viz. , impartiality between friends and foes in the appointment to offices. Aristides regarded, not the political opinions, but the abstractcharacter or talents, of the candidates. With Themistocles, on thecontrary, it was a favourite saying, "The gods forbid that I should bein power, and my friends no partakers of my success. " The tendency ofthe first policy is to discontent friends, while it rarely, if ever, conciliates foes; neither is it so elevated as it may appear to thesuperficial; for if we contend for the superiority of one set ofprinciples over another, we weaken the public virtue when we giveequal rewards to the principles we condemn as to the principles weapprove. We make it appear as if the contest had been but a war ofnames, and we disregard the harmony which ought imperishably to existbetween the opinions which the state should approve and the honourswhich the state can confer. He who is impartial as to persons mustsubmit to seem lukewarm as to principles. Thus the more towering andeminent the seeming power of Aristides, the more really hollow andinsecure were its foundations. To his own party it was unproductive--to the multitude it appeared unconstitutional. The extraordinaryhonours he had acquired--his monopoly of the magistrature--hisanti-popular opinions, could not but be regarded with fear by a peopleso jealous of their liberties. He seemed to their apprehensions to beapproaching gradually to the sovereignty of the state--not, indeed, byguards and military force, but the more dangerous encroachments ofcivil authority. The moment for the attack arrived. Themistoclescould count at last upon the chances of a critical experiment, andAristides was subjected to the ordeal of the ostracism. 

IV. The method of the ostracism was this:--each citizen wrote upon ashell, or a piece of broken earthenware, the name of the person hedesired to banish. The magistrates counted the shells, and if theyamounted to six thousand (a very considerable proportion of the freepopulation, and less than which rendered the ostracism invalid), theywere sorted, and the man whose name was found on the greater number ofshells was exiled for ten years, with full permission to enjoy hisestates. The sentence was one that honoured while it afflicted, nordid it involve any other accusation than that of being too powerful ortoo ambitious for the citizen of a free state. It is a well-knownstory, that, during the process of voting, an ignorant burgher came toAristides, whose person he did not know, and requested him to writedown the name of Aristides. 

"Has he ever injured you?" asked the great man. 

"No, " answered the clown, "nor do I know him even by sight; but itvexes me to hear him everywhere called the 'Just. '"

Aristides replied not--he wrote his own name on the shell, andreturned it to the enlightened voter. Such is a tale to which moreimportance than is its due has been attached. Yet perhaps we can givea new reading to the honest burgher's reply, and believe that it wasnot so expressive of envy at the virtue, as of fear at the reputation. Aristides received the sentence of exile (B. C. 483) with hisaccustomed dignity. His last words on leaving his native city werecharacteristic of his generous and lofty nature. "May the Athenianpeople, " he said, "never know the day which shall force them toremember Aristides!"--A wish, fortunately alike for the exile and thepeople, not realized. That day, so patriotically deprecated, sooncame, glorious equally to Athens and Aristides, and the reparation ofwrong and the triumph of liberty found a common date. 

The singular institution of the ostracism is often cited in proof ofthe ingratitude of a republic, and the fickleness of a people; but itowed its origin not to republican disorders, but to despoticencroachment--not to a people, but to a tyrant. If we look throughoutall the Grecian states, we find that a tyranny was usually establishedby some able and artful citizen, who, attaching himself either to thearistocratic, or more frequently to the popular party, was suddenlyelevated into supreme power, with the rise of the faction he hadespoused. Establishing his fame by popular virtues, he was enabledoften to support his throne by a moral authority--more dangerous thanthe odious defence of military hirelings: hence necessarily aroseamong the free states a jealousy of individuals, whose eminence becamesuch as to justify an undue ambition; and hence, for a long period, while liberty was yet tender and insecure, the (almost) necessity ofthe ostracism. 

Aristotle, who laments and condemns the practice, yet allows that incertain states it was absolutely requisite; he thinks the evil it isintended to prevent "might have been provided for in the earlierepochs of a commonwealth, by guarding against the rise of one man to adangerous degree of power; but where the habits and laws of a nationare so formed as to render it impossible to prevent the rise, you mustthen guard against its consequences:" and in another part of hisPolitics he observes, "that even in republics, where men are regarded, not according to their wealth, but worth--where the citizens loveliberty and have arms and valour to defend it; yet, should thepre-eminent virtues of one man, or of one family, totally eclipse themerit of the community at large, you have but two choices--theostracism or the throne. "

If we lament the precaution, we ought then to acknowledge the cause. The ostracism was the creature of the excesses of the tyrannical, andnot of the popular principle. The bland and specious hypocrisy ofPisistratus continued to work injury long after his death--and theostracism of Aristides was the necessary consequence of the seizure ofthe citadel. Such evil hath arbitrary power, that it producesinjustice in the contrary principles as a counterpart to the injusticeof its own; thus the oppression of our Catholic countrymen forcenturies resulted from the cruelties and persecutions of a papalascendency. We remembered the danger, and we resorted to the rigidprecaution. To guard against a second tyranny of opinion, wecondemned, nor perhaps without adequate cause, not one individual, buta whole sect, to a moral ostracism. Ancient times are not then soopposite to the present--and the safety of the state may excuse, in arepublic as in a monarchy, a thousand acts of abstract injustice. Butthe banishment of Aristides has peculiar excuses in the criticalcircumstances of the time. The remembrance of Pisistratus was stillfresh--his son had but just perished in an attempt on his country--thefamily still lived, and still menaced: the republic was yet in itsinfancy--a hostile aristocracy within its walls--a powerful enemystill formidable without. It is a remarkable fact, that as therepublic strengthened, and as the popular power increased, the customof ostracism was superseded. The democratic party was never so strongas at the time in which it was finally abolished. It is theinsecurity of power, whether in a people or a king, that generatessuspicion. Habituated to liberty, a people become less rigid and moreenlightened as to its precautions. 

V. It had been a saying of Aristides, "that if the Athenians desiredtheir affairs to prosper, they ought to fling Themistocles and himselfinto the barathrum. " But fortune was satisfied at this time with asingle victim, and reserved the other for a later sacrifice. Relievedfrom the presence of a rival who had constantly crossed and obstructedhis career, Themistocles found ample scope for his genius. He was notone of those who are unequal to the situation it costs them so much toobtain. On his entrance into public life he is said by Theophrastusto have possessed only three talents; but the account is inconsistentwith the extravagance of his earlier career, and still more with theexpenses to which a man who attempts to lead a party is, in allpopular states, unavoidably subjected. More probably, therefore, itis said of him by others, that he inherited a competent patrimony, andhe did not scruple to seize upon every occasion to increase it, whether through the open emolument or the indirect perquisites ofpublic office. But, desiring wealth as a means, not an end, hegrasped with one hand to lavish with the other. His generositydazzled and his manners seduced the people, yet he exercised the powerhe acquired with a considerate and patriotic foresight. From thefirst retreat of the Persian armament he saw that the danger wassuspended, and not removed. But the Athenians, who shared a commonGrecian fault, and ever thought too much of immediate, too little ofdistant peril, imagined that Marathon had terminated the great contestbetween Asia and Europe. They forgot the fleets of Persia, but theystill dreaded the galleys of Aegina. The oligarchy of that rivalstate was the political enemy of the Athenian demos; the ally of thePersian was feared by the conqueror, and every interest, military andcommercial, contributed to feed the passionate and jealous hate thatexisted against a neighbour, too near to forget, too warlike todespise. The thoughtful and profound policy of Themistocles resolvedto work this popular sentiment to ulterior objects; and urging upon awilling audience the necessity of making suitable preparations againstAegina, then the mistress of the seas, he proposed to construct anavy, fitted equally to resist the Persian and to open a new dominionto the Athenians. 

To effect this purpose he called into aid one of the most valuablesources of her power which nature had bestowed upon Athens. 

VI. Around the country by the ancient Thoricus, on the road from themodern Kerratia to the Cape of Sunium, heaps of scoriae indicate tothe traveller that he is in the neighbourhood of the once celebratedsilver-mines of Laurion; he passes through pines and woodlands--henotices the indented tracks of wheels which two thousand years havenot effaced from the soil--he discovers the ancient shafts of themines, and pauses before the foundations of a large circular tower andthe extensive remains of the castles which fortified the neighbouringtown [33]. A little farther, and still passing among mine-banks andhillocks of scoriae, he beholds upon Cape Colonna the fourteenexistent columns of the temple of Minerva Sunias. In this country, towhich the old name is still attached [34], is to be found a principalcause of the renown and the reverses of Athens--of the victory ofSalamis--of the expedition to Sicily. 

It appears that the silver-mines of Laurion had been worked from avery remote period--beyond even any traditional date. But as it iswell and unanswerably remarked, "the scarcity of silver in the time ofSolon proves that no systematic or artificial process of mining couldat that time have been established. " [35] It was, probably, duringthe energetic and politic rule of the dynasty of Pisistratus thatefficient means were adopted to derive adequate advantage from sofertile a source of national wealth. And when, subsequently, Athens, profiting from the lessons of her tyrants, allowed the genius of herfree people to administer the state, fresh necessity was created forwealth against the hostility of Sparta--fresh impetus given to generalindustry and public enterprise. Accordingly, we find that shortlyafter the battle of Marathon, the yearly profits of the mines wereimmense. We learn from the researches of one of those eminent Germans[36] who have applied so laborious a learning with so subtle anacuteness to the elucidation of ancient history, that these mines werealways considered the property of the state; shares in them were soldto individuals as tenants in fee farms, and these proprietors paid, besides, an annual sum into the public treasury, amounting to thetwenty-fourth part of the produce. The state, therefore, received aregular revenue from the mines, derived from the purchase--moneys andthe reserved rents. This revenue had been hitherto divided among allthe free citizens, and the sum allotted to each was by no meansinconsiderable, when Themistocles, at an early period of his career(before even the ostracism of Aristides), had the courage to proposethat a fund thus lucrative to every individual should be appropriatedto the national purpose of enlarging the navy. The feud still carriedon with the Aeginetans was his pretext and excuse. But we cannotrefuse our admiration to the fervent and generous order of publicspirit existent at that time, when we find that it was a popularleader who proposed to, and carried through, a popular assembly themotion, that went to empoverish the men who supported his party andadjudged his proposition. Privileged and sectarian bodies neverwillingly consent to a surrender of pecuniary benefits for a merepublic end. But among the vices of a popular assembly, it possessesthe redeeming virtue to be generous. Upon a grand and unconsciousprinciple of selfishness, a democracy rarely grudges a sacrificeendured for the service of the state. 

The money thus obtained was devoted to the augmentation of themaritime force to two hundred triremes--an achievement that probablyexhausted the mine revenue for some years; and the custom once broken, the produce of Laurion does not seem again to have been wasted uponindividuals. To maintain and increase the new navy, a decree waspassed, either at that time [37], or somewhat later, which ordainedtwenty triremes to be built yearly. 

VII. The construction of these vessels, the very sacrifice of thecitizens, the general interest that must have attached to anundertaking that was at once novel in itself, and yet congenial notmore to the passions of a people, who daily saw from their own heightsthe hostile rock of Aegina, "the eyesore of the Piraeus, " than to thehabits of men placed in a steril land that on three sides tempted tothe sea--all combined to assist Themistocles in his master policy--apolicy which had for its design gradually to convert the Atheniansfrom an agricultural into a maritime people. What was imputed to himas a reproach became his proudest distinction, viz. , that "he firsttook his countrymen from the spear and shield, and sent them to thebench and oar. "

CHAPTER IV. 

The Preparations of Darius. --Revolt of Egypt. --Dispute for theSuccession to the Persian Throne. --Death of Darius. --Brief Review ofthe leading Events and Characteristics of his Reign. 

I. While, under the presiding genius of Themistocles, Athens wassilently laying the foundation of her naval greatness, and graduallyincreasing in influence and renown, the Persian monarch was notforgetful of the burning of Sardis and the defeat of Marathon. Thearmies of a despotic power are often slow to collect, and unwieldy tounite, and Darius wasted three years in despatching emissaries tovarious cities, and providing transports, horses, and forage for a newinvasion. 

The vastness of his preparations, though congenial to orientalwarfare, was probably proportioned to objects more great than thosewhich appear in the Greek historians. There is no reason, indeed, tosuppose that he cherished the gigantic project afterward entertainedby his son--a project no less than that of adding Europe as a provinceto the empire of the East. But symptoms of that revolt in Egypt whichshortly occurred, may have rendered it advisable to collect animposing force upon other pretences; and without being carried away byany frantic revenge against the remote and petty territory of Athens, Darius could not but be sensible that the security of his Ionian, Macedonian, and Thracian conquests, with the homage already renderedto his sceptre by the isles of Greece, made it necessary to redeem thedisgrace of the Persian arms, and that the more insignificant the foe, the more fatal, if unpunished, the example of resistance. The Ioniancoasts--the entrance into Europe--were worth no inconsiderable effort, and the more distant the provinces to be awed, the more stupendous, according to all rules of Asiatic despotism, should appear theresources of the sovereign. He required an immense armament, not somuch for the sake of crushing the Athenian foe, as of exhibiting inall its might the angry majesty of the Persian empire. 

II. But while Asia was yet astir with the martial preparations of thegreat king, Egypt revolted from his sway, and, at the same time, thepeace of Darius was imbittered, and his mind engaged, by a contestamong his sons for the succession to the crown (B. C. 486). Artabazanes, the eldest of his family, born to him by his first wife, previous to his own elevation to the throne, founded his claim uponthe acknowledged rights of primogeniture; but Xerxes, the eldest of asecond family by Atossa, daughter of the great Cyrus, advanced, on theother hand, a direct descent from the blood of the founder of thePersian empire. Atossa, who appears to have inherited something ofher father's genius, and who, at all events, exercised unboundedinfluence over Darius, gave to the claim of her son a stronger supportthan that which he could derive from argument or custom. The intrigueprobably extended from the palace throughout the pure Persian race, who could not but have looked with veneration upon a descendant ofCyrus, nor could there have seemed a more popular method ofstrengthening whatever was defective in the title of Darius to thecrown, than the transmission of his sceptre to a son, in whose personwere united the rights of the new dynasty and the sanctity of the old. These reasonings prevailed with Darius, whose duty it was to nominatehis own successor, and Xerxes was declared his heir. While thecontest was yet undecided, there arrived at the Persian courtDemaratus, the deposed and self-exiled king of Sparta. He attachedhimself to the cause and person of Xerxes, and is even said to havefurnished the young prince with new arguments, founded on the usagesof Sparta--an assertion not to be wholly disregarded, since Demaratusappeared before the court in the character of a monarch, if in thedestitution of an exile, and his suggestions fell upon the ear of anarbiter willing to seize every excuse to justify the resolution towhich he had already arrived. 

This dispute terminated, Darius in person prepared to march againstthe Egyptian rebels, when his death (B. C. 485) consigned to theinexperienced hands of his heir the command of his armies and theexecution of his designs. 

The long reign of Darius, extending over thirty-six years, wasmemorable for vast improvements in the administrations of the empire, nor will it, in this place, be an irrelevant digression to glancebriefly and rapidly back over some of the events and the innovationsby which it was distinguished. 

III. The conquest of Cyrus had transplanted, as the ruling people, tothe Median empire, a race of brave and hardy, but simple anduncivilized warriors. Cambyses, of whose character no unequivocalevidence remains, since the ferocious and frantic crimes ascribed tohim [38] are conveyed to us through the channel of the Egyptianpriests, whom he persecuted, most probably, rather as a politicalnobility than a religious caste, could but slightly have improved thecondition of the people, or the administration of the empire, sincehis reign lasted but seven years and five months, during which he wasoccupied with the invasion of Africa and the subjugation of Egypt. Atthe conclusion of his reign he was menaced by a singular conspiracy. The Median magi conspired in his absence from the seat of empire toelevate a Mede to the throne. Cambyses, under the impulse of jealousand superstitious fears, had lately put to death Smerdis, his brother. The secret was kept from the multitude, and known only to a few--amongothers, to the magian whom Cambyses had intrusted with the charge ofhis palace at Susa, an office as important as confidential. This manconceived a scheme of amazing but not unparalleled boldness. Hisbrother, a namesake of the murdered prince, resembled the latter alsoin age and person. This brother, the chief of the household, with thegeneral connivance of his sacerdotal caste, who were naturally anxiousto restore the Median dynasty, suddenly declared to be the trueSmerdis, and the impostor, admitted to possession of the palace, asserted his claim to the sovereign power. The consent of the magi--the indifference of the people--the absence, not only of the king, butof the flower of the Persian race--and, above all, the tranquilpossession of the imperial palace, conspired to favour the deceit. [39] Placed on the Persian throne, but concealing his person from theeyes of the multitude in the impenetrable pomp of an Orientalseraglio, the pseudo Smerdis had the audacity to despatch, among theheralds that proclaimed his accession, a messenger to the Egyptianarmy, demanding their allegiance. The envoy found Cambyses atEcbatana in Syria. Neither cowardice nor sloth was the fault of thatmonarch; he sprang upon his horse, determined to march at once toSusa, when the sheath fell from his sword, and he received a mortalwound from the naked blade. Cambyses left no offspring, and theimpostor, believed by the people to be the true son of Cyrus, issued, from the protecting and august obscurity of his palace, popularproclamations and beneficent edicts. Whatever his present fraud, whatever his previous career, this daring Mede was enabled to make hisreign beloved and respected. After his death he was regretted by allbut the Persians, who would not have received the virtues of a god asan excuse for the usurpation of a Mede. Known to the vast empire onlyby his munificence of spirit--by his repeal of tribute and service, the impostor permitted none to his presence who could have detectedthe secret. He never quitted his palace--the nobles were not invitedto his banquets--the women in his seraglio were separated each fromeach--and it was only in profound darkness that the partners of hispleasures were admitted to his bed. The imposture is said byHerodotus to have been first discovered in the following manner:--themagian, according to the royal custom, had appropriated to himself thewives of Cambyses; one of these was the daughter of Otanes, a Persiannoble whom the secluded habits of the pretended king filled withsuspicion. For some offence, the magian had been formerly deprived ofhis ears by the order of Cyrus. Otanes communicated this fact, withhis suspicions, to his daughter, and the next time she was a partakerof the royal couch, she took the occasion of his sleep to convinceherself that the sovereign of the East was a branded and criminalimpostor. The suspicions of Otanes verified, he entered, with sixother nobles, into a conspiracy, which mainly owed its success to theresolution and energy of one among them, named Darius, who appears tohave held a station of but moderate importance among the royal guard, though son of Hystaspes, governor of the province of Persis, and ofthe purest and loftiest blood of Persia. The conspirators penetratedthe palace unsuspected--put the eunuchs who encountered them to death--and reached the chamber in which the usurper himself was seated withhis brother. The impostors, though but imperfectly armed, defendedthemselves with valour; two of the conspirators were wounded, but theswords of the rest sufficed to consummate the work, and Darius himselfgave the death-blow to one of the brothers. 

This revolution was accompanied and stained by an indiscriminatemassacre of the magi. Nor did the Persians, who bore to that Mediantribe the usual hatred which conquerors feel to the wisest and noblestpart of the conquered race, content themselves with a short-lived andsingle revenge. The memory of the imposture and the massacre was longperpetuated by a solemn festival, called "the slaughter of the Magi, "or Magophonia, during which no magian was permitted to be seen abroad. 

The result of this conspiracy threw into the hands of the seven noblesthe succession to the Persian throne: the election fell upon Darius, the soul of the enterprise, and who was of that ancient and princelyhouse of the Achaemenids, in which the Persians recognised the familyof their ancestral kings. But the other conspirators had notstruggled solely to exchange one despot for another. With a newmonarchy arose a new oligarchy. Otanes was even exempted fromallegiance to the monarch, and his posterity were distinguished bysuch exclusive honours and immunities, that Herodotus calls them theonly Persian family which retained its liberty. The otherconspirators probably made a kind of privileged council, since theyclaimed the right of access at all hours, unannounced, to the presenceof the king--a privilege of the utmost value in Eastern forms ofgovernment--and their power was rendered permanent and solid bycertain restrictions on marriage [40], which went to maintain aconstant alliance between the royal family and their own. While thesix conspirators rose to an oligarchy, the tribe of the Pasargadae--the noblest of those sections into which the pure Persian family wasdivided--became an aristocracy to officer the army and adorn thecourt. But though the great body of the conquered Medes were kept insubject inferiority, yet the more sternly enforced from the Persianresentment at the late Median usurpation, Darius prudently conciliatedthe most powerful of that great class of his subjects by offices ofdignity and command, and of all the tributary nations, the Medesranked next to the Persians. 

IV. With Darius, the Persian monarchy progressed to that great crisisin the civilization of those states founded by conquering Nomades, when, after rich possessions are seized, cities built, and settlementsestablished, the unwieldy and enormous empire is divided intoprovinces, and satrap government reflects in every district themingled despotism and subservience, pomp and insecurity, of theimperial court. Darius undoubtedly took the most efficient means inhis power to cement his sway and organize his resources. For thebetter collection of tribute, twenty provinces were created, governedby twenty satraps. Hitherto no specific and regular tax had beenlevied, but the Persian kings had been contented with reluctantpresents, or arbitrary extortions. Darius now imposed a limited andannual impost, amounting, according to the computation of Herodotus, to fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty talents, collectedpartially from Africa, principally from Asia [41]. The Persians, asthe conquering and privileged race, were excluded from the generalimposition, but paid their moderate contribution under the softertitle of gratuity. The Colchians fixed their own burdens--theEthiopians that bordered Egypt, with the inhabitants of the sacredtown of Nyssa, rendered also tributary gratuities--while Arabiaoffered the homage of her frankincense, and India [42] of her gold. The empire of Darius was the more secure, in that it was contrary toits constitutional spirit to innovate on the interior organization ofthe distant provinces--they enjoyed their own national laws andinstitutions--they even retained their monarchs--they resigned nothingbut their independence and their tribute. The duty of the satraps wasas yet but civil and financial: they were responsible for the imposts, they executed the royal decrees. Their institution was outwardlydesigned but for the better collection of the revenue; but when fromthe ranks of the nobles Darius rose to the throne, he felt theadvantage of creating subject principalities, calculated at once toremove and to content the more powerful and ambitious of his formerequals. Save Darius himself, no monarch in the known world possessedthe dominion or enjoyed the splendour accorded to these imperialviceroys. Babylon and Assyria fell to one--Media was not sufficientfor another--nation was added to nation, and race to race, to form aprovince worthy the nomination of a representative of the great king. His pomp and state were such as befitted the viceroy over monarchs. Ameasure of silver, exceeding the Attic medimnus, was presented everyday to the satrap of Babylon [43]. Eight hundred stallions andsixteen thousand mares were apportioned to his stables, and the tax offour Assyrian towns was to provide for the maintenance of his Indiandogs. 

But under Darius, at least, these mighty officers were curbed and keptin awe by the periodical visits of the king himself, or hiscommissioners; while a broad road, from the western coast to thePersian capital--inns, that received the messengers, and couriers, that transmitted the commands of the king, brought the more distantprovinces within the reach of ready intelligence and vigilant control. These latter improvements were well calculated to quicken the stagnantlanguor habitual to the overgrowth of eastern empire. Nor was thereign of Darius undistinguished by the cultivation of the more elegantarts--since to that period may be referred, if not the foundation, atleast the embellishment and increase of Persepolis. The remains ofthe palace of Chil-Menar, ascribed by modern superstition to thearchitecture of genii, its graceful columns, its mighty masonry, itsterrace-flights, its marble basins, its sculptured designs stampedwith the unmistakeable emblems of the magian faith, sufficientlyevince that the shepherd-soldiery of Cyrus had already learned toappreciate and employ the most elaborate arts of the subjugated Medes. 

During this epoch, too, was founded a more regular military system, bythe institution of conscriptions--while the subjection of the skilfulsailors of Phoenicia, and of the great maritime cities of AsiaticGreece, brought to the Persian warfare the new arm of a numerous andexperienced navy. 

V. The reign of Darius is also remarkable for the influence whichGrecian strangers began to assume in the Persian court--and the fataland promiscuous admission of Grecian mercenaries into the Persianservice. The manners of the Persians were naturally hospitable, andDarius possessed not only an affable temper, but an inquisitive mind. A Greek physician of Crotona, who succeeded in relieving the king fromthe effects of a painful accident which had baffled the Egyptianpractitioners, esteemed the most skilful the court possessed, naturally rose into an important personage. His reputation wasincreased by a more difficult cure upon the person of Atossa, thedaughter of Cyrus, who, from the arms of her brother Cambyses, andthose of the magian impostor, passed to the royal marriage-bed. Andthe physician, though desirous only of returning through some pretextto his own country, perhaps first inflamed the Persian king with theill-starred wish of annexing Greece to his dominions. He despatched acommission with the physician himself, to report on the affairs ofGreece. Many Hellenic adventurers were at that time scattered overthe empire, some who had served with Cambyses, others who had sidedwith the Egyptians. Their valour recommended them to a valiantpeople, and their singular genius for intrigue took root in everysoil. Syloson, a Greek of Samos, brother to Polycrates, the tyrant ofthat state, who, after a career of unexampled felicity and renown, fell a victim to the hostile treachery of Oretes, the satrap ofSardis, induced Darius to send over Otanes at the head of a Persianforce to restore him to the principality of his murdered brother; andwhen, subsequently, in his Scythian expedition, Darius was aneyewitness of the brilliant civilization of Ionia, not only did Greecebecome to him more an object of ambition, but the Greeks of hisrespect. He sought, by a munificent and wise clemency, to attach themto his throne, and to colonize his territories with subjects valuablealike for their constitutional courage and national intelligence. Norcan we wonder at the esteem which a Hippias or a Demaratus found inthe Persian councils, when, in addition to the general reputation ofGreeks, they were invested with the dignity of princely rank--for, above all nations [44], the Persians most venerated the name and theattributes of a king; nor could their Oriental notions have accuratelydistinguished between a legitimate monarch and a Greek tyrant. 

VI. In this reign, too, as the empire was concentrated, and asplendid court arose from the warrior camp of Cyrus and Cambyses, thenoble elements of the pure Persian character grew confounded with theMedian and Assyrian. As the Persians retreated from the manners of anomad, they lost the distinction of a conquering people. Warriorsbecame courtiers--the palace shrunk into the seraglio--eunuchs andfavourites, queens [45], and above all queen-mothers, rose intopernicious and invisible influence. And while the Greeks, in theirsmall states, and under their free governments, progressed to acivilization, in which luxury only sharpened new energies and creatednew arts, the gorgeous enervation of a despotism destructive tocompetition, and an empire too vast for patriotism, rapidly debasedand ruined the old hardy race of Cyrus [46], perhaps equal originallyto the Greeks in mental, and in many important points far superior tothem in moral qualities. With a religion less animated andpicturesque, but more simple and exalted, rejecting the belief thatthe gods partook of a mortal nature, worshipping their GREAT ONE notin statues or in temples, but upon the sublime altar of loftymountain-tops--or through those elementary agents which are theunidolatrous representatives of his beneficence and power [47];accustomed, in their primitive and uncorrupted state, to mild laws andlimited authority; inured from childhood to physical discipline andmoral honesty, "to draw the bow and to speak the truth, " this gallantand splendid tribe were fated to make one of the most signal proofs inhistory, that neither the talents of a despot nor the original virtuesof a people can long resist the inevitable effect of vicious politicalconstitutions. It was not at Marathon, nor at Salamis, nor atPlataea, that the Persian glory fell. It fell when the Persiansimitated the manners of the slaves they conquered. "Most imitative ofall men, " says Herodotus, "they are ever ready to adopt the manners ofthe foreigners. They take from the Medes their robe, from theEgyptians their breastplate. " Happy, if to the robe and thebreastplate they had confined their appropriations from the nationsthey despised! Happy, if they had not imparted to their augustreligion the gross adulterations of the Median magi; if they had notexchanged their mild laws and restricted government, for the mostcallous contempt of the value of life [48] and the dignity of freedom. The whole of the pure Persian race, but especially the nobler tribe ofthe Pasargadae, became raised by conquest over so vast a population, to the natural aristocracy of the land. But the valuable principle ofaristocratic pride, which is the safest curb to monarchicencroachment, crumbled away in the atmosphere of a despotism, whichreceived its capricious checks or awful chastisement only in the darkrecesses of a harem. Retaining to the last their disdain of allwithout the Persian pale; deeming themselves still "the most excellentof mankind;" [49] this people, the nobility of the East, with thearrogance of the Spartan, contracting the vices of the Helot, rapidlydecayed from all their national and ancient virtues beneath thatseraglio-rule of janizaries and harlots, in which, from first to last, have merged the melancholy destinies of Oriental despotism. 

VII. Although Darius seems rather to have possessed the ardour forconquest than the genius for war, his reign was memorable for manymilitary triumphs, some cementing, others extending, the foundationsof the empire. A formidable insurrection of Babylon, which resisted asiege of twenty-one months, was effectually extinguished, and the newsatrap government, aided by the yearly visits of the king, appears tohave kept from all subsequent reanimation the vast remains of thatancient empire of the Chaldaean kings. Subsequently an expeditionalong the banks of the Indus, first navigated for discovery by one ofthe Greeks whom Darius took into his employ, subjected the highlandsnorth of the Indus, and gave that distant river as a new boundary tothe Persian realm. More important, had the fortunes of his son beenequal to his designs, was the alarming settlement which the monarch ofAsia effected on the European continent, by establishing hissovereignty in Thrace and Macedonia--by exacting homage from the islesand many of the cities of Greece--by breaking up, with the crowningfall of Miletus, the independence and rising power of those Ioniancolonies, which ought to have established on the Asiatic coasts thepermanent barrier to the irruptions of eastern conquest. Againstthese successes the loss of six thousand four hundred men at thebattle of Marathon, a less number than Darius deliberately sacrificedin a stratagem at the siege of Babylon, would have seemed but a pettycounterbalance in the despatches of his generals, set off, as it was, by the spoils and the captives of Euboea. Nor were the settlements inThrace and Macedon, with the awe that his vast armament excitedthroughout that portion of his dominions, an insufficient recompensefor the disasters of the expedition, conducted by Darius in person, against the wandering, fierce, and barbarous Mongolian race, that, known to us by the name of Scythians, worshipped their war-god underthe symbol of a cimeter, with libations of human blood--hideousinhabitants of the inhospitable and barren tracts that interposebetween the Danube and the Don. 

VIII. Thus the heritage that passed from Darius to Xerxes was thefruit of a long and, upon the whole, a wise and glorious reign. Thenew sovereign of the East did not, like his father, find a disjointedand uncemented empire of countries rather conquered than subdued, destitute alike of regular revenues and local governments; a wanderingcamp, shifted to and fro in a wilderness of unconnected nations--Xerxes ascended the throne amid a splendid court, with Babylon, Ecbatana, Persepolis, and Susa for his palaces. Submissive satrapsunited the most distant provinces with the seat of empire. The wealthof Asia was borne in regular currents to his treasury. Save therevolt of the enfeebled Egyptians, and the despised victory of ahandful of men upon a petty foreland of the remote Aegaean, no cloudrested upon the dawn of his reign. As yet unfelt and unforeseen werethe dangers that might ultimately result from the very wisdom ofDarius in the institution of satraps, who, if not sufficientlysupported by military force, would be unable to control the motleynations over which they presided, and, if so supported, mightthemselves become, in any hour, the most formidable rebels. Towhatever prestige he inherited from the fame of his father, the youngking added, also, a more venerable and sacred dignity in the eyes ofthe Persian aristocracy, and, perhaps, throughout the whole empire, derived, on his mother's side, from the blood of Cyrus. Never, to allexternal appearance, and, to ordinary foresight, under fairerauspices, did a prince of the East pass from the luxury of a seraglioto the majesty of a throne. 

CHAPTER V. 

Xerxes Conducts an Expedition into Egypt. --He finally resolves on theInvasion of Greece. --Vast Preparations for the Conquest of Europe. --Xerxes Arrives at Sardis. --Despatches Envoys to the Greek States, demanding Tribute. --The Bridge of the Hellespont. --Review of thePersian Armament at Abydos. --Xerxes Encamps at Therme. 

I. On succeeding to the throne of the East (B. C. 485), Xerxes foundthe mighty army collected by his father prepared to execute hisdesigns of conquest or revenge. In the greatness of that army, in theyouth of that prince, various parties beheld the instrument ofinterest or ambition. Mardonius, warlike and enterprising, desiredthe subjugation of Greece, and the command of the Persian forces. Andto the nobles of the Pasargadae an expedition into Europe could notbut present a dazzling prospect of spoil and power--of satrapies asyet unexhausted of treasure--of garrisons and troops remote from theeye of the monarch, and the domination of the capital. 

The persons who had most influence over Xerxes were his uncleArtabanus, his cousin Mardonius, and a eunuch named Natacas [50]. Theintrigues of the party favourable to the invasion of Europe werebacked by the representations of the Grecian exiles. The family andpartisans of the Pisistratidae had fixed themselves in Susa, and theGreek subtlety and spirit of enterprise maintained and confirmed, forthat unprincipled and able faction, the credit they had alreadyestablished at the Persian court. Onomacritus, an Athenian priest, formerly banished by Hipparchus for forging oracular predictions, wasnow reconciled to the Pisistratidae, and resident at Susa. Presentedto the king as a soothsayer and prophet, he inflamed the ambition ofXerxes by garbled oracles of conquest and fortune, which, this time, it was not the interest of the Pisistratidae to expose. 

About the same period the Aleuadae, those princes of Thessaly whosepolicy seems ever to have been that of deadly hostility to the Grecianrepublics, despatched ambassadors to Xerxes, inviting him to Greece, and promising assistance to his arms, and allegiance to his sceptre. 

II. From these intrigues Xerxes aroused himself in the second year ofhis reign, and, as the necessary commencement of more extendeddesigns, conducted in person an expedition against the rebelliousEgyptians. That people had neither military skill nor constitutionalhardihood, but they were inspired with the most devoted affection fortheir faith and their institutions. This affection was to them whatthe love of liberty is in others--it might be easy to conquer them, itwas almost impossible to subdue. By a kind of fatality their history, for centuries, was interwoven with that of Greece: their perils andtheir enemies the same. The ancient connexion which apocryphaltradition recorded between races so opposite, seemed a typicalprophecy of that which actually existed in the historical times. Andif formerly Greece had derived something of civilization from Egypt, she now paid back the gift by the swords of her adventurers; and thebravest and most loyal part of the Egyptian army was composed ofGrecian mercenaries. At the same time Egypt shared the fate of allnations that intrust too great a power to auxiliaries. Greeksdefended her, but Greeks conspired against her. The adventurers fromwhom she derived a fatal strength were of a vain, wily, and irritabletemperament. A Greek removed from the influence of Greece usuallylost all that was honest, all that was noble in the nationalcharacter; and with the most refining intellect, he united a policylike that of the Italian in the middle ages, fierce, faithless, anddepraved. Thus, while the Greek auxiliaries under Amasis, or ratherPsammenitus, resisted to the last the arms of Cambyses, it was by aGreek (Phanes) that Egypt had been betrayed. Perhaps, could wethoroughly learn all the secret springs of the revolt of Egypt, andthe expedition of Xerxes, we might find a coincidence not of datesalone between Grecian and Egyptian affairs. Whether in Memphis or inSusa, it is wonderful to see the amazing influence and ascendencywhich the Hellenic intellect obtained. It was in reality thedesperate refuse of Europe that swayed the councils, moved the armies, and decided the fate of the mighty dynasties of the East. 

III. The arms of Xerxes were triumphant in Egypt (B. C. 484), and hemore rigorously enforced upon that ill-fated land the iron despotismcommenced by Cambyses. Intrusting the Egyptian government to hisbrother Achaemenes, the Persian king returned to Susa, and flushedwith his victory, and more and more influenced by the ambitiouscounsels of Mardonius, he now fairly opened, in the full divan of hiscounsellors, the vast project he had conceived. The vanity of theGreeks led them too credulously to suppose that the invasion of Greecewas the principal object of the great king; on the contrary, it wasthe least. He regarded Greece but as the threshold of a new quarterof the globe. Ignorant of the nature of the lands he designed tosubject, and credulous of all the fables which impart proverbialmagnificence to the unknown, Xerxes saw in Europe "regions notinferior to Asia in extent, and far surpassing it in fertility. "After the conquest of Greece on either continent, the young monarchunfolded to his counsellors his intention of overrunning the whole ofEurope, "until heaven itself should be the only limit to the Persianrealm, and the sun should shine on no country contiguous to his own. "[51]

IV. These schemes, supported by Mardonius, were opposed only byArtabanus; and the arguments of the latter, dictated by prudence andexperience, made considerable impression upon the king. From thattime, however, new engines of superstitious craft and imposture werebrought to bear upon the weak mind, on whose decision now rested thefatal war between Asia and Europe. Visions and warnings, threats andexhortations, haunted his pillow and disturbed his sleep, all tendingto one object, the invasion of Greece. As we learn from Ctesias thatthe eunuch Natacas was one of the parasites most influential withXerxes, it is probable that so important a personage in the intriguesof a palace was, with the evident connivance of the magi, theinstrument of Mardonius. And, indeed, from this period the politicsof Persia became more and more concentrated in the dark plots of theseraglio. Thus superstition, flattery, ambition, all operating uponhim, the irresolution of Xerxes vanished. Artabanus himself affectedto be convinced of the expediency of the war; and the only object nowremaining to the king and his counsellors was to adapt thepreparations to the magnitude of the enterprise. Four additionalyears were not deemed an idle delay in collecting an army and fleetdestined to complete the conquest of the world. 

"And never, " says Herodotus, "was there a military expeditioncomparable to this. Hard would it be to specify one nation of Asiawhich did not accompany the Persian king, or any waters, save thegreat rivers, which were not exhausted by his armament. " Preparationsfor an expedition of three years were made, to guard against thecalamities formerly sustained by the Persian fleet. Had the successof the expedition been commensurate with the grandeur of itscommencement, perhaps it would have ranked among the sublimestconceptions of military genius. All its schemes were of a vast andgigantic nature. Across the isthmus, which joins the promontory ofAthos to the Thracian continent, a canal was formed--a work of soenormous a labour, that it seems almost to have justified theskepticism of later writers [52], but for the concurrent testimony ofThucydides and Lysias, Plato, Herodotus, and Strabo. 

Bridges were also thrown over the river Strymon; the care ofprovisions was intrusted to the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and storeswere deposited in every station that seemed the best adapted forsupplies. 

V. While these preparations were carried on, the great king, at thehead of his land-forces, marched to Sardis. Passing the river Halys, and the frontiers of Lydia, he halted at Celaenae. Here he wasmagnificently entertained by Pythius, a Lydian, esteemed, next to theking himself, the richest of mankind. This wealthy subject profferedto the young prince, in prosecution of the war, the whole of histreasure, amounting to two thousand talents of silver, and fourmillions, wanting only seven thousand, of golden staters of Darius[53]. "My farms and my slaves, " he added, "will be sufficient tomaintain me. "

"My friend, " said the royal guest, who possessed all the irregulargenerosity of princes, "you are the first person, since I left Persia(B. C. 480), who has treated my army with hospitality and voluntarilyoffered me assistance in the war. Accept my friendship; I receive youas my host; retain your possessions, and permit me to supply the seventhousand staters which are wanting to complete the four millions youalready possess. " A man who gives from the property of the public isseldom outdone in munificence. 

At length Xerxes arrived at Sardis, and thence he despatched heraldsinto Greece (close of B. C. 481), demanding the tribute of earth andwater. Athens and Sparta were the only cities not visited by hisenvoys. 

VI. While Xerxes rested at the Lydian city, an enterprise, scarcelyless magnificent in conception than that of the canal at Athos, wascompleted at the sacred passage of the Hellespont. Here wasconstructed from the coast of Asia to that of Europe a bridge ofboats, for the convoy of the army. Scarce was this completed when asudden tempest scattered the vessels, and rendered the labour vain. The unruly passion of the high-spirited despot was popularly said tohave evinced itself at this intelligence, by commanding the Hellespontto receive three hundred lashes and a pair of fetters--a storyrecorded as a certainty by Herodotus, and more properly contemned as afable by modern skepticism. 

A new bridge was now constructed under new artificers, whose industrywas sharpened by the fate of their unfortunate predecessors, whomXerxes condemned to death. These architects completed at last twobridges of vessels, of various kinds and sizes, secured by anchors ofgreat length, and thus protected from the influence of the winds thatset in from the Euxine on the one hand, and the south and southeastwinds on the other. The elaborate description of this work given byHerodotus proves it to have been no clumsy or unartist-likeperformance. The ships do not appear so much to have formed thebridge, as to have served for piers to support its weight. Rafters ofwood, rough timber, and layers of earth were placed across extendedcables, and the whole was completed by a fence on either side, thatthe horses and beasts of burden might not be frightened by the sightof the open sea. 

VII. And now the work was finished (B. C. 480), the winter was past, and at the dawn of returning spring, Xerxes led his armament fromSardis to Abydos. As the multitude commenced their march, it is saidthat the sun was suddenly overcast, and an abrupt and utter darknesscrept over the face of heaven. The magi were solemnly consulted atthe omen; and they foretold, that by the retirement of the sun, thetutelary divinity of the Greeks, was denoted the withdrawal of theprotection of Heaven from that fated nation. The answer pleased theking. 

On they swept--the conveyance of the baggage, and a vast promiscuouscrowd of all nations, preceding; behind, at a considerable interval, came the flower of the Persian army--a thousand horse--a thousandspearmen--the ten sacred steeds, called Nisaean--the car of the greatPersian god, drawn by eight snow-white horses, and in which no mortalever dared to seat himself. Around the person of Xerxes were spearmenand cavalry, whose arms glittered with gold--the ten thousand infantrycalled "The Immortals, " of whom nine thousand bore pomegranates ofsilver at the extremity of their lances, and one thousand pomegranatesof gold. Ten thousand horsemen followed these: and far in the rear, the gorgeous procession closed with the mighty multitude of thegeneral army. 

The troops marched along the banks of the Caicus--over the plains ofThebes;--and passing Mount Ida to the left, above whose hoary crestbroke a storm of thunder and lightning, they arrived at the goldenScamander, whose waters failed the invading thousands. Here it ispoetically told of Xerxes, that he ascended the citadel of Priam, andanxiously and carefully surveyed the place, while the magi of thebarbarian monarch directed libations to the manes of the Homericheroes. 

VIII. Arrived at Abydos, the king reviewed his army. High upon aneminence, and on a seat of white marble, he surveyed the plainscovered with countless thousands, and the Hellespont crowded withsails and masts. At first, as he gazed, the lord of Persia felt allthe pride and exultation which the command over so many destinies wascalculated to inspire. But a sad and sudden thought came over him inthe midst of his triumphs, and he burst into tears. "I reflect, " saidhe to Artabanus, "on the transitory limit of human life. Icompassionate this vast multitude--a hundred years hence, which ofthem will still be a living man?" Artabanus replied like aphilosopher, "that the shortness of life was not its greatest evil;that misfortune and disease imbittered the possession, and that deathwas often the happiest refuge of the living. " [54]

At early daybreak, while the army yet waited the rising of the sun, they burnt perfumes on the bridge, and strewed it with branches of thetriumphal myrtle. As the sun lifted himself above the east, Xerxespoured a libation into the sea, and addressing the rising orb, implored prosperity to the Persian arms, until they should havevanquished the whole of Europe, even to the remotest ends. Thencasting the cup, with a Persian cimeter, into the sea, the signal wasgiven for the army to commence the march. Seven days and seven nightswere consumed in the passage of that prodigious armament. 

IX. Thus entering Europe, Xerxes proceeded to Doriscus (a wide plainof Thrace, commanded by a Persian garrison), where he drew up, andregularly numbered his troops; the fleets ranged in order along theneighbouring coast. The whole amount of the land-force, according toHerodotus, was 1, 700, 000. Later writers have been skeptical as tothis vast number, but without sufficient grounds for their disbelief. There were to be found the soldiery of many nations:--the Persians intunics and scale breastplates, the tiara helmet of the Medes, thearrows, and the large bow which was their natural boast and weapon;there were the Medes similarly equipped; and the Assyrians, withbarbarous helmets, linen cuirasses, and huge clubs tipped with iron;the Bactrians with bows of reeds, and the Scythian Sacae, with theirhatchets and painted crests. There, too, were the light-clothedIndians, the Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, Gandarians, and theDadicae. There were the Caspians, clad in tough hides, with bows andcimeters; the gorgeous tunics of the Sarangae, and the loose flowingvests (or zirae) of the Arabians. There were seen the negroes ofAethiopian Nubia with palm bows four cubits long, arrows pointed withflint, and vestures won from the leopard and the lion; a barbaroushorde, who, after the wont of savages, died their bodies with gypsumand vermilion when they went to war; while the straight-haired AsiaticAethiopians wore the same armour as the Indians whom they bordered. Save that their helmets were formed of the skin of the horse's head[55], on which the mane was left in the place of plumage. The Libyanswere among the horde, and the buskined Paphlagonians, with helms ofnetwork; and the Cappadocian Syrians; and the Phrygians; and theArmenians; the Lydians, equipped similarly to the Greeks; theStrymonian Thracians, clad in tunics, below which were flowing robeslike the Arabian zirae or tartan, but of various colours, and buskinsof the skins of fawns--armed with the javelin and the dagger; theThracians, too, of Asia, with helmets of brass wrought with the earsand horns of an ox; the people from the islands of the Red Sea, armedand people like Medes; the Mares, and the Colchians, and the Moschi, and other tribes, tedious to enumerate, swelled and diversified theforce of Xerxes. 

Such were the infantry of the Persian army, forgetting not the tenthousand chosen Persians, called the Immortal Band [56], whose armourshone with profuse gold, and who were distinguished even in war byluxury--carriages for their women, troops of attendants, and camelsand beasts of burden. 

Besides these were the Persian cavalry; the nomad Sagartii, whocarried with them nooses, in which they sought to entangle their foe;the Medes and the Indian horse, which last had also chariots of wardrawn by steeds or wild asses; the Bactrians and Caspians, equippedalike; the Africans, who fought from chariots; the Paricanians; andthe Arabians with their swift dromedaries, completed the forces of thecavalry, which amounted to eighty thousand, exclusive even of chariotsand the camels. 

Nor was the naval unworthy of the land armada. The number of thetriremes was one thousand two hundred and seven. Of these thePhoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine furnished three hundred, theserving-men with breastplates of linen, javelins, bucklers withoutbosses, and helmets fashioned nearly similarly to those of the Greeks;two hundred vessels were supplied by the Egyptians, armed with hugebattle-axes, and casques of network; one hundred and fifty vesselscame from Cyprus, and one hundred from Cilicia; those who manned thefirst differing in arms from the Greeks only in the adoption of thetunic, and the Median mitres worn by the chiefs--those who manned thelast, with two spears, and tunics of wool. The Pamphylians, clad asthe Greeks, contributed thirty vessels, and fifty also were manned byLycians with mantles of goat-skin and unfeathered arrows of reed. Inthirty vessels came the Dorians of Asia; in seventy the Carians, andin a hundred, the subjugated Ionians. The Grecian Isles between theCyaneae, and the promontories of Triopium and Sunium [57], furnishedseventeen vessels, and the Aeolians sixty. The inhabitants of theHellespont (those of Abydos alone excepted, who remained to defend thebridges) combined with the people of Pontus to supply a hundred more. In each vessel were detachments of Medes, Persians, and Saci; the bestmariners were the Phoenicians, especially those of Sidon. Thecommanders-in-chief of the sea-forces were Ariabignes (son of Darius), Prexaspes, Megabazus (son of Megabates), and Achaemenes (brother ofXerxes, and satrap of Egypt). 

Of the infantry, the generals were Mardonius, Tritantaechmes, son ofArtabanus, and Smerdones (cousin to Xerxes), Maistes (his brother), Gergis, and Megabazus, son of that celebrated Zopyrus, through whomDarius possessed himself of Babylon. [58]

Harmamithres and Tithaeus, who were Medes, commanded the cavalry; athird leader, Pharnouches, died in consequence of a fall from hishorse. But the name of a heroine, more masculine than her colleagues, must not be omitted: Artemisia, widow to one of the Carian kings, furnished five ships (the best in the fleet next to those of Sidon), which she commanded in person, celebrated alike for a dauntlesscourage and a singular wisdom. 

X. Such were the forces which the great king reviewed, passingthrough the land-forces in his chariot, and through the fleet in aSidonian vessel, beneath a golden canopy. After his survey, the kingsummoned Demaratus to his presence. 

"Think you, " said he, "that the Greeks will presume to resist me?"

"Sire, " answered the Spartan, "your proposition of servitude will berejected by the Greeks; and even if the rest of them sided with you, Lacedaemon still would give you battle; question not in what numbers;had Sparta but a thousand men she would oppose you. "

Marching onward, and forcibly enlisting, by the way, various tribesthrough which he passed, exhausting many streams, and empoverishingthe population condemned to entertain his army, Xerxes arrived atAcanthus: there he dismissed the commanders of his fleet, orderingthem to wait his orders at Therme, a small town which gave its name tothe Thermean Gulf (to which they proceeded, pressing ships and seamenby the way), and afterward, gaining Therme himself, encamped his armyon the coast, spreading far and wide its multitudinous array fromTherme and Mygdonia to the rivers Lydias and Haliacmon. 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Conduct of the Greeks. --The Oracle relating to Salamis. --Art ofThemistocles. --The Isthmian Congress. --Embassies to Argos, Crete, Corcyra, and Syracuse. --Their ill Success. --The Thessalians sendEnvoys to the Isthmus. --The Greeks advance to Tempe, but retreat. --TheFleet despatched to Artemisium, and the Pass of Thermopylae occupied. --Numbers of the Grecian Fleet. --Battle of Thermopylae. 

I. The first preparations of the Persians did not produce the effectwhich might have been anticipated in the Grecian states. Far fromuniting against the common foe, they still cherished a frivolous andunreasonable jealousy of each other. Several readily sent the symbolsof their allegiance to the Persian, including the whole of Boeotia, except only the Thespians and Plataeans. The more timorous statesimagined themselves safe from the vengeance of the barbarian; the moreresolute were overwhelmed with dismay. The renown of the Median armswas universally acknowledged for in spite of Marathon, Greece had notyet learned to despise the foreigner; and the enormous force of theimpending armament was accurately known from the spies and desertersof the Grecian states, who abounded in the barbarian camp. Evenunited, the whole navy of Greece seemed insufficient to contendagainst such a foe; and, divided among themselves, several of thestates were disposed rather to succumb than to resist [59]. "Andhere, " says the father of history, "I feel compelled to assert anopinion, however invidious it may be to many. If the Athenians, terrified by the danger, had forsaken their country, or submitted tothe Persian, Xerxes would have met with no resistance by sea. TheLacedaemonians, deserted by their allies, would have died with honouror yielded from necessity, and all Greece have been reduced to thePersian yoke. The Athenians were thus the deliverers of Greece. Theyanimated the ardour of those states yet faithful to themselves; and, next to the gods, they were the true repellers of the invader. Eventhe Delphic oracles, dark and ominous as they were, did not shaketheir purpose, nor induce them to abandon Greece. " When even thedeities themselves seemed doubtful, Athens was unshaken. Themessengers despatched by the Athenians to the Delphic oracle receivedindeed an answer well calculated to appal them. 

"Unhappy men, " cried the priestess, "leave your houses and theramparts of the city, and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. Fire and keen Mars, compelling the Syrian chariot, shall destroy, towers shall be overthrown, and temples destroyed by fire. Lo! now, even now, they stand dropping sweat, and their house-tops black withblood, and shaking with prophetic awe. Depart and prepare for ill!"

II. Cast into the deepest affliction by this response, the Atheniansyet, with the garb and symbols of suppliants, renewed theirapplication. "Answer us, " they said, "oh supreme God, answer us morepropitiously, or we will not depart from your sanctuary, but remainhere even until death. "

The second answer seemed less severe than the first: "Minerva isunable to appease the Olympian Jupiter. Again, therefore, I speak, and my words are as adamant. All else within the bounds of Cecropiaand the bosom of the divine Cithaeron shall fall and fail you. Thewooden wall alone Jupiter grants to Pallas, a refuge to your childrenand yourselves. Wait not for horse and foot--tarry not the march ofthe mighty army--retreat, even though they close upon you. Oh Salamisthe divine, thou shalt lose the sons of women, whether Ceres scatteror hoard her harvest!"

III. Writing down this reply, the messengers returned to Athens. Many and contradictory were the attempts made to interpret theresponse; some believed that by a wooden wall was meant the citadel, formerly surrounded by a palisade of wood. Others affirmed that theenigmatical expression signified the fleet. But then the concludingwords perplexed them. For the apostrophe to Salamis appeared todenote destruction and defeat. At this juncture Themistocles approvedhimself worthy of the position he had attained. It is probable thathe had purchased the oracle to which he found a ready and boldsolution. He upheld the resort to the ships, but denied that in theapostrophe to Salamis any evil to Athens was denounced. "Had, " saidhe, "the prediction of loss and slaughter referred to the Athenians, would Salamis have been called 'divine?' would it not have been rathercalled the 'wretched' if the Greeks were doomed to perish near thatisle? The oracle threatens not the Athenians, but the enemy. Let usprepare then to engage the barbarian by sea. Our ships are our woodenwalls. "

This interpretation, as it was the more encouraging, so it was themore approved. The vessels already built from the revenues of themines of Laurion were now destined to the safety of Greece. 

IV. It was, however, before the arrival of the Persian envoys [60], and when the Greeks first woke to the certainty, that the vastpreparations of Xerxes menaced Greece as the earliest victim, that acongress, perhaps at the onset confined to the Peloponnesian states, met at Corinth. At the head of this confederate council necessarilyranked Sparta, which was the master state of the Peloponnesus. But inpolicy and debate, if not in arms, she appears always to have met witha powerful rival in Corinth, the diplomacy of whose wealthy andliberal commonwealth often counteracted the propositions of theSpartan delegates. To this congress subsequently came the envoys ofall the states that refused tribute and homage to the Persian king. The institution of this Hellenic council, which was one cause of thesalvation of Greece, is a proof of the political impotence of the oldAmphictyonic league. The Synedrion of Corinth (or rather of thatCorinthian village that had grown up round the temple of Neptune, andis styled the ISTHMUS by the Greek writers) was the true historicalAmphictyony of Hellas. 

In the Isthmian congress the genius of Themistocles found an amplersphere than it had hitherto done among the noisy cabals of Athens. Ofall the Greek delegates, that sagacious statesman was most successfulin accomplishing the primary object of the confederacy, viz. , inremoving the jealousies and the dissensions that hitherto existedamong the states which composed it. In this, perhaps the mostdifficult, as the most essential, task, Themistocles was aided by aTegean, named Chileus, who, though he rarely appears upon the externalstage of action, seems to have been eminently skilled in the intricateand entangled politics of the time. Themistocles, into whose handsthe Athenian republic, at this period, confided the trust not more ofits interests than its resentments, set the example of concord; andAthens, for a while, consented to reconciliation and amity with thehated Aegina. All the proceedings of this illustrious congress werecharacterized by vigilant prudence and decisive energy. As soon asXerxes arrived in Sardis, emissaries were despatched to watch themovements of the Persian army, and at the same period, or rather sometime before [61], ambassadors were sent to Corcyra, Crete, Argos, andto Syracuse, then under the dominion of Gelo. This man, from thestation of a high-born and powerful citizen of Gela, in Sicily, hadraised himself, partly by military talents, principally by a profoundand dissimulating policy, to the tyranny of Gela and of Syracuse. Hisabilities were remarkable, his power great; nor on the Greciancontinent was there one state that could command the force and theresources that were at the disposal of the Syracusan prince. 

The spies despatched to Sardis were discovered, seized, and would havebeen put to death, but for the interference of Xerxes, who dismissedthem, after directing them to be led round his army, in the hope thattheir return from the terror of such a spectacle would, more thantheir death, intimidate and appal their countrymen. 

The mission to Argos, which, as a Peloponnesian city, was one of theearliest applied to, was unsuccessful. That state still suffered theexhaustion which followed the horrible massacre perpetrated byCleomenes, the Spartan king, who had burnt six thousand Argives in theprecincts of the sanctuary to which they had fled. New changes ofgovernment had followed this fatal loss, and the servile populationhad been enabled to seize the privileges of the free. Thus, hatred toSparta, a weakened soldiery, an unsettled internal government, allconspired to render Argos lukewarm to the general cause. Yet thatstate did not openly refuse the aid which it secretly resolved towithhold. It consented to join the common league upon two conditions;an equal share with the Spartans in the command, and a truce of thirtyyears with those crafty and merciless neighbours. The Spartansproposed to compromise the former condition, by allowing to the Argiveking not indeed half the command, but a voice equal to that of each oftheir own kings. To the latter condition they offered no objection. Glad of an excuse to retaliate on the Spartans their own haughtyinsolence, the Argives at once rejected the proposition, and orderedthe Spartan ambassador to quit their territories before sunset. ButArgos, though the chief city of Argolis, had not her customaryinfluence over the other towns of that district, in which theattachment to Greece was stronger than the jealous apprehensions ofSparta. 

The embassy to Sicily was not more successful than that to Argos. Gelo agreed indeed to furnish the allies with a considerable force, but only on the condition of obtaining for Sicily the supreme command, either of the land-force claimed by Sparta, or of the naval force towhich Athens already ventured to pretend; an offer to which it wasimpossible that the Greeks should accede, unless they were disposed tosurrender to the craft of an auxiliary the liberties they assertedagainst the violence of a foe. The Spartan and the Athenianambassadors alike, and with equal indignation, rejected the proposalsof Gelo, who, in fact, had obtained the tyranny of his native city byfirst securing the command of the Gelan cavalry. The prince ofSyracuse was little affected by the vehement scorn of the ambassadors. "I see you are in more want of troops than commanders, " said he, wittily. "Return, then; tell the Greeks this year will be without itsspring. " For, as the spring to the year did Gelo consider hisassistance to Greece. From Sicily the ambassadors repaired toCorcyra. Here they were amused with flattering promises, but thegovernors of that intriguing and factious state fitted out a fleet ofsixty vessels, stationed near Pylos, off the coast of Sparta, to waitthe issue of events assuring Xerxes, on the one hand, of theirindisposition to oppose him, and pretending afterward to the Greeks, on the other, that the adverse winds alone prevented their takingshare in the engagement at Salamis. The Cretans were not moredisposed to the cause than the Corcyraeans; they found an excuse in anoracle of Delphi, and indeed that venerable shrine appears to havebeen equally dissuasive of resistance to all the states that consultedit; although the daring of the Athenians had construed the ambiguousmenace into a favourable omen. The threats of superstition become butincitements to courage when interpreted by the brave. 

V. And now the hostile army had crossed the Hellespont, and theThessalians, perceiving that they were the next objects of attack, despatched ambassadors to the congress at the Isthmus. 

Those Thessalian chiefs called the Aleuadae had, it is true, invitedXerxes to the invasion of Greece. But precisely because acceptable tothe chiefs, the arrival of the great king was dreaded by the people. By the aid of the Persians, the Aleuadae trusted to extend their powerover their own country--an ambition with which it is not to besupposed that the people they assisted to subject would sympathize. Accordingly, while Xerxes was to the chiefs an ally, to the people heremained a foe. 

These Thessalian envoys proclaimed their willingness to assist theconfederates in the defence of their fatherland, but represented theimminence of the danger to Thessaly, and demanded an immediate supplyof forces. "Without this, " they said, "we cannot exert ourselves foryou, and our inability to assist you will be our excuse, if we providefor our own safety. "

Aroused by these exhortations, the confederates commenced theirmilitary movements. A body of infantry passed the Euripus, enteredThessaly, and encamped amid the delights of the vale of Tempe. Heretheir numbers, in all ten thousand heavy-armed troops, were joined bythe Thessalian horse. The Spartans were led by Euaenetus. Themistocles commanded the Athenians. The army did not long, however, remain in the encampment. Alexander, the king of Macedon, sentconfidentially advising their retreat, and explaining accurately theforce of the enemy. This advice concurred with the discovery thatthere was another passage into Thessaly through the higher regions ofMacedonia, which exposed them to be taken in the rear. And, in truth, it was through this passage that the Persian army ultimately marched. The Greeks, therefore, broke up the camp and returned to the Isthmus. The Thessalians, thus abandoned, instantly treated with the invader, and became among the stanchest allies of Xerxes. 

It was now finally agreed in the Isthmian congress, that the mostadvisable plan would be to defend the pass of Thermopylae, as beingboth nearer and narrower than that of Thessaly. The fleet theyresolved to send to Artemisium, on the coast of Histiaeotis, a placesufficiently neighbouring Thermopylae to allow of easy communication. Never, perhaps, have the Greeks shown more military skill than in thechoice of these stations. But one pass in those mountainous districtspermitted the descent of the Persian army from Thessaly, bounded tothe west by steep and inaccessible cliffs, extending as far as MountOeta; to the east by shoals and the neighbouring sea. This defilereceived its name Thermopylae, or Hot Gates, from the hot-springswhich rose near the base of the mountain. In remote times thepastoral Phocians had fortified the place against the incursions ofthe Thessalians, and the decayed remains of the wall and gates oftheir ancient garrison were still existent in the middle of the pass;while, by marsh and morass, to render the place yet more impassable, they had suffered the hot-springs to empty themselves along the plain, on the Thessalian side, and the quagmire was still sodden andunsteady. The country on either side the Thermopylae was socontracted, that before, near the river Phoenix, and behind, near thevillage of Alpeni, was at that time space only for a single chariot. In such a pass the numbers and the cavalry of the Mede were renderedunavailable; while at the distance of about fifteen miles fromThermopylae the ships of the Grecian navy rode in the narrow sea, offthe projecting shores of Euboea, equally fortunate in a station whichweakened the force of numbers and allowed the facility of retreat. 

The sea-station was possessed by the allied ships. Corinth sentforty; Megara twenty; Aegina eighteen; Sicyon twelve; Sparta ten; theEpidaurians contributed eight; the Eretrians seven; the Troezeniansfive; the Ityraeans and the people of Ceos each two, and the OpuntianLocrians seven vessels of fifty oars. The total of these ships(without reckoning those of fifty oars, supplied by the Locrians, andtwo barks of the same description, which added to the quota sent bythe people of Ceos) amount to one hundred and twenty-four. TheAthenian force alone numbered more vessels than all the otherconfederates, and contributed one hundred and twenty-seven triremes, partly manned by Plataeans, besides twenty vessels lent to theChalcidians, who equipped and manned them. The Athenian fleet wascommanded by Themistocles. The land-force at Thermopylae consistedchiefly of Peloponnesians; its numbers were as follows:--three hundredheavy-armed Spartans; five hundred Tegeans; five hundred Mantinaeans;one hundred and twenty Orchomenians; one thousand from the otherstates of Arcady; two hundred from Phlius; eighty from Mycenae. Boeotia contributed seven hundred Thespians, and four hundred Thebans;the last had been specially selected by Leonidas, the Spartan chief, because of the general suspicion that the Thebans were attached to theMedes, and he desired, therefore, to approve them as friends, or knowthem as foes. Although the sentiments of the Thebans were hostile, says Herodotus, they sent the assistance required. In addition tothese, were one thousand Phocians, and a band of the OpuntianLocrians, unnumbered by Herodotus, but variously estimated, byDiodorus at one thousand, and, more probably, by Pausanias at no lessthan seven thousand. 

The chief command was intrusted, according to the claims of Sparta, toLeonidas, the younger brother of the frantic Cleomenes [62], by adifferent mother, and his successor to the Spartan throne. 

There are men whose whole life is in a single action. Of these, Leonidas is the most eminent. We know little of him, until the lastfew days of his career. He seems, as it were, born but to show howmuch glory belongs to a brave death. Of his character or genius, hisgeneral virtues and vices, his sorrows and his joys, biography canscarcely gather even the materials for conjecture. He passed from anobscure existence into an everlasting name. And history dedicates herproudest pages to one of whom she has nothing but the epitaph torelate. 

As if to contrast the little band under the command of Leonidas, Herodotus again enumerates the Persian force, swelled as it now was bymany contributions, forced and voluntary, since its departure fromDoriscus. He estimates the total by sea and land, thus augmented, attwo millions six hundred and forty-one thousand six hundred and tenfighting men, and computes the number of the menial attendants, themotley multitude that followed the armament, at an equal number; sothat the son of Darius conducted, hitherto without disaster, to Sepiasand Thermopylae, a body of five millions two hundred and eighty-threethousand two hundred and twenty human beings [63]. And out of thiswondrous concourse, none in majesty and grace of person, saysHerodotus, surpassed the royal leader. But such advantages as belongto superior stature, the kings of Persia obtained by artificial means;and we learn from Xenophon that they wore a peculiar kind of shoe soconstructed as to increase their height. 

VI. The fleet of Xerxes, moving from Therme, obtained some partialsuccess at sea: ten of their vessels despatched to Sciathos, captureda guard-ship of Troezene, and sacrificed upon the prow a Greek namedLeon; the beauty of his person obtained him that disagreeablepreference. A vessel of Aegina fell also into their hands, the crewof which they treated as slaves, save only one hero, Pytheas, endearedeven to the enemy by his valour; a third vessel, belonging to theAthenians, was taken at the mouth of the Peneus; the seamen, however, had previously debarked, and consequently escaped. Beacons apprizedthe Greek station at Artemisium of these disasters, and the fleetretreated for a while to Chalcis, with a view of guarding the Euripus. But a violent storm off the coast of Magnesia suddenly destroying noless than four hundred of the barbarian vessels, with a considerablenumber of men and great treasure, the Grecian navy returned toArtemisium. 

Here they soon made a capture of fifteen of the Persian vessels, which, taking them for friends, sailed right into the midst of them. With this exception, the rest of the barbarian fleet arrived safely atAphetae. 

VII. Meanwhile the mighty land-force of the great king, passingthrough Thessaly and Achaia, arrived at last at the wide Trachinianplains, which, stretching along the shores of Thessaly, forty miles incircumference, and adjacent to the straits of Thermopylae, allowedspace for the encampment of his army. 

The Greeks at Thermopylae beheld the approach of Xerxes with dismay;they had anticipated considerable re-enforcements from the confederatestates, especially Sparta, which last had determined to commit all herstrength to the campaign, leaving merely a small detachment for thedefence of the capital. But the Carneian festival in honour of thegreat Dorian Apollo, at Sparta, detained the Lacedaemonians, and theOlympic games diverted the rest of the allies, not yet expecting animmediate battle. 

The vicinity of Xerxes, the absence of the re-enforcements theyexpected, produced an alarmed and anxious council; Leonidas dissuadedthe confederates from retreat, and despatched messengers to thevarious states, urging the necessity of supplies, and stating thehopelessness of opposing the Mede effectually with the present forces. 

Xerxes, in the meanwhile, who had heard that an insignificant bandwere assembled under a Spartan descendant of Hercules, to resist hisprogress, despatched a spy to reconnoitre their number and theirmovements. The emissary was able only to inspect those without theintrenchment, who, at that time, happened to be the Spartans; he foundthat singular race engaged in gymnastic exercises, and dressing theirlong hair for the festival of battle. Although they perceived thespy, they suffered him to gaze at his leisure, and he returned insafety to the king. 

Much astonished at the account he received, Xerxes sent for Demaratus, and detailing to him what the messenger had seen, inquired what itmight portend, and whether this handful of men amusing themselves inthe defile could seriously mean to resist his arms. 

"Sire, " answered the Spartan, "it is their intention to dispute thepass, and what your messenger has seen proves that they are preparingaccordingly. It is the custom of the Spartans to adorn their hair onthe eve of any enterprise of danger. You are advancing to attack theflower of the Grecian valour. " Xerxes, still incredulous thatopposition could be seriously intended, had the courtesy to wait fourdays to give the enemy leisure to retreat; in the interim hedespatched a messenger to Leonidas, demanding his arms. "Come andtake them!" replied the Spartan. 

VIII. On the fifth day the patience of Xerxes was exhausted, and hesent a detachment of Medes and Cissians [64] into the pass, withorders to bring its rash and obstinate defenders alive into hispresence. The Medes and Cissians were repulsed with considerableloss. "The Immortal Band" were now ordered to advance, under thecommand of Hydarnes. But even the skill and courage of that warliketroop were equally unsuccessful; their numbers were crippled by thenarrowness of the pass, and their short weapons coped to greatdisadvantage with the long spears of the Greeks. The engagement wasrenewed a second day with the like fortune; the loss of the Persianswas great, although the scanty numbers of the Spartans were alsosomewhat diminished. 

In the midst of the perplexity which pervaded the king's councilsafter this defeat, there arrived at the Persian camp one Ephialtes, aMalian. Influenced by the hope of a great reward, this traitordemanded and obtained an audience, in which he offered to conduct theMedes through a secret path across the mountains, into the pass. Theoffer was joyfully accepted, and Hydarnes, with the forces under hiscommand, was despatched under the guidance of the Malian. At the duskof evening the detachment left the camp, and marching all night, fromthe river Asopus, between the mountains of Oeta on the right hand, andthe Trachinian ridges on the left, they found themselves at the earlydawn at the summit of the hill, on which a thousand Phocians had beenstationed to defend the pass, for it was not unknown to the Spartans. In the silence of dawn they wound through the thick groves of oak thatclad the ascent, and concealed the glitter of their arms; but theexceeding stillness of the air occasioned the noise they made intrampling on the leaves [65] to reach the ears of the Phocians. Thatband sprang up from the earth on which they had slept, to theconsternation and surprise of the invaders, and precipitately betookthemselves to arms. The Persians, though unprepared for an enemy atthis spot, drew up in battle array, and the heavy onslaught of theirarrows drove the Phocians to seek a better shelter up the mountains, not imagining that the passage into the defile, but their owndestruction, was the object of the enterprise. The Persians prudentlyforbore pursuit, but availing themselves of the path now open to theirprogress, rapidly descended the opposite side of the mountain. 

