(about $140) required a great room for its stowage, and a yoke of oxen to draw it.” The object of this, he tell us, was to prevent its being used for the purchase of “foreign trumpery.”
THE PUBLIC TABLES.–The most peculiar, perhaps, of the Lycurgean institutions were the public meals. In order to correct the extravagance with which the tables of the rich were often spread, Lycurgus ordered that all the Spartan citizens should eat at public and common tables. Excepting the ephors, none, not even the kings, were excused from sitting at the common mess. One of the kings, returning from a long expedition, presumed to dine privately with his wife, but received therefor a severe reproof.
A luxury-loving Athenian, once visiting Sparta and seeing the coarse fare of the citizens, is reported to have declared that now he understood the Spartan disregard of life in battle. “Any one,” said he, “must naturally prefer death to life on such fare as this.”
EDUCATION OF THE YOUTH.–Children were considered as belonging to the state. Every infant was brought before the Council of Elders; and if it did not seem likely to become a robust and useful citizen, it was exposed in a mountain glen. At seven the education and training of the youth were committed to the charge of public officers, called boy-trainers. The aim of the entire course, as to the boys, was to make a nation of soldiers who should despise toil and danger and prefer death to military dishonor. Reading and writing were untaught, and the art of rhetoric was despised. Spartan brevity was a proverb, whence our word _laconic_ (from Laconia), implying a concise and pithy mode of expression. Boys were taught to respond in the fewest words possible. At the public tables they were not permitted to speak until questioned: they sat “silent as statues.” As Plutarch puts it, “Lycurgus was for having the money bulky, heavy, and of little value; and the language, on the contrary, very pithy and short, and a great deal of sense compressed in a few words.”
But before all things else the Spartan youth was taught to bear pain unflinchingly. Often he was scourged just for the purpose of accustoming his body to pain. Frequently, it is said, boys died under the lash, without betraying their suffering by look or moan.
Another custom tended to the same end as the foregoing usage. The boys were at times compelled to forage for their food. If detected, they were severely punished for having been so unskilful as not to get safely away with their booty. This custom, as well as the fortitude of the Spartan youth, is familiar to all through the story of the boy who, having stolen a young fox and concealed it beneath his tunic, allowed the animal to tear out his vitals, without betraying himself by the movement of a muscle.
The Cryptia, which has been represented as an organization of young Spartans who were allowed, as a means of rendering themselves ready and expert in war, to hunt and kill the Helots, seems in reality to have been a sort of police institution, designed to guard against uprisings of the serfs.
ESTIMATE OF THE SPARTAN INSTITUTIONS.–That the laws and regulations of the Spartan constitution were admirably adapted to the end in view,–the rearing of a nation of skilful and resolute warriors,–the long military supremacy of Sparta among the states of Greece abundantly attests. But when we consider the aim and object of the Spartan institutions, we must pronounce them low and unworthy. The true order of things was just reversed among the Lacedæmonians. Government exists for the individual: at Sparta the individual lived for the state. The body is intended to be the instrument of the mind: the Spartans reversed this, and attended to the education of the mind only so far as its development enhanced the effectiveness of the body as a weapon in warfare.
Spartan history teaches how easy it is for a nation, like an individual, to misdirect its energies–to subordinate the higher to the lower. It illustrates, too, the fact that only those nations that labor to develop that which is best and highest in man make helpful contributions to the progress of the world. Sparta, in significant contrast to Athens, bequeathed nothing to posterity.
THE MESSENIAN WARS.–The most important event in Spartan history between the age of Lycurgus and the commencement of the Persian War was the long contest with Messenia, known as the First and Second Messenian Wars (about 750-650 B.C.). Messenia was one of the districts of the Peloponnesus which, like Laconia, had been taken possession of by the Dorians at the time of the great invasion.
It is told that the Spartans, in the second war, falling into despair, sent to Delphi for advice. The oracle directed them to ask Athens for a commander. The Athenians did not wish to aid the Lacedæmonians, yet dared not oppose the oracle. So they sent Tyrtæus, a poet-schoolmaster, who they hoped and thought would prove of but little service to Sparta. Whatever truth there may be in this part of the story, it seems indisputable that during the Second Messenian War, Tyrtæus, an Attic poet, reanimated the drooping spirits of the Spartans by the energy of his martial strains. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that Sparta owed her final victory to the inspiring songs of this martial poet.
The conquered Messenians were reduced to serfdom, and their condition made as degrading and bitter as that of the Helots of Laconia. Many, choosing exile, pushed out into the western seas in search of new homes. Some of the fugitives founded Rhegium, in Italy; others, settling in Sicily, gave name and importance to the still existing city of Messina.
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF SPARTA.–After having secured possession of Messenia, Sparta conquered the southern part of Argolis. All the southern portion of the Peloponnesus was now subject to her commands.
On the north, Sparta extended her power over many of the villages, or townships, of Arcadia; but her advance in this direction having been checked by Tegea, one of the few important Arcadian cities, Sparta entered into an alliance with that city, which ever after remained her faithful friend and helper. This alliance was one of the main sources of Spartan preponderance in Greece during the next hundred years and more.
Sparta was now the most powerful state in the Peloponnesus. Her fame was spread even beyond the limits of Hellas. Croesus, king of Lydia, sought an alliance with her in his unfortunate war with Persia, which just now was the rising power in Asia.
3. THE GROWTH OF ATHENS.
THE ATTIC PEOPLE.–The population of Attica in historic times was essentially Ionian in race, but there were in it strains of other Hellenic stocks, besides some non-Hellenic elements as well. This mixed origin of the population is believed to be one secret of the versatile yet well- balanced character which distinguished the Attic people above all other branches of the Hellenic family. It is not the absolutely pure, but the mixed races, like the English people, that have made the largest contributions to civilization.
THE SITE OF ATHENS.–Four or five miles from the sea, a flat-topped rock, about one thousand feet in length and half as many in width, rises with abrupt cliffs, one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the plains of Attica. The security afforded by this eminence doubtless led to its selection as a stronghold by the early Attic settlers. Here a few buildings, perched upon the summit of the rock and surrounded by a palisade, constituted the beginning of the capital whose fame has spread over all the world.
THE KINGS OF ATHENS.–During the Heroic Age Athens was ruled by kings, like all the other Grecian cities. The names of Theseus and Codrus are the most noted of the regal line.
[Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS. (From a Photograph.)]
To Theseus tradition ascribed the work of uniting the different Attic villages, or cantons, twelve in number, into a single city, on the seat of the ancient Cecropia (see p. 92). This prehistoric union, however or by whomsoever effected, laid the basis of the greatness of Athens.
Respecting Codrus, the following legend is told: At one time the Dorians from the Peloponnesus invaded Attica. Codrus having learned that an oracle had assured them of success if they spared the life of the Athenian king, disguised himself, and, with a single companion, made an attack upon some Spartan soldiers, who instantly slew him. Discovering that the king of Athens had fallen by a Lacedæmonian sword, the Spartans despaired of taking the city, and withdrew from the country.
THE ARCHONS (1050?-612 B.C.).–Codrus was the last king of Athens. His successor, elected by the nobles, was given simply the name of Archon, or Ruler, for the reason, it is said, that no one was thought worthy to bear the title of the divine Codrus. The real truth is, that the nobles were transforming the Homeric monarchy into an oligarchy, and to effect the change were taking away from the king his royal powers. At the outset there was but one Archon, elected for life; later, there were nine, chosen annually.
Throughout these early times the government was in the hands of the nobles; the people, that is, the free farmers and artisans, having no part in the management of public affairs. The people at length demanded a voice in the government, or at least legal protection from the exactions and cruelties of the wealthy.
THE LAWS OF DRACO (about 620 B.C.).–To meet these demands, the nobles appointed one of their own number, Draco, to prepare a code of laws. He reduced existing customs and regulations to a definite and written constitution, assigning to the smallest offence the penalty of death. This cruel severity of the Draconian laws caused an Athenian orator to say of them that “they were written, not in ink, but in blood.” But for their harshness Draco was not responsible: he did not make them; their severity was simply a reflection of the harshness of those early times.
THE REBELLION OF CYLON (612 B.C.).–Soon after the enactment of Draco’s laws, which naturally served only to increase the discontent of the people, Cylon, a rich and ambitious noble, taking advantage of the state of affairs, attempted to overthrow the government and make himself supreme. He seized the citadel of the Acropolis, where he was closely besieged by the Archons. Finally the Archon Megacles offered the insurgents their lives on condition of surrender. They accepted the offer, but fearing to trust themselves among their enemies without some protection, fastened a string to a statue of Athena, and holding fast to this, descended from the citadel, into the streets of Athens. As they came in front of the altars of the Furies, the line broke; and Megacles, professing to believe that this mischance indicated that the goddess refused to shield them, caused them to be set upon and massacred.
The people were alarmed lest the fierce anger of the avenging Furies had been incurred by the slaughter of prisoners in violation of a sacred oath and before their very altars. Calamities that now befell the state deepened their apprehension. Thus the people were inflamed still more against the aristocracy. They demanded and finally secured the banishment of the Alcmæonidæ, the family to which Megacles belonged. Even the bones of the dead of the family were dug up, and cast beyond the frontiers. The people further insisted upon a fresh revision of the laws and a share in the government.
THE LAWS OF SOLON (594 B.C.).–Solon, a man held in great esteem by all classes, was chosen to draw up a new code of laws. He repealed many of the cruel laws of Draco; permitted the return of persons driven into exile; gave relief to the debtor class, especially to the poor farmers, whose little plots were covered with mortgages, by reducing the value of the money in which they would have to make payment; ordered those held in slavery for debt to be set free; and cancelled all fines payable to the state. These measures caused contentment and prosperity to take the place, everywhere throughout Attica, of previous discontent and wretchedness.
CHANGES IN THE ATHENIAN CONSTITUTION.–The changes wrought by Solon in the political constitution of Athens were equally wise and beneficent. He divided all the citizens of Athens into four classes, according to their income. Only members of the first class could hold the office of Archon; and only those of the first three classes were eligible to the Council of Elders; but every member of all the classes had the right to vote in the popular assembly.
Thus property instead of birth was made the basis of political rights. This completely changed the character of the government; it was no longer an exclusive oligarchy.
A council known as the Council of the Four Hundred was created by Solon. Its chief duties were to decide what matters might be discussed by the public assembly, and to execute the resolutions of that body.
THE TRIBUNAL OF THE AREOPAGUS.–Solon also enlarged the jurisdiction of the celebrated Tribunal of the Areopagus, a venerable council that from time out of memory had been held on the Areopagus, or Mars’ Hill, near the Acropolis. The judges sat beneath the open sky, that they might not be contaminated, it is said, by the breath of the criminals brought before them. To this court was committed the care of morals and religion. It was in the presence of this venerable tribunal, six hundred years after Solon’s time, that Paul stood when he made his eloquent defence of Christianity.
THE PUBLIC ASSEMBLY.–The public assembly, under the constitution of Solon, was made the most important of all the institutions of the state. It was the fountain of all power. Contrary to the rule in Sparta, any citizen had the right not only of voting, but of speaking on any question which the assembly had a right to discuss. Six thousand citizens were required to constitute a quorum to transact business in cases of special importance. This popular assembly grew into vast importance in later times. By it were discussed and decided questions affecting the entire Hellenic world.
These laws and institutions of Solon laid the basis of the Athenian democracy.
