ANC15NT
gree:ce
^.
H-B-COTTERILL
n
Y
Q
^
K. G. OLAISUKK.
Boolibuyer & HooUseller.
25 HiKh^iate Hill, London, N. 19.
Books Hoikiht
GREAT NATIO NS
In active preparation
ROME By H. L. Havell, B.A.
FRANCE By Professor W. H. Hudson
GERMANY By T. W. RoUeston
IRELAND By Eleanor HuU and
Professor Stanley Lane-Poole
SCOTLAND By R. L. Mackie, M.A,
MEDIEVAL ITALY By H. B.
Cotterill, M.A.
eJf«.*Ji!>»»i»i»».»JfS>s'«BJ5^,»i?*5W
I White Attic Lekythus
2. Red-figured Lekythus
HCjv-
C
ANCIENT GREECE
A SKETCH OF ITS ART LITERATURE & PHILO
SOPHY VIEWED IN CONNEXION WITH ITS
EXTERNAL HISTORY FROM EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
BY H. B. COTTERILL M.A.
Translator of the " Odyssey " Editor of " Selections from the
Inferno" Goethe's " Iphigenie " Milton's " Areopagitica " Virgil's
" Aeneid " I and VI etc.
LONDON
GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY
3 PORTSMOUTH STREET KINGSWAY W.C.
MCMXIII
PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON
PREFACE
WHEN the attempt is made in a book ot this size to
give a continuous account of the external history
of Greece, and into this framework to fit a
number of sketches descriptive of its art, literature, and
philosophy, as well as other matters, it is of course necessary
to omit many details and to rely on whatever skill one may
happen to possess in selection and combination. In regard to
antiquities and literature, I have drawn attention chiefly to
what is extant and of general interest, and have trusted
to description, illustration, and quotation rather than to dis-
quisition and criticism. The Sections appended to each chapter
treat subjects that are closely connected with the period
covered by the chapter. Any of these Sections can be omitted
without seriously interrupting continuity. Temples, Dress,
Coins, and Vases have been relegated to Notes at the end of
the volume, seeing that they are not specially connected with
any one period.
The letters B.C. (but not a.d.) have been generally omitted,
as unnecessary in a book on Ancient Greece.
To name in full all the books that one has to use in such work
is unnecessary, but, since space did not always allow of exact
reference on occasions when I annexed a fact or a sentiment,
it is right that I should here acknowledge my obligations to
the following modern writers : Baikie, Berard, Bergk, Ber-
noulli, Buchholz, Burrows, Bury, Busolt, Butcher, Archer
Butler, Chamberlain [Grundlagen], Christ, Dawldns, Deussen,
Diehl, Donaldson, Dorpfeld, Dussaud, Sir A. J. Kvans, Frazer
{Pausanias), Furtwangler, B. Gardner, P. Gardner, Gomperz,
Grote, Hall, Miss Harrison, Head, Hill, Hogarth, Holm,
V
PREFACE
Hommel {Chronology), A. lyang, W. I^eaf, Lowy, Mahaffy,
Meltzer, Mover, Mosso, A. S. Murray, G. Murray, F. A.
Paley, Petrie, Sir H. Rawlinson, Canon Rawlinson, Ridge-
way, Ritter and Preller, Schlegel, Schliemann, Schuchliardt,
A. H. Smith, G. Smith, W. Smith, Tsountas, H. B. Walters,
Wilamowitz, Wood {Ephesus), Zeller, Zimmermann.
Also, in regard to the illustrations, my thanks are due to
Mr. Hasluck, of the British School in Athens, and (especially
in regard to vases) to Professor H. Thiersch, of Freiburg, as
well as to many others whose names are mentioned in the lyist.
Some of the illustrations supplied by F. Bruckmann and Co.
are from their fine series of Greek and Roman Portraits ; others
are from Bernoulli's Griechische Ikonographie. The autotypes
of coins in Plates I-VI are reproductions which I was permitted
by the courtesy of the Director of the British Museum to make
from Mr. Head's official Guide to the Coins of the Ancients.
In quoting Herodotus I have, with the permission of Mr.
John Murray, frequently made use of Canon Rawlinson's
version, and in translating Thucydides I sometimes accepted
the guidance of Dale. For the compilation of the index I am
indebted to Mr. C. C. Wood.
H. B. C.
Freiburg im Breisgau,
March 19 13
VI
CONTENTS
I. The Aegaean Civilization : The Achaean
Supremacy i
Sections : A. Language and Writing. B. The Old
Religion. C. The ' Homeric Age ' and Homer. D. Chrono-
logy of Aegaean and other Contemporary Civihzations.
II. The Dark Age 74
Sections : A. ' Dipylon ' Antiquities. B. Hesiod
C. The Phoenicians and some other^Nations during the
Dark Age.
III. From the First Olympiad to Peisistratus 113
Sections : A. Egypt and Cyrene. B. Lydia : List of
Eastern Kings. C. The Games. D. The Poets.
^ IV. The Age of Peisistratus and the Rise of
Persia 172
Sections : A. Poets and Philosophers. B. Early Greek
Sculpture and Architecture.
V. The Persian Invasions 234
Sections : A. The Greeks and Carthaginians in Sicily.
B. Pindar.
VI. The Rise of the Athenian Empire 283
Sections: A. Architecture and Sculpture. B. Aeschylus:
Herodotus : Philosophers of the Period.
VII. The Peloponnesian War 326
Sections : A. Thucydides. B. Sophocles : Euripides :
Aristophanes. C. Democritus : The Sophists : Socrates.
D. Sculpture.
vii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Vlli. The Spartan and the Theban Supremacy 387
Sections : A. Xenophon. B. Sicily and the Cartha-
ginians. C. Plato. D. Sculpture, Architecture, and
Painting till the Accession of Alexander.
IX. The Rise of Macedonia : Phiwp and Ai^exander 422
Sections : A. Isocrates : Aeschines : Demosthenes :
Later Philosophers. B. Lysippus : Hellenistic Sculpture.
Note A. Greek Temples 449
Note B. Dress 458
Note C. Coins 462
Note D. Pottery and Vase-Painting 471
List of Important Dates 477
Dates of Foundation of the Early Greek Colonies 479
lyisT OF THE Persian Kings 480
List of the Chief Greek Writers, Philosophers,
AND Sculptors 481
Index 483
vnj
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
In the following list the names of those to whom the author is indebted for
permission to use copyright photographs, &c., are given in italic below the
title of the subject.
MAPS
PAGE
Greece and the Aegaean Sea i
Sicily and Magna Graecia 119
Athens and the Peiraeus 299
The Route of the Ten Thousand 390
COLOURED PLATES
PLATE
I. Two lyEKYTHi Frontispiece
Photo Mansell cS- Co. The larger, a white Attic lekythus
(funeral oil-vase) with polychrome painting of early,
severe style (c. 460). The smaller, a red-figured lekythus
of the earher and still somewhat restrained ' beautiful
style,' which afterwards became fanciful and fantastic ;
date c. 450. In British Museum.
II. lyATE-MvCENAEAN VASES (c. I200) 8
Photo Mansell &> Co. One has the polypus decoration ;
the other is an example of the characteristic Mycenaean
false-necked amphora (' Biigel-kanne '). In the latter
vessel the neck, to which the handles are attached, has
no aperture. The spout is set in the shoulder of the vessel,
and in the picture it stands in front of the ' false neck '
and hides it. In British Museum.
III. An Attic Hydria of the Middi^e Bi.ack-figured
Period (c. 550) 218
Photo Mansell &- Co. Found at Vulci. Maidens fetching
water from a fountain. Similar vases are inscribed with
the names of the fountains Kalhkrene or Kalhrrhoe. This
vase has the names of some of the maidens with the
adjective /caXj) (' beautiful ') appended, as frequently
occurs in vase-paintings. On the lower part of the vase
is depicted Heracles strangling the Nemean Hon. In
British Museum.
ix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE
IV. A IvATE BI.ACK-FIGURED HyDRIA (c. 510) FROM
VUIvCI
Photo Mansell & Co. Harnessing chariot-horses. The
driver in long white robe (cf. Fig. 74). Below, a boar-
hunt. In British Museum.
V. An Apulian Funerai. Amphora with Voi^ute
Handi.es
Photo Mansell &■ Co. Date c. 300. Scenes from the ' Sack
of Troy ' [Iliou Per sis). Above, the death of Priam and
of Hecuba; below, Ajax and Cassandra. In British
Museum.
PACK
250
470
COINS
I. Co
ins of c.
700-500
II.
„ c.
600-500
III.
,, c.
480-400
IV.
,, c.
480-430
V.
,, c-
400-350
VI.
C-
380-300
VII. Portrait Coins
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
Plates I-VI consist of reproductions from the British Museum ' Guide to the Coins
of the Ancients.' Plate VII is from photographs by F. Bruckmann.
GENERAL ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Wai.Iv of the Sixth City of Troy
From the Rev. James Baikie's ' Sea Kings of Crete ' (Messrs.
A. &■ C. Black). Since this photo was taken the site
has been further excavated. See, for instance, Dr.
W. Leaf's new book on Troy. There can be very
little doubt that these are the actual walls from a tower
of which Andromache (if Homer's story is true) saw
Hector being dragged round the city behind the chariot
of Achilles (//. xxii. 460 sq.).
2. The lyiON Gate, Mycenae
Photo English Photographic Co.
3. Amenhotep III
Photo Mansell &' Co. British Museum.
10
10
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PACK
4. Men worshipping a Snake 10
From Miss J. E. Harrison's ' Prolegomena ' {Cambridge
University Press).
5. Siege Scene 12
Photo Mansell &- Co. On fragment of silver vase. From the
copy in the British Museum.
6. Cretan Statue 12
Photo Maraghiannis. From Eleutherma.
7. From a Mycenaean Gold Ring : Women and
Sacred Tree 14
From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prShelleniques ' [Geuthner,
Paris). Found south of Mycenaean acropolis. Sun and
moon and Milky Way (or ocean stream ?) ; sky-deity with
figure-of-eight shield and lance ; double axe ; child
picking the date-like (or grape-like ?) fruit of the sacred
tree ; row of animals' heads (?).
8. The ' Warrior Vase ' 14
Photo English Photographic Co. The painted fragment was
found outside acropolis at Mycenae. Note corslet, short
fringed chiton, leggings and footgear, metal (?) rings
at knee and wrist, gourd or bag for water or food (?)
hanging on spear, and the woman saying farewell.
9. Goi,DEN Mask 14
Photo Rhomaides. The mask covered the face of one of
the Mycenaean princes buried on the acropoUs.
10 y II. Mycenaean Daggers 15, 16
From Professor Bury 's ' History of Greece ' {Macmillan 6-
Co. Ltd.).
12. G01.DEN Discs and Shrine i6
Photo Rhomaides. From the third tomb on the Mycenae
acropolis. Of thin gold. Rather less than natural size.
The discs probably dress ornaments.
13. Goi^DEN Cups from Vaphio i6
Photo Rhomaides.
14. Acropows, Mycenae i8
Photo Simiriottis, Athens.
15. Excavations of Palace, Cnossus i8
Photo Maraghiannis.
xi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
i6. The Cup-bearkr, Cnossus 20
Copyright. By permission of Mr. John Murray.
ly. Acrobats and Elands 21
Frofft Diissaud' s ' Civilisations prihelUniques ' {Getithner,
Paris). Cretan gems. Instead of the usual bull we find
here large antelopes like African elands.
18. ' Throne of Minos ' 22
Photo Maraghiannis. In the ' Council Chamber ' of the
Cnossus Palace. Fresco of " griffin with peacock-plumes
in a flowery landscape."
19. MiNOAN Game-board 22
Photo Maraghiannis. Found in Cnossus Palace.
20. Cretan Jars for Oil, or Corn 38
Photo Maraghiannis. Found in store-houses of Cnossus
Palace. Five feet high.
21. Clay Disc of Phaestus 38
Photo Maraghiannis.
22. Tablets with Cretan Linear Script 39
From Dussand' s ' Civilisations prihelUniques ' {Geuthner,
Paris). Early linear writing [c. 1600 ?).
23. Inscription on Tataia's Flask 42
Copied by the author from Mr. H. B. Walters' book on
Vases.
24. ' Harvester Vase ' 48
Photo Maraghiannis. A small vessel of black soapstone,
probably once covered with gold-leaf. Early Minoan
work. Found at Hagia Triada, Crete.
25. Cretan Sarcophagus 48
Photo Maraghiannis. Later Minoan. Plastered Hmestone,
painted. Funeral ceremony. Double axes. Musicians,
one with seven-stringed lute.
26. Griffins and Pillar 50
From Diissaud' s ' Civilisations prihelUniques ' (Geuthner,
Paris). Cretan gem.
27. Earth-Goddess and Lions 50
From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prihelUniques ' (Geuthner,
Paris). Imprint of seal found in Cnossus Palace. The
Earth-Mother on mountain (Ida ?) with lions ; shrine
and worshipper (or her son, Zeus Cretagenes ?).
xii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
28. RiTUAi. Dance and Uprooting of vS acred Tree 51
From Diissaud's ' Civilisations pr&helUniques ' {Geuthner,
Paris). Gold ring. The uprooting of the sacred tree was
perhaps a funeral ceremony.
29. Genii watering Sacred Tree 51
From Diissaud's ' Civilisations prihellSniques ' (Geuthner,
Paris). Gem found at Vaphio.
30. The ' lyADY OF WiivD Creatures ' 52
From Miss J. E. Harrison's ' Prolegomena ' [Cambridge Uni-
versity Press). Painting on a Boeotian amphora at
Athens.
31. Cretan Seaxs 53
From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prihelUniques ' [Geuthner,
Paris). Perhaps represent transformations in masked
ritual dance, or perhaps worn as charms against evil
spirits.
32. The Return of the Earth-Maiden 56
From Miss J. E. Harrison's ' Prolegomena ' [Cambridge Uni-
versity Press). Vase at Oxford. L,ike the Anodos of Kore,
but here the maiden is Pandora (generally the Greek
Eve, but here probably the ' All-giver,' Earth-goddess).
Zeus, Hermes, and Epimetheus welcome her return.
Compare the northern myth of Holda, the goddess of
spring.
33. MiNOAN, Mycenaean, and Trojan Ware 58
Photo Maraghiannis.
Top left jug and two small cups are of the exceedingly fine
Kamares ware ; found in Kamares cave, Mount Ida,
Crete. Date c. 2000.
Two other jugs on left, one with sunflower and papyrus (?),
the other with octopus, are later Minoan, c. 1500-
1400. The former is in what is called ' Cnossus Palace
style.'
Top right-hand jug, probably from an island tomb ; date
c. 2500. Black with incised Unes filled with white
substance.
Two-necked jug of ' Hissarlik ' (Trojan) type. Date c. 1800,
IfOwest to right : Mycenaean ware, but found in Cyprus.
Date c. 1300.