IX. Meanwhile, dark and superstitious terrors were at work in theGrecian camp. The preceding eve the soothsayer (Megistias) hadinspected the entrails, and foretold that death awaited the defendersof Thermopylae in the morning; and on that fatal night a Cumaeandeserted from the Persian camp had joined Leonidas, and informed himof the treachery of Ephialtes. At early day their fears wereconfirmed by the sentinels posted on the mountains, who fled into thedefile at the approach of the barbarians. 

A hasty council was assembled; some were for remaining, some forflight. The council ended with the resolution of a general retreat, probably with the assent, possibly by the instances, of Leonidas, whowas contented to possess the monopoly of glory and of death. The lawsof the Spartans forbade them to fly from any enemy, however numerous, and Leonidas did not venture to disobey them. Perhaps his resolutionwas strengthened by an oracle of that Delphi so peculiarly veneratedby the Dorian race, and which foretold either the fall of Sparta, orthe sacrifice of a Spartan king of the blood of Hercules. To menwhose whole happiness was renown, life had no temptation equal to sucha death!

X. Leonidas and his countrymen determined to keep the field. TheThespians alone voluntarily remained to partake his fate; but hedetained also the suspected Thebans, rather as a hostage than anauxiliary. The rest of the confederates precipitately departed acrossthe mountains to their native cities. Leonidas would have dismissedthe prophetic soothsayer, but Megistias insisted on his right toremain; he contented himself with sending away his only son, who hadaccompanied the expedition. Even the stern spirit of Leonidas is saidto have yielded to the voice of nature; and he ordered two of hisrelations to return to Sparta to report the state of affairs. "Youprescribe to us the duties of messengers, not of soldiers, " was thereply, as the warriors buckled on their shields, and took their postswith the rest. 

If history could penetrate from events into the hearts of the agents, it would be interesting even to conjecture the feelings of thisdevoted band, awaiting the approach of a certain death, in thatsolitary defile. Their enthusiasm, and that rigid and Spartan spiritwhich had made all ties subservient to obedience to the law--allexcitement tame to that of battle--all pleasure dull to theanticipation of glory--probably rendered the hours preceding death themost enviable of their lives. They might have exulted in the sameelevating fanaticism which distinguished afterward the followers ofMahomet; and seen that opening paradise in immortality below, whichthe Moslemin beheld in anticipation above. 

XI. Early on that awful morning, Xerxes offered a solemn libation tohis gods, and at the middle of the noon, when Hydarnes might besupposed to be close upon the rear of the enemy, the barbarian troopscommenced their march. Leonidas and his band advanced beyond theirintrenchment, into the broader part of the defile. Before the fury oftheir despair, the Persians fell in great numbers; many of them werehurled into the sea, others trodden down and crushed by the press oftheir own numbers. 

When the spears of the Greeks were shivered in pieces they hadrecourse to their swords, and the battle was fought hand to hand: thusfighting, fell Leonidas, surrounded in death by many of his band, ofvarious distinction and renown. Two half-brothers of Xerxes, minglingin the foremost of the fray, contended for the body of the Spartanking, and perished by the Grecian sword. 

For a short time the Spartans repelled the Persian crowd, who, wherevalour failed to urge them on, were scourged to the charge by the lashof their leaders, and drew the body of Leonidas from the press; andnow, winding down the pass, Hydarnes and his detachment descended tothe battle. The scene then became changed, the Spartans retired, still undaunted, or rather made yet more desperate as death drew near, into the narrowest of the pass, and, ranged upon an eminence of thestrait, they died--fighting, even after their weapons were broken, with their hands and teeth--rather crushed beneath the number thanslain by the swords of the foe--"non victi sed vincendo fatigati. "[67]

XII. Two Spartans of the three hundred, Eurytus and Aristodemus, had, in consequence of a severe disorder in the eyes, been permitted tosojourn at Alpeni; but Eurytus, hearing of the contest, was led by hishelot into the field, and died with his countrymen. Aristodemus aloneremained, branded with disgrace on his return to Sparta; butsubsequently redeeming his name at the battle of Plataea. [68]

The Thebans, beholding the victory of the Persians, yielded theirarms; and, excepting a few, slain as they approached, not as foes, butas suppliants, were pardoned by Xerxes. 

The king himself came to view the dead, and especially the corpse ofLeonidas. He ordered the head of that hero to be cut off, and hisbody suspended on a cross [69], an instance of sudden passion, ratherthan customary barbarity. For of all nations the Persians mosthonoured valour, even in their foes. 

XIII. The moral sense of mankind, which places the example ofself-sacrifice among the noblest lessons by which our nature can becorrected, has justly immortalized the memory of Leonidas. It isimpossible to question the virtue of the man, but we may fairlydispute the wisdom of the system he adorned. We may doubt whether, infact, his death served his country so much as his life would havedone. It was the distinction of Thermopylae, that its heroes died inobedience to the laws; it was the distinction of Marathon, that itsheroes lived to defeat the invader and preserve their country. And inproof of this distinction, we find afterward, at Plataea, that of allthe allied Greeks the Spartans the most feared the conquerors ofThermopylae; the Athenians the least feared the fugitives of Marathon. 

XIV. Subsequently, on the hill to which the Spartans and Thespianshad finally retired, a lion of stone was erected by the Amphictyons, in honour of Leonidas; and many years afterward the bones of that herowere removed to Sparta, and yearly games, at which Spartans only wereallowed to contend, were celebrated round his tomb. Separatemonuments to the Greeks generally, and to the three hundred who hadrefused to retreat, were built also, by the Amphictyons, atThermopylae. Long extant, posterity admired the inscriptions whichthey bore; that of the Spartans became proverbial for its sublimeconciseness. 

"Go, stranger, " it said, "and tell the Spartans that we obeyed thelaw--and lie here!"

The private friendship of Simonides the poet erected also a monumentto Megistias, the soothsayer, in which it was said truly to hishonour, "That the fate he foresaw he remained to brave;"

Such is the history of the battle of Thermopylae (B. C. 480). [70]

CHAPTER VII. 

The Advice of Demaratus to Xerxes. --Themistocles. --Actions offArtemisium. --The Greeks retreat. --The Persians invade Delphi, and arerepulsed with great Loss. --The Athenians, unaided by their Allies, abandon Athens, and embark for Salamis. --The irresolute and selfishPolicy of the Peloponnesians. --Dexterity and Firmness ofThemistocles. --Battle of Salamis. --Andros and Carystus besieged by theGreeks. --Anecdotes of Themistocles. --Honours awarded to him inSparta. --Xerxes returns to Asia. --Olynthus and Potidaea besieged byArtabazus. --The Athenians return Home. --The Ostracism of Aristides isrepealed. 

I. After the victory of Thermopylae, Demaratus advised the Persianmonarch to despatch a detachment of three hundred vessels to theLaconian coast, and seize the Island of Cythera, of which a Spartanonce (foreseeing how easily hereafter that post might be made tocommand and overawe the Laconian capital) had said, "It were betterfor Sparta if it were sunk into the sea. " The profound experience ofDemaratus in the selfish and exclusive policy of his countrymen madehim argue that, if this were done, the fears of Sparta for herselfwould prevent her joining the forces of the rest of Greece, and leavethe latter a more easy prey to the invader. 

The advice, fortunately for the Greeks, was overruled by Achaemenes. 

Meanwhile the Grecian navy, assembled off Artemisium, was agitated bydivers councils. Beholding the vast number of barbarian ships nowcollected at Aphetae, and the whole shores around swarming withhostile troops, the Greeks debated the necessity of retreat. 

The fleet was under the command of Eurybiades, the Spartan. Foralthough Athens furnished a force equal to all the rest of the alliestogether, and might justly, therefore, have pretended to the command, yet the jealousy of the confederates, long accustomed to yield to theclaims of Sparta, and unwilling to acknowledge a new superiority inanother state, had induced the Athenians readily to forego theirclaim. And this especially at the instance of Themistocles. "Tohim, " says Plutarch, "Greece not only owes her preservation, but theAthenians in particular the glory of surpassing their enemies invalour and their allies in moderation. " But if fortune gaveEurybiades the nominal command, genius forced Themistocles into theactual pre-eminence. That extraordinary man was, above all, adaptedto his time; and, suited to its necessities, he commanded its fates. His very fault in the callousness of the moral sentiment, and hisunscrupulous regard to expediency, peculiarly aided him in hismanagement of men. He could appeal to the noblest passions--he couldwind himself into the most base. Where he could not exalt hecorrupted, where he could not persuade he intimidated, where he couldnot intimidate he bribed. [71]

When the intention to retreat became generally circulated, theinhabitants of the northern coast of Euboea (off which the Atheniannavy rode) entreated Eurybiades at least to give them time to removetheir slaves and children from the vengeance of the barbarian. Unsuccessful with him, they next sought Themistocles. For theconsideration of thirty talents, the Athenian promised to remain atArtemisium, and risk the event of battle. Possessed of this sum, hewon over the sturdy Spartan by the gift of five talents, and toAdimantus the Corinthian, the most obstinate in retreat, he privatelysent three [72]. The remainder he kept for his own uses;--distinguished from his compeers in this--that he obtained a muchlarger share of the gift than they; that they were bribed to be brave, and that he was rewarded for bribing them. The pure-minded statesmanof the closet cannot but feel some disdain and some regret to find, blended together, the noblest actions and the paltriest motives. Butwhether in ancient times or in modern, the web of human affairs iswoven from a mingled yarn, and the individuals who save nations arenot always those most acceptable to the moralist. The share ofThemistocles in this business is not, however, so much to hisdiscredit as to that of the Spartan Eurybiades. We cannot but observethat no system contrary to human nature is strong against actualtemptation. The Spartan law interdicted the desire of riches, and theSpartans themselves yielded far more easily to the lust of avaricethan the luxurious Athenians. Thus a native of Zelea, a city in AsiaMinor, had sought to corrupt the Peloponnesian cities by Persian gold:it was not the Spartans, it was the Athenians, who declared this maninfamous, and placed his life out of the pale of the Grecian law. With a noble pride Demosthenes speaks of this decree. "The gold, " he, says, "was brought into Peloponnesus, not to Athens. But ourancestors extended their care beyond their own city to the whole ofGreece. " [73] An Aristides is formed by the respect paid tointegrity, which society tries in vain--a Demaratus, an Eurybiades, and, as we shall see, a Pausanias, by the laws which, affecting toexclude the influence of the passions, render their temptations novel, and their effects irresistible. 

II. The Greeks continued at Euboea; and the Persians, eager to engageso inconsiderable an enemy, despatched two hundred chosen vessels, with orders to make a circuitous route beyond Sciathos, and thus, unperceived, to attack the Grecian rear, while on a concerted signalthe rest would advance upon the front. 

A deserter of Scios escaped, however, from Aphetae, and informed theGreeks of the Persian plan. Upon this it was resolved at midnight toadvance against that part of the fleet which had been sent aroundEuboea. But as twilight approached, they appeared to have changed ordelayed this design, and proceeded at once towards the main body ofthe fleet, less perhaps with the intention of giving regular battle, than of attempting such detached skirmishes as would make experimentof their hardihood and skill. The Persians, amazed at the infatuationof their opponents, drew out their fleet in order, and succeeded insurrounding the Greek ships. 

The night, however, separated the hostile forces, but not until theGreeks had captured thirty of the barbarian vessels; the first shipwas taken by an Athenian. The victory, however, despite thisadvantage, was undecided, when the Greeks returned to Artemisium, thePersians to Aphetae. 

III. But during the night one of those sudden and vehement storms notunfrequent to the summers of Greece broke over the seas. The Persiansat Aphetae heard, with a panic dismay, the continued thunder thatburst above the summit of Mount Pelion; and the bodies of the dead andthe wrecks of ships, floating round the prows, entangled their oarsamid a tempestuous and heavy sea. But the destruction which thePersians at Aphetae anticipated to themselves, actually came upon thatpart of the barbarian fleet which had made the circuit round Euboea. Remote from land, exposed to all the fury of the tempest, ignorant oftheir course, and amid the darkness of night, they were dashed topieces against those fearful rocks termed "The Hollows, " and not asingle galley escaped the general destruction. 

Thus the fleet of the barbarians was rendered more equal to that ofthe Greeks. Re-enforced by fifty-three ships from Athens the nextday, the Greeks proceeded at evening against that part of the hostilenavy possessed by the Cilicians. These they utterly defeated, andreturned joyfully to Artemisium. 

Hitherto these skirmishes, made on the summer evenings, in orderprobably to take advantage of the darkening night to break off beforeany irremediable loss was sustained, seem rather to have been for thesake of practice in the war--chivalric sorties as it were--than actualand deliberate engagements. But the third day, the Persians, impatient of conquest, advanced to Artemisium. These sea encounterswere made precisely on the same days as the conflicts at Thermopylae;the object on each was the same--the gaining in one of the sea defile, in the other of the land entrance into Greece. The Euripus was theThermopylae of the ocean. 

IV. The Greeks remained in their station, and there met the shock;the battle was severe and equal; the Persians fought with great valourand firmness, and although the loss upon their side was far thegreatest, many of the Greek vessels also perished. They separated asby mutual consent, neither force the victor. Of the Persian fleet theEgyptians were the most distinguished--of the Grecian the Athenians;and of the last none equalled in valour Clinias; his ship was mannedat his own expense. He was the father of that Alcibiades, afterwardso famous. 

While the Greeks rested at Artemisium, counting the number of theirslain, and amid the wrecks of their vessels, they learned the fate ofLeonidas. [74] This determined their previous consultations on thepolicy of retreat, and they abandoned the Euripus in steady andmarshalled order, the Corinthians first, the Athenians closing therear. Thus the Persians were left masters of the sea and landentrance into Greece. 

But even in retreat, the active spirit of Themistocles was intent uponexpedients. It was more than suspected that a considerable portion ofthe Ionians now in the service of Xerxes were secretly friendly to theGreeks. In the swiftest of the Athenian vessels Themistoclestherefore repaired to a watering-place on the coast, and engraved uponthe rocks these words, which were read by the Ionians the next day. 

"Men of Ionia, in fighting against your ancestors, and assisting toenslave Greece, you act unworthily. Come over to us; or if that maynot be, at least retire from the contest, and prevail on the Cariansto do the same. If yet neither secession nor revolt be practicable, at least when we come to action exert not yourselves against us. Remember that we are descended from one common race, and that it wason your behalf that we first incurred the enmity of the Persian. "

A subtler intention than that which was the more obvious, was couchedbeneath this exhortation. For if it failed to seduce the Ionians, itmight yet induce Xerxes to mistrust their alliance. 

When the Persians learned that the Greeks had abandoned their station, their whole fleet took possession of the pass, possessed themselves ofthe neighbouring town of Histiaea, and overrunning a part of the Isleof Euboea, received the submission of the inhabitants. 

Xerxes now had recourse to a somewhat clumsy, though a very commonlypractised artifice. Twenty thousand of his men had fallen atThermopylae: of these he buried nineteen thousand, and leaving theremainder uninterred, he invited all who desired it, by publicproclamation, to examine the scene of contest. As a considerablenumber of helots had joined their Spartan lords and perished withthem, the bodies of the slain amounted to four thousand [75], whilethose of the Persians were only one thousand. This was a practicaldespotic bulletin. 

V. Of all the neighbouring district, the Phocians had alone remainedfaithful to the Grecian cause: their territory was now overrun by thePersians, at the instance of their hereditary enemies, theThessalians, destroying city and temple, and committing all thehorrors of violence and rapine by the way. Arrived at Panopeae, thebulk of the barbarian army marched through Boeotia towards Athens, the great object of revenge, while a separate detachment was sentto Delphi, with a view of plundering the prodigious richesaccumulated in that celebrated temple, and of which, not perhapsuncharacteristically, Xerxes was said to be better informed than ofthe treasures he had left behind in his own palace. 

But the wise and crafty priesthood of Delphi had been too longaccustomed successfully to deceive mankind to lose hope orself-possession at the approach even of so formidable a foe. When thedismayed citizens of Delphi ran to the oracle, demanding advice andwishing to know what should be done with the sacred treasures, thepriestess gravely replied that "the god could take care of his ownpossessions, and that the only business of the citizens was to providefor themselves;" a priestly answer, importing that the god consideredhis possessions, and not the flock, were the treasure. The one wassure to be defended by a divinity, the other might shift forthemselves. 

The citizens were not slow in adopting the advice; they immediatelyremoved their wives and children into Achaia--while the males andadults fled--some to Amphissa, some amid the craggy recesses ofParnassus, or into that vast and spacious cavern at the base of MountCorycus, dedicated to the Muses, and imparting to those lovely deitiesthe poetical epithet of Corycides. Sixty men, with the chief priest, were alone left to protect the sacred city. 

VI. But superstition can dispense with numbers in its agency. Justas the barbarians were in sight of the temple, the sacred arms, hitherto preserved inviolable in the sanctuary, were seen by thesoothsayer to advance to the front of the temple. And this prodigybut heralded others more active. As the enemy now advanced in thestillness of the deserted city, and impressed doubtless by their ownawe (for not to a Persian army could there have seemed no venerationdue to the Temple of the Sun!) just by the shrine of Minerva Pronaea, built out in front of the great temple, a loud peal of thunder burstsuddenly over their heads, and two enormous fragments of rock(separated from the heights of that Parnassus amid whose recessesmortals as well as gods lay hid) rolled down the mountain-side with amighty crash, and destroyed many of the Persian multitude. At thesame time, from the temple of the warlike goddess broke forth a loudand martial shout, as if to arms. Confused--appalled--panic-strickenby these supernatural prodigies--the barbarians turned to fly; whilethe Delphians, already prepared and armed, rushed from cave andmountain, and, charging in the midst of the invaders, scattered themwith great slaughter. Those who escaped fled to the army in Boeotia. Thus the treasures of Delphi were miraculously preserved, not onlyfrom the plunder of the Persian, but also from the clutch of theDelphian citizens themselves, who had been especially anxious, in thefirst instance, to be permitted to deposite the treasures in a placeof safety. Nobody knew better than the priests that treasures alwaysdiminish when transferred from one hand to another. 

VII. The Grecian fleet anchored at Salamis by the request of theAthenians, who were the more anxious immediately to deliberate on thestate of affairs, as the Persian army was now approaching theirborders, and they learned that the selfish warriors of thePeloponnesus, according to their customary policy, instead ofassisting the Athenians and Greece generally, by marching towardsBoeotia, were engaged only in fortifying the isthmus or providing fortheir own safety. 

Unable to engage the confederates to assist them in protecting Attica, the Athenians entreated, at least, the rest of the maritime allies toremain at Salamis, while they themselves hastened back to Athens. 

Returned home, their situation was one which their generous valour hadbut little merited. Although they had sent to Artemisium theprincipal defence of the common cause, now, when the storm rolledtowards themselves, none appeared on their behalf. They were at onceincensed and discouraged by the universal desertion. [76] How was itpossible that, alone and unaided, they could withstand the Persianmultitude? Could they reasonably expect the fortunes of Marathon tobe perpetually renewed? To remain at Athens was destruction--to leaveit seemed to them a species of impiety. Nor could they anticipatevictory with a sanguine hope, in abandoning the monuments of theirancestors and the temples of their gods. [77]

Themistocles alone was enabled to determine the conduct of hiscountrymen in this dilemma. Inexhaustible were the resources of agenius which ranged from the most lofty daring to the most intricatecraft. Perceiving that the only chance of safety was in the desertionof the city, and that the strongest obstacle to this alternative wasin the superstitious attachment to HOME ever so keenly felt by theancients, he had recourse, in the failure of reason, to acounter-superstition. In the temple of the citadel was a serpent, dedicated to Minerva, and considered the tutelary defender of the place. The food appropriated to the serpent was suddenly found unconsumed--theserpent itself vanished; and, at the suggestion of Themistocles, thepriests proclaimed that the goddess had deserted the city and offeredherself to conduct them to the seas. Then, amid the general excitement, Themistocles reiterated his version of the Delphic oracle. Then were theships reinterpreted to be the wooden walls, and Salamis once moreproclaimed "the Divine. " The fervour of the people was awakened--thepersuasions of Themistocles prevailed--even the women loudly declaredtheir willingness to abandon Athens for the sake of the Athenians; andit was formally decreed that the city should be left to the guardianshipof Minerva, and the citizens should save themselves, their women, children, and slaves, as their own discretion might suggest. Most ofthem took refuge in Troezene, where they were generously supported atthe public expense--some at Aegina--others repaired to Salamis. 

A moving and pathetic spectacle was that of the embarcation of theAthenians for the Isle of Salamis. Separated from their children, their wives (who were sent to remoter places of safety)--abandoningtheir homes and altars--the citadel of Minerva--the monuments ofMarathon--they set out for a scene of contest (B. C. 480), perilousand precarious, and no longer on the site of their beloved andfather-land. Their grief was heightened by the necessity of leavingmany behind, whose extreme age rendered them yet more venerable, whileit incapacitated their removal. Even the dumb animals excited all thefond domestic associations, running to the strand, and expressing bytheir cries their regret for the hands that fed them: one of them, adog, that belonged to Xanthippus, father of Pericles, is said to havefollowed the ships, and swam to Salamis, to die, spent with toil, uponthe sands. 

VIII. The fleet now assembled at Salamis; the Spartans contributedonly sixteen vessels, the people of Aegina thirty--swift galleys andwell equipped; the Athenians one hundred and eighty; the whole navy, according to Herodotus, consisted of three hundred and seventy-eight[78] ships, besides an inconsiderable number of vessels of fifty oars. 

Eurybiades still retained the chief command. A council of war washeld. The greater number of the more influential allies were composedof Peloponnesians, and, with the countenance of the Spartan chief, itwas proposed to retire from Salamis and fix the station in the isthmusnear the land-forces of Peloponnesus. This was highly consonant tothe interested policy of the Peloponnesian states, and especially tothat of Sparta; Attica was considered already lost, and the fate ofthat territory they were therefore indisposed to consider. While thedebate was yet pending, a messenger arrived from Athens with theintelligence that the barbarian, having reduced to ashes the alliedcities of Thespiae and Plataea in Boeotia, had entered Attica; andshortly afterward they learned that (despite a desperate resistancefrom the handful of Athenians who, some from poverty, some from asuperstitious prejudice in favour of the wooden wall of the citadel, had long held out, though literally girt by fire from the burning oftheir barricades) the citadel had been taken, plundered, and burnt, and the remnant of its defenders put to the sword. 

IX. Consternation seized the council; many of the leaders broke awayhastily, went on board, hoisted their sails, and prepared to fly. Those who remained in the council determined that an engagement at seacould only be risked near the isthmus. With this resolve the leadersat night returned to their ships. 

It is singular how often, in the most memorable events, the fate andthe glory of nations is decided by the soul of a single man. WhenThemistocles had retired to his vessel, he was sought by Mnesiphilus, who is said to have exercised an early and deep influence over themind of Themistocles, and to have been one of those practical yetthoughtful statesmen called into existence by the sober philosophy ofSolon [79], whose lessons on the science of government made agroundwork for the rhetorical corruptions of the later sophists. Onlearning the determination of the council, Mnesiphilus forciblyrepresented its consequences. "If the allies, " said he, "once abandonSalamis, you have lost for ever the occasion of fighting for yourcountry. The fleet will certainly separate, the various confederatesreturn home, and Greece will perish. Hasten, therefore, ere yet it betoo late, and endeavour to persuade Eurybiades to change hisresolution and remain. "

This advice, entirely agreeable to the views of Themistocles, excitedthat chief to new exertions. He repaired at once to Eurybiades; and, by dint of that extraordinary mastery over the minds of others whichhe possessed, he finally won over the Spartan, and, late as the hourwas, persuaded him to reassemble the different leaders. 

X. In that nocturnal council debate grew loud and warm. WhenEurybiades had explained his change of opinion and his motives forcalling the chiefs together; Themistocles addressed the leaders atsome length and with great excitement. It was so evidently theinterest of the Corinthians to make the scene of defence in thevicinity of Corinth, that we cannot be surprised to find theCorinthian leader, Adimantus, eager to interrupt the Athenian. "Themistocles, " said he, "they who at the public games rise beforetheir time are beaten. "

"True, " replied Themistocles, with admirable gentleness and temper;"but they who are left behind are never crowned. "

Pursuing the advantage which a skilful use of interruption alwaysgives to an orator, the Athenian turned to Eurybiades. Artfullysuppressing his secret motive in the fear of the dispersion of theallies, which he rightly judged would offend without convincing, hehad recourse to more popular arguments. "Fight at the isthmus, " hesaid, "and you fight in the open sea, where, on account of our heaviervessels and inferior number, you contend with every disadvantage. Grant even success, you will yet lose, by your retreat, Salamis, Megara, and Aegina. You would preserve the Peloponnesus, butremember, that by attracting thither the war, you attract not only thenaval, but also the land forces of the enemy. Fight here, and we havethe inestimable advantage of a narrow sea--we shall preserve Salamis, the refuge of our wives and children--we shall as effectually protectthe Peloponnesus as by repairing to the isthmus and drawing thebarbarian thither. If we obtain the victory, the enemy will neitheradvance to the isthmus nor penetrate beyond Attica. Their retreat issure. "

The orator was again interrupted by Adimantus with equal rudeness. And Themistocles, who well knew how to alternate force withmoderation, and menace with persuasion, retorted with an equalasperity, but with a singular dignity and happiness of expression. 

"It becomes you, " said Adimantus, scornfully, alluding to the captureof Athens, "it becomes you to be silent, and not to advise us todesert our country; you, who no longer have a country to defend!Eurybiades can only be influenced by Themistocles when Themistocleshas once more a city to represent. "

"Wretch!" replied Themistocles, sternly, "we have indeed left ourwalls and houses--preferring freedom to those inanimate possessions--but know that the Athenians still possess a country and a city, greater and more formidable than yours, well provided with stores andmen, which none of the Greeks will be able to resist: our ships areour country and our city. "

"If, " he added, once more addressing the Spartan chief, "if youcontinue here you will demand our eternal gratitude: fly, and you arethe destroyers of Greece. In this war the last and sole resource ofthe Athenians is their fleet: reject my remonstrances, and I warn youthat at once we will take our families on board, and sail to thatSiris, on the Italian shores, which of old is said to have belonged tous, and in which, if the oracle be trusted, we ought to found a city. Deprived of us, you will remember my words. "

XI. The menace of Themistocles--the fear of so powerful a race, unhoused, exasperated, and in search of a new settlement--and the yetmore immediate dread of the desertion of the flower of the navy--finally prevailed. Eurybiades announced his concurrence with theviews of Themistocles, and the confederates, wearied with altercation, consented to risk the issue of events at Salamis. 

XII. Possessed of Athens, the Persian king held also his council ofwar. His fleet, sailing up the Euripus, anchored in the Attic bay ofPhalerum; his army encamped along the plains around, or within thewalls of Athens. The losses his armament had sustained were alreadyrepaired by new re-enforcements of Malians, Dorians, Locrians, Bactrians, Carystians, Andrians, Tenedians, and the people of thevarious isles. "The farther, " says Herodotus, "the Persianspenetrated into Greece, the greater the numbers by which they werefollowed. " It may be supposed, however, that the motley contributionsof an idle and predatory multitude, or of Greeks compelled, not byaffection, but fear, ill supplied to Xerxes the devoted thousands, many of them his own gallant Persians, who fell at Thermopylae orperished in the Euboean seas. 

XIII. Mardonius and the leaders generally were for immediate battle. The heroine Artemisia alone gave a more prudent counsel. Sherepresented to them, that if they delayed a naval engagement or sailedto the Peloponnesus [80], the Greeks, failing of provisions andoverruled by their fears, would be certain to disperse, to retire totheir several homes, and, thus detached, fall an easy prey to hisarms. 

Although Xerxes, contrary to expectation, received the adverse opinionof the Carian princess with compliments and praise, he yet adopted thecounsel of the majority; and, attributing the ill success atArtemisium to his absence, resolved in person to witness the triumphof his arms at Salamis. 

The navy proceeded, in order, to that island: the land-forces on thesame night advanced to the Peloponnesus: there, under Cleombrotus, brother to Leonidas, all the strength of the Peloponnesianconfederates was already assembled. They had fortified the pass ofSciron, another Thermopylae in its local character, and protected theisthmus by a wall, at the erection of which the whole army workednight and day; no materials sufficing for the object of defence weredisdained--wood, stones, bricks, and sand--all were pressed intoservice. Here encamped, they hoped nothing from Salamis--theybelieved the last hope of Greece rested solely with themselves. [81]

XIV. Again new agitation, fear, and dissension broke out in theGrecian navy. All those who were interested in the safety of thePeloponnesus complained anew of the resolution of Eurybiades--urgedthe absurdity of remaining at Salamis to contend for a territoryalready conquered--and the leaders of Aegina, Megara, and Athens wereleft in a minority in the council. 

Thus overpowered by the Peloponnesian allies, Themistocles is said tohave bethought himself of a stratagem, not inconsonant with hisscheming and wily character. Retiring privately from the debate, yetunconcluded, and summoning the most confidential messenger in hisservice [82], he despatched him secretly to the enemy's fleet withthis message--"The Athenian leader, really attached to the king, andwilling to see the Greeks subjugated to his power, sends me privatelyto you. Consternation has seized the Grecian navy; they are preparingto fly; lose not the opportunity of a splendid victory. Divided amongthemselves, the Greeks are unable to resist you; and you will see, asyou advance upon them, those who favour and those who would oppose youin hostility with each other. "

The Persian admiral was sufficiently experienced in the treachery anddefection of many of the Greeks to confide in the message thusdelivered to him; but he scarcely required such intelligence toconfirm a resolution already formed. At midnight the barbarianspassed over a large detachment to the small isle of Psyttaleia, between Salamis and the continent, and occupying the whole narrow seaas far as the Attic port of Munychia, under cover of the darknessdisposed their ships, so as to surround the Greeks and cut off thepossibility of retreat. 

XV. Unconscious of the motions of the enemy, disputes still prevailedamong the chiefs at Salamis, when Themistocles was summoned at nightfrom the council, to which he had returned after despatching hismessenger to the barbarian. The person who thus summoned him wasAristides. It was the third year of his exile--which sentence wasevidently yet unrepealed--or not in that manner, at night and as athief, would the eminent and high-born Aristides have joined hiscountrymen. He came from Aegina in an open boat, under cover of thenight passed through the midst of the Persian ships, and arrived atSalamis to inform the Greeks that they were already surrounded. 

"At any time, " said Aristides, "it would become us to forget ourprivate dissensions, and at this time especially; contending only whoshould most serve his country. In vain now would the Peloponnesiansadvise retreat; we are encompassed, and retreat is impossible. "

Themistocles welcomed the new-comer with joy, and persuaded him toenter the council and acquaint the leaders with what he knew. Hisintelligence, received with doubt, was presently confirmed by atrireme of Tenians, which deserted to them; and they now seriouslycontemplated the inevitable resort of battle. 

XVI. At dawn all was prepared. Assembled on the strand, Themistoclesharangued the troops; and when he had concluded, orders were given toembark. 

It was in the autumn of 480 B. C. , two thousand three hundred andsixteen years ago, that the battle of Salamis was fought. 

High on a throne of precious metals, placed on one of the eminences ofMount Aegaleos, sat, to survey the contest, the royal Xerxes. Therising sun beheld the shores of the Eleusinian gulf lined with histroops to intercept the fugitives, and with a miscellaneous and motleycrowd of such as were rather spectators than sharers of the conflict. [83]

But not as the Persian leaders had expected was the aspect of the foe;nor did the Greeks betray the confusion or the terror ascribed to themby the emissary of Themistocles. As the daylight made them manifestto the Persian, they set up the loud and martial chorus of the paean--"the rocks of Salamis echoed back the shout"--and, to use theexpression of a soldier of that day [84], "the trumpet inflamed themwith its clangour. "

As soon as the Greeks began to move, the barbarian vessels advancedswiftly. But Themistocles detained the ardour of the Greeks until thetime when a sharp wind usually arose in that sea, occasioning a heavyswell in the channel, which was peculiarly prejudicial to the unwieldyships of the Persians; but not so to the light, low, and compactvessels of the Greeks. The manner of attack with the ancient navieswas to bring the prow of the vessel, which was fortified by longprojecting beaks of brass, to bear upon the sides of its antagonist, and this, the swell of the sea causing the Persian galleys to veerabout unwieldily, the agile ships of the Greeks were well enabled toeffect. 

By the time the expected wind arose, the engagement was begun. ThePersian admiral [85] directed his manoeuvres chiefly againstThemistocles, for on him, as the most experienced and renowned of theGrecian leaders, the eyes of the enemy were turned. From his ship, which was unusually lofty, as from a castle [86], he sent forth dartsand arrows, until one of the Athenian triremes, commanded by Aminias, shot from the rest, and bore down upon him with the prow. The shipsmet, and, fastened together by their brazen beaks, which served asgrappling-irons, Ariabignes gallantly boarded the Grecian vessel, andwas instantly slain by the hostile pikes and hurled into the sea [87]. The first who took a ship was an Athenian named Lycomedes. TheGrecians keeping to the straits, the Persians were unable to bringtheir whole armament to bear at once, and could only enter the narrowpass by detachments; the heaviness of the sea and the cumbrous size oftheir tall vessels frequently occasioned more embarrassment tothemselves than the foe--driven and hustling the one against theother. The Athenians maintaining the right wing were opposed by thePhoenicians; the Spartans on the left by the Ionians. The first weregallantly supported by the Aeginetans, who, long skilled in maritimewarfare, eclipsed even their new rivals the Athenians. The Phoenicianline was broken. The Greeks pursued their victory, still preservingthe steadiest discipline and the most perfect order. The sea becamestrewn and covered with the wrecks of vessels and the bodies of thedead; while, to the left, the Ionians gave way before that part of theallied force commanded by the Spartans, some fighting with greatvalour, some favouring the Greek confederates. Meanwhile, as thePersians gave way, and the sea became more clear, Aristides, who hadhitherto remained on shore, landed a body of Athenians on the Isle ofPsyttaleia, and put the Persian guard there stationed to the sword. 

Xerxes from the mountain, his countless thousands from the shore, beheld, afar and impotent, the confusion, the slaughter, the defeat ofthe forces on the sea. Anxious now only for retreat, the barbariansretreated to Phalerum; and there, intercepted by the Aeginetans, werepressed by them in the rear; by the Athenians, led by Themistocles, infront. At this time the heroine Artemisia, pursued by that Aminiaswhose vessel had first grappled with the Persians, and who of all theAthenian captains was that day the most eminently distinguished, foundherself in the extremest danger. Against that remarkable woman theefforts of the Athenians had been especially directed: deeming it adisgrace to them to have an enemy in a woman, they had solemnly set areward of great amount upon her capture. Thus pursued, Artemisia hadrecourse to a sudden and extraordinary artifice. Falling in with avessel of the Persians, commanded by a Calyndian prince, with whom shehad once been embroiled, she bore down against the ship and sunk it--atruly feminine stratagem--deceiving at once a public enemy andgratifying a private hatred. The Athenian, seeing the vessel he hadpursued thus attack a barbarian, conceived he had mistaken a friendlyvessel, probably a deserter from the Persians, for a foe, andimmediately sought new objects of assault. Xerxes beheld and admiredthe prowess of Artemisia, deeming, in the confusion, that it was ahostile vessel she had sunken. [88]

XVII. The battle lasted till the dusk of evening, when at length theremnant of the barbarian fleet gained the port of Phalerum; and theGreeks beheld along the Straits of Salamis no other vestige of theenemy than the wrecks and corpses which were the evidence of hisdefeat. 

XVIII. When morning came, the Greeks awaited a renewal of theengagement; for the Persian fleet were still numerous, the Persianarmy yet covered the neighbouring shores, and, by a feint to concealhis real purpose, Xerxes had ordered the Phoenician transports to bejoined together, as if to connect Salamis to the continent. But amandate was already issued for the instant departure of the navy forthe Hellespont, and a few days afterward the army itself retired intoBoeotia. 

The victory of Salamis was celebrated by solemn rejoicings, in which, principally remarkable for the beauty of his person, and hisaccomplishments on the lyre and in the dance, was a youth namedSophocles, destined afterward to share the glory of Aeschylus, who, noless a warrior than a poet, distinguished himself in the battle, andhas bequeathed to us the most detailed and animated account we possessof its events. 

The Grecian conquerors beheld the retreat of the enemy withindignation; they were unwilling that any of that armament which hadburnt their hearths and altars should escape their revenge; theypursued the Persian ships as far as Andros, where, not reaching them, they cast anchor and held a consultation. Themistocles is said tohave proposed, but not sincerely, to sail at once to the Hellespontand destroy the bridge of boats. This counsel was overruled, and itwas decided not to reduce so terrible an enemy to despair:--"Rather, "said one of the chiefs (whether Aristides or Eurybiades is differentlyrelated), "build another bridge, that Xerxes may escape the sooner outof Europe. "

Themistocles affected to be converted to a policy which he desiredonly an excuse to effect; and, in pursuance of the hint alreadyfurnished him, is said to have sent secretly to Xerxes, informing himthat it was the intention of the allies to sail to the Hellespont anddestroy the bridge, so that, if the king consulted his safety, hewould return immediately into Asia, while Themistocles would findpretexts to delay the pursuit of the confederates. 

This artifice appears natural to the scheming character ofThemistocles; and, from concurrent testimony [89], it seems to meundoubted that Themistocles maintained a secret correspondence withXerxes, and even persuaded that monarch that he was disposed to favourhim. But it is impossible to believe, with Herodotus, that he had atthat time any real desire to conciliate the Persian, foreseeing thathe might hereafter need a refuge at the Eastern court. Then in thezenith of his popularity, so acute a foresight is not in man. He wasone of those to whom the spirit of intrigue is delight in itself, andin the present instance it was exerted for the common cause of theAthenians, which, with all his faults, he never neglected for, butrather incorporated with, his own. 

XIX. Diverted from the notion of pursuing the Persians, the Grecianallies, flushed with conquest, were yet eager for enterprise. Theisles which had leagued with the Mede were strongly obnoxious to theconfederates, and it was proposed to exact from them a fine; indefrayal of the expenses of the war. Siege was laid to Andros, andthose islanders were the first who resisted the demand. Then was itthat they made that memorable answer, which may serve as a warning inall times to the strong when pressing on the desperate. 

"I bring with me, " said Themistocles, "two powerful divinities--Persuasion and Force. "

"And we, " answered the Andrians, "have two gods equally powerful onour side--Poverty and Despair. "

The Andrian deities eventually triumphed, and the siege was raisedwithout effect. But from the Parians and Carystians, and some otherislanders, Themistocles obtained enormous sums of money unknown to hiscolleagues, which, however unjustly extorted, it does notsatisfactorily appear that he applied largely to his own personalprofit, but, as is more probable, to the rebuilding of Athens. Perhaps he thought, nor without reason, that as the Athenians had beenthe principal sufferers in the war, and contributed the most largelyto its resources, so whatever fines were levied on the seceders weredue, not to the confederates generally, but the Athenians alone. Theprevious conduct of the allies, with so much difficulty preserved fromdeserting Athens, merited no particular generosity, and excusedperhaps the retaliation of a selfish policy. The payment of the finedid not, however, preserve Carystus from attack. After wasting itslands, the Greeks returned to Salamis and divided the Persian spoils. The first fruits were dedicated to the gods, and the choicest of thebooty sent to Delphi. And here we may notice one anecdote ofThemistocles, which proves, that whatever, at times and in greatcrises, was the grasping unscrupulousness of his mind, he had at leastno petty and vulgar avarice. Seeing a number of bracelets and chainsof gold upon the bodies of the dead, he passed them by, and turning toone of his friends, "Take these for yourself, " said he, "for you arenot Themistocles. " [90]

Meanness or avarice was indeed no part of the character ofThemistocles, although he has been accused of those vices, becauseguilty, at times, of extortion. He was profuse, ostentatious, andmagnificent above his contemporaries and beyond his means. His veryvices were on a large and splendid scale; and if he had something ofthe pirate in his nature, he had nothing of the miser. When he had tochoose between two suiters for his daughter, he preferred the worthyto the wealthy candidate--willing that she should rather marry a manwithout money than money without a man. [91]

XX. The booty divided, the allies repaired to the isthmus, accordingto that beautiful ancient custom of apportioning rewards to such ashad been most distinguished. It was in the temple of Neptune that theleaders met. The right of voting was confined to the several chiefs, who were to declare whom they thought the first in merit and whom thesecond. Each leader wrote his own name a candidate for the firstrank; but a great majority of suffrages awarded the second toThemistocles. While, therefore, each leader had only a singlesuffrage in favour of the first rank, the second rank wasunequivocally due to the Athenian. 

XXI. But even conquest had not sufficed to remove the jealousies ofthe confederate leaders--they evaded the decision of a question whichcould not but be propitious to the Athenians, and returned homewithout having determined the point which had assembled them at theisthmus. But Themistocles was not of a temper to brook patiently thisfraud upon his honours. Far from sharing the petty and miserableenvies of their chiefs, the Greeks generally were loud in praise ofhis wisdom and services; and, taking advantage of their enthusiasm, Themistocles repaired to Sparta, trusting to the generosity of theprincipal rival to compensate the injustice of many. His expectationswere not ill-founded--the customs of Sparta allowed no slight to aSpartan, and they adjudged therefore the prize of valour to their ownEurybiades, while they awarded that of wisdom or science toThemistocles. Each was equally honoured with a crown of olive. Forgetful of all their prejudices, their envy, and their inhospitabletreatment of strangers, that nation of warriors were dazzled by thehero whose courage assimilated to their own. They presented him withthe stateliest chariot to be found in Sparta, and solemnly conductedhim homeward as far as Tegea, by an escort of three hundred chosenSpartans called "The Knights"--the sole example of the Spartansconducting any man from their city. It is said that on his return toAthens, Themistocles was reproached by Timodemus of Aphidna, aBelbinite by origin [92], and an implacable public enemy, with hisvisit to Sparta: "The honours awarded you, " said Timodemus, "arebestowed from respect, not to you, but to Athens. "

"My friend, " retorted the witty chief, "the matter stands thus. Had Ibeen a Belbinite, I had not been thus distinguished at Sparta, norwould you, although you had been born an Athenian!"

While the Greeks were thus occupied, the Persian army had retreatedwith Mardonius into Thessaly. Here that general selected andmarshalled the forces with which he intended to renew the war, retaining in his service the celebrated Immortals. The total, including the cavalry, Herodotus estimates at three hundred thousandmen. 

Thus occupied, and ere Xerxes departed from Thessaly, the Spartans, impelled by an oracle, sent a messenger to Xerxes to demand atonementfor the death of Leonidas. 

"Ay, " replied the king, laughing, "this man (pointing to Mardonius)shall make you fitting retribution. "

Leaving Mardonius in Thessaly, where he proposed to winter, Xerxes nowhastened home. Sixty thousand Persians under Artabazus accompaniedthe king only as far as the passage into Asia; and it was with aninconsiderable force, which, pressed by famine, devastated the veryherbage on their way, and which a pestilence and the dysenterydiminished as it passed, that the great king crossed the Hellespont, on which the bridge of boats had already been broken by wind andstorm. A more abundant supply of provisions than they had yetexperienced tempted the army to excesses, to which many fell victims. The rest arrived at Sardis with Xerxes, whence he afterward returnedto his more distant capital. 

XXII. The people of Potidaea, on the Isthmus of Pallene, andOlynthus, inhabited by the Bottiaeans, a dubious and mongrel race, that boasted their origin from those Athenians who, in the traditionalages, had been sent as tributary captives to the Cretan Minos, nosooner learned the dispersion of the fleet at Salamis, and the retreatof the king, than they openly revolted from the barbarian. Artabazus, returning from the Hellespont, laid siege to Olynthus, massacred theinhabitants, and colonized the town with Chalcidians. He then satdown before Potidaea; but a terrible inundation of the sea, with thesallies of the besieged, destroyed the greater number of theunfortunate invaders. The remnant were conducted by Artabazus intoThessaly, to join the army of Mardonius. The Persian fleet, retreating from Salamis, after passing over the king and his forcesfrom the Chersonese to Abydos, wintered at Cuma; and at thecommencement of the spring assembled at Samos. 

Meanwhile the Athenians returned to their dismantled city, anddirected their attention to its repair and reconstruction. It wasthen, too, that in all probability the people hastened, by a formaland solemn reversal of the sentence of ostracism, to reward theservices of Aristides, and to restore to the commonwealth the mostspotless of its citizens. [93]

CHAPTER VIII. 

Embassy of Alexander of Macedon to Athens. --The Result of hisProposals. --Athenians retreat to Salamis. --Mardonius occupies Athens. --The Athenians send Envoys to Sparta. --Pausanias succeeds Cleombrotusas Regent of Sparta. --Battle of Plataea. --Thebes besieged by theAthenians. --Battle of Mycale. --Siege of Sestos. --Conclusion of thePersian War. 

I. The dawning spring and the formidable appearance of Mardonius, who, with his Persian forces, diminished indeed, but still mighty, lowered on their confines, aroused the Greeks to a sense of theirdanger. Their army was not as yet assembled, but their fleet, consisting of one hundred and ten vessels, under the command ofLeotychides, king of Sparta, and Xanthippus of Athens, lay off Aegina. Thus anchored, there came to the naval commanders certain Chians, who, having been discovered in a plot against the life of Strattis, atyrant imposed upon Chios by the Persians, fled to Aegina. Theydeclared that all Ionia was ripe for revolt, and their representationsinduced the Greeks to advance as far as the sacred Delos. 

Beyond they dared not venture, ignorant alike of the localities of thecountry and the forces of the enemy. Samos seemed to them no lessremote than the Pillars of Hercules, and mutual fear thus kept thespace between the Persian and the Greek fleet free from the advance ofeither. But Mardonius began slowly to stir from his winter lethargy. Influenced, thought the Greeks, perhaps too fondly, by a Thebanoracle, the Persian general despatched to Athens no less distinguishedan ambassador than Alexander, the king of Macedon. That prince, connected with the Persians by alliance (for his sister had marriedthe Persian Bubares, son of Megabazus), was considered an envoycalculated to conciliate the Athenians while he served their enemy. And it was now the object of Mardonius to reconcile the foe whom hehad failed to conquer. Aware of the Athenian valour, Mardoniustrusted that if he could detach that state from the confederacy, andprevail on the Athenians to unite their arms to his own, the rest ofGreece would become an easy conquest. By land he already deemedhimself secure of fortune, by sea what Grecian navy, if deprived ofthe flower of its forces, could resist him?

II. The King of Macedon arrived at Athens; but conscious of thejealous and anxious fear which the news of an embassy from Persiawould excite among the confederates, the Athenians delayed to granthim the demanded audience until they had time to send for and obtaindeputies from Sparta to be present at the assembly. 

Alexander of Macedon then addressed the Athenians. 

"Men of Athens!" said he, "Mardonius informs you, through me, of thismandate from the king: 'Whatever injuries, ' saith he, 'the Athenianshave done me, I forgive. Restore them their country--let them evenannex to it any other territories they covet--permit them the freeenjoyment of their laws. If they will ally with me, rebuild thetemples I have burnt. '"

Alexander then proceeded to dilate on the consequences of thisfavourable mission, to represent the power of the Persian, and urgethe necessity of an alliance. "Let my offers prevail with you, " heconcluded, "for to you alone, of all the Greeks, the king extends hisforgiveness, desiring your alliance. "

When Alexander had concluded, the Spartan envoys thus spoke throughtheir chief, addressing, not the Macedonian, but the Athenians:--"Wehave been deputed by the Spartans to entreat you to adopt no measuresprejudicial to Greece, and to receive no conditions from thebarbarians. This, most iniquitous in itself, would be, above all, unworthy and ungraceful in you; with you rests the origin of the warnow appertaining to all Greece. Insufferable, indeed, if theAthenians, once the authors of liberty to many, were now the authorsof the servitude of Greece. We commiserate your melancholy condition--your privation for two years of the fruits of your soil, your homesdestroyed, and your fortunes ruined. We, the Spartans, and the otherallies, will receive your women and all who may be helpless in the warwhile the war shall last. Let not the Macedonian, smoothing down themessages of Mardonius, move you. This becomes him; tyrant himself, hewould assist in a tyrant's work. But you will not heed him if you arewise, knowing that faith and truth are not in the barbarians. "

III. The answer of the Athenians to both Spartan and Persian, thesubstance of which is, no doubt, faithfully preserved to us byHerodotus, may rank among the most imperishable records of thathigh-souled and generous people. 

"We are not ignorant, " ran the answer, dictated, and, probably, uttered by Aristides [94], "that the power of the Mede is many timesgreater than our own. We required not that ostentatious admonition. Yet, for the preservation of liberty, we will resist that power as wecan. Cease to persuade us to contract alliance with the barbarian. Bear back to Mardonius this answer from the Athenians--So long asyonder sun, " and the orator pointed to the orb [95], "holds thecourses which now it holds--so long will we abjure all amity withXerxes--so long, confiding in the aid of our gods and heroes, whoseshrines and altars he hath burnt, will we struggle against him inbattle and for revenge. And thou, beware how again thou bearest suchproffers to the Athenians; nor, on the plea of benefit to us, urge usto dishonour; for we would not--ungrateful to thee, our guest and ourfriend--have any evil befall to thee from the anger of the Athenians. "

"For you, Spartans! it may be consonant with human nature that youshould fear our alliance with the barbarians--yet shamefully you fearit, knowing with what spirit we are animated and act. Gold hath noamount--earth hath no territory, how beautiful soever--that can temptthe Athenians to accept conditions from the Mede for the servitude ofGreece. Were we so inclined, many and mighty are our prohibitions;first and chiefly, our temples burnt and overthrown, urging us not toalliance, but to revenge. Next, the whole race of Greece has oneconsanguinity and one tongue, and common are its manners, its altars, and its gods base indeed, if Athenians were of these the betrayers. Lastly, learn now, if ye knew it not before, that, while one Athenianshall survive, Athens allies herself not with Xerxes. "

"We thank you for your providence of us--your offers to protect ourfamilies--afflicted and impoverished as we are. We will bear, however, our misfortunes as we may--becoming no burden upon you. Beit your care to send your forces to the field. Let there be no delay. The barbarian will be on us when he learns that we have rejected hisproposals. Before he proceed to Attica let us meet him in Boeotia. "

IV. On receiving this answer from the Athenians the Spartanambassadors returned home; and, shortly afterward, Mardonius, by rapidmarches, conducted his army towards Attica; fresh supplies of troopsrecruiting his forces wheresoever he passed. The Thessalian princes, far from repenting their alliance with Mardonius, animated his ardour. 

Arrived in Boeotia, the Thebans endeavoured to persuade the Persiangeneral to encamp in that territory, and to hazard no battle, butrather to seek by bribes to the most powerful men in each city, todetach the confederates from the existent alliance. Pride, ambition, and the desire of avenging Xerxes once more upon Athens, deterredMardonius from yielding to this counsel. He marched on to Attica--hefound the territory utterly deserted. He was informed that theinhabitants were either at Salamis or with the fleet. He proceeded toAthens (B. C. 479), equally deserted, and, ten months after the firstcapture by Xerxes, that city a second time was occupied by the Mede. 

From Athens Mardonius despatched a Greek messenger to Salamis, repeating the propositions of Alexander. On hearing these offers incouncil, the Athenians were animated by a species of fury. Acounsellor named Lycidas having expressed himself in favour of theterms, he was immediately stoned to death. The Athenian women, rousedby a similar passion with the men, inflicted the same fate upon hiswife and children--one of those excesses of virtue which becomecrimes, but for which exigency makes no despicable excuse. [96] Theambassador returned uninjured. 

V. The flight of the Athenians to Salamis had not been a willingresort. That gallant people had remained in Attica so long as theycould entertain any expectation of assistance from the Peloponnesus;nor was it until compelled by despair at the inertness of theirallies, and the appearance of the Persians in Boeotia, that they hadremoved to Salamis. 

The singular and isolated policy of Sparta, which had curbed andcrippled, to an exclusive regard for Spartans, all the more generousand daring principles of action, was never, perhaps, so odiouslydisplayed as in the present indifference to an ally that had so noblypreferred the Grecian liberties to its own security. The whole of thePeloponnesus viewed with apathy the occupation of Attica, and theSpartans were employed in completing the fortifications of theisthmus. 

The Athenians despatched messengers to Sparta, as did also Megara andPlataea. These ambassadors assumed a high and reproachful tone ofremonstrance. 

They represented the conduct of the Athenians in rejecting theovertures of the barbarians--they upbraided the Spartans with perfidyfor breaking the agreement to meet the enemy in Boeotia--they declaredthe resentment of the Athenians at the violation of this compact, demanded immediate supplies, and indicated the plains near Thria, avillage in Attica, as a fitting field of battle. 

The ephors heard the remonstrance, but from day to day delayed ananswer. The Spartans, according to Herodotus, were engaged incelebrating the solemnities in honour of Hyacinthus and Apollo; andthis ceremonial might have sufficed as a plausible cause forprocrastination, according to all the usages and formalities ofSpartan manners. But perhaps there might be another and a graverreason for the delayed determination of the ephors. 

When the isthmian fortifications were completed, the superstition ofthe regent Cleombrotus, who had superintended their construction, wasalarmed by an eclipse, and he led back to Sparta the detachment he hadcommanded in that quarter. He returned but to die; and his sonPausanias succeeded to the regency during the continued minority ofPleistarchus, the infant heir of Leonidas [97]. If the funeralsolemnities on the death of a regent were similar to those bestowedupon a deceased king, we can account at once for the delay of theephors, since the ten days which passed without reply to theambassadors exactly correspond in number with the ten days dedicatedto public mourning. [98] But whatever the cause of the Spartan delay--and the rigid closeness of that oligarchic government kept, in yetmore important matters, its motives and its policy no less a secret tocontemporaneous nations than to modern inquirers--the delay itselfhighly incensed the Athenian envoys: they even threatened to treatwith Mardonius, and abandon Sparta to her fate, and at length fixedthe day of their departure. The ephors roused themselves. Among thedeputies from the various states, there was then in Sparta thatChileus of Tegea, who had been scarcely less serviceable thanThemistocles in managing the affairs of Greece in the isthmiancongress. This able and eminent Arcadian forcibly represented to theephors the danger of forfeiting the Athenian alliance, and theinsufficient resistance against the Persian that the fortifications ofthe isthmus would afford. The ephors heard, and immediately actedwith the secrecy and the vigilance that belongs to oligarchies. Thatvery night they privately despatched a body of five thousand Spartansand thirty-five thousand helots (seven to each Spartan), under thecommand of Pausanias. 

The next morning the ephors calmly replied to the angry threats of theAthenians, by protesting that their troops were already on the march, and by this time in Oresteum, a town in Arcadia, about eighteen milesdistant from Sparta. The astonished deputies [99] hastened toovertake the Spartan force, and the ephors, as if fully to atone fortheir past procrastination, gave them the escort and additionalre-enforcement of five thousand heavy-armed Laconians or Perioeci. 

VI. Mardonius soon learned from the Argives (who, not content withrefusing to join the Greek legion, had held secret communications withthe Persians) of the departure of the Spartan troops. Hitherto he hadrefrained from any outrage on the Athenian lands and city, in the hopethat Athens might yet make peace with him. He now set fire to Athens, razed the principal part of what yet remained of the walls and temples[100], and deeming the soil of Attica ill adapted to his cavalry, and, from the narrowness of its outlets, disadvantageous in case ofretreat, after a brief incursion into Megara he retired towardsThebes, and pitched his tents on the banks of the Asopus, extendingfrom Erythrae to Plataea. Here his force was swelled by such of theGreeks as were friendly to his cause. 

VII. Meanwhile the Spartans were joined at the isthmus by the rest ofthe Peloponnesian allies. Solemn sacrifices were ordained, and theauguries drawn from the victims being favourable, the Greek armyproceeded onward; and, joined at Eleusis by the Athenians, marched tothe foot of Cithaeron, and encamped opposite the Persians, with theriver of the Asopus between the armies. Aristides commanded theAthenians, at the head of eight thousand foot; and while the armieswere thus situated, a dangerous conspiracy was detected and defeatedby that able general. 

The disasters of the war--the devastation of lands, the burning ofhouses--had reduced the fortunes of many of the Athenian nobles. Withtheir property diminished their influence. Poverty, and discontent, and jealousy of new families rising into repute [101], induced thesemen of fallen fortunes to conspire for the abolition of the populargovernment at Athens, and, failing that attempt, to betray the causeto the enemy. 

This project spread secretly through the camp, and corrupted numbers;the danger became imminent. On the one hand, the conspiracy was notto be neglected; and, on the other, in such a crisis it might bedangerous too narrowly to sift a design in which men of mark andstation were concerned. Aristides acted with a singular prudence. Hearrested eight of the leaders. Of these he prosecuted only two (whoescaped during the proceedings), and, dismissing the rest, appealed tothe impending battle as the great tribunal which would acquit them ofthe charge and prove their loyalty to the state. [102]

VIII. Scarce was this conspiracy quelled than the cavalry of thePersians commenced their operations. At the head of that skilful andgallant horse, for which the oriental nations are yet renowned, rodetheir chief, Masistius, clad in complete armour of gold, of brass, andof iron, and noted for the strength of his person and the splendour ofhis trappings. Placed on the rugged declivities of Cithaeron, theGreeks were tolerably safe from the Persian cavalry, save only theMegarians, who, to the number of three thousand, were posted along theplain, and were on all sides charged by that agile and vapid cavalry. Thus pressed, the Megarians sent to Pausanias for assistance. TheSpartan beheld the air darkened with shafts and arrows, and knew thathis heavy-armed warriors were ill adapted to act against horse. He invain endeavoured to arouse those about him by appeals to their honour--all declined the succour of the Megarians--when Aristides, causingthe Athenian to eclipse the Spartan chivalry, undertook the defence. With three hundred infantry, mixed with archers, Olympiodorus, one ofthe ablest of the Athenian officers, advanced eagerly on thebarbarian. 

Masistius himself, at the head of his troops, spurred his Nisaeancharger against the new enemy. A sharp and obstinate conflict ensued;when the horse of the Persian general, being wounded, threw its rider, who could not regain his feet from the weight of his armour. There, as he lay on the ground, with a swarm of foes around him, the closescales of his mail protected him from their weapons, until at length alance pierced the brain through an opening in his visor. After anobstinate conflict for his corpse, the Persians were beaten back tothe camp, where the death of one, second only to Mardonius inauthority and repute, spread universal lamentation and dismay. 

The body of Masistius, which, by its vast size and beautifulproportions, excited the admiration of the victors, remained the prizeof the Greeks; and, placed on a bier, it was borne triumphantlythrough the ranks. 

IX. After this victory, Pausanias conducted his forces along the baseof Cithaeron into the neighbourhood of Plataea, which he deemed a moreconvenient site for the disposition of his army and the supply ofwater. There, near the fountain of Gargaphia [103], one of thesources of the Asopus (which splits into many rivulets, bearing acommon name), and renowned in song for the death of the fabulousActaeon, nor far from the shrine of an old Plataean hero(Androcrates), the Greeks were marshalled in regular divisions, thedifferent nations, some on a gentle acclivity, others along the plain. 

In the allotment of the several stations a dispute arose between theAthenians and the Tegeans. The latter claimed, from ancient andtraditionary prescription, the left wing (the right being unanimouslyawarded to the Spartans), and assumed, in the course of theirargument, an insolent superiority over the Athenians. 

"We came here to fight, " answered the Athenians (or Aristides in theirname [104]), "and not to dispute. But since the Tegeans proclaimtheir ancient as well as their modern deeds, fit is it for us tomaintain our precedence over the Arcadians. "

Touching slightly on the ancient times referred to by the Tegeans, andquoting their former deeds, the Athenians insisted chiefly uponMarathon; "Yet, " said their orators, or orator, in conclusion, "whilewe maintain our right to the disputed post, it becomes us not, at thiscrisis, to altercate on the localities of the battle. Place us, ohSpartans! wherever seems best to you. No matter what our station; wewill uphold our honour and your cause. Command, then--we obey. "

Hearing this generous answer, the Spartan leaders were unanimous infavour of the Athenians; and they accordingly occupied the left wing. 

X. Thus were marshalled that confederate army, presenting thestrongest force yet opposed to the Persians, and comprising the wholemight and manhood of the free Grecian states; to the right, tenthousand Lacedaemonians, one half, as we have seen, composed of thePerioeci, the other moiety of the pure Spartan race--to each warriorof the latter half were allotted seven armed helots, to each of theheavy-armed Perioeci one serving-man. Their whole force was, therefore, no less than fifty thousand men. Next to the Spartans (akind of compromise of their claim) were the one thousand five hundredTegeans; beyond these five thousand Corinthians; and to themcontiguous three hundred Potidaeans of Pallene, whom the inundation oftheir seas had saved from the Persian arms. Next in order, Orchomenusranged its six hundred Arcadians; Sicyon sent three thousand, Epidaurus eight hundred, and Troezene one thousand warriors. Neighbouring the last were two hundred Lepreatae, and by them fourhundred Myceneans and Tirynthians [105]. Stationed by the Tirynthianscame, in successive order, a thousand Phliasians, three hundredHermionians, six hundred Eretrians and Styreans, four hundredChalcidians, five hundred Ambracians, eight hundred Leucadians andAnactorians, two hundred Paleans of Cephallenia, and five hundred onlyof the islanders of Aegina. Three thousand Megarians and six hundredPlataeans were ranged contiguous to the Athenians, whose force ofeight thousand men, under the command of Aristides, closed the leftwing. 

Thus the total of the heavy-armed soldiery was thirty-eight thousandseven hundred. To these were added the light-armed force ofthirty-five thousand helots and thirty-four thousand five hundredattendants on the Laconians and other Greeks; the whole amounting to onehundred and eight thousand two hundred men, besides one thousand eighthundred Thespians, who, perhaps, on account of the destruction of theircity by the Persian army, were without the heavy arms of theirconfederates. 

Such was the force--not insufficient in number, but stronger in heart, union, the memory of past victories, and the fear of future chains--that pitched the tent along the banks of the rivulets which confoundwith the Asopus their waters and their names. 

XI. In the interim Mardonius had marched from his former post, andlay encamped on that part of the Asopus nearest to Plataea. His bravePersians fronted the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans; and, in successiveorder, ranged the Medes and Bactrians, the Indians and the Sacae, theBoeotians, Locrians, Malians, Thessalians, Macedonians, and thereluctant aid of a thousand Phocians. But many of the latter tribeabout the fastnesses of Parnassus, openly siding with the Greeks, harassed the barbarian outskirts: Herodotus calculates the hostileforce at three hundred and fifty thousand, fifty thousand of whichwere composed of Macedonians and Greeks. And, although the historianhas omitted to deduct from this total the loss sustained by Artabazusat Potidaea, it is yet most probable that the barbarian nearly trebledthe Grecian army--odds less fearful than the Greeks had already metand vanquished. 

XII. The armies thus ranged, sacrifices were offered up on bothsides. It happened, by a singular coincidence, that to either armywas an Elean augur. The appearance of the entrails forbade bothPersian and Greek to cross the Asopus, and ordained each to act on thedefensive. 

That the Persian chief should have obeyed the dictates of a Greciansoothsayer is sufficiently probable; partly because a superstitiouspeople rarely despise the superstitions of another faith, principallybecause a considerable part of the invading army, and that perhaps thebravest and the most skilful, was composed of native Greeks, whoseprejudices it was politic to flatter--perilous to affront. 

Eight days were consumed in inactivity, the armies confronting eachother without motion; when Mardonius, in order to cut off the newforces which every day resorted to the Grecian camp, despatched a bodyof cavalry to seize the pass of Cithaeron. Falling in with a convoyof five hundred beasts of burden, carrying provisions from thePeloponnesus, the barbarians, with an inhumanity sufficient, perhaps, to prove that the detachment was not composed of Persians, properly sospeaking, a mild though gallant people--slaughtered both man andbeast. The provisions were brought to the Persian camp. 

XIII. During the two following days Mardonius advanced nearer to theAsopus, and his cavalry (assisted by the Thebans, who were the rightarm of the barbarian army), in repeated skirmishes, greatly harassedthe Greeks with much daring and little injury. 

At length Mardonius, either wearied of this inactivity or unable torepress the spirit of a superior army, not accustomed to receive theattack, resolved to reject all further compliance with the oracles ofthis Elean soothsayer, and, on the following morning, to give battleto the Greeks. Acting against one superstition, he sagaciously, however, sought to enlist on his behalf another; and, from thedecision of a mortal, he appealed to the ambiguous oracles of theDelphic god, which had ever one interpretation for the enterprise andanother for the success. 

XIV. "The watches of the night were set, " says Herodotus, in hisanimated and graphic strain--"the night itself was far advanced--auniversal and utter stillness prevailed throughout the army, buried inrepose--when Alexander, the Macedonian prince, rode secretly from thePersian camp, and, coming to the outposts of the Athenians, whose linewas immediately opposed to his own, demanded an audience of theircommanders. This obtained, the Macedonian thus addressed them: 'I amcome to inform you of a secret you must impart to Pausanias alone. From remote antiquity I am of Grecian lineage. I am solicitous of thesafety of Greece. Long since, but for the auguries, would Mardoniushave given battle. Regarding these no longer, he will attack youearly on the morning. Be prepared. If he change his purpose, remainas you are--he has provisions only for a few days more. Should theevent of war prove favourable, you will but deem it fitting to makesome effort for the independence of one who exposes himself to sogreat a peril for the purpose of apprizing you of the intentions ofthe foe. I am Alexander of Macedon. '"

"Thus saying, the horseman returned to the Persian camp. "

"The Athenian leaders hastened to Pausanias, and informed him of whatthey had heard. "

The Spartan does not appear, according to the strong expressions [106]of Herodotus, to have received the intelligence with the customarydauntlessness of his race. He feared the Persians, he wasunacquainted with their mode of warfare, and he proposed to theAthenians to change posts with the Lacedaemonians; "For you, " said he, "have before contended with the Mede, and your experience of theirwarfare you learned at Marathon. We, on the other hand, have foughtagainst the Boeotians and Thessalians [opposed to the left wing]. Letus then change our stations. "

At first the Athenian officers were displeased at the offer, not fromterror, but from pride; and it seemed to them as if they were shifted, like helots, from post to post at the Spartan's pleasure. ButAristides, whose power of persuasion consisted chiefly in appeals, notto the baser, but the loftier passions, and who, in swaying, exaltedhis countrymen--represented to them that the right wing, which theSpartan proposed to surrender, was, in effect, the station of command. 

"And are you, " he said, "not pleased with the honour you obtain, norsensible of the advantage of contending, not against the sons ofGreece, but the barbarian invader?" [107]

These words animated those whom the Athenian addressed; they instantlyagreed to exchange posts with the Spartans, and "to fight for thetrophies of Marathon and Salamis. " [108]

XV. As, in the dead of night, the Athenians marched to their newstation, they exhorted each other to valour and to the recollection offormer victories. But Mardonius, learning from deserters the changeof position, moved his Persians opposite the Spartans; and Pausaniasagain returning to the right, Mardonius pursued a similar manoeuvre. Thus the day was consumed without an action. The troops havingresumed their former posts, Mardonius sent a herald to the Spartans, chiding them for their cowardice, and proposing that an allottednumber meet equal Spartans in battle, and whoever conquered should bedeemed victors over the whole adverse army. 

This challenge drew no reply from the Spartans. And Mardonius, construing the silence into a proof of fear, already anticipated thevictory. His cavalry, advancing upon the Greeks, distressed them fromafar and in safety with their shafts and arrows. They succeeded ingaining the Gargaphian fountain, which supplied water to the Grecianarmy, and choked up the stream. Thus cut off from water, and, at thesame time, yet more inconvenienced by the want of provisions, theconvoy of which was intercepted by the Persian cavalry, the Grecianchiefs determined to shift the ground, and occupy a space which, beingsurrounded by rivulets, was termed the Island of Oeroe [109], andafforded an ample supply of water. This island was about a mile fromtheir present encampment: thence they proposed to detach half theirarmy to relieve a convoy of provisions encompassed in the mountains. 

About four hours after sunset the army commenced its march; but whenPausanias gave the word to his Spartans, one officer, namedAmompharetus, obstinately refused to stir. He alleged the customs andoaths of Sparta, and declared he would not fly from the barbarian foe, nor connive at the dishonour of Sparta. 

XVI. Pausanias, though incensed at the obstinacy of the officer, wasunwilling to leave him and his troop to perish; and while the disputewas still unsettled, the Athenians, suspicious of their ally, "forthey knew well it was the custom of Spartans to say one thing and tothink another, " [110] despatched a horseman to Pausanias to learn thecause of the delay. The messenger found the soldiers in their ranks;the leaders in violent altercation. Pausanias was arguing withAmompharetus, when the last, just as the Athenian approached, took upa huge stone with both hands, and throwing it at the feet ofPausanias, vehemently exclaimed, "With this calculus I give mysuffrage against flying from the stranger. " Pausanias, in greatperplexity, bade the Athenian report the cause of the delay, andimplore his countrymen to halt a little, that they might act inconcert. At length, towards morning, Pausanias resolved, despiteAmompharetus, to commence his march. All his forces proceeded alongthe steep defiles at the base of Cithaeron, from fear of the Persiancavalry; the more dauntless Athenians along the plain. Amompharetus, after impotent attempts to detain his men, was reluctantly compelledto follow. 