THE TYRANT PISISTRATUS (560-527 B.C.).–Solon had the misfortune of living to see his institutions used to set up a tyranny, by an ambitious kinsman, his nephew Pisistratus. This man courted popular favor, and called himself the “friend of the people.” One day, having inflicted many wounds upon himself, he drove his chariot hastily into the public square, and pretended that he had been thus set upon by the nobles, because of his devotion to the people’s cause. The people, moved with sympathy and indignation, voted him a guard of fifty men. Under cover of raising this company, Pisistratus gathered a much larger force, seized the Acropolis, and made himself master of Athens. Though twice expelled from the city, he as often returned, and finally succeeded in getting a permanent hold of the government.
The rule of the usurper was mild, and under him Athens enjoyed a period of great prosperity. He adorned the city with temples and other splendid buildings, and constructed great aqueducts. Just beyond the city walls, he laid out the Lyceum, a sort of public park, which became in after years the favorite resort of the philosophers and poets of Athens. He was a liberal patron of literature; and caused the Homeric poems to be collected and edited. He died 527 B.C., thirty-three years after his first seizure of the citadel. Solon himself said of him that he had no vice save ambition.
EXPULSION OF THE TYRANTS FROM ATHENS (510 B.C.).–The two sons of Pisistratus, Hippias and Hipparchus, succeeded to his power. At first they emulated the example of their father, and Athens flourished under their parental rule. But at length an unfortunate event gave an entirely different tone to the government. Hipparchus, having insulted a young noble, was assassinated. Hippias escaped harm, but the event caused him to become suspicious and severe. His rule now became a tyranny indeed, and was brought to an end in the following way.
After his last return to Athens, Pisistratus had sent the “accursed” Alcmæonidæ into a second exile. During this period of banishment an opportunity arose for them to efface the stain of sacrilege which was still supposed to cling to them on account of the old crime of Megacles. The temple at Delphi having been destroyed by fire, they contracted with the Amphictyons to rebuild it. They not only completed the work in the most honorable manner throughout, but even went so far beyond the terms of their contract as to use beautiful Parian marble for the front of the temple, when only common stone was required by the specifications.
By this act the exiled family won to such a degree the favor of the priests of the sacred college, that they were able to influence the utterances of the oracle. The invariable answer now of the Pythia to Spartan inquirers at the shrine was, “Athens must be set free.”
Moved at last by the repeated injunctions of the oracle, the Spartans resolved to drive Hippias from Athens. Their first attempt was unsuccessful; but in a second they were so fortunate as to capture the two children of the tyrant, who, to secure their release, agreed to leave the city (510 B.C.). He retired to Asia Minor, and spent the rest of his life, as we shall learn hereafter, seeking aid in different quarters to re- establish his tyranny in Athens. The Athenians passed a decree of perpetual exile against him and all his family.
THE REFORMS OF CLISTHENES (509 B.C.).–Straightway upon the expulsion of the Tyrant Hippias, there arose a great strife between the people, who of course wished to organize the government in accord with the constitution of Solon, and the nobles, who desired to re-establish the old aristocratical rule. Clisthenes, an aristocrat, espoused the cause of the popular party. Through his influence several important changes in the constitution, which rendered it still more democratical than under Solon, were now effected.
Athenian citizenship was conferred upon _all the free inhabitants of Attica_. This made such a radical change in the constitution in the interest of the masses, that Clisthenes rather than Solon is regarded by many as the real founder of the Athenian democracy.
OSTRACISM.–But of all the innovations or institutions of Clisthenes, that known as _ostracism_ was the most characteristic. By means of this process any person who had excited the suspicions or displeasure of the people could, without trial, be banished from Athens for a period of ten years. Six thousand votes cast against any person in a meeting of the popular assembly was a decree of banishment. The name of the person whose banishment was sought was written on a piece of pottery or a shell (in Greek _ostrakon_), hence the term _ostracism_.
The original design of this institution was to prevent the recurrence of such a usurpation as that of the Pisistratidæ. The privilege and power it gave the people were often abused, and many of the ablest and best statesmen of Athens were sent into exile through the influence of some demagogue who for the moment had caught the popular ear.
No stigma or disgrace attached to the person ostracized. The vote came to be employed, as a rule, simply to settle disputes between rival leaders of political parties. Thus the vote merely expressed political preference, the ostracized person being simply the defeated candidate for popular favor.
The institution was short-lived. It was resorted to for the last time during the Peloponnesian War (417 B.C.). The people then, in a freak, ostracized a man whom all admitted to be the meanest man in Athens. This was regarded as such a degradation of the institution, as well as such an honor to the mean man, that never thereafter did the Athenians degrade a good man, or honor a bad one, by a resort to the measure.
SPARTA OPPOSES THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.–The aristocratic party at Athens was naturally bitterly opposed to all these democratic innovations. The Spartans, also, viewed with disquiet and jealousy this rapid growth of the Athenian democracy, and tried to overthrow the new government and restore Hippias to power. But they did not succeed in their purpose, and Hippias went away to Persia to seek aid of King Darius. His solicitations, in connection with an affront which the Athenians just now offered the king himself by aiding his revolted subjects in Ionia, led directly up to the memorable struggle known as the Græco-Persian wars.
[Illustration: GREEK WARRIORS PREPARING FOR BATTLE.]
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GRÆCO-PERSIAN WARS.
(500-479 B.C.)
EXPEDITIONS OF DARIUS AGAINST GREECE.–In narrating the history of the Persians, we told how Darius, after having subdued the revolt of his Ionian subjects in Asia Minor, turned his armaments against the European Greeks, to punish them for the part they had taken in the capture and burning of Sardis. It will be recalled how ill-fated was his first expedition, which was led by his son-in-law Mardonius (see p. 80).
Undismayed by this disaster, Darius issued orders for the raising and equipping of another and stronger armament. Meanwhile he sent heralds to the various Grecian states to demand earth and water, which elements among the Persians were symbols of submission. The weaker states gave the tokens required; but the Athenians and Spartans threw the envoys of the king into pits and wells, and bade them help themselves to earth and water. By the beginning of the year 490 B.C., another Persian army of 120,000 men had been mustered for the second attempt upon Greece. This armament was intrusted to the command of the experienced generals Datis and Artaphernes; but was under the guidance of the traitor Hippias. A fleet of six hundred ships bore the army from the coasts of Asia Minor over the Aegean towards the Grecian shores.
After receiving the submission of the most important of the Cyclades, and capturing and sacking the city of Eretria upon the island of Euboea, the Persians landed at Marathon, barely one day’s journey from Athens. Here is a sheltered bay, which is edged by a crescent-shaped plain, backed by the rugged ranges of Parnes and Pentelicus. Upon this level ground the Persian generals drew up their army, flushed and confident with their recent successes.
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON (490 B.C.).–The Athenians were nerved by the very magnitude of the danger to almost superhuman energy. Slaves were transformed into soldiers by the promise of liberty. A fleet runner, Phidippides by name, was despatched to Sparta for aid. In just thirty-six hours he was in Sparta, which is one hundred and fifty miles from Athens. But it so happened that it lacked a few days of the full moon, during which interval the Spartans, owing to an old superstition, were averse to setting out upon a military expedition. They promised aid, but moved only in time to reach Athens when all was over. The Platæans, firm and grateful friends of the Athenians, on account of some former service, no sooner received the latter’s appeal for help than they responded to a man.
The Athenians and their faithful allies, numbering about ten thousand in all, under the command of Miltiades, were drawn up in battle array just where the hills of Pentelicus sink down into the plain of Marathon. The vast host of the Persians filled the level ground in their front. The fate of Greece and the future of Europe were in the keeping of Miltiades and his trusty warriors. Without waiting for the attack of the Persians, the Greeks charged and swept like a tempest from the mountain over the plain, pushed the Persians back towards the shore, and with great slaughter drove them to their ships.
Miltiades at once despatched a courier to Athens with intelligence of his victory. The messenger reached the city in a few hours, but so breathless from his swift run that, as the people thronged eagerly around him to hear the news he bore, he could merely gasp, “Victory is ours,” and fell dead.
But the danger was not yet past. The Persian fleet, instead of returning to the coast of Asia, bore down upon Athens. Informed by watchers on the hills of the movements of the enemy, Miltiades immediately set out with his little army for the capital, which he reached just at evening, the battle at Marathon having been won in the forenoon of that same day. The next morning, when the Persian generals would have made an attack upon the city, they found themselves confronted by the same men who but yesterday had beaten them back from the plains of Marathon. Shrinking from another encounter with these citizen-soldiers of Athens, the Persians spread their sails, and bore away towards the Ionian shore.
Thus the cloud that had lowered so threateningly over Hellas was for a time dissipated. The most imposing honors were accorded to the heroes who had achieved the glorious victory, and their names and deeds were transmitted to posterity, in song and marble. And as the gods were believed to have interposed in behalf of Greece, suitable recognition of their favor was made in gifts and memorials. A considerable part of the brazen arms and shields gathered from the battle-field was melted into a colossal statue of Athena, which was placed upon the Acropolis, as the guardian of Athens.
RESULTS OF THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.–The battle of Marathon is reckoned as one of the “decisive battles of the world.” It marks an epoch, not only in the life of Greece, but in that of Europe. Hellenic civilization was spared to mature its fruit, not for itself alone, but for the world. The battle decided that no longer the despotism of the East, with its repression of all individual action, but the freedom of the West, with all its incentives to personal effort, should control the affairs and mould the ideas and institutions of the future. It broke the spell of the Persian name, and destroyed forever the prestige of the Persian arms. It gave the Hellenic peoples that position of authority and pre-eminence that had been so long enjoyed by the successive races of the East. It especially revealed the Athenians to themselves. The consciousness of resources and power became the inspiration of their future acts. They performed great deeds thereafter because they believed themselves able to perform them.
MILTIADES FALLS INTO DISGRACE.–The distinguished services Miltiades had rendered his country, made him the hero of the hour at Athens. Taking advantage of the public feeling in his favor, he persuaded the Athenians to put in his hands a fleet for an enterprise respecting the nature of which no one save himself was to know anything whatever. Of course it was generally supposed that he meditated an attack upon the Persians or their allies, and with full faith in the judgment as well as in the integrity of their favorite, the Athenians gave him the command he asked.
But Miltiades abused the confidence imposed in him. He led the expedition against the island of Paros, simply to avenge some private wrong. The undertaking was unsuccessful, and Miltiades, severely wounded, returned to Athens, where he was brought to trial for his conduct. His never-to-be- forgotten services at Marathon pleaded eloquently for him, and he escaped being sentenced to death, but was subjected to a heavy fine. This he was unable to pay, and in a short time he died of his wound. The unfortunate affair left an ineffaceable blot upon a fame otherwise the most resplendent in Grecian story.
ATHENS PREPARES FOR PERSIAN VENGEANCE.–Many among the Athenians were inclined to believe that the battle of Marathon had freed Athens forever from the danger of a Persian invasion. But there was at least one among them who was clear-sighted enough to see that that battle was only the beginning of a great struggle. This was Themistocles, a sagacious, versatile, and ambitious statesman, who labored to persuade the Athenians to strengthen their navy, in order to be ready to meet the danger he foresaw.
Themistocles was opposed in this policy by Aristides, called the Just, a man of the most scrupulous integrity, who feared that Athens would make a serious mistake if she converted her land force into a naval armament. The contention grew so sharp between them that the ostracism was called into use to decide the matter. Six thousand votes were cast against Aristides, and he was sent into exile.