34. DiPYEON Vase 9^
Photo Mansell 6- Co. Two sides of same vase. Date
about 8 so or earlier. British Museum.
Xlll
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
35. D1PY1.ON, PhaIvEron, Samian, and Corinthian
Ware, c. 800-600 100
Photo Mansell &' Co.
Upper row, three Dipylon vessels ; ancient animal decoration
(bird, two horses at manger) combined with the revived
geometric and maeander style. See Note D. Date
c. 800.
I^owest to left : ' Phaleron ware.' About fifty of such one-
handled jugs discovered. Named after first, found on
the road to Phaleron. Very different from preceding,
and far more artistic. Oriental influence ? Date c. 700.
Samian two-handled jug, found in the cemetery Fikellura,
Rhodes. Date c. 600.
Old Corinthian ; easily recognized by rather heavy but finely
balanced shape, colours (rich browns and yellows) and
style of animals, with spaces filled with flowers, &c.
Corinth was anciently a great emporium, especially for
trade with the far "West. Date, about Periander's age,
c. 600.
36. Foundations of Apollo's Temple, West Delphi 104
Photo Siniiriottis , Athens. See under Fig. 49 in this list.
37. Archaic Statue io6
From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' {Macmillan
& Co. Ltd.). One of the so-called "Tauten' ('Aunts')
excavated on the Athenian Acropolis.
38. Assarhaddon with Captive Egyptian and
Aethiopian 112
Photo Graphische Gesellschaft.
39. The ' Francois Vase ' ii6
Photo Alinari. In the Etruscan Museum, Florence. Perhaps
the oldest inscribed Greek vase. Found by M. Francois
at Chiusi (Clusium, the city of Lars Porsena, where
great numbers of tombs, &c., have been discovered).
It was in about fifty fragments, but was nearly complete.
In 1900, however, an insane employ i of the museum
overthrew it, and while it lay shattered on the floor
numerous shards were stolen, so that many important
portions (as seen in the picture) are wanting. For
questions of ancient Greek dress, weapons, chariots,
vases, &c., it is invaluable. See Index and Note B.
Many of the figures in the numerous scenes are named,
and we learn the names of the painter and maker by
the words KXtrta? /x' eypa^ev 'Epyurt/noy /x' inoirjafv. Date
perhaps about 650. Greek work imported into
Etruria.
40. I^ACiNiAN Cape and Column 120
From ' Aus dem klass. Suden,' by permission of Herr Ch.
Coleman, Liibeck.
xiv
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
41. Poseidon's Temple, Paestum ^ 120
Photo Brogi. To left a part of the ' Basilica.' Note the
greater bulge (entasis) of the columns. See Note A.
42. Apoi^lo's Temple, Corinth 130
Photo Simiriottis, Athens. See Note A.
43. Site of Corinth and the Acrocorinthus 130
Photo Simiriottis, Athens. Looking south. The rock of the
ancient citadel Acrocorinth is some 1900 feet high. A
village existed on the old site till 1858, when it was
destroyed by an earthquake, and New Corinth was then
founded on the sea-shore.
44. Colossi of Abu Simbel 148
Photo Frith. They all represent Ramses II (c. 1300, the
Pharaoh of Moses' youth). The Greek inscription is on
the legs of the headless colossus. It is signed by ' Archon
and Pelekos,' who had " travelled with King Psamtik
to Elephantine, and as far as the river permits." Date
594-
45. Cimmerians 148
Photo Mansell &- Co. A terra-cotta sarcophagus found at Clazo-
menae, now in the British Museum. The head-dress,
weapons, and war-dogs make it Ukely that these are
the mysterious Cimmerians. Others take it for a
chariot-race or a ' Doloneia.'
46. Site of Olympia and Vale of the Alpheios 152
Photo Simiriottis, Athens.
47. Heraion, Olympia 152
Photo Simiriottis . Athens.
48. Vale of Tempe and Mouth of River Peneios 156
Photo Simiriottis, Athens.
49. Site of Delphi 156
Before the old village of Zastri had been cleared away. Photo
by Dr. Walter Leaf, Hellenic Society. In background
lower precipices of Parnassus and ravine, from the left
side of which springs the Castalian Fount. The great
Temple Ues further west.
50. ' Artemis of Delos ' 172
From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' {Macmillan
(S- Co. Ltd.). Primitive image with hair (as in Cretan
statue. Fig. 6) in Egyptian style. Dedicated by
Nicandra of Naxos to the Dehan Artemis. Found in
Delos.
XV
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
51. Stele of Aristion 172
Photo Alinari. Athens National Museum.
52. The Croesus Column 182
From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' {Macmillan
&■ Co. Ltd.). The inscription is on the moulding
beneath the figure. It is unfortunately almost invisible.
53. Tomb of Cyrus 192
From Dr. Sarre's ' Iranische Felsreliefs ' {Ernst Wasmuth,
A.-G., Berlin). Seep. 193.
54. The Olympieion, Athens 192
Photo Simiriottis, Athens. See p. 456.
55. Black-figured Vases, c. 700-500 204
Photo Mansell & Co.
Greek vase found at Vulci, Etruria. Achilles slaying Penthe-
silea. Date c. 550.
Panathenaic prize vase. Victor being crowned. Date
perhaps only c. 420, but in these prize vases the old
black-figured style of the sixth century was kept.
In middle : Attic amphora. Birth of Athene (springing from
the head of Zeus).
Left lower : Ancient Corinthian crater (mixing bowl).
Return of Hephaestus to Olympus, mounted on mule and
accompanied by Dionysus and satyrs. A not infrequent
comic subject.
From Daphnae, Egypt. Such water-jars (about thirty)
only found at Daphnae (and perhaps Clazomenae).
Decoration all of same type : above, Sphinxes ; below,
geese ; in middle, procession of women. Black-figured
st^de with white women's faces. Date c. 560 (age of
Solon, Croesus, and Amasis).
56. Ancient Black-figured Amphora 210
Photo Mansell &• Co. From Vulci, in Etruria, but Attic
work. Athene, Zeus, and Hermes. Archaic style.
Date c. 560.
57. Temple near Segesta 214
Photo Brogi. See Note A.
58. Statue from the Branchidae Temple 222
From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' {Macmillan
&- Co. Ltd.). Inscribed with name of Chares of Teichiussa.
British Museum.
59. The ' Harpy Tomb ' 222
Photo Mansell & Co. British Museum.
XV i
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAOE
60. EUROPA ON THE Bui,!, 226
From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' [Macmillan
&' Co. Ltd.). Metope from temple at Selinus. At
Palermo. Somewhat later than the Selinus reliefs of
Perseus and the Gorgon, and the extraordinary fore-
shortened chariot, models of which are in the British
Museum.
61. The Tyrannicides 230
Photo Alinari. Naples.
62. Tempi^e of Aphaia, Aegina 232
Photo Simiriottis, Athens. See Note A.
63. Aegina Pediment 232
Photo F. Bruckmann. Central group. Restored by Thor-
waldsen.
64. The ' Darius Vase ' 236
Photo F. Bruckmann. At Naples. An Apulian vase of about
300. Darius is seated in his throne, and before him
stands a counsellor who is supposed to be warning him
against invading Greece.
65. Pythagoras 242
Photo Alinari. Vatican. Almost incredible as genuine
portrait. No sign of great character or intellect.
66. Aeschyi^us 242
Photo Alinari. Capitol. Old type in simple grand style.
Possible portrait. Date c. 420.
67. MlI^TIADES 242
Doubtful. He was painted, by Micon or Polygnotus, in
pictures of Marathon, and his statue was the centre of a
group by Pheidias at Delphi. Old drawings exist of
ancient busts, now lost. This bust (helm ornamented
with hons) is in the I,ouvre. Replica, called ' Masinissa,'
in Capitol.
68. Themistoci.es 242
Photo F. Bruckmann. At Munich. Often called "unknown
archaic warrior." Very fine, and dates probably from
Persian wars. Bernoulli says it is possibly Themistocles.
69. Thermopyi^ae 260
From a photo by Miss A. R. Fry, Failand, Bristol. From the
I^eonidas mound, looking west, towards Malian Plain
and the Spercheios. In foreground the West Gate and
the Hot Springs ; to left KalUdromos and Trachinian
cliffs. In distance, spur of Mount Oeta (?) and range
of Mount Othrys.
b xvii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
70. Tomb of I^eonidas (?) 260
Photo English Photographic Co. Ruins on a mound near
Thermopylae ; just possibly remains of the tomb of
I^eonidas, on which a lion was erected.
71. Bay of Sai^amis 266
Photo Simiriotiis, Athens. From Mount Aegaleos, looking south.
Aegina and Epidaurian coast in distance. Salamis to
right, Psyttaleia to left.
72. Wali^s of Thkmistoci.es 266
Photo Siminottis, Athens. From near Dipylon. Hymettus in
distance. Acropolis and Theseion to right.
73. Tomb of Darius 274
The entrance, which is on the face of a perpendicular precipice.
See Note, p. 193.
74. Charioteer found at Dei^phi 274
Photo Simiriotiis, Athens.
75. OSTRAKA OF ThEMISTOCI.ES AND XANTHIPPUS,
Father of Pericles 274
Photo Mansell &' Co. The second is a shard of a painted
vase " from the pre-Persian debris on the Athenian
Acropolis." Another has been found with the name of
Megacles, possibly the Megacles mentioned by Pindar.
76. Temple of ' Concordia,' Acragas 278
Photo Brogi. See Note A.
yy. ' Hiero's Helmet ' 278
Photo Mansell 6- Co.
78. Group of Gods, Parthenon Frieze 284
From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' {Macmillan
& Co. Ltd.).
79. The ' Strangford ' Shield 284
Photo Mansell & Co. Copy of the shield of the Pheidian
Athene Parthenos, in British Museum. The figure
that half covers its face with its arm is said to be that of
Pericles, and the "bald-headed but vigorous" man on
his right side to be Pheidias himself.
80. Temple on Sunion 288
Photo by Dr. Walter Leaf, Hellenic Society.
81. Theseion, or perhaps Temple of Hephaestus 288
Photo English Photographic Co.
xviii
LLSiT OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PACK
82. Metopes from the Parthenon ^ 292
Photo Mansell & Co. British Museum.
83. Parthenon, from West 296
Photo Alinari.
84. Apollo's Temple, Phigaleia 296
Photo Simiriottis, Athens. See Note A.
85. Portions of Parthenon Frieze 3^4
Photo Mansell &■ Co.
86. The Pediments of the Parthenon 306
Reconstructed by Karl Schwerzek, Ritter des kaiserl. Franz-
Joseph Ordens. The work was specially favoured by the
late Empress of Austria and the Imperial family. It is
regarded as a very successful attempt, founded on a most
careful study of aU the remains. My thanks are due to the
artist for kind permission to reproduce the pictures of
his models given in his Erlciuterungen, published by
himself in Vienna.
87. Probable Copy of the Pheidian Athene IvEmnia 310
Photo R. Tamme, Dresden; reproduced by permission of the
Director of the Albertinum. A very fine head at Bologna
was found by Professor Furtwangler to fit exactly a
headless Athene at Dresden, which evidently belonged to
the Pheidian school of sculpture. Our picture represents
this body furnished with a cast of the Bologna head, and
according to Professor Furtwangler, whose authority few
would care to question, we have in the complete statue a
fine copy of the celebrated Lemnian Athene of Pheidias.
Another similar, but much mutilated, statue in the
Dresden Museimi has been restored on the same lines.
The face of the Lemnia is cited by Lucian in a famous
passage {Imag. vi.) as of ideal beauty and nobihty,
and Himerius says, probably in reference to this statue,
that Pheidias sometimes " decked the virgin goddess
with a blush instead of a helmet."
88. Probable Copy of Myron's Athene 310
Photo supplied and permission for reproduction given by Dr.
Swarzenski, Director of the Stddtische Gallerie, Frankfurt-
a.-M. The rather repellent Marsyas of Myron is well
known from a coin, a painted and a sculptured vase, and
from the statue in the Lateran Museimi and a small bronze
in the British Museum. The Marsyas belonged to a group
in which Athene, who had invented flutes and had cast
them away (because they disfigured her face when she
played), was represented looking disdainfully at the
satyr, who " while advancing to pick up the discarded
flutes is suddenly confronted by the goddess" and starts
xix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
riC. PAGE
back in dismay. The Athene was supposed to be
hopelessly lost ; but about 1882 this statue of Parian
marble was dug up in Rome, and after lying for twenty
years in a shed was recognized as probably the lost
Myron, and transferred by some rich German Hellenists
to the Frankfurt Gallery. It is a beautiful statue,
and, if it is Myron's, must give us an idea of him as
artist very different from what we gain from the Marsyas
or the Discobolos.
Three possibi^e Copies of the Pheidian Athene :
89. head of a statue in ROME 314
From Professor E. Luwy's ' Griechische Plastik ' {Klinkhardt
and Biermann, Leipzig). By Antiochos, a sculptor
otherwise unknown. Museo Nazionale delle Terme. The
dress and helm are not like those of the Athene Parthenos,
but the face is believed to be the best extant copy of that
of the Pheidian goddess, and is very much the finest of
the three here given.
90. A STATUETTE FOUND AT ATHENS, NEAR THE
VARVAKEION 314
Photo English Photographic Co. Supposed by some to be a
model, by a Roman artist, of the Pheidian Athene. But
it is quite incredible that it should be an exact repre-
sentation. The general pose may be reproduced (as it is
also in another half -finished statuette found by M.
I^enormant near the Pnyx), but it is impossible to accept
the face, or the exceedingly ugly device of the column
supporting the right hand — though it may have been
added to the original statue at some later time to
prevent collapse.
91. A RED JASPER INTAGWO INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME
ASPASIOS 314
From Brunn-Bruckmann' s ' Denkniiiler der griech. und runt.
Sculptur.' At Vienna. Evidently a copy of the Pheidian
Athene.
92. The ' Meidias Vase ' 326
Photo Mansell &' Co. Hydria signed with name ' Meidias.'
Winckelmann esteemed it " above all others known to
him " for beauty of drawing. Date c. 430, but, though rich,
still very pure and unaffected by the ' fine style.' Below,
Heracles in the Garden of the Hesperides ; above, the
Leucippidae carried off by Castor and Pollux.
93. The Nike (Victory) of Paeonius 336
From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' [Macmillan
&' Co. Ltd.). In the Museum at Olympia.
XX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PACE
94. Herodotus 348
Photo Brogi. From double herm (^ith Thucydides) at
Naples. Ancient type and possible portrait,
95. Thucydides 348
Photo Anderson. Capitol. Somewhat like the Holkam
bust, which is perhaps the best ; but the types vary
considerably.
96. Perici.es 348
Photo Anderson. British Museum. Perhaps after the bust
or statue by Cresilas, whose name is on a base found on
the Acropolis. Date c. 450. Pericles was born c. 500,
and is represented here in his prime. On the ' Strangford '
Shield he is probably ten years older.