XVII. Mardonius, beholding the vacant ground before him no longerbristling with the Grecian ranks, loudly vented his disdain of thecowardice of the fugitives, and instantly led his impatient army overthe Asopus in pursuit. As yet, the Athenians, who had already passedthe plain, were concealed by the hills; and the Tegeans andLacedaemonians were the sole object of attack. 

As the troops of Mardonius advanced, the rest of the Persian armament, deeming the task was now not to fight but to pursue, raised theirstandards and poured forward tumultuously, without discipline ororder. 

Pausanias, pressed by the Persian line, and if not of a timorous, atleast of an irresolute temper, lost no time in sending to theAthenians for succour. But when the latter were on their march withthe required aid, they were suddenly intercepted by the auxiliaryGreeks in the Persian service, and cut off from the rescue of theSpartans. 

The Spartans beheld themselves thus left unsupported with considerablealarm. Yet their force, including the Tegeans and helots, wasfifty-three thousand men. Committing himself to the gods, Pausaniasordained a solemn sacrifice, his whole army awaiting the result, whilethe shafts of the Persian bowmen poured on them near and fast. Butthe entrails presented discouraging omens, and the sacrifice was againrenewed. Meanwhile the Spartans evinced their characteristicfortitude and discipline--not one man stirring from his ranks untilthe auguries should assume a more favouring aspect; all harassed, andsome wounded, by the Persian arrows, they yet, seeking protection onlybeneath their broad bucklers, waited with a stern patience the time oftheir leader and of Heaven. Then fell Callicrates, the stateliest andstrongest soldier in the whole army, lamenting, not death, but thathis sword was as yet undrawn against the invader. 

XVIII. And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to forbid thebattle, when Pausanias, lifting his eyes, that streamed with tears, tothe temple of Juno that stood hard by, supplicated the tutelarygoddess of Cithaeron, that if the fates forbade the Greeks to conquer, they might at least fall like warriors [111]. And while uttering thisprayer, the tokens waited for became suddenly visible in the victims, and the augurs announced the promise of coming victory. 

Therewith the order of battle rang instantly through the army, and, touse the poetical comparison of Plutarch, the Spartan phalanx suddenlystood forth in its strength, like some fierce animal--erecting itsbristles and preparing its vengeance for the foe. The ground, brokenin many steep and precipitous ridges, and intersected by the Asopus, whose sluggish stream [112] winds over a broad and rushy bed, wasunfavourable to the movements of cavalry, and the Persian footadvanced therefore on the Greeks. 

Drawn up in their massive phalanx, the Lacedaemonians presented analmost impenetrable body--sweeping slowly on, compact and serried--while the hot and undisciplined valour of the Persians, more fortunatein the skirmish than the battle, broke itself into a thousand wavesupon that moving rock. Pouring on in small numbers at a time, theyfell fast round the progress of the Greeks--their armour slightagainst the strong pikes of Sparta--their courage without skill--theirnumbers without discipline; still they fought gallantly, even when onthe ground seizing the pikes with their naked hands, and with thewonderful agility which still characterizes the oriental swordsman, springing to their feet and regaining their arms when seeminglyovercome--wresting away their enemies' shields, and grappling withthem desperately hand to hand. 

XIX. Foremost of a band of a thousand chosen Persians, conspicuous byhis white charger, and still more by his daring valour, rodeMardonius, directing the attack--fiercer wherever his armour blazed. Inspired by his presence, the Persians fought worthily of theirwarlike fame, and, even in falling, thinned the Spartan ranks. Atlength the rash but gallant leader of the Asiatic armies received amortal wound--his scull was crushed in by a stone from the hand of aSpartan [113]. His chosen band, the boast of the army, fell fightinground him, but his death was the general signal of defeat and flight. Encumbered by their long robes, and pressed by the relentlessconquerors, the Persians fled in disorder towards their camp, whichwas secured by wooden intrenchments, by gates, and towers, and walls. Here, fortifying themselves as they best might, they contendedsuccessfully, and with advantage, against the Lacedaemonians, who wereill skilled in assault and siege. 

Meanwhile the Athenians obtained the victory on the plains over theGreeks of Mardonius--finding their most resolute enemy in the Thebans(three hundred of whose principal warriors fell in the field)--and nowjoined the Spartans at the Persian camp. The Athenians are said tohave been better skilled in the art of siege than the Spartans; yet atthat time their experience could scarcely have been greater. TheAthenians were at all times, however, of a more impetuous temper; andthe men who had "run to the charge" at Marathon were not to be baffledby the desperate remnant of their ancient foe. They scaled the walls--they effected a breach through which the Tegeans were the first torush--the Greeks poured fast and fierce into the camp. Appalled, dismayed, stupefied by the suddenness and greatness of their loss, thePersians no longer sustained their fame--they dispersed themselves inall directions, falling, as they fled, with a prodigious slaughter, sothat out of that mighty armament scarce three thousand effected anescape. We must except, however, the wary and distrustful Artabazus, who, on the first tokens of defeat, had fled with the forty thousandParthians and Chorasmians he commanded towards Phocis, in theintention to gain the Hellespont. The Mantineans arrived after thecapture of the camp, too late for their share of glory; theyendeavoured to atone the loss by the pursuit of Artabazus, which was, however, ineffectual. The Eleans arrived after the Mantineans. Theleaders of both these people were afterward banished. 

XX. An Aeginetan proposed to Pausanias to inflict on the corpse ofMardonius the same insult which Xerxes had put upon the body ofLeonidas. 

The Spartan indignantly refused. "After elevating my country tofame, " said he, "would you have me depress it to infamy by vengeanceon the body of the dead? Leonidas and Thermopylae are sufficientlyavenged by this mighty overthrow of the living. "

The body of that brave and ill-fated general, the main author of thewar, was removed the next day--by whose piety and to what sepulchre isunknown. The tomb of his doubtful fame is alone eternally visiblealong the plains of Plataea, and above the gray front of theimperishable Cithaeron!

XXI. The victory won (September, B. C. 479), the conquerors weredazzled by the gorgeous plunder which remained--tents and couchesdecorated with precious metals--cups, and vessels, and sacks of gold--and the dead themselves a booty, from the costly ornaments of theirchains and bracelets, and cimeters vainly splendid--horses, andcamels, and Persian women, and all the trappings and appliances bywhich despotism made a luxury of war. 

Pausanias forbade the booty to be touched [114], and directed thehelots to collect the treasure in one spot. But those dexterousslaves secreted many articles of value, by the purchase of whichseveral of the Aeginetans, whose avarice was sharpened by a life ofcommerce, enriched themselves--obtaining gold at the price of brass. 

Piety dedicated to the gods a tenth part of the booty--from which waspresented to the shrine of Delphi a golden tripod, resting on athree-headed snake of brass; to the Corinthian Neptune a brazen state ofthe deity, seven cubits high; and to the Jupiter of Olympia a statue often cubits. Pausanias obtained also a tenth of the produce in eacharticle of plunder--horses and camels, women and gold--a prize whichruined in rewarding him. The rest was divided among the soldiers, according to their merit. 

So much, however, was left unappropriated in the carelessness ofsatiety, that, in after times, the battlefield still afforded to thesearch of the Plataeans chests of silver and gold, and othertreasures. 

XXIL Taking possession of the tent of Mardonius, which had formerlybeen that of Xerxes, Pausanias directed the oriental slaves who hadescaped the massacre to prepare a banquet after the fashion of thePersians, and as if served to Mardonius. Besides this gorgeous feast, the Spartan ordered his wonted repast to be prepared; and then, turning to the different chiefs, exclaimed--"See the folly of thePersian, who forsook such splendour to plunder such poverty. "

The story has in it something of the sublime. But the austere Spartanwas soon corrupted by the very luxuries he affected to disdain. It isoften that we despise to-day what we find it difficult to resistto-morrow. 

XXIII. The task of reward to the living completed, the Greeksproceeded to that of honour to the dead. In three trenches theLacedaemonians were interred; one contained those who belonged to aclass in Sparta called the Knights [115], of whom two hundred hadconducted Themistocles to Tegea (among these was the stubbornAmompharetus); the second, the other Spartans; the third, the helots. The Athenians, Tegeans, Megarians, Phliasians, each had their singleand separate places of sepulture, and, over all, barrows of earth wereraised. Subsequently, tribes and states, that had shared indeed thefinal battle or the previous skirmishes, but without the glory of aloss of life, erected cenotaphs to imaginary dead in that illustriousburial-field. Among those spurious monuments was one dedicated to theAeginetans. Aristodemus, the Spartan who had returned safe fromThermopylae, fell at Plataea, the most daring of the Greeks on thatday, voluntarily redeeming a dishonoured life by a glorious death. But to his manes alone of the Spartan dead no honours were decreed. 

XXIV. Plutarch relates that a dangerous dispute ensued between theSpartans and Athenians as to their relative claim to the Aristeia, orfirst military honours; the question was decided by awarding them tothe Plataeans--a state of which none were jealous; from a similarmotive, ordinary men are usually found possessed of the honours due tothe greatest. 

More important than the Aristeia, had the spirit been properlymaintained, were certain privileges then conferred on Plataea. Thither, in a subsequent assembly of the allies, it was proposed byAristides that deputies from the states of Greece should be annuallysent to sacrifice to Jupiter the Deliverer, and confer upon thegeneral politics of Greece. There, every fifth year, should becelebrated games in honour of Liberty; while the Plataeans themselves, exempted from military service, should be deemed, so long as theyfulfilled the task thus imposed upon them, a sacred and inviolablepeople. Thus Plataea nominally became a second Elis--its battle-fieldanother Altis. Aristides, at the same time, sought to enforce thelarge and thoughtful policy commenced by Themistocles. He endeavouredto draw the jealous states of Greece into a common and perpetualleague, maintained against all invaders by a standing force of onethousand cavalry, one hundred ships, and ten thousand heavy-armedinfantry. 

XXV. An earnest and deliberate council was now held, in which it wasresolved to direct the victorious army against Thebes, and demand thepersons of those who had sided with the Mede. Fierce as had been thehostility of that state to the Hellenic liberties, its sin was that ofthe oligarchy rather than the people. The most eminent of thesetraitors to Greece were Timagenidas and Attaginus, and the alliesresolved to destroy the city unless those chiefs were given up tojustice. 

On the eleventh day from the battle they sat down before Thebes, andon the refusal of the inhabitants to surrender the chiefs so justlyobnoxious, laid waste the Theban lands. 

Whatever we may think of the conduct of Timagenidas in espousing thecause of the invaders of Greece, we must give him the praise of adisinterested gallantry, which will remind the reader of the siege ofCalais by Edward III. , and the generosity of Eustace de St. Pierre. He voluntarily proposed to surrender himself to the besiegers. 

The offer was accepted: Timagenidas and several others were deliveredto Pausanias, removed to Corinth, and there executed--a stern butsalutary example. Attaginus saved himself by flight. His children, given up to Pausanias, were immediately dismissed. "Infants, " saidthe Spartan, "could not possibly have conspired against us with theMede. "

While Thebes preserved herself from destruction, Artabazus succeededin effecting his return to Asia, his troop greatly reduced by theattacks of the Thracians, and the excesses of famine and fatigue. 

XXVI. On the same day as that on which the battle of Plataea crushedthe land-forces of Persia, a no less important victory was gained overtheir fleet at Mycale in Ionia. 

It will be remembered that Leotychides, the Spartan king, and theAthenian Xanthippus, had conducted the Grecian navy to Delos. Thereanchored, they received a deputation from Samos, among whom wasHegesistratus, the son of Aristagoras. These ambassadors declaredthat all the Ionians waited only the moment to revolt from the Persianyoke, and that the signal would be found in the first active measuresof the Grecian confederates. Leotychides, induced by theserepresentations, received the Samians into the general league, and setsail to Samos. There, drawn up in line of battle, near the temple ofJuno, they prepared to hazard an engagement. 

But the Persians, on their approach, retreated to the continent, inorder to strengthen themselves with their land-forces, which, to theamount of sixty thousand, under the command of the Persian Tigranes, Xerxes had stationed at Mycale for the protection of Ionia. 

Arrived at Mycale, they drew their ships to land, fortifying them withstrong intrenchments and barricades, and then sanguinely awaited theresult. 

The Greeks, after a short consultation, resolved upon pursuit. Approaching the enemy's station, they beheld the sea deserted, theships secured by intrenchments, and long ranks of infantry rangedalong the shore. Leotychides, by a herald, exhorted the Ionians inthe Persian service to remember their common liberties, and that onthe day of battle their watchword would be "Hebe. "

The Persians, distrusting these messages, though uttered in a tonguethey understood not, and suspecting the Samians, took their arms fromthe latter; and, desirous of removing the Milesians to a distance, intrusted them with the guard of the paths to the heights of Mycale. Using these precautions against the desertion of their allies, thePersians prepared for battle. 

The Greeks were anxious and fearful not so much for themselves as fortheir countrymen in Boeotia, opposed to the mighty force of Mardonius. But a report spreading through the camp that a complete victory hadbeen obtained in that territory (an artifice, most probably, ofLeotychides), animated their courage and heightened their hopes. 

The Athenians, who, with the troops of Corinth, Sicyon, and Troezene, formed half the army, advanced by the coast and along the plain--theLacedaemonians by the more steep and wooded courses; and while thelatter were yet on their march, the Athenians were already engaged atthe intrenchments (Battle of Mycale, September, B. C. 479). 

Inspired not more by enmity than emulation, the Athenians urged eachother to desperate feats--that they, and not the Spartans, might havethe honours of the day. They poured fiercely on--after an obstinateand equal conflict, drove back the foe to the barricades that girttheir ships, stormed the intrenchments, carried the wall, and, rushingin with their allies, put the barbarians to disorderly and rapidflight. The proper Persians, though but few in number, alone stoodtheir ground--and even when Tigranes himself was slain, resolutelyfought on until the Lacedaemonians entered the intrenchment, and allwho had survived the Athenian, perished by the Spartan, sword. 

The disarmed Samians, as soon as the fortunes of the battle becameapparent, gave all the assistance they could render to the Greeks; theother Ionians seized the same opportunity to revolt and turn theirarms against their allies. In the mountain defiles the Milesiansintercepted their own fugitive allies, consigning them to the Greciansword, and active beyond the rest in their slaughter. So relentlessand so faithless are men, compelled to servitude, when the occasionsummons them to be free. 

XXVII. This battle, in which the Athenians were pre-eminentlydistinguished, was followed up by the conflagration of the Persianships and the collection of the plunder. The Greeks then retired toSamos. Here deliberating, it was proposed by the Peloponnesianleaders that Ionia should henceforth, as too dangerous and remote toguard, be abandoned to the barbarian, and that, in recompense, theIonians should be put into possession of the maritime coasts of thoseGrecian states which had sided with the Mede. The Athenians resistedso extreme a proposition, and denied the power of the Peloponnesiansto dispose of Athenian colonies. The point was surrendered by thePeloponnesians; the Ionians of the continent were left to make theirown terms with the barbarian, but the inhabitants of the isles whichhad assisted against the Mede were received into the generalconfederacy, bound by a solemn pledge never to desert it. The fleetthen sailed to the Hellespont, with the design to destroy the bridge, which they believed still existent. Finding it, however, alreadybroken, Leotychides and the Peloponnesians returned to Greece. TheAthenians resolved to attempt the recovery of the colony of Miltiadesin the Chersonese. The Persians collected their whole remaining forceat the strongest hold in that peninsula--the Athenians laid siege toit (begun in the autumn, B. C. 479, concluded in the spring, B. C. 478), and, after enduring a famine so obstinate that the cordage, orrather straps, of their bedding were consumed for food, the Persiansevacuated the town, which the inhabitants then cheerfully surrendered. 

Thus concluding their victories, the Athenians returned to Greece, carrying with them a vast treasure, and, not the least preciousrelics, the fragments and cables of the Hellespontic bridge, to besuspended in their temples. 

XXVIII. Lingering at Sardis, Xerxes beheld the scanty and exhaustedremnants of his mighty force, the fugitives of the fatal days ofMycale and Plataea. The army over which he had wept in the zenith ofhis power, had fulfilled the prediction of his tears: and the armedmight of Media and Egypt, of Lydia and Assyria, was now no more!

So concluded the great Persian invasion--that war the most memorablein the history of mankind, whether from the vastness or from thefailure of its designs. We now emerge from the poetry that belongs toearly Greece, through the mists of which the forms of men assumeproportions as gigantic as indistinct. The enchanting Herodotusabandons us, and we do not yet permanently acquire, in the stead ofhis romantic and wild fidelity, the elaborate and sombre statesmanshipof the calm Thucydides. Henceforth we see more of the beautiful andthe wise, less of the wonderful and vast. What the heroic age is totradition, the Persian invasion is to history. 

BOOK IV. 

FROM THE END OF THE PERSIAN INVASION TO THE DEATH OF CIMON. B. C. 479--B. C. 449. 

CHAPTER I. 

Remarks on the Effects of War. --State of Athens. --Interference ofSparta with respect to the Fortifications of Athens. --DexterousConduct of Themistocles. --The New Harbour of the Piraeus. --Propositionof the Spartans in the Amphictyonic Council defeated by Themistocles. --Allied Fleet at Cyprus and Byzantium. --Pausanias. --Alteration in hisCharacter. --His ambitious Views and Treason. --The Revolt of theIonians from the Spartan Command. --Pausanias recalled. --Dorcisreplaces him. --The Athenians rise to the Head of the Ionian League. --Delos made the Senate and Treasury of the Allies. --Able and prudentManagement of Aristides. --Cimon succeeds to the Command of the Fleet. --Character of Cimon. --Eion besieged. --Scyros colonized by Atticans. --Supposed Discovery of the Bones of Theseus. --Declining Power ofThemistocles. --Democratic Change in the Constitution. --Themistoclesostracised. --Death of Aristides. 

I. It is to the imperishable honour of the French philosophers of thelast century, that, above all the earlier teachers of mankind, theyadvocated those profound and permanent interests of the human racewhich are inseparably connected with a love of PEACE; that theystripped the image of WAR of the delusive glory which it took, in theprimitive ages of society, from the passions of savages and theenthusiasm of poets, and turned our contemplation from the fame of theindividual hero to the wrongs of the butchered millions. But theirzeal for that HUMANITY, which those free and bold thinkers were thefirst to make the vital principle of a philosophical school, led theminto partial and hasty views, too indiscriminately embraced by theirdisciples; and, in condemning the evils, they forgot the advantages ofwar. The misfortunes of one generation are often necessary to theprosperity of another. The stream of blood fertilizes the earth overwhich it flows, and war has been at once the scourge and the civilizerof the world: sometimes it enlightens the invader, sometimes theinvaded; and forces into sudden and brilliant action the arts and thevirtues that are stimulated by the invention of necessity--matured bythe energy of distress. What adversity is to individuals, war oftenis to nations: uncertain in its consequences, it is true that, withsome, it subdues and crushes, but with others it braces and exalts. Nor are the greater and more illustrious elements of character in menor in states ever called prominently forth, without something of thatbitter and sharp experience which hardens the more robust propertiesof the mind, which refines the more subtle and sagacious. Even whenthese--the armed revolutions of the world--are most terrible in theirresults--destroying the greatness and the liberties of one people--they serve, sooner or later, to produce a counteracting rise andprogress in the fortunes of another; as the sea here advances, thererecedes, swallowing up the fertilities of this shore to increase theterritories of that; and fulfilling, in its awful and appallingagency, that mandate of human destinies which ordains all things to bechanged and nothing to be destroyed. Without the invasion of Persia, Greece might have left no annals, and the modern world might search invain for inspirations from the ancient. 

II. When the deluge of the Persian arms rolled back to its Easternbed, and the world was once more comparatively at rest, the continentof Greece rose visibly and majestically above the rest of thecivilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains, the infant state of Romewas silently and obscurely struggling into strength against theneighbouring and petty states in which the old Etrurian civilizationwas rapidly passing to decay. The genius of Gaul and Germany, yetunredeemed from barbarism, lay scarce known, save where colonized byGreeks, in the gloom of its woods and wastes. The pride of Carthagehad been broken by a signal defeat in Sicily; and Gelo, the able andastute tyrant of Syracuse, maintained in a Grecian colony thesplendour of the Grecian name. 

The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy of the world, waspermanently checked and crippled; the strength of generations had beenwasted, and the immense extent of the empire only served yet more tosustain the general peace, from the exhaustion of its forces. Thedefeat of Xerxes paralyzed the East. 

Thus Greece was left secure, and at liberty to enjoy the tranquillityit had acquired, and to direct to the arts of peace the novel andamazing energies which had been prompted by the dangers and exalted bythe victories of war. 

III. The Athenians, now returned to their city, saw before them thearduous task of rebuilding its ruins and restoring its wasted lands. The vicissitudes of the war had produced many silent and internal aswell as exterior changes. Many great fortunes had been broken; andthe ancient spirit of the aristocracy had received no inconsiderableshock in the power of new families; the fame of the baseborn anddemocratic Themistocles, and the victories which a whole people hadparticipated, broke up much of the prescriptive and venerable sanctityattached to ancestral names and to particular families. This wassalutary to the spirit of enterprise in all classes. The ambition ofthe great was excited to restore, by some active means, their brokenfortunes and decaying influence--the energies of the humbler ranks, already aroused by their new importance, were stimulated to maintainand to increase it. It was the very crisis in which a new directionmight be given to the habits and the character of a whole people; andto seize all the advantages of that crisis, fate, in Themistocles, hadallotted to Athens a man whose qualities were not only pre-eminentlygreat in themselves, but peculiarly adapted to the circumstances ofthe time. And, as I have elsewhere remarked, it is indeed the natureand prerogative of free states to concentrate the popular will intosomething of the unity of despotism, by producing, one after another, a series of representatives of the wants and exigences of the hour--each leading his generation, but only while he sympathizes with itswill; and either baffling or succeeded by his rivals, not inproportion as he excels or he is outshone in genius, but as he givesor ceases to give to the widest range of the legislative power themost concentrated force of the executive; thus uniting the desires ofthe greatest number under the administration of the narrowest possiblecontrol; the constitution popular--the government absolute, but, responsible. 

IV. In the great events of the late campaign, we have lost sight ofthe hero of Salamis [116]. But the Persian war was no sooner endedthan we find Themistocles the most prominent citizen of Athens--asufficient proof that his popularity had not yet diminished, and thathis absence from Plataea was owing to no popular caprice or partytriumph. 

V. In the sweeping revenge of Mardonius, even private houses had beendestroyed, excepting those which had served as lodgments for thePersian nobles [117]. Little of the internal city, less of theoutward walls was spared. As soon as the barbarians had quitted theirterritory, the citizens flocked back with their slaves and familiesfrom the various places of refuge; and the first care was to rebuildthe city. They were already employed upon this necessary task, whenambassadors arrived from Sparta, whose vigilant government, everjealous of a rival, beheld with no unreasonable alarm the increasingnavy and the growing fame of a people hitherto undeniably inferior tothe power of Lacedaemon. And the fear that was secretly cherished bythat imperious nation was yet more anxiously nursed by the subordinateallies [118]. Actuated by their own and the general apprehensions, the Spartans therefore now requested the Athenians to desist from theerection of their walls. Nor was it without a certain grace, and aplausible excuse, that the government of a city, itself unwalled, inveighed against the policy of walls for Athens. The Spartanambassadors urged that fortified towns would become strongholds tothe barbarian, should he again invade them; and the walls of Athensmight be no less useful to him than he had found the ramparts ofThebes. The Peloponnesus, they asserted, was the legitimate retreatand the certain resource of all; and, unwilling to appear exclusivelyjealous of Athens, they requested the Athenians not only to desistfrom their own fortifications, but to join with them in razing everyfortification without the limit of the Peloponnesus. 

It required not a genius so penetrating as that of Themistocles todivine at once the motive of the demand, and the danger of aperemptory refusal. He persuaded the Athenians to reply that theywould send ambassadors to debate the affair; and dismissed theSpartans without further explanation. Themistocles next recommendedto the senate [119] that he himself might be one of the ambassadorssent to Sparta, and that those associated with him in the mission (forit was not the custom of Greece to vest embassies in individuals)should be detained at Athens until the walls were carried to a heightsufficient, at least, for ordinary defence. He urged his countrymento suspend for this great task the completion of all private edifices--nay, to spare no building, private or public, from which materialsmight be adequately selected. The whole population, slaves, women, and children, were to assist in the labour. 

VI. This counsel adopted, he sketched an outline of the conduct hehimself intended to pursue, and departed for Sparta. His colleagues, no less important than Aristides, and Abronychus, a distinguishedofficer in the late war, were to follow at the time agreed on. 

Arrived in the Laconian capital, Themistocles demanded no publicaudience, avoided all occasions of opening the questions in dispute, and screened the policy of delay beneath the excuse that hiscolleagues were not yet arrived--that he was incompetent to treatwithout their counsel and concurrence--and that doubtless they wouldspeedily appear in Sparta. 

When we consider the shortness of the distance between the states, thecommunications the Spartans would receive from the neighbouringAeginetans, more jealous than themselves, and the astute andproverbial sagacity of the Spartan council--it is impossible tobelieve that, for so long a period as, with the greatest expedition, must have elapsed from the departure of Themistocles to the necessaryprogress in the fortifications, the ephors could have been ignorant ofthe preparations at Athens or the designs of Themistocles. I fear, therefore, that we must believe, with Theopompus [120], thatThemistocles, the most expert briber of his time, heightened thatesteem which Thucydides assures us the Spartans bore him, by privateand pecuniary negotiations with the ephors. At length, however, suchdecided and unequivocal intelligence of the progress of the wallsarrived at Sparta, that the ephors could no longer feel or affectincredulity. 

Themistocles met the remonstrances of the Spartans by an appearance ofcandour mingled with disdain. "Why, " said he, "give credit to theseidle rumours? Send to Athens some messengers of your own, in whom youcan confide; let them inspect matters with their own eyes, and reportto you accordingly. "

The ephors (not unreluctantly, if the assertion of Theopompus may becredited) yielded to so plausible a suggestion, and in the mean whilethe crafty Athenian despatched a secret messenger to Athens, urgingthe government to detain the Spartan ambassadors with as littlesemblance of design as possible, and by no means to allow theirdeparture until the safe return of their own mission to Sparta. Forit was by no means improbable that, without such hostages, even theephors, however powerful and however influenced, might not be enabled, when the Spartans generally were made acquainted with the deceitpractised upon them, to prevent the arrest of the Athenian delegates. [121]

At length the walls, continued night and day with incredible zeal andtoil, were sufficiently completed; and disguise, no longer possible, was no longer useful. Themistocles demanded the audience he hadhitherto deferred, and boldly avowed that Athens was now so farfortified as to protect its citizens. "In future, " he added, haughtily, "when Sparta or our other confederates send ambassadors toAthens, let them address us as a people well versed in our owninterests and the interests of our common Greece. When we desertedAthens for our ships, we required and obtained no Lacedaemoniansuccours to support our native valour; in all subsequent measures, towhom have we shown ourselves inferior, whether in the council or thefield? At present we have judged it expedient to fortify our city, rendering it thus more secure for ourselves and our allies. Nor wouldit be possible, with a strength inferior to that of any rival power, adequately to preserve and equally to adjust the balance of theliberties of Greece. " [122]

Contending for this equality, he argued that either all the cities inthe Lacedaemonian league should be dismantled of their fortresses, orthat it should be conceded, that in erecting fortresses for herselfAthens had rightly acted. 

VII. The profound and passionless policy of Sparta forbade alloutward signs of unavailing and unreasonable resentment. TheSpartans, therefore, replied with seeming courtesy, that "in theirembassy they had not sought to dictate, but to advise--that theirobject was the common good;" and they accompanied their excuses withprofessions of friendship for Athens, and panegyrics on the Athenianvalour in the recent war. But the anger they forbore to show onlyrankled the more bitterly within. [123]

The ambassadors of either state returned home; and thus the mingledfirmness and craft of Themistocles, so well suited to the people withwhom he had to deal, preserved his country from the present jealousiesof a yet more deadly and implacable foe than the Persian king, andlaid the foundation of that claim of equality with the most eminentstate of Greece, which he hastened to strengthen and enlarge. 

The ardour of the Athenians in their work of fortification had sparedno material which had the recommendation of strength. The wallseverywhere presented, and long continued to exhibit, an evidence ofthe haste in which they were built. Motley and rough hewn, anduncouthly piled, they recalled, age after age, to the traveller thename of the ablest statesman and the most heroic days of Athens. There, at frequent intervals, would he survey stones wrought in therude fashion of former times--ornaments borrowed from the antiqueedifices demolished by the Mede--and frieze and column plucked fromdismantled sepulchres; so that even the dead contributed from theirtombs to the defence of Athens. 

VIII. Encouraged by the new popularity and honours which followed thesuccess of his mission, Themistocles now began to consummate the vastschemes he had formed, not only for the aggrandizement of his country, but for the change in the manners of the citizens. All that is leftto us of this wonderful man proves that, if excelled by others inaustere virtue or in dazzling accomplishment, he stands unrivalled forthe profound and far-sighted nature of his policy. He seems, unlikemost of his brilliant countrymen, to have been little influenced bythe sallies of impulse or the miserable expediencies of faction--hisschemes denote a mind acting on gigantic systems; and it isastonishing with what virtuous motives and with what prophetic art heworked through petty and (individually considered) dishonest means togrand and permanent results. He stands out to the gaze of time, themodel of what a great and fortunate statesman should be, so long asmankind have evil passions as well as lofty virtues, and the statethat he seeks to serve is surrounded by powerful and restless foes, whom it is necessary to overreach where it is dangerous to offend. 

In the year previous to the Persian war, Themistocles had filled theoffice of archon [124], and had already in that year planned theconstruction of a harbour in the ancient deme of Piraeus [125], forthe convenience of the fleet which Athens had formed. Late events hadfrustrated the continuance of the labour, and Themistocles nowresolved to renew and complete it, probably on a larger and moreelaborate scale. 

The port of Phalerun had hitherto been the main harbour of Athens--onewholly inadequate to the new navy she had acquired; another inlet, Munychia, was yet more inconvenient. But equally at hand was thecapacious, though neglected port of Piraeus, so formed by nature as topermit of a perfect fortification against a hostile fleet. OfPiraeus, therefore, Themistocles now designed to construct the mostample and the most advantageous harbour throughout all Greece. Helooked upon this task as the foundation of his favourite and mostambitious project, viz. , the securing to Athens the sovereignty of thesea. [126]

The completion of the port--the increased navy which the constructionof the new harbour would induce--the fame already acquired by Athensin maritime warfare, encouraging attention to naval discipline andtactics--proffered a splendid opening to the ambition of a people atonce enterprising and commercial. Themistocles hoped that the resultsof his policy would enable the Athenians to gain over their ownoffspring, the Ionian colonies, and by their means to deliver from thePersian yoke, and permanently attach to the Athenian interest, all theAsiatic Greeks. Extending his views, he beheld the various insularstates united to Athens by a vast maritime power, severing themselvesfrom Lacedaemon, and following the lead of the Attican republic. Hesaw his native city thus supplanting, by a naval force, the long-wonpre-eminence and iron supremacy of Sparta upon land, and so extendingher own empire, while she sapped secretly and judiciously theauthority of the most formidable of her rivals. 

IX. But in the execution of these grand designs Themistocles couldnot but anticipate considerable difficulties: first, in the jealousyof the Spartans; and, secondly, in the popular and long-rootedprejudices of the Athenians themselves. Hitherto they had discouragedmaritime affairs, and their more popular leaders had directedattention to agricultural pursuits. We may suppose, too, that themountaineers, or agricultural party, not the least powerful, wouldresist so great advantages to the faction of the coastmen, ifacquainted with all the results which the new policy would produce. Nor could so experienced a leader of mankind be insensible of thoseoften not insalutary consequences of a free state in the changinghumours of a wide democracy--their impatience at pecuniary demands--their quick and sometimes uncharitable apprehensions of the motives oftheir advisers. On all accounts it was necessary, therefore, to actwith as much caution as the task would admit--rendering the designinvidious neither to foreign nor to domestic jealousies. Themistoclesseemed to have steered his course through every difficulty with hisusual address. Stripping the account of Diodorus [127] of itsimprobable details, it appears credible at least that Themistoclessecured, in the first instance, the co-operation of Xanthippus andAristides, the heads of the great parties generally opposed to hismeasures, and that he won the democracy to consent that the outline ofhis schemes should not be submitted to the popular assembly, but tothe council of Five Hundred. It is perfectly clear, however, that, assoon as the plan was carried into active operation, the Athenianscould not, as Diodorus would lead us to suppose, have been kept inignorance of its nature; and all of the tale of Diodorus to which wecan lend our belief is, that the people permitted the Five Hundred toexamine the project, and that the popular assembly ratified theapprobation of that senate without inquiring the reasons upon which itwas founded. 

X. The next care of Themistocles was to anticipate the jealousy ofSparta, and forestall her interference. According to Diodorus, hedespatched, therefore, ambassadors to Lacedaemon, representing theadvantages of forming a port which might be the common shelter ofGreece should the barbarian renew his incursions; but it is so obviousthat Themistocles could hardly disclose to Sparta the very project heat first concealed from the Athenians, that while we may allow thefact that Themistocles treated with the Spartans, we must give himcredit, at least, for more crafty diplomacy than that ascribed to himby Diodorus [128]. But whatever the pretexts with which he sought toamuse or beguile the Spartan government, they appear at least to havebeen successful. And the customary indifference of the Spartanstowards maritime affairs was strengthened at this peculiar time byengrossing anxieties as to the conduct of Pausanias. ThusThemistocles, safe alike from foreign and from civil obstacles, pursued with activity the execution of his schemes. The Piraeus wasfortified by walls of amazing thickness, so as to admit two cartsabreast. Within, the entire structure was composed of solid masonry, hewn square, so that each stone fitted exactly, and was furtherstrengthened on the outside by cramps of iron. The walls were nevercarried above half the height originally proposed. But the whole wasso arranged as to form a fortress against assault, too fondly deemedimpregnable, and to be adequately manned by the smallest possiblenumber of citizens; so that the main force might, in time of danger, be spared to the fleet. 

Thus Themistocles created a sea-fortress more important than the cityitself, conformably to the advice he frequently gave to the Athenians, that, if hard pressed by land, they should retire to this arsenal, andrely, against all hostilities, on their naval force. [129]

The new port, which soon bore the ambitious title of the Lower City, was placed under the directions of Hippodamus, a Milesian, who, according to Aristotle [130], was the first author who, without anyknowledge of practical affairs, wrote upon the theory of government. Temples [131], a market-place, even a theatre, distinguished andenriched the new town. And the population that filled it were notlong before they contracted and established a character for themselvesdifferent in many traits and attributes from the citizens of theancient Athens--more bold, wayward, innovating, and tumultuous. 

But if Sparta deemed it prudent, at present, to avoid a directassumption of influence over Athens, her scheming councils were noless bent, though by indirect and plausible means, to the extension ofher own power. To use the simile applied to one of her own chiefs, where the lion's skin fell short, she sought to eke it by the fox's. 

At the assembly of the Amphictyons, the Lacedaemonian delegates movedthat all those states who had not joined in the anti-Persicconfederacy should be expelled the council. Under this popular andpatriotic proposition was sagaciously concealed the increase of theSpartan authority; for had the Thessalians, Argives, and Thebans(voices ever counter to the Lacedaemonians) been expelled theassembly, the Lacedaemonian party would have secured the preponderanceof votes, and the absolute dictation of that ancient council. [132]

But Themistocles, who seemed endowed with a Spartan sagacity for thefoiling the Spartan interests, resisted the proposition by argumentsno less popular. He represented to the delegates that it was unjustto punish states for the errors of their leaders--that only thirty-onecities had contributed to the burden of the war, and many of thoseinconsiderable--that it was equally dangerous and absurd to excludefrom the general Grecian councils the great proportion of the Grecianstates. 

The arguments of Themistocles prevailed, but his success stimulatedyet more sharply against him the rancour of the Lacedaemonians; and, unable to resist him abroad, they thenceforth resolved to underminehis authority at home. 

XI. While, his danger invisible, Themistocles was increasing with hisown power that of the state, the allies were bent on new enterprisesand continued retribution. From Persia, now humbled and exhausted, itwas the moment to wrest the Grecian towns, whether in Europe or inAsia, over which she yet arrogated dominion--it was resolved, therefore, to fit out a fleet, to which the Peloponnesus contributedtwenty and Athens thirty vessels. Aristides presided over the latter;Pausanias was commander-in-chief; many other of the allies joined theexpedition. They sailed to Cyprus, and reduced with ease most of thetowns in that island. Thence proceeding to Byzantium, the mainstrength and citadel of Persia upon those coasts, and the link betweenher European and Asiatic dominions, they blockaded the town andultimately carried it. 

But these foreign events, however important in themselves, weretrifling in comparison with a revolution which accompanied them, andwhich, in suddenly raising Athens to the supreme command of alliedGreece, may be regarded at once as the author of the coming greatness--and the subsequent reverses--of that republic. 

XII. The habits of Sparta--austere, stern, unsocial--rendered herever more effectual in awing foes than conciliating allies; and themanners of the soldiery were at this time not in any way redeemed orcounterbalanced by those of the chief. Since the battle of Plataea aremarkable change was apparent in Pausanias. Glory had made himarrogant, and sudden luxury ostentatious. He had graven on the goldentripod, dedicated by the confederates to the Delphic god, aninscription, claiming exclusively to himself, as the general of theGrecian army, the conquest of the barbarians--an egotism no less atvariance with the sober pride of Sparta, than it was offensive to thejust vanity of the allies. The inscription was afterward erased bythe Spartan government, and another, citing only the names of theconfederate cities, and silent as to that of Pausanias, wassubstituted in its place. 

XIII. To a man of this arrogance, and of a grasping and alreadysuccessful ambition, circumstances now presented great andirresistible temptation. Though leader of the Grecian armies, he wasbut the uncle and proxy of the young Spartan king--the time must comewhen his authority would cease, and the conqueror of the superbMardonius sink into the narrow and severe confines of a Spartancitizen. Possessed of great talents and many eminent qualities, theybut served the more to discontent him with the limits of theirlegitimate sphere and sterility of the Spartan life. And thisdiscontent, operating on a temper naturally haughty, evinced itself ina manner rude, overbearing, and imperious, which the spirit of hisconfederates was ill calculated to suffer or forgive. 

But we can scarcely agree with the ancient historians in attributingthe ascendency of the Athenians alone, or even chiefly, to the conductof Pausanias. The present expedition was naval, and the greater partof the confederates at Byzantium were maritime powers. The superiorfleet and the recent naval glories of the Athenians could not fail togive them, at this juncture, a moral pre-eminence over the otherallies; and we shall observe that the Ionians, and those who hadlately recovered their freedom from the Persian yoke [133], wereespecially desirous to exchange the Spartan for the Athenian command. Connected with the Athenians by origin--by maritime habits--by akindred suavity and grace of temperament--by the constant zeal of theAthenians for their liberties (which made, indeed, the first cause ofthe Persian war)--it was natural that the Ionian Greeks should preferthe standard of Athens to that of a Doric state; and the propositionof the Spartans (baffled by the Athenian councils) to yield up theIonic settlements to the barbarians, could not but bequeath a lastingresentment to those proud and polished colonies. 

XIV. Aware of the offence he had given, and disgusted himself alikewith his allies and his country, the Spartan chief became driven bynature and necessity to a dramatic situation, which a future Schillermay perhaps render yet more interesting than the treason of thegorgeous Wallenstein, to whose character that of Pausanias has beenindirectly likened [134]. The capture of Byzantium brought theSpartan regent into contact with many captured and noble Persians[135], among whom were some related to Xerxes himself. With theseconversing, new and dazzling views were opened to his ambition. Hecould not but recall the example of Demaratus, whose exile from thebarren dignities of Sparta had procured him the luxuries and thesplendour of oriental pomp, with the delegated authority of three ofthe fairest cities of Aeolia. Greater in renown than Demaratus, hewas necessarily more aspiring in his views. Accordingly, he privatelyreleased his more exalted prisoners, pretending they had escaped, andfinally explained whatever messages he had intrusted by them toXerxes, in a letter to the king, confided to an Eretrian namedGongylus, who was versed in the language and the manners of Persia, and to whom he had already deputed the government of Byzantium. Inthis letter Pausanias offered to assist the king in reducing Spartaand the rest of Greece to the Persian yoke, demanding, in recompense, the hand of the king's daughter, with an adequate dowry of possessionsand of power. 

XV. The time had passed when a Persian monarch could deride theloftiness of a Spartan's pretensions--Xerxes received thecommunications with delight, and despatched Artabazus to succeedMegabates in Phrygia, and to concert with the Spartan upon the meanswhereby to execute their joint design [136]. But while Pausanias wasin the full flush of his dazzled and grasping hopes, his fall was athand. Occupied with his new projects, his natural haughtinessincreased daily. He never accosted the officers of the allies butwith abrupt and overbearing insolence; he insulted the military prideby sentencing many of the soldiers to corporeal chastisement, or tostand all day with an iron anchor on their shoulders [137]. Hepermitted none to seek water, forage, or litter, until the Spartanswere first supplied--those who attempted it were driven away by rods. Even Aristides, seeking to remonstrate, was repulsed rudely. "I amnot at leisure, " said the Spartan, with a frown. [138]

Complaints of this treatment were despatched to Sparta, and in themean while the confederates, especially the officers of Chios, Samos, and Lesbos, pressed Aristides to take on himself the general command, and protect them from the Spartan's insolence. The Athenian artfullyreplied, that he saw the necessity of the proposition, but that itought first to be authorized by some action which would render itimpossible to recede from the new arrangement once formed. 

The hint was fiercely taken; and a Samian and a Chian officer, resolving to push matters to the extreme, openly and boldly attackedthe galley of Pausanias himself at the head of the fleet. Disregarding his angry menaces, now impotent, this assault wasimmediately followed up by a public transfer of allegiance; and theaggressors, quitting the Spartan, arrayed themselves under theAthenian, banners. Whatever might have been the consequences of thisinsurrection were prevented by the sudden recall of Pausanias. Theaccusations against him had met a ready hearing in Sparta, and thatwatchful government had already received intimation of his intrigueswith the Mede. On his arrival in Sparta, Pausanias was immediatelysummoned to trial, convicted in a fine for individual and privatemisdemeanours, but acquitted of the principal charge of treason withthe Persians--not so much from the deficiency as from the abundance ofproof [139]; and it was probably prudent to avoid, if possible, thescandal which the conviction of the general might bring upon thenation. 

The Spartans sent Dorcis, with some colleagues, to replace Pausaniasin the command; but the allies were already too disgusted with theyoke of that nation to concede it. And the Athenian ascendency washourly confirmed by the talents, the bearing, and the affable andgracious manners of Aristides. With him was joined an associate ofhigh hereditary name and strong natural abilities, whose character itwill shortly become necessary to place in detail before the reader. This comate was no less a person than Cimon, the son of the greatMiltiades. 

XVI. Dorcis, finding his pretensions successfully rebutted, returnedhome; and the Spartans, never prone to foreign enterprise, anxious forexcuses to free themselves from prosecuting further the Persian war, and fearful that renewed contentions might only render yet moreunpopular the Spartan name, sent forth no fresh claimants to thecommand; they affected to yield that honour, with cheerful content, tothe Athenians. Thus was effected without a blow, and with theconcurrence of her most dreaded rival, that eventful revolution, whichsuddenly raised Athens, so secondary a state before the Persian war, to the supremacy over Greece. So much, when nations have an equalglory, can the one be brought to surpass the other (B. C. 477) by thesuperior wisdom of individuals. The victory of Plataea was wonprincipally by Sparta, then at the head of Greece. And the generalwho subdued the Persians surrendered the results of his victory to thevery ally from whom the sagacious jealousy of his countrymen hadsought most carefully to exclude even the precautions of defence!

XVII. Aristides, now invested with the command of all the allies, save those of the Peloponnesus who had returned home, strengthened theAthenian power by every semblance of moderation. 

Hitherto the Grecian confederates had sent their deputies to thePeloponnesus. Aristides, instead of naming Athens, which might haveexcited new jealousies, proposed the sacred Isle of Delos, a spotpeculiarly appropriate, since it once had been the navel of the Ioniancommerce, as the place of convocation and the common treasury: thetemple was to be the senate house. A new distribution of the taxeslevied on each state, for the maintenance of the league, was ordained. The objects of the league were both defensive and offensive; first, toguard the Aegaean coasts and the Grecian Isles; and, secondly, toundertake measures for the further weakening of the Persian power. Aristides was elected arbitrator in the relative proportions of thegeneral taxation. In this office, which placed the treasures ofGreece at his disposal, he acted with so disinterested a virtue, thathe did not even incur the suspicion of having enriched himself, andwith so rare a fortune that he contented all the allies. The total, raised annually, and with the strictest impartiality, was four hundredand sixty talents (computed at about one hundred and fifteen thousandpounds). 

Greece resounded with the praises of Aristides; it was afterwardequally loud in reprobation of the avarice of the Athenians. For withthe appointment of Aristides commenced the institution of officersstyled Hellenotamiae, or treasurers of Greece; they became a permanentmagistracy--they were under the control of the Athenians; and thusthat people were made at once the generals and the treasurers ofGreece. But the Athenians, unconscious as yet of the power they hadattained--their allies yet more blind--it seemed now, that the morethe latter should confide, the more the former should forbear. So dothe most important results arise from causes uncontemplated by theprovidence of statesmen, and hence do we learn a truth which shouldnever be forgotten--that that power is ever the most certain ofendurance and extent, the commencement of which is made popular bymoderation. 

XVIII. Thus, upon the decay of the Isthmian Congress, rose intoexistence the great Ionian league; and thus was opened to the ambitionof Athens the splendid destiny of the empire of the Grecian seas. Thepre-eminence of Sparta passed away from her, though invisibly andwithout a struggle, and, retiring within herself, she was probablyunaware of the decline of her authority; still seeing herPeloponnesian allies gathering round her, subordinate and submissive, and, by refusing assistance, refusing also allegiance to the new queenof the Ionian league. His task fulfilled, Aristides probably returnedto Athens, and it was at this time and henceforth that it became hispolicy to support the power of Cimon against the authority ofThemistocles [140]. To that eupatrid, joined before with himself, wasnow intrusted the command of the Grecian fleet. 

To great natural abilities, Cimon added every advantage of birth andcircumstance. His mother was a daughter of Olorus, a Thracian prince;his father the great Miltiades. On the death of the latter, it isrecorded, and popularly believed, that Cimon, unable to pay the fineto which Miltiades was adjudged, was detained in custody until awealthy marriage made by his sister Elpinice, to whom he was tenderly, and ancient scandal whispered improperly, attached, released him fromconfinement, and the brother-in-law paid the debt. "Thus severe andharsh, " says Nepos, "was his entrance upon manhood. " [141] But it isvery doubtful whether Cimon was ever imprisoned for the state-debtincurred by his father--and his wealth appears to have beenconsiderable even before he regained his patrimony in the Chersonese, or enriched himself with the Persian spoils. [142]

In early youth, like Themistocles, his conduct had been wild anddissolute [143]; and with his father from a child, he had acquired, with the experience, something of the license, of camps. LikeThemistocles also, he was little skilled in the gracefulaccomplishments of his countrymen; he cultivated neither the art ofmusic, nor the brilliancies of Attic conversation; but power andfortune, which ever soften nature, afterward rendered his habitsintellectual and his tastes refined. He had not the smooth and artfulaffability of Themistocles, but to a certain roughness of manner wasconjoined that hearty and ingenuous frankness which ever conciliatesmankind, especially in free states, and which is yet more popular whenunited to rank. He had distinguished himself highly by his zeal inthe invasion of the Medes, and the desertion of Athens for Salamis;and his valour in the seafight had confirmed the promise of hisprevious ardour. Nature had gifted him with a handsome countenanceand a majestic stature, recommendations in all, but especially inpopular states--and the son of Miltiades was welcomed, not less by thepeople than by the nobles, when he applied for a share in theadministration of the state. Associated with Aristides, first in theembassy to Sparta, and subsequently in the expeditions to Cyprus andByzantium, he had profited by the friendship and the lessons of thatgreat man, to whose party he belonged, and who saw in Cimon a lessinvidious opponent than himself to the policy or the ambition ofThemistocles. 

By the advice of Aristides, Cimon early sought every means toconciliate the allies, and to pave the way to the undivided command heafterward obtained. And it is not improbable that Themistocles mightwillingly have ceded to him the lead in a foreign expedition, whichremoved from the city so rising and active an opponent. Theappointment of Cimon promised to propitiate the Spartans, who everpossessed a certain party in the aristocracy of Athens--who peculiarlyaffected Cimon, and whose hardy character and oligarchical policy theblunt genius and hereditary prejudices of that young noble were wellfitted to admire and to imitate. Cimon was, in a word, precisely theman desired by three parties as the antagonist of Themistocles; viz. , the Spartans, the nobles, and Aristides, himself a host. All thingsconspired to raise the son of Miltiades to an eminence beyond hisyears, but not his capacities. 

XIX. Under Cimon the Athenians commenced their command [144], bymarching against a Thracian town called Eion, situated on the banks ofthe river Strymon, and now garrisoned by a Persian noble. The townwas besieged (B. C. 476), and the inhabitants pressed by famine, whenthe Persian commandant, collecting his treasure upon a pile of wood, on which were placed his slaves, women, and children--set fire to thepile [145]. After this suicide, seemingly not an uncommon mode ofself-slaughter in the East, the garrison surrendered, and itsdefenders, as usual in such warfare, were sold for slaves. 

From Eion the victorious confederates proceeded to Scyros, a smallisland in the Aegean, inhabited by the Dolopians, a tribe addicted topiratical practices, deservedly obnoxious to the traders of theAegean, and who already had attracted the indignation and vengeance ofthe Amphictyonic assembly. The isle occupied, and the piratesexpelled, the territory was colonized by an Attic population. 

An ancient tradition had, as we have seen before, honoured the soil ofScyros with the possession of the bones of the Athenian Theseus--someyears after the conquest of the isle, in the archonship of Aphepsion[146], or Apsephion, an oracle ordained the Athenians to search forthe remains of their national hero, and the skeleton of a man of greatstature, with a lance of brass and a sword by its side was discovered, and immediately appropriated to Theseus. The bones were placed withgreat ceremony in the galley of Cimon, who was then probably on avisit of inspection to the new colony, and transported to Athens. Games were instituted in honour of this event, at which were exhibitedthe contests of the tragic poets; and, in the first of these, Sophocles is said to have made his earliest appearance, and gained theprize from Aeschylus (B. C. 469). 

XXI. It is about the period of Cimon's conquest of Eion and Scyros(B. C. 476) that we must date the declining power of Themistocles. That remarkable man had already added, both to domestic and to Spartanenmities, the general displeasure of the allies. After baffling theproposition of the Spartans to banish from the Amphictyonic assemblythe states that had not joined in the anti-Persic confederacy, he hadsailed round the isles and extorted money from such as had been guiltyof Medising: the pretext might be just, but the exactions wereunpopularly levied. Nor is it improbable that the accusations againsthim of enriching his own coffers as well as the public treasury hadsome foundation. Profoundly disdaining money save as a means to anend, he was little scrupulous as to the sources whence he sustained apower which he yet applied conscientiously to patriotic purposes. Serving his country first, he also served himself; and honest upon onegrand and systematic principle, he was often dishonest in details. 

His natural temper was also ostentatious; like many who have risenfrom an origin comparatively humble, he had the vanity to seek tooutshine his superiors in birth--not more by the splendour of geniusthan by the magnificence of parade. At the Olympic games, thebase-born son of Neocles surpassed the pomp of the wealthy andillustrious Cimon; his table was hospitable, and his own life soft andluxuriant [147]; his retinue numerous beyond those of hiscontemporaries; and he adopted the manners of the noble exactly inproportion as he courted the favour of the populace. This habitualostentation could not fail to mingle with the political hostilities ofthe aristocracy the disdainful jealousies of offended pride; for it isever the weakness of the high-born to forgive less easily the beingexcelled in genius than the being outshone in state by those of inferiororigin. The same haughtiness which offended the nobles began also todisplease the people; the superb consciousness of his own merits woundedthe vanity of a nation which scarcely permitted its greatest men toshare the reputation it arrogated to itself. The frequent calumniesuttered against him obliged Themistocles to refer to the actions he hadperformed; and what it had been illustrious to execute, it becamedisgustful to repeat. "Are you weary, " said the great man, bitterly, "to receive benefits often from the same hand?" [148] He offended thenational conceit yet more by building, in the neighbourhood of his ownresidence, a temple to Diana, under the name of Aristobule, or "Diana ofthe best counsel;" thereby appearing to claim to himself the merit ofgiving the best counsels. 

It is probable, however, that Themistocles would have conquered allparty opposition, and that his high qualities would have more thancounterbalanced his defects in the eyes of the people, if he had stillcontinued to lead the popular tide. But the time had come when thedemagogue was outbid by an aristocrat--when the movement he no longerheaded left him behind, and the genius of an individual could nolonger keep pace with the giant strides of an advancing people. 

XXII. The victory at Salamis was followed by a democratic result. That victory had been obtained by the seamen, who were mostly of thelowest of the populace--the lowest of the populace began, therefore, to claim, in political equality, the reward of military service. AndAristotle, whose penetrating intellect could not fail to notice thechanges which an event so glorious to Greece produced in Athens, hasadduced a similar instance of change at Syracuse, when the mariners ofthat state, having, at a later period, conquered the Athenians, converted a mixed republic to a pure democracy. The destruction ofhouses and property by Mardonius--the temporary desertion by theAthenians of their native land--the common danger and the commonglory, had broken down many of the old distinctions, and the spirit ofthe nation was already far more democratic than the constitution. Hitherto, qualifications of property were demanded for the holding ofcivil offices. But after the battle of Plataea, Aristides, the leaderof the aristocratic party, proposed and carried the abolition of suchqualifications, allowing to all citizens, with or without property, ashare in the government, and ordaining that the archons should bechosen out of the whole body; the form of investigation as to moralcharacter was still indispensable. This change, great as it was, appears, like all aristocratic reforms, to have been a compromise[149] between concession and demand. And the prudent Aristidesyielded what was inevitable, to prevent the greater danger ofresistance. It may be ever remarked, that the people value more aconcession from the aristocratic party than a boon from their ownpopular leaders. The last can never equal, and the first can soeasily exceed, the public expectation. 

XXIII. This decree, uniting the aristocratic with the more democraticparty, gave Aristides and his friends an unequivocal ascendency overThemistocles, which, however, during the absence of Aristides andCimon, and the engrossing excitement of events abroad, was not plainlyvisible for some years; and although, on his return to Athens, Aristides himself prudently forbore taking an active part against hisancient rival, he yet lent all the influence of his name andfriendship to the now powerful and popular Cimon. The victories, themanners, the wealth, the birth of the son of Miltiades were supportedby his talents and his ambition. It was obvious to himself and to hisparty that, were Themistocles removed, Cimon would become the firstcitizen of Athens. 

XXIV. Such were the causes that long secretly undermined, that atlength openly stormed, the authority of the hero of Salamis; and atthis juncture we may conclude, that the vices of his character avengedthemselves on the virtues. His duplicity and spirit of intrigue, exercised on behalf of his country, it might be supposed, wouldhereafter be excited against it. And the pride, the ambition, thecraft that had saved the people might serve to create a despot. 

Themistocles was summoned to the ordeal of the ostracism and condemnedby the majority of suffrages (B. C. 471). Thus, like Aristides, notpunished for offences, but paying the honourable penalty of rising bygenius to that state of eminence which threatens danger to theequality of republics. 

He departed from Athens, and chose his refuge at Argos, whose hatredto Sparta, his deadliest foe, promised him the securest protection. 

XXV. Death soon afterward removed Aristides from all competitorshipwith Cimon; according to the most probable accounts, he died atAthens; and at the time of Plutarch his monument was still to be seenat Phalerum. His countrymen, who, despite all plausible charges, werenever ungrateful except where their liberties appeared imperilled(whether rightly or erroneously our documents are too scanty toprove), erected his monument at the public charge, portioned his threedaughters, and awarded to his son Lysimachus a grant of one hundredminae of silver, a plantation of one hundred plethra [150] of land, and a pension of four drachmae a day (double the allowance of anAthenian ambassador). 

CHAPTER II. 

Popularity and Policy of Cimon. --Naxos revolts from the IonianLeague. --Is besieged by Cimon. --Conspiracy and Fate of Pausanias. --Flight and Adventures of Themistocles. --His Death. 

I. The military abilities and early habits of Cimon naturallyconspired with past success to direct his ambition rather to warlikethan to civil distinctions. But he was not inattentive to the artswhich were necessary in a democratic state to secure and confirm hispower. Succeeding to one, once so beloved and ever so affable asThemistocles, he sought carefully to prevent all disadvantageouscontrast. From the spoils of Byzantium and Sestos he received a vastaddition to his hereditary fortunes. And by the distribution of histreasures, he forestalled all envy at their amount. He threw open hisgardens to the public, whether foreigners or citizens--he maintained atable to which men of every rank freely resorted, though probablythose only of his own tribe [151]--he was attended by a numeroustrain, who were ordered to give mantles to what citizen soever--agedand ill-clad--they encountered; and to relieve the necessitous by aimsdelicately and secretly administered. By these artful devices herendered himself beloved, and concealed the odium of his politicsbeneath the mask of his charities. For while he courted the favour, he advanced not the wishes, of the people. He sided with thearistocratic party, and did not conceal his attachment to theoligarchy of Sparta. He sought to content the people with himself, inorder that he might the better prevent discontent with their position. But it may be doubted whether Cimon did not, far more than any of hispredecessors, increase the dangers of a democracy by vulgarizing itsspirit. The system of general alms and open tables had the effectthat the abuses of the Poor Laws [152] have had with us. Itaccustomed the native poor to the habits of indolent paupers, and whatat first was charity soon took the aspect of a right. Hence much ofthe lazy turbulence, and much of that licentious spirit of exactionfrom the wealthy, that in a succeeding age characterized the mobs ofAthens. So does that servile generosity, common to an anti-popularparty, when it affects kindness in order to prevent concession, ultimately operate against its own secret schemes. And so much lessreally dangerous is it to exalt, by constitutional enactments, theauthority of a people, than to pamper, by the electioneeringcajoleries of a selfish ambition, the prejudices which thus settleinto vices, or the momentary exigences thus fixed into permanentdemands. 

II. While the arts or manners of Cimon conciliated the favour, hisintegrity won the esteem, of the people. In Aristides he found theexample, not more of his aristocratic politics than of his loftyhonour. A deserter from Persia, having arrived at Athens with greattreasure, and being harassed by informers, sought the protection ofCimon by gifts of money. 

"Would you have me, " said the Athenian, smiling, "your mercenary oryour friend?"

"My friend!" replied the barbarian. 

"Then take back your gifts. " [153]

III. In the mean while the new ascendency of Athens was alreadyendangered. The Carystians in the neighbouring isle of Euboea openlydefied her fleet, and many of the confederate states, seeingthemselves delivered from all immediate dread of another invasion ofthe Medes, began to cease contributions both to the Athenian navy andthe common treasury. For a danger not imminent, service becameburdensome and taxation odious. And already some well-foundedjealousy of the ambition of Athens increased the reluctance to augmenther power. Naxos was the first island that revolted from theconditions of the league, and thither Cimon, having reduced theCarystians, led a fleet numerous and well equipped. 

Whatever the secret views of Cimon for the aggrandizement of hiscountry, he could not but feel himself impelled by his own genius andthe popular expectation not lightly to forego that empire of the sea, rendered to Athens by the profound policy of Themistocles and thefortunate prudence of Aristides; and every motive of Grecian, as wellas Athenian, policy justified the subjugation of the revolters--anevident truth in the science of state policy, but one somewhat hastilylost sight of by those historians who, in the subsequent andunlooked-for results, forgot the necessity of the earlier enterprise. Greece had voluntarily intrusted to Athens the maritime command of theconfederate states. To her, Greece must consequently look for nodiminution of the national resources committed to her charge; to her, that the conditions of the league were fulfilled, and the commonsafety of Greece ensured. Commander of the forces, she was answerablefor the deserters. Nor, although Persia at present remained tranquiland inert, could the confederates be considered safe from her revenge. No compact of peace had been procured. The more than suspectedintrigues of Xerxes with Pausanias were sufficient proofs that thegreat king did not yet despair of the conquest of Greece. And theperil previously incurred in the want of union among the severalstates was a solemn warning not to lose the advantages of that league, so tardily and so laboriously cemented. Without great dishonour andwithout great imprudence, Athens could not forego the control withwhich she had been invested; if it were hers to provide the means, itwas hers to punish the defaulters; and her duty to Greece thusdecorously and justly sustained her ambition for herself. 

IV. And now it is necessary to return to the fortunes of Pausanias, involving in their fall the ruin of one of far loftier virtues andmore unequivocal renown. The recall of Pausanias, the fine inflictedupon him, his narrow escape from a heavier sentence, did not sufficeto draw him, intoxicated as he was with his hopes and passions, fromhis bold and perilous intrigues. It is not improbable that his mindwas already tainted with a certain insanity [154]. And it is acurious physiological fact, that the unnatural constraints of Sparta, when acting on strong passions and fervent imaginations, seem, notunoften, to have produced a species of madness. An anecdote isrecorded [155], which, though romantic, is not perhaps whollyfabulous, and which invests with an interest yet more dramatic thefate of the conqueror of Plataea. 

At Byzantium, runs the story, he became passionately enamoured of ayoung virgin named Cleonice. Awed by his power and his sternness, theparents yielded her to his will. The modesty of the maiden made herstipulate that the room might be in total darkness when she stole tohis embraces. But unhappily, on entering, she stumbled against thelight, and the Spartan, asleep at the time, imagined, in the confusionof his sudden waking, that the noise was occasioned by one of hisnumerous enemies seeking his chamber with the intent to assassinatehim. Seizing the Persian cimeter [156] that lay beside him, heplunged it in the breast of the intruder, and the object of hispassion fell dead at his feet. "From that hour, " says the biographer, "he could rest no more!" A spectre haunted his nights--the voice ofthe murdered girl proclaimed doom to his ear. It is added, and, if weextend our belief further, we must attribute the apparition to theskill of the priests, that, still tortured by the ghost of Cleonice, he applied to those celebrated necromancers who, at Heraclea [157], summoned by gloomy spells the manes of the dead, and by their aidinvoked the spirit he sought to appease. The shade of Cleoniceappeared and told him, "that soon after his return to Sparta he wouldbe delivered from all his troubles. " [158]

Such was the legend repeated, as Plutarch tells us, by manyhistorians; the deed itself was probable, and conscience, even withoutnecromancy, might supply the spectre. 

V. Whether or not this story have any foundation in fact, the conductof Pausanias seems at least to have partaken of that inconsideraterecklessness which, in the ancient superstition, preceded thevengeance of the gods. After his trial he had returned to Byzantium, without the consent of the Spartan government. Driven thence by theresentment of the Athenians [159], he repaired, not to Sparta, but toColonae, in Asia Minor, and in the vicinity of the ancient Troy; andthere he renewed his negotiations with the Persian king. Acquaintedwith his designs, the vigilant ephors despatched to him a herald withthe famous scytale. This was an instrument peculiar to the Spartans. To every general or admiral, a long black staff was entrusted; themagistrates kept another exactly similar. When they had anycommunication to make, they wrote it on a roll of parchment, appliedit to their own staff, fold upon fold--then cutting it off, dismissedit to the chief. The characters were so written that they wereconfused and unintelligible until fastened to the stick, and thuscould only be construed by the person for whose eye they wereintended, and to whose care the staff was confided. 

The communication Pausanias now received was indeed stern and laconic. "Stay, " it said, "behind the herald, and war is proclaimed against youby the Spartans. "

On receiving this solemn order, even the imperious spirit of Pausaniasdid not venture to disobey. Like Venice, whose harsh, tortuous, butenergetic policy her oligarchy in so many respects resembled, Spartapossessed a moral and mysterious power over the fiercest of her sons. His fate held him in her grasp, and, confident of acquittal, insteadof flying to Persia, the regent hurried to his doom, assured that bythe help of gold he could baffle any accusation. His expectationswere so far well-founded, that, although, despite his rank as regentof the kingdom and guardian of the king, he was thrown into prison bythe ephors, he succeeded, by his intrigues and influence, in procuringhis enlargement: and boldly challenging his accusers, he offered tosubmit to trial. 

The government, however, was slow to act. The proud caution of theSpartans was ever loath to bring scandal on their home by publicproceedings against any freeborn citizen--how much more against theuncle of their monarch and the hero of their armies! His power, histalents, his imperious character awed alike private enmity and publicdistrust. But his haughty disdain of their rigid laws, and hiscontinued affectation of the barbarian pomp, kept the governmentvigilant; and though released from prison, the stern ephors were hissentinels. The restless and discontented mind of the expectantson-in-law of Xerxes could not relinquish its daring schemes. And theregent of Sparta entered into a conspiracy, on which it were much tobe desired that our information were more diffuse. 

VI. Perhaps no class of men in ancient times excite a more painfuland profound interest than the helots of Sparta. Though, as we havebefore seen, we must reject all rhetorical exaggerations of the savagecruelty to which they were subjected, we know, at least, that theirservitude was the hardest imposed by any of the Grecian states upontheir slaves [160], and that the iron soldiery of Sparta were exposedto constant and imminent peril from their revolts--a proof that thecurse of their bondage had passed beyond the degree which subdues thespirit to that which arouses, and that neither the habit of years, northe swords of the fiercest warriors, nor the spies of the keenestgovernment of Greece had been able utterly to extirpate from humanhearts that law of nature which, when injury passes an allotted, yetrarely visible, extreme, converts suffering to resistance. 

Scattered in large numbers throughout the rugged territories ofLaconia--separated from the presence, but not the watch, of theirmaster, these singular serfs never abandoned the hope of liberty. Often pressed into battle to aid their masters, they acquired thecourage to oppose them. Fierce, sullen, and vindictive, they were asdroves of wild cattle, left to range at will, till wanted for theburden or the knife--not difficult to butcher, but impossible to tame. 

We have seen that a considerable number of these helots had fought aslight-armed troops at Plataea; and the common danger and the commonglory had united the slaves of the army with the chief. Entering intosomewhat of the desperate and revengeful ambition that, under asimilar constitution, animated Marino Faliero, Pausanias sought, bymeans of the enslaved multitude, to deliver himself from the thraldomof the oligarchy which held prince and slave alike in subjection. Hetampered with the helots, and secretly promised them the rights andliberties of citizens of Sparta, if they would co-operate with hisprojects and revolt at his command. 

Slaves are never without traitors; and the ephors learned thepremeditated revolution from helots themselves. Still, slow and wary, those subtle and haughty magistrates suspended the blow--it was notwithout the fullest proof that a royal Spartan was to be condemned onthe word of helots: they continued their vigilance--they obtained theproof they required. 

VII. Argilius, a Spartan, with whom Pausanias had once formed thevicious connexion common to the Doric tribes, and who was deep in hisconfidence, was intrusted by the regent with letters to Artabazus. Argilius called to mind that none intrusted with a similar mission hadever returned. He broke open the seals and read what his fearsforeboded, that, on his arrival at the satrap's court, the silence ofthe messenger was to be purchased by his death. He carried the packetto the ephors. That dark and plotting council were resolved yet moreentirely to entangle their guilty victim, and out of his own mouth toextract his secret; they therefore ordered Argilius to take refuge asa suppliant in the sanctuary of the temple of Neptune on MountTaenarus. Within the sacred confines was contrived a cell, which, bya double partition, admitted some of the ephors, who, there concealed, might witness all that passed. 

Intelligence was soon brought to Pausanias that, instead of proceedingto Artabazus, his confidant had taken refuge as a suppliant in thetemple of Neptune. Alarmed and anxious, the regent hastened to thesanctuary. Argilius informed him that he had read the letters, andreproached him bitterly with his treason to himself. Pausanias, confounded and overcome by the perils which surrounded him, confessedhis guilt, spoke unreservedly of the contents of the letter, imploredthe pardon of Argilius, and promised him safety and wealth if he wouldleave the sanctuary and proceed on the mission. 

The ephors, from their hiding-place, heard all. 

On the departure of Pausanias from the sanctuary, his doom was fixed. But, among the more public causes of the previous delay of justice, wemust include the friendship of some of the ephors, which Pausanias hadwon or purchased. It was the moment fixed for his arrest. Pausanias, in the streets, was alone and on foot. He beheld the ephorsapproaching him. A signal from one warned him of his danger. Heturned--he fled. The temple of Minerva Chalcioecus at hand proffereda sanctuary--he gained the sacred confines, and entered a small househard by the temple. The ephors--the officers--the crowd pursued; theysurrounded the refuge, from which it was impious to drag the criminal. Resolved on his death, they removed the roof--blocked up the entrances(and if we may credit the anecdote, that violating human wascharacteristic of Spartan nature, his mother, a crone of great age[161], suggested the means of punishment, by placing, with her ownhand, a stone at the threshold)--and, setting a guard around, left theconqueror of Mardonius to die of famine. When he was at his lastgasp, unwilling to profane the sanctuary by his actual death, theybore him out into the open air, which he only breathed to expire[162]. His corpse, which some of the fiercer Spartans at firstintended to cast in the place of burial for malefactors, was afterwardburied in the neighbourhood of the temple. And thus ended the gloryand the crimes--the grasping ambition and the luxurious ostentation--of the bold Spartan who first scorned and then imitated theeffeminacies of the Persian he subdued. 