It is related that while the vote that ostracized him was being taken in the popular assembly, an illiterate peasant, who was a stranger to Aristides, asked him to write the name of Aristides upon his tablet. As he placed the name desired upon the shell, the statesman asked the man what wrong Aristides had ever done him. “None,” responded the voter; “I don’t even know him; but I am tired of hearing him called ‘the Just.'”
After the banishment of Aristides, Themistocles was free to carry out his naval policy without any serious opposition, and soon Athens had the largest fleet of any Greek city, with a harbor at Piræus.
XERXES’ PREPARATIONS TO INVADE GREECE.–No sooner had the news of the disaster at Marathon been carried to Darius than he began to make gigantic preparations to avenge this second defeat and insult. It was in the midst of these plans for revenge that, as we have already learned, death cut short his reign, and his son Xerxes came to the throne (see p. 80).
Urged on by his nobles, as well as by exiled Greeks at his court, who sought to gratify ambition or enjoy revenge in the humiliation and ruin of their native land, Xerxes, though at first disinclined to enter into a contest with the Greeks, at length ordered the preparations begun by his father to be pushed forward with the utmost energy. For eight years all Asia resounded with the din of preparation. Levies were made upon all the provinces that acknowledged the authority of the Great King, from India to the Hellespont. Vast contingents of vessels were furnished by the coast countries of the Mediterranean. Immense stores of provisions, the harvests of many years, were gathered into great storehouses along the intended line of march.
While all these preparations were going on in Asia itself, Phoenician and Egyptian architects were employed in spanning the Hellespont with a double bridge of boats, which was to unite the two continents as with a royal highway. At the same time, the isthmus at Mount Athos, in rounding which promontory the admirals of Mardonius had lost their fleet, was cut by a canal, traces of which may be seen at this day. Three years were consumed in these gigantic works. With them completed, or far advanced, Xerxes set out from his capital to join the countless hosts that from all quarters of the compass were gathering at Sardis, in Asia Minor.
DISUNION OF THE GREEKS: CONGRESS AT CORINTH (481 B.C.).–Startling rumors of the gigantic preparations that the Persian king was making to crush them were constantly borne across the Aegean to the ears of the Greeks in Europe. Finally came intelligence that Xerxes was about to begin his march. Something must now be done to meet the impending danger. Mainly through the exertions of Themistocles, a council of the Greek cities was convened at Corinth in the fall of 481 B.C.
But on account of feuds, jealousies, and party spirit, only a small number of the states of Hellas could be brought to act in concert. Argos would not join the proposed confederation through hatred of Sparta; Thebes, through jealousy of Athens. The Cretans, to whom an embassy had been sent soliciting aid, refused all assistance. Gelon, the Tyrant of Syracuse, offered to send over a large armament, provided that he were given the chief command of the allied forces. His aid on such terms was refused.
Thus, through different causes, many of the Greek cities held aloof from the confederation, so that only about fifteen or sixteen states were brought to unite their resources against the Barbarians; and even the strength of many of those cities that did enter into the alliance was divided by party spirit. The friends of aristocratical government were almost invariably friends of Persia, because a Persian victory in Greece proper meant what it had already meant in Ionia,–a suppression of the democracies as incompatible with the Persian form of government. Thus for the sake of a party victory, the aristocrats were ready to betray their country into the hands of the Barbarians. Furthermore, the Delphian oracle, aristocratical in its sympathies, was luke-warm and wavering, if not actually disloyal, and by its timid responses, disheartened the patriot party.
But under the inspiration of Themistocles the patriots in convention at Corinth determined upon desperate resistance to the Barbarians. It was at first decided to concentrate a strong force in the Vale of Tempe, and at that point to dispute the advance of the enemy; but this being found impracticable, it was resolved that the first stand against the invaders should be made at the pass of Thermopylæ.
The Spartans were given the chief command of both the land and the naval forces. The Athenians might fairly have insisted upon their right to the command of the allied fleet, but they patriotically waived their claim, for the sake of harmony.
THE HELLESPONTINE BRIDGES BROKEN.–As the vast army of Xerxes was about to move from Sardis, intelligence came that the bridges across the Hellespont had been wrecked by a violent tempest. It is said that Xerxes, in great wrath, ordered the architects to be put to death, and the sea to be bound with fetters and scourged. The scourgers faithfully performed their duty, at the same time gratuitously cursing the traitorous and rebellious Hellespont with what Herodotus calls “non-Hellenic and blasphemous terms.”
Other architects spanned the channel with two stronger and firmer bridges. Each roadway rested upon a row of from three to four hundred vessels, all securely anchored like modern pontoons. The bridges were each about one mile in length, and furnished with high parapets, that the horses and cattle might not be rendered uneasy at sight of the water.
PASSAGE OF THE HELLESPONT.–With the first indications of the opening spring of 480 B.C., just ten years after the defeat at Marathon, the vast Persian army was astir and concentrating from all points upon the Hellespont. The passage of this strait, as pictured to us in the inimitable narration of Herodotus, is one of the most dramatic of all the spectacles afforded by history.
Before the passage commenced, the bridges were strewn with the sacred myrtle and perfumed with incense from golden censers, while the sea was placated with libations poured by the king himself. As the east reddened with the approach of day, prayers were offered, and the moment the rays of the sun touched the bridges the passage began. To avoid accidents and delays, the trains of baggage wagons and the beasts of burden crossed by one causeway, leaving the other free for the march of the army. The first of the host to cross was the sacred guard of the Great King, the Ten Thousand Immortals, all crowned with garlands as in festival procession. Preceding the king, the gorgeous Chariot of the Sun moved slowly, drawn by eight milk-white steeds. Herodotus affirms that for seven days and seven nights the bridges groaned beneath the living tide that Asia was pouring into Europe. [Footnote: According to Herodotus, the land and naval forces of Xerxes amounted to 2,317,000 men, besides about 2,000,000 slaves and attendants. It is believed that these figures are a great exaggeration, and that the actual number of the Persian army could not have exceeded 900,000 men.]
BATTLE OF THERMOPYLÆ (480 B.C.).–Leading from Thessaly into Central Greece is a narrow pass, pressed on one side by the sea and on the other by rugged mountain ridges. At the foot of the cliffs break forth several hot springs, whence the name of the pass, Thermopylæ, or “Hot Gates.”
At this point, in accordance with the decision of the Corinthian Congress, was offered the first resistance to the progress of the Persian army. Leonidas, king of Sparta, with three hundred Spartan soldiers and about six thousand allies from different states of Greece, held the pass. As the Greeks were about to celebrate the Olympian games, which their religious scruples would not allow them to postpone, they left this handful of men unsupported to hold in check the army of Xerxes until the festival days should be past.
The Spartans could be driven from their advantageous position only by an attack in front, as the Grecian fleet prevented Xerxes from landing a force in their rear. Before assaulting them, Xerxes summoned them to give up their arms. The answer of Leonidas was, “Come and take them.” For two days the Persians tried to storm the pass. The Asiatics were driven to the attack by their officers armed with whips. But every attempt to force the way was repulsed; even the Ten Thousand Immortals were hurled back from the Spartan front like waves from a cliff.
But an act of treachery on the part of a native Greek rendered unavailing all the bravery of the keepers of the pass. A by-way leading over the mountains to the rear of the Spartans was revealed to Xerxes. The startling intelligence was brought to Leonidas that the Persians were descending the mountain-path in his rear. He saw instantly that all was lost. The allies were permitted to seek safety in flight while opportunity remained. But to him and his Spartan companions there could be no thought of retreat. Death in the pass, the defence of which had been intrusted to them, was all that Spartan honor and Spartan law now left them. The next day, surrounded by the Persian host, they fought with desperate valor; but, overwhelmed by mere numbers, they were slain to the last man. With them also perished seven hundred Thespians who had chosen death with their companions. Over the bodies of the Spartan soldiers a monument was afterwards erected with this inscription: “Stranger, tell the Lacedæmonians that we lie here in obedience to their orders.”
THE BURNING OF ATHENS.-Athens now lay open to the invaders. The Peloponnesians, thinking of their own safety simply, commenced throwing up defences across the isthmus of Corinth, working day and night under the impulse of an almost insane fear. Athens was thus left outside to care for herself.
Counsels were divided. The Delphian oracle had obscurely declared, “When everything else in the land of Cecrops shall be taken, Zeus grants to Athena that the _wooden walls_ alone shall remain unconquered, to defend you and your children.” The oracle was believed to be, as was declared, “firm as adamant.”
But there were various opinions as to what was meant by the “wooden walls.” Some thought the Pythian priestess directed the Athenians to seek refuge in the forests on the mountains; but Themistocles (who it is thought may have himself prompted the oracle) contended that the ships were plainly indicated.
The last interpretation was acted upon. All the soldiers of Attica were crowded upon the vessels of the fleet at Salamis. The aged men, with the women and children, were carried out of the country to different places of safety. All the towns of Attica, with the capital, were thus abandoned to the conquerors.
A few days afterwards the Persians entered upon the deserted plain, which they rendered more desolate by ravaging the fields and burning the empty towns. Athens shared the common fate, and her splendid temples sank in flames. Sardis was avenged. The joy in distant Susa was unbounded.
THE NAVAL BATTLE OF SALAMIS (480 B.C.).–Just off the coast of Attica, separated from the mainland by a narrow passage of water, lies the island of Salamis. Here lay the Greek fleet, awaiting the Persian attack. To hasten on the attack before dissensions should divide the Greek forces, Themistocles resorted to the following stratagem. He sent a messenger to Xerxes representing that he himself was ready to espouse the Persian cause, and advised an immediate attack upon the Athenian fleet, which he represented as being in no condition to make any formidable resistance. Xerxes was deceived. He ordered an immediate attack. From a lofty throne upon the shore he himself overlooked the scene and watched the result. The Persian fleet was broken to pieces and two hundred of the ships destroyed. [Footnote: The entire Persian fleet numbered about seven hundred and fifty vessels; the Grecian, about three hundred and eighty-five ships, mostly triremes.]
The blow was decisive. Xerxes, fearing that treachery might burn or break the Hellespontine bridges, instantly despatched a hundred ships to protect them; and then, leaving Mardonius with three hundred thousand men to retrieve the disaster of Salamis, and effect, as he promised to do, the conquest of the rest of Greece, the monarch set out on his ignominious retreat to Asia. [Footnote: On the very day of the battle of Salamis, Gelon of Syracuse gained a great victory over the Carthaginians at the battle of Himera, in the north of Sicily. So it was a memorable day for Hellas in the West as well as in the East.]
THE BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYCALE (479 B.C.).–The next year the Persian fleet and army thus left behind in Europe were entirely destroyed, both on the same day–the army at Platæa, near Thebes, by the combined Greek forces under the Spartan Pausanias; and the fleet, including the Asiatic land forces, at Mycale, on the Ionian coast.
The battles of Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale were the successive blows that shattered into fragments the most splendid armaments ever commanded by Asiatic despot.
MEMORIALS AND TROPHIES OF THE WAR.–The glorious issue of the war caused a general burst of joy and exultation throughout all Greece. Poets, artists, and orators, all vied with one another in commemorating the deeds of the heroes whose valor had warded off the impending danger.
Nor did the pious Grecians think that the marvellous deliverance had been effected without the intervention of the gods in their behalf. To the temple at Delphi was gratefully consecrated a tenth of the immense spoils in gold and silver from the field of Platæa; and within the sanctuary of Athena, upon the Acropolis at Athens, were placed the broken cables of the Hellespontine bridges, at once a proud trophy of victory, and a signal illustration of the divine punishment that had befallen the audacious and impious attempt to lay a yoke upon the sacred waters of the Hellespont.