97. A1.CIBIADES 348
Photo Anderson. Capitol. Doubtful, but ancient. Several
copies exist.
98. Sophoci.es 358
Photo Anderson. Lateran. Other statues and busts of same
type exist.
99. Euripides 362
Photo Anderson. Vatican. Body once with other head.
A Euripides head (too small 1) put on it by Pio VII.
Tragic mask.
100, Socrates 376
Photo Brogi. Naples. Probably the most authentic of many
portraits of the philosopher.
loi. Plato 376
Photo Brogi. Uffizi, Florence. Small — one-third of life-size.
Built into the wall. Inscribed name ancient. A small
bronze copy is at Oxford. A Plato bust at Copenhagen
is somewhat similar. But Bernoulli says these are
entirely overthrown by a bust lately discovered, now at
Berlin.
102. Aristophanes 376
Photo Anderson. Capitol. Several of same type,
103. lyYSIAS 376
Photo F. Bruckmann. Capitol. Several of same type, one
of the best at Holkam.
104. Mourning Athene 384
Photo Simirioitis, Athens. Perhaps mourning over the
epitaph of warriors fallen in battle (c. 450). Found built
into wall of Acropolis.
105. Stele with Woman carrying Vase 384
Photo English Photographic Co. From the Cerameicus at
Athens.
106. Stele of Hegeso 384
Photo English Photographic Co. From the Cerameicus at
Athens.
xxi
LiLSiT OF ILLUSTRATIONS
107. Figure from Greek Tomb
Photo Mansell &- Co. The ' Trentham Hall ' statue. Since
1907 in. British Museum. Probably stood on a tomb in
the Cerameicus. For dress see Note B. Date about
fourth century. Probably found in Italy, and perhaps
reinscribed for monument of Roman lady.
108. Amazon by Poi,yci<eitus
Photo Alinari. So-called ' Mattel Amazon,' in Vatican,
Rome.
109. StEI^E of DEXII.EOS
Photo Simiriottis, Athens. The inscription (in Athens National
Museum Catalogue) seems to give Coroneia as the place
where he fell, though others mentioned in the epitaph
were killed near Corinth.
1X0. From the Mausoi<eum
Photo Mansell & Co. Ionic colxunn and architrave in British
Museum.
384
III.
112.
113-
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
zxii
Head of Cnidian Aphrodite
Photo F. Bruckmann. Possibly a copy from the statue by
Praxiteles. In collection of Herr von Kaufmann, Berlin.
The Hermes of Oi^ympia
Photo Alinari. By Praxiteles.
Hypnos
Photo Mansell &' Co. The well-known bronze winged head
in the British Museum has lately been set on the body,
newly discovered. It represents a youth running and
bending forward. He probably held a poppy in his
hand. The work is evidently of the Praxitelean age
(c. 360), and is Greek, though found near Perugia, in Italy.
The Satyr (Faun) of Praxitei^es
Photo Anderson. Capitoline Museum, Rome. The best known
of the copies of the original. A torso in the I<ouvre is
believed by some to be a part of the original statue.
Apoho Sauroctonos
Photo Mansell &• Co. Copy of the statue by Praxiteles.
Demeter
Photo Mansell &• Co. Head perhaps by Scopas.
EiRENE and P1.UTUS
Photo F. Bruckmann. By Cephisodotus.
The Cnidian Aphrodite
Photo Mansell S- Co. Copy of the statue by Praxiteles.
Drum of CoIvUmn
From the later temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Photo
Mansell & Co. British Musexun.
392
392
392
392
394
394
400
404
408
414
418
420
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. ^'■'--^
120. MausoIvUS 422
Photo Mansell & Co. British Museum. .
121. The I/IOn of Chakroneia 430
Photo Simiriottis, Athens.
122. Arcadian Gate, Messene 430
Photo Simiriottis. Athens. Messene was founded by Epamei-
nondas.
123. Alexander 434
Photo Mansell S' Co. British Museum.
124. ISOCRATES 434
Photo Graphische Gesellschaft. Berlin. Same type as the
bust with inscribed name in Villa Albani, Rome. Possibly
copied from the statue of Isocrates by I^eochares (see
p. 443) set up at Eleusis by Timotheus, son of Conon ; but
poor work, and represents him at earUer time of life.
If genuine, the portrait taken during his hfe, for otherwise
he would be represented as very old, having lived about
ninety-nine years.
125. Aeschines 434
Photo Anderson. Vatican. Several of same type.
126. Epicurus 434
Photo F. Bruckmann. Copenhagen.
127. Demosthenes 438
Photo Anderson. Vatican. False restoration with book.
Hands should be lightly interlocked and hold no book.
128. Aristotle 442
Sitting statue : Photo Anderson. Bust : Photo F. Bruckmann.
The beardless seated statue in the Spada Palace at
Rome has inscription arist . . . S, but the s is not
at the right distance for aristoTEi^ES, and the head
seems not to belong to the body. A drawing of an
ancient bust of Aristotle (such busts were very common
among the Romans — vide Juv. Sat. II, vi.) has been found
in an old manuscript, and has led to identification at
Vienna of the bearded bust, which may be an authentic
likeness ; but unfortunately it has a restored irregular
nose, whereas the drawing and old descriptions give him
an aquiline nose !
129. Aphrodite of Melos 444
Photo Alinari. Louvre.
130. The ' Alexander Sarcophagus ' 446
Photo Sebah and Joaillier. Constantinople. The larger rehef
represents the battle of Issus. Alexander is on horseback
at the left end.
131. The Nike of Samothrace 448
Photo Alinari. Louvre.
132. Temple of Athene Nike 454
Photo Alinari.
xxiii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGB
133. Erechtheion 454
Photo English Photographic Co.
134. The Acropolis from near the Oi^ympieion 456
Photo English Photographic Co. Relics of ancient city wall
and columns of Olympieion in foreground. Under
Cimon's great south wall of Acropolis (just above the
white house) the Theatre of Dionysus, and further left
the site of the Odeion of Herodes.
135. Caryatid from Erechtheion 460
Photo Mansell & Co.
136. Monument of Lysicrates 460
Photo Alinari.
137. Bronze and Sii^ver Dress-pins 460
From the British Museum ' Guide to the Department of Greek and
Roman Antiquities.' Mycenaean and later.
138. Ionic Chiton and Himation 460
Photo Mansell (S- Co. A very beautiful bronze statuette in the
British Museum.
139. Doric Chiton and Dagger-i.ike Pins 460
From the British Museum ' Guide to the Department of Greek
and Roman Antiquities.' From a toilet-box in the
British Museum.
140. Early Female Dress 461
From the FranQois Vase.
141. Red-figured Vases and White Lekythi, c.
520-350 472
Photo Mansell &> Co.
Attic hydria from Vulci, Etruria. Medea and the daughters
of Pelias (The trick of the rejuvenated ram). Datec.470.
Attic stamnos from Vulci. Odysseus and Sirens. Date c. 520.
White Attic lekythi, oil-flasks, found generally in tombs.
Earlier black on white, later polychrome. Date of these
c. 400. Very fine collection in British Museum.
Attic (or possibly Itahan) hydria, found in Southern Italy.
Late rich ' Apulian ' style, but not debased. Scene
similar to some on Attic stelae. Date c. 350.
XXIV
-'N..I A
Pelia
,4g>Therma
Mrthniie.^6;-:V_Ch a LcTd i ce
'MP©
uS^I
'''o-; m
■ TlierianpylaJrTr ^
TOLIAl. .: -^ ^v, .^
;;:phocis v*^,.
Naupaclus ■'locRiI j^, ^l^haeVoneaX^
^;-
' .P Z° a .W'^SC' I
.4 J . • "'"''■ €orinth* •
Tegea
T.iessena i ^ ^ ,; s;
Cff/f-fil
U
-'n
f'-ii
CHAPTER I
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION : THE
ACHAEAN SUPREMACY
(down to c. iioo)
^") SECTIONS : I^ANGUAGE AND WRITING : THE OIvD RELIGION :
^ THE ' HOMERIC AGE ' AND HOMER : CHRONOI.OGY OF
AEGAEAN AND CONTEMPORARY CIVIUZATIONS
NOT very long ago the history of Greece (such history as is
founded on the evidence of contemporary inscriptions
and similar relics) was held to begin about the tra-
ditional date of the first Olympiad — namely, 776. It is true
that for some two thousand years a chronology of the 'pre-
historic ' or ' mythical ' age of Greece was accepted with more
or less diffidence, and has been handed down to our times.
This chronology, based on the calculations of ancient writers ^
and drawn up finally (c. 220) by the keeper of the great
Alexandrian library, Eratosthenes, takes us back to the founda-
tion of Thebes by Cadmus in 13 13, a date of modest pre-
tensions compared with those given by some old writers, who
by calculating the generations of ancient dynasties and hero-
families lead us back beyond Deucalion, the Greek Noah
and father of all Hellenes, to Pelasgus, the ancestor of all
Pelasgians, and his ancestor Inachus, the first king of Argos,
who is said to have lived about 1986.
All this chronology and all the traditions of the so-called
mythical age were until quite lately rejected as of no historical
value by almost every modern writer on Greece — as valueless
1 See Hdt. vii. 204, where, according to the accepted genealogy of the Spartan
kings, Leonidas is shown to have been the twenty-first from Heracles, whose
traditional date is 1261-1209. C/. Hdt. viii. 131. Some assert that Eratosthenes
went back only to the Fall of Troy ( 1 1 84) . Thucydides fixes the Dorian invasion
(return of Heracleidae) at eighty years after the Fall of Troy. Some of these
dates come curiously near to those accepted by modern archaeolog)^
A I
tl
ANCIENT GREECE
as the legends of Brute the Trojan and the Cornish giants and
early kings of Britain, which Geoffrey of Monmouth gives as
serious history, and which even Milton in his history of England
is half inclined to accept on the ground that " never any
to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some
part of what so long hath been remember'd, cannot be thought
without too strict an incredulity."
That in this ' mythical age ' of Greece, long before the Fall
of Troy, great wars had been waged ^ and great empires had
existed was not denied ; but even such statements as those
of Thucydides and Herodotus about the sea-empire of Minos
the Cretan were relegated to the realm of fable — the realm of
demigods and monsters.
Nor was it denied that from certain points of view fables and
traditions are of supreme interest and value. Plato himself
has pointed out ^ the great ethical value of poetic fiction and
the uselessness and folly of attempting to unweave the rainbows
of old fables — of decomposing them into allegories or sun-
myths ; and in this he has been followed by perhaps the
greatest modern historian of Greece, Grote, who has devoted
the first of his ten volumes almost entirely to the consideration
of the Greek myths as wonderful products of Greek imagination,
and has carefully weighed their influence on the Greek mind
and on the course of Greek history.
But Grote also agrees with Plato in believing it to be use-
less and foolish to analyse these ancient myths for the purpose
of discovering any deposit of historical fact. " The hope,"
he says, " that we may, by carrying our researches up the
stream of time, exhaust the limits of fiction and land ulti-
mately upon some points of solid truth appears to me no less
illusory than the northward journey in quest of the Hyperborean
Elysium" — the Earthly Paradise of the ancients, the lyand
beyond the North Wind.
Within the last thirty years or more this point of view has
been gradually abandoned, even by the most sceptical. How-
^ Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Multi. . . . — HoRACB.
2 lu the Phaedriis.
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
ever disdainfully the modern historian may still speak of such
' fables ' as those of Pelops and I^ycurgus (whom, b'orrowing a
phrase from Herodotus, they describe as " not men, but only
gods "), none would now venture to deny that there are " points
of sohd truth" in legends that indicate the former existence
of a great ancient Mycenaean civilization, or a still greater
and more ancient civilization in Crete ; for we now possess
indisputable evidence that such civilizations existed, and that
in many an old legend there was at least a germ of truth. Nor
is it impossible that ere long the excavator and the philologist
(for both of whom a vast amount of unexplored and unde-
ciphered material is at hand) may open up yet more wonderful
vistas and help us to reconstruct and repeople far more fully
and vividly the so-called mythical age of Greece. vShould this
happen, I doubt not that many more of the old myths will be
found to contain some historical truth in the midst of their
poetic fictions, and that once more many a sceptic will have
to reweave his theories.
This, however, is a task for the archaeologist and the linguist.
For the historian it is still nearly as true as it was in Grote's
day that " two courses, and two only, are open : either to pass
over the myths altogether, or else to give an account of them
as myths." And seeing that to give a full account of myths
regarded as creations of poetic imagination, or as interesting
folk-lore, seems to be in this age of specialists the task of
other writers rather than that of the historian, and considering
that classical dictionaries and books about mythology are easily
obtained, and that a very full and systematic account of these
ancient Greek myths may be found in Grote's first volume, I
shall only relate, or mention, those which appear to have some
connexion with historical facts, or with such reconstructions as
may be reasonably built up on the rehcs of prehistoric times.
The first part of my subject is the so-called Aegaean civihza-
tion, which has been brought to light within the last thirty or
forty years. Enough has been discovered by excavation and
research to assure us that a once undreamt-of civilization
of very considerable importance did actually exist in Aegaean
3
ANCIENT GREECE
lands long before the first Olympiad, or the invasion of the
Dorians, or even the first coming of those Achaeans by whom
Troy is said to have been sacked — a civilization which in all
probability was already in existence at a period as far anterior
to the age of Pericles as that age is anterior to our own. So
much seems certain ; but what further deductions we are
justified in making, and how we are to adjust and use all the
evidence tliat has come to light, it is at present difficult to see.
It should therefore be the aim of every one who writes on the
subject to place the evidence clearly, fully, and accurately
before his readers and to indulge as little as possible in theoretics.
A certain amount of theory and hypothesis is necessary in
order that the facts may be classified and presented in a dis-
tinct and graphic form, but it must not be forgotten that at
any moment new discoveries may be made which may roughly
upset our most plausible reconstructions.
At what stage in the history of humanity the first wave of
Aryan migration reached Central Europe we have no means
of knowing, but it is indubitable that the people whom we
call the ancient Greeks, and who called themselves Hellenes,
were mainly ^ of this Indo-Germanic race, and that when
their northern ancestors first pushed southward into Greece
they found there a race of quite a different kind — a dark-
haired, lithe-limbed race, which in that age under various
names seems to have inhabited most of the European lands
bordering on the Mediterranean. The Northmen probably
came in small bands at first, and, like the Normans of later
days in Southern Europe, established themselves as chieftains
among the less warlike Southerners. In time they would be
followed by successive waves of invaders, many of whom
would settle in the country, appropriate the land and the
1 This is perhaps too strong. Possibly the intermixture of the northern
(Achaean and Dorian) invaders with the aborigines was in time somewhat
such as that of the Normans with the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic population in
Britain, and the strangely rapid development and perfection of classical
Greek art may have been due to the revival of art-feeling that had existed
in the race before the advent of the northern invaders, just as the supremacy
of Tuscan art in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was possibly due to
the old Etruscan element.