VIII. Amid the documents of which the ephors possessed themselvesafter the death of Pausanias was a correspondence with Themistocles, then residing in the rival and inimical state of Argos. Yetvindictive against that hero, the Spartan government despatchedambassadors to Athens, accusing him of a share in the conspiracy ofPausanias with the Medes. It seems that Themistocles did not disavowa correspondence with Pausanias, nor affect an absolute ignorance ofhis schemes; but he firmly denied by letter, his only mode of defence, all approval and all participation of the latter. Nor is there anyproof, nor any just ground of suspicion, that he was a party to thebetrayal of Greece. It was consistent, indeed, with his astutecharacter, to plot, to manoeuvre, to intrigue, but for great and notpaltry ends. By possessing himself of the secret, he possessedhimself of the power of Pausanias; and that intelligence might perhapshave enabled him to frustrate the Spartan's treason in the hour ofactual danger to Greece. It is possible that, so far as Sparta alonewas concerned, the Athenian felt little repugnance to any revolutionor any peril confined to a state whose councils it had been the objectof his life to baffle, and whose power it was the manifest interest ofhis native city to impair. He might have looked with complacency onthe intrigues which the regent was carrying on against the Spartangovernment, and which threatened to shake that Doric constitution toits centre. But nothing, either in the witness of history or in thecharacter or conduct of a man profoundly patriotic, even in his vices, favours the notion that he connived at the schemes which implicated, with the Grecian, the Athenian welfare. Pausanias, far less able, wasprobably his tool. By an insight into his projects, Themistoclesmight have calculated on the restoration of his own power. To weakenthe Spartan influence was to weaken his own enemies at Athens; tobreak up the Spartan constitution was to leave Athens herself withouta rival. And if, from the revolt of the helots, Pausanias shouldproceed to an active league with the Persians, Themistocles knewenough of Athens and of Greece to foresee that it was to the victor ofSalamis and the founder of the Grecian navy that all eyes would bedirected. Such seem the most probable views which would have beenopened to the exile by the communications of Pausanias. If so, theywere necessarily too subtle for the crowd to penetrate or understand. The Athenians heard only the accusations of the Spartans; they sawonly the treason of Pausanias; they learned only that Themistocles hadbeen the correspondent of the traitor. Already suspicious of a geniuswhose deep and intricate wiles they were seldom able to fathom, andtrembling at the seeming danger they had escaped, it was naturalenough that the Athenians should accede to the demands of theambassadors. An Athenian, joined with a Lacedaemonian troop, wasordered to seize Themistocles wherever he should be found. Apprizedof his danger, he hastily quitted the Peloponnesus and took refuge atCorcyra. Fear of the vengeance at once of Athens and of Spartainduced the Corcyreans to deny the shelter he sought, but theyhonourably transported him to the opposite continent. His route wasdiscovered--his pursuers pressed upon him. He had entered the countryof Admetus, king of the Molossians, from whose resentment he hadeverything to dread. For he had persuaded the Athenians to reject thealliance once sought by that monarch, and Admetus had vowed vengeance. 

Thus situated, the fugitive formed a resolution which a great mindonly could have conceived, and which presents to us one of the mosttouching pictures in ancient history. He repaired to the palace ofAdmetus himself. The prince was absent. He addressed his consort, and, advised by her, took the young child of the royal pair in hishand, and sat down at the hearth--"THEMISTOCLES THE SUPPLIANT!" [163]On the return of the prince he told his name, and bade him not wreakhis vengeance on an exile. "To condemn me now, " he said, "would be totake advantage of distress. Honour dictates revenge only among equalsupon equal terms. True that I opposed you once, but on a matter notof life, but of business or of interest. Now surrender me to mypersecutors, and you deprive me of the last refuge of life itself. "

IX. Admetus, much affected, bade him rise, and assured him ofprotection. The pursuers arrived; but, faithful to the guest who hadsought his hearth, after a form peculiarly solemn among theMolossians, Admetus refused to give him up, and despatched him, guarded, to the sea-town of Pydna, over an arduous and difficultmountain-road. The sea-town gained, he took ship, disguised andunknown to all the passengers, in a trading vessel bound to Ionia. Astorm arose--the vessel was driven from its course, and impelled righttowards the Athenian fleet, that then under Cimon, his bitterest foe, lay before the Isle of Naxos (B. C. 466). 

Prompt and bold in his expedients, Themistocles took aside the masterof the vessel--discovered himself; threatened, if betrayed, to informagainst the master as one bribed to favour his escape; promised, ifpreserved, everlasting gratitude; and urged that the preservation waspossible, if no one during the voyage were permitted, on any pretext, to quit the vessel. 

The master of the vessel was won--kept out at sea a day and a night towindward of the fleet, and landed Themistocles in safety at Ephesus. 

In the mean while the friends of Themistocles had not been inactive inAthens. On the supposed discovery of his treason, such of hisproperty as could fall into the hands of the government was, as usualin such offences, confiscated to the public use; the amount wasvariously estimated at eighty and a hundred talents [164]. But thegreater part of his wealth--some from Athens, some from Argos--wassecretly conveyed to him at Ephesus [165]. One faithful friendprocured the escape of his wife and children from Athens to the courtof Admetus, for which offence of affection, a single historian, Stesimbrotus (whose statement even the credulous Plutarch questions, and proves to be contradictory with another assertion of the sameauthor), has recorded that he was condemned to death by Cimon. It isnot upon such dubious chronicles that we can suffer so great a stainon the character of a man singularly humane. [166]

X. As we have now for ever lost sight of Themistocles on the stage ofAthenian politics, the present is the most fitting opportunity toconclude the history of his wild and adventurous career. 

Persecuted by the Spartans, abandoned by his countrymen, excluded fromthe whole of Greece, no refuge remained to the man who had crushed thepower of Persia, save the Persian court. The generous andhigh-spirited policy that characterized the oriental despotism towardsits foes proffered him not only a safe, but a magnificent asylum. ThePersian monarchs were ever ready to welcome the exiles of Greece, and toconciliate those whom they had failed to conquer. It was the fate ofThemistocles to be saved by the enemies of his country. He had noalternative. The very accusation of connivance with the Medes drove himinto their arms. 

Under guidance of a Persian, Themistocles traversed the Asiaticcontinent; and ere he reached Susa, contrived to have a letter, thatmight prepare the way for him, delivered at the Persian court. Hisletter ran somewhat thus, if we may suppose that Thucydides preservedthe import, though he undoubtedly fashioned the style. [167]

"I, Themistocles, who of all the Greeks have inflicted the severestwounds upon your race, so long as I was called by fate to resist theinvasion of the Persians, now come to you. " (He then urged, on theother hand, the services he had rendered to Xerxes in his messagesafter Salamis, relative to the breaking of the bridges, assuming acredit to which he was by no means entitled--and insisted that hisgenerosity demanded a return. ) "Able" (he proceeded) "to perform greatservices--persecuted by the Greeks for my friendship for you--I amnear at hand. Grant me only a year's respite, that I may then apprizeyou in person of the object of my journey hither. "

The bold and confident tone of Themistocles struck the imagination ofthe young king (Artaxerxes), and he returned a favourable reply. Themistocles consumed the year in the perfect acquisition of thelanguage, and the customs and manners of the country. He then soughtand obtained an audience. [168]

Able to converse with fluency, and without the medium of aninterpreter, his natural abilities found their level. He rose toinstant favour. Never before had a stranger been so honoured. He wasadmitted an easy access to the royal person--instructed in thelearning of the Magi--and when he quitted the court it was to takepossession of the government of three cities--Myus, celebrated for itsprovisions; Lampsacus, for its vineyards; and Magnesia, for therichness of the soil; so that, according to the spirit and phraseologyof oriental taxation, it was not unaptly said that they were awardedto him for meat, wine, and bread. 

XI. Thus affluent and thus honoured, Themistocles passed at Magnesiathe remainder of his days--the time and method of his death uncertain;whether cut off by natural disease, or, as is otherwise related [169], by a fate than which fiction itself could have invented none moresuited to the consummation of his romantic and great career. It issaid that when afterward Egypt revolted, and that revolt was aided bythe Athenians; when the Grecian navy sailed as far as Cilicia andCyprus; and Cimon upheld, without a rival, the new sovereignty of theseas; when Artaxerxes resolved to oppose the growing power of a statewhich, from the defensive, had risen to the offending, power;Themistocles received a mandate to realize the vague promises he hadgiven, and to commence his operations against Greece (B. C. 449). Then (if with Plutarch we accept this version of his fate), neitherresentment against the people he had deemed ungrateful, nor hispresent pomp, nor the fear of life, could induce the lord of Magnesiato dishonour his past achievements [170], and demolish his immortaltrophies. Anxious only to die worthily--since to live as became himwas no longer possible--he solemnly sacrificed to the gods--took leaveof his friends, and finished his days by poison. 

His monument long existed in the forum of Magnesia; but his bones aresaid by his own desire to have been borne back privately to Attica, and have rested in the beloved land that exiled him from her bosom. And this his last request seems touchingly to prove his loyalty toAthens, and to proclaim his pardon of her persecution. Certain it is, at least, that however honoured in Persia, he never perpetrated oneact against Greece; and that, if sullied by the suspicion of others, his fame was untarnished by himself. He died, according to Plutarch, in his sixty-fifth year, leaving many children, and transmitting hisname to a long posterity, who received from his memory the honoursthey could not have acquired for themselves. 

XII. The character of Themistocles has already in these pagesunfolded itself--profound, yet tortuous in policy--vast in conception--subtle, patient, yet prompt in action; affable in manner, butboastful, ostentatious, and disdaining to conceal his consciousness ofmerit; not brilliant in accomplishment, yet master not more of theGreek wiles than the Attic wit; sufficiently eloquent, but greater indeeds than words, and penetrating, by an almost preternatural insight, at once the characters of men and the sequences of events. Incomparably the greatest of his own times, and certainly notsurpassed by those who came after him. Pisistratus, Cimon, Pericles, Aristides himself, were of noble and privileged birth. Themistocleswas the first, and, except Demosthenes, the greatest of those who rosefrom the ranks of the people, and he drew the people upward in hisrise. His fame was the creation of his genius only. "What other man"(to paraphrase the unusual eloquence of Diodorus) "could in the sametime have placed Greece at the head of nations, Athens at the head ofGreece, himself at the head of Athens?--in the most illustrious agethe most illustrious man. Conducting to war the citizens of a statein ruins, he defeated all the arms of Asia. He alone had the power tounite the most discordant materials, and to render danger itselfsalutary to his designs. Not more remarkable in war than peace--inthe one he saved the liberties of Greece, in the other he created theeminence of Athens. "

After him, the light of the heroic age seems to glimmer and to fade, and even Pericles himself appears dwarfed and artificial beside thatmasculine and colossal intellect which broke into fragments the mightof Persia, and baffled with a vigorous ease the gloomy sagacity ofSparta. The statue of Themistocles, existent six hundred years afterhis decease, exhibited to his countrymen an aspect as heroical as hisdeeds. [171]

We return to Cimon

CHAPTER III. 

Reduction of Naxos. --Actions off Cyprus. --Manners of Cimon. --Improvements in Athens. --Colony at the Nine Ways. --Siege of Thasos. --Earthquake in Sparta. --Revolt of Helots, Occupation of Ithome, andThird Messenian War. --Rise and Character of Pericles. --Prosecution andAcquittal of Cimon. --The Athenians assist the Spartans at Ithome. --Thasos Surrenders. --Breach between the Athenians and Spartans. --Constitutional Innovations at Athens. --Ostracism of Cimon. 

I. At the time in which Naxos refused the stipulated subsidies, andwas, in consequence, besieged by Cimon, that island was one of themost wealthy and populous of the confederate states. For some timethe Naxians gallantly resisted the besiegers; but, at length reduced, they were subjected to heavier conditions than those previouslyimposed upon them. No conqueror contents himself with acquiring theobjects, sometimes frivolous and often just, with which he commenceshostilities. War inflames the passions, and success the ambition. Cimon, at first anxious to secure the Grecian, was now led on todesire the increase of the Athenian power. The Athenian fleet hadsubdued Naxos, and Naxos was rendered subject to Athens. This was thefirst of the free states which the growing republic submitted to heryoke [172]. The precedent once set, as occasion tempted, the restshared a similar fate. 

II. The reduction of Naxos was but the commencement of the victoriesof Cimon. In Asia Minor there were many Grecian cities in which thePersian ascendency had never yet been shaken. Along the Carian coastCimon conducted his armament, and the terror it inspired sufficed toengage all the cities, originally Greek, to revolt from Persia; thosegarrisoned by Persians he besieged and reduced. Victorious in Caria, he passed with equal success into Lycia [173], augmenting his fleetand forces as he swept along. But the Persians, not inactive, had nowassembled a considerable force in Pamphylia, and lay encamped on thebanks of the Eurymedon (B. C. 466), whose waters, sufficiently wide, received their fleet. The expected re-enforcement of eightyPhoenician vessels from Cyprus induced the Persians to delay [174]actual hostilities. But Cimon, resolved to forestall the anticipatedjunction, sailed up the river, and soon forced the barbarian fleet, already much more numerous than his own, into active engagement. ThePersians but feebly supported the attack; driven up the river, thecrews deserted the ships, and hastened to join the army arrayed alongthe coast. Of the ships thus deserted, some were destroyed; and twohundred triremes, taken by Cimon, yet more augmented his armament. But the Persians, now advanced to the verge of the shore, presented along and formidable array, and Cimon, with some anxiety, saw thedanger he incurred in landing troops already much harassed by the lateaction, while a considerable proportion of the hostile forces, farmore numerous, were fresh and unfatigued. The spirit of the men, andtheir elation at the late victory, bore down the fears of the general;yet warm from the late action, he debarked his heavy-armed infantry, and with loud shouts the Athenians rushed upon the foe. The contestwas fierce--the slaughter great. Many of the noblest Athenians fellin the action. Victory at length declared in favour of Cimon; thePersians were put to flight, and the Greeks remained masters of thebattle and the booty--the last considerable. Thus, on the same day, the Athenians were victorious on both elements--an unprecedentedglory, which led the rhetorical Plutarch to declare--that Plataea andSalamis were outshone. Posterity, more discerning, estimates glorynot by the greatness of the victory alone, but the justice of thecause. And even a skirmish won by men struggling for liberty on theirown shores is more honoured than the proudest battle in which theconquerors are actuated by the desire of vengeance or the lust ofenterprise. 

III. To the trophies of this double victory were soon added those ofa third, obtained over the eighty vessels of the Phoenicians off thecoast of Cyprus. These signal achievements spread the terror of theAthenian arms on remote as on Grecian shores. Without adopting theexaggerated accounts of injudicious authors as to the number of shipsand prisoners [175], it seems certain, at least, that the amount ofthe booty was sufficient, in some degree, to create in Athens a moralrevolution--swelling to a vast extent the fortunes of individuals, andaugmenting the general taste for pomp, for luxury, and for splendour, which soon afterward rendered Athens the most magnificent of theGrecian states. 

The navy of Persia thus broken, her armies routed, the scene of actiontransferred to her own dominions, all designs against Greece were laidaside. Retreating, as it were, more to the centre of her vastdomains, she left the Asiatic outskirts to the solitude, rather ofexhaustion than of peace. "No troops, " boasted the laterrhetoricians, "came within a day's journey, on horseback, of theGrecian seas. " From the Chelidonian isles on the Pamphylian coast, tothose [176] twin rocks at the entrance of the Euxine, between whichthe sea, chafed by their rugged base, roars unappeasably through itsmists of foam, no Persian galley was descried. Whether this was thecause of defeat or of acknowledged articles of peace, has beendisputed. But, as will be seen hereafter, of the latter allhistorical evidence is wanting. 

In a subsequent expedition, Cimon, sailing from Athens with a smallforce, wrested the Thracian Chersonese from the Persians--an exploitwhich restored to him his own patrimony. 

IV. Cimon was now at the height of his fame and popularity. Hisshare of the booty, and the recovery of the Chersonese, rendered himby far the wealthiest citizen of Athens; and he continued to use hiswealth to cement his power. His intercourse with other nations, hisfamiliarity with the oriental polish and magnificence, served toelevate his manners from their early rudeness, and to give splendourto his tastes. If he had spent his youth among the wild soldiers ofMiltiades, the leisure of his maturer years was cultivated by anintercourse with sages and poets. His passion for the sex, which evenin its excesses tends to refine and to soften, made his only vice. Hewas the friend of every genius and every art; and, the link betweenthe lavish ostentation of Themistocles and the intellectual grace ofPericles, he conducted, as it were, the insensible transition from theage of warlike glory to that of civil pre-eminence. He may be said tohave contributed greatly to diffuse that atmosphere of poetry and ofpleasure which even the meanest of the free Athenians afterwarddelighted to respire. He led the citizens more and more from therecesses of private life; and carried out that social policy commencedby Pisistratus, according to which all individual habits became mergedinto one animated, complex, and excited public. Thus, himself gay andconvivial, addicted to company, wine, and women, he encouraged showsand spectacles, and invested them with new magnificence; heembellished the city with public buildings, and was the first to erectat Athens those long colonnades--beneath the shade of which, shelteredfrom the western suns, that graceful people were accustomed toassemble and converse. The Agora, that universal home of thecitizens, was planted by him with the oriental planes; and the grovesof Academe, the immortal haunt of Plato, were his work. Thatcelebrated garden, associated with the grateful and brightremembrances of all which poetry can lend to wisdom, was, before thetime of Cimon, a waste and uncultivated spot. It was his hand thatintersected it with walks and alleys, and that poured through itsgreen retreats the ornamental waters so refreshing in those climes, and not common in the dry Attic soil, which now meandered in livingstreams, and now sparkled into fountains. Besides these works toembellish, he formed others to fortify the city. He completed thecitadel, hitherto unguarded on the south side; and it was from thebarbarian spoils deposited in the treasury that the expenses offounding the Long Walls, afterward completed, were defrayed. 

V. In his conduct towards the allies, the natural urbanity of Cimonserved to conceal a policy deep-laid and grasping. The other Atheniangenerals were stern and punctilious in their demands on theconfederates; they required the allotted number of men, and, indefault of the supply, increased the rigour of their exactions. Notso Cimon--from those whom the ordinary avocations of a peaceful liferendered averse to active service, he willingly accepted a pecuniarysubstitute, equivalent to the value of those ships or soldiers theyshould have furnished. These sums, devoted indeed to the generalservice, were yet appropriated to the uses of the Athenian navy; thusthe states, hitherto warlike, were artfully suffered to lapse intopeaceful and luxurious pursuits; and the confederates became at once, under the most lenient pretexts, enfeebled and impoverished by thevery means which strengthened the martial spirit and increased thefiscal resources of the Athenians. The tributaries found too late, when they ventured at revolt, that they had parted with the facilitiesof resistance. [177]

In the mean while it was the object of Cimon to sustain the navalardour and discipline of the Athenians; while the oar and the swordfell into disuse with the confederates, he kept the greater part ofthe citizens in constant rotation at maritime exercise or enterprise--until experience and increasing power with one, indolence and gradualsubjection with the other, destroying the ancient equality in arms, made the Athenians masters and their confederates subjects. [178]

VI. According to the wise policy of the ancients, the Athenians neverneglected a suitable opportunity to colonize; thus extending theirdominion while they draughted off the excess of their population, aswell as the more enterprising spirits whom adventure tempted orpoverty aroused. The conquest of Eion had opened to the Athenians anew prospect of aggrandizement, of which they were now prepared toseize the advantages. Not far from Eion, and on the banks of theStrymon, was a place called the Nine Ways, afterward Amphipolis, andwhich, from its locality and maritime conveniences, seemed especiallycalculated for the site of a new city. Thither ten thousand persons, some confederates, some Athenians, had been sent to establish acolony. The views of the Athenians were not, however, in thisenterprise, bounded to its mere legitimate advantages. About the sametime they carried on a dispute with the Thasians relative to certainmines and places of trade on the opposite coasts of Thrace. Thedispute was one of considerable nicety. The Athenians, havingconquered Eion and the adjacent territory, claimed the possession byright of conquest. The Thasians, on the other hand, had ancientlypossessed some of the mines and the monopoly of the commerce; they hadjoined in the confederacy; and, asserting that the conquest had beenmade, if by Athenian arms, for the federal good, they demanded thatthe ancient privileges should revert to them. The Athenian governmentwas not disposed to surrender a claim which proffered to avarice thetemptation of mines of gold. The Thasians renounced the confederacy, and thus gave to the Athenians the very pretext for hostilities whichthe weaker state should never permit to the more strong. While thecolony proceeded to its destination, part of the Athenian fleet, underCimon, sailed to Thasos--gained a victory by sea--landed on theisland--and besieged the city. 

Meanwhile the new colonizers had become masters of the Nine Ways, having dislodged the Edonian Thracians, its previous habitants. Buthostility following hostility, the colonists were eventually utterlyrouted and cut off in a pitched battle at Drabescus (B. C. 465), inEdonia, by the united forces of all the neighbouring Thracians. 

VII. The siege of Thasos still continued, and the besieged took theprecaution to send to Sparta for assistance. That sullen state hadlong viewed with indignation the power of Athens; her younger warriorsclamoured against the inert indifference with which a city, for agesso inferior to Sparta, had been suffered to gain the ascendency overGreece. In vain had Themistocles been removed; the inexhaustiblegenius of the people had created a second Themistocles in Cimon. TheLacedaemonians, glad of a pretext for quarrel, courteously receivedthe Thasian ambassadors, and promised to distract the Athenian forcesby an irruption into Attica. They were actively prepared inconcerting measures for this invasion, when sudden and complicatedafflictions, now to be related, forced them to abandon their designs, and confine their attention to themselves. 

VIII. An earthquake, unprecedented in its violence, occurred inSparta. In many places throughout Laconia the rocky soil was rentasunder. From Mount Taygetus, which overhung the city, and on whichthe women of Lacedaemon were wont to hold their bacchanalian orgies, huge fragments rolled into the suburbs. The greater portion of thecity was absolutely overthrown; and it is said, probably withexaggeration, that only five houses wholly escaped the shock. Thisterrible calamity did not cease suddenly as it came; its concussionswere repeated; it buried alike men and treasure: could we creditDiodorus, no less than twenty thousand persons perished in the shock. Thus depopulated, empoverished, and distressed, the enemies whom thecruelty of Sparta nursed within her bosom resolved to seize the momentto execute their vengeance and consummate her destruction. UnderPausanias we have seen before that the helots were already ripe forrevolt. The death of that fierce conspirator checked, but did notcrush, their designs of freedom. Now was the moment, when Sparta layin ruins--now was the moment to realize their dreams. From field tofield, from village to village, the news of the earthquake became thewatchword of revolt. Up rose the helots (B. C. 464)--they armedthemselves, they poured on--a wild, and gathering, and relentlessmultitude, resolved to slay by the wrath of man all whom that ofnature had yet spared. The earthquake that levelled Sparta rent herchains; nor did the shock create one chasm so dark and wide as thatbetween the master and the slave. 

It is one of the sublimest and most awful spectacles in history--thatcity in ruins--the earth still trembling--the grim and dauntlesssoldiery collected amid piles of death and ruin; and in such a time, and such a scene, the multitude sensible, not of danger, but of wrong, and rising, not to succour, but to revenge: all that should havedisarmed a feebler enmity, giving fire to theirs; the dreadestcalamity their blessing--dismay their hope it was as if the GreatMother herself had summoned her children to vindicate the long-abused, the all inalienable heritage derived from her; and the stir of theangry elements was but the announcement of an armed and solemn unionbetween nature and the oppressed. 

IX. Fortunately for Sparta, the danger was not altogether unforeseen. After the confusion and horror of the earthquake, and while thepeople, dispersed, were seeking to save their effects, Archidamus, who, four years before, had succeeded to the throne of Lacedaemon, ordered the trumpets to sound as to arms. That wonderful superiorityof man over matter which habit and discipline can effect, and whichwas ever so visible among the Spartans, constituted their safety atthat hour. Forsaking the care of their property, the Spartans seizedtheir arms, flocked around their king, and drew up in disciplinedarray. In her most imminent crisis, Sparta was thus saved. Thehelots approached, wild, disorderly, and tumultuous; they came intentonly to plunder and to slay; they expected to find scattered andaffrighted foes--they found a formidable army; their tyrants werestill their lords. They saw, paused, and fled, scattering themselvesover the country--exciting all they met to rebellion, and soon, joinedwith the Messenians, kindred to them by blood and ancientreminiscences of heroic struggles, they seized that same Ithome whichtheir hereditary Aristodemus had before occupied with unforgottenvalour. This they fortified; and, occupying also the neighbouringlands, declared open war upon their lords. As the Messenians were themore worthy enemy, so the general insurrection is known by the name ofthe Third Messenian War. 

X. While these events occurred in Sparta, Cimon, intrusting to othersthe continued siege of Thasos, had returned to Athens [179]. He foundhis popularity already shaken, and his power endangered. Thedemocratic party had of late regained the influence it had lost on theexile of Themistocles. Pericles, son of Xanthippus (the accuser ofMiltiades), had, during the last six years, insensibly risen intoreputation: the house of Miltiades was fated to bow before the race ofXanthippus, and hereditary opposition ended in the old hereditaryresults. Born of one of the loftiest families of Athens, distinguished by the fame as the fortunes of his father, who had beenlinked with Aristides in command of the Athenian fleet, and in whosename had been achieved the victory of Mycale, the young Pericles foundbetimes an easy opening to his brilliant genius and his high ambition. He had nothing to contend against but his own advantages. The beautyof his countenance, the sweetness of his voice, and the blandness ofhis address, reminded the oldest citizens of Pisistratus; and thisresemblance is said to have excited against him a popular jealousywhich he found it difficult to surmount. His youth was passedalternately in the camp and in the schools. He is the first of thegreat statesmen of his country who appears to have prepared himselffor action by study; Anaxagoras, Pythoclides, and Damon were histutors, and he was early eminent in all the lettered accomplishmentsof his time. By degrees, accustoming the people to his appearance inpublic life, he became remarkable for an elaborate and impassionedeloquence, hitherto unknown. With his intellectual and meditativetemperament all was science; his ardour in action regulated by longforethought, his very words by deliberate preparation. Till his time, oratory, in its proper sense, as a study and an art, was uncultivatedin Athens. Pisistratus is said to have been naturally eloquent, andthe vigorous mind of Themistocles imparted at once persuasion andforce to his counsels. But Pericles, aware of all the advantages tobe gained by words, embellished words with every artifice that hisimagination could suggest. His speeches were often writtencompositions, and the novel dazzle of their diction, and thatconsecutive logic which preparation alone can impart to language, became irresistible to a people that had itself become a Pericles. Universal civilization, universal poetry, had rendered the audiencesusceptible and fastidious; they could appreciate the ornate andphilosophical harangues of Pericles; and, the first to mirror tothemselves the intellectual improvements they had made, the first torepresent the grace and enlightenment, as Themistocles had been thefirst to represent the daring and enterprise, of his time, the son ofXanthippus began already to eclipse that very Cimon whose qualitiesprepared the way for him. 

XI. We must not suppose, that in the contests between thearistocratic and popular parties, the aristocracy were always on oneside. Such a division is never to be seen in free constitutions. There is always a sufficient party of the nobles whom conviction, ambition, or hereditary predilections will place at the head of thepopular movement; and it is by members of the privileged order thatthe order itself is weakened. Athens in this respect, therefore, resembled England, and as now in the latter state, so then at Athens, it was often the proudest, the wealthiest, the most high-born of thearistocrats that gave dignity and success to the progress ofdemocratic opinion. There, too, the vehemence of party frequentlyrendered politics an hereditary heirloom; intermarriages kept togethermen of similar factions; and the memory of those who had been themartyrs or the heroes of a cause mingled with the creed of theirdescendants. Thus, it was as natural that one of the race of thatClisthenes who had expelled the Pisistratides, and popularized theconstitution, should embrace the more liberal side, as that a Russellshould follow out in one age the principles for which his ancestorperished in another. So do our forefathers become sponsors forourselves. The mother of Pericles was the descendant of Clisthenes;and though Xanthippus himself was of the same party as Aristides, wemay doubt, by his prosecution of Miltiades as well as by his connexionwith the Alcmaeonids, whether he ever cordially co-operated with theviews and the ambition of Cimon. However this be, his brilliant soncast himself at once into the arms of the more popular faction, andopposed with all his energy the aristocratic predilections of Cimon. Not yet, however, able to assume the lead to which he aspired (for ithad now become a matter of time as well as intellect to rise), heranged himself under Ephialtes, a personage of whom history gives ustoo scanty details, although he enjoyed considerable influence, increased by his avowed jealousy of the Spartans and his ownunimpeachable integrity. 

XII. It is noticeable, that men who become the leaders of the public, less by the spur of passion than by previous study and conscioustalent--men whom thought and letters prepare for enterprise--arerarely eager to advance themselves too soon. Making politics ascience, they are even fastidiously alive to the qualities and theexperience demanded for great success; their very self-esteem rendersthem seemingly modest; they rely upon time and upon occasion; and, pushed forward rather by circumstance than their own exertions, it islong before their ambition and their resources are fully developed. Despite all his advantages, the rise of Pericles was gradual. 

On the return of Cimon the popular party deemed itself sufficientlystrong to manifest its opposition. The expedition to Thasos had notbeen attended with results so glorious as to satisfy a people pamperedby a series of triumphs. Cimon was deemed culpable for not havingtaken advantage of the access into Macedonia, and added that countryto the Athenian empire. He was even suspected and accused ofreceiving bribes from Alexander, the king of Macedon. Pericles [180]is said to have taken at first an active part in this prosecution; butwhen the cause came on, whether moved by the instances of Cimon'ssister, or made aware of the injustice of the accusation, he conductedhimself favourably towards the accused. Cimon himself treated thecharges with a calm disdain; the result was worthy of Athens andhimself. He was honourably acquitted. 

XIII. Scarce was this impeachment over, when a Spartan ambassadorarrived at Athens to implore her assistance against the helots; therequest produced a vehement discussion. 

Ephialtes strongly opposed the proposition to assist a city, sometimesopenly, always heartily, inimical to Athens. "Much better, " hecontended, "to suffer her pride to be humbled, and her powers ofmischief to be impaired. " Ever supporting and supported by theLacedaemonian party, whether at home or abroad, Cimon, on the otherhand, maintained the necessity of marching to the relief of Sparta. "Do not, " he said, almost sublimely--and his words are reported tohave produced a considerable impression on that susceptible assembly--"do not suffer Greece to be mutilated, nor deprive Athens of hercompanion!"

The more generous and magnanimous counsel prevailed with a generousand magnanimous people; and Cimon was sent to the aid of Sparta at thehead of a sufficient force. It may be observed, as a sign of thepolitical morality of the time, that the wrongs of the helots appearto have been forgotten. But such is the curse of slavery, that itunfits its victims to be free, except by preparations and degrees. And civilization, humanity, and social order are often enlisted on thewrong side, in behalf of the oppressors, from the license andbarbarity natural to the victories of the oppressed. A conflictbetween the negroes and the planters in modern times may not beunanalogous to that of the helots and Spartans; and it is often afatal necessity to extirpate the very men we have maddened, by our owncruelties, to the savageness of beasts. 

It would appear that, during the revolt of the helots and Messenians, which lasted ten years, the Athenians, under Cimon, marched twice[181] to the aid of the Spartans. In the first (B. C. 464) theyprobably drove the scattered insurgents into the city of Ithome; inthe second (B. C. 461) they besieged the city. In the interval Thasossurrendered (B. C. 463); the inhabitants were compelled to level theirwalls, to give up their shipping, to pay the arrear of tribute, todefray the impost punctually in future, and to resign all claims onthe continent and the mines. 

XIV. Thus did the Athenians establish their footing on the Thraciancontinent, and obtain the possession of the golden mines, which theymistook for wealth. In the second expedition of the Athenians, thelong-cherished jealousy between themselves and the Spartans could nolonger be smothered. The former were applied to especially from theirskill in sieges, and their very science galled perhaps the pride ofthe martial Spartans. While, as the true art of war was still solittle understood, that even the Athenians were unable to carry thetown by assault, and compelled to submit to the tedious operations ofa blockade, there was ample leisure for those feuds which theuncongenial habits and long rivalry of the nations necessarilyproduced. Proud of their Dorian name, the Spartans looked on theIonic race of Athens as aliens. Severe in their oligarchicdiscipline, they regarded the Athenian Demus as innovators; and, inthe valour itself of their allies, they detected a daring and restlessenergy which, if serviceable now, might easily be rendered dangeroushereafter. They even suspected the Athenians of tampering with thehelots--led, it may be, to that distrust by the contrast, which theywere likely to misinterpret, between their own severity and theAthenian mildness towards the servile part of their severalpopulations, and also by the existence of a powerful party at Athens, which had opposed the assistance Cimon afforded. With their usualtranquil and wary policy, the Spartan government attempted to concealtheir real fears, and simply alleging they had no further need oftheir assistance, dismissed the Athenians. But that people, constitutionally irritable, perceiving that, despite this hollowpretext, the other allies, including the obnoxious Aeginetans, wereretained, received their dismissal as an insult. Thinking justly thatthey had merited a nobler confidence from the Spartans, they gave wayto their first resentment, and disregarding the league existing yetbetween themselves and Sparta against the Mede--the form of which hadsurvived the spirit--they entered into an alliance with the Argives, hereditary enemies of Sparta, and in that alliance the Aleuads ofThessaly were included. 

XV. The obtaining of these decrees by the popular party was theprelude to the fall of Cimon. The talents of that great man were farmore eminent in war than peace; and despite his real or affectedliberality of demeanour, he wanted either the faculty to suit thetime, or the art to conceal his deficiencies. Raised to eminence bySpartan favour, he had ever too boldly and too imprudently espousedthe Spartan cause. At first, when the Athenians obtained their navalascendency--and it was necessary to conciliate Sparta--the partialitywith which Cimon was regarded by that state was his recommendation;now when, no longer to be conciliated, Sparta was to be dreaded andopposed, it became his ruin. It had long been his custom to laud theSpartans at the expense of the Athenians, and to hold out theirmanners as an example to the admiration of his countrymen. It was afavourite mode of reproof with him--"The Spartans would not have donethis. " It was even remembered against him that he had called his sonLacedaemonius. These predilections had of late rankled in the popularmind; and now, when the Athenian force had been contumeliouslydismissed, it was impossible to forget that Cimon had obtained thedecree of the relief, and that the mortification which resulted fromit was the effect of his counsels. 

Public spirit ran high against the Spartans, and at the head of theSpartan faction in Athens stood Cimon. 

XVI. But at this time, other events, still more intimately connectedwith the Athenian politics, conspired to weaken the authority of thisable general. Those constitutional reforms, which are in realityrevolutions under a milder name, were now sweeping away the lastwrecks of whatever of the old aristocratic system was still left tothe Athenian commonwealth. 

We have seen that the democratic party had increased in power by thedecree of Aristides, which opened all offices to all ranks. This, asyet, was productive less of actual than of moral effects. The liberalopinions possessed by a part of the aristocracy, and the legitimateinfluence which in all countries belongs to property and high descent(greatest, indeed, where the countries are most free)--secured, as ageneral rule, the principal situations in the state to rank andwealth. But the moral effect of the decree was to elevate the lowerclasses with a sense of their own power and dignity, and every victoryachieved over a foreign foe gave new authority to the people whosevoices elected the leader--whose right arms won the battle. 

The constitution previous to Solon was an oligarchy of birth. Solonrendered it an aristocracy of property. Clisthenes widened its basisfrom property to population; as we have already seen, it was, in allprobability, Clisthenes also who weakened the more illicit andoppressive influences of wealth, by establishing the ballot or secretsuffrage instead of the open voting, which was common in the time ofSolon. It is the necessary constitution of society, that when oneclass obtains power, the ancient checks to that power requireremodelling. The Areopagus was designed by Solon as the aristocraticbalance to the popular assembly. But in all states in which thepeople and the aristocracy are represented, the great blow to thearistocratic senate is given, less by altering its own constitutionthan by infusing new elements of democracy into the popular assembly. The old boundaries are swept away, not by the levelling of the bank, but by the swelling of the torrent. The checks upon democracy oughtto be so far concealed as to be placed in the representation of thedemocracy itself; for checks upon its progress from without are but asfortresses to be stormed; and what, when latent, was the influence ofa friend, when apparent, is the resistance of a foe. 

The Areopagus, the constitutional bulwark of the aristocratic party ofAthens, became more and more invidious to the people. And now, whenCimon resisted every innovation on that assembly, he only ensured hisown destruction, while he expedited the policy he denounced. Ephialtes directed all the force of the popular opinion against thisvenerable senate; and at length, though not openly assisted byPericles [182], who took no prominent part in the contention, thatinfluential statesman succeeded in crippling its functions andlimiting its authority. 

XVII. I do not propose to plunge the reader into the voluminous andunprofitable controversy on the exact nature of the innovations ofEphialtes which has agitated the students of Germany. It appears tome most probable that the Areopagus retained the right of adjudgingcases of homicide [183], and little besides of its ancientconstitutional authority, that it lost altogether its most dangerouspower in the indefinite police it had formerly exercised over thehabits and morals of the people, that any control of the finances waswisely transferred to the popular senate [184], that its irresponsiblecharacter was abolished, and it was henceforth rendered accountable tothe people. Such alterations were not made without exciting the deepindignation of the aristocratic faction. 

In all state reforms a great and comprehensive mind does not so muchconsider whether each reform is just, as what will be the ultimateascendency given to particular principles. Cimon preferred to allconstitutions a limited aristocracy, and his practical experienceregarded every measure in its general tendency towards or against thesystem which he honestly advocated. 

XVIII. The struggle between the contending parties and principles hadcommenced before Cimon's expedition to Ithome; the mortificationconnected with that event, in weakening Cimon, weakened thearistocracy itself. Still his fall was not immediate [185], nor didit take place as a single and isolated event, but as one of thenecessary consequences of the great political change effected byEphialtes. All circumstances, however, conspired to place the son ofMiltiades in a situation which justified the suspicion and jealousy ofthe Athenians. Of all the enemies, how powerful soever, that Athenscould provoke, none were so dangerous as Lacedaemon. 

Dark, wily, and implacable, the rugged queen of the Peloponnesusreared her youth in no other accomplishments than those of stratagemand slaughter. Her enmity against Athens was no longer smothered. Athens had everything to fear, not less from her influence than herarmies. It was not, indeed, so much from the unsheathed sword as fromthe secret councils of Sparta that danger was to be apprehended. Itcannot be too often remembered, that among a great portion of theAthenian aristocracy, the Spartan government maintained a considerableand sympathetic intelligence. That government ever sought to adaptand mould all popular constitutions to her own oligarchic model; andwhere she could not openly invade, she secretly sought to undermine, the liberties of her neighbours. Thus, in addition to all fear froman enemy in the field, the Athenian democracy were constantly excitedto suspicion against a spy within the city: always struggling with anaristocratic party, which aimed at regaining the power it had lost, there was just reason to apprehend that that party would seize anyoccasion to encroach upon the popular institutions; every feud withSparta consequently seemed to the Athenian people, nor without cause, to subject to intrigue and conspiracy their civil freedom; and (asalways happens with foreign interference, whether latent or avowed)exasperated whatever jealousies already existed against those forwhose political interests the interference was exerted. Bearing thisin mind, we shall see no cause to wonder at the vehement opposition towhich Cimon was now subjected. We are driven ourselves to searchdeeply into the causes which led to his prosecution, as to that ofother eminent men in Athens, from want of clear and precise historicaldetails. Plutarch, to whom, in this instance, we are compelledchiefly to resort, is a most equivocal authority. Like mostbiographers, his care is to exalt his hero, though at the expense ofthat hero's countrymen; and though an amiable writer, nor without somesemi-philosophical views in morals, his mind was singularly deficientin grasp and in comprehension. He never penetrates the subtle causesof effects. He surveys the past, sometimes as a scholar, sometimes asa taleteller, sometimes even as a poet, but never as a statesman. Thus, we learn from him little of the true reasons for the ostracism, either of Aristides, of Themistocles, or of Cimon--points nowintricate, but which might then, alas! have been easily cleared up bya profound inquirer, to the acquittal alike of themselves and of theirjudges. To the natural deficiencies of Plutarch we must add his partypredilections. He was opposed to democratic opinions--and thatobjection, slight in itself, or it might be urged against many of thebest historians and the wisest thinkers, is rendered weighty in thathe was unable to see, that in all human constitutions perfection isimpossible, that we must take the evil with the good, and that what heimputes to one form of government is equally attributable to another. For in what monarchy, what oligarchy, have not great men beenmisunderstood, and great merits exposed to envy!

Thus, in the life of Cimon, Plutarch says that it was "on a slightpretext" [186] that that leader of the Spartan party in Athens wassubjected to the ostracism. We have seen enough to convince us that, whatever the pretext, the reasons, at least, were grave and solid--that they were nothing short of Cimon's unvarying ardour for, andconstant association with, the principles and the government of thatstate most inimical to Athens, and the suspicious policy of which was, in all times--at that time especially--fraught with danger to herpower, her peace, and her institutions. Could we penetrate fartherinto the politics of the period, we might justify the Athenians yetmore. Without calling into question the integrity and the patriotismof Cimon, without supposing that he would have entered into anyintrigue against the Athenian independence of foreign powers--asupposition his subsequent conduct effectually refutes--he might, as asincere and warm partisan of the nobles, and a resolute opposer of thepopular party, have sought to restore at home the aristocratic balanceof power, by whatever means his great rank, and influence, andconnexion with the Lacedaemonian party could afford him. We are told, at least, that he not only opposed all the advances of the moreliberal party--that he not only stood resolutely by the interests anddignities of the Areopagus, which had ceased to harmonize with themore modern institutions, but that he expressly sought to restorecertain prerogatives which that assembly had formally lost during hisforeign expeditions, and that he earnestly endeavoured to bring backthe whole constitution to the more aristocratic government establishedby Clisthenes. It is one thing to preserve, it is another to restore. A people may be deluded under popular pretexts out of the rights theyhave newly acquired, but they never submit to be openly despoiled ofthem. Nor can we call that ingratitude which is but the refusal tosurrender to the merits of an individual the acquisitions of a nation. 

All things considered, then, I believe, that if ever ostracism wasjustifiable, it was so in the case of Cimon--nay, it was perhapsabsolutely essential to the preservation of the constitution. Hisvery honesty made him resolute in his attempts against thatconstitution. His talents, his rank, his fame, his services, onlyrendered those attempts more dangerous. 

XIX. Could the reader be induced to view, with an examination equallydispassionate, the several ostracisms of Aristides and Themistocles, he might see equal causes of justification, both in the motives and inthe results. The first was absolutely necessary for the defeat of thearistocratic party, and the removal of restrictions on those energieswhich instantly found the most glorious vents for action; the secondwas justified by a similar necessity that produced similar effects. To impartial eyes a people may be vindicated without traducing thosewhom a people are driven to oppose. In such august and complicatedtrials the accuser and defendant may be both innocent. 

CHAPTER IV. 

War between Megara and Corinth. --Megara and Pegae garrisoned byAthenians. --Review of Affairs at the Persian Court. --Accession ofArtaxerxes. --Revolt of Egypt under Inarus. --Athenian Expedition toassist Inarus. --Aegina besieged. --The Corinthians defeated. --SpartanConspiracy with the Athenian Oligarchy. --Battle of Tanagra. --Campaignand Successes of Myronides. --Plot of the Oligarchy against theRepublic. --Recall of Cimon. --Long Walls completed. --Aegina reduced. --Expedition under Tolmides. --Ithome surrenders. --The Insurgents aresettled at Naupactus. --Disastrous Termination of the EgyptianExpedition. --The Athenians march into Thessaly to restore Orestes theTagus. --Campaign under Pericles. --Truce of five Years with thePeloponnesians. --Cimon sets sail for Cyprus. --Pretended Treaty ofPeace with Persia. --Death of Cimon. 

I. Cimon, summoned to the ostracism, was sentenced to its appointedterm of banishment--ten years. By his removal, the situation ofPericles became suddenly more prominent and marked, and he mingledwith greater confidence and boldness in public affairs. The vigour ofthe new administration was soon manifest. Megara had hitherto beenfaithful to the Lacedaemonian alliance--a dispute relative to thesettlement of frontiers broke out between that state and Corinth. Although the Corinthian government, liberal and enlightened, was oftenopposed to the Spartan oligarchy, it was still essential to theinterest of both those Peloponnesian states to maintain a firm generalalliance, and to keep the Peloponnesian confederacy as acounterbalance to the restless ambition of the new head of the Ionianleague. Sparta could not, therefore, have been slow in preferring thealliance of Corinth to that of Megara. On the other hand, Megara, nowpossessed of a democratic constitution, had long since abandoned theDorian character and habits. The situation of its territories, thenature of its institutions, alike pointed to Athens as its legitimateally. Thus, when the war broke out between Megara and Corinth, on theside of the latter appeared Sparta, while Megara naturally sought theassistance of Athens. The Athenian government eagerly availed itselfof the occasion to increase the power which Athens was now rapidlyextending over Greece. If we cast our eyes along the map of Greece, we shall perceive that the occupation of Megara proffered peculiaradvantages. It became at once a strong and formidable fortressagainst any incursions from the Peloponnesus, while its seaports ofNisaea and Pegae opened new fields, both of ambition and of commerce, alike on the Saronic and the Gulf of Corinth. The Athenians seizedwillingly on the alliance thus offered to them, and the Megarians hadthe weakness to yield both Megara and Pegae to Athenian garrisons, while the Athenians fortified their position by long walls that unitedMegara with its harbour at Nisaea. 

II. A new and more vast enterprise contributed towards the stabilityof the government by draining off its bolder spirits, and divertingthe popular attention from domestic to foreign affairs. 

It is necessary to pass before us, in brief review, the vicissitudesof the Persian court. In republican Greece, the history of the peoplemarches side by side with the biography of great men. In despoticPersia, all history dies away in the dark recesses and sanguinarymurthers of a palace governed by eunuchs and defended but by slaves. 

In the year 465 B. C. The reign of the unfortunate Xerxes drew to itsclose. On his return to Susa, after the disastrous results of thePersian invasion, he had surrendered himself to the indolent luxury ofa palace. An able and daring traitor, named Artabanus [187], but whoseems to have been a different personage from that Artabanus whosesagacity had vainly sought to save the armies of Xerxes from theexpedition to Greece, entered into a conspiracy against the feeblemonarch. By the connivance of a eunuch, he penetrated at night thechamber of the king--and the gloomy destinies of Xerxes wereconsummated by assassination. Artabanus sought to throw the guiltupon Darius, the eldest son of the murdered king; and Artaxerxes, theyounger brother, seems to have connived at a charge which might renderhimself the lawful heir to the throne. Darius accordingly perished bythe same fate as his father. The extreme youth of Artaxerxes hadinduced Artabanus to believe that but a slender and insecure life nowstood between himself and the throne; but the young prince was alreadymaster of the royal art of dissimulation: he watched his opportunity--and by a counter-revolution Artabanus was sacrificed to the manes ofhis victims. [188]

Thus Artaxerxes obtained the undisturbed possession of the Persianthrone (B. C. 464). The new monarch appears to have derived fromnature a stronger intellect than his father. But the abuses, so rapidand rank of growth in Eastern despotisms, which now ate away thestrength of the Persian monarchy, were already, perhaps, past thepossibility of reform. The enormous extent of the ill-regulatedempire tempted the ambition of chiefs who might have plausibly hoped, that as the Persian masters had now degenerated to the effeminacy ofthe Assyrians they had supplanted, so the enterprise of a second Cyrusmight be crowned by a similar success. 

Egypt had been rather overrun by Xerxes than subdued--and the spiritof its ancient people waited only the occasion of revolt. A Libyanprince, of the name of Inarus, whose territories bordered Egypt, entered that country (B. C. 460), and was hailed by the greater partof the population as a deliverer. The recent murder of Xerxes--theweakness of a new reign, commenced in so sanguinary a manner, appearedto favour their desire of independence; and the African adventurerbeheld himself at the head of a considerable force. Having alreadysecured foreign subsidiaries, Inarus was anxious yet more tostrengthen himself abroad; and more than one ambassador was despatchedto Athens, soliciting her assistance, and proffering, in return, ashare in the government for whose establishment her arms weresolicited: a singular fatality, that the petty colony which, if webelieve tradition, had so many centuries ago settled in the thenobscure corners of Attica, should now be chosen the main auxiliary ofthe parent state in her vital struggles for national independence. 

III. In acceding to the propositions of Inarus, Pericles yielded toconsiderations wholly contrary to his after policy, which made it aprincipal object to confine the energies of Athens within the limitsof Greece. It is probable that that penetrating and scientificstatesman (if indeed he had yet attained to a position which enabledhim to follow out his own conceptions) saw that every new governmentmust dazzle either by great enterprises abroad or great changes athome--and that he preferred the former. There are few sacrifices thata wary minister, newly-established, from whom high hopes areentertained, and who can justify the destruction of a rival party onlyby the splendour of its successor--will not hazard rather than incurthe contempt which follows disappointment. He will do something thatis dangerous rather than do nothing that is brilliant. 

Neither the hatred nor the fear of Persia was at an end in Athens; andto carry war into the heart of her empire was a proposition eagerlyhailed. The more democratic and turbulent portion of the populace, viz. , the seamen, had already been disposed of in an expedition of twohundred triremes against Cyprus. But the distant and magnificententerprise of Egypt--the hope of new empire--the lust of undiscoveredtreasures--were more alluring than the reduction of Cyprus. Thatisland was abandoned, and the fleet, composed both of Athenian andconfederate ships, sailed up the Nile. Masters of that river, theAthenians advanced to Memphis, the capital of Lower Egypt. Theystormed and took two of the divisions of that city; the third, calledthe White Castle (occupied by the Medes, the Persians, and such of theEgyptians as had not joined the revolt), resisted their assault. 

IV. While thus occupied in Egypt, the Athenian arms were equallyemployed in Greece. The whole forces of the commonwealth were indemand--war on every side. The alliance with Megara not only createdan enemy in Corinth, but the Peloponnesian confederacy became involvedwith the Attic: Lacedaemon herself, yet inert, but menacing; while theneighbouring Aegina, intent and jealous, prepared for hostilities soonmanifest. 

The Athenians forestalled the attack--made a descent on Haliae, inArgolis--were met by the Corinthians and Epidaurians, and the resultof battle was the victory of the latter. This defeat the Atheniansspeedily retrieved at sea. Off Cecryphalea, in the Saronic gulf, theyattacked and utterly routed the Peloponnesian fleet. And now Aeginaopenly declared war and joined the hostile league. An importantbattle was fought by these two maritime powers with the confederatesof either side. The Athenians were victorious--took seventy ships--and, pushing the advantage they had obtained, landed in Aegina andbesieged her city. Three hundred heavy-armed Peloponnesians weredespatched to the relief of Aegina; while the Corinthians invaded theMegarian territory, seized the passes of Geranea, and advanced toMegara with their allies. Never was occasion more propitious. Solarge a force in Egypt, so large a force at Aegina--how was itpossible for the Athenians to march to the aid of Megara? Theyappeared limited to the choice either to abandon Megara or to raisethe siege of Aegina: so reasoned the Peloponnesians. But theadvantage of a constitution widely popular is, that the wholecommunity become soldiers in time of need. Myronides, an Athenian ofgreat military genius, not unassisted by Pericles, whose splendidqualities now daily developed themselves, was well adapted to givedirection to the enthusiasm of the people. Not a man was called fromAegina. The whole regular force disposed of, there yet remained atAthens those too aged and those too young for the ordinary service. Under Myronides, boys and old men marched at once to the assistance oftheir Megarian ally. A battle ensued; both sides retiring, neitherconsidered itself defeated. But the Corinthians retreating toCorinth, the Athenians erected a trophy on the field. The Corinthiangovernment received its troops with reproaches, and, after an intervalof twelve days, the latter returned to the scene of contest, andasserting their claim to the victory, erected a trophy of their own. During the work the Athenians sallied from Megara, where they hadensconced themselves, attacked and put to flight the Corinthians; anda considerable portion of the enemy turning into ground belonging to aprivate individual, became entangled in a large pit or ditch, fromwhich was but one outlet, viz. , that by which they had entered. Atthis passage the Athenians stationed their heavy-armed troops, whilethe light-armed soldiers surrounded the ditch, and with the missilesof darts and stones put the enemy to death. The rest (being thegreater part) of the Corinthian forces effected a safe butdishonourable retreat. 

V. This victory effected and Megara secured--although Aegina stillheld out, and although the fate of the Egyptian expedition was stillunknown--the wonderful activity of the government commenced what evenin times of tranquillity would have been a great and arduousachievement. To unite their city with its seaports, they set to workat the erection of the long walls, which extended from Athens both toPhalerus and Piraeus. Under Cimon, preparations already had been madefor the undertaking, and the spoils of Persia now provided the meansfor the defence of Athens. 

Meanwhile, the Spartans still continued at the siege of Ithome. Wemust not imagine that all the helots had joined in the revolt. This, indeed, would be almost to suppose the utter disorganization of theSpartan state. The most luxurious subjects of a despotism were nevermore utterly impotent in procuring for themselves the necessaries oflife, than were the hardy and abstemious freemen of the Dorian Sparta. It was dishonour for a Spartan to till the land--to exercise a trade. He had all the prejudices against any calling but that of arms whichcharacterized a noble of the middle ages. 

As is ever the case in the rebellion of slaves, the rise was notuniversal; a sufficient number of these wretched dependants remainedpassive and inert to satisfy the ordinary wants of their masters, andto assist in the rebuilding of the town. Still the Spartans weregreatly enfeebled, crippled, and embarrassed by the loss of the rest:and the siege of Ithome sufficed to absorb their attention, and tomake them regard without open hostilities, if with secret enmity, theoperations of the Athenians. The Spartan alliance formally dissolved--Megara, with its command of the Peloponnesus seized--the Doric cityof Corinth humbled and defeated--Aegina blockaded; all these--theAthenian proceedings--the Spartans bore without any formal declarationof war. 

VI. And now, in the eighth year of the Messenian war, piety succeededwhere pride and revenge had failed, and the Spartans permitted otherobjects to divide their attention with the siege of Ithome. It wasone of the finest characteristics of that singular people, theirveneration for antiquity. For the little, rocky, and obscureterritory of Doris, whence tradition derived their origin, they feltthe affection and reverence of sons. A quarrel arising between thepeople of this state and the neighbouring Phocians, the latter invadedDoris, and captured one of its three towns [189]. The Lacedaemoniansmarched at once to the assistance of their reputed father-land, withan army of no less than fifteen hundred heavy-armed Spartans and tenthousand of their Peloponnesian allies [190], under the command ofNicomedes, son of Cleombrotus, and guardian of their king Pleistoanax, still a minor. They forced the Phocians to abandon the town they hadtaken; and having effectually protected Doris by a treaty of peacebetween the two nations, prepared to return home. But in this theywere much perplexed; the pass of Geranea was now occupied by theAthenians: Megara, too, and Pegae were in their hands. Should theypass by sea through the Gulf of Crissa, an Athenian squadron alreadyoccupied that passage. Either way they were intercepted [191]. Underall circumstances, they resolved to halt a while in Boeotia, and watchan opportunity to effect their return. But with these ostensiblemotives for that sojourn assigned by Thucydides, there was anothermore deep and latent. We have had constant occasion to remark howsingularly it was the Spartan policy to plot against the constitutionof free states, and how well-founded was the Athenian jealousy of thesecret interference of the Grecian Venice. 

Halting now in Boeotia, Nicomedes entered into a clandestinecommunication with certain of the oligarchic party in Athens, theobject of the latter being the overthrow of the existent popularconstitution. With this object was certainly linked the recall ofCimon, though there is no reason to believe that great general a partyin the treason. This conspiracy was one main reason of the halt inBoeotia. Another was, probably, the conception of a great and politicdesign, glanced at only by historians, but which, if successful, wouldhave ranked among the masterpieces of Spartan statesmanship. Thisdesign was--while Athens was to be weakened by internal divisions, andher national spirit effectually curbed by the creation of anoligarchy, the tool of Sparta--to erect a new rival to Athens in theBoeotian Thebes. It is true that this project was not, according toDiodorus, openly apparent until after the battle of Tanagra. But sucha scheme required preparation; and the sojourn of Nicomedes in Boeotiaafforded him the occasion to foresee its possibility and prepare hisplans. Since the Persian invasion, Thebes had lost her importance, not only throughout Greece, but throughout Boeotia, her dependantterritory. Many of the states refused to regard her as their capital, and the Theban government desired to regain its power. Promises tomake war upon Athens rendered the Theban power auxiliary to Sparta:the more Thebes was strengthened, the more Athens was endangered: andSparta, ever averse to quitting the Peloponnesus, would thus erect abarrier to the Athenian arms on the very frontiers of Attica. 

VII. While such were the designs and schemes of Nicomedes, theconspiracy of the aristocratic party could not be so secret in Athensbut what some rumour, some suspicion, broke abroad. The people becamealarmed and incensed. They resolved to anticipate the war; and, judging Nicomedes cut off from retreat, and embarrassed and confinedin his position, they marched against him with a thousand Argives, with a band of Thessalian horse, and some other allied troops drawnprincipally from Ionia, which, united to the whole force of the armedpopulation within their walls, amounted, in all, to fourteen thousandmen. 

VIII. It is recorded by Plutarch, that during their march Cimonappeared, and sought permission to join the army. This was refused bythe senate of Five Hundred, to whom the petition was referred, notfrom any injurious suspicion of Cimon, but from a natural fear thathis presence, instead of inspiring confidence, would create confusion;and that it might be plausibly represented that he sought less toresist the Spartans than to introduce them into Athens--a proof howstrong was the impression against him, and how extensive had been theSpartan intrigues. Cimon retired, beseeching his friends to vindicatethemselves from the aspersions cast upon them. Placing the armour ofCimon--a species of holy standard--in their ranks, a hundred of thewarmest supporters among his tribe advanced to battle conscious of thetrust committed to their charge. 

IX. In the territory of Tanagra a severe engagement took place. Onthat day Pericles himself fought in the thickest part of the battle(B. C. 457); exposing himself to every danger, as if anxious that theloss of Cimon should not be missed. The battle was long, obstinate, and even: when in the midst of it, the Thessalian cavalry suddenlydeserted to the Spartans. Despite this treachery, the Athenians, wellsupported by the Argives, long maintained their ground with advantage. But when night separated the armies [192], victory remained with theSpartans and their allies. [193]

The Athenians were not, however, much disheartened by defeat, nor didthe Spartans profit by their advantage. Anxious only for escape, Nicomedes conducted his forces homeward, passed through Megara, destroying the fruit-trees on his march; and, gaining the pass ofGeranea, which the Athenians had deserted to join the camp at Tanagra, arrived at Lacedaemon. 

Meanwhile the Thebans took advantage of the victory to extend theirauthority, agreeably to the project conceived with Sparta. Thebes nowattempted the reduction of all the cities of Boeotia. Some submitted, others opposed. 

X. Aware of the necessity of immediate measures against a neighbour, brave, persevering, and ambitious, the Athenian government lost notime in recruiting its broken forces. Under Myronides, an army, collected from the allies and dependant states, was convened toassemble upon a certain day. Many failed the appointment, and thegeneral was urged to delay his march till their arrival. "It is notthe part of a general, " said Myronides, sternly, "to await thepleasure of his soldiers! By delay I read an omen of the desire ofthe loiterers to avoid the enemy. Better rely upon a few faithfulthan on many disaffected. "

With a force comparatively small, Myronides commenced his march, entered Boeotia sixty-two days only after the battle of Tanagra, and, engaging the Boeotians at Oenophyta, obtained a complete and splendidvictory (B. C. 456). This battle, though Diodorus could find nodetails of the action, was reckoned by Athens among the most gloriousshe had ever achieved; preferred by the vain Greeks even to those ofMarathon and Plataea, inasmuch as Greek was opposed to Greek, and notto the barbarians. Those who fell on the Athenian side were firsthonoured by public burial in the Ceramichus--"As men, " says Plato, "who fought against Grecians for the liberties of Greece. " Myronidesfollowed up his victory by levelling the walls of Tanagra. AllBoeotia, except Thebes herself, was brought into the Athenianalliance--as democracies in the different towns, replacing theoligarchical governments, gave the moral blow to the Spartanascendency. Thus, in effect, the consequences of the battle almostdeserved the eulogies bestowed upon the victory. Those consequenceswere to revolutionize nearly all the states in Boeotia; and, bycalling up a democracy in each state, Athens at once changed enemiesinto allies. 

From Boeotia, Myronides marched to Phocis, and, pursuing the samepolicy, rooted out the oligarchies, and established populargovernments. The Locrians of Opus gave a hundred of their wealthiestcitizens as hostages. Returned to Athens, Myronides was received withpublic rejoicings [194], and thus closed a short but brilliantcampaign, which had not only conquered enemies, but had establishedeverywhere garrisons of friends. 

XI. Although the banishment of Cimon had appeared to complete thetriumph of the popular party in Athens, his opinions were not banishedalso. Athens, like all free states, was ever agitated by the feud ofparties, at once its danger and its strength. Parties in Athens were, however, utterly unlike many of those that rent the peace of theItalian republics; nor are they rightly understood in the vaguedeclamations of Barthelemi or Mitford; they were not only parties ofnames and men--they were also parties of principles--the parties ofrestriction and of advance. And thus the triumph of either wasinvariably followed by the triumph of the principle it espoused. Nobler than the bloody contests of mere faction, we do not see inAthens the long and sweeping proscriptions, the atrocious massacresthat attended the party-strifes of ancient Rome or of modern Italy. The ostracism, or the fine, of some obnoxious and eminent partisans, usually contented the wrath of the victorious politicians. And in theadvance of a cause the people found the main vent for their passions. I trust, however, that I shall not be accused of prejudice when Istate as a fact, that the popular party in Athens seems to have beenmuch more moderate and less unprincipled even in its excesses than itsantagonists. We never see it, like the Pisistratidae, leagued withthe Persian, nor with Isagoras, betraying Athens to the Spartan. Whatthe oligarchic faction did when triumphant, we see hereafter in theestablishment of the Thirty Tyrants. And compared with theiroffences, the ostracism of Aristides, or the fine and banishment ofCimon, lose all their colours of wrong. 

XII. The discontented advocates for an oligarchy, who had intriguedwith Nicomedes, had been foiled in their object, partly by the conductof Cimon in disavowing all connexion with them, partly by the retreatof Nicomedes himself. Still their spirit was too fierce to sufferthem to forego their schemes without a struggle, and after the battleof Tanagra they broke out into open conspiracy against the republic. 

The details of this treason are lost to us; it is one of the darkestpassages of Athenian history. From scattered and solitary referenceswe can learn, however, that for a time it threatened the democracywith ruin. [195]

The victory of the Spartans at Tanagra gave strength to the Spartanparty in Athens; it also inspired with fear many of the people; it wasevidently desirable rather to effect a peace with Sparta than tohazard a war. Who so likely to effect that peace as the banishedCimon? Now was the time to press for his recall. Either at thisperiod, or shortly afterward, Ephialtes, his most vehement enemy, wasbarbarously murdered--according to Aristotle, a victim to the hatredof the nobles. 

XIII. Pericles had always conducted his opposition to Cimon withgreat dexterity and art; and indeed the aristocratic leaders ofcontending parties are rarely so hostile to each other as theirsubordinate followers suppose. In the present strife for the recallof his rival, amid all the intrigues and conspiracies, the openviolence and the secret machination, which threatened not only theduration of the government, but the very existence of the republic, Pericles met the danger by proposing himself the repeal of Cimon'ssentence. 

Plutarch, with a childish sentimentality common to him when he meansto be singularly effective, bursts into an exclamation upon thegenerosity of this step, and the candour and moderation of thosetimes, when resentments could be so easily laid aside. But theprofound and passionless mind of Pericles was above all the weaknessof a melodramatic generosity. And it cannot be doubted that thismeasure was a compromise between the government and the more moderateand virtuous of the aristocratic party. Perhaps it was the mostadvantageous compromise Pericles was enabled to effect; for byconcession with respect to individuals, we can often preventconcession as to things. The recall [196] of the great leader of theanti-popular faction may have been deemed equivalent to the surrenderof many popular rights. And had we a deeper insight into theintrigues of that day and the details of the oligarchic conspiracy, Isuspect we should find that, by recalling Cimon, Pericles saved theconstitution. [197]

XIV. The first and most popular benefit anticipated from the recallof the son of Miltiades in a reconciliation between Sparta and Athens, was not immediately realized further than by an armistice of fourmonths. [198]

About this time the long walls of the Piraeus were completed (B. C. 455), and shortly afterward Aegina yielded to the arms of theAthenians (B. C. 455), upon terms which subjected the citizens of thatgallant and adventurous isle (whose achievements and commerce seem noless a miracle than the greatness of Athens when we survey the limitsof their narrow and rocky domain) to the rival they had long sofearlessly, nor fruitlessly braved. The Aeginetans surrendered theirshipping, demolished their walls, and consented to the payment of anannual tribute. And so was fulfilled the proverbial command ofPericles, that Aegina ought not to remain the eyesore of Athens. 

XV. Aegina reduced, the Athenian fleet of fifty galleys, manned byfour thousand men [199], under the command of Tolmides, circumnavigated the Peloponnesus--the armistice of four months hadexpired--and, landing in Laconia, Tolmides burnt Gythium, a dock ofthe Lacedaemonians; took Chalcis, a town belonging to Corinth, and, debarking at Sicyon, engaged and defeated the Sicyonians. Thenceproceeding to Cephallenia, he mastered the cities of that isle; anddescending at Naupactus, on the Corinthian gulf, wrested it from theOzolian Locrians. 

In the same year with this expedition, and in the tenth year of thesiege (B. C. 455), Ithome surrendered to Lacedaemon. The long andgallant resistance of that town, the precipitous site of which natureherself had fortified, is one of the most memorable and gloriousevents in the Grecian history; and we cannot but regret that theimperfect morality of those days, which saw glory in the valour offreemen, rebellion only in that of slaves, should have left us butfrigid and scanty accounts of so obstinate a siege. To posterityneither the cause nor the achievements of Marathon or Plataea, seemthe one more holy, the other more heroic, than this long defiance ofMessenians and helots against the prowess of Sparta and the aid of herallies. The reader will rejoice to learn that it was on nodishonourable terms that the city at last surrendered. Life and freepermission to depart was granted to the besieged, and recorded by apillar erected on the banks of the Alpheus [200]. But such of thehelots as had been taken in battle or in the neighbouring territorywere again reduced to slavery--the ringleaders so apprehended aloneexecuted. [201]

The gallant defenders of Ithome having conditioned to quit for everthe Peloponnesus, Tolmides invested them with the possession of hisnew conquest of Naupactus. There, under a democratic government, protected by the power of Athens, they regained their ancient freedom, and preserved their hereditary name of Messenians--long distinguishedfrom their neighbours by their peculiar dialect. 

XVI. While thus, near at home, the Athenians had extended theirconquests and cemented their power, the adventurers they haddespatched to the Nile were maintaining their strange settlement withmore obstinacy than success. At first, the Athenians and their ally, the Libyan Inarus, had indeed, as we have seen, obtained noinconsiderable advantage. 

Anxious to detach the Athenians from the Egyptian revolt, Artaxerxeshad despatched an ambassador to Sparta, in order to prevail upon thatstate to make an excursion into Attica, and so compel the Athenians towithdraw their troops from Egypt. The liability of the Spartangovernment to corrupt temptation was not unknown to a court which hadreceived the Spartan fugitives; and the ambassador was charged withlarge treasures to bribe those whom he could not otherwise convince. Nevertheless, the negotiation failed; the government could not beinduced to the alliance with the Persian king. There was indeed acertain spirit of honour inherent in that haughty nation which, if notincompatible with cunning and intrigue, held at least in profounddisdain an alliance with the barbarian, for whatsoever ends. But, infact, the Spartans were then entirely absorbed in the reduction ofIthome, and the war in Arcady; and it would, further, have been theheight of impolicy in that state, if meditating any designs againstAthens, to assist in the recall of an army which it was its veryinterest to maintain employed in distant and perilous expeditions. 

The ambassador had the satisfaction indeed of wasting some of hismoney, but to no purpose; and he returned without success to Asia. Artaxerxes then saw the necessity of arousing himself to those activeexertions which the feebleness of an exhausted despotism rendered thefinal, not the first resort. Under Megabyzus an immense army wascollected; traversing Syria and Phoenicia, it arrived in Egypt, engaged the Egyptian forces in a pitched battle, and obtained acomplete victory. Thence marching to Memphis, it drove the Greeksfrom their siege of the White Castle, till then continued, and shutthem up in Prosopitis, an island in the Nile, around which their shipslay anchored. Megabyzus ordered the channel to be drained by dikes, and the vessels, the main force of the Athenians, were left stranded. Terrified by this dexterous manoeuvre, as well as by the success ofthe Persians, the Egyptians renounced all further resistance; and theAthenians were deprived at once of their vessels and their allies. [202]

XVII. Nothing daunted, and inspired by their disdain no less than bytheir valour, the Athenians were yet to the barbarian what the Normanknights were afterward to the Greeks. They burnt their vessels thatthey might be as useless to the enemy as to themselves, and, exhortingeach other not to dim the glory of their past exploits, shut up stillin the small town of Byblus situated in the isle of Prosopitis, resolved to defend themselves to the last. 