CHAPTER XIV.
PERIOD OF ATHENIAN SUPREMACY. (479-431 B.C.)
REBUILDING THE WALLS OF ATHENS.–After the Persians had been expelled from Greece, the first care of the Athenians was the rebuilding of their homes. Their next task was the restoration of the city walls. The exalted hopes for the future which had been raised by the almost incredible achievements of the past few months, led the Athenians to draw a vast circuit of seven miles about the Acropolis as the line of the new ramparts.
The rival states of the Peloponnesus watched the proceedings of the Athenians with the most jealous interest. While they could not but admire Athens, they feared her. Sparta sent an embassy to dissuade the citizens from rebuilding the walls, hypocritically assigning as the cause of her interest in the matter her solicitude lest, in case of another Persian invasion, the city, if captured, might become a shelter and defence to the enemy. But the Athenians persisted in their purpose, and in a marvellously short time had raised the wall to such a height that they could defy interference.
THEMISTOCLES’ NAVAL POLICY.–Themistocles saw clearly that the supremacy of Athens among the Grecian states must be secured and maintained by her mastery of the sea. He had unbounded visions of the maritime power and glory that might come to her through her fleet, those “wooden walls” to which at this moment she owed her very existence; and he succeeded in inspiring his countrymen with his own enthusiasm and sanguine hopes.
In the prosecution of his views, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to enlarge the harbor of Piræus, the most spacious of the ports of Athens, and to surround the place with immense walls, far exceeding, both in compass and strength, those of the capital. He also led his countrymen to the resolution of adding each year twenty well-equipped triremes to their navy.
This policy, initiated by Themistocles, was, as we shall see, zealously pursued by the statesmen that after him successively assumed the lead in Athenian affairs.
HIS OSTRACISM.–Themistocles well deserved the honor of being called, as he was, the founder of the New Athens. But, although an able statesman, he was an unscrupulous man. He accepted bribes and sold his influence, thereby acquiring an enormous property. Finally he was ostracized (471 B.C.). After long wanderings, he became a resident at the court of the Persian king.
Tradition affirms that Artaxerxes, in accordance with Persian usage, provided for the courtier exile by assigning to three cities in Asia Minor the care of providing for his table: one furnished bread, a second meat, and a third wines. It is told that one day, as he sat down to his richly loaded board, he exclaimed, “How much we should have lost, my children, if we had not been ruined!”
THE CONFEDERACY OF DELOS (477 B.C.).–In order that they might be able to carry on the war more effectively against the Persians, the Ionian states of Asia Minor, the islands of the Ægean, and some of the states in Greece proper, shortly after the battle of Platæa, formed themselves into what is known as the Confederacy of Delos. Sparta, on account of her military reputation, had hitherto been accorded the place of pre-eminence and authority in all such alliances of the Hellenic cities. She had come, indeed, to regard herself as the natural guardian and leader of Greece. But at this time the unbearable arrogance of the Spartan general Pausanias, who presumed upon the great reputation he had gained at the battle of Platæa, led the states which had entered into the alliance to look to Athens to assume the position of leadership in the new confederacy.
The lofty character of Aristides, who was now the most prominent Athenian leader, and his great reputation for fairness and incorruptible integrity, also contributed to the same result. He was chosen the first president of the league (477 B.C.), and the sacred island of Delos was made the repository of the common funds. What proportion of the ships and money needed for carrying out the purposes of the union should be contributed by the different states, was left entirely to the decision of Aristides, such was the confidence all had in his equity; and so long as he had control of the matter, none of the members of the alliance ever had cause of complaint.
Thus did Sparta lose, and Athens gain, the place of precedence among the Ionian states. The Dorian states of the Peloponnesus, in the main, still looked to Sparta as their leader and adviser. All Greece was thus divided into two great leagues, under the rival leadership of Sparta and Athens.
THE ATHENIANS CONVERT THE DELIAN LEAGUE INTO AN EMPIRE.–The Confederacy of Delos laid the basis of the imperial power of Athens. The Athenians misused their authority as leaders of the league, and gradually, during the interval between the formation of the union and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, reduced their allies, or confederates, to the condition of tributaries and subjects.
Athens transformed the league into an empire in the following manner. The contributions assessed by Aristides upon the different members of the confederation consisted of ships and their crews for the larger states, and of money payments for the smaller ones. From the first, Athens attended to this assessment matter, and saw to it that each member of the league made its proper contribution. After a while, some of the cities preferring to make a money payment in lieu of ships, Athens accepted the commutation, and then building the ships herself, added them to her own navy. Thus the confederates disarmed themselves and armed their master.
Very soon the restraints which Athens imposed upon her allies became irksome, and they began to refuse, one after another, to pay the assessment in any form. Naxos, one of the Cyclades, was the first island to secede, as it were, from the league (466 B.C.). But Athens had no idea of admitting any such doctrine of state rights, and with her powerful navy forced the Naxians to remain within the union, and to pay an increased tribute.
What happened in the case of Naxos happened in the case of almost all the other members of the confederation. By the year 449 B.C. only three of the island members of the league still retained their independence.
Even before this date (probably about 457 B.C.) the Athenians had transferred the common treasury from Delos to Athens, and diverting the tribute from its original purpose, were beginning to spend it, not in the prosecution of war against the Barbarians, but in the execution of home enterprises, as though the treasure were their own revenue.
Thus what had been simply a voluntary confederation of sovereign and independent cities, was converted into what was practically an absolute monarchy, with the Attic democracy as the imperial master.
What made this servitude of the former allies of Athens all the more galling was the fact that they themselves had been compelled to forge the very chains which fettered them; for it was their money that had built and was maintaining the fleet by which they were kept in subjection and forced to do whatever might be the will of the Athenians.
THE LEADERSHIP OF CIMON; HIS OSTRACISM.–One of the ablest and most popular of the generals who commanded the forces of the Athenians during this same period when they were enslaving their confederates, was Cimon, the son of Miltiades. He was one of those whose spirits had been fired by the exciting events attendant upon the Persian invasion. He had acquired a certain reputation, at the time of the abandonment of Athens, by being the first to hang up his bridle in the sanctuary of the Acropolis, thus expressing his resolution to place all his confidence in the fleet, as Themistocles advised.
The popularity of Cimon at last declined, and he suffered ostracism, as had Aristides and Themistocles before him. His loss of public favor came about in this manner. In the year 464 B.C., a terrible earthquake destroyed a large portion of Sparta. In the panic of the appalling disaster the Spartans were led to believe that the evil had befallen them as a punishment for their recent violation of the Temple of Poseidon, from which some Helots who had fled to the sanctuary for refuge had been torn. The Helots, on their part, were quick to interpret the event as an intervention of the gods in their behalf, and as an unmistakable signal for their uprising. Everywhere they flew to arms, and, being joined by some of the Perioeci, furiously attacked their masters. The Spartans, after maintaining the bitter struggle for several years, finding themselves unable to reduce their former slaves to submission, were forced to ask aid of the other Grecian states.
The great Athenian statesman Pericles implored his countrymen not to lend themselves to the building up of the power of their rival. But the aristocratic Cimon, who had always entertained the most friendly feelings for the Spartans, exhorted the Athenians to put aside all sentiments of enmity or jealousy, and to extend succor to their kinsmen. “Let not Greece,” said he, “be lamed, and thus Athens herself be deprived of her yokefellow.” The assembly voted as he advised, and so the Athenian forces fought for some time side by side with the Lacedæmonians.
But the Spartans were distrustful of their Athenian allies, and fearing they might pass over to the side of the Helots, they dismissed them. The discourtesy of the act aroused the most bitter resentment at Athens. The party of Pericles took advantage of the exasperated feelings of the people to effect some important changes in the constitution in favor of the people, which made it almost purely democratical in character, and to secure the exercise of the ostracism against Cimon as the leader of the aristocratical party and the friend of Sparta (459 B.C.).
THE AGE OF PERICLES (459-431 B.C.).
GENERAL FEATURES OF THE AGE.–Under the inspiration of Pericles, the Athenian state now entered upon the most brilliant period of its history. The epoch embraces less than the lifetime of a single generation, yet its influence upon the civilization of the world can hardly be overrated. During this short period Athens gave birth to more great men–poets, artists, statesmen, and philosophers–than all the world besides has produced in any period of equal length.
[Illustration: PERICLES.]
Among all the great men of this age, Pericles stood pre-eminent. Such was the impression he left upon the period in which he lived, that it is called after him the Periclean Age. Yet Pericles’ authority was simply that which talent and character justly confer. He ruled, as Plutarch says, by the art of persuasion.
During the Periclean period the Athenian democracy was supreme. Every matter that concerned the empire was discussed and decided by the popular assembly. Never before had any people enjoyed such perfect political liberty as did the citizens of Athens at this time, and never before were any people, through so intimate a knowledge of public affairs, so well able to direct the policies of state. Every citizen, it is affirmed, was qualified to hold civil office.
PERICLES FOSTERS THE NAVAL POWER OF ATHENS.–Cimon’s policy had been to keep the Grecian cities united in order that they might offer effectual resistance to the Persian power. The aim of his rival Pericles was to maintain Athens as the leading state in Hellas, and to oppose the pretensions of Sparta. Accordingly he encouraged the Athenians to strengthen their naval armament and to perfect themselves in naval discipline, for with Themistocles he was convinced that the supremacy of Athens must depend chiefly upon her fleet.
As a part of his maritime policy, Pericles persuaded the Athenians to build what were known as the Long Walls,–great ramparts between four and five miles in length,–which united Athens to the ports of Piræus and Phalerum. Later, as a double security, a third wall was built parallel to the one running to the former harbor. By means of these walls Athens and her ports, with the intervening land, were converted into a vast fortified district, capable in time of war of holding the entire population of Attica. With her communication with the sea thus secured, and with a powerful navy at her command, Athens could bid defiance to her foes on sea and land.
[Illustration: ATHENS AND THE LONG WALLS.]
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE THIRTY YEARS’ TRUCE.–At the same time that Pericles was making the maritime supremacy of Athens more secure, he was endeavoring to build up for her a land empire in Central Greece. As her influence in this quarter increased, Sparta became more and more jealous, and strove to counteract it, chiefly by enhancing the power of Thebes.
The contest between the two rivals was long and bitter. It was ended by the well-known Peace of Pericles, or the Thirty Years’ Truce (445 B.C.). By the terms of this treaty each of the rival cities was left at the head of the confederation it had formed, but neither was to interfere with the subjects or allies of the other, while those cities of Hellas which were not yet members of either league were to be left free to join either according to choice.
The real meaning of the Truce was that Athens gave up her ambition to establish a land empire, and was henceforth to be content with supremacy on the seas. It meant further that Greece was to remain a house divided against itself; that democratic Athens must share with aristocratic Sparta the hegemony, or leadership, of the Hellenic cities.
PERICLES ADORNS ATHENS WITH PUBLIC BUILDINGS.–Notwithstanding Pericles had failed to build up for Athens a land dominion, he had nevertheless succeeded in securing for her a place of proud pre-eminence in maritime Hellas. Athens having achieved such a position as she now held, it was the idea of Pericles that the Athenians should so adorn their city that it should be a fitting symbol of the power and glory of their empire. Nor was it difficult for him to persuade his art-loving countrymen to embellish their city with those masterpieces of genius that in their ruins still excite the admiration of the world.