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
women and enslave the men, or drive them forth to take
refuge in more barren or mountainous districts, such as Attica
and Arcadia.^
Now the evidence suppHed by excavation and research points
to the fact that in Greece, at a period not much anterior to
the age of the fair-haired Achaean princes described by Homer,
this dark-haired, hthe-hmbed Mediterranean race was still in
possession ; and similar evidence makes it clear that in Crete
a people probably belonging to the same race, and of a like
civilization, existed from a very early time, and possessed a
powerful empire until the advent of the northern conquerors.
It is this so-called Minoan and Mycenaean civilization which
of late years has been revealed to us.
The Trojan Cities
In the year 1870 the first beginning was made, by Dr. Schlie-
mann, of the excavations that have led to this result. Long
before that date the ancient history of Egypt and of Mesopo-
tamia had been to a large extent reconstructed by the dis-
coveries of monuments and the deciphering of hieroglyphic
and cuneiform inscriptions, but of the first ages of Greece what
few relics were known, such as old ' Pelasgic ' walls and a
few ancient sepulchres and remnants of primeval pottery,
were regarded with hopeless wonderment as the survivals of a
civilization which had passed away into eternal oblivion.
Much incredulity and some ridicule met the enthusiasm of
Dr. Schliemann, therefore, when he announced his intention
first to excavate ancient Troy and then to discover the tomb
of Agamemnon (described by Pausanias) at Mycenae. The
site of Homeric Troy he believed, in spite of the contrary
opinion of scholars, to be that of the later Roman city Novum
IHum, now the Hill of Hissarhk. On this site he and his
successors discovered the remains of no less than seven —
possibly nine — towns. Traces of the rough-stone walls^of
^ In this connexion the celebrated opening chapters of Thucydides' history
should be read. The discoveries of late years have added greatly to their
interest.
ANCIENT GREECE
the earliest of these towns are still visible, and within them
have been discovered fragments of primitive black pottery
and stone implements — among which is an axe-head of white
jade (nephrite), a stone said to be found in its natural state
only in China. ^ The second town had great ramparts with
towers and a fortified gate, all of sun-baked brick, with a
paved ramp and stone foundations. The relics were pottery
(still hand-made) and stone and copper implements. Bronze
seems to have been still rare, but near to the great gate, within
a kind of acropolis, was discovered a very considerable treasure
of gold and silver vessels and ornaments, together with copper
weapons and a hideous leaden idol of some ancient female
deity. The great ramparts and the wealth and art evidenced
by these finely wrought gold and silver ornaments made
Schliemann conclude that this was the Homeric city, and
that he had discovered the Treasure of King Priam. But,
almost incredible as it seemed before the discoveries of similar
treasures and other works of art in Crete and at Mycenae,
it is now believed that this second city of Troy existed at least
a thousand years before the days of Priam and Agamemnon,
and that the ruins of the sixth stratum are in all probability
those of the Homeric city. These ruins consist of great and
well-built walls of wrought stone (Fig. i), far better built
than so-called ' Pelasgic ' walls, and enclosing a very consider-
able area, with remains of a high- terraced acropolis, on the
summit of which was doubtless, as at Mycenae and Tiryns,
the regal palace. Of the four city gates the two greatest,
those to the south and the east, were guarded by strong towers,
and one of these might be the famous ' Scaean Gate ' of the
Iliad except for the fact that Homer's ' Scaean Gate ' seems
to have looked towards the Grecian camp and the sea —
1 Jade and jadite are to be found in the Alps and in European megalithic
monuments. In one of the latter, in Brittany, an axe-head of white jade
seems to have been discovered {Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race, by
T. W. Rolleston). It seems therefore a little over-fanciful to build up on a
bit of nephrite the possibility of commerce between this primeval Trojan town
and China via Nineveh. But even such a guess may be verified by future
discovery.
6
I. Wai,l of the Sixth City of Troy
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
evidently to the north-west, in which part the old walls were
demolished (50 B.C.) in order to fortify Sigeion (Sigeum).
In this sixth city bronze ^ weapons were found, and many
fragments of what is called ' Mycenaean ' pottery — a glazed
and painted wheel-made ware which denotes the later period
of Mycenaean civilization {c. 1400-1200), and which has been
found not only in Aegaean lands, but in Spain, Italy, Egypt,
Cyprus, and Asia Minor. From these and other evidences it
seems highly probable that Homeric Troy was built at the
time when (c. 1350) the northern Achaean race was still pouring
down through Thessaly into I^ower Greece ; that the builders
were a northern Aryan (Danubian) people related to the fair-
haired Achaeans, namely, the Bhryges, or Phrygians ; and
that this sixth city ^ was afterwards burnt by foreign enemies,
whom we may most reasonabl}^ suppose to have been the
Achaean princes of Greece and their followers (a mixed host
of Achaeans, Argives, and Aegaeans) described by Homer.
The Bhryges, or Phrygians, were apparently a tribe of the
same great Aryan race (originally from Northern India, but
long inhabiting Central Europe) to which the Mysians and
perhaps also the Lydians and Lycians and other peoples of
Asia Minor belonged,-^ as well as the Achaeans of Greece. They
seem to have come over from Thrace in successive waves
during several centuries. The second city of Troy was probably
founded by earlier Phrygian or northern invaders, and it was
possibly to later invasions of the same northern race that the
destruction and refounding of the third, fourth, and fifth
cities were due, on which occasions the earlier comers (Lycians
1 But only one specimen of iron— a knife, which SchUemann believed to have
slipped down from a higher stratum.
* Possibly also the fifth, for tradition tells us of a former sack of Troy by
Telamon and Heracles.
^ The original inhabitants of Lydia may have been non-Aryan, but they
were conquered by and amalgamated with the Phrygians. These mixed
peoples are called Maeonians (Mr/ovfy) by Homer, who does not mention
Lydians. The Lycians I believe to have been of Aryan stock, but not the
Carians, whom Homer describes as " speaking a strange tongue." The
Pamphylians are believed to have belonged to the later Dorian race of
invaders, of whom three tribes are often mentioned : Hylleis, Pamphyli,
Dymanes.
ANCIENT GREECE
and others) were driven further south. Or possibly these
Aryan invaders for several centuries, before they made them-
selves masters of these north-western parts of Asia Minor,
had been obliged to fight for existence against the older
inhabitants. Who these older inhabitants were is not known
for certain, but it is believed that in this age the great Empire
of the Hittites, a Semitic race (mentioned in the Old Testament,
and perhaps the K/jreioi of Odyssey xi. 521), whose chief
city was Carchemish, extended over much of Asia Minor.
This seems proved by numerous inscriptions in Hittite script,
a syllabic hieroglyphic writing, which has been partly
deciphered.^ Tablets, too, have been discovered with official
correspondence between the Hittite kings and subject states,
and a cuneiform version of a treaty between the Hittite
king Chetasor and Ramses II of Egypt.
We hear also of a great nation of Cappadocians (probably
different from the Hittites), whose chief city was Pteria.
These nations blocked the western expansion of Babylon and
Assyria, and of eastern art and cuneiform writing.
The Homeric Trojans were evidently a mixed people com-
posed of northern and aboriginal elements (Queen Hecabe,
for instance, was a Phrygian), speaking a language closely
akin to that of the Achaeans, and worshipping similar northern
deities.^ The chivalrous respect with which, in Homer's
poem, the Achaean princes regard their foes doubtless existed
in reality between the northern conquerors on both sides of
the Aegaean, and, in spite of all arguments about pure Achaean
blood and fair hair (which the Phrygian chieftains may also
have had), we can feel assured that the traditions that make
Pelops, the son of the Phrygian king Tantalus, give his name
to the Peloponnese and found the royal house of the Pelopidae,
to which Agamemnon and Menelaus belonged, as well as the
traditions (repeated by the sane-minded Thucydides) which
derived the great wealth of ' golden Mycenae ' from Phrygian
mines and the gold-sands of the Pactolus, have some historical
basis.
1 See Section A, ' Writing/ " See Section B, ' The Old Religion.'
8
00
Id
tn
<
>
2
<
<
z
Cd
<
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
That the founder of a royal Peloponnesian dynasty came
from Phrygia, as tradition avers, we have no good reason to
doubt, but the question is, I think, whether this was not
long before the advent of the Achaeans in the Peloponnese or
the Phrygians in Asia Minor. If it were so, then the older
Pelopid monarchs of Pisa, Mycenae, and Sparta may well have
been of Aegaean or even Hittite race, and have ruled over
an aboriginal Aegaean population, and the tombs of which we
shall soon hear may be those of these older monarchs, into
whose family the Achaeans may have married when they
conquered the land.
Schliemann had proved conclusively that a great Trojan
city had existed, and that it had been burnt about the time
of the traditional date of the Fall of Troy (1184). He had
shown that there is a very solid historical basis in Homer's
great poem ; and further research has enabled us to recon-
struct and rej)eople this Homeric age. But excavation was
to open up vistas into far more distant ages.
Mycenae
Dr. Schliemann had announced his intention of discovering
the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae ; and if he did not find,
as he firmly believed he had done, the tomb and the very
body of the great Achaean king, he found something perhaps
still more wonderful.
Homer's " golden, wide-wayed Mycenae," the home of
Agamemnon, 1 was evidently one of the principal cities of
Achaean Greece, larger than Argos, Tiryns, Corinth, or Sparta.
In later days its importance declined so much that it could
supply only eighty men for Thermopylae and two hundred
for Plataea. Soon afterwards (462) it was destroyed by the
^ Some modern writers have propounded the idea that Agamemnon had
nothing to do with Mycenae, but was king of the old district of Argos in
Thessaly, and was ' translated,' together with his Achaeans and Argives,
to the Peloponnese by some late contributor to the Homeric poems ! This
would indeed be an easy solution of the Mycenae problem. In the Odyssey
Agamemnon is evidently murdered at Mycenae. The dramatists make Argos
the scene of the slaughter.
ANCIENT GREECE
Argives and the inhabitants were expelled, and the ingenuity
of Thucydides finds some difficulty in explaining away the
apparent insignificance of its ruins.
Some of these ruins were the massive ramparts and the
well-known I^ion Gate, which still exist ; and it was within
these walls of the ancient Mycenaean acropolis that the
Greek traveller and writer Pausanias (to whose descriptions
we owe much of our knowledge of Greek antiquities) saw
the tombs, or what were then {c. a.d. 160) beheved to be the
tombs, of Atreus and Agamemnon. " Some remnants of the
encirchng wall," says Pausanias, " are still visible, and also
a gate which has lions over it. These, as they say, were
built by the Cyclopes. . . . There is the tomb of Atreus
and of the men whom Aegisthus slew at the banquet when
they returned from Troy . . . and the tomb of Agamemnon.
But Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus were buried a short distance
outside the walls, for they were deemed unworthy to lie
within, where Agamemnon was interred and those who fell
with him."
Trusting in this description. Dr. Schliemann, in 1876, sank
a pit, some 40 yards square, within the walls of the acropolis,
not far from the Lion Gate. He first came upon stone slabs,
vertical and horizontal, forming what he thought to be the
seats of an agora (place of council). Below these he found
an altar and some tombstones {stelae), and under these again,
some 25 feet below the surface, six square tombs hewn vertically
in the solid rock. These had originally been covered with
great slabs of stone. The slabs had given way, and the tombs
(which are from 10 to 15 feet deep and of various sizes) were
filled with earth and stones, amidst which lay embedded
no less than seventeen human bodies. On excavating these
tombs a great amount of treasure was discovered — rings and
sword-hilts and bracelets and pins and brooches and necklaces
and hundreds of other ornaments, all of pure gold, more than
seven hundred golden plaques (probably once attached to the
women's dresses), diadems of gold on the heads of the women
and masks of gold covering the faces of some of the men,
10
w
H
o
33
w
a
o
P-l
l-t
w
o
o
w
o
o
w
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
besides many other costly objects, in silver, bronze, amber,
and ivory. " Au seul point de vue de la valeur venale," says
Diehl, " les bijoux representent plus de 100,000 francs d'or ;
au point de vue artistique et scientifique, leur prix est
inestimable." It was scarcely strange that Dr. Schhemann
in his hour of triumph dispatched a telegram to the King of
Greece announcing that he had discovered the tombs that
Pausanias describes, and probably the tombs of those Achaean
princes of ' golden Mycenae ' of whom Homer sang. But are
these the tombs which Pausanias saw ? And are they the
tombs of the Achaean princes ? Before venturing to answer
this question let us hear more.
Besides the six shaft-graves on the acropolis there exist
(partly known before excavation by Schliemann and others)
nine great vaulted sepulchres, of which the so-called Treasury
of Atreus is the largest. It is a lofty ' beehive ' chamber,
about 50 feet high, sunk into the side of a hill, and approached
by a deep passage about 40 yards in length. The fagade was
once richly decorated. The portal, which has a Hntel nearly
30 feet long and weighing some 120 tons, was flanked by
alabaster columns with zigzag and spiral ornament.^ Above
the lintel was a large triangle of red porphyry, the architectural
device being evidently copied from the Lion Gate. In these
great sepulchres no treasure was found. They had been
plundered and stripped even of their bronze decorations.
Nor were any bodies discovered. But what few evidences
came to light made it clear that these tombs were of a later
age than the shaft- tombs of the acropolis.
Some less pretentious square tombs with slanting roofs
were also discovered cut out of the rock on a lower level —
probably the site of the town of Mycenae ; and the remains
^ Portions of these columns are in the British Museum. Another similar
tomb, and nearly as large, is known as the Tomb of Clytaemnestra. It was
mostly excavated by Mrs. Schliemann. In order to avoid perplexing the
reader with details I do not describe the further excavations at Tiryns,
Orchomenus, and other places, where interesting evidences of the Aegaean
civilization were found, but nothing at all comparable with the tombs of
Mycenae.
II
ANCIENT GREECE
of a palace, probably of the Achaean age, were found on the
summit of the hills.
Now let us, with the aid of our illustrations, consider towards
what conclusion the evidence points. I believe it will be found
to point towards this conclusion : that the shaft-graves of the
acropolis are the tombs of princes (possibly Pelopidae) who
ruled over an ' Aegaean ' people before the advent of the
Achaean invaders. And I believe that the great vaulted
sepulchres of later date are most probably the tombs of the
Achaean princes,^ and that the palace was built by them.
(i) Firstly, the human remains were skulls and bones " on
which were remnants of flesh and skin." They had evidently
not been burnt. (Ashes were found, but probably these
were the ashes of sacrificed victims — possibly also human.)
Now the Acliaeans, if we are to believe Homer, burnt their
dead, sometimes burying the ashes under a great mound.