The blockade endured a year and a half, such was the singularignorance of the art of sieges in that time. At length, when thechannel was drained, as I have related, the Persians marched acrossthe dry bed, and carried the place by a land assault. So ended thiswild and romantic expedition. The greater part of the Atheniansperished; a few, however, either forced their way by arms, or, asDiodorus more probably relates, were permitted by treaty to retire, out of the Egyptian territory. Taking the route of Libya, theyarrived at Cyrene, and finally reached Athens. 

Inarus, the author of the revolt, was betrayed, and perished on thecross, and the whole of Egypt once more succumbed to the Persian yoke, save only that portion called the marshy or fenny parts (under thedominion of a prince named Amyrtaeus), protected by the nature of thesoil and the proverbial valour of the inhabitants. Meanwhile asquadron of fifty vessels, despatched by Athens to the aid of theircountrymen, entered the Mendesian mouth of the Nile too late toprevent the taking of Byblus. Here they were surprised and defeatedby the Persian troops and a Phoenician fleet (B. C. 455), and fewsurvived a slaughter which put the last seal on the disastrous resultsof the Egyptian expedition. 

At home the Athenians continued, however, their military operations. Thessaly, like the rest of Greece, had long shaken off the forms ofkingly government, but the spirit of monarchy still survived in acountry where the few were opulent and the multitude enslaved. TheThessalian republics, united by an assembly of deputies from thevarious towns, elected for their head a species of protector--whoappears to have possessed many of the characteristics of the podestaof the Italian states. His nominal station was that of militarycommand--a station which, in all save the most perfect constitutions, comprehends also civil authority. The name of Tagus was given to thisdangerous chief, and his power and attributes so nearly resembledthose of a monarch, that even Thucydides confers on a Tagus the titleof king. Orestes, one of these princes, had been driven from hiscountry by a civil revolution. He fled to Athens, and besought herassistance to effect his restoration. That the Athenians should exertthemselves in favour of a man whose rank so nearly resembled theodious dignity of a monarch, appears a little extraordinary. But asthe Tagus was often the favourite of the commonalty and the foe of thearistocratic party, it is possible that, in restoring Orestes, theAthenians might have seen a new occasion to further the policy sotriumphantly adopted in Boeotia and Phocis--to expel a hostileoligarchy and establish a friendly democracy [203]. Whatever theirviews, they decided to yield to the exile the assistance he demanded, and under Myronides an army in the following year accompanied Orestesinto Thessaly. They were aided by the Boeotians and Phocians. Myronides marched to Pharsalus, a Thessalian city, and mastered thesurrounding country; but the obstinate resistance of the citypromising a more protracted blockade than it was deemed advisable toawait, the Athenians raised the siege without effecting the object ofthe expedition. 

XVIII. The possession of Pegae and the new colony of Naupactus [204]induced the desire of extending the Athenian conquests on theneighbouring coasts, and the government were naturally anxious torepair the military honours of Athens--lessened in Egypt, andcertainly not increased in Thessaly. With a thousand Atheniansoldiers, Pericles himself set out for Pegae. Thence the fleet, thereanchored, made a descent on Sicyon; Pericles defeated the Sicyoniansin a pitched battle, and besieged the city; but, after some fruitlessassaults, learning that the Spartans were coming to the relief of thebesieged, he quitted the city, and, re-enforced by some Achaeans, sailed to the opposite side of the continent, crossed over theCorinthian Bay, besieged the town of Oeniadae in Acarnania (B. C. 454)(the inhabitants of which Pausanias [205] styles the hereditaryenemies of the Athenians), ravaged the neighbouring country, and boreaway no inconsiderable spoils. Although he reduced no city, thesuccesses of Pericles were signal enough to render the campaigntriumphant [206]; and it gratified the national pride and resentmentto have insulted the cities and wasted the lands of the Peloponnesus. 

These successes were sufficient to render a peace with Sparta and herallies advisable for the latter, while they were not sufficientlydecided to tempt the Athenians to prolong irregular and fruitlesshostilities. Three years were consumed without further aggressions oneither side, and probably in negotiations for peace. At the end ofthat time, the influence and intervention of Cimon obtained a truce offive years between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians. 

XIX. The truce with the Peloponnesians (B. C. 450) removed the mainobstacle to those more bright and extensive prospects of enterpriseand ambition which the defeat of the Persians had opened to theAthenians. In that restless and unpausing energy, which is thecharacteristic of an intellectual republic, there seems, as it were, akind of destiny: a power impossible to resist urges the state fromaction to action, from progress to progress, with a rapidity dangerouswhile it dazzles; resembling in this the career of individualsimpelled onward, first to obtain, and thence to preserve, power, andwho cannot struggle against the fate which necessitates them to soar, until, by the moral gravitation of human things, the point which hasno beyond is attained; and the next effort to rise is but the preludeof their fall. In such states Time indeed moves with giganticstrides; years concentrate what would be the epochs of centuries inthe march of less popular institutions. The planet of their fortunesrolls with an equal speed through the cycle of internal civilizationas of foreign glory. The condition of their brilliant life is theabsence of repose. The accelerated circulation of the bloodbeautifies but consumes, and action itself, exhausting the stores ofyouth by its very vigour, becomes a mortal but divine disease. 

XX. When Athens rose to the ascendency of Greece, it was necessary tothe preservation of that sudden and splendid dignity that she shouldsustain the naval renown by which it had been mainly acquired. Thereis but one way to sustain reputation, viz. , to increase it and thememory of past glories becomes dim unless it be constantly refreshedby new. It must also be borne in mind that the maritime habits of thepeople had called a new class into existence in the councils of thestate. The seamen, the most democratic part of the population, werenow to be conciliated and consulted: it was requisite to keep them inaction, for they were turbulent--in employment, for they were poor:and thus the domestic policy and the foreign interests of Athens alikeconspired to necessitate the prosecution of maritime enterprise. 

XXI. No longer harassed and impeded by fears of an enemy in thePeloponnesus, the lively imagination of the people readily turned tomore dazzling and profitable warfare. The Island of Cyprus had (wehave seen) before attracted the ambition of the mistress of theAegaean. Its possession was highly advantageous, whether for militaryor commercial designs, and once subjected, the fleet of the Atheniansmight readily retain the dominion. Divided into nine petty states, governed, not by republican, but by monarchical institutions, theforces of the island were distracted, and the whole proffered an easyas well as glorious conquest; while the attempt took the plausibleshape of deliverance, inasmuch as Persia, despite the former successesof Cimon, still arrogated the supremacy over the island, and the warwas, in fact, less against Cyprus than against Persia. Cimon, whoever affected great and brilliant enterprises, and whose main policyit was to keep the Athenians from the dangerous borders of thePeloponnesus, hastened to cement the truce he had formed with thestates of that district, by directing the spirit of enterprise to theconquest of Cyprus. 

Invested with the command of two hundred galleys, he set sail for thatisland (B. C. 450) [207]. But designs more vast were associated withthis enterprise. The objects of the late Egyptian expedition stilltempted, and sixty vessels of the fleet were despatched to Egypt tothe assistance of Amyrtaeus, who, yet unconquered, in the marshyregions, sustained the revolt against the Persian king. 

Artabazus commanded the Persian forces, and with a fleet of threehundred vessels he ranged himself in sight of Cyprus. Cimon, however, landing on the island, succeeded in capturing many of its principaltowns. Humbled and defeated, it was not the policy of Persia tocontinue hostilities with an enemy from whom it had so much to fearand so little to gain. It is not, therefore, altogether an improbableaccount of the later authorities, that ambassadors with proposals ofpeace were formally despatched to Athens. But we must reject as apure fable the assertions that a treaty was finally agreed upon, bywhich it was decreed, on the one hand, that the independence of theAsiatic Greek towns should be acknowledged, and that the Persiangenerals should not advance within three days' march of the Grecianseas; nor should a Persian vessel sail within the limit of Phaselisand the Cyanean rocks; while, on the other hand, the Athenians werebound not to enter the territories of Artaxerxes [208]. No sucharrangement was known to Thucydides; no reference is ever made to sucha treaty in subsequent transactions with Persia. A document, professing to be a copy of this treaty, was long extant; but it wasundoubtedly the offspring of a weak credulity or an ingeniousinvention. But while negotiations, if ever actually commenced, wereyet pending, Cimon was occupied in the siege of Citium, where famineconspired with the obstinacy of the besieged to protract the successof his arms. It is recorded among the popular legends of the day thatCimon [209] sent a secret mission to the oracle of Jupiter Ammon. "Return, " was the response to the messengers; "Cimon is with me!" Themessengers did return to find the son of Miltiades was no more. Heexpired during the blockade of Citium (B. C. 449). By his orders hisdeath was concealed, the siege raised, and, still under the magic ofCimon's name, the Athenians engaging the Phoenicians and Cilicians offthe Cyprian Salamis, obtained signal victories both by land and sea. Thence, joined by the squadron despatched to Egypt, which, if it didnot share, did not retrieve, the misfortunes of the previousexpedition, they returned home. 

The remains of Cimon were interred in Athens, and the splendidmonument consecrated to his name was visible in the time of Plutarch. 

CHAPTER V. 

Change of Manners in Athens. --Begun under the Pisistratidae. --Effectsof the Persian War, and the intimate Connexion with Ionia. --TheHetaerae. --The Political Eminence lately acquired by Athens. --TheTransfer of the Treasury from Delos to Athens. --Latent Dangers andEvils. --First, the Artificial Greatness of Athens not supported byNatural Strength. --Secondly, her pernicious Reliance on Tribute. --Thirdly, Deterioration of National Spirit commenced by Cimon in theUse of Bribes and Public Tables. --Fourthly, Defects in Popular Courtsof Law. --Progress of General Education. --History. --Its Ionian Origin. --Early Historians. --Acusilaus. --Cadmus. --Eugeon. --Hellanicus. --Pherecides. --Xanthus. --View of the Life and Writings of Herodotus. --Progress of Philosophy since Thales. --Philosophers of the Ionian andEleatic Schools. --Pythagoras. --His Philosophical Tenets and PoliticalInfluence. --Effect of these Philosophers on Athens. --School ofPolitical Philosophy continued in Athens from the Time of Solon. --Anaxagoras. --Archelaus. --Philosophy not a thing apart from theordinary Life of the Athenians. 

I. Before we pass to the administration of Pericles--a period sobrilliant in the history not more of Athens than of art--it may not beunseasonable to take a brief survey of the progress which theAthenians had already made in civilization and power (B. C. 449). 

The comedians and the rhetoricians, when at a later period they boldlyrepresented to the democracy, in a mixture of satire and of truth, themore displeasing features of the popular character, delighted to drawa contrast between the new times and the old. The generation of menwhom Marathon and Salamis had immortalized were, according to thesepraisers of the past, of nobler manners and more majestic virtues thantheir degenerate descendants. "Then, " exclaimed Isocrates, "our youngmen did not waste their days in the gambling-house, nor withmusic-girls, nor in the assemblies, in which whole days are now consumedthen did they shun the Agora, or, if they passed through its haunts, it was with modest and timorous forbearance--then, to contradict anelder was a greater offence than nowadays to offend a parent--then, not even a servant of honest repute would have been seen to eat ordrink within a tavern!" "In the good old times, " says the citizen ofAristophanes [210], "our youths breasted the snow without a mantle--their music was masculine and martial--their gymnastic exercisesdecorous and chaste. Thus were trained the heroes of Marathon!"

In such happy days we are informed that mendicancy and even want wereunknown. [211]

It is scarcely necessary to observe, that we must accept thesecomparisons between one age and another with considerable caution andqualification. We are too much accustomed to such declamations in ourown time not to recognise an ordinary trick of satirists anddeclaimers. As long as a people can bear patiently to hear their ownerrors and follies scornfully proclaimed, they have not becomealtogether degenerate or corrupt. Yet still, making every allowancefor rhetorical or poetic exaggeration, it is not more evident thannatural that the luxury of civilization--the fervour of unbridledcompetition, in pleasure as in toil--were attended with many changesof manners and life favourable to art and intellect, but hostile tothe stern hardihood of a former age. 

II. But the change was commenced, not under a democracy, but under atyranny--it was consummated, not by the vices, but the virtues of thenation. It began with the Pisistratidae [212], who first introducedinto Athens the desire of pleasure and the habits of ostentation, thatrefine before they enervate; and that luxury which, as in Athenaeus itis well and profoundly said, is often the concomitant of freedom, "assoft couches took their name from Hercules"--made its rapid progresswith the result of the Persian war. The plunder of Plataea, theluxuries of Byzantium, were not limited in their effect to the wildPausanias. The decay of old and the rise of new families tended togive a stimulus to the emulation of wealth--since it is by wealth thatnew families seek to eclipse the old. And even the destruction ofprivate houses, in the ravages of Mardonius, served to quicken thecareer of art. In rebuilding their mansions, the nobles naturallyavailed themselves of the treasures and the appliances of the gorgeousenemy they had vanquished and despoiled. Few ever rebuild theirhouses on as plain a scale as the old ones. In the city itself theresidences of the great remained plain and simple; they were mostlybuilt of plaster and unburnt brick, and we are told that the houses ofCimon and Pericles were scarcely distinguishable from those of theother citizens. But in their villas in Attica, in which the Athenianstook a passionate delight, they exhibited their taste and displayedtheir wealth [213]. And the lucrative victories of Cimon, backed byhis own example of ostentation, gave to a vast number of families, hitherto obscure, at once the power to gratify luxury and the desireto parade refinement. Nor was the Eastern example more productive ofemulation than the Ionian. The Persian war, and the league whichfollowed it, brought Athens into the closest intercourse with hergraceful but voluptuous colonies. Miletus fell, but the manners ofMiletus survived her liberties. That city was renowned for thepeculiar grace and intellectual influence of its women; and it isevident that there must have been a gradual change of domestic habitsand the formation of a new class of female society in Athens beforeAspasia could have summoned around her the power, and the wisdom, andthe wit of Athens--before an accomplished mistress could have beeneven suspected of urging the politic Pericles into war--and, aboveall, before an Athenian audience could have assented in delight tothat mighty innovation on their masculine drama--which is visible inthe passionate heroines and the sentimental pathos of Euripides. 

But this change was probably not apparent in the Athenian matronsthemselves, who remained for the most part in primitive seclusion; andthough, I think, it will be shown hereafter that modern writers havegreatly exaggerated both the want of mental culture and the degree ofdomestic confinement to which the Athenian women [214] were subjected, yet it is certain, at least, that they did not share the socialfreedom or partake the intellectual accomplishments of their lords. It was the new class of "Female Friends" or "Hetaerae, " a phrase illtranslated by the name of "courtesans" (from whom they wereindubitably but not to our notions very intelligibly, distinguished), that exhibited the rarest union of female blandishment and masculineculture. "The wife for our house and honour, " implies Demosthenes, "the Hetaera for our solace and delight. " These extraordinary women, all foreigners, and mostly Ionian, made the main phenomenon ofAthenian society. They were the only women with whom an enlightenedGreek could converse as equal to himself in education. While the lawdenied them civil rights, usage lavished upon them at once admirationand respect. By stealth, as it were, and in defiance of legislation, they introduced into the ambitious and restless circles of Athens manyof the effects, pernicious or beneficial, which result from theinfluence of educated women upon the manners and pursuits of men. [215]

III. The alteration of social habits was not then sudden andstartling (such is never the case in the progress of nationalmanners), but, commencing with the graces of a polished tyranny, ripened with the results of glorious but too profitable victories. Perhaps the time in which the state of transition was most favourablyvisible was just prior to the death of Cimon. It was not then so muchthe over-refinement of a new and feebler generation, as the polish andelegance which wealth, art, and emulation necessarily imparted to thesame brave warriors who exchanged posts with the Spartans at Plataea, and sent out their children and old men to fight and conquer withMyronides. 

IV. A rapid glance over the events of the few years commemorated inthe last book of this history will suffice to show the eminence whichAthens had attained over the other states of Greece. She was the headof the Ionian League--the mistress of the Grecian seas; with Sparta, the sole rival that could cope with her armies and arrest herambition, she had obtained a peace; Corinth was humbled, Aeginaruined, Megara had shrunk into her dependency and garrison. Thestates of Boeotia had received their very constitution from the handsof an Athenian general--the democracies planted by Athens served tomake liberty itself subservient to her will, and involved in hersafety. She had remedied the sterility of her own soil by securingthe rich pastures of the neighbouring Euboea. She had added the goldof Thasos to the silver of Laurion, and established a footing inThessaly which was at once a fortress against the Asiatic arms and amart for Asiatic commerce. The fairest lands of the opposite coast--the most powerful islands of the Grecian seas--contributed to hertreasury, or were almost legally subjected to her revenge. Her navywas rapidly increasing in skill, in number, and renown; at home, therecall of Cimon had conciliated domestic contentions, and the death ofCimon dispirited for a while the foes to the established constitution. In all Greece, Myronides was perhaps the ablest general--Pericles (nowrapidly rising to the sole administration of affairs [216]) wasundoubtedly the most highly educated, cautious, and commandingstatesman. 

But a single act of successful daring had, more than all else, contributed to the Athenian power. Even in the lifetime of Aristidesit had been proposed to transfer the common treasury from Delos toAthens [217]. The motion failed--perhaps through the virtuousopposition of Aristides himself. But when at the siege of Ithome thefeud between the Athenians and Spartans broke out, the fairest pretextand the most favourable occasion conspired in favour of a measure soseductive to the national ambition. Under pretence of saving thetreasury from the hazard of falling a prey to the Spartan rapacity orneed, --it was at once removed to Athens (B. C. 461 or 460) [218]; andwhile the enfeebled power of Sparta, fully engrossed by the Messenianwar, forbade all resistance to the transfer from that the mostformidable quarter, the conquests of Naxos and the recent reduction ofThasos seem to have intimidated the spirit, and for a time even tohave silenced the reproaches, of the tributary states themselves. Thus, in actual possession of the tribute of her allies, Athensacquired a new right to its collection and its management; and whileshe devoted some of the treasures to the maintenance of her strength, she began early to uphold the prerogative of appropriating a part tothe enhancement of her splendour. [219]

As this most important measure occurred at the very period when thepower of Cimon was weakened by the humiliating circumstances thatattended his expedition to Ithome, and by the vigorous and popularmeasures of the opposition, so there seems every reason to believethat it was principally advised and effected by Pericles, who appearsshortly afterward presiding over the administration of the finances. [220]

Though the Athenian commerce had greatly increased, it was stillprincipally confined to the Thracian coasts and the Black Sea. Thedesire of enterprises, too vast for a state whose power reverses mightsuddenly destroy, was not yet indulged to excess; nor had theturbulent spirits of the Piraeus yet poured in upon the variousbarriers of the social state and the political constitution, therashness of sailors and the avarice of merchants. Agriculture, towhich all classes in Athens were addicted, raised a healthfulcounteraction to the impetus given to trade. Nor was it till someyears afterward, when Pericles gathered all the citizens into thetown, and left no safety-valve to the ferment and vices of the Agora, that the Athenian aristocracy gradually lost all patriotism andmanhood, and an energetic democracy was corrupted into a vehementthough educated mob. The spirit of faction, it is true, ran high, buta third party, headed by Myronides and Tolmides, checked the excessesof either extreme. 

V. Thus, at home and abroad, time and fortune, the concurrence ofevents, and the happy accident of great men, not only maintained thepresent eminence of Athens, but promised, to ordinary foresight, along duration of her glory and her power. To deeper observers, thepicture might have presented dim but prophetic shadows. It was clearthat the command Athens had obtained was utterly disproportioned toher natural resources--that her greatness was altogether artificial, and rested partly upon moral rather than physical causes, and partlyupon the fears and the weakness of her neighbours. A steril soil, alimited territory, a scanty population--all these--the drawbacks anddisadvantages of nature--the wonderful energy and confident daring ofa free state might conceal in prosperity; but the first calamity couldnot fail to expose them to jealous and hostile eyes. The empiredelegated to the Athenians they must naturally desire to retain and toincrease; and there was every reason to forbode that their ambitionwould soon exceed their capacities to sustain it. As the state becameaccustomed to its power, it would learn to abuse it. Increasingcivilization, luxury, and art, brought with them new expenses, andAthens had already been permitted to indulge with impunity thedangerous passion of exacting tribute from her neighbours. Dependanceupon other resources than those of the native population has ever beena main cause of the destruction of despotisms, and it cannot fail, sooner or later, to be equally pernicious to the republics that trustto it. The resources of taxation, confined to freemen and natives, are almost incalculable; the resources of tribute, wrung fromforeigners and dependants, are sternly limited and terriblyprecarious--they rot away the true spirit of industry in the peoplethat demand the impost--they implant ineradicable hatred in the statesthat concede it. 

VI. Two other causes of great deterioration to the national spiritwere also at work in Athens. One, as I have before hinted, was thepolicy commenced by Cimon, of winning the populace by the bribes andexhibitions of individual wealth. The wise Pisistratus had inventedpenalties--Cimon offered encouragement--to idleness. When the poorare once accustomed to believe they have a right to the generosity ofthe rich, the first deadly inroad is made upon the energies ofindependence and the sanctity of property. A yet more pernicious evilin the social state of the Athenians was radical in theirconstitution--it was their courts of justice. Proceeding upon atheory that must have seemed specious and plausible to aninexperienced and infant republic, Solon had laid it down as aprinciple of his code, that as all men were interested in thepreservation of law, so all men might exert the privilege of theplaintiff and accuser. As society grew more complicated, the door wasthus opened to every species of vexatious charge and frivolouslitigation. The common informer became a most harassing and powerfulpersonage, and made one of a fruitful and crowded profession; and inthe very capital of liberty there existed the worst species ofespionage. But justice was not thereby facilitated. The informer wasregarded with universal hatred and contempt; and it is easy toperceive, from the writings of the great comic poet, that thesympathies of the Athenian audience were as those of the Englishpublic at this day, enlisted against the man who brought theinquisition of the law to the hearth of his neighbour. 

VII. Solon committed a yet more fatal and incurable error when hecarried the democratic principle into judicial tribunals. Heevidently considered that the very strength and life of hisconstitution rested in the Heliaea--a court the numbers and nature ofwhich have been already described. Perhaps, at a time when the oldoligarchy was yet so formidable, it might have been difficult tosecure justice to the poorer classes while the judges were selectedfrom the wealthier. But justice to all classes became a yet morecapricious uncertainty when a court of law resembled a popularhustings. [221]

If we intrust a wide political suffrage to the people, the people atleast hold no trust for others than themselves and their posterity--they are not responsible to the public, for they are the public. Butin law, where there are two parties concerned, the plaintiff anddefendant, the judge should not only be incorruptible, but strictlyresponsible. In Athens the people became the judge; and, in offencespunishable by fine, were the very party interested in procuringcondemnation; the numbers of the jury prevented all responsibility, excused all abuses, and made them susceptible of the same shamelessexcesses that characterize self-elected corporations--from whichappeal is idle, and over which public opinion exercises no control. These numerous, ignorant, and passionate assemblies were liable at alltimes to the heats of party, to the eloquence of individuals--to thewhims and caprices, the prejudices, the impatience, and the turbulencewhich must ever be the characteristics of a multitude orallyaddressed. It was evident, also, that from service in such a court, the wealthy, the eminent, and the learned, with other occupation oramusement, would soon seek to absent themselves. And the final blowto the integrity and respectability of the popular judicature wasgiven at a later period by Pericles, when he instituted a salary, justsufficient to tempt the poor and to be disdained by the affluent, toevery dicast or juryman in the ten ordinary courts [222]. Legalscience became not the profession of the erudite and the laboriousfew, but the livelihood of the ignorant and idle multitude. Thecanvassing--the cajoling--the bribery--that resulted from this, themost vicious institution of the Athenian democracy--are but tooevident and melancholy tokens of the imperfection of human wisdom. Life, property, and character were at the hazard of a popularelection. These evils must have been long in progressive operation;but perhaps they were scarcely visible till the fatal innovation ofPericles, and the flagrant excesses that ensued allowed the peoplethemselves to listen to the branding and terrible satire upon thepopular judicature, which is still preserved to us in the comedy ofAristophanes. 

At the same time, certain critics and historians have widely andgrossly erred in supposing that these courts of "the sovereignmultitude" were partial to the poor and hostile to the rich. Alltestimony proves that the fact was lamentably the reverse. Thedefendant was accustomed to engage the persons of rank or influencewhom he might number as his friends, to appear in court on his behalf. And property was employed to procure at the bar of justice thesuffrages it could command at a political election. The greatest viceof the democratic Heliaea was, that by a fine the wealthy couldpurchase pardon--by interest the great could soften law. But thechances were against the poor man. To him litigation was indeedcheap, but justice dear. He had much the same inequality to struggleagainst in a suit with a powerful antagonist, that he would have hadin contesting with him for an office in the administration. In alltrials resting on the voice of popular assemblies, it ever has beenand ever will be found, that, caeteris paribus, the aristocrat willdefeat the plebeian. 

VIII. Meanwhile the progress of general education had been great andremarkable. Music [223], from the earliest time, was an essentialpart of instruction; and it had now become so common an acquirement, that Aristotle [224] observes, that at the close of the Persian warthere was scarcely a single freeborn Athenian unacquainted with theflute. The use of this instrument was afterward discontinued, andindeed proscribed in the education of freemen, from the notion that itwas not an instrument capable of music sufficiently elevated andintellectual [225]; yet it was only succeeded by melodies moreeffeminate and luxurious. And Aristophanes enumerates the change fromthe old national airs and measures among the worst symptoms ofAthenian degeneracy. Besides the musician, the tutor of the gymnasiumand the grammarian still made the nominal limit of scholasticinstruction. [226] But life itself had now become a school. Thepassion for public intercourse and disputation, which the gardens andthe Agora, and exciting events, and free institutions, and the rise ofphilosophy, and a serene and lovely climate, made the prevalentcharacteristic of the matured Athenian, began to stir within theyoung. And in the mean while the tardy invention of prose literatureworked its natural revolution in intellectual pursuits. 

IX. It has been before observed, that in Greece, as elsewhere, thefirst successor of the poet was the philosopher, and that the orallecturer preceded the prose writer. With written prose HISTORYcommenced. Having found a mode of transmitting that species ofknowledge which could not, like rhythmical tales or sententiousproblems, be accurately preserved by the memory alone, it was naturalthat a present age should desire to record and transmit the past--chtaema es aei--an everlasting heirloom to the future. 

To a semi-barbarous nation history is little more than poetry. Thesubjects to which it would be naturally devoted are the legends ofreligion--the deeds of ancestral demigods--the triumphs of successfulwar. In recording these themes of national interest, the poet is thefirst historian. As philosophy--or rather the spirit of conjecture, which is the primitive and creative breath of philosophy--becomesprevalent, the old credulity directs the new research to theinvestigation of subjects which the poets have not sufficientlyexplained, but which, from their remote and religious antiquity, aremysteriously attractive to a reverent and inquisitive population, withwhom long descent is yet the most flattering proof of superiority. Thus genealogies, and accounts of the origin of states and deities, made the first subjects of history, and inspired the Argive Acusilaus[227], and, as far as we can plausibly conjecture, the MilesianCadmus. 

X. The Dorians--a people who never desired to disturb tradition, unwilling carefully to investigate, precisely because theysuperstitiously venerated, the past, little inquisitive as to themanners or the chronicles of alien tribes, satisfied, in a word, withthemselves, and incurious as to others--were not a race to whomhistory became a want. Ionia--the subtle, the innovating, theanxious, and the restless--nurse of the arts, which the mother countryultimately reared, boasts in Cadmus the Milesian the first writer ofhistory and of prose [228]; Samos, the birthplace of Pythagoras, produced Eugeon, placed by Dionysius at the head of the earlyhistorians; and Mitylene claimed Hellanicus, who seems to have formeda more ambitious design than his predecessors. He wrote a history ofthe ancient kings of the earth, and an account of the founders of themost celebrated cities in each kingdom [229]. During the early andcrude attempts of these and other writers, stern events contributed torear from tedious research and fruitless conjecture the true genius ofhistory; for it is as a people begin to struggle for rights, tocomprehend political relations, to contend with neighbours abroad, andto wrestle with obnoxious institutions at home, that they desire tosecure the sanction of antiquity, to trace back to some illustriousorigin the rights they demand, and to stimulate hourly exertions by areference to departed fame. Then do mythologies, and genealogies, andgeographical definitions, and the traditions that concern kings andheroes, ripen into chronicles that commemorate the convulsions or theprogress of a nation. 

During the stormy period which saw the invasion of Xerxes (B. C. 480), when everything that could shed lustre upon the past incited topresent struggles, flourished Pherecydes. He is sometimes called ofLeria, which seems his birthplace--sometimes of Athens, where heresided thirty years, and to which state his history refers. Althoughhis work was principally mythological, it opened the way to soundhistorical composition, inasmuch as it included references to latertimes--to existent struggles--the descent of Miltiades--the Scythianexpedition of Darius. Subsequently, Xanthus, a Lydian, composed awork on his own country (B. C. 463), of which some extracts remain, and from which Herodotus did not disdain to borrow. 

XI. It was nearly a century after the invention of prose and ofhistorical composition, and with the guides and examples of, manywriters not uncelebrated in their day before his emulation, thatHerodotus first made known to the Grecian public, and, according toall probable evidence, at the Olympic Games, a portion of that workwhich drew forth the tears of Thucydides, and furnishes theimperishable model of picturesque and faithful narrative. Thishappened in a brilliant period of Athenian history; it was in the sameyear as the battle of Oenophyta, when Athens gave laws andconstitutions to Boeotia, and the recall of Cimon established forherself both liberty and order. The youth of Herodotus was passedwhile the glory of the Persian war yet lingered over Greece, and whilewith the ascendency of Athens commenced a new era of civilization. His genius drew the vital breath from an atmosphere of poetry. Thedesire of wild adventure still existed, and the romantic expedition ofthe Athenians into Egypt had served to strengthen the connexionbetween the Greeks and that imposing and interesting land. The riseof the Greek drama with Aeschylus probably contributed to give effect, colour, and vigour to the style of Herodotus. And something almost ofthe art of the contemporaneous Sophocles may be traced in the easyskill of his narratives, and the magic yet tranquil energy of hisdescriptions. 

XII. Though Dorian by ancient descent, it was at Halicarnassus, inCaria, a city of Asia Minor, that Herodotus was born; nor does hisstyle, nor do his views, indicate that he derived from the origin ofhis family any of the Dorian peculiarities. His parents weredistinguished alike by birth and fortune. Early in life thoseinternal commotions, to which all the Grecian towns were subjected, and which crushed for a time the liberties of his native city, drovehim from Halicarnassus: and, suffering from tyranny, he becameinspired by that enthusiasm for freedom which burns throughout hisimmortal work. During his exile he travelled through Greece, Thrace, and Macedonia--through Scythia, Asia, and Egypt. Thus he collectedthe materials of his work, which is, in fact, a book of travelsnarrated historically. If we do not reject the story that he read aportion of his work at the Olympian Games, when Thucydides, one of hislisteners, was yet a boy, and if we suppose the latter to have beenabout fifteen, this anecdote is calculated [230] to bear the date ofOlym. 81, B. C. 456, when Herodotus was twenty-eight. 

The chief residence of Herodotus was at Samos, until a revolutionbroke out in Halicarnassus. The people conspired against their tyrantLygdamis. Herodotus repaired to his native city, took a prominentpart in the conspiracy, and finally succeeded in restoring the populargovernment. He was not, however, long left to enjoy the liberties hehad assisted to acquire for his fellow-citizens: some intrigue of thecounter-party drove him a second time into exile. Repairing toAthens, he read the continuation of his history at the festival of thePanathenaea (B. C. 446). It was received with the most rapturousapplause; and we are told that the people solemnly conferred upon theman who had immortalized their achievements against the Mede the giftof ten talents. The disposition of this remarkable man, like that ofall travellers, inclined to enterprise and adventure. His earlywanderings, his later vicissitudes, seem to have confirmed atemperament originally restless and inquisitive. Accordingly, in hisforty-first year, he joined the Athenian emigrators that in the southof Italy established a colony at Thurium (B. C. 443). 

VIII. At Thurium Herodotus apparently passed the remainder of hislife, though whether his tomb was built there or in Athens is a matterof dispute. These particulars of his life, not uninteresting inthemselves, tend greatly to illustrate the character of his writings. Their charm consists in the earnestness of a man who describescountries as an eyewitness, and events as one accustomed toparticipate in them. The life, the raciness, the vigour of anadventurer and a wanderer glow in every page. He has none of therefining disquisitions that are born of the closet. He paints historyrather than descants on it; he throws the colourings of a mind, unconsciously poetic, over all he describes. Now a soldier--now apriest--now a patriot--he is always a poet, if rarely a philosopher. He narrates like a witness, unlike Thucydides, who sums up like ajudge. No writer ever made so beautiful an application ofsuperstitions to truths. His very credulities have a philosophy oftheir own; and modern historians have acted unwisely in disdaining theoccasional repetition even of his fables. For if his truths recordthe events, his fables paint the manners and the opinions of the time;and the last fill up the history, of which events are only theskeleton. 

To account for his frequent use of dialogue and his dramatic effectsof narrative, we must remember the tribunal to which the work ofHerodotus was subjected. Every author, unconsciously to himself, consults the tastes of those he addresses. No small coterie ofscholars, no scrupulous and critical inquirers, made the ordealHerodotus underwent. His chronicles were not dissertations to becoldly pondered over and skeptically conned: they were read aloud atsolemn festivals to listening thousands; they were to arrest thecuriosity--to amuse the impatience--to stir the wonder of a lively andmotley crowd. Thus the historian imbibed naturally the spirit of thetaleteller. And he was driven to embellish his history with theromantic legend--the awful superstition--the gossip anecdote--whichyet characterize the stories of the popular and oral fictionist, inthe bazars of the Mussulman, or on the seasands of Sicily. Still ithas been rightly said that a judicious reader is not easily led astrayby Herodotus in important particulars. His descriptions oflocalities, of manners and customs, are singularly correct; and moderntravellers can yet trace the vestiges of his fidelity. As thehistorian, therefore, was in some measure an orator, so his skill wasto be manifest in the arts which keep alive the attention of anaudience. Hence Herodotus continually aims at the picturesque; hegives us the very words of his actors, and narrates the secrets ofimpenetrable palaces with as much simplicity and earnestness as if hehad been placed behind the arras. [231]

That it was impossible for the wandering Halicarnassian to know whatGyges said to Candaules, or Artabanus to Xerxes, has, perhaps, beentoo confidently asserted. Heeren reminds us, that both by Jewish andGrecian writers there is frequent mention of the scribes orsecretaries who constantly attended the person of the Persian monarch--on occasion of festivals [232], of public reviews [233], and even inthe tumult of battle; and, with the idolatrous respect in whichdespotism was held, noted down the words that fell from the royal lip. The ingenious German then proceeds to show that this custom was commonto all the Asiatic nations. Thus were formed the chronicles orarchives of the Persians; and by reference to these minute anddetailed documents, Herodotus was enabled to record conversations andanecdotes, and preserve to us the memoirs of a court. And though thisconjecture must be received with caution, and, to many passagesunconnected with Persia or the East, cannot be applied, it issufficiently plausible, in some very important parts of the history, not to be altogether dismissed with contempt. 

But it is for another reason that I have occasionally admitted thedialogues of Herodotus, as well as the superstitious anecdotes currentat the day. The truth of history consists not only in the relation ofevents, but in preserving the character of the people, and depictingthe manners of the time. Facts, if too nakedly told, may be verydifferent from truths, in the impression they convey; and the spiritof Grecian history is lost if we do not feel the Greeks themselvesconstantly before us. Thus when, as in Herodotus, the agents ofevents converse, every word reported may not have been spoken; butwhat we lose in accuracy of details we more than gain by the fidelityof the whole. We acquire a lively and accurate impression of thegeneral character--of the thoughts, and the manners, and the men ofthe age and the land. It is so also with legends, sparingly used, andof which the nature is discernible from fact by the most superficialgaze; we more sensibly feel that it was the Greeks who were engaged atMarathon when we read of the dream of Hippias or the apparition ofTheseus. Finally, an historian of Greece will, almost without aneffort, convey to the reader a sense of the mighty change, from an ageof poetical heroes to an age of practical statesmen, if we sufferHerodotus to be his model in the narrative of the Persian war, andallow the more profound and less imaginative Thucydides to colour thepictures of the Peloponnesian. 

XIV. The period now entered upon is also remarkable for the fertileand rapid development of one branch of intellectual cultivation inwhich the Greeks were pre-eminently illustrious. In history, Rome wasthe rival of Greece; in philosophy, Rome was never more than hercredulous and reverend scholar. 

We have seen the dawn of philosophy with Thales; Miletus, hisbirthplace, bore his immediate successors. Anaximander, his youngercontemporary [234], is said, with Pherecydes, to have been the firstphilosopher who availed himself of the invention of writing. Hisservices have not been sufficiently appreciated--like those of mostmen who form the first steps in the progress between the originatorand the perfector. He seems boldly to have differed from his master, Thales, in the very root of his system. He rejected the originalelement of water or humidity, and supposed the great primary essenceand origin of creation to be in that EVERYTHING or NOTHING which hecalled THE INFINITE, and which we might perhaps render as "The Chaos;"[235] that of this vast element, the parts are changed--the wholeimmutable, and all things arise from and return unto that universalsource [236]. He pursued his researches into physics, and attemptedto account for the thunder, the lightning, and the winds. Hisconjectures are usually shrewd and keen; and sometimes, as in hisassertion, "that the moon shone in light borrowed from the sun, " maydeserve a higher praise. Both Anaximander and Pherecydes concurred inthe principles of their doctrines, but the latter seems to have moredistinctly asserted the immortality of the soul. [237]

Anaximenes, also of Miletus, was the friend and follower ofAnaximander (B. C. 548). He seems, however, to have deserted theabstract philosophical dogmas of his tutor, and to have resumed theanalogical system commenced by Thales--like that philosopher, hefounded axioms upon observations, bold and acute, but partial andcontracted. He maintained that air was the primitive element. Inthis theory he united the Zeus, or ether, of Pherecydes, and theInfinite of Anaximander, for he held the air to be God in itself, andinfinite in its nature. 

XV. While these wild but ingenious speculators conducted the careerof that philosophy called the Ionian, to the later time of the sereneand lofty spiritualism of Anaxagoras, two new schools arose, bothfounded by Ionians, but distinguished by separate names--the Eleaticand the Italic. The first was founded by Xenophanes of Colophon, inElea, a town in western Italy. Migrating to an alien shore, colonization seems to have produced in philosophy the same resultswhich it produced in politics: it emancipated the reason from allprevious prejudice and prescriptive shackles. Xenophanes was thefirst thinker who openly assailed the popular faith (B. C. 538). Hedivested the Great Deity of the human attributes which human vanity, assimilating God to man, had bestowed upon him. The divinity ofXenophanes is that of modern philosophy--eternal, unalterable, andalone: graven images cannot represent his form. His attributes are--ALL HEARING, ALL SIGHT, and ALL THOUGHT. 

To the Eleatic school, founded by Xenophanes, belong Parmenides, Melissus the Samian, Zeno, and Heraclitus of Ephesus. All these werethinkers remarkable for courage and subtlety. The main metaphysicaldoctrines of this school approach, in many respects, to those thathave been familiar to modern speculators. Their predecessors argued, as the basis of their system, from experience of the outward world, and the evidence of the senses; the Eleatic school, on the contrary, commenced their system from the reality of ideas, and thence argued onthe reality of external objects; experience with them was but a showand an appearance; knowledge was not in things without, but in themind; they were the founders of idealism. With respect to the Deity, they imagined the whole universe filled with it--God was ALL IN ALL. Such, though each philosopher varied the system in detail, were themain metaphysical dogmas of the Eleatic school. Its masters werehigh-wrought, subtle, and religious thinkers; but their doctrines werebased upon a theory that necessarily led to parodox and mysticism; andfinally conduced to the most dangerous of all the ancient sects--thatof the sophists. 

We may here observe, that the spirit of poetry long continued tobreathe in the forms of philosophy. Even Anaximander, and hisimmediate followers in the Ionic school, while writing in prose, appear, from a few fragments left to us, to have had much recourse topoetical expression, and often convey a dogma by an image; while, inthe Eleatic school, Xenophanes and Parmenides adopted the form itselfof verse, as the medium for communicating their theories; and Zeno, perhaps from the new example of the drama, first introduced intophilosophical dispute that fashion of dialogue which afterward gave tothe sternest and loftiest thought the animation and life of dramaticpictures. 

XVI. But even before the Eleatic school arose, the most remarkableand ambitious of all the earlier reasoners, the arch uniter of actualpolitics with enthusiastic reveries--the hero of a thousand legends--ademigod in his ends and an impostor in his means--Pythagoras of Samos--conceived and partially executed the vast design of establishing aspeculative wisdom and an occult religion as the keystone of politicalinstitutions. 

So mysterious is everything relating to Pythagoras, so mingled withthe grossest fables and the wildest superstitions, that he seemsscarcely to belong to the age of history, or to the advanced andpractical Ionia. The date of his birth--his very parentage, arematters of dispute and doubt. Accounts concur in considering hisfather not a native of Samos; and it seems a probable supposition thathe was of Lemnian or Pelasgic origin. Pythagoras travelled early intoEgypt and the East, and the system most plausibly ascribed to himbetrays something of oriental mystery and priestcraft in its peculiardoctrines, and much more of those alien elements in its pervading andgeneral spirit. The notion of uniting a state with religion isespecially Eastern, and essentially anti-Hellenic. Returning toSamos, he is said to have found the able Polycrates in the tyranny ofthe government, and to have quitted his birthplace in disgust. If, then, he had already conceived his political designs, it is clear thatthey could never have been executed under a jealous and acute tyrant;for, in the first place, radical innovations are never so effectuallyopposed as in governments concentrated in the hands of a single man;and, secondly, the very pith and core of the system of Pythagorasconsisted in the establishment of an oligarchic aristocracy--aconstitution most hated and most persecuted by the Grecian tyrants. The philosopher migrated into Italy. He had already, in allprobability, made himself renowned in Greece. For it was then adistinction to have travelled into Egypt, the seat of mysterious andvenerated learning; and philosophy, like other novelties, appears tohave passed into fashion even with the multitude. Not only all thetraditions respecting this extraordinary man, but the certain fact ofthe mighty effect that, in his single person, he afterward wrought inItaly, prove him also to have possessed that nameless art of making apersonal impression upon mankind, and creating individual enthusiasm, which is necessary to those who obtain a moral command, and are thefounders of sects and institutions. It is so much in conformity withthe manners of the time and the objects of Pythagoras to believe thathe diligently explored the ancient, religions and political systems ofGreece, from which he had long been a stranger, that we cannot rejectthe traditions (however disfigured with fable) that he visited Delos, and affected to receive instructions from the pious ministrants ofDelphi. [238]

At Olympia, where he could not fail to be received with curiosity anddistinction, the future lawgiver is said to have assumed the title ofphilosopher, the first who claimed the name. For the rest, we mustyield our faith to all probable accounts, both of his own earnestpreparations for his design, and of the high repute he acquired inGreece, that may tend to lessen the miracle of the success thatawaited him in the cities of the west. 

XVII. Pythagoras (B. C. 540-510) arrived in Italy during the reign ofTarquinius Superbus, according to the testimony of Cicero and AulusGellius [239], and fixed his residence in Croton, a city in the Bay ofTarentum, colonized by Greeks of the Achaean tribe [240]. If we maylend a partial credit to the extravagant fables of later disciples, endeavouring to extract from florid superaddition some original germeof simple truth, it would seem that he first appeared in the characterof a teacher of youth [241]; and, as was not unusual in those times, soon rose from the preceptor to the legislator. Dissensions in thecity favoured his objects. The senate (consisting of a thousandmembers, doubtless of a different race from the body of the people;the first the posterity of the settlers, the last the nativepopulation) availed itself of the arrival and influence of an eloquentand renowned philosopher. He lent himself to the consolidation ofaristocracies, and was equally inimical to democracy and tyranny. Buthis policy was that of no vulgar ambition; he refused, at least for atime, ostensible power and office, and was contented with institutingan organized and formidable society--not wholly dissimilar to thatmighty order founded by Loyola in times comparatively recent. Thedisciples admitted into this society underwent examination andprobation; it was through degrees that they passed into its higherhonours, and were admitted into its deepest secrets. Religion madethe basis of the fraternity--but religion connected with human ends ofadvancement and power. He selected the three hundred who, at Croton, formed his order, from the noblest families, and they were professedlyreared to know themselves, that so they might be fitted to command theworld. It was not long before this society, of which Pythagoras wasthe head, appears to have supplanted the ancient senate and obtainedthe legislative administration. In this institution, Pythagorasstands alone--no other founder of Greek philosophy resembles him. Byall accounts, he also differed from the other sages of his time in hisestimate of the importance of women. He is said to have lectured toand taught them. His wife was herself a philosopher, and fifteendisciples of the softer sex rank among the prominent ornaments of hisschool. An order based upon so profound a knowledge of all that canfascinate or cheat mankind, could not fail to secure a temporarypower. His influence was unbounded in Croton--it extended to otherItalian cities--it amended or overturned political constitutions; andhad Pythagoras possessed a more coarse and personal ambition, hemight, perhaps, have founded a mighty dynasty, and enriched our socialannals with the results of a new experiment. But his was theambition, not of a hero, but a sage. He wished rather to establish asystem than to exalt himself; his immediate followers saw not all theconsequences that might be derived from the fraternity he founded: andthe political designs of his gorgeous and august philosophy, only fora while successful, left behind them but the mummeries of an impotentfreemasonry and the enthusiastic ceremonies of half-witted ascetics. 

XVIII. It was when this power, so mystic and so revolutionary, had, by the means of branch societies, established itself throughout aconsiderable portion of Italy, that a general feeling of alarm andsuspicion broke out against the sage and his sectarians. Theanti-Pythagorean risings, according to Porphyry, were sufficientlynumerous and active to be remembered for long generations afterward. Many of the sage's friends are said to have perished, and it is doubtfulwhether Pythagoras himself fell a victim to the rage of his enemies, ordied a fugitive among his disciples at Metapontum. Nor was it untilnearly the whole of Lower Italy was torn by convulsions, and Greeceherself drawn into the contest, as pacificator and arbiter, that theferment was allayed--the Pythagorean institutions were abolished, andthe timocratic democracies [242] of the Achaeans rose upon the ruins ofthose intellectual but ungenial oligarchies. 

XIX. Pythagoras committed a fatal error when, in his attempt torevolutionize society, he had recourse to aristocracies for hisagents. Revolutions, especially those influenced by religion, cannever be worked out but by popular emotions. It was from this errorof judgment that he enlisted the people against him--for, by theaccount of Neanthes, related by Porphyry [243], and, indeed, from allother testimony, it is clearly evident that to popular, not partycommotion, his fall must be ascribed. It is no less clear that, afterhis death, while his philosophical sect remained, his political codecrumbled away. The only seeds sown by philosophers, which spring upinto great states, are those that, whether for good or evil, areplanted in the hearts of the many. 

XX. The purely intellectual additions made by Pythagoras to humanwisdom seem to have been vast and permanent. By probable testimony, he added largely to mathematical science; and his discoveries inarithmetic, astronomy, music, and geometry, constitute an era in thehistory of the mind. His metaphysical and moral speculations are notto be separated from the additions or corruptions of his disciples. But we must at least suppose that Pythagoras established the mainproposition of the occult properties of NUMBERS, which were held to bethe principles of all things. According to this theory, unity is theabstract principle of all perfection, and the ten elementary numberscontain the elements of the perfect system of nature. By numbers theorigin and the substance of all things could be explained [244]. Numbers make the mystery of earth and heaven--of the gods themselves. And this part of his system, which long continued to fool mankind, wasa sort of monstrous junction between arithmetic and magic--the mostcertain of sciences with the most fantastic of chimeras. ThePythagoreans supposed the sun, or central fire, to be the seat ofJupiter and the principle of life. The stars were divine. Men, andeven animals, were held to have within them a portion of the celestialnature. The soul, emanating from the celestial fire [245]--cancombine with any form of matter, and is compelled to pass throughvarious bodies. Adopting the Egyptian doctrine of transmigration, thePythagoreans coupled it with the notion of future punishment orreward. 

Much of the doctrinal morality of Pythagoras is admirable; but it isvitiated by the ceremonial quackery connected with it. Humanity toall things--gentleness--friendship--love--and, above all the rest, SELF-COMMAND--form the principal recommendations of his mild andpatriarchal ethics. But, perhaps, from his desire to establish apolitical fraternity--perhaps from his doubt of the capacity ofmankind to embrace Truth unadorned, enamoured only of her own beauty--these doctrines were united with an austere and frivolous ascetism. And virtue was but to be attained by graduating through the secret andrigid ceremonies of academical imposture. His disciples soon pushedthe dogmas of their master into an extravagance at once dangerous andgrotesque; and what the sage designed but for symbols of a truth werecultivated to the prejudice of the truth itself. The influence ofPythagoras became corrupt and pernicious in proportion as the originaltenets became more and more adulterated or obscure, and served, insucceeding ages, to invest with the sanctity of a great name the mostvisionary chimeras and the most mischievous wanderings of pervertedspeculation. But, looking to the man himself--his discoveries--hisdesigns--his genius--his marvellous accomplishments--we cannot butconsider him as one of the most astonishing persons the world everproduced; and, if in part a mountebank and an impostor, no one, perhaps, ever deluded others with motives more pure--from an ambitionmore disinterested and benevolent. 

XXI. Upon the Athenians the effect of these various philosophers wasalready marked and influential. From the time of Solon there hadexisted in Athens a kind of school of political philosophy [246]. Butit was not a school of refining dogmas or systematic ethics; it wastoo much connected with daily and practical life to foster to anygreat extent the abstract contemplations and recondite theories ofmetaphysical discoveries. Mnesiphilus, the most eminent of theseimmediate successors of Solon, was the instructor of Themistocles, thevery antipodes of rhetoricians and refiners. But now a new age ofphilosophy was at hand. Already the Eleatic sages, Zeno andParmenides, had travelled to Athens, and there proclaimed theirdoctrines, and Zeno numbered among his listeners and disciples theyouthful Pericles. But a far more sensible influence was exercised byAnaxagoras of the Ionian school. For thirty years, viz. , from B. C. 480 to B. C. 450, during that eventful and stirring period interveningbetween the battle of Thermopylae and the commencement of the fiveyears' truce with Sparta, followed by the death of Cimon (B. C. 449), this eminent and most accomplished reasoner resided in Athens [247]. His doctrines were those most cherished by Pericles, who ranked thephilosopher among his intimate friends. After an absence of someyears, he again returned to Athens; and we shall then find himsubjected to a prosecution in which religious prejudice was stimulatedby party feud. More addicted to physics than to metaphysicalresearch, he alarmed the national superstition by explaining onphysical principles the formation even of the celestial bodies. According to him, the sun itself--that centre of divine perfectionwith the Pythagoreans--was ejected from the earth and heated into fireby rapid motion. He maintained that the proper study of man was thecontemplation of nature and the heavens [248]: and he refined theAuthor of the universe into an intellectual principle (Nous), whichwent to the root of the material causes mostly favoured by hispredecessors and contemporaries. He admitted the existence of matter, but INTELLIGENCE was the animating and prevailing principle, creatingsymmetry from chaos, imposing limit and law on all things, andinspiring life, and sensation, and perception. His predecessors inthe Ionian school, who left the universe full of gods, had not openlyattacked the popular mythology. But the assertion of OneIntelligence, and the reduction of all else to material and physicalcauses, could not but have breathed a spirit wholly inimical to thenumerous and active deities of Hellenic worship. Party feelingagainst his friend and patron Pericles ultimately drew the generalsuspicion into a focus; and Anaxagoras was compelled to quit Athens, and passed the remainder of his days at Lampsacus. But his influencesurvived his exile. His pupil Archelaus was the first _nativeAthenian_ who taught philosophy at Athens (B. C. 450), and from him wedate the foundation of those brilliant and imperishable schools whichsecured to Athens an intellectual empire long after her politicalindependence had died away [249]. Archelaus himself (as was the usualcustom of the earlier sages) departed widely from the tenets of hismaster. He supposed that two discordant principles, fire and water, had, by their operation, drawn all things from chaos into order, andhis metaphysics were those of unalloyed materialism. At this period, too, or a little later, began slowly to arise in Athens the sect ofthe Sophists, concerning whom so much has been written and so littleis known. But as the effects of their lessons were not for some timewidely apparent, it will be more in the order of this history to deferto a later era an examination of the doctrines of that perverted butnot wholly pernicious school. 

XXII. Enough has been now said to convey to the reader a generalnotion of the prodigious rise which, in the most serene ofintellectual departments, had been made in Greece, from the appearanceof Solon to the lectures of Archelaus, who was the master of Socrates. With the Athenians philosophy was not a thing apart from theoccupations of life and the events of history--it was not the monopolyof a few studious minds, but was cultivated as a fashion by the youngand the well-born, the statesman, the poet, the man of pleasure, thevotary of ambition [250]. It was inseparably interwoven with theirmanners, their pursuits, their glory, their decay. The history ofAthens includes in itself the history of the human mind. Science andart--erudition and genius--all conspired--no less than the trophies ofMiltiades, the ambition of Alcibiades--the jealousy of Sparta--to thecauses of the rise and fall of Athens. And even that satire onthemselves, to which, in the immortal lampoons of Aristophanes, theAthenian populace listened, exhibits a people whom, whatever theirerrors, the world never can see again--with whom philosophy was apastime--with whom the Agora itself was an academe--whose coarsestexhibitions of buffoonery and caricature sparkle with a wit, or expandinto a poetry, which attest the cultivation of the audience no lessthan the genius of the author; a people, in a word, whom the stagiriteunconsciously individualized when he laid down a general proposition, which nowhere else can be received as a truism--that the common peopleare the most exquisite judges of whatever in art is graceful, harmonious, or sublime. 

BOOK V. 

FROM THE DEATH OF CIMON, B. C. 449, TO THE DEATH OF PERICLES, IN THETHIRD YEAR OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, B. C. 429. 

CHAPTER I. 

Thucydides chosen by the Aristocratic Party to oppose Pericles. --HisPolicy. --Munificence of Pericles. --Sacred War. --Battle of Coronea. --Revolt of Euboea and Megara. --Invasion and Retreat of thePeloponnesians. --Reduction of Euboea. --Punishment of Histiaea--AThirty Years' Truce concluded with the Peloponnesians. --Ostracism ofThucydides. 

I. On the death of Cimon (B. C. 449) the aristocratic party in Athensfelt that the position of their antagonists and the temper of thetimes required a leader of abilities widely distinct from those whichhad characterized the son of Miltiades. Instead of a skilful andenterprising general, often absent from the city on dazzling butdistant expeditions, it was necessary to raise up a chief who couldcontend for their enfeebled and disputed privileges at home, and meetthe formidable Pericles, with no unequal advantages of civilexperience and oratorical talent, in the lists of the popularassembly, or in the stratagems of political intrigue. Accordinglytheir choice fell neither on Myronides nor Tolmides, but on one who, though not highly celebrated for military exploits, was deemedsuperior to Cimon, whether as a practical statesman or a popularorator. Thucydides, their new champion, united with natural giftswhatever advantage might result from the memory of Cimon; and hisconnexion with that distinguished warrior, to whom he wasbrother-in-law, served to keep together the various partisans of thefaction, and retain to the eupatrids something of the respect andenthusiasm which the services of Cimon could not fail to command, evenamong the democracy. The policy embraced by Thucydides was perhaps thebest which the state of affairs would permit; but it was one which wasfraught with much danger. Hitherto the eupatrids and the people, thoughever in dispute, had not been absolutely and totally divided; thestruggles of either faction being headed by nobles, scarcely permittedto the democracy the perilous advantage of the cry--that the people wereon one side, and the nobles on the other. But Thucydides, seeking torender his party as strong, as compact, and as united as possible, brought the main bulk of the eupatrids to act together in one body. Themeans by which he pursued and attained this object are not very clearlynarrated; but it was probably by the formation of a political club--aspecies of social combination, which afterward became very common to allclasses in Athens. The first effect of this policy favoured thearistocracy, and the energy and union they displayed restored for awhile the equilibrium of parties; but the aristocratic influence, thusmade clear and open, and brought into avowed hostility with the popularcause, the city was rent in two, and the community were plainly invitedto regard the nobles as their foes [251]. Pericles, thus more and morethrown upon the democracy, became identified with their interests, andhe sought, no less by taste than policy, to prove to the populace thatthey had grown up into a wealthy and splendid nation, that coulddispense with the bounty, the shows, and the exhibitions of individualnobles. He lavished the superfluous treasures of the state upon publicfestivals, stately processions, and theatrical pageants. As if desirousof elevating the commons to be themselves a nobility, all by which heappealed to their favour served to refine their taste and to inspire themeanest Athenian with a sense of the Athenian grandeur. It was said byhis enemies, and the old tale has been credulously repeated, that hisown private fortune not allowing him to vie with the wealthy nobles whomhe opposed, it was to supply his deficiencies from the public stock thathe directed some part of the national wealth to the encouragement of thenational arts and the display of the national magnificence. But it ismore than probable that it was rather from principle than personalambition that Pericles desired to discountenance and eclipse theinterested bribes to public favour with which Cimon and others hadsought to corrupt the populace. Nor was Pericles without the means orthe spirit to devote his private fortune to proper objects ofgenerosity. "It was his wealth and his prudence, " says Plutarch, when, blaming the improvidence of Anaxagoras, "that enabled him to relieve thedistressed. " What he spent in charity he might perhaps have spent moreprofitably in display, had he not conceived that charity was theprovince of the citizen, magnificence the privilege of the state. Itwas in perfect consonance with the philosophy that now began to spreadthroughout Greece, and with which the mind of this great politicalartist was so deeply imbued, to consider that the graces ennobled thecity they adorned, and that the glory of a state was intimatelyconnected with the polish of the people. 

II. While, at home, the divisions of the state were progressing tothat point in which the struggle between the opposing leaders mustfinally terminate in the ordeal of the ostracism--abroad, new causesof hostility broke out between the Athenians and the Spartans. Thesacred city of Delphi formed a part of the Phocian station; but, froma remote period, its citizens appear to have exercised the independentright of managing to affairs of the temple [252], and to have electedtheir own superintendents of the oracle and the treasures. In Delphiyet lingered the trace of the Dorian institutions and the Dorianblood, but the primitive valour and hardy virtues of the ancestraltribe had long since mouldered away. The promiscuous intercourse ofstrangers, the contaminating influence of unrelaxing imposture andpriestcraft--above all, the wealth of the city, from which the nativesdrew subsistence, and even luxury, without labour [253], contributedto enfeeble and corrupt the national character. Unable to defendthemselves by their own exertions against any enemy, the Delphiansrelied on the passive protection afforded by the superstitiousreverence of their neighbours, or on the firm alliance that existedbetween themselves and the great Spartan representatives of theircommon Dorian race. The Athenian government could not but deem itdesirable to wrest from the Delphians the charge over the oracle andthe temple, since that charge might at any time be renderedsubservient to the Spartan cause; and accordingly they appear to haveconnived at a bold attempt of the Phocians, who were now their allies. These hardier neighbours of the sacred city claimed and forciblyseized the right of superintendence of the temple. The Spartans, alarmed and aroused, despatched an armed force to Delphi, and restoredtheir former privileges to the citizens. They piously gave to theirexcursion the name of the Sacred War. Delphi formally renounced thePhocian league, declared itself an independent state, and even definedthe boundaries between its own and the Phocian domains. Sparta wasrewarded for its aid by the privilege of precedence in consulting theoracle, and this decree the Spartans inscribed on a brazen wolf in thesacred city. The Athenians no longer now acted through others--theyrecognised all the advantage of securing to their friends and wrestingfrom their foes the management of an oracle, on whose voice dependedfortune in war and prosperity in peace. Scarce had the Spartanswithdrawn, than an Athenian force, headed by Pericles, who is said tohave been freed by Anaxagoras from superstitious prejudices, enteredthe city, and restored the temple to the Phocians. The same imagewhich had recorded the privilege of the Spartans now bore aninscription which awarded the right of precedence to the Athenians. The good fortune of this expedition was soon reversed. 

III. When the Athenians, after the battle of Oenophyta, hadestablished in the Boeotian cities democratic forms of government, theprincipal members of the defeated oligarchy, either from choice or bycompulsion, betook themselves to exile. These malecontents, aided, nodoubt, by partisans who did not share their banishment, now seizedupon Chaeronea, Orchomenus, and some other Boeotian towns. TheAthenians, who had valued themselves on restoring liberty to Boeotia, and, for the first time since the Persian war, had honoured withburial at the public expense those who fell under Myronides, could notregard this attempt at counterrevolution with indifference. Policyaided their love of liberty; for it must never be forgotten that thechange from democratic to oligarchic government in the Grecian stateswas the formal exchange of the Athenian for the Spartan alliance. YetPericles, who ever unwillingly resorted to war, and the mostremarkable attribute of whose character was a profound and calculatingcaution, opposed the proposition of sending an armed force intoBoeotia. His objections were twofold--he considered the timeunseasonable, and he was averse to hazard upon an issue notimmediately important to Athens the flower of her Hoplites, orheavy-armed soldiery, of whom a thousand had offered their services inthe enterprise. Nevertheless, the counsel of Tolmides, who was eagerfor the war, and flushed with past successes, prevailed. "If, " saidPericles, "you regard not my experience, wait, at least, for the adviceof TIME, that best of counsellors. " The saying was forgotten in thepopular enthusiasm it opposed--it afterward attained the veneration of aprophecy. [254]

IV. Aided by some allied troops, and especially by his thousandvolunteers, Tolmides swept into Boeotia--reduced Chaeronea--garrisonedthe captured town, and was returning homeward, when, in the territoryof Coronea, he suddenly fell in with a hostile ambush [255], composedof the exiled bands of Orchomenus, of Opuntian Locrians, and thepartisans of the oligarchies of Euboea. Battle ensued--the Atheniansreceived a signal and memorable defeat (B. C. 447); many were madeprisoners, many slaughtered: the pride and youth of the AthenianHoplites were left on the field; the brave and wealthy Clinias (fatherto the yet more renowned Alcibiades), and Tolmides himself, wereslain. But the disaster of defeat was nothing in comparison with itsconsequences. To recover their prisoners, the Athenian governmentwere compelled to enter into a treaty with the hostile oligarchies andwithdraw their forces from Boeotia. On their departure, the oldoligarchies everywhere replaced the friendly democracies, and thenearest neighbours of Athens were again her foes. Nor was this changeconfined to Boeotia. In Locris and Phocis the popular party fell withthe fortunes of Coronea--the exiled oligarchies were re-established--and when we next read of these states, they are the allies of Sparta. At home, the results of the day of Coronea were yet more important. By the slaughter of so many of the Hoplites, the aristocratic party inAthens were greatly weakened, while the neglected remonstrances andfears of Pericles, now remembered, secured to him a respect andconfidence which soon served to turn the balance against hiscompetitor Thucydides. 

V. The first defeat of the proud mistress of the Grecian sea was asignal for the revolt of disaffected dependants. The Isle of Euboea, the pasturages of which were now necessary to the Athenians, encouraged by the success that at Coronea had attended the arms of theEuboean exiles, shook off the Athenian yoke (B. C. 445). In the sameyear expired the five years truce with Sparta, and that stateforthwith prepared to avenge its humiliation at Delphi. Periclesseems once more to have been called into official power--he was notnow supine in action. At the head of a sufficient force he crossedthe channel, and landed in Euboea. Scarce had he gained the island, when he heard that Megara had revolted--that the Megarians, joined bypartisans from Sicyon, Epidaurus, and Corinth, had put to the swordthe Athenian garrison, save a few who had ensconced themselves inNisaea, and that an army of the Peloponnesian confederates waspreparing to march to Attica. On receiving these tidings, Periclesre-embarked his forces and returned home. Soon appeared thePeloponnesian forces, commanded by the young Pleistoanax, king ofSparta, who, being yet a minor, was placed under the guardianship ofCleandridas; the lands by the western frontier of Attica, some of themost fertile of that territory, were devastated, and the enemypenetrated to Eleusis and Thria. But not a blow was struck--theycommitted the aggression and departed. On their return to Sparta, Pleistoanax and Cleandridas were accused of having been bribed tobetray the honour or abandon the revenge of Sparta. Cleandridas fledthe prosecution, and was condemned to death in his exile. Pleistoanaxalso quitted the country, and took refuge in Arcadia, in the sanctuaryof Mount Lycaeum. The suspicions of the Spartans appear to have beentoo well founded, and Pericles, on passing his accounts that year, isstated to have put down ten talents [256] as devoted to a certain use--an item which the assembly assented to in conscious and sagacioussilence. This formidable enemy retired, Pericles once more enteredEuboea, and reduced the isle (B. C. 445). In Chalcis he is said byPlutarch to have expelled the opulent landowners, who, no doubt, formed the oligarchic chiefs of the revolt, and colonized Histiaeawith Athenians, driving out at least the greater part of the nativepopulation [257]. For the latter severity was given one of thestrongest apologies that the stern justice of war can plead for itsharshest sentences--the Histiaeans had captured an Athenian vessel andmurdered the crew. The rest of the island was admitted to conditions, by which the amount of tribute was somewhat oppressively increased. [258]

VI. The inglorious result of the Peloponnesian expedition into Atticanaturally tended to make the Spartans desirous of peace uponhonourable terms, while the remembrance of dangers, eluded rather thancrushed, could not fail to dispose the Athenian government toconciliate a foe from whom much was to be apprehended and littlegained. Negotiations were commenced and completed (B. C. 445). TheAthenians surrendered some of the most valuable fruits of theirvictories in their hold on the Peloponnesus. They gave up their claimon Nisaea and Pegae--they renounced the footing they had establishedin Troezene--they abandoned alliance or interference with Achaia, overwhich their influence had extended to a degree that might reasonablyalarm the Spartans, since they had obtained the power to raise troopsin that province, and Achaean auxiliaries had served under Pericles atthe siege of Oeniadae [259]. Such were the conditions upon which atruce of thirty years was based [260]. The articles were ostensiblyunfavourable to Athens. Boeotia was gone--Locris, Phocis, an internalrevolution (the result of Coronea) had torn from their alliance. Thecitizens of Delphi must have regained the command of their oracle, since henceforth its sacred voice was in favour of the Spartans. Megara was lost--and now all the holds on the Peloponnesus weresurrendered. These reverses, rapid and signal, might have taught theAthenians how precarious is ever the military eminence of smallstates. But the treaty with Sparta, if disadvantageous, was notdishonourable. It was founded upon one broad principle, withoutwhich, indeed, all peace would have been a mockery--viz. , that theAthenians should not interfere with the affairs of the Peloponnesus. This principle acknowledged, the surrender of advantages or conqueststhat were incompatible with it was but a necessary detail. AsPericles was at this time in office [261], and as he had struggledagainst an armed interference with the Boeotian towns, so it isprobable that he followed out his own policy in surrendering all rightto interfere with the Peloponnesian states. Only by peace with Spartacould he accomplish his vast designs for the greatness of Athens--designs which rested not upon her land forces, but upon her confirmingand consolidating her empire of the sea; and we shall shortly find, inour consideration of her revenues, additional reasons for approving apeace essential to her stability. 

VII. Scarce was the truce effected ere the struggle betweenThucydides and Pericles approached its crisis. The friends of theformer never omitted an occasion to charge Pericles with having toolavishly squandered the public funds upon the new buildings whichadorned the city. This charge of extravagance, ever an accusationsure to be attentively received by a popular assembly, made a sensibleimpression. "If you think, " said Pericles to the great tribunalbefore which he urged his defence, "that I have expended too much, charge the sums to my account, not yours--but on this condition, letthe edifices be inscribed with my name, not that of the Athenianpeople. " This mode of defence, though perhaps but an oratoricalhyperbole [262], conveyed a rebuke which the Athenians were anaudience calculated to answer but in one way--they dismissed theaccusation, and applauded the extravagance. 

VIII. Accusations against public men, when unsuccessful, are thefairest stepping-stones in their career. Thucydides failed againstPericles. The death of Tolmides--the defeat of Coronea--the slaughterof the Hoplites--weakened the aristocratic party; the democracy andthe democratic administration seized the occasion for a decisiveeffort. Thucydides was summoned to the ostracism, and his banishmentfreed Pericles from his only rival for the supreme administration ofthe Athenian empire. 

CHAPTER II. 

Causes of the Power of Pericles. --Judicial Courts of the dependantAllies transferred to Athens. --Sketch of the Athenian Revenues. --Public Buildings the Work of the People rather than of Pericles. --Vices and Greatness of Athens had the same Sources. --Principle ofPayment characterizes the Policy of the Period. --It is the Policy ofCivilization. --Colonization, Cleruchia. 

I. In the age of Pericles (B. C. 444) there is that which seems toexcite, in order to disappoint, curiosity. We are fully impressedwith the brilliant variety of his gifts--with the influence heexercised over his times. He stands in the midst of great andimmortal names, at the close of a heroic, and yet in the suddenmeridian of a civilized age. And scarcely does he recede from ourgaze, ere all the evils which only his genius could keep aloof, gatherand close around the city which it was the object of his life not lessto adorn as for festival than to crown as for command. It is almostas if, with Pericles, her very youth departed from Athens. Yet soscanty are our details and historical materials, that the life of thissurprising man is rather illustrated by the general light of the timesthan by the blaze of his own genius. His military achievements arenot dazzling. No relics, save a few bold expressions, remain of theeloquence which awed or soothed, excited or restrained, the mostdifficult audience in the world. It is partly by analyzing the worksof his contemporaries--partly by noting the rise of the whole people--and partly by bringing together and moulding into a whole thescattered masses of his ambitious and thoughtful policy, that we alonecan gauge and measure the proportions of the master-spirit of thetime. The age of Pericles is the sole historian of Pericles. 