Upon the commanding site of the Acropolis was erected the unrivalled Parthenon. Various other edifices, rich with sculptures, were also erected there and in different parts of Athens, until the whole city took on a surprisingly brilliant and magnificent appearance. The whole world looked up to the Attic city with the same surprised wonder with which a century before it had regarded the city of Babylon as adorned by the power and wealth of the great Nebuchadnezzar.
The Athenians secured the vast sums of money needed for the prosecution of their great architectural works, out of the treasury of the Delian confederacy. The allies naturally declaimed bitterly against this proceeding, complaining that Athens, with their money, was “gilding itself as a proud and vain woman decks herself out with jewels.” But the answer of Pericles to them was, that the money was contributed to the end that the cities of the league should be protected from the Persians, and that so long as the Athenians kept the enemy at a distance they had a right to use the money as they pleased.
The Citizens are taken into the Pay of the State.–It was a fixed idea of Pericles that in a democracy there should be not only an equal distribution of political rights among all classes, but also an equalization of the means and opportunities of exercising these rights, as well as an equal participation by all in social and intellectual enjoyments.
In promoting his views Pericles carried to great length the system of payment for the most common public services. Thus, he introduced the custom of military pay; hitherto the Athenian soldier had served his country in the field as a matter of honor and duty. He also secured the payment of the citizen for serving as a juryman, as well as for his attendance upon the meetings of the popular assembly. Through his influence, also, salaries were attached to the various civil offices, the most of which had hitherto been unpaid positions.
These various measures enabled the poorer citizens to enjoy, without an inconvenient sacrifice, their franchise in the popular assembly, and to offer themselves for the different magistracies, which up to this time had been practically open only to men of means and leisure.
Furthermore, Pericles introduced or extended the practice of supplying all the citizens with free tickets to the theatre and other places of amusement, and of banqueting the people on festival days at the public expense.
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.–Under Pericles Athens had become the most powerful naval state in the world. In one of his last speeches, made at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in which he recounts the resources of the Athenian empire, Pericles says to his fellow-citizens: “There is not now a king, there is not any nation in the universal world, able to withstand that navy which at this juncture you can launch out to sea.”
But the most significant feature of this new imperial power was the combination of these vast material resources with the most imposing display of intellectual resources that the world had ever witnessed. Never before had there been such a union of the material and intellectual elements of civilization at the seat of empire. Literature and art had been carried to the utmost perfection possible to human genius. Art was represented by the inimitable creations of Phidias and Polygnotus. The drama was illustrated by the incomparable tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and by the comedies of Aristophanes, while the writing of the world’s annals had become an art in the graceful narrations of Herodotus.
But there were elements of weakness in the splendid imperial structure. The subject cities of the empire were the slaves of Athens. To her they paid tribute. To her courts they were dragged for trial. Naturally they regarded Athens as the destroyer of Hellenic liberties, and watched impatiently for the first favorable moment to revolt, and throw off the hateful yoke that she had imposed upon them. Hence the Athenian empire rested upon a foundation of sand.
Had Athens, instead of enslaving her confederates of the Delian league, only been able to find out some way of retaining them as allies in an equal union,–a great and perhaps impossible task in that age of the world,–as head of the federated Greek race, she might have secured for Hellas the sovereignty of the Mediterranean, and the history of Rome might have ended with the first century of the Republic.
Furthermore, in his system of payment for the most common public services, and of wholesale public gratuities, Pericles had introduced or encouraged practices that had the same demoralizing effects upon the Athenians that the free distribution of grain at Rome had upon the Roman populace. These pernicious customs cast discredit upon labor, destroyed frugality, and fostered idleness, thus sapping the virtues and strength of the Athenian democracy.
Illustrations of these weaknesses, as well as of the strength of the Athenian empire, will be afforded by the great struggle between Athens and Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War, the causes and chief incidents of which we shall next rehearse.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR: THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY.
1. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 B.C.).
CAUSES OF THE WAR.–During the closing years of the life of Pericles, the growing jealousy between Athens and Sparta broke out in the long struggle known as the Peloponnesian War. Pericles had foreseen the coming storm: “I descry war,” said he, “lowering from the Peloponnesus.” His whole later policy looked toward the preparation of Athens for the “irrepressible conflict.”
The immediate causes of the war were, first, the interference of Athens, on the side of the Corcyræans, in a quarrel between them and their mother city Corinth; and secondly, the blockade by the Athenians of Potidæa, on the Macedonian coast. This was a Corinthian colony, but it was a member of the Delian league, and was now being chastised by Athens for attempted secession. Corinth, as the ever-jealous naval rival of Athens, had endeavored to lend aid to her daughter, but had been worsted in an engagement with the Athenians.
With affairs in this shape, Corinth, seconded by other states that had causes of complaint against Athens, appealed to Sparta, as the head of the Dorian alliance, for aid and justice. The Spartans, after listening to the deputies of both sides, decided that the Athenians had been guilty of injustice, and declared for war. The resolution of the Spartans was endorsed by the Peloponnesian confederation, and apparently approved by the Delphian oracle, which, in response to an inquiry of the Spartans as to what would be the issue of the proposed undertaking, assured them that “they would gain the victory, if they fought with all their might.”
COMPARISON OF THE RESOURCES OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS.–The resources of Hellas were, at the outbreak of the war, very evenly divided between the two parties. With Sparta were all the states of the Peloponnesus, save Argos and Achaia, while beyond the Isthmus the Boeotian League, headed by Thebes, and other states were her allies. Together, these states could raise a land force of sixty thousand men, besides a considerable naval armament, Corinth being especially strong in ships.
Athens commanded all the resources of the subject cities–about three hundred in number, with twice as many smaller towns–of her great maritime empire. Her independent allies were Chios, Lesbos, Corcyra, and other states. Of course the chief strength of Athens lay in her splendid navy.
THE BEGINNING: ATTACK UPON PLATÆA BY THE THEBANS.–The first act in the long and terrible drama was enacted at night, within the walls of Platæa. This city, though in Boeotia, was under the protection of Athens, and would have nothing to do with the Boeotian League.
Anxious to get possession of this place before the actual outbreak of the war which they saw to be inevitable, the Thebans planned its surprise and capture. Three hundred Thebans gained access to the unguarded city in the dead of night, and marching to the public square, summoned the Platæans to exchange the Athenian for a Boeotian alliance.
The Platæans were upon the point of acceding to all the demands made upon them, when, discovering the small number of the enemy, they attacked and overpowered them in the darkness, and took a hundred and eighty of them prisoners. These captives they afterwards murdered, in violation, as the Thebans always maintained, of a sacred promise that their lives should be spared. This wretched affair at Platæa precipitated the war (431 B.C.).
INVASION OF ATTICA: PESTILENCE AT ATHENS.–A Spartan army was soon overrunning Attica, while an Athenian fleet was ravaging the coasts of the Peloponnesus. Pericles persuaded the country people of Attica to abandon their villas and hamlets and gather within the defences of the city. He did not deem it prudent to risk a battle in the open fields. From the walls of Athens the people could see the flames of their burning villages and farmhouses, as the enemy ravaged the plains of Attica up to the very gates of the city. It required all the persuasion of Pericles to restrain them from issuing in a body from behind the ramparts and rushing to the defence of their homes.
The second year the Lacedæmonians again ravaged the fields about Athens, and drove the Athenians almost to frenzy with the sight of the flame and smoke of such property as had escaped the destruction of the previous year. To increase their misery, a pestilence broke out within the crowded city, and added its horrors to the already unbearable calamities of war. No pen could picture the despair and gloom that settled over the city. Athens lost, probably, one-fourth of her fighting men. Pericles, who had been the very soul and life of Athens through these dark days, fell a victim to the plague (429 B.C.). In dying, he said he considered his greatest praise to be that “he had never caused an Athenian to put on mourning.”
After the death of Pericles the leadership of affairs at Athens fell into the hands of unprincipled demagogues, of whom Cleon was chief. The mob element got control of the popular assembly, so that hereafter we shall find many of its actions characterized neither by virtue nor wisdom.
DESPERATE AND CRUEL CHARACTER OF THE WAR.–On both sides the war was waged with the utmost vindictiveness and cruelty. As a rule, all the men captured by either side were killed.
In the year 428 B.C. the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, revolted from the Athenians. With the rebellion suppressed, the fate of the Mytileneans was in the hands of the Athenian assembly. Cleon proposed that all the men of the place, six thousand in number, should be slain, and the women and children sold as slaves. This infamous decree was passed, and a galley despatched bearing the sentence for execution to the Athenian general at Mytilene.
By the next morning, however, the Athenians had repented of their hasty and cruel resolution. A second meeting of the assembly was hurriedly called; the barbarous vote was repealed; and a swift trireme, bearing the reprieve, set out in anxious haste to overtake the former galley, which had twenty-four hours the start. The trireme reached the island just in time to prevent the execution of the barbarous edict.
The second resolution of the Athenians, though more discriminating than the first decree, was quite severe enough. Over one thousand of the nobles of Mytilene were killed, the city was destroyed, and the larger part of the lands of the island given to citizens of Athens.
Still more unrelenting and cruel were the Spartans. In the summer of the same year that the Athenians wreaked such vengeance upon the Mytileneans, the Spartans and their allies captured the city of Platæa, put to death all the men, sold the women as slaves, and turned the site of the city into pasture-land.
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE PEACE OF NICIAS (421 B.C.).–Soon after the affair at Mytilene and the destruction of Platæa, an enterprising general of the Athenians, named Demosthenes, seized and fortified a point of land (Pylos) on the coast of Messenia. The Spartans made every effort to dislodge the enemy. In the course of the siege, four hundred Spartans under Brasidas, having landed upon a little island (Sphacteria), were so unfortunate as to be cut off from the mainland by the sudden arrival of an Athenian fleet. About three hundred of them were at last captured and taken as prisoners to Athens.
But affairs now took a different turn; the Athenians were worsted (at the battle of Delium, 424 B.C.), and then much indecisive fighting followed. At last negotiations for peace were opened, which, after many embassies to and fro, resulted in what is known as the Peace of Nicias, from the prominent Athenian general who is supposed to have had most to do in bringing it about. The treaty arranged for a truce of fifty years. Each party was to give up to the other all prisoners and captured places.
ALCIBIADES AND THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION (415-413 B.C.).–The Peace of Nicias was only a nominal one. Some of the allies of the two principal parties to the truce were dissatisfied with it, and consequently its terms were not carried out in good faith or temper on either side. So the war went on. For about seven years, however, Athens and Sparta refrained from invading each other’s territory; but even during this period each was aiding its allies in making war upon the dependents or confederates of the other. Finally, hostilities flamed out in open and avowed war, and all Hellas was again lit up with the fires of the fratricidal strife.
[Illustration: ALCIBIADES]
The most prominent person on the Athenian side during this latter period of the struggle was Alcibiades, a versatile and brilliant man, but a reckless and unsafe counsellor. He was a pupil of Socrates, but he failed to follow the counsels of his teacher. His astonishing escapades only seemed to attach the people more closely to him, for he possessed all those personal traits which make men popular idols. His influence over the democracy was unlimited. He was able to carry through the popular assembly almost any measure that it pleased him to advocate. The more prudent of the Athenians were filled with apprehension for the future of the state under such guidance. The noted misanthrope Timon gave expression to this feeling when, after Alcibiades had secured the assent of the popular assembly to one of his impolitic measures, he said to him: “Go on, my brave boy, and prosper; for your prosperity will bring on the ruin of all this crowd.” And it did, as we shall see.