Embalming or ' drying ' a body is once mentioned, but the
slain Homeric heroes (Achilles, Hector, Patroclus, Elpenor)
are all burnt on a funeral pyre, and the graphic account of
the process given by the ghost of Odysseus' mother {Od. xi.)
surely shows that burning was customary among the
Achaeans.^
(2) Secondly, the dress and arms of the portrayed Mycenaean
warriors are not at all what one associates with the Homeric
Achaeans. In a siege-scene depicted on a fragment of a silver
vessel (Fig. 5) most of the defenders of the fort are armed with
slings and bows, and are stark naked, while two in the rear
rank are enveloped in great hide (or bark ?) shields, apparently
suspended by a baldrick of thongs or cords, for the men are
^ This is of course inconsistent with the assertion of Pausanias given above.
He may have seen the acropolis tombs, but it is very remarkable that if they
were known in his day they should have remained unrifled.
2 Burial and burning often existed side b}'^ side, as was certainly the case
in the ' classical ' age of Greece. A curious inconsistency occurs to me. The
skeleton of the Achaean Orestes, Herodotus tells us (i. 68), was foiind at
Tegea in a coffin over ten feet long ; but Sophocles brings on to the stage, in
the Electra, the (supposed) ashes of Orestes enclosed in an urn. The supposed
bones of Theseus, who belonged to the Aegaean age, were found by Cimon
in Scyros, whence they were transported to Athens.
12
N
w
H
<!
H
m
<
w
w
>
Pi
W
>
i-T
In
o
{-I
W
o
«
O
W
w
u
I
W
o
w
M
s
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
not holding them. Such shields are found, often in a figure-of-
eight form, on other Aegaean (Mycenaean and Cretan) gems
and seals. This great man-covering, ox-hide shield (" as great
as a tower ") is, indeed, not unknown to Homer, but as a rule
the Homeric shield seems to have been circular and smaller
and carried by a handle,^ and the armour (helm, greaves,
and breastplate) of the Homeric warriors was of bronze.
Now the warriors on the Mycenaean ' Warrior Vase ' (Fig. 8)
do certainly seem to carry a round, or rather a crescent-shaped,
light shield, with perhaps a rim {avrvK) of metal, but the
rest of their equipment is surely not Homeric. Allowance
may be made for the artlessness of the painter, but surely these
fighters are not the well-greaved, bronze-clad and bronze-
helmed Achaeans.
On an old painted tombstone found in the lower town of
Mycenae there is depicted underneath a row of warriors a
row of horses. Moreover, on old Aegaean pottery (see Fig. 33)
and in paintings found at Tiryns and on gems one finds horses,
and also warriors in primitive two-horsed chariots with wicker
breastwork. Does this, it may be asked, point to an age after
the Achaean invasion ? I think not. It is evident that the
horse was introduced into Greece before the coming of the
Achaeans, and probably the ancient myths that describe the
wars between ThessaHan I^apithae and the Centaurs are a
reminiscence of a very early appearance of horsemen from the
north. The myth of Pegasus, too (connected with Perseus
and the Medusa), presupposes a knowledge of the horse.
[It may be remarked in passing that the horse is said not to
be found in early Egyptian art. Possibly it was introduced
by the Shepherd Kings, about 1800. It is first mentioned in
the Bible in connexion with Joseph and Jacob, who died in
Egypt (see Gen. xlvii. 17 and 1. 9). Joseph's chariot is also
mentioned in Gen. xlvi. 29. Joseph probably lived under the
^ This is a point much disputed. Some argue from the apparent incon-
sistencies that the Iliad is a poem of mixed authorship and diverse ages.
The small shield was invented by the Carians, according to Herodotus (i. 171).
The huge shield of Ajax in Homer has seven layers of ox-hide, and must have
been of enormous weight.
13
ANCIENT GREECE
last of the Shepherd Kings. Abraham, who visited Egypt
about the year 2000, was given sheep and asses and camels by
Pharaoh, but no horses are mentioned.]
But to return to the subject of Mycenaean dress. In the
' siege-scene ' there are women standing on the very solidly
and regularly built rampart. They seem to be applauding
their defenders and deriding the foe. Their dress is not easy
to discern ; but on the gold ring (Figs. 7 and 28) one sees
7. From a Mycenaean Goi,d Ring
distinctly what the dress of the Mycenaean ladies of this age
was like. It apparently very much resembled that of fashion-
able dames of modern times, except that the whole bust seems
to have been often uncovered.
Now in Homer the dress of the women is entirely different.
Instead of rich-embroidered jackets or blouses (very ^e'co/Z^^^'^s
sometimes, or conspicuous for their absence) and heavily
flounced skirts and lofty coiffures of hair, the Achaean ladies
wore a thin ^ chiton (tunic, chemise) and an ample over-garment
^ Even the chiton of Odysseus was as soft and glossy as the inner skin of an
onion. See Note B, ' Dress.'
14
8. The ' Warrior Vase '
9. Goi^DEN IMask from Mycenae
14
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
{peplos or pharos) of lighter or tliicker stuff, according to the
season, confined round the waist by
a zone, and fastened over the shoul-
ders and down the side by brooches.
(The peplos given to Penelope by a
suitor had twelve of such brooches ;
and it is remarkable that scarcely
one has been found among all the
Mycenaean treasures.) Over the
head they wore a coif of soft, glisten-
ing tissue {Od. i. 354), and above this
sometimes a large veil {Od. v. 232).
The men, moreover, when not in
armour were not content with the
bathing-drawers sort of garment
which we often find as the only
article of dress in Aegaean por-
traiture, but even such people as
swineherds wore the tunic {chiton)
and a mantle or cloak {chlaina,
pharos). The tunic was fastened
round the waist by a belt {zoster).
Thus the dress, both of men and of
women, of these Mycenaeans, as far
as we can judge from the evidence
supplied by excavation, was very
different from that of the Homeric
Achaeans.
(3) The remains of various palaces
and other buildings discovered at
Mycenae, Tiryns, and other places
where the rehcs (such as pottery)
make us suspect a similar ' My-
cenaean ' civilization are in some
respects hke the Homeric palaces,
and a decorative material men-
tioned by Homer {cyan, or blue glass-paste) has been found.
15
10. Mycenaean Dagger
ANCIENT GREECE
These buildings, however, are possibly not Aegaean, but
Achaean.
(4) Among the weapons dis-
covered at Mycenae are two
daggers (Figs. 10 and 11) the blades
of which are most skilfully inlaid
with gold and silver and a dark
substance on a ground of enamelled
bronze. It is true that we find
something similar in Homer, whose
' Shield of Achilles ' and ' Brooch
of Odysseus ' and ' Belt of Hera-
cles,' as well as his descriptions
of the process of inlaying, testify
to high skill in the art. But here
again we have the loin-cloths and
the figure-of-eight shield (in the
lion-hunt), and a scene which
reminds one much more of Egypt
or Crete than of Homer, namely,
a representation of cats, or ichneu-
mons, hunting ducks amidst the
papyrus on the banks of a river
that may be meant for the Nile.
There was discovered at Thebes in
Egypt a very similar wall-painting ;
but the art of the Mycenae dagger
is distinctly not Egyptian : it is
evidently native work, and is a
striking evidence of the high
development which the art of
the metal - worker had already
reached among the pre-Achaean
Greeks.
(5) But still more striking as
II. Mycenaean Dagger ^Qj-ks of art are two golden
cups (Fig. 13) which were found, not at Mycenae, but at
16
■j
12. Goi,DEN Discs and Shrine
13. Goi,DEN Cups from Vaphio
16
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
Vaphio/ near the ancient capital of lyaconia, Amyclae. The
skill, both in design and execution, with which the scene
(perhaps the capture of wild bulls) is wrought is astonishing.
" We see here, as in the Mycenae daggers, the highest attain-
ments of a mature art, not the promising attempts of one that
is yet in its infancy. . . . They in no way resemble the
often successful but always tentative experiments of an
archaic Greek artist." -
How are we to explain the existence of such art at such an
epoch in Greece ? There are, I think, only two possible
explanations : either these folk of golden Mycenae, whose
warriors were, when clad at all, clad and armed so differently
from the Homeric Achaeans, and whose women-folk were
bedizened like the fashionable dames of latter-day Europe,
not only possessed wealth and an abundance of gold (wliich
assuredly was not produced by the Peloponnese, or any other
part of Greece) and were in a high state of material civilization,
but also must have been the heirs of an age of art — for such works
as these Vaphio cups presume a long artistic training ; ^ or else
these cups are not a native product, but were imported from
some land where art had flourished for a long period. This land
could not have been Assyria or Phoenicia or Egypt, for there
is no trace whatever of the special characteristics of Oriental
or Egyptian art in this splendid repousse work, which is like
some chef-d'ceuvre of Benvenuto Cellini rather than a relic of
antiquity. " The design," says Professor E. Gardner, " which
is all round the outside of the cups, is beaten up from behind
into bold relief and finished with a chisel in front ; the repousse
plates are backed with others which are turned over at the
back, so as to hold in the reliefs." If not native Mycenaean
work, and if not Assyrian, Phoenician, or Egyptian, whence
could these cups have come ?
^ In a great vaulted tomb that had been brought to light by a landslip — ^'
perhaps the tomb of some Pelopid lord of I^aconia.
' Gardner's Handbook of Greek Sculpture.
* If Dr. Flinders Petrie is right in tracing the periodical rise and decline of
art by means of sculpture and in assigning about 2000 years to such periods,
it would seem that the Vaphio cups were the product of an art at least 1000
years old. . - . .
B 17
ANCIENT GREECE
Crete
There can be only one answer. They must have come from
Crete, or must have been the product of Cretan workmanship.
Ivong before — perhaps for a thousand years before — the days of
those ancient pre- Achaean kings whose bones were unearthed
at Mycenae there had existed in Crete a civiHzation which has
only of late years been brought to light, and which we now
know to have produced artistic work of a quality no less
admirable than that of the Vapliio cups, and to have passed
its highest development before the era of ' Mycenaean '
civilization — which civilization seems to have been at its
highest and to have extended over a great part of the Aegaean
islands and over parts of Northern Greece, and to Cyprus and
Rhodes, about 1500 to 1200. This far more ancient Cretan
civilization, evidences of which, discovered during the last
dozen years, take us back to the Stone Age (say 3000 B.C. at
the very least), is only indirectly connected with the history
of the Hellenic race (if one uses the word history in its ordinary
sense), but it is of very great interest and importance in regard
to artistic and religious matters. I shall therefore devote a
short space to its consideration.
The excavations in Crete that have opened up for us a vista
into so vast a realm of the past — very much more distant
than that revealed by the Mycenaean and the Trojan researches
of Schliemann and his successors— were first seriously begun
in 1901 by Dr. (now Sir Arthur) Evans, who went to Crete
primarily in the hope of discovering further evidence of an
ancient written language, his curiosity having been awakened
at Athens by Cretan seals engraved with unknown hieroglyphic
and linear characters. After many difficulties he was enabled
to make extensive excavations on the site of the ancient city
of Cnossus (or Knosos), which Homer mentions as the chief
of ninety (or a hundred) towns of Crete, and where the famous
artist and inventor Daedalus built the lyabyrinth for King
Minos, and a beautiful dancing-ground for the princess, fair-
haired Ariadne. Ere long the excavators unearthed the
foundations of a very large palace, and a vast complex of
18
M
-T>3«9^
14. AcROPOWS, Mycenae
15. Excavations of Palace, Cnossus
18
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
buildings which are beheved by some to have formed the
celebrated Labyrinth. Store-rooms were found with rows of
enormous jars, and shrines with idols and other sacred objects,
and a great hall, and remains of frescoes, still bright with colour,
and a handsome stone seat which has been dignified with the
title ' The Throne of Minos,' and finely worked vessels of
syenite and marble and alabaster and steatite (soapstone),
and a great quantity of tablets covered with inscriptions
of which no single word has been satisfactorily deciphered,
and, of course, a great deal of pottery, some of it dating
probably from at least 3000 — indeed, some of the ancient
black pottery (like Etruscan hticchero) found among the
Stone Age deposits ^ on the hill of Cephala, near Cnossus, may
date from very much earlier times, possibly from 8000.
At Phaestus, on the south side of the island, and at Gortyna
and Gournia and Hagia Triada numerous finds have been made
that have supplemented and confirmed the evidence of Cnossus.
Any day important discoveries may bring us further knowledge
and upset some of our theories.
Let us briefly consider the present evidence, and then see
what conclusions may reasonably be drawn from it. Our
illustrations will give us a fair conception of some of the
relics.
The walls of the palace (especially in the great Hall of the
Double Axes ^) show evident signs of a great conflagration.
Possibly the palace and city were sacked twice during the
long era of this so-called Minoan civilization, and almost
everything portable that w^as worth carrying off (such as
precious metals) has disappeared. Of what remains probably
the thousands of inscribed tablets, none of which has yet
been deciphered, will ultimately prove the most valuable to
the historian, if only some bihngual monument should be
discovered that will enable us to read and understand the old
1 These deposits (beneath the first stratum of the Bronze Age, which
began about 3000) are about 20 feet deep, which gives, according to
the usual calculations of archaeologists, a period of at least six thousand
years.
* For the ' Labrys ' see Section B.
19
ANCIENT GREECE
Cretan language, as the Rosetta stone, with its Greek trans-
lation of a hieroglyphic inscription, enabled Champollion to
read the ancient language of Egypt, and as a list of Persian
kings proved the key to the cuneiform script, and as the
cuneiform version of the treaty between Ramses II and
King Chetasor taught us to decipher Hittite monuments.
But at present these Cretan tablets are a closed book to us,
and it is perhaps the pictures of these Minoan people that most
deeply interest one. In the ' Cup-bearer ' (Fig. i6) we have
a very striking portrait (perhaps some 3500 years old) of
one of these Minoan Cretans — for the features are most
certainly not Oriental or Egyptian. " The flesh- tint," says
Sir^Arthur Evans, "is of a deep reddish brown ; the limbs are
finely moulded, though the waist, as usual in Mycenaean
fashions, is tightly drawn in by a silver-mounted girdle. . . .
The profile is almost classically Greek, and the physiognomy
has certainly no Semitic cast. There was something very
impressive in this vision of brilliant youth and of male beauty
recalled after so long an interval to the upper air from what had
been, till yesterday, a forgotten world." The youth is bearing,
says Mr. Baikie, a " gold-mounted silver cup. His loin-cloth
is decorated with a beautiful quatrefoil pattern ; he wears
a silver ear-ornament, silver rings on the neck and upper arm,
and on the wrist a bracelet with an agate gem." Other
frescoes contain similar youths, a lady (perhaps a queen) in
a magnificent dress, and many other figures, as well as scenes
from bull-fights. In these scenes (found also on seals), athletes,
generally boys and girls, are depicted as awaiting the charge
of the infuriated animal or catching it by the horns and turning
a somersault, or vaulting, over its back. The bull figures
largely in Minoan art. As will be seen later, the animal
was intimately connected with the old Cretan rehgion, a
fact which forms a " sohd point of truth " in the legends
of Theseus and the Minotaur. The connexion between
Mycenaean and Cretan art and religious practices is, more-
over, graphically confirmed by a fresco found at Tiryns,
near Mycenae, and by various gems or seals where similar
20
l6. TllK CUI'-BKARKK, CnOSSUS
20
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
scenes are depicted. It is just possible, too, that the Vaphio
cups may represent a scene of ' bull-grappHng ' {ravpoKaOaypLo)
by athletes.