This statesman was now at that period of life when public men areusually most esteemed--when, still in the vigour of manhood, they haveacquired the dignity and experience of years, outlived the earlierprejudices and jealousies they excited, and see themselves surroundedby a new generation, among whom rivals must be less common thandisciples and admirers. Step by step, through a long and consistentcareer, he had ascended to his present eminence, so that his rise didnot startle from its suddenness; while his birth, his services, andhis genius presented a combination of claims to power that his enemiescould not despise, and that justified the enthusiasm of his friends. His public character was unsullied; of the general belief in hisintegrity there is the highest evidence [263]; and even the fewslanders afterward raised against him--such as that of entering intoone war to gratify the resentment of Aspasia, and into another todivert attention from his financial accounts, are libels sounsupported by any credible authority, and so absurd in themselves, that they are but a proof how few were the points on which calumnycould assail him. 

II. The obvious mode to account for the moral power of a man in anyparticular time, is to consider his own character, and to ascertainhow far it is suited to command the age in which he lived and thepeople whom he ruled. No Athenian, perhaps, ever possessed so manyqualities as Pericles for obtaining wide and lasting influence overthe various classes of his countrymen. By his attention to maritimeaffairs, he won the sailors, now the most difficult part of thepopulation to humour or control; his encouragement to commerce securedthe merchants and conciliated the alien settlers; while the stupendousworks of art, everywhere carried on, necessarily obtained the favourof the mighty crowd of artificers and mechanics whom they served toemploy. Nor was it only to the practical interests, but to all themore refined, yet scarce less powerful sympathies of his countrymen, that his character appealed for support. Philosophy, with allparties, all factions, was becoming an appetite and passion. Pericleswas rather the friend than the patron of philosophers. The increasingrefinement of the Athenians--the vast influx of wealth that pouredinto the treasury from the spoils of Persia and the tributes ofdependant cities, awoke the desire of art; and the graceful intellectof Pericles at once indulged and directed the desire, by advancingevery species of art to its perfection. The freedom of democracy--thecultivation of the drama (which is the oratory of poetry)--the rise ofprose literature--created the necessity of popular eloquence--and withPericles the Athenian eloquence was born. Thus his power was derivedfrom a hundred sources: whether from the grosser interests--the mentalsympathies--the vanity--ambition--reason--or imagination of thepeople. And in examining the character of Pericles, and noting itsharmony with his age, the admiration we bestow on himself must beshared by his countrymen. He obtained a greater influence thanPisistratus, but it rested solely on the free-will of the Athenians--it was unsupported by armed force--it was subject to the laws--itmight any day be dissolved; and influence of this description is onlyobtained, in free states, by men who are in themselves the likenessand representative of the vast majority of the democracy they wield. Even the aristocratic party that had so long opposed him appear, withthe fall of Thucydides, to have relaxed their hostilities. In fact, they had less to resent in Pericles than in any previous leader of thedemocracy. He was not, like Themistocles, a daring upstart, vyingwith, and eclipsing their pretensions. He was of their own order. His name was not rendered odious to them by party proscriptions or thememory of actual sufferings. He himself had recalled their idolCimon--and in the measures that had humbled the Areopagus, sodiscreetly had he played his part, or so fortunately subordinate hadbeen his co-operation, that the wrath of the aristocrats had fallenonly on Ephialtes. After the ostracism of Thucydides, "he became, "says Plutarch [264], "a new man--no longer so subservient to themultitude--and the government assumed an aristocratical, or rathermonarchical, form. " But these expressions in Plutarch are not to beliterally received. The laws remained equally democratic--the agoraequally strong--Pericles was equally subjected to the popular control;but having now acquired the confidence of the people, he was enabledmore easily to direct them, or, as Thucydides luminously observes, "Not having obtained his authority unworthily, he was not compelled toflatter or to sooth the popular humours, but, when occasion required, he could even venture vehemently to contradict them. " [265] The causewhich the historian assigns to the effect is one that deserves to becarefully noted by ambitious statesmen--because the authority ofPericles was worthily acquired, the people often suffered it to beeven unpopularly exercised. On the other hand, this far-seeing andprudent statesman was, no doubt, sufficiently aware of the dangers towhich the commonwealth was exposed, if the discontents of the greataristocratic faction were not in some degree conciliated, to inducehis wise and sober patriotism, if not actually to seek the favour ofhis opponents, at least cautiously to shun all idle attempts torevenge past hostilities or feed the sources of future irritation. Heowed much to the singular moderation and evenness of his temper; andhis debt to Anaxagoras must have been indeed great, if the lessons ofthat preacher of those cardinal virtues of the intellect, serenity andorder, had assisted to form the rarest of all unions--a genius themost fervid, with passions the best regulated. 

III. It was about this time, too, in all probability, that Pericleswas enabled to consummate the policy he had always adopted withrespect to the tributary allies. We have seen that the treasury hadbeen removed from Delos to Athens; it was now resolved to make Athensalso the seat and centre of the judicial authority. The subjectallies were compelled, if not on minor, at least on all importantcases, to resort to Athenian courts of law for justice [266]. Andthus Athens became, as it were, the metropolis of the allies. A moreprofound and sagacious mode of quickly establishing her empire it wasimpossible for ingenuity to conceive; but as it was based upon anoppression that must have been daily and intolerably felt--that everyaffair of life must have called into irritating action, so, with theestablishment of the empire was simultaneously planted an inevitablecause of its decay. For though power is rarely attained withoutinjustice, the injustice, if continued, is the never-failing principleof its corruption. And, in order to endure, authority must hasten todivest itself of all the more odious attributes of conquest. 

IV. As a practical statesman, one principal point of view in which wemust regard Pericles is in his capacity of a financier. By Englishhistorians his policy and pretensions in this department have not beensufficiently considered; yet, undoubtedly, they made one of the mostprominent features of his public character in the eyes of hiscountrymen. He is the first minister in Athens who undertook thescientific management of the national revenues, and partly from hisscrupulous integrity, partly from his careful wisdom, and partly froma fortunate concurrence of circumstances, the Athenian revenues, evenwhen the tribute was doubled, were never more prosperouslyadministered. The first great source of the revenue was from thetributes of the confederate cities [267]. These, rated at fourhundred and sixty talents in the time of Aristides, had increased tosix hundred in the time of Pericles; but there is no evidence to provethat the increased sum was unfairly raised, or that fresh exactionswere levied, save in rare cases [268], on the original subscribers tothe league. The increase of a hundred and forty talents is to beaccounted for partly by the quota of different confederacies acquiredsince the time of Aristides, partly by the exemption from military ormaritime service, voluntarily if unwisely purchased, during theadministration of Cimon, by the states themselves. So far as tributewas a sign of dependance and inferiority, the impost was a hardship;but for this they who paid it are to be blamed rather than those whoreceived. Its practical burden on each state, at this period, appears, in most cases, to have been incredibly light; and a verytrifling degree of research will prove how absurdly exaggerated havebeen the invectives of ignorant or inconsiderate men, whether inancient or modern times, on the extortions of the Athenians, and theimpoverishment of their allies. Aristophanes [269] attributes to theempire of Athens a thousand tributary cities: the number is doubtlessa poetical license; yet, when we remember the extent of territorywhich the league comprehended, and how crowded with cities were allthe coasts and islands of Greece, we should probably fall short of thenumber of tributary cities if we estimated it at six hundred; so thatthe tribute would not in the time of Pericles average above a talent, or 241l. 13s. 4d. [270] English money, for each city! Even when in atime of urgent demand on the resources of the state [271], Cytherafell into the hands of the Athenians [272], the tribute of that islandwas assessed but at four talents. And we find, by inscriptions stillextant, that some places were rated only at two thousand, and even onethousand drachmas. [273]

Finally, if the assessment by Aristides, of four hundred and sixtytalents, was such as to give universal satisfaction from its equityand moderation, the additional hundred and forty talents in the timeof Pericles could not have been an excessive increase, when weconsider how much the league had extended, how many states hadexchanged the service for the tribute, and how considerable was thelarge diffusion of wealth throughout the greater part of Greece, thecontinued influx of gold [274], and the consequent fall in value ofthe precious metals. 

V. It was not, then, the amount of the tribute which made itshardship, nor can the Athenian government be blamed for havingcontinued, a claim voluntarily conceded to them. The original objectof the tribute was the maintenance of a league against the barbarians--the Athenians were constituted the heads of the league and theguardians of the tribute; some states refused service and offeredmoney--their own offers were accepted; other states refused both--itwas not more the interest than the duty of Athens to maintain, even byarms, the condition of the league--so far is her policy justifiable. But she erred when she reduced allies to dependants--she erred whenshe transferred the treasury from the central Delos to her own state--she erred yet more when she appropriated a portion of these treasuresto her own purposes. But these vices of Athens are the vices of alleminent states, monarchic or republican--for they are the vices of thepowerful. "It was, " say the Athenian ambassadors in Thucydides, withhonest candour and profound truth--"it was from the nature of thething itself that we were at first compelled to advance our empire towhat it is--chiefly through fear--next for honour--and, lastly, forinterest; and then it seemed no longer safe for us to venture to letgo the reins of government, for the revolters would have gone over toyou" (viz. , to the Spartans) [275]. Thus does the universal lesson ofhistory teach us that it is the tendency of power, in what handssoever it be placed, to widen its limits, to increase its vigour, inproportion as the counteracting force resigns the security for itsadministration, or the remedy for its abuse. 

VI. Pericles had not scrupled, from the date of the transfer of thetreasury to Athens, to devote a considerable proportion of the generaltribute to public buildings and sacred exhibitions--purposes purelyAthenian. But he did so openly--he sought no evasion or disguise--hemaintained in the face of Greece that the Athenians were notresponsible to the allies for these contributions; that it was theAthenians who had resisted and defended the barbarians, while many ofthe confederate states had supplied neither ships nor soldiers; thatAthens was now the head of a mighty league; and that, to increase herglory, to cement her power, was a duty she owed no less to the alliesthan to herself. Arguments to which armies, and not orators, couldalone reply. [276]

The principal other sources whence the Athenian revenue was derived, it may be desirable here to state as briefly and as clearly as thenature of the subject will allow. By those who would search moredeeply, the long and elaborate statistics of Boeckh must be carefullyexplored. Those sources of revenue were--

1st. Rents from corporate estates--such as pastures, forests, rivers, salt-works, houses, theatres, etc. , and mines, let for terms of years, or on heritable leases. 

2dly. Tolls, export and import duties, probably paid only bystrangers, and amounting to two per cent. , a market excise, and thetwentieth part of all exports and imports levied in the dependantallied cities--the last a considerable item. 

3dly. Tithes, levied only on lands held in usufruct, as estatesbelonging to temples. 

4thly. A protection tax [277], paid by the settlers, or Metoeci, common to most of the Greek states, but peculiarly productive inAthens from the number of strangers that her trade, her festivals, andher renown attracted. The policy of Pericles could not fail toincrease this source of revenue. 

5thly. A slave tax of three obols per head. [278]

Most of these taxes appear to have been farmed out. 

6thly. Judicial fees and fines. As we have seen that the allies inmost important trials were compelled to seek justice in Athens, this, in the time of Pericles, was a profitable source of income. But itwas one, the extent of which necessarily depended upon peace. 

Fines were of many classes, but not, at least in this period, of verygreat value to the state. Sometimes (as in all private accusations)the fine fell to the plaintiff, sometimes a considerable proportionenriched the treasury of the tutelary goddess. The task of assessingthe fines was odious, and negligently performed by the authorities, while it was easy for those interested to render a false account oftheir property. 

Lastly. The state received the aid of annual contributions, or whatwere termed liturgies, from individuals for particular services. 

The ordinary liturgies were, 1st. The Choregia, or duty of furnishingthe chorus for the plays--tragic, comic, and satirical--ofremunerating the leader of the singers and musicians--of maintainingthe latter while trained--of supplying the dresses, the golden crownsand masks, and, indeed, the general decorations and equipments of thetheatre. He on whom this burdensome honour fell was called Choregus;his name, and that of his tribe, was recorded on the tripod whichcommemorated the victory of the successful poet, whose performanceswere exhibited. [279]

2dly. The Gymnasiarchy, or charge of providing for the expense of thetorch-race, celebrated in honour of the gods of fire, and some othersacred games. In later times the gymnasiarchy comprised thesuperintendence of the training schools, and the cost of ornamentingthe arena. 

3dly. The Architheoria, or task of maintaining the embassy to sacredgames and festivals. 

And, 4thly, the Hestiasis, or feasting of the tribes, a costlyobligation incurred by some wealthy member of each tribe forentertaining the whole of the tribe at public, but not very luxurious, banquets. This last expense did not often occur. The hestiasis wasintended for sacred objects, connected with the rites of hospitality, and served to confirm the friendly intercourse between the members ofthe tribe. 

These three ordinary liturgies had all a religious character; theywere compulsory on those possessed of property not less than threetalents--they were discharged in turn by the tribes, except whenvolunteered by individuals. 

VII. The expenses incurred for the defence or wants of the state werenot regular, but extraordinary liturgies--such as the TRIERARCHY, orequipment of ships, which entailed also the obligation of personalservice on those by whom the triremes were fitted out. Personalservice was indeed the characteristic of all liturgies, aproperty-tax, which was not yet invented, alone excepted; and this, though bearing the name, has not the features, of a liturgy. Of theextraordinary liturgies, the trierarchy was the most important. Itwas of very early origin. Boeckh observes [280] that it was mentionedin the time of Hippias. At the period of which we treat each vesselhad one trierarch. The vessel was given to the trierarch, sometimesready equipped; he also received the public money for certainexpenses; others fell on himself [281]. Occasionally, but rarely, anambitious or patriotic trierarch defrayed the whole cost; but in anycase he rendered strict account of the expenses incurred. The cost ofa whole trierarchy was not less than forty minas, nor more than atalent. 

VIII. Two liturgies could not be demanded simultaneously from anyindividual, nor was he liable to any one more often than every otheryear. He who served the trierarchies was exempted from all othercontributions. Orphans were exempted till the year after they hadobtained their majority, and a similar exemption was, in a very fewinstances, the reward of eminent public services. The nine archonswere also exempted from the trierarchies. 

IX. The moral defects of liturgies were the defects of a nobletheory, which almost always terminates in practical abuses. Theirprinciple was that of making it an honour to contribute to the publicsplendour or the national wants. Hence, in the earlier times, anemulation among the rich to purchase favour by a liberal, but oftencalculating and interested ostentation; hence, among the poor, actuated by an equal ambition, was created so great a necessity forriches as the means to power [282], that the mode by which they wereto be acquired was often overlooked. What the theory designed as themunificence of patriotism, became in practice but a showy engine ofcorruption; and men vied with each other in the choregia or thetrierarchy, not so much for the sake of service done to the state, asin the hope of influence acquired over the people. I may alsoobserve, that in a merely fiscal point of view, the principle ofliturgies was radically wrong; that principle went to tax the fewinstead of the many; its operation was therefore not more unequal inits assessments than it was unproductive to the state in proportion toits burden on individuals. 

X. The various duties were farmed--a pernicious plan of financecommon to most of the Greek states. The farmers gave sureties, andpunctuality was rigorously exacted from them, on penalty ofimprisonment, the doubling of the debt, the confiscation of theirproperties, the compulsory hold upon their sureties. 

XI. Such were the main sources of the Athenian revenue. Opportunities will occur to fill up the brief outline and amplify eachdetail. This sketch is now presented to the reader as comprising aknowledge necessary to a clear insight into the policy of Pericles. Arapid glance over the preceding pages will suffice to show that it wason a rigid avoidance of all unnecessary war--above all, of distant andperilous enterprises, that the revenue of Athens rested. Hercommercial duties--her tax on settlers--the harvest of judicial fees, obtained from the dependant allies--the chief profits from the mines--all rested upon the maintenance of peace: even the foreign tribute, the most productive of the Athenian resources, might fail at once, ifthe Athenian arms should sustain a single reverse, as indeed it didafter the fatal battle of Aegospotamos [283]. This it was which mighthave shown to the great finance minister that peace with thePeloponnesus could scarce be too dearly purchased [284]. Thesurrender of a few towns and fortresses was nothing in comparison withthe arrest and paralysis of all the springs of her wealth, which wouldbe the necessary result of a long war upon her own soil. For thisreason Pericles strenuously checked all the wild schemes of theAthenians for extended empire. Yet dazzled with the glories of Cimon, some entertained the hopes of recovering Egypt, some agitated theinvasion of the Persian coasts; the fair and fatal Sicily alreadyaroused the cupidity and ambition of others; and the vain enthusiastsof the Agora even dreamed of making that island the base and centre ofa new and vast dominion, including Carthage on one hand and Etruria onthe other [285]. Such schemes it was the great object of Pericles tooppose. He was not less ambitious for the greatness of Athens thanthe most daring of these visionaries; but he better understood on whatfoundations it should be built. His objects were to strengthen thepossessions already acquired, to confine the Athenian energies withinthe frontiers of Greece, and to curb, as might better be done by peacethan war, the Peloponnesian forces to their own rocky barriers. Themeans by which he sought to attain these objects were, 1st, by amaritime force; 2dly, by that inert and silent power which springs asit were from the moral dignity and renown of a nation; whatever, inthis latter respect, could make Athens illustrious, made Athensformidable. 

XII. Then rapidly progressed those glorious fabrics which seemed, asPlutarch gracefully expresses it, endowed with the bloom of aperennial youth. Still the houses of private citizens remained simpleand unadorned; still were the streets narrow and irregular; and evencenturies afterward, a stranger entering Athens would not at firsthave recognised the claims of the mistress of Grecian art. But to thehomeliness of her common thoroughfares and private mansions, themagnificence of her public edifices now made a dazzling contrast. TheAcropolis, that towered above the homes and thoroughfares of men--aspot too sacred for human habitation--became, to use a proverbialphrase, "a city of the gods. " The citizen was everywhere to bereminded of the majesty of the STATE--his patriotism was to beincreased by the pride in her beauty--his taste to be elevated by thespectacle of her splendour. Thus flocked to Athens all who throughoutGreece were eminent in art. Sculptors and architects vied with eachother in adorning the young empress of the seas [286]; then rose themasterpieces of Phidias, of Callicrates, of Mnesicles [287], whicheven, either in their broken remains, or in the feeble copies ofimitators less inspired, still command so intense a wonder, andfurnish models so immortal. And if, so to speak, their bones andrelics excite our awe and envy, as testifying of a lovelier andgrander race, which the deluge of time has swept away, what, in thatday, must have been their brilliant effect--unmutilated in their fairproportions--fresh in all their lineaments and hues? For their beautywas not limited to the symmetry of arch and column, nor theirmaterials confined to the marbles of Pentelicus and Paros. Even theexterior of the temples glowed with the richest harmony of colours, and was decorated with the purest gold; an atmosphere peculiarlyfavourable both to the display and the preservation of art, permittedto external pediments and friezes all the minuteness of ornament--allthe brilliancy of colours; such as in the interior of Italian churchesmay yet be seen--vitiated, in the last, by a gaudy and barbaroustaste. Nor did the Athenians spare any cost upon the works that were, like the tombs and tripods of their heroes, to be the monuments of anation to distant ages, and to transmit the most irrefragable proof"that the power of ancient Greece was not an idle legend. " [288] Thewhole democracy were animated with the passion of Pericles; and whenPhidias recommended marble as a cheaper material than ivory for thegreat statue of Minerva, it was for that reason that ivory waspreferred by the unanimous voice of the assembly. Thus, whether itwere extravagance or magnificence, the blame in one case, theadmiration in another, rests not more with the minister than thepopulace. It was, indeed, the great characteristic of those works, that they were entirely the creations of the people: without thepeople, Pericles could not have built a temple or engaged a sculptor. The miracles of that day resulted from the enthusiasm of a populationyet young--full of the first ardour for the beautiful--dedicating tothe state, as to a mistress, the trophies, honourably won or thetreasures injuriously extorted--and uniting the resources of a nationwith the energy of an individual, because the toil, the cost, wereborne by those who succeeded to the enjoyment and arrogated the glory. 

XIII. It was from two sources that Athens derived her chief politicalvices; 1st, Her empire of the seas and her exactions from her allies;2dly, an unchecked, unmitigated democratic action, void of the twovents known in all modern commonwealths--the press, and arepresentative, instead of a popular, assembly. But from thesesources she now drew all her greatness also, moral and intellectual. Before the Persian war, and even scarcely before the time of Cimon, Athens cannot be said to have eclipsed her neighbours in the arts andsciences. She became the centre and capital of the most polishedcommunities of Greece, and she drew into a focus all the Grecianintellect; she obtained from her dependants the wealth to administerthe arts, which universal traffic and intercourse taught her toappreciate; and thus the Odeon, and the Parthenon, and the Propylaeaarose! During the same administration, the fortifications werecompleted, and a third wall, parallel [289] and near to that unitingPiraeus with Athens, consummated the works of Themistocles and Cimon, and preserved the communication between the twofold city, even shouldthe outer walls fall into the hands of an enemy. 

But honour and wealth alone would not have sufficed for the universalemulation, the universal devotion to all that could adorn or exalt thenation. It was the innovations of Aristides and Ephialtes thatbreathed into that abstract and cold formality, THE STATE, the breathand vigour of a pervading people, and made the meanest citizenstruggle for Athens with that zeal with which an ambitious statesmanstruggles for himself [290]. These two causes united reveal to us thetrue secret why Athens obtained a pre-eminence in intellectualgrandeur over the rest of Greece. Had Corinth obtained the command ofthe seas and the treasury of Delos--had Corinth established abroad apower equally arbitrary and extensive, and at home a democracy equallybroad and pure--Corinth might have had her Pericles and Demosthenes, her Phidias, her Sophocles, her Aristophanes, her Plato--and posteritymight not have allowed the claim of Athens to be the Hellas Hellados, "the Greece of Greece. "

XIV. But the increase of wealth bounded not its effects to thesemagnificent works of art--they poured into and pervaded the wholedomestic policy of Athens. We must recollect, that as the greatnessof the state was that of the democracy, so its treasures were theproperty of the free population. It was the people who were rich; andaccording to all the notions of political economy in that day, thepeople desired practically to enjoy their own opulence. Thus wasintroduced the principal of payment for service, and thus wassanctioned and legalized the right of a common admission tospectacles, the principal cost of which was defrayed from commonproperty. That such innovations would be the necessary andunavoidable result of an overflowing treasury in a state thusdemocratic is so obvious, that nothing can be more absurd than to laythe blame of the change upon Pericles. He only yielded to, andregulated the irresistible current of the general wish. And we mayalso observe, that most of those innovations, which were ultimatelyinjurious to Athens, rested upon the acknowledged maxims of moderncivilization; some were rather erroneous from details than principles;others, from the want of harmony between the new principles and theold constitution to which then were applied. Each of the elementsmight be healthful--amalgamated, they produced a poison. 

XV. It is, for instance, an axiom in modern politics that judgesshould receive a salary [291]. During the administration of Pericles, this principle was applied to the dicasts in the popular courts ofjudicature. It seems probable that the vast accession of law businesswhich ensued from the transfer of the courts in the allied states tothe Athenian tribunal was the cause of this enactment. Lawsuitsbecame so common, that it was impossible, without salaries, that thecitizens could abandon their own business for that of others. Paymentwas, therefore, both equitable and unavoidable, and, doubtless, itwould have seemed to the Athenians, as now to us, the best means, notonly of securing the attention, but of strengthening the integrity, ofthe judges or the jurors. The principle of salaries was, therefore, right, but its results were evil, when applied to the peculiarconstitution of the courts. The salary was small--the judgesnumerous, and mostly of the humblest class--the consequences I havebefore shown [292]. Had the salaries been high and the number of thejudges small, the means of a good judicature would have been attained. But, then, according to the notions, not only of the Athenians, but ofall the Hellenic democracies, the democracy itself, of which thepopular courts were deemed the constitutional bulwark and the vitalessence, would have been at an end. In this error, therefore, howeverfatal it might be, neither Pericles nor the Athenians, but thetheories of the age, are to be blamed [293]. It is also a maximformerly acted upon in England, to which many political philosophersnow incline, and which is yet adopted in the practice of a great andenlightened portion of the world, that the members of the legislativeassembly should receive salaries. This principle was now applied inAthens [294]. But there the people themselves were the legislativeassembly, and thus a principle, perhaps sound in itself, becamevitiated to the absurdity of the people as sovereign paying the peopleas legislative. Yet even this might have been necessary to thepreservation of the constitution, as meetings became numerous andbusiness complicated; for if the people had not been tempted and evendriven to assemble in large masses, the business of the state wouldhave been jobbed away by active minorities, and the life of ademocracy been lost [295]. The payment was first one obolus--afterward increased to three. Nor must we suppose, as the ignoranceor effrontery of certain modern historians has strangely asserted, that in the new system of payments the people were munificent only tothemselves. The senate was paid--the public advocates and oratorswere paid--so were the ambassadors, the inspectors of the youths inthe trading schools, the nomothetae or law-commissioners, thephysicians, the singers, even the poets; all the servants of thedifferent officers received salaries. And now, as is the inevitableconsequence of that civilization in a commercial society whichmultiplies and strongly demarcates the divisions of labour, the safetyof the state no longer rested solely upon the unpurchased arms andhearts of its citizens--but not only were the Athenians themselves whoserved as soldiers paid, but foreign mercenaries were engaged--ameasure in consonance with the characteristic policy of Pericles, which was especially frugal of the lives of the citizens. Butpeculiar to the Athenians of all the Grecian states was the humane andbeautiful provision for the poor, commenced under Solon orPisistratus. At this happy and brilliant period few were in need ofit--war and disaster, while they increased the number of thedestitute, widened the charity of the state. 

XVI. Thus, then, that general system of payment which grew up underPericles, and produced many abuses under his successors, was, afterall, but the necessary result of the increased civilization andopulence of the period. Nor can we wonder that the humbler or themiddle orders, who, from their common stock, lavished generosity upongenius [296], and alone, of all contemporaneous states, gave relief towant--who maintained the children of all who died in war--who awardedremunerations for every service, should have deemed it no graspingexaction to require for their own attendance on offices forced on themby the constitution a compensation for the desertion of their privateaffairs, little exceeding that which was conferred upon the verypaupers of the state. [297]

XVII. But there was another abuse which sprang out of the wealth ofthe people, and that love for spectacles and exhibitions which wasnatural to the lively Ionic imagination, and could not but increase asleisure and refinement became boons extended to the bulk of thepopulation--an abuse trifling in itself--fatal in the precedent itset. While the theatre was of wood, free admissions were found toproduce too vast a concourse for the stability of the building; andonce, indeed, the seats gave way. It was, therefore, long before thepresent period, deemed advisable to limit the number of the audienceby a small payment of two obols for each seat; and this continuedafter a stately edifice of stone replaced the wooden temple of theearlier drama. 

But as riches flowed into the treasury, and as the drama became moreand more the most splendid and popular of the national exhibitions, itseemed but just to return to the ancient mode of gratuitousadmissions. It was found, however, convenient, partly, perhaps, forgreater order and for the better allotment of the seats--partly, also, for the payment of several expenses which fell not on the state, butindividuals--and partly, no doubt, to preserve the distinctionsbetween the citizens and the strangers, to maintain the prices, but toallow to those whose names were enrolled in the book of the citizensthe admittance money from the public treasury. This fund was calledthe THEORICON. But the example once set, Theorica were extended toother festivals besides those of the drama [298], and finally, underthe plausible and popular pretext of admitting the poorer classes tothose national or religious festivals, from which, as forming the bulkof the nation, it was against the theory of the constitution toexclude them, paved the way to lavish distributions of the publicmoney, which at once tended to exhaust the wealth of the state, and torender effeminate and frivolous the spirit of the people. But theseabuses were not yet visible: on the contrary, under Pericles, theresults of the Theoricon were highly favourable to the manners andgenius of the people. Art was thus rendered the universal right, andwhile refinement of taste became diffused, the patriotism of thecitizens was increased by the consciousness that they were the commonand legitimate arbiters of all which augmented the splendour andrenown of Athens. 

Thus, in fact, the after evils that resulted from the more popularpart of the internal policy of Pericles, it was impossible to foresee;they originated not in a single statement, but in the very nature ofcivilization. And as in despotisms, a coarse and sensual luxury, onceestablished, rots away the vigour and manhood of a conquering people, so in this intellectual republic it was the luxury of the intellectwhich gradually enervated the great spirit of the victor race ofMarathon and Salamis, and called up generations of eloquent talkersand philosophical dreamers from the earlier age of active freemen, restless adventurers, and hardy warriors. The spirit of poetry, orthe pampered indulgence of certain faculties to the prejudice ofothers, produced in a whole people what it never fails to produce inthe individual: it unfitted them just as they grew up into a manhoodexposed to severer struggles than their youth had undergone--for thestern and practical demands of life; and suffered the love of thebeautiful to subjugate or soften away the common knowledge of theuseful. Genius itself became a disease, and poetry assisted towardsthe euthanasia of the Athenians. 

XVIII. As all the measures of Pericles were directed towardsconsolidating the Athenian empire, so under his administration was notomitted the politic expedient of colonization. Of late years, stateshaving become confirmed and tribes settled, the Grecian migrationswere far less frequent than of old; and one principal cause ofcolonization, in the violent feud of parties, and the expulsion of aconsiderable number of citizens, arose from the disasters of infantcommunities, and was no longer in force under the free but stronggovernment of Athens. As with the liberties fell the commerce ofMiletus and Ionia, so also another principal source of the oldcolonization became comparatively languid and inert. But now, underthe name of Cleruchi [299], a new description of colonists arose--colonists by whom the mother country not only draughted off aredundant population, or rid herself of restless adventurers, butstruck the roots of her empire in the various places that came underher control. In the classic as in the feudal age, conquest gave theright to the lands of the conquered country. Thus had arisen, andthus still existed, upon the plundered lands of Laconia, thecommonwealth of Sparta--thus were maintained the wealthy and luxuriousnobles of Thessaly--and thus, in fine, were created all the ancientDorian oligarchies. After the return of the Heraclidae, this mode ofconsummating conquest fell into disuse, not from any moral convictionof its injustice, but because the wars between the various statesrarely terminated in victories so complete as to permit the seizure ofthe land and the subjugation of the inhabitants. And it must be everremembered, that the old Grecian tribes made war to procure asettlement, and not to increase dominion. The smallness of theirpopulation rendered human life too valuable to risk its waste in theexpeditions that characterized the ambition of the leaders of orientalhordes. But previous to the Persian wars, the fertile meadows ofEuboea presented to the Athenians a temptation it could scarcely beexpected that victorious neighbours would have the abstinence toforego; and we have seen that they bestowed the lands of theHippobotae on Athenian settlers. These colonists evacuated theirpossessions during the Persian war: the Hippobotae returned, and seemto have held quiet, but probably tributary, possession of theirancient estates, until after the recent retreat of the Peloponnesians. Pericles defeated and displaced them; their lands fell once more toAthenian colonists; and the north of Euboea was protected andgarrisoned by the erection of Oreus, a new town that supplanted theold Histiaea. Territories in Scyros, Lemnos, and Imbros had been alsobestowed on Athenian settlers during the earlier successes of theAthenian arms--and the precedent thus set, examples became morenumerous, under the profound and systematic policy of Pericles. Thismode of colonization, besides the ordinary advantages of allcolonization, proffered two peculiar to itself. In the first place, it supplied the deficiency of land, which was one of the maininconveniences of Attica, and rewarded the meritorious or appeased theavaricious citizens, with estates which it did not impoverish themother country to grant. 2dly. It secured the conquests of the stateby planting garrisons which it cost little to maintain [300]. Thuswere despatched by Pericles a thousand men to the valuable possessionsin the Chersonese, two hundred and fifty to Andros, five hundred toNaxos, a thousand to Thrace. At another period, the date of which isuncertain, but probably shortly subsequent to the truce with thePeloponnesians, a large fleet, commanded by Pericles, swept theEuxine, in order to awe and impress the various states and nationsalong the adjacent coasts, whether Greek or barbarian, with thedisplay of the Athenian power; and the city of Sinope, being at thattime divided with contentions for and against its tyrant Timesilaus, the republican party applied to the head of the Greek democracies foraid. Lamachus, a warrior to whose gallant name, afterwarddistinguished in the Peloponnesian war, Aristophanes has accorded theequal honour of his ridicule and his praise, was intrusted withthirteen galleys and a competent force for the expulsion of the tyrantand his adherents. The object effected, the new government of Sinoperewarded six hundred Athenians with the freedom of the city and theestates of the defeated faction. 

While thus Athens fixed her footing on remoter lands, gradually hergrasp extended over the more near and necessary demesnes of Euboea, until the lands of more than two thirds of that island were in thepossession of Athenians [301]. At a later period, new opportunitiesgave rise to new cleruchiae. [302]

XIX. Besides these cleruchiae, in the second year of the supremeadministration of Pericles a colony, properly so called, wasestablished in Western Italy--interesting alike from the great namesof its early adventurers, the beauty of its site, and from thecircumstance of its being, besides that at Amphipolis, the only pureand legitimate colony [303], in contradistinction to the cleruchiae, founded by Athens, since her ancient migrations to Ionia and theCyclades. Two centuries before, some Achaeans, mingled withTroezenians, had established, in the fertile garden of Magna Graecia, the state of Sybaris. Placed between two rivers, the Crathis and theSybaris--possessing extraordinary advantages of site and climate, thiscelebrated colony rose with unparalleled rapidity to eminence in warand luxury in peace. So great were its population and resources, thatit is said by Diodorus to have brought at one time three hundredthousand men into the field--an army which doubled that which allGreece could assemble at Plataea! The exaggeration is evident; but itstill attests the belief of a populousness and power which must haverested upon no fabulous foundation. The state of Sybaris hadprospered for a time by the adoption of a principle which is ever aptto force civilization to premature development, and not unfrequentlyto end in the destruction of national character and internalstability--viz. , it opened its arms to strangers of every tribe andclass. Thronged by mercantile adventurers, its trade, like that ofAgrigentum, doubtless derived its sources from the oil and wine whichit poured into the harbours of Africa and Gaul. As with individuals, so with states, wealth easily obtained is prodigally spent, and theeffeminate and voluptuous ostentation of Sybaris passed into a proverbmore enduring than her prosperity. Her greatness, acquired by atempered and active democracy, received a mortal blow by theusurpation of a tyrant named Telys, who, in 510 B. C. , expelled fivehundred of the principal citizens. Croton received the exiles, a warbroke out, and in the same year, or shortly afterward, theCrotoniates, under Milo, defeated the Sybarites with prodigiousslaughter, and the city was abandoned to pillage, and left desolateand ruined. Those who survived fled to Laos and Scidrus. Fifty-eightyears afterward, aided by some Thessalians, the exiled Sybarites againsought possession of their former settlement, but were speedilyexpelled by the Crotoniates. It was now that they applied to Spartaand Athens for assistance. The former state had neither population tospare, nor commerce to strengthen, nor ambition to gratify, andrejected the overtures of the Sybarite envoys. But a differentsuccess awaited the exiles at Athens. Their proposition, timed in aperiod when it was acceptable to the Athenian policy (B. C. 443), wasenforced by Pericles. Adventurers from all parts of Greece, butinvited especially from the Peloponnesus, swelled the miscellaneousband: eminent among the rest were Lysias, afterward so celebrated as arhetorician [304], and Herodotus, the historian. 

As in the political code of Greece the religious character of thepeople made a prevailing principle, so in colonization the deity ofthe parent state transplanted his worship with his votaries, and therelation between the new and the old country was expressed andperpetuated by the touching symbol of taking fire from the Prytaneumof the native city. A renowned diviner, named Lampon [305], whosesacred pretensions did not preserve him from the ridicule of the comicpoets [306], accompanied the emigrants (B. C. 440), and an oracledictated the site of the new colony near the ancient city, and by thefountain of Thurium. The Sybarites, with the common vanity of menwhose ancestors have been greater than themselves, increased theirpretensions in proportion as they lost their power; they affectedsuperiority over their companions, by whose swords alone they againexisted as a people; claimed the exclusive monopoly of the principaloffices of government, and the first choice of lands; and were finallycut off by the very allies whose aid they had sought, and whoseresentment they provoked. New adventurers from Greece replaced theSybarites, and the colonists of Thurium, divided into ten tribes(four, the representatives of the united Ionians, Euboeans, Islanders, and Athenians; three of the Peloponnesians; and three of the settlersfrom Northern Greece)--retained peaceable possession of theirdelightful territory, and harmonized their motley numbers by theadoption of the enlightened laws and tranquil institutions ofCharondas. Such was the home of Herodotus, the historian. 

CHAPTER III. 

Revision of the Census. --Samian War. --Sketch of the Rise and Progressof the Athenian Comedy to the Time of Aristophanes. 

I. In proportion as it had become matter of honourable pride andlucrative advantage to be a citizen of Athens, it was natural that thelaws defining and limiting the freedom of the city should increase instrictness. Even before the time of Themistocles, those only wereconsidered legitimate [307] who, on either side, derived parentagefrom Athenian citizens. But though illegitimate, they were nottherefore deprived of the rights of citizenship; nor had the stainupon his birth been a serious obstacle to the career of Themistocleshimself. Under Pericles, the law became more severe, and a decree waspassed (apparently in the earlier period of his rising power), whichexcluded from the freedom of the city those whose parents were notboth Athenian. In the very year in which he attained the supremeadministration of affairs, occasion for enforcing the law occurred:Psammetichus, the pretender to the Egyptian throne, sent a present ofcorn to the Athenian people (B. C. 444); the claimants for a share inthe gift underwent the ordeal of scrutiny as to their titles tocitizenship, and no less than five thousand persons were convicted ofhaving fraudulently foisted themselves into rights which were nowtantamount to property; they were disfranchised [308]; and the wholelist of the free citizens was reduced to little more than fourteenthousand. [309]

II. While under this brilliant and energetic administration Athenswas daily more and more concentrating on herself the reluctantadmiration and the growing fears of Greece, her policy towards herdependant allies involved her in a war which ultimately gave, if not alegal, at least an acknowledged, title to the pretensions she assumed. Hostilities between the new population of Miletus and the oligarchicgovernment of Samos had been for some time carried on; the object ofcontention was the city of Priene--united, apparently, with rivalclaims upon Anaea, a town on the coast opposite Samos. The Milesians, unsuccessful in the war, applied to Athens for assistance. As theSamians were among the dependant allies, Pericles, in the name of theAthenian people, ordered them to refer to Athens the decision of thedispute; on their refusal an expedition of forty galleys was conductedagainst them by Pericles in person. A still more plausible colourthan that of the right of dictation was given to this interference;for the prayer of the Milesians was backed and sanctioned by many ofthe Samians themselves, oppressed by the oligarchic government whichpresided over them. A ridiculous assertion was made by the libellersof the comic drama and the enemies of Pericles, that the war wasundertaken at the instigation of Aspasia, with whom that minister hadformed the closest connexion; but the expedition was the necessary andunavoidable result of the twofold policy by which the Atheniangovernment invariably directed its actions; 1st, to enforce the rightof ascendency over its allies; 2dly, to replace oligarchic bydemocratic institutions. Nor, on this occasion, could Athens haveremained neutral or supine without materially weakening her hold uponall the states she aspired at once to democratize and to govern. 

III. The fleet arrived at Samos--the oligarchic government wasdeposed--one hundred hostages (fifty men--fifty boys) from itspartisans were taken and placed at Lemnos, and a garrison was left tosecure the new constitution of the island. Some of the defeatedfaction took refuge on the Asiatic continent--entered into an intriguewith the Persian Pissuthnes, satrap of Sardis; and having, bycontinued correspondence with their friends at Samos, securedconnivance at their attempt, they landed by night at Samos with ahired force of seven hundred soldiers, and succeeded in mastering theAthenian garrison, and securing the greater part of the chiefs of thenew administration; while, by a secret and well-contrived plot, theyregained their hostages left at Lemnos. They then openly proclaimedtheir independence--restored the oligarchy--and, as a formal proof ofdefiance, surrendered to Pissuthnes the Athenians they had captured. Byzantium hastened to join the revolt. Their alliance with Pissuthnesprocured the Samians the promised aid of a Phoenician fleet, and theynow deemed themselves sufficiently strong to renew their hostilitieswith Miletus. Their plans were well laid, and their boldness made aconsiderable impression on the states hostile to Athens. Among thePeloponnesian allies it was debated whether or not, despite thetreaty, the Samians should be assisted: opinions were divided, butCorinth [310], perhaps, turned the scale, by insisting on the right ofevery state to deal with its dependants. Corinth had herself coloniesover which she desired to preserve a dictatorial sway; and she wasdisposed to regard the Samian revolution less as the gallantry offreemen than the enterprise of rebels. It was fortunate, too, perhaps, for Athens, that the Samian insurgents had sought their allyin the Persian satrap; nor could the Peloponnesian states at that timehave decorously assisted the Persian against the Athenian arms. Butshort time for deliberation was left by a government which procuredfor the Athenians the character to be not more quick to contrive thanto execute--to be the only people who could simultaneously project andacquire--and who even considered a festival but as a day on which somenecessary business could be accomplished [311]. With a fleet of sixtysail, Pericles made for Samos; some of the vessels were stationed onthe Carian coast to watch the movements of the anticipated Phoenicianre-enforcement; others were despatched to collect aid from Chios andLesbos. Meanwhile, though thus reduced to forty-four sail, Pericles, near a small island called Tragia, engaged the Samian fleet returningfrom Miletus, consisting of seventy vessels, and gained a victory. Then, re-enforced by forty galleys from Athens, and twenty-five fromLesbos and Chios, he landed on the island, defeated the Samians in apitched battle, drove them into their city, invested it with a tripleline of ramparts, and simultaneously blockaded the city by sea. Thebesieged were not, however, too discouraged to sally out; and, underMelissus, who was at once a philosopher and a hero, they even obtainedadvantage in a seafight. But these efforts were sufficientlyunimportant to permit Pericles to draw off sixty of his vessels, andsteer along the Carian coast to meet the expected fleet of thePhoenicians. The besieged did not suffer the opportunity thusafforded them to escape--they surprised the naval blockading force, destroyed the guard-ships, and joining battle with the rest of thefleet, obtained a decisive victory (B. C. 440), which for fourteendays left them the mastery of the open sea, and enabled them tointroduce supplies. 

IV. While lying in wait for the Phoenician squadron, which did not, however, make its appearance, tidings of the Samian success werebrought to Pericles. He hastened back and renewed the blockade--freshforces were sent to his aid--from Athens, forty-eight ships, underthree generals, Thucydides [312], Agnon, and Phormio; followed bytwenty more under Tlepolemus and Anticles, while Chios and Lesbossupplied an additional squadron of thirty. Still the besieged werenot disheartened; they ventured another engagement, which was but anineffectual struggle, and then, shut up within their city, stood asiege of nine months. 

With all the small Greek states it had ever been the policy ofnecessity to shun even victories attended with great loss. Thispolicy was refined by Pericles into a scientific system. In thepresent instance, he avoided all assaults which might weaken hisforces, and preferred the loss of time to the loss of life. Thetedious length of the blockade occasioned some murmurs among thelively and impatient forces he commanded; but he is said to havediverted the time by the holyday devices, which in the middle agesoften so graced and softened the rugged aspect of war. The army wasdivided into eight parts, and by lot it was decided which one of theeight divisions should, for the time, encounter the fatigues of actualservice; the remaining seven passed the day in sports and feasting[313]. A concourse of women appear to have found their way to theencampment [314], and a Samian writer ascribes to their piety or theirgratitude the subsequent erection of a temple to Venus. The siege, too, gave occasion to Pericles to make experiment of military engines, which, if invented before, probably now received mechanicalimprovement. Although, in the earlier contest, mutual animosities hadbeen so keen that the prisoners on either side had been contumeliouslybranded [315], it was, perhaps, the festive and easy manner in whichthe siege was afterward carried on, that, mitigating the bitterness ofprolonged hostilities, served to procure, at last, for the Samiansarticles of capitulation more than usually mild. They embraced theconditions of demolishing their fortifications, delivering up theirships, and paying by instalments a portion towards the cost of thesiege [316]. Byzantium, which, commanding the entrance of the Euxine, was a most important possession to the Athenians [317], whether forambition or for commerce, at the same time accepted, withoutresistance, the terms held out to it, and became once more subject tothe Athenian empire. 

V. On his return, Pericles was received with an enthusiasm whichattested the sense entertained of the value of his conquest. Hepronounced upon those who had fallen in the war a funeral oration. [318] When he descended from the rostrum, the women crowded round andshowered fillets and chaplets on the eloquent victor. Elpinice, thesister of Cimon, alone shared not the general enthusiasm. "Are theseactions, " she said to Pericles, "worthy of chaplets and garlands?actions purchased by the loss of many gallant citizens--not wonagainst the Phoenician and the Mede, like those of Cimon, but by theruin of a city united with ourselves in amity and origin. " The readyminister replied to the invective of Elpinice by a line fromArchilochus, which, in alluding to the age and coquetry of the lady, probably answered the oratorical purpose of securing the laugh on hisown side. [319]

While these events confirmed the authority of Athens and the Atheniangovernment, a power had grown up within the city that assumed a right, the grave assertion of which without the walls would have been deeplyfelt and bitterly resented--a power that sat in severe and derisivejudgment upon Athens herself, her laws, her liberties, her mightygenerals, her learned statesmen, her poets, her sages, and herarrogant democracy--a power that has come down to foreign nations anddistant ages as armed with irresistible weapons--which now ispermitted to give testimony, not only against individuals, but nationsthemselves, but which, in that time, was not more effective inpractical results than at this day a caricature in St. James's-street, or a squib in a weekly newspaper--a power which exposed to relentlessridicule, before the most susceptible and numerous tribunal, theloftiest names in rank, in wisdom, and in genius--and which could nothave deprived a beggar of his obol or a scavenger of his office: THEPOWER OF THE COMIC MUSE. 

VI. We have seen that in the early village festivals, out of whichgrew the tragedy of Phrynichus and Aeschylus, there were, besides theDithyramb and the Satyrs, the Phallic processions, which diversifiedthe ceremony by the lowest jests mingled with the wildest satire. Asher tragedy had its origin in the Dithyramb--as her satyricafter-piece had its origin in the satyric buffooneries--so out of thePhallic processions rose the Comedy of Greece (B. C. 562) [320]. Susarion is asserted by some to have been a Megarian by origin; andwhile the democracy of Megara was yet in force, he appears to haveroughly shaped the disorderly merriment of the procession into a rudefarce, interspersed with the old choral songs. The close connexionbetween Megara and Athens soon served to communicate to the latter theimprovements of Susarion; and these improvements obtained for theMegarian the title of inventer of comedy, with about the same justiceas a similar degree of art conferred upon the later Thespis thedistinction of the origin of tragedy. The study of Homer's epics hadsuggested its true province to tragedy; the study of the Margites, attributed also to Homer, seems to have defined and enlarged thedomain of comedy. Eleven years after Phrynichus appeared, and justprevious to the first effort of Aeschylus (B. C. 500), Epicharmus, whoappears to have been a native of Cos [321], produced at Syracuse theearliest symmetrical and systematic form of comic dialogue and fable. All accounts prove him to have been a man of extraordinary genius, andof very thoughtful and accomplished mind. Perhaps the loss of hisworks is not the least to be lamented of those priceless treasureswhich time has destroyed. So uncertain, after all, is the greattribunal of posterity, which is often as little to be relied upon asthe caprice of the passing day! We have the worthless Electra ofEuripides--we have lost all, save the titles and a few sententiousfragments, of thirty-five comedies of Epicharmus! Yet if Horaceinform us rightly, that the poet of Syracuse was the model of Plautus, perhaps in the Amphitryon we can trace the vein and genius of thefather of true comedy; and the thoughts and the plot of the lostEpicharmus may still exist, mutilated and disguised, in the humours ofthe greatest comic poet [322] of modern Europe. 

VII. It was chiefly from the rich stores of mythology that Epicharmusdrew his fables; but what was sublimity with the tragic poet, wasburlesque with the comic. He parodied the august personages andvenerable adventures of the gods of the Greek Pantheon. By a singularcoincidence, like his contemporary Aeschylus [323], he was aPythagorean, and it is wonderful to observe how rapidly and howpowerfully the influence of the mysterious Samian operated on the mostoriginal intellects of the age. The familiar nature of the Hellenicreligion sanctioned, even in the unphilosophical age of Homer, atreatment of celestial persons that to our modern notions would, atfirst glance, evince a disrespect for the religion itself. Butwherever homage to "dead men" be admitted, we may, even in our owntimes, find that the most jocular legends are attached to names heldin the most reverential awe. And he who has listened to an Irish oran Italian Catholic's familiar stories of some favourite saint, mayform an adequate notion of the manner in which a pious Greek couldjest upon Bacchus to-day and sacrifice to Bacchus to-morrow. With hismythological travesties the Pythagorean mingled, apparently, manyearnest maxims of morality [324], and though not free, in the judgmentof Aristotle, from a vice of style usually common only to ages themost refined [325]; he was yet proverbial, even in the most polishedperiod of Grecian letters, for the graces of his diction and the happychoice of his expressions. 

Phormis, a contemporary of Epicharmus, flourished also at Syracuse, and though sometimes classed with Epicharmus, and selecting hismaterials from the same source, his claims to reputation areimmeasurably more equivocal. Dinolochus continued the Sicilianschool, and was a contemporary of the first Athenian comic writer. 

VIII. Hence it will be seen that the origin of comedy does not restwith the Athenians; that Megara, if the birthplace of Susarion, mayfairly claim whatever merit belongs to the first rude improvement, andthat Syracuse is entitled to the higher distinction of raising humourinto art. So far is comedy the offspring of the Dorians--not theDorians of a sullen oligarchy, with whom to vary an air of music was acrime--not the Dorians of Lacedaemon--but of Megara and Syracuse--ofan energetic, though irregular democracy--of a splendid, thoughillegitimate monarchy. [326]

But the comedy of Epicharmus was not altogether the old comedy ofAthens. The last, as bequeathed to us by Aristophanes, has featureswhich bear little family resemblance to the philosophical parodies ofthe Pythagorean poet. It does not confine itself to mythologicalsubjects--it avoids the sententious style--it does not preach, butridicule philosophy--it plunges amid the great practical business ofmen--it breathes of the Agora and the Piraeus--it is not a laughingsage, but a bold, boisterous, gigantic demagogue, ever in the thickestmob of human interests, and wielding all the various humours of ademocracy with a brilliant audacity, and that reckless ease which isthe proof of its astonishing power. 

IX. Chionides was the first Athenian comic writer. We find himbefore the public three years after the battle of Marathon (B. C. 487), when the final defeat of Hippias confirmed the stability of therepublic; and when the improvements of Aeschylus in tragedy served tocommunicate new attractions to the comic stage. Magnes, a writer ofgreat wit, and long popular, closely followed, and the titles of someof the plays of these writers confirm the belief that Attic comedy, from its commencement, took other ground than that occupied by themythological burlesques of Epicharmus. So great was the impetus givento the new art, that a crowd of writers followed simultaneously, whosevery names it is wearisome to mention. Of these the most eminent wereCratinus and Crates. The earliest _recorded_ play of Cratinus, thoughhe must have exhibited many before [327], appeared the year prior tothe death of Cimon (the Archilochi, B. C. 448). Plutarch quotes somelines from this author, which allude to the liberality of Cimon withsomething of that patron-loving spirit which was rather thecharacteristic of a Roman than an Athenian poet. Though he himself, despite his age, was proverbially of no very abstemious or decoroushabits, Cratinus was unsparing in his attacks upon others, andwherever he found or suspected vice, he saw a subject worthy of hisgenius. He was admired to late posterity, and by Roman critics, forthe grace and even for the grandeur of his hardy verses; andQuintilian couples him with Eupolis and Aristophanes as models for theformation of orators. Crates appeared (B. C. 451) two years beforethe first _recorded_ play of Cratinus. He had previously been anactor, and performed the principal characters in the plays ofCratinus. Aristophanes bestows on him the rare honour of his praise, while he sarcastically reminds the Athenian audience of the illreception that so ingenious a poet often received at their hands. Yet, despite the excellence of the earlier comic writers, they hadhitherto at Athens very sparingly adopted the artistical graces ofEpicharmus. Crates, who did not write before the five years' trucewith Sparta, is said by Aristotle not only to have been the first whoabandoned the Iambic form of comedy, but the first Athenian whoinvented systematic fable or plot--a strong argument to show howlittle the Athenian borrowed from the Sicilian comedy, since, if thelast had been its source of inspiration, the invented stories ofEpicharmus (by half a century the predecessor of Crates) wouldnaturally have been the most striking improvement to be imitated. TheAthenian comedy did not receive the same distinctions conferred upontragedy. So obscure was its rise to its later eminence, that evenAristotle could not determine when or by whom the various progressiveimprovements were made: and, regarded with jealous or indifferent eyesby the magistrature as an exhibition given by private competitors, norcalling for the protection of the state, which it often defied, it waslong before its chorus was defrayed at the public cost. 

Under Cratinus and Crates [328], however, in the year of the Samianwar, the comic drama assumed a character either so personallyscurrilous, or so politically dangerous, that a decree was passedinterdicting its exhibitions (B. C. 440). The law was repealedthree years afterward (B. C. 437) [329]. Viewing its temporaryenforcement, and the date in which it was passed, it appears highlyprobable that the critical events of the Samian expedition may havebeen the cause of the decree. At such a time the opposition of thecomic writers might have been considered dangerous. With theincreased stability of the state, the law was, perhaps, deemed nolonger necessary. And from the recommencement of the comic drama, wemay probably date both the improvements of Crates and the specialprotection of the state; for when, for the first time, Comedy wasformally authorized by the law, it was natural that the law shouldrecognise the privileges it claimed in common with its sister Tragedy. There is no authority for supposing that Pericles, whose calm temperand long novitiate in the stormy career of public life seem to haverendered him callous to public abuse, was the author of this decree. It is highly probable, indeed, that he was absent at the siege ofSamos [330] when it was passed; but he was the object of such virulentattacks by the comic poets that we might consider them actuated bysome personal feeling of revenge and spleen, were it not evident thatCratinus at least (and probably Crates, his disciple) was attached tothe memory of Cimon, and could not fail to be hostile to theprinciples and government of Cimon's successor. So far at this periodhad comedy advanced; but, in the background, obscure and undreamed of, was one, yet in childhood, destined to raise the comic to the rank ofthe tragic muse; one who, perhaps, from his earliest youth, wasincited by the noisy fame of his predecessors, and the desire of thatglorious, but often perverted power, so palpable and so exultant, which rides the stormy waves of popular applause [331]. Aboutthirteen years after the brief prohibition of comedy appeared thatwonderful genius, the elements and attributes of whose works it willbe a pleasing, if arduous task, in due season, to analyze and define;matchless alike in delicacy and strength, in powers the most gigantic, in purpose the most daring--with the invention of Shakspeare--theplayfulness of Rabelais--the malignity of Swift--need I add the nameof Aristophanes?

X. But while comedy had thus progressed to its first invidiousdignity, that of proscription, far different was the reward thatawaited the present representative and master of the tragic school. In the year that the muse of Cratinus was silenced, Sophocles wasappointed one of the colleagues with Pericles in the Samian war. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Tragedies of Sophocles. 

I. It was in the very nature of the Athenian drama, that, when onceestablished, it should concentrate and absorb almost every variety ofthe poetical genius. The old lyrical poetry, never much cultivated inAthens, ceased in a great measure when tragedy arose, or rathertragedy was the complete development, the new and perfectedconsummation of the Dithyrambic ode. Lyrical poetry transmigratedinto the choral song, as the epic merged into the dialogue and plot, of the drama. Thus, when we speak of Athenian poetry, we speak ofdramatic poetry--they were one and the same. As Helvetius has soluminously shown [332], genius ever turns towards that quarter inwhich fame shines brightest, and hence, in every age, there will be asympathetic connexion between the taste of the public and thedirection of the talent. 

Now in Athens, where audiences were numerous and readers few, everyman who felt within himself the inspiration of the poet wouldnecessarily desire to see his poetry put into action--assisted withall the pomp of spectacle and music, hallowed by the solemnity of areligious festival, and breathed by artists elaborately trained toheighten the eloquence of words into the reverent ear of assembledGreece. 

Hence the multitude of dramatic poets, hence the mighty fertility ofeach; hence the life and activity of this--the comparative torpor andbarrenness of every other--species of poetry. To add to thepre-eminence of the art, the applauses of the many were sanctioned bythe critical canons of the few. The drama was not only the mostalluring form which the Divine Spirit could assume--but it was alsodeemed the loftiest and the purest; and when Aristotle ranked [333] thetragic higher than even the epic muse, he probably did but explain thereasons for a preference which the generality of critics were disposedto accord to her. [334]

II. The career of the most majestic of the Greek poets was eminentlyfelicitous. His birth was noble, his fortune affluent; his naturalgifts were the rarest which nature bestows on man, genius and beauty. All the care which the age permitted was lavished on his education. For his feet even the ordinary obstacles in the path of distinctionwere smoothed away. He entered life under auspices the mostpropitious and poetical. At the age of sixteen he headed the youthswho performed the triumphant paean round the trophy of Salamis. Attwenty-five, when the bones of Theseus were borne back to Athens inthe galley of the victorious Cimon, he exhibited his first play, andwon the prize from Aeschylus. That haughty genius, whether indignantat the success of a younger rival, or at a trial for impiety beforethe Areopagus, to which (though acquitted) he was subjected, or at therapid ascendency of a popular party, that he seems to have scornedwith the disdain at once of an eupatrid and a Pythagorean, soon afterretired from Athens to the Syracusan court; and though he thence sentsome of his dramas to the Athenian stage [335], the absent veterancould not but excite less enthusiasm than the young aspirant, whoseartful and polished genius was more in harmony with the reigning tastethan the vast but rugged grandeur of Aeschylus, who, perhaps from theimpossibility tangibly and visibly to body forth his shadowy Titansand obscure sublimity of design, does not appear to have obtained apopularity on the stage equal to his celebrity as a poet [336]. Forthree-and-sixty years did Sophocles continue to exhibit; twenty timeshe obtained the first prize, and he is said never to have beendegraded to the third. The ordinary persecutions of envy itself seemto have spared this fortunate poet. Although his moral character wasfar from pure [337], and even in extreme old age he sought after thepleasures of his youth [339], yet his excesses apparently met with aremarkable indulgence from his contemporaries. To him were knownneither the mortifications of Aeschylus nor the relentless mockeryheaped upon Euripides. On his fair name the terrible Aristophaneshimself affixes no brand [339]. The sweetness of his genius extendedindeed to his temper, and personal popularity assisted his publictriumphs. Nor does he appear to have keenly shared the partyanimosities of his day; his serenity, like that of Goethe, has in itsomething of enviable rather than honourable indifference. He owedhis first distinction to Cimon, and he served afterward underPericles; on his entrance into life, he led the youths that circledthe trophy of Grecian freedom--and on the verge of death, we shallhereafter see him calmly assent to the surrender of Athenianliberties. In short, Aristophanes perhaps mingled more truth thanusual with his wit, when even in the shades below he says ofSophocles, "He was contented here--he's contented there. " Adisposition thus facile, united with an admirable genius, will, notunoften, effect a miracle, and reconcile prosperity with fame. [340]

At the age of fifty-seven, Sophocles was appointed, as I before said[341], to a command, as one of the ten generals in the Samian war; buthistory is silent as to his military genius [342]. In later life weshall again have occasion to refer to him, condemned as he was toillustrate (after a career of unprecedented brilliancy--nor eversubjected to the caprice of the common public) the melancholy moralinculcated by himself [343], and so often obtruded upon us by thedramatists of his country, "never to deem a man happy till deathitself denies the hazard of reverses. " Out of the vast, though notaccurately known, number of the dramas of Sophocles, seven remain. 

III. A great error has been committed by those who class Aeschylusand Sophocles together as belonging to the same era, and refer both tothe age of Pericles, because each was living while Pericles was inpower. We may as well class Dr. Johnson and Lord Byron in the sameage, because both lived in the reign of George III. The Athenianrivals were formed under the influences of very different generations;and if Aeschylus lived through a considerable portion of the career ofthe younger Sophocles, the accident of longevity by no means warrantsus to consider then the children of the same age--the creatures of thesame influences. Aeschylus belonged to the race and the period fromwhich emerged Themistocles and Aristides--Sophocles to those whichproduced Phidias and Pericles. Sophocles indeed, in the calmness ofhis disposition, and the symmetry and stateliness of his genius, mightalmost be entitled the Pericles of poetry. And as the statesman wascalled the Olympian, not from the headlong vehemence, but the serenemajesty of his strength; so of Sophocles also it may be said, that hispower is visible in his repose, and his thunders roll from the depthof a clear sky. 

IV. The age of Pericles is the age of art [344]. It was notSophocles alone that was an artist in that time; he was but one of themany who, in every department, sought, in study and in science, thesecrets of the wise or the beautiful. Pericles and Phidias were intheir several paths of fame what Sophocles was in his. But it was notthe art of an emasculate or effeminate period--it grew out of theexample of a previous generation of men astonishingly great. It wasart still fresh from the wells of nature. Art with a vast field yetunexplored, and in all its youthful vigour and maiden enthusiasm. There was, it is true, at a period a little later than that in whichthe genius of Sophocles was formed, one class of students among whom afalse taste and a spurious refinement were already visible--the classof rhetoricians and philosophical speculators. For, in fact, the artwhich belongs to the imagination is often purest in an early age; butthat which appertains to the reason and intellect is slow before itattains mature strength and manly judgment, Among these students wasearly trained and tutored the thoughtful mind of Euripides; and hencethat art which in Sophocles was learned in more miscellaneous andactive circles, and moulded by a more powerful imagination, inEuripides often sickens us with the tricks of a pleader, the quibblesof a schoolman, or the dullness of a moralizing declaimer. But as, inthe peculiar attributes and character of his writings, Euripidessomewhat forestalled his age--as his example had a very importantinfluence upon his successors--as he did not exhibit till the fame ofSophocles was already confirmed--and as his name is intimatelyassociated with the later age of Aristophanes and Socrates--it may bemore convenient to confine our critical examination at present to thetragedies of Sophocles. 

Although the three plays of the "Oedipus Tyrannus, " the "Oedipus atColoneus, " and the "Antigone, " were composed and exhibited at verywide intervals of time, yet, from their connexion with each other, they may almost be said to form one poem. The "Antigone, " whichconcludes the story, was the one earliest written; and there arepassages in either "Oedipus" which seem composed to lead up, as itwere, to the catastrophe of the "Antigone, " and form a harmonious linkbetween the several dramas. These three plays constitute, on thewhole, the greatest performance of Sophocles, though in detached partsthey are equalled by passages in the "Ajax" and the "Philoctetes. "

V. The "Oedipus Tyrannus" opens thus. An awful pestilence devastatesThebes. Oedipus, the king, is introduced to us, powerful and beloved;to him whose wisdom had placed him on the throne, look up the priestand the suppliants for a remedy even amid the terrors of the plague. Oedipus informs them that he has despatched Creon (the brother of hiswife Jocasta) to the Pythian god to know by what expiatory deed thecity might be delivered from its curse. Scarce has he concluded, whenCreon himself enters, and announces "glad tidings" in the explicitanswer of the oracle. The god has declared--that a pollution had beenbred in the land, and must be expelled the city--that Laius, theformer king, had been murdered--and that his blood must be avenged. Laius had left the city never to return; of his train but one manescaped to announce his death by assassins. Oedipus instantlyresolves to prosecute the inquiry into the murder, and orders thepeople to be summoned. The suppliants arise from the altar, and asolemn chorus of the senators of Thebes (in one of the most splendidlyrics of Sophocles) chant the terrors of the plague--"that unarmedMars"--and implore the protection of the divine averters ofdestruction. Oedipus then, addressing the chorus, demands their aidto discover the murderer, whom he solemnly excommunicates, and dooms, deprived of aid and intercourse, to waste slowly out a miserableexistence; nay, if the assassin should have sought refuge in the royalhalls, there too shall the vengeance be wreaked and the curse fall. 

"For I, " continued Oedipus, "I, who the sceptre which he wielded wield; I, who have mounted to his marriage bed; I, in whose children (had he issue known) His would have claimed a common brotherhood; Now that the evil fate bath fallen o'er him-- I am the heir of that dead king's revenge, Not less than if these lips had hailed him 'father!'"

A few more sentences introduce to us the old soothsayer Tiresias--forwhom, at the instigation of Creon, Oedipus had sent. The seer answersthe adjuration of the king with a thrilling and ominous burst--

 "Wo--wo!--how fearful is the gift of wisdom, When to the wise it bears no blessing!--wo!"

The haughty spirit of Oedipus breaks forth at the gloomy and obscurewarnings of the prophet. His remonstrances grow into threats. In hisblindness he even accuses Tiresias himself of the murder of Laius--andout speaks the terrible diviner:

 "Ay--is it so? Abide then by thy curse And solemn edict--never from this day Hold human commune with these men or me; Lo, where thou standest--lo, the land's polluter!"

A dialogue of great dramatic power ensues. Oedipus accuses Tiresiasof abetting his kinsman, Creon, by whom he had been persuaded to sendfor the soothsayer, in a plot against his throne--and the seer, whoexplains nothing and threatens all things, departs with a dim andfearful prophecy. 

After a song from the chorus, in which are imbodied the doubt, thetrouble, the terror which the audience may begin to feel--and here itmay be observed, that with Sophocles the chorus always carries on, notthe physical, but the moral, progress of the drama [345]--Creonenters, informed of the suspicion against himself which Oedipus hadexpressed. Oedipus, whose whole spirit is disturbed by the weird anddark threats of Tiresias, repeats the accusation, but wildly andfeebly. His vain worldly wisdom suggests to him that Creon wouldscarcely have asked him to consult Tiresias, nor Tiresias haveventured on denunciations so tremendous, had not the two conspiredagainst him: yet a mysterious awe invades him--he presses questions onCreon relative to the murder of Laius, and seems more anxious toacquit himself than accuse another. 

While the princes contend, the queen, Jocasta, enters. She chidestheir quarrel, learns from Oedipus that Tiresias had accused him ofthe murder of the deceased king, and, to convince him of the falsenessof prophetic lore, reveals to him, that long since it was predictedthat Laius should be murdered by his son joint offspring of Jocastaand himself. Yet, in order to frustrate the prophecy, the only son ofLaius had been exposed to perish upon solitary and untroddenmountains, while, in after years, Laius himself had fallen, in a spotwhere three roads met, by the hand of a stranger; so that the prophecyhad not come to pass. 

At this declaration terror seizes upon Oedipus. He questions Jocastaeagerly and rapidly--the place where the murder happened, the time inwhich it occurred, the age and personal appearance of Laius--and whenhe learns all, his previous arrogant conviction of innocence desertshim; and as he utters a horrid exclamation, Jocasta fixes her eyesupon him, and "shudders as she gazes. " [346] He inquires what trainaccompanied Laius--learns that there were five persons; that but oneescaped; that on his return to Thebes, seeing Oedipus on the throne, the surviver had besought the favour to retire from the city. Oedipusorders this witness of the murder to be sent for, and then proceeds torelate his own history. He has been taught to believe that Polybus ofCorinth and Merope of Doris were his parents. But once at a banquethe was charged with being a supposititious child; the insult galledhim, and he went to Delphi to consult the oracle. It was predicted tohim that he should commit incest with his mother, and that his fathershould fall by his hand. Appalled and horror-stricken, he resolves tofly the possible fulfilment of the prophecy, and return no more toCorinth. In his flight by the triple road described by Jocasta hemeets an old man in a chariot, with a guide or herald, and otherservitors. They attempt to thrust him from the road--a contestensues--he slays the old man and his train. Could this be Laius? Canit be to the marriage couch of the man he slew that he has ascended?No, his fears are too credulous! he clings to a straw; the herdsmanwho had escaped the slaughter of Laius and his attendants may provethat it was _not_ the king whom he encountered. Jocasta sustains thishope--she cannot believe a prophecy--for it had been foretold thatLaius should fall by the hand of his son, and that son had long sinceperished on the mountains. The queen and Oedipus retire within theirpalace; the chorus resume their strains; after which, Jocastareappears on her way to the temple of Apollo, to offer sacrifice andprayer. At this time a messenger arrives to announce to Oedipus thedeath of Polybus, and the wish of the Corinthians to elect Oedipus tothe throne! At these tidings Jocasta is overjoyed. 

 "Predictions of the gods, where are ye now? Lest by the son's doomed hand the sire should fall, The son became a wanderer on the earth, Lo, not the son, but Nature, gives the blow!"

Oedipus, summoned to the messenger, learns the news of his supposedfather's death! It is a dread and tragic thought, but the piousOedipus is glad that his father is no more, since he himself is thussaved from parricide; yet the other part of the prediction haunts him. His mother!--she yet lives. He reveals to the messenger the prophecyand his terror. To cheer him, the messenger now informs him that heis not the son of Merope and Polybus. A babe had been found in theentangled forest-dells of Cithaeron by a herdsman and slave of Laius--he had given the infant to another--that other, the messenger whonow tells the tale. Transferred to the care of Polybus and Merope, the babe became to them as a son, for they were childless. Jocastahears--stunned and speechless--till Oedipus, yet unconscious of thehorrors still to come, turns to demand of her if she knew the herdsmanwho had found the child. Then she gasps wildly out--

 "Whom speaks he of? Be silent--heed it not-- Blot it out from thy memory!--it is evil! Oedipus. It cannot be--the clew is here; and I Will trace it through that labyrinth--my birth. Jocasta. By all the gods I warn thee; for the sake Of thine own life beware; it is enough For me to hear and madden!"