The most prosperous enterprise of Alcibiades, in the Timonian sense, was the inciting the Athenians to undertake an expedition against the Dorian city of Syracuse, in Sicily. The scheme that Alcibiades was revolving in his mind was a most magnificent one. He proposed that the Athenians, after effecting the conquest of Sicily, should make that island the base of operations against both Africa and Italy. With the Italians and Carthaginians subdued, the armaments of the entire Hellenic world outside of the Peloponnesus, were to be turned against the Spartans, who with one blow should be forever crushed, and Athens be left the arbiter of the destinies of Hellas.
Alcibiades succeeded in persuading the Athenians to undertake at least the first part of the colossal enterprise. An immense fleet was carefully equipped and manned. [Footnote: It consisted of one hundred and thirty- four costly triremes, bearing thirty-six thousand soldiers and sailors. The commanders were Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus. Later, Demosthenes was sent out with a reinforcement consisting of seventy-three triremes and five thousand soldiers.] Anxiously did those remaining behind watch the squadron as it bore away from the port of Athens. Could the watchers have foreseen the fate of the splendid armament, their anxiety would have passed into despair. “Athens itself was sailing out of the Piræus, never again to return.”
Scarcely had the expedition arrived at Sicily, before Alcibiades, who was one of the leading generals in command of the armament, was summoned back to Athens to answer a charge of impiety. [Footnote: Just upon the eve of the departure of the expedition, the numerous statues of Hermes scattered throughout the city were grossly mutilated. Alcibiades was accused of having had a hand in the affair, and furthermore of having mimicked the sacred rites of the Eleusinian mysteries.] Fearing to trust himself in the hands of his enemies at Athens, he fled to Sparta, and there, by traitorous counsel, did all in his power to ruin the very expedition he had planned. He advised the Spartans to send at once their best general to the Syracusans. They sent Gylippus, an able commander, whose generalship contributed largely to the total and irretrievable defeat that the Athenians finally suffered. Their fleet and army were both virtually annihilated. Seven thousand prisoners were crowded into the open stone quarries, where hundreds speedily died of exposure and starvation. Most of the wretched survivors were sold as slaves. The disaster was appalling and complete. The resources of Athens were wrecked.
THE DECELEAN WAR: THE FALL OF ATHENS–While the Athenians were before Syracuse, the Spartans, acting upon the advice of Alcibiades, had taken possession of and fortified a strong and commanding position known as Decelea, in Attica, only twelve miles from Athens. This was a thorn in the side of Athens. Secure in this stronghold, the Spartans could annoy and keep in terror almost all the Attic plain. The occupation by the Spartans of this strategic point had such a determining influence upon the remainder of the Peloponnesian War, that this latter portion of it is known as the Decelean War (413-404 B.C.).
Taking advantage of the terrible misfortunes of Athens, her subject-allies now revolted and fell away from her on every side. The Persians, ever ready to aid the Greeks in destroying one another, lent a willing ear to the solicitations of the traitor Alcibiades, and gave help to the Spartans.
The Athenians put forth almost superhuman efforts to retrieve their fortunes. Had they been united among themselves, perhaps their efforts might not have been in vain. But the oligarchical party, for the sake of ruining the democracy were willing to ruin the empire. While the army was absent from Athens, they overturned the government, and established a sort of aristocratical rule (411 B.C.), under which affairs were in the hands of a council of Four Hundred.
The Athenian troops, however, who were at Samos, would not recognize the new government. They voted themselves to be the true Athens, and forgetting and forgiving the past, recalled Alcibiades, and gave him command of the army, thereby well illustrating what the poet Aristophanes said respecting the disposition of the Athenians towards the spoiled favorite,–“They love, they hate, but cannot live without him.”
Alcibiades detached the Persians from the side of the Spartans, and gained some splendid victories for Athens. But he could not undo the evil he had done. He had ruined Athens beyond redemption by any human power. Constantly the struggle grew more and more hopeless. Alcibiades was defeated, and fearing to face the Athenians, who had deposed him from his command, sought safety in flight.
Finally, at Ægospotami, on the Hellespont, the Athenian fleet was surprised and captured by the Spartans under Lysander (405 B.C.). The prisoners, three thousand in number, were massacred, and the usual rites of burial denied their bodies.
The battle of Ægospotami sealed the fate of Athens. “That night,” writes the historian Xenophon, referring to the night upon which the news of the woful disaster reached Athens, “That night no man slept.”
The towns on the Thracian and Macedonian coasts, and the islands of the Ægean belonging to the Athenian Empire, now fell into the hands of the Peloponnesians. Athens was besieged by sea and land, and soon forced to surrender. Some of the allies insisted upon the total destruction of the city, and the conversion of its site into pasture-land. The Spartans, however, with apparent magnanimity, declared that they would never consent thus “to put out one of the eyes of Greece.”
The real motive, doubtless, of the Spartans in sparing the city was their fear lest, with Athens blotted out, Thebes or Corinth should become too powerful. So the city itself was spared, but the fortifications of Piræus and the Long Walls were levelled to the ground, the work of demolition being begun to the accompaniment of festive music (404 B.C.).
Sparta’s power was now supreme. She had neither peer nor rival among all the Grecian states. Throughout the war she had maintained that her only purpose in warring against Athens was to regain liberty for the Grecian cities. We shall very soon see what sort of liberty it was that they enjoyed under her guardianship.
RESULTS OF THE WAR.–“Never,” says Thucydides, commenting upon the lamentable results of the Peloponnesian War, “Never had so many cities been made desolate by victories;… never were there so many instances of banishment; never so many scenes of slaughter either in battle or sedition.”
Athens was but the wreck of her former self. She had lost two hundred ships and sixty thousand men, including the killed among her allies. Things were just the reverse now of what they were at the time of the Persian invasion. When, with all Athens in ruins, Themistocles at Salamis was taunted by the Spartans with being a man without a city, he replied grandly, “Athens is here in her ships.” But now the real Athens was gone; only the empty shell remained.
And all the rest of Hellas showed the marks of the cruel war. Spots where once had stood large towns were now pasture-land. But more lamentable than all else besides, was the effect of the war upon the intellectual and moral life of the Greek race. The Grecian world had sunk many degrees in morality; while the vigor and productiveness of the intellectual and artistic life of Hellas, the centre and home of which had been Athens, were impaired beyond recovery. The achievements of the Greek intellect, especially in the fields of philosophic thought, in the century following the war were, it is true, wonderful; but these triumphs merely show, we may believe, what the Hellenic mind would have done for art and general culture, had it been permitted, unchecked, and under the favoring and inspiring conditions of liberty and self-government, to disclose all that was latent in it.
2. THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY.
SPARTAN SUPREMACY.–For just one generation following the Peloponnesian War (404-371 B.C.), Sparta held the leadership of the Grecian states. Aristocratical governments, with institutions similar to the Spartan, were established in the different cities of the old Athenian Empire. At Athens, the democratical constitution of Solon, under which the Athenians had attained their greatness, was abolished, and an oppressive oligarchy established in its stead. The Thirty Tyrants, however, who administered this government, were, after eight months’ infamous rule, driven from the city, and the old democratic constitution, somewhat modified, was re- established (403 B.C.).
It was during this period that Socrates, the greatest moralist and teacher of antiquity that Europe had produced, was condemned to death, because his teachings were thought contrary to the religion of the Athenians. To this era also belongs the well-known expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks.
EXPEDITION OF THE TEN THOUSAND (401-400 B.C.).–Cyrus, satrap of the Persian province of Asia Minor, thinking that his brother Artaxerxes held the throne unjustly, planned to wrest it from him. For carrying out this purpose, he raised an army composed of a hundred thousand Barbarians and about eleven thousand Greek mercenaries.
With this force Cyrus set out from Sardis, in the spring of 401 B.C. He marched without opposition across Asia Minor and Mesopotamia to Babylonia, into the very heart of the Persian empire. Here, at Cunaxa, he was confronted by Artaxerxes with a force of more than half a million of men. The Barbarian allies of Cyrus were scattered at the first onset of the enemy; but the Greeks stood like a rampart of rock. Cyrus, however, was slain; and the other Greek generals, having been persuaded to enter into a council, were treacherously murdered by the Persians.
The Greeks, in a hurried night meeting, chose new generals to lead them back to their homes. One of these was Xenophon, the popular historian of the expedition. Now commenced one of the most memorable retreats in all history. After a most harassing march over the hot plains of the Tigris and the icy passes of Armenia, the survivors reached the Black Sea, the abode of sister Greek colonies.
THEBAN SUPREMACY (371-362 B.C.).–Throughout all the period of her supremacy, Sparta dealt selfishly and tyrannically with the other Grecian states. But at last the fiery resentment kindled by her oppressive measures inspired such a determined revolt against her as brought to an end her assumed supremacy over her sister cities. It was a city in Boeotia that led the uprising against Sparta. This was Thebes. The oligarchical government which the Lacedæmonians had set up in that capital was overthrown by Pelopidas at the head of the so-called Sacred Band, a company of three hundred select men who were bound by oath to stand by each other to the last. Pelopidas was seconded in all his efforts by Epaminondas, one of the ablest generals the Grecian race ever produced. Under the masterly guidance and inspiration of these patriot leaders, Thebes very soon secured a predominating influence in the affairs of Greece.
It was Epaminondas who, when his enemies sought to disgrace and annoy him by electing him “public scavenger,” made, in accepting the office, the memorable utterance, “If the office will not reflect honor upon me, I will reflect honor upon it.”
At Leuctra (371 B.C.) the Thebans earned the renown of being the most invincible soldiers in the world by completely overthrowing, with a force of six thousand men, the Spartan army of twice that number. This is said to have been the first time that the Spartans were ever fairly defeated in open battle. Their forces had been annihilated, as at Thermopylæ,–but annihilation is not defeat.
From the victory of Leuctra dates the short but brilliant period of Theban supremacy. The year after that battle Epaminondas led an army into the Peloponnesus to aid the Arcadians, who had risen against Sparta. Laconia was ravaged, and for the first time Spartan women saw the smoke of fires kindled by an enemy.
To strengthen Arcadia’s power of resistance to Sparta, Epaminondas perfected a league among the hitherto isolated towns and cantons of the district. As the mutual jealousies of the leading cities prevented him from making any one of them the capital of the confederation, he founded Megalopolis, or the Great City, and made it the head of the union. In the pursuit of the same policy, Epaminondas also restored the independence of Messenia.
But, moved by jealousy of the rapidly growing power of Thebes, Athens now formed an alliance with her old rival Sparta against her. Three times more did Epaminondas lead an army into the Peloponnesus. During his fourth and last expedition he fought with the Spartans and Athenians the great battle of Mantinea, in Arcadia. On this memorable field, Epaminondas led the Thebans once more to victory; but he himself was slain, and with him fell the hopes and power of Thebes (362 B.C.).
All the states of Greece now lay exhausted, worn out by their endless domestic contentions and wars. There was scarcely sufficient strength left to strike one worthy blow against enslavement by the master destined soon to come from the North.
CHAPTER XVI.
PERIOD OF MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY: EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER. (338-323 B.C.)
GENERAL STATEMENT.–Macedonia lay to the north of Greece proper. The ruling class of the country was probably of Hellenic race; at all events the Macedonian kings were allowed to take part in the Olympian games–a privilege accorded to none but pure Hellenes. Their efforts to spread Greek art and culture among their subjects, a race of rough but brave and martial men, unaccustomed to city life, had been so far successful that the country had, to a certain degree, become Hellenized.