The Minoan ladies are pictured (as we find also in Egyptian
art and on early Greek vases) wi,th a skin of chalky white-
ness. They are dressed in the same way as the Mycenaean
women already described — with towering coiffures, tight
bodices, often covering but little of the bust, richly embroidered
heavily pleated and flounced skirts, and often with almost
17. Acrobats and Elands (?)
incredible wasp-waists. .Such figures are found both in colour
and also incised on seals (see Figs. 7 and 28).
Besides frescoes there were found figures and other objects
in terra-cotta, faience, ivory, and other material, and brightly
coloured reliefs in plaster, one of which is a life-sized bull's
head (perhaps once a part of a complete bull) . It is very finely
modelled and coloured, and testifies to as highly developed art
as do the Vaphio cups. Also many of the Minoan vessels
are of artistic workmanship. One of the steatite vessels,'
once probably covered with gold-leaf, represents a boxing
match, another a company of soldiers with their officers
(most interesting as a contrast to the Mycenae ' Warrior Vase '),
and another (Fig. 24) a band of people in procession carrying
what may be palm-branches and preceded by a huge figure in
21
1
ANCIENT GREECE
a curious plaited costume. It is generally called a procession
of harvesters, but the presence of a man with a sistrum (metal
rattle) seems rather to point, I think, to some reHgious ceremony
— possibly a procession of Cretan Curetes, the priests of the
Cretan Zeus.
The painted stone sarcophagus found at Hagia Triada
(Fig. 25) is not a specimen of good Minoan art (possibly it
dates after the collapse of Cretan power and art, about 1400),
but is intensely interesting as an illustration of rehgious rites.
I shall speak of it again later, together with various idols,
seals with pictures of demons (genii), and other objects.
The only other relic that I shall here describe is a very
beautiful table (Fig. 19), which is beheved to have been the
board on which some game like draughts (mentioned in Homer)
used to be played. Its framework was of gold-plated ivory,
and it was richly set with crystals, blue cyan, gold, and silver,
and decorated with reliefs of flowers and shells of great
beauty.
Besides such relics we have in the vast ruins a most impressive
testimony to the greatness of Crete in this so-called Minoan
age. Whether or not the excavators have brought once more
to the light of day the veritable Ivabyrinth of Cnossus or
the actual dancing-ground made by Daedalus for fair-haired
Ariadne, they have, at any rate, proved that the ancient
traditions about the great naval power of the Cretans are not
merely empty myths, and they have shown it to be highly
probable that even the Minotaur fable is an imaginative version
of facts, doubtless some of them of terribly tragic nature,
connected with Cretan bull-worship and the bull-grappling
spectacles, in which the boy and girl athletes must have often
lost their lives.
Thus it seems proved that in Crete a civihzed and at one time
powerful nation existed from at least 3000 (possibly from much
earlier) down to about 1350, when some great calamity befell
it, from which it never recovered.
Now both Thucydides and Herodotus speak of the ancient
naval supremacy of Crete under a king Minos. Old myths
22
t^f^l^
i
,■/
h it
VJ
1 8. ' Throne of Minos '
19. MiNOAN Game-board
22
J
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
tell of two Cretan kings of this name. One was the son of
Zeus, a great lawgiver, who after his earthly life was made
a judge (as Homer describes him) in the nether world.
The other Minos was said to be his grandson. He was
the husband of Pasiphae, and in his reign Daedalus built
the Labyrinth for the Minotaur, whom the Athenian hero
Theseus slew. Homer also speaks of tliis later Minos. He
calls him the father of Ariadne and Deucalion and the grand-
father of the Cretan hero Idomeneus, who fought at Troy, and
says that he conversed as a familiar friend with Zeus, and
reigned " for a space of nine years."
Now it is almost certain that ' Minos ' was, Hke ' Pharaoh,'
a royal title, and that these kings of Crete or Cnossus were
beheved to be descended from the great Cretan god, the
Dictaean Zeus, and it is thought that the king, as High-priest
of Zeus, went up once every nine years to ' converse ' with the
deity in the Dictaean cave and to receive his laws (like Moses
on Sinai). Moreover, research and excavation have made it
clear that the old Cretan religion was closely associated
with the bull, as is intimated by the myths of Europa ^ and
Pasiphae. Bulls were doubtless sacrificed to Zeus, and the
king-priest seems to have performed ceremonies in the disguise
of a bull-headed monster — a fact that is probably the real
explanation of the Minotaur and Pasiphae myths. By some
it is believed that the priest-king, when he entered the Dictaean
cave at the end of his nine-years reign, was walled up there,
or slain, 2 and it is evident that at the bull-grappling spectacles
given in honour of the Bull-god many human victims were
done to death, mostly youths and maidens (as in the case
of the sacrifices of first-born children to Moloch). It seems,
therefore, that behind these old m3^ths of the ' Bull of Minos '
^ Europa, according to the myth, was carried off by Zeus, in the form of a
bull, from Phoenicia, and it was formerly assumed that the bull-headed Cretan
deity was the Phoenician Baal or Moloch. Doubtless both the Minotaur and
the Talos myth do seem to point to the bull-headed Moloch and human
burnt sacrifice ; but at present the Phoenicians, like the Pelasgians, are in
disrepute, and it is asserted that Phoenician influence on Crete and Greece
was much later and much less important than was formerly supposed.
^ As happened to the Pharaoh-priest at the ' Sed ' festival in Egypt.
23
ANCIENT GREECE
and Theseus and the Athenian youths and maidens sent every
nine years (as Plutarch tells us) to be given over as victims to
this Minotaur, there is a good deal of fact, and when Thucydides
(who strongly condemns " careless investigation of truth ")
tells us that Minos of Crete was the first monarch to acquire
a navy and that he " made himself master of the greater
part " of the Aegaean and " swept piracy from the sea," we need
no longer doubt his accuracy nor the possibility of trustworthy
traditions of the great Minoan Empire having reached the age
of Pericles. That it was an empire founded on naval supremacy
is remarkably confirmed by the fact that Cnossus possessed no
fortifications. Moreover, the existence of numerous settlements
named Minoa on the Mediterranean shores seems to prove it.
One of these was on the island off Megara. In the Theseus myth
Minos lays even Athens under tribute.
But before we draw conclusions in regard to this Minoan
race and its connexion with the early history of the Hellenic
nation there is another group of evidence to be considered,
namely, that which Egypt ^ supplies.
Egypt and Crete
The earliest evidences of what is called Minoan civilization
in Crete are perhaps a little later than the age (c. 3500) in which
King Mena is said to have founded the first of the Egyptian
dynasties, 2 and the final fall of the Minoan Empire, about
1350, corresponds with the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty.
In the age of the first two dynasties there was doubtless some
intercourse between Egypt and Crete, but the only possible
evidence of it consists in fragments of bucchero (black pottery)
which have been found in very ancient Egyptian tombs,
This pottery is believed to have come from Crete. On the
other hand, very ancient vessels of syenite, some of which have
^ There is only the very faintest evidence, if indeed it can be accepted as
evidence, of any intercourse in these ages between Crete (or any other Aegaean
land) and Babylonia or Assyria, and (what seems strange considering the
gr^at' antiquity of Sidon) very much less Phoenician influence than was
formerly believed to liave existed.
2 Others put this back some two thousand years to 5500.
24
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
been found at Cnossus, are believed to have come from
Egypt. From the era of Cheops and other Pyramid-builders
(Ilird to Xlth Dynasties) there is considerably more
evidence of a similar nature ; but it was not till about 2000,
during the Xllth Dynasty, that the Cretan ware, especially
the beautiful ' Kamares ' porcelain, seems to have been
largely imported into Egypt. Indubitable specimens of this
polychrome Minoan ware have been discovered in Egyptian
tombs of this period, together with cylinders inscribed with
the name of Amenemhat III, the last of the dynasty. It was
this great king who built the Ivabyrinth near Lake Moeris in
Egypt which very possibly was imitated at Cnossus by King
Minos — unless indeed the Egyptian lyabyrinth was suggested
by the Cretan.^
Then follows the Dark Age of Egyptian history (Xlllth to
XVIIth Dynasties), during which for some five centuries the
Hyksos (a Canaanite or African nomad race) were the lords of
Egypt. Of these so-called ' Shepherd Kings ' the only one at
all known is Khyan (' Embracer of Eands '). His cartouche,
carved on a Hon, has been found even at Bagdad, and at Cnossus
the lid of an alabaster box has been discovered bearing his
name. After the Dark Age and the domination of the Hyksos
(broken by the Wars of Independence) we have the famous
XVIIIth Dynasty, founded by Aahmes in 1580. To this
dynasty belonged the great monarchs Queen Hatshepsut,
King Tutmes, and Amenhotep III (Fig. 3), who extended
Egyptian trade and influence into distant countries. In
the numerous inscribed and painted Egyptian records of
this era there figure many foreign races, and among these is
one, that of the Kephtiu, which formerly used to be regarded
as Phoenician, but which is evidently Cretan. In feature, in
dress, and in the high coiffure with long down-hanging tresses,
these painted Kephtiu bear a most striking resemblance to
the type that we have in the ' Cup-bearer ' (Fig. 16), and the
^ This Egyptian Labyrinth, with its 4500 rooms, was seen by Herodotus,
who describes (ii. 148) the enormous complex as the most wonderful building on
earth, " surpassing the Pyramids." Evidently this I/abyrinth was very much
larger than anything discovered in Crete.
25
ANCIENT GREECE
name Kephtiu, which is said to mean ' the men from beyond '
{i.e. from beyond the sea), is one that well suits the Cretans.
Also the fact that these Kephtiu are depicted carrying, as
tribute or gifts, gold and silver vessels very similar to the
Vaphio cups confirms one's belief that they are Cretans,
all the more when one remembers that the era of this
XVIIIth Dynasty corresponds to that of the great Palace
at Cnossus, with its wonderful frescoes and other signs of an
advanced civilization. Moreover, the evidence from pottery is
here very strong, great quantities of Cretan ware of this period
and of the succeeding centuries having been found in Egypt.
It is very striking that about 1400, the era of the sack of
Cnossus and the fall of the Minoan Empire, the Kephtiu suddenly
disappear from Egyptian records, and that some 100 years
later, about the time of the Biblical Exodus, the names of a
number of strange northern tribes are found, among whom are
the ' Aqayuasha ' — very possibly the Achaeans.
Not much later, again (c. 1200 — just about the time of the
Trojan War), a great host of ' people of the sea,' leagued
with the Hittites, threatened Egypt from the north-east, but
they were defeated and dispersed by Ramses III. Among
these invaders are mentioned Danauna (possibly Danai, i.e.
Argives) and Pulosathu, who were probably Cretan refugees and
identical with the Kephtiu — perhaps the Biblical Philistines of
Kaphtor.i
Egypt and Mycenae
During the later period of Minoan civilization (say 1700-1400)
the Mycenaean civilization was probably at its highest, ^ and
^ See Jer. xlvii. 4 and Gen. x. 14. After their defeat by Ramses these
Pulosathu (Pelasgians ? Philistines ?) seem to have settled in Palestine, and
it is remarkable that Cretan pottery is said to have been discovered at their
chief town, Gath. Perhaps Gohath was a Cretan, and perhaps, after all, the
Philistines were of a people that for some reasons may claim to be children of
Light no less than the Israelites — artistically anyhow.
^ Not only are traces of ' Mycenaean ' civilization found in Aegaean lands
and islands, as well as in Northern Greece, and even in Sicily and Spain, but
it seems that there were Mycenaean kings in Cyprus about 1450. And yet
Mycenae was evidently not a great naval power.
26
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
to this period may belong the shaft-tombs on the acropoHs
of Mycenae. Amongst the relics there discovered we have
already noted an evident Nile scene on an inlaid dagger-blade.
But besides this the cartouche of the Egyptian Amenhotep III
(Fig. 3), the great king of the XVIIIth Dynasty, was found
in one of the later vaulted tombs, as well as several pieces
of porcelain inscribed with his name. Amenhotep reigned
from 1414 to 1380, so it seems hkely that these later Mycenaean
tombs were built about 1400. The old Aegaean (Pelopid ?)
kings of the earlier tombs were probably supreme at Mycenae,
and in the rest of the Peloponnese, until about this date, when
Mycenae seems to have been conquered by some foreign enemy.
Shortly afterwards the same enemy seems to have sacked
Cnossus.
General Conclusions
The question now naturally arises, who were these invaders ?
And this question leads us to a still larger one, namely, what
conclusions can we from all this evidence reasonably draw in
regard to the early inhabitants of Greece, and those migrations
and invasions and heroes and dynasties of which Greek myths
tell so much, but which till lately were generally regarded as
quite worthless fables ?
Firstly, then, who were these invaders who seem to have
conquered Mycenae and some years later to have sacked
Cnossus ?
The old tradition, handed down to us by Herodotus, says
that when Daedalus made himself wings and thus escaped
to Southern Italy and Sicily he was pursued by Minos, and that,
Minos having come to a tragic end in Sicily, a great host of
Cretans set forth in ships to avenge his death ; but they failed
in their object and lost their fleet in a tempest and founded
llyndi. in Southern Italy, where they changed their name to
Messapian lapygians. Herodotus also learnt from the inhabi-
tants of Praesos, in Crete, that after this national disaster
" men of various nations flocked to Crete, destitute as it now
was of inhabitants ; but none came in such numbers as the
27
ANCIENT GREECE
Greeks." He places the death of this King Minos three gene-
rations before the Trojan War, say in 1330 — i.e. not long after
the time when, we are assured by modern archaeologists,
Cnossus was sacked and the great palace burnt.
What truth there may be in this tale of a Cretan-Sicilian
expedition one cannot say. Possibly it represents the general
exodus of Cretans after the advent of " men of various nations "
from over the sea. Of these invaders, according to Herodotus,
the Greeks (Hellenes) were the most numerous, and among
the various nations which inhabited Crete in a somewhat
later, post-Dorian, age the first that Homer mentions are the
Achaeans,^ which looks as if then they were still the paramount
race.
All our evidence, I think, points to the Achaeans as the
conquerors of the Mycenaeans and other Aegaean peoples,
and as the sackers of Cnossus, and points to the period
1400-1200 as that during which these northern invaders (of
whom we have already heard much in connexion with the
Homeric age and the sixth city of Troy) extended their conquests
over Greece and as far as Crete. That these Achaeans (perhaps
the ' Aqayuasha ' of Egyptian records, of whom we have
heard) made themselves lords not only of mainland Greece
but also of the Aegaean, and perhaps Crete, seems probable
also from Homer's statement (quoted by Thucydides) that
Agamemnon, the great Achaean king, ruled not only over all
Argos but over ' many islands.'