Oedipus (suspecting only that the pride of his queen revolts from thethought of her husband's birth being proved base and servile) replies, "Nay, nay, cheer thee! Were I through three descents threefold a slave, My shame would not touch thee. Jocasta. I do implore thee, This once obey me--this once. Oedipus I will not! To truth I grope my way. Jocasta. And yet what love Speaks in my voice! Thine ignorance is thy bliss. Oedipus. A bliss that tortures! Jocasta. Miserable man! Oh couldst thou never learn the thing thou art! Oedipus. Will no one quicken this slow herdsman's steps The unquestioned birthright of a royal name Let this proud queen possess! Jocasta. Wo! wo! thou wretch! Wo! my last word!--words are no more for me!"

With this Jocasta rushes from the scene. Still Oedipus misconstruesher warning; he ascribes her fears to the royalty of her spirit. Forhimself, Fortune was his mother, and had blessed him; nor could theaccident of birth destroy his inheritance from nature. The chorusgive way to their hopes! their wise, their glorious Oedipus might havebeen born a Theban! The herdsman enters: like Tiresias, he is loathto speak. The fiery king extorts his secret. Oedipus is the son ofLaius and Jocasta--at his birth the terrible prophecies of the Pythianinduced his own mother to expose him on the mountains--the compassionof the herdsman saved him--saved him to become the bridegroom of hismother, the assassin of his sire. The astonishing art with which, from step to step, the audience and the victim are led to the climaxof the discovery, is productive of an interest of pathos and of terrorwhich is not equalled by the greatest masterpieces of the modern stage[347], and possesses that species of anxious excitement which iswholly unparalleled in the ancient. The discovery is a truecatastrophe--the physical denouement is but an adjunct to the moralone. Jocasta, on quitting the scene, had passed straight to thebridal-chamber, and there, by the couch from which had sprung a doubleand accursed progeny, perished by her own hands. Meanwhile, thepredestined parricide, bursting into the chamber, beheld, as the lastobject on earth, the corpse of his wife and mother! Once more Oedipusreappears, barred for ever from the light of day. In the fury of hisremorse, he "had smote the balls of his own eyes, " and the wisebaffler of the sphinx, Oedipus, the haughty, the insolent, theillustrious, is a forlorn and despairing outcast. But amid all thehorror of the concluding scene, a beautiful and softening light breaksforth. Blind, powerless, excommunicated, Creon, whom Oedipus accusedof murder, has now become his judge and his master. The great spirit, crushed beneath its intolerable woes, is humbled to the dust; and the"wisest of mankind" implores but two favours--to be thrust from theland an exile, and once more to embrace his children. Even intranslation the exquisite tenderness of this passage cannot altogetherfail of its effect. 

 "For my fate, let it pass! My children, Creon! My sons--nay, they the bitter wants of life May master--they are MEN?--my girls--my darlings-- Why, never sat I at my household board Without their blessed looks--our very bread We brake together; thou'lt be kind to them For my sake, Creon--and (oh, latest prayer!) Let me but touch them--feel them with these hands, And pour such sorrow as may speak farewell O'er ills that must be theirs! By thy pure line-- For thin is pure--do this, sweet prince. Methinks I should not miss these eyes, could I but touch them. What shall I say to move thee? Sobs! And do I, Oh do I hear my sweet ones? Hast thou sent, In mercy sent, my children to my arms? Speak--speak--I do not dream! Creon. They are thy children; I would not shut thee from the dear delight In the old time they gave thee. Oedipus. Blessings on thee For this one mercy mayst thou find above A kinder God than I have. Ye--where are ye? My children--come!--nearer and nearer yet, " etc. 

The pathos of this scene is continued to the end; and the very lastwords Oedipus utters as his children cling to him, implore that theyat least may not be torn away. 

It is in this concluding scene that the art of the play isconsummated; the horrors of the catastrophe, which, if a lastimpression, would have left behind a too painful and gloomy feeling, are softened down by this beautiful resort to the tenderest andholiest sources of emotion. And the pathos is rendered doublyeffective, not only from the immediate contrast of the terror thatpreceded it, but from the masterly skill with which all display of thesofter features in the character of Oedipus is reserved to the close. In the breaking up of the strong mind and the daring spirit, whenempire, honour, name, are all annihilated, the heart is seen, as itwere, surviving the wrecks around it, and clinging for support to theaffections. 

VII. In the "Oedipus at Coloneus, " the blind king is presented to us, after the lapse of years, a wanderer over the earth, unconsciouslytaking his refuge in the grove of the furies [348]--"the awfulgoddesses, daughters of Earth and Darkness. " His young daughter, Antigone, one of the most lovely creations of poetry, is his companionand guide; he is afterward joined by his other daughter, Ismene, whoseweak and selfish character is drawn in strong contrast to the heroismand devotion of Antigone. The ancient prophecies that foretold hiswoes had foretold also his release. His last shelter andresting-place were to be obtained from the dread deities, and a sign ofthunder, or earthquake, or lightning was to announce his parting hour. Learning the spot to which his steps had been guided, Oedipus solemnlyfeels that his doom approaches: thus, at the very opening of the poem, he stands before us on the verge of a mysterious grave. 

The sufferings which have bowed the parricide to a premature old age[349] have not crushed his spirit; the softness and self-humiliationwhich were the first results of his awful affliction are passed away. He is grown once more vehement and passionate, from the sense ofwrong; remorse still visits him, but is alternated with the yet morehuman feeling of resentment at the unjust severity of his doom [350]. His sons, who, "by a word, " might have saved him from the expulsion, penury, and wanderings he has undergone, had deserted his cause--hadlooked with indifferent eyes on his awful woes--had joined with Creonto expel him from the Theban land. They are the Goneril and Regan ofthe classic Lear, as Antigone is the Cordelia on whom he leans--aCordelia he has never thrust from him. "When, " says Oedipus, in sternbitterness of soul, "When my soul boiled within me--when 'to die' Was all my prayer--and death was sweetness, yea, Had they but stoned me like a dog, I'd blessed them; Then no man rose against me--but when time Brought its slow comfort--when my wounds were scarred-- All my griefs mellow'd, and remorse itself Judged my self-penance mightier than my sins, Thebes thrust me from her breast, and they, my sons, My blood, mine offspring, from their father shrunk: A word of theirs had saved me--one small word-- They said it not--and lo! the wandering beggar!"

In the mean while, during the exile of Oedipus, strife had broken outbetween the brothers: Eteocles, here represented as the younger, droveout Polynices, and seized the throne; Polynices takes refuge at Argos, where he prepares war against the usurper: an oracle declares thatsuccess shall be with that party which Oedipus joins, and a mysteriousblessing is pronounced on the land which contains his bones. Thus, the possession of this wild tool of fate--raised up in age to a dreadand ghastly consequence--becomes the argument of the play, as hisdeath must become the catastrophe. It is the deep and fierce revengeof Oedipus that makes the passion of the whole. According to asublime conception, we see before us the physical Oedipus in thelowest state of destitution and misery--in rags, blindness, beggary, utter and abject impotence. But in the moral, Oedipus is all themajesty of a power still royal. The oracle has invested one, sofallen and so wretched in himself, with the power of a god--the powerto confer victory on the cause he adopts, prosperity on the land thatbecomes his tomb. With all the revenge of age, all the grandmalignity of hatred, he clings to this shadow and relic of a sceptre. Creon, aware of the oracle, comes to recall him to Thebes. Thetreacherous kinsman humbles himself before his victim--he is thesuppliant of the beggar, who defies and spurns him. Creon avengeshimself by seizing on Antigone and Ismene. Nothing can be moredramatically effective than the scene in which these last props of hisage are torn from the desolate old man. They are ultimately restoredto him by Theseus, whose amiable and lofty character is painted withall the partial glow of colouring which an Athenian poet wouldnaturally lavish on the Athenian Alfred. We are next introduced toPolynices. He, like Creon, has sought Oedipus with the selfish motiveof recovering his throne by means of an ally to whom the oraclepromises victory. But there is in Polynices the appearance of a truepenitence, and a mingled gentleness and majesty in his bearing whichinterests us in his fate despite his faults, and which were possiblyintended by Sophocles to give a new interest to the plot of the"Antigone, " composed and exhibited long before. Oedipus is persuadedby the benevolence of Theseus, and the sweet intercession of Antigone, to admit his son. After a chant from the chorus on the ills of oldage [351], Polynices enters. He is struck with the wasted andmiserable appearance of the old man, and bitterly reproaches his owndesertion. 

"But since, " he says, with almost a Christian sentiment--

 "Since o'er each deed, upon the Olympian throne, Mercy sits joint presider with great Jove, Let her, oh father, also take her stand Within thy soul--and judge me! The past sins Yet have their cure--ah, would they had recall! Why are you voiceless? Speak to me, my father? Turn not away--will you not answer me?" etc. 

Oedipus retains his silence in spite of the prayers of his belovedAntigone, and Polynices proceeds to narrate the wrongs he hasundergone from Eteocles, and, warming with a young warrior's ardour, paints the array that he has mustered on his behalf--promises torestore Oedipus to his palace--and, alluding to the oracle, throwshimself on his father's pardon. 

Then, at last, outspeaks Oedipus, and from reproach bursts intocurses. 

 "And now you weep; you wept not at these woes Until you wept your own. But I--I weep not. These things are not for tears, but for Endurance. My son is like his sire--a parricide! Toil, exile, beggary--daily bread doled out From stranger hands--these are your gifts, my son! My nurses, guardians--they who share the want, Or earn the bread, are daughters; call them not Women, for they to me are men. Go to! Thou art not mine--I do disclaim such issue. Behold, the eyes of the avenging God Are o'er thee! but their ominous light delays To blast thee yet. March on--march on--to Thebes! Not--not for thee, the city and the throne; The earth shall first be reddened with thy blood-- Thy blood and his, thy foe--thy brother! Curses! Not for the first time summoned to my wrongs-- Curses! I call ye back, and make ye now Allies with this old man!

 * * * * * *

 Yea, curses shall possess thy seat and throne, If antique Justice o'er the laws of earth Reign with the thunder-god. March on to ruin! Spurned and disowned--the basest of the base-- And with thee bear this burden: o'er thine head I pour a prophet's doom; nor throne nor home Waits on the sharpness of the levelled spear: Thy very land of refuge hath no welcome; Thine eyes have looked their last on hollow Argos. Death by a brother's hand--dark fratricide, Murdering thyself a brother--shall be thine. Yea, while I curse thee, on the murky deep Of the primeval hell I call! Prepare These men their home, dread Tartarus! Goddesses, Whose shrines are round me--ye avenging Furies! And thou, oh Lord of Battle, who hast stirred Hate in the souls of brethren, hear me--hear me!-- And now, 'tis past!--enough!--depart and tell The Theban people, and thy fond allies, What blessings, from his refuge with the Furies, The blind old Oedipus awards his sons!" [352]

As is usual with Sophocles, the terrific strength of these execrationsis immediately followed by a soft and pathetic scene between Antigoneand her brother. Though crushed at first by the paternal curse, thespirit of Polynices so far recovers its native courage that he willnot listen to the prayer of his sister to desist from the expeditionto Thebes, and to turn his armies back to Argos. "What, " he says, "Lead back an army that could deem I trembled!"

Yet he feels the mournful persuasion that his death is doomed; and aglimpse of the plot of the "Antigone" is opened upon us by his prayerto his sister, that if he perish, they should lay him with due honoursin the tomb. The exquisite loveliness of Antigone's character toucheseven Polynices, and he departs, saying, "With the gods rests the balance of our fate; But thee, at least--oh never upon thee May evil fall! Thou art too good for sorrow!"

The chorus resume their strains, when suddenly thunder is heard, andOedipus hails the sign that heralds him to the shades. Nothing can beconceived more appalling than this omen. It seems as if Oedipus hadbeen spared but to curse his children and to die. He summons Theseus, tells him that his fate is at hand, and that without a guide hehimself will point out the spot where he shall rest. Never may thatspot be told--that secret and solemn grave shall be the charm of theland and a defence against its foes. Oedipus then turns round, andthe instinct within guides him as he gropes along. His daughters andTheseus follow the blind man, amazed and awed. "Hither, " he says, "Hither--by this way come--for this way leads The unseen conductor of the dead [353]--and she Whom shadows call their queen! [354] Oh light, sweet light, Rayless to me--mine once, and even now I feel thee palpable, round this worn form, Clinging in last embrace--I go to shroud The waning life in the eternal Hades!"

Thus the stage is left to the chorus, and the mysterious fate ofOedipus is recited by the Nuntius, in verses which Longinus has notextolled too highly. Oedipus had led the way to a cavern, well knownin legendary lore as the spot where Perithous and Theseus had pledgedtheir faith, by the brazen steps which make one of the entrances tothe infernal realms;

 "Between which place and the Thorician stone-- The hollow thorn, and the sepulchral pile He sat him down. "

And when he had performed libations from the stream, and laved, anddecked himself in the funeral robes, Jove thundered beneath the earth, and the old man's daughters, aghast with horror, fell at his kneeswith sobs and groans. 

 "Then o'er them as they wept, his hands he clasped, And 'Oh my children, ' said he, 'from this day Ye have no more a father--all of me Withers away--the burden and the toil Of mine old age fall on ye nevermore. Sad travail have ye home for me, and yet Let one thought breathe a balm when I am gone-- The thought that none upon the desolate world Loved you as I did; and in death I leave A happier life to you!'

 Thus movingly, With clinging arms and passionate sobs, the three Wept out aloud, until the sorrow grew Into a deadly hush--nor cry nor wail Starts the drear silence of the solitude. Then suddenly a bodiless voice is heard And fear came cold on all. They shook with awe, And horror, like a wind, stirred up their hair. Again, the voice--again--'Ho! Oedipus, Why linger we so long? Come--hither--come. '"

Oedipus then solemnly consigns his children to Theseus, dismissesthem, and Theseus alone is left with the old man. 

 "So groaning we depart--and when once more We turned our eyes to gaze, behold, the place Knew not the man! The king alone was there, Holding his spread hands o'er averted brows As if to shut from out the quailing gaze The horrid aspect of some ghastly thing That nature durst not look on. So we paused Until the king awakened from the terror, And to the mother Earth, and high Olympus, Seat of the gods, he breathed awe--stricken prayer But, how the old man perished, save the king, Mortal can ne'er divine; for bolt, nor levin, Nor blasting tempest from the ocean borne, Was heard or seen; but either was he rapt Aloft by wings divine, or else the shades, Whose darkness never looked upon the sun, Yawned in grim mercy, and the rent abyss Ingulf'd the wanderer from the living world. "

Such, sublime in its wondrous power, its appalling mystery, its dim, religious terror, is the catastrophe of the "Oedipus at Coloneus. "The lines that follow are devoted to the lamentations of thedaughters, and appear wholly superfluous, unless we can consider thatSophocles desired to indicate the connexion of the "Oedipus" with the"Antigone, " by informing us that the daughters of Oedipus are to besent to Thebes at the request of Antigone herself, who hopes, in thetender courage of her nature, that she may perhaps prevent thepredicted slaughter of her brothers. 

VII. Coming now to the tragedy of "Antigone, " we find the prophecy ofOedipus has been fulfilled--the brothers have fallen by the hand ofeach other--the Argive army has been defeated--Creon has obtained thetyranny, and interdicts, on the penalty of death, the burial ofPolynices, whose corpse remains guarded and unhonoured. Antigone, mindful of her brother's request to her in their last interview, resolves to brave the edict, and perform those rites so indispensablysacred in the eyes of a Greek. She communicates her resolution to hersister Ismene, whose character, still feeble and commonplace, is aperpetual foil to the heroism of Antigone. She acts upon herresolutions, baffles the vigilant guards, buries the corpse. Creon, on learning that his edict has been secretly disobeyed, orders theremains to be disinterred, and in a second attempt Antigone isdiscovered, brought before him, and condemned to death. Haemon, theson of Creon, had been affianced to Antigone. On the news of hersentence he seeks Creon, and after a violent scene between the two, which has neither the power nor the dignity common to Sophocles, departs with vague menaces. A short but most exquisite invocation tolove from the chorus succeeds, and in this, it may be observed, thechorus express much left not represented in the action--they serve toimpress on the spectator all the irresistible effects of the passionwhich the modern artist would seek to represent in some moving scenebetween Antigone and Haemon. The heroine herself now passes acrossthe stage on her way to her dreadful doom, which is that of livingburial in "the cavern of a rock. " She thus addresses the chorus--

 "Ye, of the land wherein my fathers dwelt, Behold me journeying to my latest bourne! Time hath no morrow for these eyes. Black Orcus, Whose court hath room for all, leads my lone steps, E'en while I live, to shadows. Not for me The nuptial blessing or the marriage hymn: Acheron, receive thy bride! (Chorus. ) Honoured and mourned Nor struck by slow disease or violent hand, Thy steps glide to the grave! Self-judged, like Freedom, [355] Thou, above mortals gifted, shalt descend All living to the shades. Antigone. Methinks I have heard-- So legends go--how Phrygian Niobe (Poor stranger) on the heights of Sipylus Mournfully died. The hard rock, like the tendrils O' the ivy, clung and crept unto her heart-- Her, nevermore, dissolving into showers, Pale snows desert; and from her sorrowful eyes, As from unfailing founts adown the cliffs, Fall the eternal dews. Like her, the god Lulls me to sleep, and into stone!"

Afterward she adds in her beautiful lament, "That she has one comfort--that she shall go to the grave dear to her parents and her brother. "

The grief of Antigone is in perfect harmony with her character--itbetrays no repentance, no weakness--it is but the natural sorrow, ofyouth and womanhood, going down to that grave which had so little ofhope in the old Greek religion. In an Antigone on our stage we mighthave demanded more reference to her lover; but the Grecian heroinenames him not, and alludes rather to the loss of the woman's lot ofwedlock than the loss of the individual bridegroom. But it is not forthat reason that we are to conclude, with M. Schlegel and others, thatthe Greek women knew not the sentiment of love. Such a notion, thathas obtained an unaccountable belief, I shall hereafter show to be atvariance with all the poetry of the Greeks--with their drama itself--with their modes of life--and with the very elements of that humannature, which is everywhere the same. But Sophocles, in the characterof Antigone, personifies duty, not passion. It is to this, herleading individuality, that whatever might weaken the pure andstatue-like effect of the creation is sacrificed. As she was to herfather, so is she to her brother. The sorrows and calamities of herfamily have so endeared them to her heart that she has room for littleelse. "Formed, " as she exquisitely says of herself, "to love, not tohate, " [356] she lives but to devote affections the most sacred to sadand pious tasks, and the last fulfilled, she has done with earth. 

When Antigone is borne away, an august personage is presented to us, whose very name to us, who usually read the Oedipus Tyrannus beforethe Antigone, is the foreteller of omen and doom. As in the OedipusTyrannus, Tiresias the soothsayer appears to announce all the terrorsthat ensue--so now, at the crowning desolation of that fated house, he, the solemn and mysterious surviver of such dark tragedies, isagain brought upon the stage. The auguries have been evil--birdsbattle with each other in the air--the flame will not mount from thesacrificial victim--and the altars and hearths are full of birds anddogs, gathering to their feast on the corpse of Polynices. Thesoothsayer enjoins Creon not to war against the dead, and to accordthe rites of burial to the prince's body. On the obstinate refusal ofCreon, Tiresias utters prophetic maledictions and departs. Creon, whose vehemence of temper is combined with a feeble character, andstrongly contrasts the mighty spirit of Oedipus, repents, and ispersuaded by the chorus to release Antigone from her living prison, aswell as to revoke the edict which denies sepulture to Polynices. Hequits the stage for that purpose, and the chorus burst into one oftheir most picturesque odes, an Invocation to Bacchus, thusinadequately presented to the English reader. 

 "Oh thou, whom earth by many a title hails, Son of the thunder-god, and wild delight Of the wild Theban maid! Whether on far Italia's shores obey'd, Or where Eleusis joins thy solemn rites With the great mother's [357], in mysterious vales-- Bacchus in Bacchic Thebes best known, Thy Thebes, who claims the Thyads as her daughters; Fast by the fields with warriors dragon-sown, And where Ismenus rolls his rapid waters. It saw thee, the smoke, On the horned height--[358] It saw thee, and broke With a leap into light; Where roam Corycian nymphs the glorious mountain, And all melodious flows the old Castalian fountain Vocal with echoes wildly glad, The Nysian steeps with ivy clad, And shores with vineyards greenly blooming, Proclaiming, steep to shore, That Bacchus evermore Is guardian of the race, Where he holds his dwelling-place With her [359], beneath the breath Of the thunder's glowing death, In the glare of her glory consuming. 

 Oh now with healing steps along the slope Of loved Parnassus, or in gliding motion, O'er the far-sounding deep Euboean ocean-- Come! for we perish--come!--our Lord and hope! Leader of the stately choir Of the great stars, whose very breath is light, Who dost with hymns inspire Voices, oh youngest god, that sound by night; Come, with thy Maenad throng, Come with the maidens of thy Naxian isle, Who chant their Lord Bacchus--all the while Maddening, with mystic dance, the solemn midnight long!"

At the close of the chorus the Nuntius enters to announce thecatastrophe, and Eurydice, the wife of Creon, disturbed by rumourswithin her palace, is made an auditor of the narration. Creon and histrain, after burying Polynices, repair to the cavern in which Antigonehad been immured. They hear loud wailings within "that unconsecratedchamber"--it is the voice of Haemon. Creon recoils--the attendantsenter--within the cavern they behold Antigone, who, in the horror ofthat deathlike solitude, had strangled herself with the zone of herrobe; and there was her lover lying beside, his arms clasped aroundher waist. Creon at length advances, perceives his son, and conjureshim to come forth. 

 "Then, glaring on his father with wild eyes, The son stood dumb, and spat upon his face, And clutched the unnatural sword--the father fled, And, wroth, as with the arm that missed a parent, The wretched man drove home unto his breast The abhorrent steel; yet ever, while dim sense Struggled within the fast-expiring soul-- Feebler, and feebler still, his stiffening arms Clung to that virgin form--and every gasp Of his last breath with bloody dews distained The cold white cheek that was his pillow. So Lies death embracing death!" [360]

In the midst of this description, by a fine stroke of art, Euridice, the mother of Haemon, abruptly and silently quits the stage [361]. When next we hear of her, she has destroyed herself, with her lastbreath cursing her husband as the murderer of her child. The end ofthe play leaves Creon the surviver. He himself does not perish, forhe himself has never excited our sympathies [362]. He is punishedthrough his son and wife--they dead, our interest ceases in him, andto add his death to theirs and to that of Antigone would be bathos. 

VIII. In the tragedy of "Electra, " the character of the heroinestands out in the boldest contrast to the creation of the Antigone;both are endowed with surpassing majesty and strength of nature--theyare loftier than the daughters of men, their very loveliness is of anage when gods were no distant ancestors of kings--when, as in theearly sculptors of Pallas, or even of Aphrodite, something of thesevere and stern was deemed necessary to the realization of thedivine; and the beautiful had not lost the colossal proportions of thesublime. But the strength and heroism of Antigone is derived fromlove--love, sober, serene, august--but still love. Electra, on thecontrary, is supported and exalted above her sex by the might of herhatred. Her father, "the king of men, " foully murdered in his palace--herself compelled to consort with his assassins--to receive fromtheir hands both charity and insult--the adulterous murderer on herfather's throne, and lord of her father's marriage bed [363]--herbrother a wanderer and an outcast. Such are the thoughts unceasinglybefore her!--her heart and soul have for years fed upon the bitternessof a resentment, at once impotent and intense, and nature itself hasturned to gall. She sees not in Clytemnestra a mother, but themurderess of a father. The doubt and the compunction of the modernHamlet are unknown to her more masculine spirit. She lives on but inthe hope of her brother's return and of revenge. The play opens withthe appearance of Orestes, Pylades, and an old attendant--arrived atbreak of day at the habitation of the Pelopidae--"reeking with blood"--the seats of Agamemnon. Orestes, who had been saved in childhood byhis sister from the designs of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, has nowreturned in manhood. It is agreed that, in order to lull allsuspicion in the royal adulterers, a false account of the death ofOrestes by an accident in the Pythian Games shall be given toClytemnestra; and Orestes and Pylades themselves are afterward to beintroduced in the character of Phocians, bearing the ashes of thesupposed dead. Meanwhile the two friends repair to the sepulchre ofAgamemnon to offer libations, etc. Electra then appears, indulges herindignant lamentations at her lot, and consoles herself with the hopeof her brother's speedy return. 

She is joined by her sister Chrysothemis, who is bearing sepulchralofferings to the tomb of Agamemnon; and in this interview Sophocles, with extraordinary skill and deep knowledge of human nature, contrivesto excite our admiration and sympathy for the vehement Electra bycontrasting her with the weak and selfish Chrysothemis. Her verybitterness against her mother is made to assume the guise of a solemnduty to her father. Her unfeminine qualities rise into courage andmagnanimity--she glories in the unkindness and persecution she meetswith from Clytemnestra and Aegisthus--they are proofs of her reverenceto the dead. Woman as she is, she is yet the daughter of a king--shecannot submit to a usurper--"she will not, add cowardice to misery. "Chrysothemis informs Electra that on the return of Aegisthus it isresolved to consign her to a vault "where she may chant her woesunheard. " Electra learns the meditated sentence undismayed--she willnot moderate her unwelcome wo--"she will not be a traitoress to thoseshe loves. " But a dream has appalled Clytemnestra--Agamemnon hasappeared to her as in life. In the vision he seemed to her to fix hissceptre on the soil, whence it sprouted up into a tree thatovershadowed the whole land. Disquieted and conscience-stricken, shenow sends Chrysothemis with libations to appease the manes of thedead. Electra adjures Chrysothemis not to render such expiations toscatter them to the winds or on the dust--to let them not approach theresting-place of the murdered king. Chrysothemis promises to obey theinjunction, and departs. A violent and powerful scene betweenClytemnestra and Electra ensues, when the attendant enters (as wasagreed on) to announce the death of Orestes. In this recital heportrays the ceremony of the Pythian races in lines justly celebrated, and which, as an animated and faithful picture of an exhibition sorenowned, the reader may be pleased to see, even in a feeble and coldtranslation. Orestes had obtained five victories in the first day--inthe second he starts with nine competitors in the chariot-race--anAchaean, a Spartan, two Libyans--he himself with Thessalian steeds--asixth from Aetolia, a Magnesian, an Enian, an Athenian, and a Boeotiancomplete the number. 

 "They took their stand where the appointed judges Had cast their lots, and ranged the rival cars; Rang out the brazen trump! Away they bound, Cheer the hot steeds and shake the slackened reins As with a body the large space is filled With the huge clangour of the rattling cars: High whirl aloft the dust-clouds; blent together Each presses each--and the lash rings--and loud Snort the wild steeds, and from their fiery breath, Along their manes and down the circling wheels, Scatter the flaking foam. Orestes still, Ay, as he swept around the perilous pillar Last in the course, wheel'd in the rushing axle, The left rein curbed--that on the dexter hand Flung loose. So on erect the chariots rolled! Sudden the Aenian's fierce and headlong steeds Broke from the bit--and, as the seventh time now The course was circled, on the Libyan car Dash'd their wild fronts: then order changed to ruin: Car crashed on car--the wide Crissaean plain Was, sealike, strewn with wrecks: the Athenian saw, Slackened his speed, and, wheeling round the marge, Unscathed and skilful, in the midmost space, Left the wild tumult of that tossing storm. Behind, Orestes, hitherto the last, Had yet kept back his coursers for the close; Now one sole rival left--on, on he flew, And the sharp sound of the impelling scourge Rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds. He nears--he reaches--they are side by side Now one--the other--by a length the victor. The courses all are past--the wheels erect All safe--when as the hurrying coursers round The fatal pillar dash'd, the wretched boy Slackened the left rein; on the column's edge Crash'd the frail axle--headlong from the car, Caught and all meshed within the reins he fell; And masterless, the mad steeds raged along!

 Loud from that mighty multitude arose A shriek--a shout! But yesterday such deeds To-day such doom! Now whirled upon the earth, Now his limbs dash'd aloft, they dragged him--those Wild horses--till all gory from the wheels Released--and no man, not his nearest friends, Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes. They laid the body on the funeral pyre, And while we speak, the Phocian strangers bear, In a small, brazen, melancholy urn, That handful of cold ashes to which all The grandeur of the beautiful hath shrunk. Hither they bear him--in his father's land To find that heritage--a tomb!"

It is much to be regretted that this passage, so fine in the original, is liable to one great objection--it has no interest as connected withthe play, because the audience know that Orestes is not dead; andthough the description of the race retains its animation, the reportof the catastrophe loses the terror of reality, and appears but ahighly-coloured and elaborate falsehood. 

The reader will conceive the lamentations of Electra and the fearfuljoy of Clytemnestra at a narrative by which the one appears to lose abrother and a friend--the other a son and an avenging foe. 

Chrysothemis joyfully returns to announce, that by the tomb ofAgamemnon she discovers a lock of hair; libations yet moisten thesummit of the mound, and flowers of every hue are scattered over thegrave. "These, " she thinks, "are signs that Orestes is returned. "Electra, informing her of the fatal news, proposes that they, women asthey are, shall attempt the terrible revenge which their brother canno longer execute. When Chrysothemis recoils and refuses, Electrastill nurses the fell design. The poet has more than once, and nowagain with judgment, made us sensible of the mature years of Electra[364]; she is no passionate, wavering, and inexperienced girl, but theeldest born of the house; the guardian of the childhood of its maleheir; unwedded and unloving, no soft matron cares, no tender maidenaffections, have unbent the nerves of her stern, fiery, andconcentrated soul. Year after year has rolled on to sharpen herhatred--to disgust her with the present--to root her to one bloodymemory of the past--to sour and freeze up the gentle thoughts ofwomanhood--to unsex

 "And fill her from the crown to the toe, topful Of direst cruelty--make thick her blood Stop up the access and passage to remorse, " [365]

and fit her for one crowning deed, for which alone the daughter of theking of men lives on. 

At length the pretended Phocians enter, bearing the supposed ashes ofOrestes; the chief of the train addresses himself to Electra, and thisis the most dramatic and touching scene in the whole tragedy. Whenthe urn containing, as she believes, the dust of her brother, isplaced in the hands of Electra, we can well overleap time and space, and see before us the great actor who brought the relics of his ownson upon the stage, and shed no mimic sorrows [366]--we can wellpicture the emotions that circle round the vast audience--pity itselfbeing mingled with the consciousness to which the audience alone areadmitted, that lamentation will soon be replaced by joy, and that theliving Orestes is before his sister. It is by a most subtle anddelicate art that Sophocles permits this struggle between present painand anticipated pleasure, and carries on the passion of the spectatorsto wait breathlessly the moment when Orestes shall be discovered. Wenow perceive why the poet at once, in the opening of the play, announced to us the existence and return of Orestes--why he disdainedthe vulgar source of interest, the gross suspense we should have felt, if we had shared the ignorance of Electra, and not been admitted tothe secret we impatiently long to be communicated to her. In thisscene, our superiority to Electra, in the knowledge we possess, refines and softens our compassion, blending it with hope. And mostbeautifully here does Sophocles remove far from us the thought of thehard hatred that hitherto animates the mourner--the strong, proudspirit is melted away--the woman and the sister alone appear. He whomshe had loved more dearly than a mother--whom she had nursed, andsaved, and prayed for, is "a nothing" in her hands; and the last ritesit had not been hers to pay. He had been

 "By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned. "

All things had vanished with him--"vanished in a day"--"vanished as bya hurricane"--she is left with her foes alone. "Admit me" (shecries), "to thy refuge--make room for me in thy home. "

In these lamentations, the cold, classic drama seems to warm intoactual life. Art, exquisite because invisible, unites us at once withimperishable nature--we are no longer delighted with Poetry--we areweeping with Truth. 

At length Orestes reveals himself, and now the plot draws to itscatastrophe. Clytemnestra is alone in her house, preparing a caldronfor the burial; Electra and the chorus are on the stage; the son--theavenger, is within; suddenly the cries of Clytemnestra are heard. Again--again! Orestes re-enters a parricide! [367] He retires asAegisthus is seen approaching; and the adulterous usurper is nowpresented to us for the first and last time--the crowning victim ofthe sacrifice. He comes flushed with joy and triumph. He has heardthat the dreaded Orestes is no more. Electra entertains him a fewmoments with words darkly and exultingly ambiguous. He orders thedoors to be thrown open, that all Argos and Mycenae may see theremains of his sole rival for the throne. The scene opens. On thethreshold (where, with the Greeks, the corpse of the dead was usuallyset out to view) lies a body covered with a veil or pall. Orestes(the supposed Phocian) stands beside. 

 "Aegisthus. Great Jove! a grateful spectacle!--if thus May it be said unsinning; yet if she, The awful Nemesis, be nigh and hear, I do recall the sentence! Raise the pall. The dead was kindred to me, and shall know A kinsman's sorrow. Orestes. Lift thyself the pall; Not mine, but thine, the office to survey That which lies mute beneath, and to salute, Lovingly sad, the dead one. Aegisthus. Be it so-- It is well said. Go thou and call the queen: Is she within? Orestes. Look not around for her-- She is beside thee!"

Aegisthus lifts the pall, and beholds the body of Clytemnestra! Heknows his fate at once. He knows that Orestes is before him. Heattempts to speak. The fierce Electra cuts him short, and Orestes, with stern solemnity, conducts him from the stage to the spot on whichAegisthus had slain Agamemnon, so that the murderer might die by theson's hand in the place where the father fell. Thus artistically isthe catastrophe not lessened in effect, but heightened, by removingthe deed of death from the scene--the poetical justice, in the calmand premeditated selection of the place of slaughter, elevates what onthe modern stage would be but a spectacle of physical horror into thedeeper terror and sublimer gloom of a moral awe; and vindictivemurder, losing its aspect, is idealized and hallowed into religioussacrifice. 

IX. Of the seven plays left to us, "The Trachiniae" is usuallyconsidered the least imbued with the genius of Sophocles; and Schlegelhas even ventured on the conjecture, singularly destitute of evenplausible testimony, that Sophocles himself may not be the author. The plot is soon told. The play is opened by Deianira, the wife ofHercules, who indulges in melancholy reflections on the misfortunes ofher youth, and the continual absence of her husband, of whom notidings have been heard for months. She soon learns from her son, Hyllus, that Hercules is said to be leading an expedition into Euboea;and our interest is immediately excited by Deianira's reply, whichinforms us that oracles had foretold that this was to be the crisis[368] in the life of Hercules--that he was now to enjoy rest from hislabours, either in a peaceful home or in the grave; and she sendsHyllus to join his father, share his enterprise and fate. The chorustouchingly paint the anxious love of Deianira in the following lines:

 "Thou, whom the starry-spangled Night did lull Into the sleep from which--her journey done Her parting steps awake thee--beautiful Fountain of flame, oh Sun! Say, on what seagirt strand, or inland shore (For earth is bared before thy solemn gaze), In orient Asia, or where milder rays Tremble on western waters, wandereth he Whom bright Alcmena bore? Ah! as some bird within a lonely nest The desolate wife puts sleep away with tears; And ever ills to be Haunting the absence with dim hosts of fears, Fond fancy shapes from air dark prophets of the breast. "

In her answer to the virgin chorus, Deianira weaves a beautifulpicture of maiden youth as a contrast to the cares and anxieties ofwedded life:

 "Youth pastures in a valley of its own; The scorching sun, the rains and winds of Heaven, Mar not the calm--yet virgin of all care; But ever with sweet joys it buildeth up The airy halls of life. "

Deianira afterward receives fresh news of Hercules. She gives way toher joy. Lichas, the herald, enters, and confides to her charge somemaidens whom the hero had captured. Deianira is struck withcompassion for their lot, and with admiration of the noble bearing ofone of them, Iole. She is about to busy herself in preparation fortheir comfort, when she learns that Iole is her rival--the belovedmistress of Hercules. The jealousy evinced by Deianira is beautifullysoft and womanly [369]. Even in uttering a reproach on Hercules, shesays she cannot feel anger with him, yet how can she dwell in the samehouse with a younger and fairer rival;

 "She in whose years the flower that fades in mine Opens the leaves of beauty. "

Her affection, her desire to retain the love of the hero, suggests toher remembrance a gift she had once received from a centaur who hadfallen by the shaft of Hercules. The centaur had assured her that theblood from his wound, if preserved, would exercise the charm of afilter over the heart of Hercules, and would ever recall and fix uponher his affection. She had preserved the supposed charm--she steepswith it a robe that she purposes to send to Hercules as a gift; butDeianira, in this fatal resolve, shows all the timidity and sweetnessof her nature; she even questions if it be a crime to regain the heartof her husband; she consults the chorus, who advise the experiment(and here, it may be observed, that this is skilfully done, for itconveys the excuse of Deianira, the chorus being, as it were, therepresentative of the audience). Accordingly, she sends the garmentby Lichas. Scarce has the herald gone, ere Deianira is terrified by astrange phenomenon: a part of the wool with which the supposed filterhad been applied to the garment was thrown into the sunlight, uponwhich it withered away--"crumbling like sawdust"--while on the spotwhere it fell a sort of venomous foam froths up. While relating thisphenomenon to the chorus, her son, Hyllus, returns [370], and relatesthe agonies of his father under the poisoned garment: he had induedthe robe on the occasion of solemn sacrifice, and all was rejoicing, when, "As from the sacred offering and the pile The flame broke forth, "

the poison began to work, the tunic clung to the limbs of the hero, glued as if by the artificer, and, in his agony and madness, Herculesdashes Lichas, who brought him the fatal gift, down the rock, and isnow on his way home. On hearing these news and the reproaches of herson, Deianira steals silently away, and destroys herself upon thebridal-bed. The remainder of the play is very feeble. Hercules isrepresented in his anguish, which is but the mere raving of physicalpain; and after enjoining his son to marry Iole (the innocent cause ofhis own sufferings), and to place him yet living upon his funeralpyre, the play ends. 

The beauty of the "Trachiniae" is in detached passages, in someexquisite bursts by the chorus, and in the character of Deianira, whose artifice to regain the love of her consort, unhappily as itterminates, is redeemed by a meekness of nature, a delicacy ofsentiment, and an anxious, earnest, unreproachful devotion of conjugallove, which might alone suffice to show the absurdity of moderndeclamations on the debasement of women, and the absence of pure andtrue love in that land from which Sophocles drew his experience. 

X. The "Ajax" is far superior to the "Trachiniae. " The subject isone that none but a Greek poet could have thought of or a Greekaudience have admired. The master-passion of a Greek was emulation--the subject of the "Ajax" is emulation defeated. He has lost toUlysses the prize of the arms of Achilles, and the shame of beingvanquished has deprived him of his senses. 

In the fury of madness he sallies from his tent at night--slaughtersthe flocks, in which his insanity sees the Greeks, whose award hasgalled and humbled him--and supposes he has slain the Atridae andcaptured Ulysses. It is in this play that Sophocles has, to a certainextent, attempted that most effective of all combinations in the handsof a master--the combination of the ludicrous and the terrible [371]:as the chorus implies, "it is to laugh and to weep. " But when thescene, opening, discovers Ajax sitting amid the slaughtered victims--when that haughty hero awakens from his delirium--when he is awarethat he has exposed himself to the mockery and derision of his foes--the effect is almost too painful even for tragedy. In contrast toAjax is the soothing and tender Tecmessa. The women of Sophocles are, indeed, gifted with an astonishing mixture of majesty and sweetness. After a very pathetic farewell with his young son, Ajax affects to bereconciled to his lot, disguises the resolution he has formed, and byone of those artful transitions of emotion which at once vary andheighten interest on the stage, the chorus, before lamenting, burstsinto a strain of congratulation and joy. The heavy affliction haspassed away--Ajax is restored. The Nuntius arrives from the camp. Calchas, the soothsayer, has besought Teucer, the hero's brother, notto permit Ajax to quit his tent that day, for on that day only Minervapersecutes him; and if he survive it, he may yet be preserved andprosper. But Ajax has already wandered away, none know whither. Tecmessa hastens in search of him, and, by a very rare departure fromthe customs of the Greek stage, the chorus follow. 

Ajax appears again. His passions are now calm and concentrated, butthey lead him on to death. He has been shamed, dishonoured--he hasmade himself a mockery to his foes. Nobly to live or nobly to die isthe sole choice of a brave man. It is characteristic of the Greektemperament, that the personages of the Greek poetry ever bid a lastlingering and half-reluctant farewell to the sun. There is amagnificent fulness of life in those children of the beautiful West;the sun is to them as a familiar friend--the affliction or the terrorof Hades is in the thought that its fields are sunless. The orb whichanimated their temperate heaven, which ripened their fertile earth, inwhich they saw the type of eternal youth, of surpassing beauty, ofincarnate poetry--human in its associations, and yet divine in itsnature--is equally beloved and equally to be mourned by the maidentenderness of Antigone or the sullen majesty of Ajax. In a Chaldaeanpoem the hero would have bid farewell to the stars!

It is thus that Ajax concludes his celebrated soliloquy. 

 "And thou that mak'st high heaven thy chariot-course, Oh sun--when gazing on my father-land, Draw back thy golden rein, and tell my woes To the old man, my father--and to her Who nursed me at her bosom--my poor mother! There will be wailing through the echoing walls When--but away with thoughts like these!--the hour Brings on the ripening deed. Death, death, look on me! Did I say death?--it was a waste of words; We shall be friends hereafter. 'Tis the DAY, Present and breathing round me, and the car Of the sweet sun, that never shall again Receive my greeting!--henceforth time is sunless, And day a thing that is not! Beautiful light, My Salamis--my country--and the floor Of my dear household hearth--and thou, bright Athens, Thou--for thy sons and I were boys together-- Fountains and rivers, and ye Trojan plains, I loved ye as my fosterers--fare ye well! Take in these words, the last earth hears from Ajax-- All else unspoken, in a spectre land I'll whisper to the dead!"

Ajax perishes on his sword--but the interest of the play survives him. For with the Greeks, burial rather than death made the great close oflife. Teucer is introduced to us; the protector of the hero's remainsand his character, at once fierce and tender, is a sketch ofextraordinary power. Agamemnon, on the contrary--also not presentedto us till after the death of Ajax--is but a boisterous tyrant [372]. Finally, by the generous intercession of Ulysses, who redeems hischaracter from the unfavourable conception we formed of him at thecommencement of the play, the funeral rites are accorded, and adidactic and solemn moral from the chorus concludes the whole. 

XI. The "Philoctetes" has always been ranked by critics among themost elaborate and polished of the tragedies of Sophocles. In somerespects it deserves the eulogies bestowed on it. But one great faultin the conception will, I think, be apparent on the simple statementof the plot. 

Philoctetes, the friend and armour-bearer of Hercules, and the heir ofthat hero's unerring shafts and bow, had, while the Grecian fleetanchored at Chryse (a small isle in the Aegaean), been bitten in thefoot by a serpent; the pain of the wound was insufferable--the shrieksand groans of Philoctetes disturbed the libations and sacrifices ofthe Greeks. And Ulysses and Diomed, when the fleet proceeded, lefthim, while asleep, on the wild and rocky solitudes of Lemnos. There, till the tenth year of the Trojan siege, he dragged out an agonizinglife. The soothsayer, Helenus, then declared that Troy could not falltill Philoctetes appeared in the Grecian camp with the arrows and bowof Hercules. Ulysses undertakes to effect this object, and, withNeoptolemus (son of Achilles), departs for Lemnos. Here the playopens. A wild and desolate shore--a cavern with two mouths (so thatin winter there might be a double place to catch the sunshine, and insummer a twofold entrance for the breeze), and a little fountain ofpure water, designate the abode of Philoctetes. 

Agreeably to his character, it is by deceit and stratagem that Ulyssesis to gain his object. Neoptolemus is to dupe him whom he has neverseen with professions of friendship and offers of services, and tosnare away the consecrated weapons. Neoptolemus--whose character is asketch which Shakspeare alone could have bodied out--has all thegenerous ardour and honesty of youth, but he has also its timidirresolution--its docile submission to the great--its fear of thecensure of the world. He recoils from the base task proposed to him;he would prefer violence to fraud; yet he dreads lest, havingundertaken the enterprise, his refusal to act should be consideredtreachery to his coadjutor. It is with a deep and melancholy wisdomthat Ulysses, who seems to comtemplate his struggles withcompassionate and not displeased superiority, thus attempts toreconcile the young man:

 "Son of a noble sire! I too, in youth, Had thy plain speech and thine impatient arm: But a stern test is time! I have lived to see That among men the tools of power and empire Are subtle words--not deeds. "

Neoptolemus is overruled. Ulysses withdraws, Philoctetes appears. The delight of the lonely wretch on hearing his native language; onseeing the son of Achilles--his description of his feelings when hefirst found himself abandoned in the desert--his relation of thehardships he has since undergone, are highly pathetic. He imploresNeoptolemus to bear him away, and when the youth consents, he burstsinto an exclamation of joy, which, to the audience, in the secret ofthe perfidy to be practised on him, must have excited the most livelyemotions. The characteristic excellence of Sophocles is, that in hismost majestic creations he always contrives to introduce the sweetesttouches of humanity. --Philoctetes will not even quit his miserabledesert until he has returned to his cave to bid it farewell--to kissthe only shelter that did not deny a refuge to his woes. In the joyof his heart he thinks, poor dupe, that he has found faith in man--inyouth. He trusts the arrows and the bow to the hand of Neoptolemus. Then, as he attempts to crawl along, the sharp agony of his woundcompletely overmasters him. He endeavours in vain to stifle hisgroans; the body conquers the mind. This seems to me, as I shallpresently again observe, the blot of the play; it is a mere exhibitionof physical pain. The torture exhausts, till insensibility or sleepcomes over him. He lies down to rest, and the young man watches overhim. The picture is striking. Neoptolemus, at war with himself, doesnot seize the occasion. Philoctetes wakes. He is ready to go onboard; he implores and urges instant departure. Neoptolemus recoils--the suspicions of Philoctetes are awakened; he thinks that thisstranger, too, will abandon him. At length the young man, by aviolent effort, speaks abruptly out, "Thou must sail to Troy--to theGreeks--the Atridae. "

"The Greeks--the Atridae!" the betrayers of Philoctetes--those beyondpardon--those whom for ten years he has pursued with the curses of awronged, and deserted, and solitary spirit. "Give me back, " he cries, "my bow and arrows. " And when Neoptolemus refuses, he pours forth atorrent of reproach. The son of the truth--telling Achilles canwithstand no longer. He is about to restore the weapons, when Ulyssesrushes on the stage and prevents him. 

At length, the sufferer is to be left--left once more alone in thedesert. He cannot go with his betrayers--he cannot give glory andconquest to his inhuman foes; in the wrath of his indignant heart eventhe desert is sweeter than the Grecian camp. And how is he to sustainhimself without his shafts! Famine adds a new horror to his drearysolitude, and the wild beasts may now pierce into his cavern: buttheir cruelty would be mercy! His contradictory and tempestuousemotions, as the sailors that compose the chorus are about to depart, are thus told. 

The chorus entreat him to accompany them. 

 Phil. Begone. Chor. It is a friendly bidding--we obey-- Come, let us go. To ship, my comrades. Phil. No-- No, do not go--by the great Jove, who hears Men's curses--do not go. Chor. Be calm. Phil. Sweet strangers! In mercy, leave me not. 

 * * * * * *

 Chor. But now you bade us! Phil. Ay--meet cause for chiding, That a poor desperate wretch, maddened with pain, Should talk as madmen do! Chor. Come, then, with us. Phil. Never! oh--never! Hear me--not if all The lightnings of the thunder-god were made Allies with you, to blast me! Perish Troy, And all beleaguered round its walls--yea; all Who had the heart to spurn a wounded wretch; But, but--nay--yes--one prayer, one boon accord me. Chor. What wouldst thou have? Phil. A sword, an axe, a something; So it can strike, no matter! Chor. Nay--for what? Phil. What! for this hand to hew me off this head-- These limbs! To death, to solemn death, at last My spirit calls me. Chor. Why? Phil. To seek my father. Chor. On earth? Phil. In Hades. 

Having thus worked us up to the utmost point of sympathy with theabandoned Philoctetes, the poet now gradually sheds a gentler andholier light over the intense gloom to which we had been led. Neoptolemus, touched with generous remorse, steals back to give thebetrayed warrior his weapons--he is watched by the vigilant Ulysses--an angry altercation takes place between them. Ulysses, finding hecannot intimidate, prudently avoids personal encounter with the son ofAchilles, and departs to apprize the host of the backsliding of hiscomrade. --A most beautiful scene, in which Neoptolemus restores theweapons to Philoctetes--a scene which must have commanded the mostexquisite tears and the most rapturous applauses of the audience, ensues; and, finally, the god so useful to the ancient poets bringsall things, contrary to the general rule of Aristotle [373], to ahappy close. Hercules appears and induces his former friend toaccompany Neoptolemus to the Grecian camp, where his wound shall behealed. . The farewell of Philoctetes to his cavern--to the nymphs ofthe meadows--to the roar of the ocean, whose spray the south winddashed through his rude abode--to the Lycian stream and the plain ofLemnos--is left to linger on the ear like a solemn hymn, in which thelittle that is mournful only heightens the majestic sweetness of allthat is musical. The dramatic art in the several scenes of this playSophocles has never excelled, and scarcely equalled. The contrast ofcharacter in Ulysses and Neoptolemus has in it a reality, a humanstrength and truth, that is more common to the modern than the ancientdrama. But still the fault of the story is partly that the plot restsupon a base and ignoble fraud, and principally that our pity isappealed to by the coarse sympathy with physical pain: the rags thatcovered the sores, the tainted corruption of the ulcers, are broughtto bear, not so much on the mind as on the nerves; and when the herois represented as shrinking with corporeal agony--the blood oozingfrom his foot, the livid sweat rolling down the brow--we sicken andturn away from the spectacle; we have no longer that pleasure in ourown pain which ought to be the characteristic of true tragedy. It isidle to vindicate this error by any dissimilarity between ancient andmodern dramatic art. As nature, so art, always has some universal andpermanent laws. Longinus rightly considers pathos a part of thesublime, for pity ought to elevate us; but there is nothing to elevateus in the noisome wounds, even of a mythical hero; our human nature istoo much forced back into itself--and a proof that in this the ancientart did not differ from the modern, is in the exceeding rarity withwhich bodily pain is made the instrument of compassion with the Greektragedians. The Philoctetes and the Hercules are among the exceptionsthat prove the rule. [374]

XII. Another drawback to our admiration of the Philoctetes is in thecomparison it involuntarily courts with the Prometheus of Aeschylus. Both are examples of fortitude under suffering--of the mind's conflictwith its fate. In either play a dreary waste, a savage solitude, constitute the scene. But the towering sublimity of the Prometheusdwarfs into littleness every image of hero or demigod with which wecontrast it. What are the chorus of mariners, and the astute Ulysses, and the boyish generosity of Neoptolemus--what is the lonely cave onthe shores of Lemnos--what the high-hearted old warrior, with historturing wound and his sacred bow--what are all these to the vastTitan, whom the fiends chain to the rock beneath which roll the riversof hell, for whom the daughters of Ocean are ministers, to whoseprimeval birth the gods of Olympus are the upstarts of a day, whosesoul is the treasure-house of a secret which threatens the realm ofheaven, and for whose unimaginable doom earth reels to its base, allthe might of divinity is put forth, and Hades itself trembles as itreceives its indomitable and awful guest! Yet, as I have beforeintimated, it is the very grandeur of Aeschylus that must have madehis poems less attractive on the stage than those of the humane andflexible Sophocles. No visible representation can body forth histhoughts--they overpower the imagination, but they do not come home toour household and familiar feelings. In the contrast between the"Philoctetes" and the "Prometheus" is condensed the contrast betweenAeschylus and Sophocles. They are both poets of the highestconceivable order; but the one seems almost above appeal to ouraffections--his tempestuous gloom appals the imagination, the vividglare of his thoughts pierces the innermost recesses of the intellect, but it is only by accident that he strikes upon the heart. The other, in his grandest flights, remembers that men make his audience, andseems to feel as if art lost the breath of its life when aspiringbeyond the atmosphere of human intellect and human passions. Thedifference between the creations of Aeschylus and Sophocles is likethe difference between the Satan of Milton and the Macbeth ofShakspeare. Aeschylus is equally artful with Sophocles--it is thecriticism of ignorance that has said otherwise. But there is thiswide distinction--Aeschylus is artful as a dramatist to be read, Sophocles as a dramatist to be acted. If we get rid of actors, andstage, and audience, Aeschylus will thrill and move us no less thanSophocles, through a more intellectual if less passionate medium. Apoem may be dramatic, yet not theatrical--may have all the effects ofthe drama in perusal, but by not sufficiently enlisting the skill ofthe actor--nay, by soaring beyond the highest reach of histrioniccapacities, may lose those effects in representation. The storm in"Lear" is a highly dramatic agency when our imagination is left freeto conjure up the angry elements, "Bid the winds blow the earth into the sea, Or swell the curled waters. "

But a storm on the stage, instead of exceeding, so poorly mimics thereality, that it can never realize the effect which the poet designs, and with which the reader is impressed. So is it with supernaturaland fanciful creations, especially of the more delicate and subtlekind. The Ariel of the "Tempest, " the fairies of the "MidsummerNight's Dream, " and the Oceanides of the "Prometheus, " are not to berepresented by human shapes. We cannot say that they are notdramatic, but they are not theatrical. We can sympathize with thepoet, but not with the actor. For the same reason, in a lesserdegree, all creations, even of human character, that very highly taskthe imagination, that lift the reader wholly out of actual experience, and above the common earth, are comparatively feeble when reduced tovisible forms. The most metaphysical plays of Shakspeare are theleast popular in representation. Thus the very genius of Aeschylus, that kindles us in the closet, must often have militated against himon the stage. But in Sophocles all--even the divinities themselves--are touched with humanity; they are not too subtle or too lofty to besubmitted to mortal gaze. We feel at once that on the stage Sophoclesought to have won the prize from Aeschylus; and, as a proof of this, if we look at the plays of each, we see that scarcely any of the greatcharacters of Aeschylus could have called into sufficient exercise thepowers of an actor. Prometheus on his rock, never changing even hisposition, never absent from the scene, is denied all the relief, theplay and mobility, that an actor needs. His earthly representativecould be but a grand reciter. In the "Persians, " not only thetheatrical, but the dramatic effect is wanting--it is splendid poetryput into various mouths, but there is no collision of passions, nosurprise, no incident, no plot, no rapid dialogue in which words arebut the types of emotions. In the "Suppliants" Garrick could havemade nothing of Pelasgus. In the "Seven before Thebes" there are notabove twenty or thirty lines in the part of Eteocles in which the artof the actor could greatly assist the genius of the poet. In the'trilogy of the "Agamemnon, " the "Choephori, " and the "Orestes, "written in advanced years, we may trace the contagious innovation ofSophocles; but still, even in these tragedies, there is no part soeffective in representation as those afforded by the great charactersof Sophocles. In the first play the hypocrisy and power ofClytemnestra would, it is true, have partially required and elicitedthe talents of the player; but Agamemnon himself is but a thing ofpageant, and the splendid bursts of Cassandra might have beeneffectively uttered by a very inferior histrionic artist. In thesecond play, in the scene between Orestes and his mother, and in thegathering madness of Orestes, the art of the poet would unquestionablytask to the uttermost the skill of the performer. But in the lastplay (the Furies), perhaps the sublimest poem of the three, whichopens so grandly with the parricide at the sanctuary, and the Furiessleeping around him, there is not one scene from the beginning to theend in which an eminent actor could exhibit his genius. 

But when we come to the plays of Sophocles, we feel that a new era inthe drama is created; we feel that the artist poet has called intofull existence the artist actor. His theatrical effects [375] aretangible, actual--could be represented to-morrow in Paris--in London--everywhere. We find, therefore, that with Sophocles has passed downto posterity the name of the great actor [376] in his principal plays. And I think the English reader, even in the general analysis andoccasional translations with which I have ventured to fill so manypages, will perceive that all the exertions of subtle, delicate, andpassionate power, even in a modern actor, would be absolutelyrequisite to do justice to the characters of Oedipus at Coloneus, Antigone, Electra, and Philoctetes. 

This, then, was the distinction between Aeschylus and Sophocles--bothwere artists, as genius always must be, but the art of the latteradapts itself better to representation. And this distinction in artwas not caused merely by precedence in time. Had Aeschylus followedSophocles, it would equally have existed--it was the naturalconsequence of the distinctions in their genius--the one more sublime, the other more impassioned--the one exalting the imagination, theother appealing to the heart. Aeschylus is the Michael Angelo of thedrama, Sophocles the Raffaele. 

XIII. Thus have I presented to the general reader the outline of allthe tragedies of Sophocles. In the great length at which I haveentered in this, not the least difficult, part of my general task, Ihave widely innovated on the plan pursued by the writers of Grecianhistory. For this innovation I offer no excuse. It is her poetry atthe period we now examine, as her philosophy in a later time, thatmakes the individuality of Athens. In Sophocles we behold the age ofPericles. The wars of that brilliant day were as pastimes to themighty carnage of oriental or northern battle. The reduction of asingle town, which, in our time, that has no Sophocles and noPericles, a captain of artillery would demolish in a week, was theproudest exploit of the Olympian of the Agora; a little while, and onedefeat wrests the diadem of the seas from the brows of "The VioletQueen;" scanty indeed the ruins that attest the glories of "ThePropylaea, the Parthenon, the Porticoes, and the Docks, " to which theeloquent orator appealed as the "indestructible possessions" ofAthens; along the desolate site of the once tumultuous Agora thepeasant drives his oxen--the champion deity [377] of Phidias, whosespectral apparition daunted the barbarian Alaric [378], and the gleamof whose spear gladdened the mariner beneath the heights of Sunium, has vanished from the Acropolis; but, happily, the age of Pericles hasits stamp and effigy in an art more imperishable than that of war--inmaterials more durable than those of bronze and marble, of ivory andgold. In the majestic harmony, the symmetrical grace of Sophocles, wesurvey the true portraiture of the genius of the times, and the oldman of Coloneus still celebrates the name of Athens in a sweeter songthan that of the nightingale [379], and melodies that have survivedthe muses of Cephisus [380]. Sophocles was allegorically the prophetwhen he declared that in the grave of Oedipus was to be found thesacred guardian and the everlasting defence of the city of Theseus. 

FOOTNOTES. 

[1] "Cum consuetudine ad imperii cupiditatem trahi videretur. "--Neposin Vit. Milt. , cap. 8. 

[2] Corn. Nepos in Vit. Milt. , cap. 7. 

[3] Nepos. In Vit. Milt. , cap. 7. 

[4] Herod. , lib. Vi. , cap. Cxxxvi. 

[5] Nepos says the fine was estimated at the cost of the navy he hadconducted to Paros; but Boeckh rightly observes, that it is anignorant assertion of that author that the fine was intended for acompensation, being the usual mode of assessing the offence. 

The case is simply this--Miltiades was accused--whether justly orunjustly no matter--it was clearly as impossible not to receive theaccusation and to try the cause, as it would be for an English courtof justice to refuse to admit a criminal action against Lord Grey orthe Duke of Wellington. Was Miltiades guilty or not? This we cannottell. We know that he was tried according to the law, and that theAthenians thought him guilty, for they condemned him. So far this isnot ingratitude--it is the course of law. A man is tried and foundguilty--if past services and renown were to save the great frompunishment when convicted of a state offence, society would perhaps bedisorganized, and certainly a free state would cease to exist. Thequestion therefore shrinks to this--was it or was it not ungrateful inthe people to relax the penalty of death, legally incurred, andcommute it to a heavy fine? I fear we shall find few instances ofgreater clemency in monarchies, however mild. Miltiades unhappilydied. But nature slew him, not the Athenian people. And it cannot besaid with greater justice of the Athenians, than of a people no lessillustrious, and who are now their judges, that it was their custom"de tuer en amiral pour encourager les autres. "

[6] The taste of a people, which is to art what public opinion is tolegislation, is formed, like public opinion, by habitual socialintercourse and collision. The more men are brought together toconverse and discuss, the more the principles of a general nationaltaste will become both diffused and refined. Less to their climate, to their scenery, to their own beauty of form, than to their socialhabits and preference of the public to the domestic life, did theAthenians, and the Grecian republics generally, owe that wonderfulsusceptibility to the beautiful and harmonious, which distinguishesthem above all nations ancient or modern. Solitude may exalt thegenius of a man, but communion alone can refine the taste of a people. 

[7] It seems probable that the principal Bacchic festival wasoriginally held at the time of the vintage--condita post frumenta. But from the earliest known period in Attica, all the triple Dionysiawere celebrated during the winter and the spring. 

[8] Egyptian, according to Herodotus, who asserts, that Melampusfirst introduced the Phallic symbol among the Greeks, though he neversufficiently explained its mysterious significations, which varioussages since his time had, however, satisfactorily interpreted. It isjust to the Greeks to add, that this importation, with the other ritesof Bacchus, was considered at utter variance with their usual habitsand manners. 

[9] Herodotus asserts that Arion first named, invented, and taughtthe dithyramb at Corinth; but, as Bentley triumphantly observes, Athenaeus has preserved to us the very verses of Archilochus, hispredecessor by a century, in which the song of the dithyramb is named. 

[10] In these remarks upon the origin of the drama, it would belongless to history than to scholastic dissertation, to enter into all thedisputed and disputable points. I do not, therefore, pause with everystep to discuss the questions contested by antiquarians--such as, whether the word "tragedy, " in its primitive and homely sense, together with the prize of the goat, was or was not known in Atticaprior to Thespis (it seems to me that the least successful part ofBentley's immortal work is that which attempts to enforce the latterproposition); still less do I think a grave answer due to those who, in direct opposition to authorities headed by the grave and searchingAristotle, contend that the exhibitions of Thespis were of a seriousand elevated character. The historian must himself weigh theevidences on which he builds his conclusions; and come to thoseconclusions, especially in disputes which bring to unimportant anddetached inquiries the most costly expenditure of learning, withoutfatiguing the reader with a repetition of all the arguments which heaccepts or rejects. For those who incline to go more deeply intosubjects connected with the early Athenian drama, works by English andGerman authors, too celebrated to enumerate, will be found inabundance. But even the most careless general reader will do well todelight himself with that dissertation of Bentley on Phalaris, sofamiliar to students, and which, despite some few intemperate and boldassumptions, will always remain one of the most colossal monuments ofargument and erudition. 

[11] Aeschylus was a Pythagorean. "Veniat Aeschylus, sed etiamPythagoreus. "--Cic. Tusc. Dis. , b. Ii. , 9. 

[12] Out of fifty plays, thirty-two were satyrical. --Suidas in Prat. 

[13] The Tetralogy was the name given to the fourfold exhibition ofthe three tragedies, or trilogy, and the Satyric Drama. 

[14] Yet in Aeschylus there are sometimes more than two speakingactors on the stage, --as at one time in the Choephori, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra (to say nothing of Pylades, who is silent), and againin the same play, Orestes, Pylades, and Clytemnestra, also in theEumenides, Apollo, Minerva, Orestes. It is truly observed, however, that these plays were written after Sophocles had introduced the thirdactor. [The Orestean tetralogy was exhibited B. C. 455, only twoyears before the death of Aeschylus, and ten years after Sophocles hadgained his first prize. ] Any number of mutes might be admitted, notonly as guards, etc. , but even as more important personages. Thus, inthe Prometheus, the very opening of the play exhibits to us the demonsof Strength and Force, the god Vulcan, and Prometheus himself; but thedialogue is confined to Strength and Vulcan. 

[15] The celebrated temple of Bacchus; built after the wooden theatrehad given way beneath the multitude assembled to witness a contestbetween Pratinas and Aeschylus. 

[16] 1st. The rural Dionysia, held in the country districtsthroughout Attica about the beginning of January. 2d. The Lenaean, orAnthesterial, Dionysia, in the end of February and beginning of March, in which principally occurred the comic contests; and the grandDionysis of the city, referred to in the text. Afterward dramaticperformances were exhibited also, in August, during the Panathenaea. 

[17] That is, when three actors became admitted on the stage. 

[18] For it is sufficiently clear that women were admitted to thetragic performances, though the arguments against their presence incomic plays preponderate. This admitted, the manners of the Greeksmay be sufficient to prove that, as in the arena of the Roman games, they were divided from the men; as, indeed, is indirectly intimated ina passage of the Gorgias of Plato. 

[19] Schlegel says truly and eloquently of the chorus--"that it wasthe idealized spectator"--"reverberating to the actual spectator amusical and lyrical expression of his own emotions. "

[20] In this speech he enumerates, among other benefits, that ofNumbers, "the prince of wise inventions"--one of the passages in whichAeschylus is supposed to betray his Pythagorean doctrines. 

[21] It is greatly disputed whether Io was represented on the stageas transformed into the actual shape of a heifer, or merely accursedwith a visionary phrensy, in which she believes in the transformation. It is with great reluctance that I own it seems to me not possible toexplain away certain expressions without supposing that Io appeared onthe stage at least partially transformed. 

[22] Vit. Aesch. 

[23] It is the orthodox custom of translators to render the dialogueof the Greek plays in blank verse; but in this instance the wholeanimation and rapidity of the original would be utterly lost in thestiff construction and protracted rhythm of that metre. 

[24] Viz. , the meadows around Asopus. 

[25] To make the sense of this detached passage more complete, andconclude the intelligence which the queen means to convey, theconcluding line in the text is borrowed from the next speech ofClytemnestra--following immediately after a brief and exclamatoryinterruption of the chorus. 

[26] i. E. Menelaus, made by grief like the ghost of his former self. 

[27] The words in italics attempt to convey paraphrastically a newconstruction of a sentence which has puzzled the commentators, and metwith many and contradictory interpretations. The original literallyis--"I pity the last the most. " Now, at first it is difficult toconjecture why those whose adversity is over, "blotted out with themoistened sponge, " should be the most deserving of compassion. But itseems to me that Cassandra applies the sentiments to herself--shepities those whose career of grief is over, because it is her own lotwhich she commiserates, and by reference to which she individualizes ageneral reflection. 

[28] Perhaps his mere diction would find a less feeble resemblance inpassages of Shelley, especially in the Prometheus of that poet, thanin any other poetry existent. But his diction alone. His power is inconcentration--the quality of Shelley is diffuseness. The interestexcited by Aeschylus, even to those who can no longer sympathize withthe ancient associations, is startling, terrible, and intense--thatexcited by Shelley is lukewarm and tedious. The intellectuality ofShelley destroyed, that of Aeschylus only increased, his command overthe passions. 

[29] In the comedy of "The Frogs, " Aristophanes makes it the boast ofAeschylus, that he never drew a single woman influenced by love. Spanheim is surprised that Aristophanes should ascribe such a boast tothe author of the "Agamemnon. " But the love of Clytemnestra forAegisthus is never drawn--never delineated. It is merely suggestedand hinted at--a sentiment lying dark and concealed behind the motivesto the murder of Agamemnon ostensibly brought forward, viz. , revengefor the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and jealousy of Cassandra. 

[30] In plays lost to us. 

[31] I reject the traditions which make Aristides and Themistoclesrivals as boys, because chronology itself refutes them. Aristidesmust have been of mature age at the battle of Marathon, if he was thefriend and follower of Clisthenes, one of the ten generals in theaction, and archon in the following year. But both Plutarch andJustin assure us that Themistocles was very young at the battle ofMarathon, and this assurance is corroborated by other facts connectedwith his biography. He died at the age of sixty-five, but he livedto see the siege of Cyprus by Cimon. This happened B. C. 449. If, then, we refer his death to that year, he was born 514 B. C. , andtherefore was about twenty-four at the battle of Marathon. 

[32] Plut. In Vit. Them. Heraclides et Idomeneus ap. Athen. , lib. 12. 

[33] See Dodwell's "Tour through Greece, " Gell's "Itinerary. "

[34] "Called by some Laurion Oros, or Mount Laurion. " Gell'sItinerary. 

[35] Boeckh's Dissert. On the Silver Mines of Laurium. 

[36] Boeckh's Dissert. On the Silver Mines of Laurium. 

[37] On this point, see Boeckh. Dissert. On the Silver Mines ofLaurion, in reference to the account of Diodorus. 

[38] If we except the death of his brother, in the Cambyses ofCtesias, we find none of the crimes of the Cambyses of Herodotus--andeven that fratricide loses its harsher aspect in the account ofCtesias, and Cambyses is represented as betrayed into the crime by asincere belief in his brother's treason. 

[39] The account of this conspiracy in Ctesias seems more improbablethan that afforded to us by Herodotus. But in both the mostextraordinary features of the plot are the same, viz. , the strikinglikeness between the impostor and the dead prince, and the completesuccess which, for a time, attended the fraud. In both narrations, too, we can perceive, behind the main personages ostensibly broughtforward, the outline of a profound device of the magi to win back fromthe Persian conquerors, and to secure to a Mede, the empire of theEast. 