So this period of Macedonian supremacy upon which we are entering belongs to the history of the political life of the Greek race, as well as the eras marked by Athenian, Spartan, or Theban leadership. It was Hellenic institutions, customs, and manners, Hellenic language and civilization, that the Macedonians, in the extended conquests which we are about to narrate, spread over the world. [Footnote: Of course it was rather the outer forms than the real inner life and spirit of the old Greek civilization which were adopted by the non-Hellenic peoples of Egypt and Western Asia. Hence the resulting culture is given a special name, _Hellenism_, which, in Professor Jebbs’ language, means,–“not ‘_being_ Hellenes,’ or Greeks, but–‘doing _like_ Hellenes’; and as the adjective answering to _Hellas_ is _Hellenic_, so the adjective answering to _Hellenism_ is _Hellenistic_.”] It is this which makes the short-lived Macedonian empire so important in universal history.
PHILIP OF MACEDON.–Macedonia first rose to importance during the reign of Philip II. (359-336 B.C.), better known as Philip of Macedon. He was a man of pre-eminent ability, of wonderful address in diplomacy, and possessed rare genius as an organizer and military chieftain. The art of war he had learned in youth as a hostage-pupil of Epaminondas of Thebes. He was the originator of the “Macedonian phalanx” a body as renowned in the military history of Macedonia as is the “legion” in that of Rome.
With his kingdom settled and consolidated at home, Philip’s ambition led him to seek the leadership of the Grecian states. He sought to gain his purpose rather by artful diplomacy and intrigue than by open force. In the use of these weapons he might have been the teacher of the Athenian Themistocles.
THE SECOND SACRED WAR (355-346 B.C.).–Philip quickly extended his power over a large part of Thrace and the Greek cities of Chalcidice. Meanwhile he was, in the following way, acquiring a commanding position in the affairs of the states of Greece proper.
The Phocians had put to secular use some of the lands which, at the end of the First Sacred War (see p. 108), had been consecrated to the Delphian Apollo. Taken to task and heavily fined for this act by the other members of the Delphian Amphictyony, the Phocians deliberately robbed the temple, and used the treasure in the maintenance of a large force of mercenary soldiers. The Amphictyons not being able to punish the Phocians for their impiety, were forced to ask help of Philip, who gladly rendered the assistance sought.
The Phocians were now quickly subdued, their cities were destroyed, and the inhabitants scattered in villages and forced to pay tribute to the Delphian Apollo. The place that the Phocians had held in the Delphian Amphictyony was given to Philip, upon whom was also bestowed the privilege of presiding at the Pythian games. The position he had now secured was just what Philip had coveted, in order that he might use it to make himself master of all Greece.
BATTLE OF CHÆRONEA (338 B.C.).–Demosthenes at Athens was one of the few who seemed to understand the real designs of Philip. His penetration, like that of Pericles, descried a cloud lowering over Greece–this time from the North. With all the energy of his wonderful eloquence, he strove to stir up the Athenians to resist the encroachments of the king of Macedon. He hurled against him his famous “Philippics,” speeches so filled with fierce denunciation that they have given name to all writings characterized by bitter criticism or violent invective.
At length the Athenians and Thebans, aroused by the oratory of Demosthenes and by some fresh encroachments of the Macedonians, united their forces, and met Philip upon the memorable field of Chæronea in Boeotia. The Macedonian phalanx swept everything before it. The Theban band was annihilated. The power and authority of Philip were now extended and acknowledged throughout Greece (338 B.C.).
PLAN TO INVADE ASIA.–While the Greek states were divided among themselves, they were united in an undying hatred of the Persians. They were at this time meditating an enterprise fraught with the greatest importance to the history of the world. This was a joint expedition against Persia. The march of the Ten Thousand Greeks through the very heart of the dominions of the Great King had encouraged this national undertaking, and illustrated the feasibility of the conquest of Asia. At a great council of the Grecian cities held at Corinth, Philip was chosen leader of this expedition. All Greece was astir with preparation. In the midst of all, Philip was assassinated during the festivities attending the marriage of his daughter, and his son Alexander succeeded to his place and power (336 B.C.).
ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.–Alexander was only twenty years of age when he came to his father’s throne. The spirit of the man is shown in the complaint of the boy when news of his father’s victories came to him: “Friends,” said he to his playmates, “my father will possess himself of everything and leave nothing for us to do.”
For about two years Alexander was busy suppressing revolts against his power among the different cities of Hellas, and chastising hostile tribes on the northern frontiers of Macedonia. Thebes having risen against him, he razed the city to the ground,–sparing, however, the house of the poet Pindar,–and sold thirty thousand of the inhabitants into slavery. Thus was one of the most renowned of the cities of Greece blotted out of existence.
ALEXANDER CROSSES THE HELLESPONT (334 B.C.).–Alexander was now free to carry out his father’s scheme in regard to the Asiatic expedition. In the spring of 334 B.C., he set out, at the head of an army numbering about thirty-five thousand men, for the conquest of the Persian empire. Now commenced one of the most remarkable and swiftly executed campaigns recorded in history.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF ISSUS. (From a Mosaic found at Pompeii.)]
Crossing the Hellespont, Alexander routed the Persians at the important battle of the Granicus, by which victory all Asia Minor was laid open to the invader.
THE BATTLE OF ISSUS (333 B.C.).–At the northeast corner of the Mediterranean lies the plain of Issus. Here Alexander again defeated the Persian army, numbering six hundred thousand men. The family of Darius, including his mother, wife, and children, fell into the hands of Alexander; but the king himself escaped from the field, and hastened to his capital, Susa, to raise another army to oppose the march of the conqueror.
SIEGE OF TYRE (332 B.C.).–Before penetrating to the heart of the empire, Alexander turned to the south, in order to effect the subjugation of Phoenicia, that he might command the Phoenician fleets and prevent their being used to sever his communication with Greece. The island-city of Tyre, after a memorable siege, was taken by means of a mole, or causeway, built with incredible labor through the sea to the city. Eight thousand of the inhabitants were slain, and thirty thousand sold into slavery–a terrible warning to those cities that should dare to close their gates against the Macedonian.
ALEXANDER IN EGYPT.–With the cities of Phoenicia and the fleets of the Mediterranean subject to his control, Alexander easily effected the conquest of Egypt. The Egyptians, indeed, made no resistance to the Macedonians, but willingly exchanged masters.
While in the country, Alexander founded, at one of the mouths of the Nile, a city called, after himself, Alexandria. The city became the meeting- place of the East and West; and its importance through many centuries attests the far-sighted wisdom of its founder.
A less worthy enterprise of the conqueror was his expedition to the oasis of Siwah, located in the Libyan desert, where were a celebrated temple and oracle of Zeus Ammon. To gratify his own vanity, as well as to impress the superstitious barbarians, Alexander desired to be declared of celestial descent. The priests of the temple, in accordance with the wish of the king, gave out that the oracle pronounced Alexander to be the son of Zeus Ammon, and the destined ruler of the world.
THE BATTLE OF ARBELA (331 B.C.).–From Egypt Alexander recommenced his march towards the Persian capital. He had received offers of peace from Darius, but to these he is said to have replied, “There cannot be two suns in the heavens.” Pushing on, he crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris without opposition; but upon the plain of Arbela, not far from ancient Nineveh, he found his further advance disputed by Darius with an immense army. Again the Macedonian phalanx “cut through the ranks of the Persians as a boat cuts through the waves.” The fate of Darius has been already narrated in our story of the last of the Persian kings (see p. 82).
The battle of Arbela was one of the decisive combats of history. It marked the end of the long struggle between the East and the West, between Persia and Greece, and prepared the way for the spread of Hellenic civilization over all Western Asia.
ALEXANDER AT BABYLON, SUSA, AND PERSEPOLIS.–From the field of Arbela Alexander marched south to Babylon, which opened its gates to him without opposition. Susa was next entered by the conqueror. Here he seized incredible quantities of gold and silver ($57,000,000, it is said), the treasure of the Great King.
From Susa Alexander’s march was next directed to Persepolis, where he secured a treasure more than twice as great ($138,000,000) as that found at Susa. Upon Persepolis Alexander wreaked vengeance, for all Greece had suffered at the hands of the Persians. Many of the inhabitants were massacred, and others sold into slavery; while the palaces of the Persian kings were given to the flames.
Alexander, having thus overthrown the power of Darius, now began to regard himself, not only as his conqueror, but as his successor, and was thus looked upon by the Persians, He assumed the pomp and state of an Oriental monarch, and required the most obsequious homage from all who approached him. His Greek and Macedonian companions, unused to paying such servile adulation to their king, were much displeased at Alexander’s conduct, and from this time on to his death, intrigues and conspiracies were being constantly formed among them against his power and life.
CONQUEST OF BACTRIA.–Urged on by an uncontrollable desire to possess himself of the most remote countries of which any accounts had ever reached him, Alexander now led his army to the north, and, after subduing many tribes that dwelt about the Caspian Sea, boldly conducted his soldiers over the snowy passes of the Hindu Kush, and descended into the fair provinces of Bactria.
During the years 329-328 B.C. Alexander conquered not only Bactria but Sogdiana, a country lying north of the Oxus. Among his captives here was a beautiful Bactrian princess, Roxana by name, who became his bride.
Alexander’s stay in Sogdiana was saddened by his murder of his dearest friend Clitus, who had saved his life at the Granicus. Both were flushed with wine when the quarrel arose; after the deed, Alexander was overwhelmed with remorse.
CONQUESTS IN INDIA.–With the countries north of the Hindu Kush subdued and settled, Alexander recrossed the mountains, and led his army down upon the rich and crowded plains of India (327 B.C.). Here again he showed himself invincible, and received the submission of many of the native princes.
The most formidable resistance encountered by the Macedonians was offered by a strong and wealthy king named Porus. Captured at last and brought into the presence of Alexander, his proud answer to the conqueror’s question as to how he thought he ought to be treated was, “Like a king.” The impulsive Alexander gave him back his kingdom, to be held, however, subject to the Macedonian crown.
Alexander’s desire was to extend his conquests to the Ganges, but his soldiers began to murmur because of the length and hardness of their campaigns, and he reluctantly gave up the undertaking. To secure the conquests already made, he founded, at different points in the valley of the Indus, Greek towns and colonies. One of these he named Alexandria, after himself; another Bucephala, in memory of his favorite steed; and still another Nicæa, for his victories. The modern museum at Lahore contains many relics of Greek art, dug up on the site of these Macedonian cities and camps.
Alexander’s return route lay through the ancient Gedrosia, now Beluchistan, a region frightful with burning deserts, amidst which his soldiers endured almost incredible privations and sufferings. After a trying and calamitous march of over two months, Alexander, with the survivors of his army, reached Carmania. Here, to his unbounded joy, he was joined by Nearchus, the trusted admiral of his fleet, whom he had ordered to explore the sea between the Indus and the Euphrates.
To appropriately celebrate his conquests and discoveries, Alexander instituted a series of religious festivals, amidst which his soldiers forgot the dangers of their numberless battles and the hardships of their unparalleled marches, which had put to the test every power of human endurance. And well might these veterans glory in their achievements. In a few years they had conquered half the world, and changed the whole course of history.
PLANS AND DEATH OF ALEXANDER.–As the capital of his vast empire, which now stretched from the Ionian Sea to the Indus, Alexander chose the ancient Babylon, upon the Euphrates. His designs were to push his conquests as far to the west as he had extended them to the east. Arabia, Carthage, Italy, and Spain were to be added to his already vast domains. Indeed, the plans of Alexander embraced nothing less than the union and Hellenizing of the world. Not only were the peoples of Asia and Europe to be blended by means of colonies, but even the floras of the two continents were to be intermingled by the transplanting of fruits and trees from one continent to the other. Common laws and customs, a common language and a common religion, were to unite the world into one great family. Intermarriages were to blend the races. Alexander himself married a daughter of Darius III., and also one of Artaxerxes Ochus; and to ten thousand of his soldiers, whom he encouraged to take Asiatic wives, he gave magnificent gifts.