The second and larger question which we must endeavour
to answer is, what conclusions we may reasonably accept
in regard to the races which inhabited Greece before the advent
of the Achaeans. We have already seen that they were
probably a dark-haired, lithe-Hmbed people, such as we find
the ancient Cretans to be depicted, and we have spoken of
them as the ' Aegaean ' race. lyCt us now hear what old
Greek tradition says about these early inhabitants of Greece,
and their conquerors, the Achaeans.
^ Od. xix. 175. He mentions also aboriginal Cretans, Cydonians, Pelasgians,
and the (evidently later) Dorians.
28
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
At the beginning of his history Thucydides, after speaking
of the continual migrations of the tribes of ancient Greece,
mentions the ' Pelasgian ' name as that which was most widely
applied to these tribes. L^ong before the time of Thucydides
these Pelasgians had been frequently mentioned by Homer,
who speaks of them in Thessaly, Boeotia, Attica, and even
in the Peloponnese, and also in Asia Minor (possibly aboriginal
Phrygians, fighting on the side of the Trojans) and in Crete
He gives the epithet ' divine ' (heaven-descended ? aboriginal ?)
to these Pelasgians. Moreover, he applies the epithet ' Pelas-
gian ' to the northern (Thessalian) Argos, and to the Zeus whose
oracle was at Dodona, in Epirus.
Herodotus also tells us of Pelasgians who built the old walls
of the Athenian Acropolis, and it seems certain that the original
lords of what was later the Athenian Acropolis were those
Pelasgi or Gecropes whom later ' autochthonous ' families
of Athens claimed as their ancestors.
It seems not impossible that these ancient Pelasgians were
of the same race as the Etruscans or Tyrrhenians, called
Tyrseni (perhaps ' Tower Men ') by the Greeks. ^ It is also
not impossible that the Pulosathu of Crete (the Philistines?),
of whom we have already heard, were Pelasgians ; and,
lastly, it is quite possible that the Turusha, one of the
oversea tribes mentioned as having invaded Egypt about 1300
together with the Aqayuasha (Achaeans ?), were these Tyrseni
or Etruscans.
However this may be, it is not surprising that formerly all
writers on Greece accepted the word ' Pelasgian ' as the most
satisfactory name to cover the unknown tribes inhabiting
Greece at the time of the Achaean invasions. But of late
^ Hesiod (c. 750), or some early imitator, mentions the Tyrseni of Italy and
possibly even King L,atinus ! The Etruscans called themselves' Rasena.' Some
three centuries later Herodotus asserts that the Tyrseni of Italy came from
Lydia, and also that Pelasgians were expelled from Athens and settled in
Lemnos. Now other traditions say that there were people called Tyrsenes
in I,emnos, who were believed to be Tyrrhenians, and an inscription found
in lycmnos is said to show similarities to old Etruscan. According to Pliny
and Varro, there was a great Labyrinth, like the Cretan, connected with the
tomb of I,ars Porsena at Clusium, in Etruria. Cf. Thuc. iv. log.
29
ANCIENT GREECE
years this name has met with disfavour, for it is evident that
the newly discovered ' Aegaean ' race was not identical with
the Pelasgic, and it is our knowledge of this so-called Aegaean
race that now allows us to reconstruct and repeople to some
extent that obscure ' mythical ' age formerly regarded as
unworthy of the attention of the historian.
The only satisfactory answer, therefore, that we can give
in regard to the pre-Achaean inhabitants of Greece is this :
There were doubtless also other peoples (such as these Pelas-
gians), but in the southern parts of Greece the main race,
and the only race that we really know anything about for
certain, was this Mycenaean, or Aegaean, race, to which
probably the Cretans were closely related. They were a dark-
haired, long-headed people, not of Semitic origin, but possibly
with some affinity to the Egyptians. They lived in Greece in
what is called the Bronze Age — that is, before iron came into
general use — and perhaps before bronze was invented, which
could not have been until tin was brought from western lands
(from Spain, and perhaps even from Britain) . Before tin was
procurable to mix with their copper, which they obtained
in abundance from Cyprus and also from Chalcis, in Euboea,
they were obliged to make their weapons and tools of copper,
or of stone or obsidian. In early times possibly some of these
Aegaean folk {e.g. at Orchomenus, Tiryns, and other marshy
places) dwelt in lake- villages, like the Stone Age inhabitants of
other parts of Europe. The northern invaders, the Achaeans,
seem to have introduced the more general use of bronze for
weapons and armour. Then, about 1250, iron, wliich hitherto
had been among Aegaean peoples a rare material for rings and
small ornaments, began to be used for sharp-edged tools (as
we find it in Homer), and gradually won its way into general
use.^ Possibly the arts of smelting and of forging iron (graphi-
cally described in the Odyssey, ix. 391) may have been intro-
duced by the Achaeans ; but the metal may have been found
less commonly by them in Greece, which may account for its
comparatively rare mention by Homer.
* See Hesiod's Erga for these various Ages. C/. p. 105.
30
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
During this Bronze Age (that is, before the advent of the
northern invaders) there were in Greece doubtless other
important cities, besides Mycenae and Tiryns and Amyclae
and Orchomenus, inhabited by Aegaeans or Pelasgians or
whatever else we may call these early races, but, except in a
few cases, their memorials have utterly perished. Of Athens,
however, and of Thebes we have some remarkable traditions.
Athens in Pre-Dorian Times
On account of the poverty of its soil, as Thucydides tells us,
and also perhaps on account of the more warlike character
of its inhabitants, Attica seems never to have been permanently
conquered by invaders. It apparently remained (as also
Arcadia in the Peloponnese) finally unoccupied by the
Achaeans,! and the ancient Pelasgian race was the main stock
from which the later Athenians sprang, though much else
was grafted upon it. Of these old Pelasgian aborigines a
relic may still be seen, namely, a few blocks of bluish Hme-
stone which formed a part of the rampart built round their
citadel. This old wall was by the later Athenians called the
' Pelasgic ' or ' Pelargic ' wall, and to the north-west of the
Acropohs was an open space called the ' Pelasgion,' on which
it was forbidden to build, until at the beginning of the Pelo-
ponnesian War (431), when thousands were flocking from the
country into the city, the old law was allowed to lapse. 2
Herodotus tells of old Pelasgian kings of Attica, Cecrops
and Erechtheus, regarded, of course, later as divine ^ and
associated with the ancient snake-worship so common in the
cult of the dead. According to one old legend, Cecrops came
from Egypt — which, indeed, possibly was the cradle of the
Aegaean and Pelasgian people. He is said to have introduced
^ This evidently accounts for the fact that Athens is almost entirely ignored
by Homer, the glorifier of the Achaeans. (In later times the Athenians
perhaps inserted certain lines in their own honour.)
' Thuc. ii. 17.
* The ancient Erechtheion, or ' house of Erechtheus,' preceded the temple of
Athene. Some writers assert that Cecrops (as also many another old hero, such
as Odysseus, or even the lawgiver Lycurgus) was originally " only a god."
Surely the reverse process is more credible.
31
ANCIENT GREECE
a higher form of religion and to have aboHshed bloody (human ?)
sacrifice. On the old Cecropian citadel was built by his son
Krechtheus a temple, first dedicated to Poseidon, but after-
wards (as we see from Homer, Od. vii. 82) given over to the
new tutelary deity, Athene ; ^ or perhaps they shared it until
the first Parthenon was built. Aegeus, grandson of Krechtheus,
is said to have been the father of Theseus, and if (as we have
seen to be possible) the myth of Theseus and King Minos
refers to facts that occurred in the last era of Minoan civiliza-
tion — i.e. about 1350 — it will follow that Cecrops might have
lived (granting that tradition is fairly correct) about 1450.
Thus the era of the ancient traditional Pelasgian kings of
Athens would correspond with the highest period of Mycenaean
civilization, and the tradition which tells us that Theseus was
driven from his throne ^ may very possibly be founded on the
fact that the Achaeans, though they did not retain possession,
captured Athens. And the strange story of the fierce battle,
in the very midst of the city, in which Theseus conquered the
Amazons may point to some disturbance caused by the pressure
from the north of the Achaean invaders.
Thebes in Pre-Dorian Times
Another ancient city of Greece was seven-gated Thebes,
which has left us many remarkable legends, but very few ruins,
and almost no relics of its early existence — as is the case
with most places that have been continuously inhabited.
Homer speaks of Amphion (Niobe's husband) and Zethus
as its founders, and perhaps this is the oldest tradition, and
points to a dynasty (possibly from Phrygia, the home of
Niobe and her brother Pelops) before that of Cadmus, who is
^ The contest between Poseidon and Athene for the tutelage of the city was
the subject of the west pediment of the later Parthenon (see Fig. 86). Codrus
is said to have decided it. Others say that it was decided by the votes of the
Athenian women, who beat the men t)y one vote — aid were straightway dis-
franchised 1
2 He retired to the island Scyros, where he was murdered. Some nine
hundred years later what were supposed to be his bones were brought to
Athens by Cimon and consigned to the Theseion (Theseum) — perhaps not
what is now so called.
32
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
generally said to have founded Thebes. Cadmus, according
to Herodotus, was a Phoenician/ and "introduced the art of
writing, whereof the Greeks till then had been ignorant."
Fourth in descent from Cadmus was Oedipus, whose tragic
fate is related by Sophocles. One of the sons of Oedipus,
according to the old legend, expelled by his brother fled to
the Peloponnese and incited the famous and disastrous expe-
dition of the Seven against Thebes, in which six of the seven
heroes perished ; but later their descendants (Epigoni) made
a second expedition and razed Thebes to the ground.
This well-known myth doubtless rests on traditions of real
facts, and these facts were probably of this nature. When
the successive waves of northern invaders — whom we may
conveniently call by the collective name of Achaeans —
rolled southward through Upper Greece, the seven-portal' d
stronghold of Thebes, with its mighty ramparts and towers
(see Od. xi. 264) and its Cadmeia, the acropolis built
by Cadmus, at first proved impregnable ; but after the
invaders had firmly planted themselves in southern Argos
they sent an army across the Isthmus or the Gulf of Corinth
and succeeded in capturing the city. With this theory the
traditional date of Cadmus (1313) and that of the expedition
of the Seven against Thebes (1213) fit in very fairly, and the
theory that these attacks on Thebes were made by an elder
generation of the Homeric ' Achaeans ' and * Argives ' is in
agreement with what Homer and Hesiod and others relate.
But let us hear further what is known, or what may be reason-
ably inferred, about these invaders who, doubtless in many
successive waves and under many different names, poured into
Greece, evidently from the north, during perhaps two centuries
(1400-1200).
It is said ^ that parts of Central Europe during these ages
were peopled by a race which in many points resembled the
^ The name may possibly mean ' the Oriental ' ; cf. Hebrew gedem, the
East. Some, however, assert that what few relics have been discovered of
Thebes are purely Minoan in character.
* See especially Professor Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece. Others regard
this ' Hallstatt civilization ' as dating only from about 700.
c 33
ANCIENT GREECE
Achaeans described by Homer. In the Austrian Alps not
far from Salzburg there is a place named Hallstatt, where
about a thousand graves have been examined. The relics
point to a transition between the ages of bronze and iron.
Armour and shields (round metal shields very unlike the huge
Aegaean shield) and swords of both metals were found, and a
great number of brooches [fibulae, irepovai), such as those
with which, as we have already seen, the Homeric woman's
peplos and the man's chlaina were fastened. Not much silver
was found, but many ornaments of amber (from northern
seas), and gold and a blue vitreous substance like the Homeric
cyan. Both burial and cremation seem to have been prac-
tised. Whether there is any evidence of horses and chariots
I do not know.
It seems possible that bands of this northern, fair-haired,
broad-headed Aryan race ^ made their way from time to time
down into Epirus and Thessaly, and estabhshed themselves
in the district of Pelasgic Argos, also called Phthiotis, the
home of the Homeric Achilles. Here they probably collected a
large army of the native Argives, and at the head of this Argive
host pressed southward, crossed the Corinthian Gulf, over-
ran the Peloponnese (except perhaps Arcadia), and founded
that southern Argos of which Agamemnon was afterwards
king, 2 and which before the advent of the Achaeans and their
Argives was probably called L^arisa (one of the very numerous
' lyarisas,' or forts, in Greece and Asia Minor) and was a mere
outpost of royal Mycenae.
Now in Thessaly, perhaps before the advent of the Achaeans
(unless they accompanied or followed them from the north),
lived a people called Hellenes. They were evidently of Aryan,
not Pelasgic, race. Tradition makes Hellen, their ancestor,
son of the Greek Noah, Deucalion, and asserts that he
^ Tttes-carrles is even nowadays (besides its other meaning) used as a
sobriquet for the Teuton race.
^ In Homer Diomede seems to be prince of the city Argos, probably under
the suzerainty of Agamemnon, who lived at Mycenae. The theory has already
been mentioned that Agamemnon and his Achaeans and Argives were only
transported from Thessaly to the Peloponnese by a poet's imagination.
34
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
reigned over Thessalian Phthiotis, or Phthia, as Homer calls
it, which was the home of Achilles. The district inhabited
by these Hellenes — the original Hellas — seems to have been
the valley of the river Spercheios (now called Ellada), which
runs into the sea not far north of Thermopylae. Some of
these Hellenes seem to have joined in the southward march,
and to have been merged in the larger host of Argives and
Achaeans — for in Homer the Hellenes, and the pan-Hellenes,
are still the Thessalian folk who followed Achilles, and Hellas
is still only a district in Thessaly. It was not till much later,
as Thucydides says, that the names Hellas and Hellenes
won their broader meanings, and denoted the land and the
peoples of what we call the Greek race not only in Greece
proper but in Asia Minor, Africa, Sicily, and Italy. ^
These invading bands of Achaeans, with their Argive and
Hellene followers, seem to have settled themselves chiefly in
the Peloponnese. Mycenae was evidently captured by them,
but the signs of conflagration which are found both at Mycenae
and at Tiryns are very Hkely due to the later Dorians, of whom
we shall hear ere long. The Achaeans were probably not such
a refined and artistically civihzed people as the Mycenaeans
whom they had conquered, but they were not, as the Dorians
seem to have been, what Homer calls " savages wanton and
wild, despisers of justice," and they seem to have assimilated
much that was valuable in the old Aegaean civilization.
Indeed, the pictures that Homer gives us of these Achaean
princes are those of men warlike and haughty, and sometimes
terribly cruel and crafty, but endowed with deep feelings of
affection and reverence and with a keen sensitiveness to all
1 It is curious also how the word ' Greek ' won its way from an equally
obscure origin. Aristotle indeed asserts that near Dodona, in Epirus, there
lived in early ages a people "then called Greeks, but now Hellenes"; and
Sophocles perhaps used the name ; but it is generally supposed that it was
the Romans who first gave the name to the Hellenes whom they met in
Southern Italy (Magna Graecia). It has been pointed out that a band of
Graians from Boeotia joined the Euboeans in founding Cyme (Cumae) in
Italy, and that their name was applied by the Romans to all Hellenic people.