[40] Herodotus says it was resolved that the king could only marryinto the family of one of the conspirators; but Darius married twodaughters and one grand-daughter of Cyrus. It is more consonant witheastern manners to suppose that it was arranged that the king shouldgive his own daughters in marriage to members of these six houses. Itwould have been scarcely possible to claim the monopoly of the royalseraglio, whether its tenants were wives or concubines, and in allprobability the king's choice was only limited (nor that very rigidly)to the family of Cyrus, and the numerous and privileged race of theAchaemenids. 

[41] Besides the regular subsidies, we gather from Herodotus, I. C. 92, that the general population was obliged to find subsistence forthe king and his armies. Babylon raised a supply for four months, theresources of that satrapy being adequate to a third part of Asia. 

[42] That comparatively small and frontier part of India known toDarius. 

[43] Forming a revenue of more than 100, 000l. Sterling. --Heeren'sPersians, chap. Ii. 

[44] Such are the expressions of Herodotus. His testimony iscorroborated by the anecdotes in his own history, and, indeed, by allother ancient authorities. 

[45] Dinon. (Apud Athen. , lib. Xiii. ) observes, that the Persianqueen tolerated the multitude of concubines common to the royalseraglio, because they worshipped her, like a divinity. 

[46] See, in addition to more familiar authorities, the curiousremarks and anecdotes relative to the luxury of the Persian kings, inthe citations from Dinon, Heraclides, Agathocles, and Chares ofMitylene, scattered throughout Athenaeus, lib. Xii. , xiii. , xiv. ; butespecially lib. Xii. 

[47] Strabo, lib. Xv, Herod. , lib. I. , c. Cxxxi. , etc. 

[48] Among innumerable instances of the disdain of human lifecontracted after their conquest by those very Persians who, in theirmountain obscurity, would neither permit their sovereign to put anyone to death for a single offence, nor the master of a household toexercise undue severity to a member of his family (Herod. , lib. I. , c. Cxxxvii. ), is one recorded by Herodotus, and in the main corroboratedby Justin. Darius is at the siege of Babylon; Zopyrus, one of theseven conspirators against the magian, maims himself and entersBabylon as a deserter, having previously concerted with Darius that athousand men, whose loss he could best spare, should be sent one dayto the gate of Semiramis, and two thousand, another day, to the gatesof Ninus, and four thousand, a third day, to the Chaldaean gates. Allthese detachments Zopyrus, at the head of the Babylonians, deliberately butchered. The confidence of the Babylonians thusobtained, Zopyrus was enabled to betray the city to the king. Thiscold-blooded and treacherous immolation of seven thousand subjects wasconsidered by the humane Darius and the Persians generally a proof ofthe most illustrious virtue in Zopyrus, who received for it the rewardof the satrapy of Babylon. The narrative is so circumstantial as tobear internal evidence of its general truth. In fact, a Persian wouldcare no more for the lives of seven thousand Medes than a Spartanwould care for the lives of suspected Helots. 

[49] Herodot. , lib. I. , c. Cxxxiv. The Pasargadae, whom the ancientwriters evidently and often confound with the whole Persianpopulation, retained the old education and severe discipline for theiryouth, long after the old virtues had died away. (See Strabo, xv. , Herod. , lib. I. , and the rhetorical romance of Xenophon. ) But lawsand customs, from which the animating spirit of national opinion andsentiment has passed, are but the cenotaphs of dead forms embalmed invain. 

[50] Ctesias, 20. 

[51] Herod. , lib vii. , c. Xi. 

[52] Juvenal, Richardson, etc. The preparations at Mount Athoscommenced three years before Xerxes arrived at Sardis. (CompareHerod. , l. Vii. 21, with 33, 37. )

[53] Differently computed; according to Montfaucon, the sum total maybe estimated at thirty-two millions of Louis d'ors. 

[54] It must be confessed that the tears of Xerxes were a littlemisplaced. He wept that men could not live a hundred years, at thevery moment when he meditated destroying a tolerable portion of themas soon as he possibly could. --Senec. De Brev. Vit. , c. 17. 

[55] Common also to the ancient Germans. 

[56] For this reason--whoever died, whether by disease or battle, hadhis place immediately supplied. Thus their number was invariably thesame. 

[57] Diod. Sic. 

[58] See note [48]. 

[59] Her. , lib. Vii. , c. 138. 

[60] Mueller on the Greek Congress. 

[61] Mueller on the Greek Congress. 

[62] Anaxandrides, king of Sparta, and father of Cleomenes andLeonidas, had married his niece: she was barren. The Ephors persuadedhim to take another wife; he did so, and by the second wife. Cleomenes was born. Almost at the same time, the first wife, hithertobarren, proved with child. And as she continued the conjugalconnexion, in process of time three sons were born; of these Leonidaswas the second. But Cleomenes, though the offspring of the secondwife, came into the world before the children by the first wife andtherefore had the prior right to the throne. 

[63] It is impossible by any calculations to render this amount morecredible to modern skepticism. It is extremely likely that Herodotusis mistaken in his calculation; but who shall correct him?

[64] The Cissii, or Cissians, inhabited the then fertile province ofSusiana, in which was situated the capital of Susa. They resembledthe Persians in dress and manners. 

[65] So Herodotus (lib. Vii. , c. 218); but, as it was summer, thenoise was probably made rather by the boughs that obstructed the pathof the barbarians, than by leaves on the ground. 

[66] Diod. Sic. , xi. , viii. 

[67] Justin, ii. , ix. 

[68] Another Spartan, who had been sent into Thessaly, and wastherefore absent from the slaughter of Thermopylae, destroyed himself. 

[69] The cross was the usual punishment in Persia for offencesagainst the king's majesty or rights. Perhaps, therefore, Xerxes, bythe outrage, only desired to signify that he considered the Spartan asa rebel. 

[70] "Thus fought the Greeks at Thermopylae, " are the simpleexpressions of Herodotus, lib. Vii. , c. 234. 

[71] Thus the command of the Athenian forces was at one time likelyto fall upon Epicydes, a man whose superior eloquence had gained anascendency with the people, which was neither due to his integrity norto his military skill. Themistocles is said to have bribed him toforego his pretensions. Themistocles could be as severe as craftywhen occasion demanded: he put to death an interpreter who accompaniedthe Persian envoys, probably to the congress at the Isthmus [Plutarchimplies that these envoys came to Athens, but Xerxes sent none to thatcity. ], for debasing the language of free Greeks to express thedemands of the barbarian enemy. 

[72] Plutarch rejects this story, very circumstantially told byHerodotus, without adducing a single satisfactory argument for therejection. The skepticism of Plutarch is more frivolous even than hiscredulity. 

[73] Demost. , Philip. 3. See also Aeschines contra Ctesiphon. 

[74] I have said that it might be doubted whether the death ofLeonidas was as serviceable to Greece as his life might have been; itsimmediate consequences were certainly discouraging. If his valour wasan example, his defeat was a warning. 

[75] There were [three hundred, for the sake of round numbers--butone of the three hundred--perhaps two--survived the general massacre. ]three hundred Spartans and four hundred Thespians; supposing that (asit has been asserted) the eighty warriors of Mycenae also remainedwith Leonidas, and that one hundred, or a fourth of the Thebans fellere their submission was received, this makes a total of eight hundredand eighty. If we take now what at Plataea was the actual ratio ofthe helots as compared with the Spartans, i. E, seven to one, we shalladd two thousand one hundred helots, which make two thousand ninehundred and ninety; to which must be added such of the Greeks as fellin the attacks prior to the slaughter of Thermopylae; so that, inorder to make out the total of the slain given by Herodotus, more thaneleven hundred must have perished before the last action, in whichLeonidas fell. 

[76] Plut. In vit. Them. 

[77] Ibid. 

[78] It is differently stated; by Aeschylus and Nepos at threehundred, by Thucydides at four hundred. 

[79] Plut. In vit. Them. 

[80] Here we see additional reason for admiring the sagacity ofThemistocles. 

[81] Her. , lib. Viii. , c. 74. 

[82] The tutor of his children, Sicinnus, who had experience of theEastern manners, and spoke the Persian language. 

[83] The number of the Persian galleys, at the lowest computation, was a thousand [Nepos, Herodotus, and Isocrates compute the total atabout twelve hundred; the estimate of one thousand is taken from adubious and disputed passage in Aeschylus, which may be so construedas to signify one thousand, including two hundred and seven vessels, or besides two hundred and seven vessels; viz. , twelve hundred andseven in all, which is the precise number given by Herodotus. Ctesiassays there were more than one thousand. ]; that of the Greeks, as wehave seen, three hundred and eighty. But the Persians were infinitelymore numerously manned, having on board of each vessel thirtymen-at-arms, in addition to the usual number of two hundred. Plutarchseems to state the whole number in each Athenian vessel to be fourteenheavy armed and four bowmen. But this would make the whole Athenianforce only three thousand two hundred and forty men, including thebowmen, who were probably not Athenian citizens. It must therefore besupposed, with Mr. Thirlwall, that the eighteen men thus specified werean addition to the ordinary company. 

[84] Aeschylus. Persae. 397. 

[85] The Persian admiral at Salamis is asserted by Ctesias to havebeen Onaphas, father-in-law to Xerxes. According to Herodotus, it wasAriabignes, the king's brother, who seems the same as Artabazanes, with whom he had disputed the throne. --Comp. Herod. , lib. Vii. , c. 2, and lib. Viii. , c. 89. 

[86] Plut in vit. Them. 

[87] Plut. In vit. Them. The Ariamenes of Plutarch is the Ariabignesof Herodotus. 

[88] Mr. Mitford, neglecting to observe this error of Xerxes, especially noted by Herodotus, merely observes--"According toHerodotus, though in this instance we may have difficulty to give himentire credit, Xerxes, from the shore where he sat, saw, admired, andapplauded the exploit. " From this passage one would suppose thatXerxes knew it was a friend who had been attacked, and then, indeed, we could not have credited the account; but if he and those about himsupposed it, as Herodotus states, a foe, what is there incredible?This is one instance in ten thousand more important ones, of Mr. Mitford's habit of arguing upon one sentence by omitting those thatfollow and precede it. 

[89] Diod. , lib xi. , c. 5. Herod. , lib. Viii. , c. 110. Nepos, etPlut, in vit. Them. 

[90] Plut. In vit. Them. 

[91] Ibid. These anecdotes have the stamp of authenticity. 

[92] Herod. , lib. Viii. , c. 125. See Wesseling's Comment onTimodemus. Plutarch tells the same anecdote, but makes the baffledrebuker of Themistocles a citizen of Seriphus, an island in which, according to Aelian, the frogs never croaked; the men seem to havemade up for the silence of the frogs!

[93] See Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , page 26. 

[94] Plut. In vit. Arist. 

[95] Ibid. 

[96] The custom of lapidation was common to the earlier ages; it hada kind of sanction, too, in particular offences; and no crime could beconsidered by a brave and inflamed people equal to that of adviceagainst their honour and their liberties. 

[97] See Herod. , lib. Ix. , c. 10. Also Mr. Clinton on the Kings ofSparta. Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , p. 187. 

[98] See Herod. , lib, vi. , c. 58. After the burial of a Spartanking, ten days were devoted to mourning; nor was any public businesstransacted in that interval. 

[99] "According to Aristides' decree, " says Plutarch, "the Athenianenvoys were Aristides, Xanthippus, Myronides, and Cimon. "

[100] Herodotus speaks of the devastation and ruin as complete. Buthow many ages did the monuments of Pisistratus survive the ravage ofthe Persian sword!

[101] Plut. In vit. Arist. 

[102] This, among a thousand anecdotes, proves how salutary andinevitable was the popular distrust of the aristocracy. When we readof the process of bribing the principal men, and of the conspiracyentered into by others, we must treat with contempt those accusationsof the jealousy of the Grecian people towards their superiors whichform the staple declamations of commonplace historians. 

[103] Gargaphia is one mile and a half from the town of Plataea. Gell's Itin. 112. 

[104] Plut. In vit. Arist. 

[105] A strange fall from the ancient splendour of Mycenae, tofurnish only four hundred men, conjointly with Tiryns, to the cause ofGreece!

[106] Her. , lib. Ix. , c. 45. 

[107] Plutarch in vit. Arist. 

[108] This account, by Herodotus, of the contrast between the Spartanand the Athenian leaders, which is amply supported elsewhere, is, as Ihave before hinted, a proof of the little effect upon Spartanemulation produced by the martyrdom of Leonidas. Undoubtedly theSpartans were more terrified by the slaughter of Thermopylae thanfired by the desire of revenge. 

[109] "Here seem to be several islands, formed by a sluggish streamin a flat meadow. (Oeroe?) must have been of that description. --"Gell's Itin, 109. 

[110] Herod. , lib. Ix. , c. 54. 

[111] Plut. In vit. Arist. 

[112] Sir W. Gell's Itin. Of Greece. 

[113] Herod. Lib. Ix. , c. 62. 

[114] The Tegeans had already seized the tent of Mardonius, possessing themselves especially of a curious brazen manger, fromwhich the Persian's horse was fed, and afterward dedicated to theAlean Minerva. 

[115] I adopt the reading of Valcknaer, "tous hippeas. " The Spartanknights, in number three hundred, had nothing to do with the cavalry, but fought on foot or on horseback, as required. (Dionys. Hal. , xi. , 13. ) They formed the royal bodyguard. 

[116] Mr. Mitford attributes his absence from the scene to somejealousy of the honours he received at Sparta, and the vain glory withwhich he bore them. But the vague observations in the authors herefers to by no means bear out this conjecture, nor does it seemprobable that the jealousy was either general or keen enough to effectso severe a loss to the public cause. Menaced with grave and imminentperil, it was not while the Athenians were still in the camp that theywould have conceived all the petty envies of the forum. Thejealousies Themistocles excited were of much later date. It isprobable that at this period he was intrusted with the very importantcharge of watching over and keeping together that considerable butscattered part of the Athenian population which was not engaged eitherat Mycale or Plataea. 

[117] Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 89. 

[118] Ibid. , lib. I. , c. 90. 

[119] Diod. Sic. , lib. Xi. ; Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 90. 

[120] Ap. Plut. In vit. Them. 

[121] Diodorus (lib. Xi. ) tells us that the Spartan ambassadors, indulging in threatening and violent language at perceiving the wallsso far advanced, were arrested by the Athenians, who declared theywould only release them on receiving hack safe and uninjured their ownambassadors. 

[122] Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 91. 

[123] Ibid. , lib. I. , c. 92. 

[124] Schol. Ad Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 93. See Clinton, Fasti Hell. , vol. I. , Introduction, p. 13 and 14. Mr. Thirlwall, vol. Ii. , p. 401, disputes the date for the archonship of Themistocles given by Mr. Clinton and confirmed by the scholiast on Thucydides. He adopts (page366) the date which M. Boeckh founds upon Philochorus, viz. , B. C. 493. But the Themistocles who was archon in that year is evidentlyanother person from the Themistocles of Salamis; for in 493 that herowas about twenty-one, an age at which the bastard of Neocles might bedriving courtesans in a chariot (as is recorded in Athenaeus), but wascertainly not archon of Athens. As for M. Boeckh's proposedemendation, quoted so respectfully by Mr. Thirlwall, by which we areto read Hybrilidon for Kebridos, it is an assumption so purelyfanciful as to require no argument for refusing it belief. Mr. Clinton's date for the archonship of the great Themistocles is the onemost supported by internal evidence--1st, by the blanks of the years481-482 in the list of archons; 2dly, by the age, the position, andrepute of Themistocles in B. C. 481, two years after the ostracism ofhis rival Aristides. If it were reduced to a mere contest ofprobabilities between Mr. Clinton on one side and Mr. Boeckh and Mr. Thirlwall on the other, which is the more likely, that Themistoclesshould have been chief archon of Athens at twenty-one or atthirty-three--before the battle of Marathon or after his triumph overAristides? In fact, a schoolboy knows that at twenty-one (andThemistocles was certainly not older in 493) no Athenian could havebeen archon. In all probability Kebridos is the right reading inPhilochorus, and furnishes us with the name of the archon in B. C. 487or 486, which years have hitherto been chronological blanks, so far asthe Athenian archons are concerned. 

[125] Pausan. , lib. I. , c. 1. 

[126] Diod. , lib. Xi. 

[127] Diod. , lib. Xi. 

[128] Diod. , lib. Xi. The reader will perceive that I do not agreewith Mr. Thirlwall and some other scholars, for whose general opinionI have the highest respect, in rejecting altogether, and withcontempt, the account of Diodorus as to the precautions ofThemistocles. It seems to me highly probable that the main featuresof the story are presented to us faithfully; 1st, that it was notdeemed expedient to detail to the popular assembly all the objects andmotives of the proposed construction of the new port; and, 2dly, thatThemistocles did not neglect to send ambassadors to Sparta, thoughcertainly not with the intention of dealing more frankly with theSpartans than he had done with the Athenians. 

[129] Thucyd. , lib. I. 

[130] Aristot. Pol. , lib. Ii. Aristotle deems the speculations ofthe philosophical architect worthy of a severe and searchingcriticism. 

[131] Of all the temples, those of Minerva and Jupiter were the mostremarkable in the time of Pausanias. There were then twomarket-places. See Pausanias, lib. I. , c. I. 

[132] Yet at this time the Amphictyonic Council was so feeble that, had the Spartans succeeded, they would have made but a hollowacquisition of authority; unless, indeed, with the project of gaininga majority of votes, they united another for reforming orreinvigorating the institution. 

[133] Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 96. 

[134] Heeren, Pol. Hist. Of Greece. 

[135] Corn. Nep. In vit. Paus. 

[136] Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 129. 

[137] Plut. In vit. Arist. 

[138] Ibid. 

[139] Thucyd. , lib. I. 

[140] Plut. In vit. Cimon. Before this period, Cimon, though risinginto celebrity, could scarcely have been an adequate rival toThemistocles. 

[141] Corn. Nep. In vit. Cim. 

[142] According to Diodorus, Cimon early in life made a very wealthymarriage; Themistocles recommended him to a rich father-in-law, in awitticism, which, with a slight variation, Plutarch has also recorded, though he does not give its application to Cimon. 

[143] Corn. Nep. In vit. Cim. 

[144] Thucyd. , lib. I. 

[145] Ibid. , lib. I. Plut. In vit. Cim. Diod. Sic. , lib. Xi. 

[146] See Clinton, Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , p. 34, in comment uponBentley. 

[147] Athenaeus, lib. Xii. 

[148] Plut. In vit. Them. 

[149] Plut. In vit. Aristid. 

[150] About twenty-three English acres. This was by no means adespicable estate in the confined soil of Attica. 

[151] Aristot. Apud Plat. Vit. Cim. 

[152] Produced equally by the anti-popular party on popular pretexts. It was under the sanction of Mr. Pitt that the prostitution of charityto the able-bodied was effected in England. 

[153] Plut. In vit. Cim. 

[154] His father's brother, Cleomenes, died raving mad, as we havealready seen. There was therefore insanity in the family. 

[155] Plut. In vit. Cim. Pausanias, lib. Iii. , c. 17. 

[156] Pausarias, lib. Iii. , c. 17. 

[157] Phigalea, according to Pausanias. 

[158] Plut. In vit. Cim. 

[159] Thucyd. , lib. I. 

[160] Plato, leg. Vi. 

[161] Nep. In vit. Paus. 

[162] Pausanias observes that his renowned namesake was the onlysuppliant taking refuge at the sanctuary of Minerva Chalcioecus whodid not obtain the divine protection, and this because he could neverpurify himself of the murder of Cleonice. 

[163] Thucyd. , lib. I. , 136. 

[164] Plut. In vit. Them. 

[165] Thucyd. , lib. I. , 137. 

[166] Mr. Mitford, while doubting the fact, attempts, with his usualdisingenuousness, to raise upon the very fact that he doubts, reproaches against the horrors of democratical despotism. A strangepractice for an historian to allow the premises to be false, and thento argue upon them as true!

[167] The brief letter to Artaxerxes, given by Thucydides (lib i. , 137), is as evidently the composition of Thucydides himself as is thecelebrated oration which he puts into the mouth of Pericles. Each hasthe hard, rigid, and grasping style so peculiar to the historian, andto which no other Greek writer bears the slightest resemblance. Butthe matter may be more genuine than the diction. 

[168] At the time of his arrival in Asia, Xerxes seems to have beenstill living. But he appeared at Susa during the short intervalbetween the death of Xerxes and the formal accession of his son, when, by a sanguinary revolution, yet to be narrated, Artabanus was raisedto the head of the Persian empire: ere the year expired Artaxerxes wason the throne. 

[169] I relate this latter account of the death of Themistocles, notonly because Thucydides (though preferring the former) does notdisdain to cite it, but also because it is evident, from the speech ofNicias, in the Knights of Aristophanes, i. 83, 84, that in the time ofPericles it was popularly believed by the Athenians that Themistoclesdied by poison; and from motives that rendered allusion to his death apopular claptrap. It is also clear that the death of Themistoclesappears to have reconciled him at once to the Athenians. The previoussuspicions of his fidelity to Greece do not seem to have been keptalive even by the virulence of party; and it is natural to supposethat it must have been some act of his own, real or imagined, whichtended to disprove the plausible accusations against him, and revivethe general enthusiasm in his favour. What could that act have beenbut the last of his life, which, in the lines of Aristophanes referredto above, is cited as the ideal of a glorious death! But if he diedby poison, the draught was not bullock's blood--the deadly nature ofwhich was one of the vulgar fables of the ancients. In some parts ofthe continent it is, in this day, even used as medicine. 

[170] Plut. In vit. Them. 

[171] Plut. In vit. Them. 

[172] Thucyd. , lib. I. 

[173] Diod. , lib. Xi. 

[174] Plut. In vit. Cim. 

[175] Diod. (lib. Xi. ) reckons the number of prisoners at twentythousand! These exaggerations sink glory into burlesque. 

[176] The Cyaneae. Plin. Vi. , c. 12. Herod. Iv. , c. 85, etc. Etc. 

[177] Thucyd. , lib. . , 99. 

[178] Plut. In vit. Cim. 

[179] For the siege of Thasos lasted three years; in the second yearwe find Cimon marching to the relief of the Spartans; in fact, thesiege of Thasos was not of sufficient importance to justify Cimon in avery prolonged absence from Athens. 

[180] Plut. In vit. Cim. 

[181] Plut. In vit. Cim. 

[182] Those historians who presume upon the slovenly sentences ofPlutarch, that Pericles made "an instrument" of Ephialtes in assaultson the Areopagus, seem strangely to mistake both the character ofPericles, which was dictatorial, not crafty, and the position ofEphialtes, who at that time was the leader of his party, and far moreinfluential than Pericles himself. Plato (ap. Plut. In vit. Peric. )rightly considers Ephialtes the true overthrower of the Areopagus; andalthough Pericles assisted him (Aristot. , l. Ii. , c. 9), it wasagainst Ephialtes as the chief, not "the instrument, " that the wrathof the aristocracy was directed. 

[183] See Demosth. Adv. Aristocr. , p. 642. Ed. Reisk. Herman ap. Heidelb. Jahrb. , 1830, No. 44. Forckhammer de Areopago, etc. AgainstBoeckh. I cannot agree with those who attach so much importance toAeschylus, in the tragedy of "The Furies, " as an authority in favourof the opinion that the innovations of Ephialtes deprived theAreopagus of jurisdiction in cases of homicide. It is true that theplay turns upon the origin of the tribunal--it is true that itcelebrates its immemorial right of adjudication of murder, and thatMinerva declares this court of judges shall remain for ever. Butwould this prophecy be risked at the very time when this court wasabout to be abolished? In the same speech of Minerva, far more directallusion is made to the police of the court in the fear and reverencedue to it; and strong exhortations follow, not to venerate anarchy ortyranny, or banish "all fear from the city, " which apply much moreforcibly to the council than to the court of the Areopagus. 

[184] That the Areopagus did, prior to the decree of Ephialtes, possess a power over the finances, appears from a passage in Aristotle(ap. Plut. In vit. Them. ), in which it is said that, in the expeditionto Salamis, the Areopagus awarded to each man eight drachmae. 

[185] Plutarch attributes his ostracism to the resentment of theAthenians on his return from Ithome; but this is erroneous. He wasnot ostracised till two years after his return. 

[186] Mikaeas epilabomenoi prophaseos. --Plut. In vit. Cim. 17. 

[187] Neither Aristotle (Polit. , lib. V. , c. 10), nor Justin, norCtesias nor Moderns speak of the assassin as kinsman to Xerxes. InPlutarch (Vit. Them. ) he is Artabanus the Chiliarch. 

[188] Ctesias, 30; Diod, 11; Justin, lib. Iii. , c. 1. According toAristotle, Artabanus, as captain of the king's guard, received anorder to make away with Darius, neglected the command, and murderedXerxes from fears for his own safety. 

[189] Thucyd. , lib. I. , 107. The three towns of Doris were, according to Thucydides, Baeum, Cytenium, and Erineus. The scholiaston Pindar (Pyth. I. , 121) speaks of six towns. 

[190] Thucyd. , lib. I. 

[191] Thucydides, in mentioning these operations of the Athenians, and the consequent fears of the Spartans, proves to what a lengthhostilities had gone, though war was not openly declared. 

[192] Diod. Sic. . Lib. Xi. 

[193] Thucyd. , lib, i. 

[194] Diod. , lib. Xi. 

[195] Certain German historians, Mueller among others, have builtenormous conclusions upon the smallest data, when they suppose Cimonwas implicated in this conspiracy. Meirs (Historia Juris de bonisDamnatis, p. 4, note 11) is singularly unsuccessful in connecting thesupposed fine of fifty talents incurred by Cimon with the civilcommotions of this period. In fact, that Cimon was ever fined at allis very improbable; the supposition rests upon most equivocal ground:if adopted, it is more likely, perhaps, that the fine was inflictedafter his return from Thasos, when he was accused of neglecting thehonour of the Athenian arms, and being seduced by Macedonian gold (acharge precisely of a nature for which a fine would have beenincurred). But the whole tale of this imaginary fine, founded upon asentence in Demosthenes, who, like many orators, was by no meansminutely accurate in historical facts, is possibly nothing more than aconfused repetition of the old story of the fine of fifty talents (thesame amount) imposed upon Miltiades, and really paid by Cimon. Thisis doubly, and, indeed, indisputably clear, if we accept Becker'sreading of Parion for patrion in the sentence of Demosthenes referredto. 

[196] If we can attach any credit to the Oration on Peace ascribed toAndocides, Cimon was residing on his patrimonial estates in theChersonese at the time of his recall. As Athens retained its right tothe sovereignty of this colony, and as it was a most importantposition as respected the recent Athenian conquests under Cimonhimself, the assertion, if true, will show that Cimon's ostracism wasattended with no undue persecution. Had the government seriouslysuspected him of any guilty connivance with the oligarchicconspirators, it could scarcely have permitted him to remain in acolony, the localities of which were peculiarly favourable to anytreasonable designs he might have formed. 

[197] In the recall of Cimon, Plutarch tells us, some historiansasserted that it was arranged between the two parties that theadministration of the state should be divided; that Cimon should beinvested with the foreign command of Cyprus, and Pericles remain thehead of the domestic government. But it was not until the sixth yearafter his recall (viz. , in the archonship of Euthydemus, see Diodorusxii. ) that Cimon went to Cyprus; and before that event Pericleshimself was absent on foreign expeditions. 

[198] Plutarch, by a confusion of dates, blends this short armisticewith the five years' truce some time afterward concluded. Mitford andothers have followed him in his error. That the recall of Cimon wasfollowed by no peace, not only with the Spartans, but thePeloponnesians generally, is evident from the incursions of Tolmidespresently to be related. 

[199] Diod lib. Xi. 

[200] See Mueller's Dorians, and the authorities he quotes. Vol. I. , b. I. 

[201] For so I interpret Diodorus. 

[202] Diod. Sic. , lib. Xi. 

[203] There was a democratic party in Thessaly always favourable toAthens. See Thucyd. , iv. , c. 88. 

[204] Now Lepanto. 

[205] Paus. , lib. Ii. , c. 25. 

[206] Plut. In vit. Peric. 

[207] Thucyd. , lib. I. , 112. 

[208] Diod. , lib. Xi. Plut. In vit. Cim. Heeren, Manual of AncientHistory; but Mr. Mitford and Mr. Thirlwall properly reject thisspurious treaty. 

[209] Plut. In Cim. 

[210] The Clouds. 

[211] Isoc. Areop. , 38. 

[212] Idomen. Ap. Athen. , lib. Xii. 

[213] Thucyd. , lib. Ii. , 16; Isoc. Areopag. , e. Xx. , p. 234. 

[214] If we believe with Plutarch that wives accompanied theirhusbands to the house of Aspasia (and it was certainly a popularcharge against Pericles that Aspasia served to corrupt the Athenianmatrons), they could not have been so jealously confined as writers, judging from passages in the Greek writers that describe not whatwomen were, but what women ought to be, desire us to imagine. And itmay be also observed, that the popular anecdotes represent Elpinice asa female intriguante, busying herself in politics, and mediatingbetween Cimon and Pericles; anecdotes, whether or not they be strictlyfaithful, that at least tend to illustrate the state of society. 

[215] As I propose, in a subsequent part of this work, to enter atconsiderable length into the social life and habits of the Athenians, I shall have full opportunity for a more detailed account of thesesingular heroines of Alciphron and the later comedians. 

[216] It was about five years after the death of Cimon that Periclesobtained that supreme power which resembled a tyranny, but was onlythe expression and concentration of the democratic will. 

[217] Theophrast. Ap. Plut. In vit. Per. 

[218] Justin, lib. Iii. , c. 6. 

[219] For the transfer itself there were excuses yet more plausiblethan that assigned by Justin. First, in the year following the breachbetween the Spartans and Athenians (B. C. 460), probably the same yearin which the transfer was effected, the Athenians were again at warwith the great king in Egypt; and there was therefore a show ofjustice in the argument noticed by Boeckh (though in the source whencehe derives it the argument applies to the earlier time of Aristides), that the transfer provided a place of greater security against thebarbarians. Secondly, Delos itself was already and had long beenunder Athenian influence. Pisistratus had made a purification of theisland [Herod. , lib. I. , c. 64], Delian soothsayers had predicted toAthens the sovereignty of the seas [Semius Delius, ap. Athen. , viii. ], and the Athenians seem to have arrogated a right of interference withthe temple. The transfer was probably, therefore, in appearance, little more than a transfer from a place under the power of Athens toAthens itself. Thirdly, it seems that when the question was firstagitated, during the life of Aristides, it was at the desire of one ofthe allies themselves (the Samians). [Plut. In vit. Aristid. Boeckh(vol. I. , 135, translation) has no warrant for supposing that Periclesinfluenced the Samians in the expression of this wish, becausePlutarch refers the story to the time of Aristides, during whose lifePericles possessed no influence in public affairs. ]

[220] The assertion of Diodorus (lib. Xii. , 38), that to Pericles wasconfided the superintendence and management of the treasure, iscorroborated by the anecdotes in Plutarch and elsewhere, whichrepresent Pericles as the principal administrator of the funds. 

[221] The political nature and bias of the Heliaea is apparent in thevery oath, preserved in Demost. Con. Tim. , p. 746, ed. Reiske. Inthis the heliast is sworn never to vote for the establishment oftyranny or oligarchy in Athens, and never to listen to any propositiontending to destroy the democratic constitution. That is, a manentered upon a judicial tribunal by taking a political oath!

[222] These courts have been likened to modern juries; but they werevery little bound by the forms and precedents which shackled thelatter. What a jury, even nowadays, a jury of only twelve persons, would be if left entirely to impulse and party feeling, any lawyerwill readily conceive. How much more capricious, uncertain, andprejudiced a jury of five hundred, and, in some instances, of onethousand or fifteen hundred! [By the junction of two or moredivisions, as in cases of Eisangelia. Poll. Viii. , 53 and 123; alsoTittman. ]

[223] "Designed by our ancestors, " says Aristotle (Pol. , lib. Viii, c. 3) not, as many now consider it, merely for delight, but fordiscipline that so the mind might be taught not only how honourably topursue business, but how creditably to enjoy leisure; for suchenjoyment is, after all, the end of business and the boundary ofactive life. 

[224] See Aristot. (Pol. , lib. Viii. , c. 6. )

[225] An anecdote in Gellius, lib. Xv. , c. 17, refers the date of thedisuse of this instrument to the age of Pericles and during theboyhood of Alcibiades. 

[226] Drawing was subsequently studied as a branch of educationessential to many of the common occupations of life. 

[227] Suid. 

[228] Hecataeus was also of Miletus. 

[229] Pausan. , ii. , c. 3: Cic. De Orat. , ii. , c. 53; Aulus Gellius, xv. , c. 23. 

[230] Fast. Hell. , vol. I. 

[231] A brilliant writer in the Edinburgh Review (Mr. Macauley) wouldaccount for the use of dialogue in Herodotus by the childishsimplicity common to an early and artless age--as the boor alwaysunconsciously resorts to the dramatic form of narration, and relateshis story by a series of "says he's" and "says I's. " But does not Mr. Macauley, in common with many others, insist far too much on theartlessness of the age and the unstudied simplicity of the writer?Though history itself was young, art was already at its zenith. Itwas the age of Sophocles, Phidias, and Pericles. It was from theAthenians, in their most polished period, that Herodotus received themost rapturous applause. Do not all accounts of Herodotus, as awriter, assure us that he spent the greater part of a long life incomposing, polishing, and perfecting his history; and is it not morein conformity with the characteristic spirit of the times, and themasterly effects which Herodotus produces, to conclude, that what wesuppose to be artlessness was, in reality, the premeditatedelaboration of art?

[232] Esther iii. , 12; viii. , 9: Ezra vi. , 1. 

[233] Herod. , vii. , 100. 

[234] About twenty-nine years younger. --Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , p. 7. 

[235] Cic. Acad. Quaest. , 4, Abbe de Canaye, Mem. De l'Acad. D'l* *crip. , tom. X. Etc. (*illegible letters)

[236] Diog. Laert. , cap. 6. , Cic. Acad. Quaest. 4, etc. 

[237] Arist. Metap. Diog. Laert. Cic. Quaest. 4. Etc. 

[238] It must ever remain a disputable matter how far the IonianPythagoras was influenced by affection for Dorian policy and customs, and how far he designed to create a state upon the old Dorian model. On the one hand, it is certain that he paid especial attention to therites and institutions most connected with the Dorian deity, Apollo--that, according to his followers, it was from that god that he derivedhis birth, a fiction that might be interpreted into a Dorian origin;he selected Croton as his residence, because it was under theprotection of "his household god;" his doctrines are said to have beendelivered in the Dorian dialect; and much of his educationaldiscipline, much of his political system, bear an evident affinity tothe old Cretan and Spartan institutions. But, on the other hand, itis probable, that Pythagoras favoured the god of Delphi, partly fromthe close connexion which many of his symbols bore to the metaphysicalspeculations the philosopher had learned to cultivate in the schoolsof oriental mysticism, and partly from the fact that Apollo was thepatron of the medical art, in which Pythagoras was an eminentprofessor. And in studying the institutions of Crete and Sparta, hemight rather have designed to strengthen by examples the system he hadalready adopted, than have taken from those Dorian cities theprimitive and guiding notions of the constitution he afterwardestablished. And in this Pythagoras might have resembled mostreformers, not only of his own, but of all ages, who desire to go backto the earliest principles of the past as the sources of experience tothe future. In the Dorian institutions was preserved the originalcharacter of the Hellenic nation; and Pythagoras, perhaps, valued orconsulted them less because they were Dorian than because they wereancient. It seems, however, pretty clear, that in the character ofhis laws he sought to conform to the spirit and mode of legislationalready familiar in Italy, since Charondas and Zaleucus, whoflourished before him, are ranked by Diodorus and others among hisdisciples. 

[239] Livy dates it in the reign of Servius Tullus. 

[240] Strabo. 

[241] Iamblichus, c. Viii. , ix. See also Plato de Repub. , lib. X. 

[242] That the Achaean governments were democracies appearssufficiently evident; nor is this at variance with the remark ofXenophon, that timocracies were "according to the laws of theAchaeans;" since timocracies were but modified democracies. 

[243] The Pythagoreans assembled at the house of Milo, the wrestler, who was an eminent general, and the most illustrious of the discipleswere stoned to death, the house being fired. Lapidation wasessentially the capital punishment of mobs--the mode of inflictingdeath that invariably stamps the offender as an enemy to the populace. 

[244] Arist. Metaph. , i. , 3. 

[245] Diog. Laert. , viii. , 28. 

[246] Plut. In vit. Them. The Sophists were not, therefore, as iscommonly asserted, the first who brought philosophy to bear uponpolitics. 

[247] See, for evidence of the great gifts and real philosophy ofAnaxagoras, Brucker de Sect. Ion. , xix. 

[248] Arist. Eth. Eu. , i. , 5. 

[249] Archelaus began to teach during the interval between the firstand second visit of Anaxagoras. See Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , B. C. 450. 

[250] See the evidence of this in the Clouds of Aristophanes. 

[251] Plut. In vit. Per. 

[252] See Thucyd. , lib. V. , c. 18, in which the articles of peacestate that the temple and fane of Delphi should be independent, andthat the citizens should settle their own taxes, receive their ownrevenues, and manage their own affairs as a sovereign nation(autoteleis kai autodikois [consult on these words Arnold'sThucydides, vol. Ii. , p. 256, note 4]), according to the ancient lawsof their country. 

[253] Mueller's Dorians, vol. Ii. , p. 422. Athen. , iv. 

[254] A short change of administration, perhaps, accompanied thedefeat of Pericles in the debate on the Boeotian expedition. He wasevidently in power, since he had managed the public funds during theopposition of Thucydides; but when beaten, as we should say, "on theBoeotian question, " the victorious party probably came into office. 

[255] An ambush, according to Diodorus, lib. Xii. 

[256] Twenty talents, according to the scholiast of Aristophanes. Suidas states the amount variously at fifteen and fifty. 

[257] Who fled into Macedonia. --Theopomp. Ap. Strab. The number ofAthenian colonists was one thousand, according to Diodorus--twothousand, according to Theopompus. 

[258] Aristoph. Nub. , 213. 

[259] Thucyd. , i. , 111. 

[260] ibid. , i. , 115. 

[261] As is evident, among other proofs, from the story beforenarrated, of his passing his accounts to the Athenians with the itemof ten talents employed as secret service money. 

[262] The Propylaea alone (not then built) cost two thousand andtwelve talents (Harpocrat. In propylaia tauta), and some temples costa thousand talents each. [Plut. In vit. Per. ] If the speech ofPericles referred to such works as these, the offer to transfer theaccount to his own charge was indeed but a figure of eloquence. But, possibly, the accusation to which this offer was intended as a replywas applicable only to some individual edifice or some of the minorworks, the cost of which his fortune might have defrayed. We canscarcely indeed suppose, that if the affected generosity were but abombastic flourish, it could have excited any feeling but laughteramong an audience so acute. 

[263] The testimony of Thucydides (lib. Ii. , c. 5) alone suffices todestroy all the ridiculous imputations against the honesty of Pericleswhich arose from the malice of contemporaries, and are yet perpetuatedonly by such writers as cannot weigh authorities. Thucydides does notonly call him incorrupt, but "clearly or notoriously honest. "[Chraematon te diaphanos adorotatos. ] Plutarch and Isocrates serve tocorroborate this testimony. 

[264] Plut. In vit. Per. 

[265] Thucyd. , lib. Ii. , c. 65. 

[266] "The model of this regulation, by which Athens obtained themost extensive influence, and an almost absolute dominion over theallies, was possibly found in other Grecian states which had subjectconfederates, such as Thebes, Elis, and Argos. But on account of theremoteness of many countries, it is impossible that every trifle couldhave been brought before the court at Athens; we must thereforesuppose that each subject state had an inferior jurisdiction of itsown, and that the supreme jurisdiction alone belonged to Athens. Canit, indeed, be supposed that persons would have travelled from Rhodesor Byzantium, for the sake of a lawsuit of fifty or a hundreddrachmas? In private suits a sum of money was probably fixed, abovewhich the inferior court of the allies had no jurisdiction, whilecases relating to higher sums were referred to Athens. There can beno doubt that public and penal causes were to a great extent decidedin Athens, and the few definite statements which are extant refer tolawsuits of this nature. "--Boeckh, Pol. Econ. Of Athens, vol. Ii. , p. 142, 143, translation. 

[267] In calculating the amount of the treasure when transferred toAthens, Boeckh (Pol. Econ. Of Athens, vol. I. , p. 193, translation) isgreatly misled by an error of dates. He assumes that the fund hadonly existed ten years when brought to Athens: whereas it had existedabout seventeen, viz. , from B. C. 477 to B. C. 461, or rather B. C. 460. And this would give about the amount affirmed by Diodorus, xii. , p. 38 (viz. , nearly 8000 talents), though he afterward raises it to10, 000. But a large portion of it must have been consumed in warbefore the transfer. Still Boeckh rates the total of the sumtransferred far too low, when he says it cannot have exceeded 1800talents. It more probably doubled that sum. 

[268] Such as Euboea, see p. 212. 

[269] Vesp. Aristoph. 795. 

[270] Knight's Prolegomena to Homer; see also Boeckh (translation), vol. I. , p. 25. 

[271] Viz. , B. C. 424; Ol. 89. 

[272] Thucyd. , iv. , 57. 

[273] See Chandler's Inscript. 

[274] In the time of Alcibiades the tribute was raised to onethousand three hundred talents, and even this must have been mostunequally assessed, if it were really the pecuniary hardship theallies insisted upon and complained of. But the resistance made toimposts upon matters of feeling or principle in our own country, as, at this day, in the case of church-rates, may show the real nature ofthe grievance. It was not the amount paid, but partly the degradationof paying it, and partly, perhaps, resentment in many places at someunfair assessment. Discontent exaggerates every burden, and a featheris as heavy as a mountain when laid on unwilling shoulders. When thenew arrangement was made by Alcibiades or the later demagogues, Andocides asserts that some of the allies left their native countriesand emigrated to Thurii. But how many Englishmen have emigrated toAmerica from objections to a peculiar law or a peculiar impost, whichstate policy still vindicates, or state necessity still maintains!The Irish Catholic peasant, in reality, would not, perhaps, be muchbetter off, in a pecuniary point of view, if the tithes weretransferred to the rental of the landlord, yet Irish Catholics haveemigrated in hundreds from the oppression, real or imaginary, ofProtestant tithe-owners. Whether in ancient times or modern, it isnot the amount of taxation that makes the grievance. People will paya pound for what they like, and grudge a farthing for what they hate. I have myself known men quit England because of the stamp duty onnewspapers!

[275] Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 75; Bloomfield's translation. 

[276] A sentiment thus implied by the Athenian ambassadors: "We arenot the first who began the custom which has ever been an establishedone, that the weaker should be kept under by the stronger. " TheAthenians had, however, an excuse more powerful than that of theancient Rob Roys. It was the general opinion of the time that therevolt of dependant allies might be fairly punished by one that couldpunish them--(so the Corinthians take care to observe). And it doesnot appear that the Athenian empire at this period was more harsh thanthat of other states to their dependants. The Athenian ambassadors(Thucyd. , i. , 78) not only quote the far more galling oppressions theIonians and the isles had undergone from the Mede, but hint that theSpartans had been found much harder masters than the Athenians. 

[277] Only twelve drachma each yearly: the total, therefore, iscalculated by the inestimable learning of Boeckh not to have exceededtwenty-one talents. 

[278] Total estimated at thirty-three talents. 

[279] The state itself contributed largely to the plays, and thelessee of the theatre was also bound to provide for several expenses, in consideration of which he received the entrance money. 

[280] On the authority of Pseud. Arist. Oecon. , 2-4. 

[281] In the expedition against Sicily the state supplied the vesseland paid the crew. The trierarchs equipped the ship and gavevoluntary contributions besides. --Thucyd. , vi. , 31. 

[282] Liturgies, with most of the Athenian laws that seemed to harassthe rich personally, enhanced their station and authority politically. It is clear that wherever wealth is made most obviously available tothe state, there it will be most universally respected. Thus is itever in commercial countries. In Carthage of old, where, according toAristotle, wealth was considered virtue, and in England at this day, where wealth, if not virtue, is certainly respectability. 

[283] And so well aware of the uncertain and artificial tenure of theAthenian power were the Greek statesmen, that we find it among thearguments with which the Corinthian some time after supported thePeloponnesian war, "that the Athenians, if they lost one sea-fight, would be utterly subdued;"--nor, even without such a mischance, couldthe flames of a war be kindled, but what the obvious expedient[Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 121. As the Corinthians indeed suggested, Thucyd. , lib. I. , c. 122] of the enemy would be to excite the Athenianallies to revolt, and the stoppage or diminution of the tribute wouldbe the necessary consequence. 

[284] If the courts of law among the allies were not removed toAthens till after the truce with Peloponnesus, and indeed till afterthe ostracism of Thucydides, the rival of Pericles, the value of thejudicial fees did not, of course, make one of the considerations forpeace; but there would then have been the mightier consideration ofthe design of that transfer which peace only could effect. 

[285] Plut. In vit. Per. 

[286] "As a vain woman decked out with jewels, " was the sarcasticreproach of the allies. --Plut. In vit. Per. 

[287] The Propylaea was built under the direction of Mnesicles. Itwas begun 437 B. C. , in the archonship of Euthymenes, three yearsafter the Samian war, and completed in five years. Harpocrat. Inpropylaia tauta. 

[288] Plut. In vit. Per. 

[289] See Arnold's Thucydides, ii. , 13, note 12. 

[290] "Their bodies, too, they employ for the state as if they wereany one's else but their own; but with minds completely their own, they are ever ready to render it service. "--Thucyd. , i. , 70, Bloomfield's translation. 

[291] With us, Juries as well as judges are paid, and, in ordinarycases, at as low a rate as the Athenian dicasts (the different valueof money being considered), viz. , common jurymen one shilling for eachtrial, and, in the sheriffs' court, fourpence. What was so perniciousin Athens is perfectly harmless in England; it was the large member ofthe dicasts which made the mischief, and not the system of paymentitself, as unreflecting writers have so often asserted. 

[292] See Book IV. , Chapter V. VII. Of this volume. 

[293] At first the payment of the dicasts was one obolus. --(Aristoph. Nubes, 861. ) Afterward, under Cleon, it seems to have been increasedto three; it is doubtful whether it was in the interval ever twoobols. Constant mistakes are made between the pay, and even theconstitution, of the ecclesiasts and the dicasts. But the reader mustcarefully remember that the former were the popular legislators, thelatter, the popular judges or jurors--their functions were a mixtureof both. 

[294] Misthos ekklaesiastikos--the pay of the ecclesiasts, or popularassembly. 

[295] We know not how far the paying of the ecclesiasts was the workof Pericles: if it were, it must have been at, or after, the time wenow enter upon, as, according to Aristophanes (Eccles. , 302), thepeople were not paid during the power of Myronides, who flourished, and must have fallen with Thucydides, the defeated rival of Pericles. 

[296] The Athenians could extend their munificence even toforeigners, as their splendid gift, said to have been conferred onHerodotus, and the sum of ten thousand drachmas, which Isocratesdeclares them to have bestowed on Pindar. [Isoc. De Antidosi. ]

[297] The pay of the dicast and the ecclesiast was, as we have justseen, first one, then three obols; and the money paid to the infirmwas never less than one, nor more than two obols a day. The commonsailors, in time of peace, received four obols a day. Neither anecclesiast nor a dicast was, therefore, paid so much as a commonsailor. 

[298] Such as the Panathenaea and Hieromeniae. 

[299] From klaeroi, lots. The estates and settlements of a cleruchiawere divided among a certain number of citizens by lot. 

[300] The state only provided the settlers with arms, and defrayedthe expenses of their journey. See Boeckh, Pol. Econ. Of Athens, vol. Ii. , p. 170 (translation). 

[301] Andoc. Orat. De Pace. 

[302] These institutions differed, therefore, from coloniesprincipally in this: the mother country retained a firm hold over thecleruchi--could recall them or reclaim their possessions, as a penaltyof revolt: the cleruchi retained all the rights, and were subject tomost of the conditions, of citizens. [Except, for instance, theliturgies. ] Lands were given without the necessity of quittingAthens--departure thence was voluntary, although it was the ordinarychoice. But whether the cleruchi remained at home or repaired totheir settlement, they were equally attached to Athenian interests. From their small number, and the enforced and unpopular nature oftheir tenure, their property, unlike that of ordinary colonists, depended on the power and safety of the parent state: they were not somuch transplanted shoots as extended branches of one tree, takingtheir very life from the same stem. In modern times, Ireland suggestsa parallel to the old cleruchiae--in the gift of lands to Englishadventurers--in the long and intimate connexion which subsistedbetween the manners, habits, and political feeling of the Englishsettlers and the parent state--in the separation between the settlersand the natives; and in the temporary power and subsequent feeblenesswhich resulted to the home government from the adoption of a systemwhich garrisoned the land, but exasperated the inhabitants. 

[303] Nor were even these composed solely of Athenians, but of mixedand various races. The colony to Amphipolis (B. C. 465) is the firstrecorded colony of the Athenians after the great Ionic migrations. 

[304] In the year in which the colony of Thurium or Thurii wasfounded, the age of Lysias was fifteen, that of Herodotus forty-one. 

[305] Plut. In vit. Per. Schol. Aristoph. Av. , 521. 

[306] Viz. , Callias, Lysippus, and Cratinus. See Athenaeus, lib. Viii. , p. 344. The worthy man seems to have had the amiableinfirmities of a bon vivant. 

[307] Plut. In vit. Them. 

[308] Historians, following the received text in Plutarch, haveretailed the incredible story that the rejected claimants were soldfor slaves; but when we consider the extraordinary agitation it musthave caused to carry such a sentence against so many persons, amounting to a fourth part of the free population--when we rememberthe numerous connexions, extending throughout at least four timestheir own number, which five thousand persons living long undisturbedand unsuspected as free citizens must have formed, it is impossible toconceive that such rigour could even have been attempted withoutcreating revolution, sedition, or formidable resistance. Yet thismeasure, most important if attended with such results--most miraculousif not--is passed over in total silence by Thucydides and by everyother competent authority. A luminous emendation by Mr. Clinton(Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , second edition, p. 52 and 390, note p)restores the proper meaning. Instead of heprataesan, he proposesapaelathaesan--the authorities from Lysias quoted by Mr. Clinton (p. 390) seem to decide the matter. "These five thousand disfranchisedcitizens, in B. C. 544, partly supplied the colony to Thurium in thefollowing year, and partly contributed to augment the number of theMetoeci. "

[309] Fourteen thousand two hundred and forty, according toPhilochorus. By the term "free citizens" is to be understood thosemale Athenians above twenty--that is, those entitled to vote in thepublic assembly. According to Mr. Clinton's computation, the womenand children being added, the fourteen thousand two hundred and fortywill amount to about fifty-eight thousand six hundred and forty, asthe total of the free population. 

[310] Thucyd. , i. , c. 40. 

[311] See the speech of the Corinthians. --Thucyd. , lib. I. , 70. 

[312] Who was this Thucydides? The rival of Pericles had been exiledless than ten years before [in fact, about four years ago; viz. , B. C. 444]; and it is difficult to suppose that he could have been recalledbefore the expiration of he sentence, and appointed to command, at thevery period when the power and influence of Pericles were at theirheight. Thucydides, the historian, was about thirty-one, an age atwhich so high a command would scarcely, at that period, have beenbestowed upon any citizen, even in Athens, where men mixed in publicaffairs earlier than in other Hellenic states [Thucydides himself(lib. V. , 43) speaks of Alcibiades as a mere youth (at least one whowould have been so considered in any other state), at a time when hecould not have been much less, and was probably rather more thanthirty]; besides, had Thucydides been present, would he have given usno more ample details of an event so important? There were severalwho bore this name. The scholiast on Aristophanes (Acharn. , v. , 703)says there were four, whom he distinguishes thus--1st, the historian;2d, the Gargettian; 3d, the Thessalian; 4th, the son of Melesias. Thescholiast on the Vespae (v. , 991) enumerates the same, and calls themall Athenians. The son of Melesias is usually supposed the opponentof Pericles--he is so called by Androtion. Theopompus, however, saysthat it was the son of Pantanus. Marcellinus (in vit. Thucyd. , p. Xi. ) speaks of many of the name, and also selects four for specialnotice. 1st, the historian; 2d, the son of Melesias; 3d, aPharsalian; 4th, a poet of the ward of Acherdus, mentioned byAndrotion, and called the son of Ariston. Two of this name, thehistorian and the son of Melesias, are well known to us; but, for thereasons I have mentioned, it is more probable that one of the otherswas general in the Samian war. A third Thucydides (the Thessalian orPharsalian) is mentioned by the historian himself (viii. , 92). I takethe Gargettian (perhaps the son of Pantanus named by Theopompus) tohave been the commander in the expedition. 

[313] Plut. In vit. Per. 

[314] Alexis ap. Ath. , lib. Xiii. 

[315] At this period the Athenians made war with a forbearance notcommon in later ages. When Timotheus besieged Samos, he maintainedhis armament solely on the hostile country, while a siege of ninemonths cost Athens so considerable a sum. 

[316] Plut. In vit. Per. 

The contribution levied on the Samians was two hundred talents, proportioned, according to Diodorus, to the full cost of theexpedition. But as Boeckh (Pol. Econ. Of Athens, vol. I. , p. 386, trans. ) well observes, "This was a very lenient reckoning; a ninemonths' siege by land and sea, in which one hundred and ninety-ninetriremes [Boeckh states the number of triremes at one hundred andninety-nine, but, in fact, there were two hundred and fifteen vesselsemployed, since we ought not to omit the sixteen stationed on theCarian coast, or despatched to Lesbos and Chios for supplies] wereemployed, or, at any rate, a large part of this number, for aconsiderable time, must evidently have caused a greater expense, andthe statement, therefore, of Isocrates and Nepos, that twelve hundredtalents were expended on it, appears to be by no means exaggerated. "

[317] It was on Byzantium that they depended for the corn theyimported from the shores of the Euxine. 

[318] The practice of funeral orations was probably of very ancientorigin among the Greeks: but the law which ordained them at Athens isreferred by the scholiast on Thucydides (lib. Ii. , 35) to Solon; whileDiodorus, on the other hand, informs us it was not passed till afterthe battle of Plataea. It appears most probable that it was a usageof the heroic times, which became obsolete while the little feudsamong the Greek states remained trivial and unimportant; but, afterthe Persian invasion, it was solemnly revived, from the magnitude ofthe wars which Greece had undergone, and the dignity and holiness ofthe cause in which the defenders of their country had fallen. 

[319] Ouk an muraisi graus eous aegeitheo. 

This seems the only natural interpretation of the line, in which, fromnot having the context, we lose whatever wit the sentence may havepossessed--and witty we must suppose it was, since Plutarch evidentlythinks it a capital joke. In corroboration of this interpretation ofan allusion which has a little perplexed the commentators, we mayobserve, that ten years before, Pericles had judged a sarcasm upon theage of Elpinice the best way to silence her importunities. Theanecdote is twice told by Plutarch, in vit. Cim. , c. 14, and in vit. Per. , c. 10. 

[320] Aristot. , Poet. Iv. 

[321] "As he was removed from Cos in infancy, the name of his adoptedcountry prevailed over that of the country of his birth, andEpicharmus is called of Syracuse, though born at Cos, as Apollonius iscalled the Rhodian, though born at Alexandria. "--Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , introduction. 

[322] Moliere. 

[323] Laertius, viii. For it is evident that Epicharmus thephilosopher was no other than Epicharmus the philosophical poet--thedelight of Plato, who was himself half a Pythagorean. --See Bentley, Diss. Phal. , p. 201; Laertius, viii. , 78; Fynes Clinton, Fast. Hell. , vol. Ii. , introduction, p. 36 (note g). 

[324] A few of his plays were apparently not mythological, but theywere only exceptions from the general rule, and might have beenwritten after the less refining comedies of Magnes at Athens. 

[325] A love of false antithesis. 

[326] In Syracuse, however, the republic existed when Epicharmusfirst exhibited his comedies. His genius was therefore formed by arepublic, though afterward fostered by a tyranny. 

[327] For Crates acted in the plays of Cratinus before he turnedauthor. (See above. ) Now the first play of Crates dates two yearsbefore the first recorded play (the Archilochi) of Cratinus;consequently Cratinus must have been celebrated long previous to theexhibition of the Archilochi--indeed, his earlier plays appear, according to Aristophanes, to have been the most successful, until theold gentleman, by a last vigorous effort, beat the favourite play ofAristophanes himself. 

[328] That the magistrature did not at first authorize comedy seems aproof that it was not at the commencement considered, like tragedy, ofa religious character. And, indeed, though modern critics constantlyurge upon us its connexion with religion, I doubt whether at any timethe populace thought more of its holier attributes and associationsthan the Neapolitans of to-day are impressed with the sanctity of thecarnival when they are throwing sugarplums at each other. 

[329] In the interval, however, the poets seem to have sought toelude the law, since the names of two plays (the Satyroi and theKoleophoroi) are recorded during this period--plays which probablyapproached comedy without answering to its legal definition. It mightbe that the difficulty rigidly to enforce the law against the spiritof the times and the inclination of the people was one of the causesthat led to the repeal of the prohibition. 

[330] Since that siege lasted nine months of the year in which thedecree was made. 

[331] Aristophanes thus vigorously describes the applauses thatattended the earlier productions of Cratinus. I quote from themasterly translation of Mr. Mitchell. 

 "Who Cratinus may forget, or the storm of whim and wit, Which shook theatres under his guiding; When Panegyric's song poured her flood of praise along, Who but he on the top wave was riding?"

 * * * * * * *

 "His step was as the tread of a flood that leaves its bed, And his march it was rude desolation, " etc. Mitchell's Aristoph. , The Knights, p. 204. 

The man who wrote thus must have felt betimes--when, as a boy, hefirst heard the roar of the audience--what it is to rule the humoursof eighteen thousand spectators!

[332] De l'esprit, passim. 

[333] De Poet. , c. 26. 

[334] The oracle that awarded to Socrates the superlative degree ofwisdom, gave to Sophocles the positive, and to Euripides thecomparative degree, Sophos Sophoclaes; sophoteros d'Euripoeaes; 'Andron de panton Sokrataes sophotatos. 

Sophocles is wise--Euripides wiser--but wisest of all men is Socrates. 

[335] The Oresteia. 

[336] For out of seventy plays by Aeschylus only thirteen weresuccessful; he had exhibited fifteen years before he obtained hisfirst prize; and the very law passed in honour of his memory, that achorus should be permitted to any poet who chose to re-exhibit hisdramas, seems to indicate that a little encouragement of suchexhibition was requisite. This is still more evident if we believe, with Quintilian, that the poets who exhibited were permitted tocorrect and polish up the dramas, to meet the modern taste, and playthe Cibber to the Athenian Shakspeare. 

[337] Athenaeus, lib. Xiii. , p. 603, 604. 

[338] He is reported, indeed, to have said that he rejoiced in theold age which delivered him from a severe and importunate taskmaster. --Athen. , lib. 12, p. 510. But the poet, nevertheless, appears tohave retained his amorous propensities, at least, to the last. --SeeAthenaeus, lib. 13, p. 523. 

[339] He does indeed charge Sophocles with avarice, but he atones forit very handsomely in the "Frogs. "

[340] M. Schlegel is pleased to indulge in one of his mostdeclamatory rhapsodies upon the life, "so dear to the gods, " of this"pious and holy poet. " But Sophocles, in private life, was aprofligate, and in public life a shuffler and a trimmer, if notabsolutely a renegade. It was, perhaps, the very laxity of hisprinciples which made him thought so agreeable a fellow. At least, such is no uncommon cause of personal popularity nowadays. Peoplelose much of their anger and envy of genius when it throws them down abundle or two of human foibles by which they can climb up to itslevel. 

[341] It is said, indeed, that the appointment was the reward of asuccessful tragedy; it was more likely due to his birth, fortune, andpersonal popularity. 

[342] It seems, however, that Pericles thought very meanly of hiswarlike capacities. --See Athenaeus, lib. 13, p. 604. 

[343] Oedip. Tyr. , 1429, etc. 

[344] When Sophocles (Athenaeus, i. , p. 22) said that Aeschyluscomposed befittingly, but without knowing it, his saying evinced thestudy his compositions had cost himself. 

[345] "The chorus should be considered as one of the persons in thedrama, should be a part of the whole, and a sharer in the action, notas in Euripides, but as in Sophocles. "--Aristot. De Poet. , Twining'stranslation. But even in Sophocles, at least in such of his plays asare left to us, the chorus rarely, if ever, is a sharer in the outwardand positive action of the piece; it rather carries on and expressesthe progress of the emotions that spring out of the action. 

[346] --akno toi pros s' aposkopois' anax. --Oedip. Tyr. , 711. 

This line shows how much of emotion the actor could express in spiteof the mask. 

[347] "Of all discoveries, the best is that which arises from theaction itself, and in which a striking effect is produced by probableincidents. Such is that in the Oedipus of Sophocles. "--Aristot. DePoet. , Twining's translation. 

[348] But the spot consecrated to those deities which men "tremble toname, " presents all the features of outward loveliness that contrastand refine, as it were, the metaphysical terror of the associations. And the beautiful description of Coloneus itself, which is the passagethat Sophocles is said to have read to his judges, before whom he wasaccused of dotage, seems to paint a home more fit for the graces thanthe furies. The chorus inform the stranger that he has come to "thewhite Coloneus;"

 "Where ever and aye, through the greenest vale Gush the wailing notes of the nightingale From her home where the dark-hued ivy weaves With the grove of the god a night of leaves; And the vines blossom out from the lonely glade, And the suns of the summer are dim in the shade, And the storms of the winter have never a breeze, That can shiver a leaf from the charmed trees; For there, oh ever there, With that fair mountain throng, Who his sweet nurses were, [the nymphs of Nisa] Wild Bacchus holds his court, the conscious woods among! Daintily, ever there, Crown of the mighty goddesses of old, Clustering Narcissus with his glorious hues Springs from his bath of heaven's delicious dews, And the gay crocus sheds his rays of gold. And wandering there for ever The fountains are at play, And Cephisus feeds his river From their sweet urns, day by day. The river knows no dearth; Adown the vale the lapsing waters glide, And the pure rain of that pellucid tide Calls the rife beauty from the heart of earth. While by the banks the muses' choral train Are duly heard--and there, Love checks her golden rein. "

[349] Geronta dorthoun, phlauron, os neos pesae. Oedip. Col. , 396. 

Thus, though his daughter had only grown up from childhood to earlywomanhood, Oedipus has passed from youth to age since the date of theOedipus Tyrannus. 

[350] See his self-justification, 960-1000. 

[351] As each poet had but three actors allowed him, the song of thechorus probably gave time for the representative of Theseus to changehis dress, and reappear as Polynices. 

[352] The imagery in the last two lines has been amplified from theoriginal in order to bring before the reader what the representationwould have brought before the spectator. 

[353] Mercury. 

[354] Proserpine. 

[355] Autonamos. --Antig. , 821. 

[356] Ou toi synechthein, alla symphilein ephun. Antig. , 523. 

[357] Ceres. 

[358] Hyper dilophon petras--viz. , Parnassus. The Bacchanalian lighton the double crest of Parnassus, which announced the god, is afavourite allusion with the Greek poets. 

[359] His mother, Semele. 

[360] Aristotle finds fault with the incident of the son attemptingto strike his father, as being shocking, yet not tragic--that is, theviolent action is episodical, since it is not carried into effect;yet, if we might connect the plot of the "Antigone" with the formerplays of either "Oedipus, " there is something of retribution in theattempted parricide when we remember the hypocritical and cruelseverity of Creon to the involuntary parricide of Oedipus. The wholedescription of the son in that living tomb, glaring on his father withhis drawn sword, the dead form of his betrothed, with the subsequentpicture of the lovers joined in death, constitutes one of the mostmasterly combinations of pathos and terror in ancient or modernpoetry. 

[361] This is not the only passage in which Sophocles expressesfeminine wo by silence. In the Trachiniae, Deianira vanishes in thesame dumb abruptness when she hears from her son the effect of thecentaur's gift upon her husband. 

[362] According to that most profound maxim of Aristotle, that intragedy a very bad man should never be selected as the object ofchastisement, since his fate is not calculated to excite oursympathies. 

[363] Electra, I. 250-300. 

[364] When (line 614) Clytemnestra reproaches Electra for usinginsulting epithets to a mother--and "Electra, too, at such a time oflife"--I am surprised that some of the critics should deem it doubtfulwhether Clytemnestra meant to allude to her being too young or toomature for such unfilial vehemence. Not only does the age of Orestes, so much the junior to Electra, prove the latter signification to bethe indisputable one, but the very words of Electra herself to heryounger sister, Chrysothemis, when she tells her that she is "growingold, unwedded. "

 Estos'onde tou chronou alektra gaearskousan anumegaia te. 

Brunck has a judicious note on Electra's age, line 614. 

[365] Macbeth, act i. , scene 5. 

[366] See Note [376]. 

[367] Sophocles skilfully avoids treading the ground consecrated toAeschylus. He does not bring the murder before us with the strugglesand resolve of Orestes. 

[368] This is very characteristic of Sophocles; he is especially fondof employing what may be called "a crisis in life" as a source ofimmediate interest to the audience. So in the "Oedipus at Coloneus, "Oedipus no sooner finds he is in the grove of the Furies than he knowshis hour is approaching; so, also, in the "Ajax, " the Nunciusannounces from the soothsayer, that if Ajax can survive the one daywhich makes the crisis of his life, the anger of the goddess willcease. This characteristic of the peculiar style of Sophocles mightbe considered as one of the proofs (were any wanting) of theauthenticity of the "Trachiniae. "

[369] M. Schlegel rather wantonly accuses Deianira of "levity"--allher motives, on the contrary, are pure and high, though tender andaffectionate. 

[370] Observe the violation of the unity which Sophocles, the mostartistical of all the Greek tragedians, does not hesitate to commitwhenever he thinks it necessary. Hyllus, at the beginning of theplay, went to Cenaeum; he has been already there and back--viz. , adistance from Mount Oeta to a promontory in Euboea, during the timeabout seven hundred and thirty lines have taken up in recital! Nor isthis all: just before the last chorus--only about one hundred linesback--Lichas set out to Cenaeum; and yet sufficient time is supposedto have elapsed for him to have arrived there--been present at asacrifice--been killed by Hercules--and after all this, for Hyllus, who tells the tale, to have performed the journey back to Trachin. 

[371] Even Ulysses, the successful rival of Ajax, exhibits areluctance to face the madman which is not without humour. 

[372] Potter says, in common with some other authorities, that "wemay be assured that the political enmity of the Athenians to theSpartans and Argives was the cause of this odious representation ofMenelaus and Agamemnon. " But the Athenians had, at that time, nopolitical enmity with the Argives, who were notoriously jealous of theSpartans; and as for the Spartans, Agamemnon and Menelaus were nottheir heroes and countrymen. On the contrary, it was the thrones ofMenelaus and Agamemnon which the Spartans overthrew. The royalbrothers were probably sacrificed by the poet, not the patriot. Thedramatic effects required that they should be made the foils to themanly fervour of Teucer and the calm magnanimity of Ulysses. 

[373] That the catastrophe should be unhappy! Aristot. , Poet. , xiii. 

In the same chapter Aristotle properly places in the second rank offable those tragedies which attempt the trite and puerile moral ofpunishing the bad and rewarding the good. 

[374] When Aristophanes (in the character of Aeschylus) ridiculesEuripides for the vulgarity of deriving pathos from the rags, etc. , ofhis heroes, he ought not to have omitted all censure of the rags andsores of the favourite hero of Sophocles. And if the Telephus of thefirst is represented as a beggar, so also is the Oedipus at Coloneusof the latter. Euripides has great faults, but he has been unfairlytreated both by ancient and modern hypercriticism. 

[375] The single effects, not the plots. 

[376] "Polus, celebrated, " says Gellius, "throughout all Greece, ascientific actor of the noblest tragedies. " Gellius relates of him ananecdote, that when acting the Electra of Sophocles, in that scenewhere she is represented with the urn supposed to contain herbrother's remains, he brought on the stage the urn and the relics ofhis own son, so that his lamentations were those of real emotion. Poles acted the hero in the plays of Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus atColoneus. --Arrian. Ap. Stob. , xcvii. , 28. The actors were no lessimportant personages on the ancient than they are on the modern stage. Aristotle laments that good poets were betrayed into episodes, orunnecessarily prolonging and adorning parts not wanted in the plot, soas to suit the rival performers. --Arist. De Poet. , ix. Precisely whatis complained of in the present day. The Attic performers were thebest in Greece--all the other states were anxious to engage them, butthey were liable to severe penalties if they were absent at the timeof the Athenian festivals. (Plut. In Alex. ) They were very highlyremunerated. Polus could earn no less than a talent in two days(Plut. In Rhet. Vit. ), a much larger sum (considering the relativevalues of money) than any English actor could now obtain for aproportionate period of service. Though in the time of Aristotleactors as a body were not highly respectable, there was nothing highlyderogatory in the profession itself. The high birth of Sophocles andAeschylus did not prevent their performing in their own plays. Actorsoften took a prominent part in public affairs; and Aristodemus, theplayer, was sent ambassador to King Philip. So great, indeed, was theimportance attached to this actor, that the state took on itself tosend ambassadors in his behalf to all the cities in which he hadengagements. --Aeschin. De Fals. Legat. , p. 30-203, ed. Reiske. 

[377] The Minerva Promachus. Hae megalae Athaena. 

[378] Zosimus, v. , p. 294. 

[379] Oedip. Colon. , 671, etc. 

[380] Oedip. Colon. , 691.