In the midst of his vast projects, Alexander was seized by a fever, brought on by his insane excesses, and died at Babylon, 323 B.C., in the thirty-second year of his age. His soldiers could not let him die without seeing him. The watchers of the palace were obliged to open the doors to them, and the veterans of a hundred battle-fields filed sorrowfully past the couch of their dying commander. His body was carried to Alexandria, in Egypt, and there enclosed in a golden coffin, and a splendid mausoleum was raised over it. His ambition for celestial honors was gratified in his death; for in Egypt and elsewhere temples were dedicated to him, and divine worship was paid to his statues.
We cannot deny to Alexander, in addition to a remarkable genius for military affairs, a profound and comprehensive intellect. He had fine tastes, and liberally encouraged art, science, and literature. The artists of his times had in him a munificent patron; and to his preceptor Aristotle he sent large collections of natural-history objects, gathered in his extended expeditions. He had a kind and generous nature: he avenged the murder of his enemy Darius; and he repented in bitter tears over the body of his faithful Clitus. He exposed himself like the commonest soldier, sharing with his men the hardships of the march and the dangers of the battle-field.
But he was self-seeking, foolishly vain, and madly ambitious of military glory. He plunged into shameful excesses, and gave way to bursts of passion that transformed a usually mild and generous disposition into the fury of a madman. The contradictions of his life cannot, perhaps, be better expressed than in the words once applied to the gifted Themistocles: “He was greater in genius than in character.”
RESULTS OF ALEXANDER’S CONQUESTS.–The remarkable conquests of Alexander had far-reaching consequences. They ended the long struggle between Persia and Greece, and spread Hellenic civilization over Egypt and Western Asia. The distinction between Greek and Barbarian was obliterated, and the sympathies of men, hitherto so narrow and local, were widened, and thus an important preparation was made for the reception of the cosmopolitan creed of Christianity. The world was also given a universal language of culture, which was a further preparation for the spread of Christian teachings.
But the evil effects of the conquest were also positive and far-reaching. The sudden acquisition by the Greeks of the enormous wealth of the Persian empire, and contact with the vices and the effeminate luxury of the Oriental nations, had a most demoralizing effect upon Hellenic life. Greece became corrupt, and she in turn corrupted Rome. Thus the civilization of antiquity was undermined.
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF GRECIAN HISTORY TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
Legendary Age
The Trojan War, legendary date 1194-1184 The Dorians enter the Peloponnesus, about 1104
Early History of Sparta
Lycurgus gives laws to Sparta, about 850 The Messenian Wars, about 750-650
Early History of Athens
Rule of the Archons 1050-612 Rebellion of Cylon 612
Legislation of Solon 594 Pisistratus rules 560-527
Expulsion of the Pisistratidæ 510
Period of Græco-Persian War
First Expedition of Darius (led by Mardonius) 492 Battle of Marathon 490
Battle of Thermopylæ 480 Battle of Salamis 480
Battles of Platæa and Mycale 479
Period of Athenian Supremacy
Athens rebuilt 478 Aristides chosen first president of the Confederacy of Delos 477
Themistocles sent into exile 471 Ostracism of Cimon 459
Pericles at the head of affairs–
Periclean Age 459-431
Events of the Peloponnesian War
Beginning of the Peloponnesian War 431 Pestilence at Athens 430
Expedition against Syracuse 415 Battle of Ægospotami 405
Close of the War 404
Period of Spartan Supremacy
Rule of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens 404-403 Expedition of the Ten Thousand 401-400 Peace of Antalcidas 387
Oligarchy established at Thebes 382 Spartan power broken on the field of Leuctra 371
Period of Theban Supremacy
Battle of Leuctra, which secures the supremacy of Thebes 371
Battle of Mantinea and death of Epaminondas 362
Period of Macedonian Supremacy
Battle of Chæronea 338 Death of Philip of Macedon 336 Alexander crosses the Hellespont 334 Battle of Issus 333
Battle of Arbela 331 Death of Alexander at Babylon 323
CHAPTER XVII.
STATES FORMED FROM THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER.
DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER.–There was no one who could wield the sword that fell from the hand of Alexander. It is told that, when dying, being asked to whom the kingdom should belong, he replied, “To the strongest,” and handed his signet ring to his general Perdiccas. But Perdiccas was not strong enough to master the difficulties of the situation. [Footnote: Perdiccas ruled as regent for Philip Arridæus (an illegitimate brother of Alexander), who was proclaimed titular king.] Indeed, who is strong enough to rule the world?
Consequently the vast empire created by Alexander’s unparalleled conquests was distracted by quarrels and wars, and before the close of the fourth century B.C., had become broken into many fragments. Besides minor states, [Footnote: Two of these lesser states, Rhodes and Pontus, deserve special notice:
RHODES.–Rhodes became the head of a maritime confederation of the cities and islands along the coasts of Asia Minor, and thus laid the basis of a remarkable commercial prosperity and naval power.
PONTUS.–Pontus (Greek for _sea_), a state of Asia Minor, was so called from its position upon the Euxine. It was never thoroughly conquered by the Macedonians. It has a place in history mainly because of the lustre shed upon it by the transcendent ability of one of its kings, Mithridates the Great (120-63 B.C.), who for a long time made successful resistance to the Roman arms.] four well-defined and important monarchies arose out of the ruins. After the rearrangement of boundaries that followed the decisive battle of Ipsus (fought in Phrygia 301 B.C.), these principal states had the outlines shown by the accompanying map. Their rulers were Lysimachus, Seleucus Nicator, Ptolemy, and Cassander, who had each assumed the title of king. The great horn being broken, in its place came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven. [Footnote: Dan. viii. 8.]
Lysimachus held Thrace and the western part of Asia Minor; Seleucus Nicator, Syria and the countries eastward to the Indus; Ptolemy ruled Egypt; and Cassander governed Macedonia, and claimed authority over Greece. [Footnote: Cassander never secured complete control of Greece, hence this country is not included in his domains as these appear upon the map.]
After barely mentioning the fate of the kingdom of Lysimachus, we will trace very briefly the fortunes of the other three monarchies until they were overthrown, one after the other, by the now rapidly rising power of Rome.
THRACE, OR THE KINGDOM OF LYSIMACHUS.–The kingdom of Lysimachus soon disappeared. He was defeated by Seleucus in the year 281 B.C., and his dominions were divided. The lands in Asia Minor were joined to the Syrian kingdom, while Thrace was absorbed by Macedonia.
SYRIA, OR THE KINGDOM OF THE SELEUCIDÆ (312-63 B.C.).–This kingdom, during the two centuries and more of its existence, played an important part in the political history of the world. Under its first king it comprised nominally almost all the countries of Asia conquered by Alexander, thus stretching from the Hellespont to the Indus. Its rulers were called Seleucidæ, from the founder of the kingdom, Seleucus Nicator.
Seleucus Nicator (312-280 B.C.), besides being a ruler of unusual ability, was a most liberal patron of learning and art. He is declared to have been “the greatest founder of cities that ever lived.” Throughout his dominions he founded a vast number, some of which endured for many centuries. Antioch, on the Orontes, in Northern Syria, became, after Seleucia on the Tigris, the capital of the kingdom, and obtained an influence and renown as a centre of population and trade which have given its name a sure place in history.
The successors of Seleucus Nicator led the kingdom through checkered fortunes. On different sides provinces fell away and became independent states. [Footnote: The most important of these were the following:–1. PERGAMUS.–This was a state in western Asia Minor, which became independent upon the death of Seleucus Nicator (280 B.C.). Favored by the Romans, it gradually grew into a powerful kingdom, which at one time embraced a considerable part of Asia Minor. Its capital, also called Pergamus, became a most noted centre of Greek learning and civilization. 2. PARTHIA.–Parthia was a powerful Turanian state that grew up east of the Euphrates River (from about 255 B.C. to 226 A.D.). Its kings were at first formidable enemies of the rulers of Syria, and later of the Romans, whom they never allowed to make any considerable conquest beyond the Euphrates.] Antiochus III. (223-187 B.C.), called “the Great,” raised the kingdom for a short time into great prominence; but attempting to make conquests in Europe, and further, giving asylum to the Carthaginian general Hannibal, he incurred the fatal hostility of Rome. Quickly driven by the Roman legions across the Hellespont, he was hopelessly defeated at the battle of Magnesia (190 B.C.). After this, the Syrian kingdom was of very little importance in the world’s affairs. At last, brought again into collision with Rome, the country was overrun by Pompey the Great, and became a part of the Roman Republic, 63 B.C.
[Illustration: COIN OF ANTIOCHUS III. (THE GREAT).]
[Illustration: PTOLEMY SOTER.]
KINGDOM OF THE PTOLEMIES IN EGYPT (323-30 B.C.).–The Græco-Egyptian empire of the Ptolemies was by far the most important, in its influence upon the civilization of the world, of all the kingdoms that owed their origin to the conquests of Alexander. The founder of the house and dynasty was Ptolemy I., surnamed Soter (323-283 B.C.), one of Alexander’s ablest generals. His descendants ruled in Egypt for nearly three centuries, a most important period in the intellectual life of the world. Under Ptolemy I., Alexandria became the great depot of exchange for the productions of the world. At the entrance of the harbor stood the Pharos, or light- house,–the first structure of its kind,–which Ptolemy built to guide the fleets of the world to his capital. This edifice was reckoned one of the Seven Wonders.
But it was not alone the exchange of material products that was comprehended in Ptolemy’s scheme. His aim was to make his capital the intellectual centre of the world–the place where the arts, sciences, literatures, and even the religions, of the world should meet and mingle. He founded the famous Museum, a sort of college, which became the “University of the East,” and established the renowned Alexandrian Library. Poets, artists, philosophers, and teachers in all departments of learning were encouraged to settle in Alexandria by the conferring of immunities and privileges, and by gifts and munificent patronage. His court embraced the learning and genius of the age.
Ptolemy II., Philadelphus (283-247 B.C.), followed closely in the footsteps of his father, carrying out, as far as possible, the plans and policies of the preceding reign. Under his successor, Ptolemy III., Euergetes (247-242 B.C.), the dominions of the Ptolemies touched their widest limits; while the capital Alexandria reached the culminating point in her fame as the centre of Hellenistic civilization.
Altogether the Ptolemies reigned in Egypt almost exactly three centuries (323-30 B.C.). Those rulers who held the throne for the last two hundred years were, with few exceptions, a succession of monsters, such as even Rome in her worst days could scarcely equal. The usage of intermarriage among the members of the royal family,–a usage in which the Ptolemies followed what was a custom of the ancient Pharaohs,–led to endless family quarrels, which resulted in fratricide, matricide, and all the dark deeds included in the calendar of royal crime. The story of the renowned Cleopatra, the last of the house of the Ptolemies, will be told in connection with Roman history, to which it properly belongs.
MACEDONIA AND GREECE.–From the time of the subjection of Greece by Philip and Alexander to the absorption of Macedonia into the growing dominions of Rome, the Greek cities of the peninsula were very much under the control or influence of the Macedonian kings. But the Greeks were never made for royal subjects, and consequently they were in a state of chronic revolt against this foreign authority.