Nations are sometimes named from apparently small causes {e.g. Americans,
Swiss), and are often known to foreigners by non-native names, e.g. Germans,
Allemands, Tedeschi, Dutch, Kafirs, Etruscans (Rasena), I/ycians (Termilae).
35
ANCIENT GREECE
that is gracious and beautiful. To their possession of such
quahties may be due the otherwise inexpHcable fact that the
tombs of the Mycenaean monarchs were discovered intact
after the lapse of more than 3000 years. How these could
have escaped the Dorians and later marauders is puzzling
enough, but that they were not at once plundered by the
Achaeans seems explainable by assuming (as I assumed before)
that these Achaeans did not ravage and enslave, but, like the
Norman adventurers in later ages, constituted themselves the
lords of the native population, and probably married princesses
of the native dynasties. On this assumption Atreus and
Agamemnon, though mainly of Achaean blood, might have
regarded the old Pelopidae as their ancestors, and in this case
would have carefully kept intact their tombs on the acropolis.
Later, perhaps, the effects of some conflagration may have
concealed them from the invader.
Having thus given a sketch of what is known about the early
— so-called Aegaean — age of Greece, and having shown the
connexion between this Aegaean civilization and that of
Crete, Egypt, and Troy, and having discussed some of the
more important traditions in their possible relation to certain
great occurrences in Greece proper down to the final establish-
ment of the Achaeans in Southern Greece (say about 1200), I
shall now, before continuing the account of historical, or
quasi-historical, events, treat in the following three sections
three subjects connected with what has been already written —
namely, the questions of (A) lyanguage and Writing, (B) The
Old Religion, (C) The ' Homeric Age ' and Homer. The fourth
section will contain a chronological table (with, of course,
many somewhat audaciously hazarded dates) which will
give a bird's-eye view of the era that we have been considering.
These and other such sections may be regarded as supple-
mentary monographs, not as integral parts of the main subject
of the book.
36
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
SECTION A : LANGUAGE AND WRITING
A chapter on the old Aegaean and Pelasgic languages
necessarily exhibits some similarity to the celebrated chapter
on the snakes of Ireland. Of ancient Cretan, which was
perhaps related to the Mycenaean and other Aegaean lan-
guages, we do, indeed, possess some thousands of inscriptions,
but not one single symbol or letter of all these inscriptions
has yet been satisfactorily deciphered, far less has any certain
meaning been extracted. It is uncertain whether Pelasgic
was of the same family as the Aegaean and Cretan, and whether
all these languages, or any one of them, belonged to the Aryan
stock or to the Semitic, or to some other entirely unknown
stock, from which perhaps also the Hittite language was
derived.
Herodotus tells us that, to judge from various Pelasgian
tribes of his day (some in Macedonia, others on the Hellespont)
and from cities " which have dropped the name, but are in
fact Pelasgian," their language was certainly ' barbarous ' ;
but of course this is no proof of its having been a non-Aryan
language, and tells us no more than Homer does when he calls
the Carians ' barbarous- tongued.' As we have already seen,
there is a possibility of the Pelasgic being closely related to
the Etruscan, and we have also seen that this same language
may possibly have been spoken by Goliath and his fellow-
Philistines. But to speak of the Pelasgic as the principal
language or dialect of ancient Greece, and to assume that it
may have been the same as the Mycenaean, and related to the
Cretan, is, of course, mere guesswork. All we can be fairly
certain about is that the pre-Hellenic language, or languages,
left behind names of places and other words which were
adopted by the northern invaders, and which are evidently
from no Greek source. ' I^arisa ' is a name that survived both
in Thessaly and in Asia Minor. It seems to mean ' a fortress.'
'Olympos' and 'Parnassus' are others. Words with the termi-
nation -inth{os) are thought to be Pelasgic or Aegaean — e.g.
Corinthos, Tiryn(th)s, Olynthos, Zacynthos, Rhadaminthys,
^7
ANCIENT GREECE
Hyacintlios, and Labyrinthos. As far as we can tell, these
and other such words, supposed to be reHcs of the old Pelasgic
or Aegaean, have no affinity to any Aryan or to any Semitic
language.
Formerly it was believed that no writing existed in Europe
before the Phoenicians introduced their alphabet into Crete,
whence it was brought to Greece. There seems, indeed,
no evidence that writing, whether alphabetic or other, was
known in pre-Hellenic Greece, for although Herodotus (v. 58)
asserts that Cadmus and his Phoenicians brought the art of
writing, " whereof the Greeks had been till then ignorant,"
to Boeotia when they founded Thebes (traditional date 1313),
nevertheless no inscription of any sort has, I believe, been
found in Greece itself of a date earlier than about 700, and
nothing at all in any script except the alphabetic. Amid all
the costly and artistic treasures of the Mycenaean kings
there has been discovered no sign of writing.
But, strange as it may seem, writing was well known at this
time not only in Egypt and Babylonia, and perhaps in a
great part of Asia Minor, but also in Crete, and, as ancient
seals and other inscribed objects prove, it had existed there
ever since at least 2000 — long before the advent of the
Phoenician alphabet. This Minoan script — of which there are
various forms — was probably a Cretan ^ invention, although
in its oldest form it seems to have some affinity to Egyptian
hieroglyphics, and in its later possibly to the Hittite and Cypriot
writing. In its oldest form Minoan script was pictographic.
It consisted of rude pictures or symbols denoting objects
themselves. Later it became hieroglyphic, in which system
the symbol denoted the name of an object, i.e. a word.
Finally it became linear, each sign probably denoting
a syllable (not a mere sound, as in the alphabetic system).
Thousands of tablets with this linear script have been dis-
covered. It went through various changes, and after the
great catastrophe of c. 1400 developed a more systematic
method of representing words and sentences, and a cursive
^ Similar script has been found in some of the islands -i?.^. Thera and Melos.
38
20. Cretan Jars for Oii. or Corn
A,.
m
\\ J
€<>
"m -^
21. Ci.AY Disc of Piiaestus
38
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
character which seems to presume the knowledge of pen and
ink. In the later form the Minoan script stands on a level
very much higher than Egyptian hieroglyphics or Babylonian
cuneiform. Hitherto, as we have said, all attempts to decipher
Cretan script have failed, except that possibly certain numerical
symbols, like the Egyptian, have been recognized.^
Perhaps the most remarkable of all inscriptions found in
Crete is that on both faces of the so-called disc of Phaestus
Ig^pf&qSijgf
22. Cretan Linear Script
(Fig. 2i), a circular clay tablet about 7 inches in diameter.
The date is perhaps about 1800. It is evidently not merely
pictographic, and is divided into periods, which may repre-
sent words, or sentences. The regularity of these divisions
and the repetition of certain symbols, such as the crested or
horse-maned warrior ^ and the circle with seven dots (can they
^ Supposed to have been on a decimal system, the unit signified by an
upright stroke, the tens by points, the hundreds by bars, and the thousands
by lozenges.
2 Reminding one of Egyptian pictures of the Pulosathu (Philistines), and
still more of the description by Herodotus of Libyans in the army of
Xerxes who wore on the head "the scalps of horses with the ears and mane
standing upright asacrest." In Central Africa I have seen similar crests made
of zebra scalps. c^t "-;
^39
ANCIENT GREECE
be the sky and seven planets?), have made some beHeve that
it is a poem — possibly a hymn to the Cretan Zeus or the
Great Mother. Sir Arthur Evans holds it to be I^ycian rather
than Cretan script.
In later times, after Greek influence had established itself in
Crete, there was a considerable district at the eastern end of
the island inhabited by the descendants of the old Cretan
race (Kteocretes, or true-Cretans, as Homer calls them)
Among them an old Cretan language survived, as the Erse
in Ireland and the Basque in Spain. But the old scrij^t was
apparently forgotten, and an inscription in this language
written in Greek letters has been discovered. Unfortunately,
although we can read it, we cannot extract any meaning
from it.
In Greece itself, as has been already said, there has been
found no sign of any script but the alphabetic, and the hope
of discovering a clue to ancient Mycenaean or Pelasgic
is therefore immeasurably less than in the case of the old
Cretan languages. The earliest mention of writing in Greek
literature is probably to be found in Homer's Iliad (vi. i68),
where King Proetus of Argos sends Bellerophon to Lycia
with ' direful signs ' written on a ' closed tablet,' in order that
the lyycian king should kill him on his arrival. These ' direful
signs ' may have been pictorial, or (as Proetus had lived in
I^ycia) they may have been in Lycian writing, ^ or in such a
script as the Hittites employed — hieroglyphic or the so-called
Cypriot syllabarium — which seems to have been widely
used in Asia Minor, for imitations of it are said to have been
found among the ornamental devices on ancient Trojan
pottery.
Although not related in very ancient Greek literature, the
fable of Philomela (daughter of the old Athenian king Pandion)
seems to imply the knowledge of some kind of writing, as she
^ The ancient I^ycian alphabet is said to have had more vowels than con-
sonant?, so that it was probably non-Semitic, but it differed entirely from the
Greek, although Greece and Lycia seem to have been from early times closely
connected. Indeed, the word ' I/ycian ' is wholly Greek. The people called
themselves ' Termilae,' as Herodotus says, and as is proved by inscriptions.
40
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
wove words into a peplos to communicate with her sister
Procne ; and the Apple of Discord was inscribed.
The invention, or anyhow the introduction into Europe,
of the alphabet is due to the Phoenicians.^ The Phoenician
script consisted (like other Semitic scripts) solely of consonants
and breathings. The Greeks seem to have adopted about
fourteen consonants from the Phoenicians and to have used
the Phoenician breatliings (aspirates) to represent the four
vowel sounds A, B, I, O. Then from the East probably came
the Greek upsilon (Y), wliich at first was a consonant {i.e.
the digamma, pronounced like V or F), and the eta (H), which
in classical Greek is e, but at first was an aspirate, as later in
Latin. It is found as aspirate on old Greek vases, Later
it was cut in half vertically, and the halves were used
as the hard and soft breathings. The H as aspirate can be
seen on Hiero's helmet (Fig. yy) and on Tataia's oil-flask
(Fig. 23). Other consonants, e.g. "^, S, and the long vowel
Vt, were invented later — probably in Ionia, or perhaps Sicily.
The ancient 9 [koppa ; Hebr. Koph) was introduced very early
into Corinth, and is found on Corinthian vases down to Roman
times. The old form of the four-stroke S was undulatory,
nearly like our S (Fig. 23). At Corinth it was sometimes
written M. This is found also on coins of Paestum. Euripides
(in a fragment) describes all the letters of the name
9H2EY2, and hence we see that in Attica about 440 the H
was the e and the S was already written with four strokes.
As we have seen, the art of writing is said by old authors
to have been brought to Greece by Cadmus of Thebes. It
is perhaps more probable that it was first introduced from the
East into Asiatic Hellas, and thence to Athens. But several
variations of Hellenic script existed, and the ' Cadmean' or some
other may have preceded the Ionian in Greece proper. The full
alphabet of twenty-four letters (called the Simonidean, after
the Cean poet) seems first to have been used in Samos, and not
to have reached Athens until after the Peloponnesian War
^ How far the Phoenician alphabetic system influenced Cretan script is
not easy to determine. The latest form of Cretan script seems to be syllabic.
41
ANCIENT GREECE
(403). At first the Greeks often wrote from right to left
(see Fig. 23), as was done in Phoenician and other Semitic
languages. Then they sometimes wrote alternate lines in
different directions, " turning the oxen," as they expressed
it, at the end of each Hne {^ovcrrpo(l>riS6v), or else they placed
the words in a column {KiovnSov), as in some Oriental
languages.
We may regard 1000-900 [i.e. about the age of Solomon
and Hiram of Tyre) as the period in which the art of writing
became known to the Greeks through the same Phoenicians
who helped Solomon to build his Temple. Although doubtless
'^^ >V^ y ^
^
.MfAV'®
>s?t 'hc/Jea an 4.*.
■isj"^ Txrcctes c-fu hguSas hos dki/ fit KU^mTvfks f-n^
'-Jam TutaJaJ f^'''^ ^it- uhcriTor Slhd} mc sia/f i^tmc O^nii]
Fig. 23.
it was long before it came into anything Hke general use,
it was most probably used for private, if not pubHc, purposes ^
during one or two centuries before an Attic jar, now in the
Museum at Athens, was incised with what is believed to
be the earhest Greek inscription extant. The inscription,
scratched on the shoulder of the jar in primitive Greek
letters, is to this effect : " He who of all the dancers the most
gaily skips. His shall be this vase." The date of this jar and
of the inscription (which seems to have been incised in the still
soft clay) is supposed to be about 700. Above is shown another
very interesting inscription, perhaps nearly as old, scratched
1 The name of I^ycurgus is said to have been inscribed on the ancient discus
of Iphitus which was preserved at Olympia. The entire absence of all relics
of Greek inscriptions of this age is remarkable.
42
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
by a child (or for a child) on her lekythus — a clay bottle for oil
or scented water. Do not the letters seem to build a fairy
bridge across the gulf of all these 2500 years ? The signature
of the artists Krgotimus and CHtias, who made and painted
the Francois Vase (Fig. 39), may be not very much later.
The Greek inscriptions on the Abu vSimbel colossus (Fig. 44)
are of about 594.
SECTION B : THE OLD RELIGION
When we speak of the old religion of the Greeks as distin-
guished from the later worship of the Olympian deities it must
not be forgotten that the feeling of awe and the sense of mystery
which were the sources of that earlier religion are inexhaustible
in human nature, and that side by side with the worship of
Zeus and Athene there continued to exist all through the
so-called classical age many old rites and esoteric creeds and
secret practices, such as we hear of in connexion with the Eleu-
sinian and other mysteries, and with the Dionysiac (Bacchic)
orgies, and the occult and doubtless sometimes noble teachings
of the Orphic theology. Indeed, this old mysticism long
survived, as it was bound to do, what has been called the
short-lived puppet-show of the Olympian hierarchy, and one
of the last things that we know of the Athenians is that many
centuries after they had lost what little belief they ever had
in the deities of their pantheon they had reverted to that
' wonder ' which is said to be the fountain-head of all religion,
and were standing once more in doubt and awe before the
altar of a nameless god.
It would be futile to divide the ages of Greek history into
certain periods and assign to each its pecuhar form of religion.
But there are certain underlying principles and many external
characteristics which distinguish the pre-Hellenic and the
Homeric forms of religion ; and even the external form of
a nation's religion is of interest and helps one to understand
that nation. I shall, therefore, first consider some of the
distinguishing principles and then some of the very striking
43
ANCIENT GREECE
differences in the kind of deities and the kind of worship that
we find in the two reHgions.
What chiefly distinguishes the old rehgion from the later
is that it was based mainly, if, not entirely, on the dread
of evil spirits {^eia-iSaijuovla) . It was a religion of atone-
ment, propitiation, exorcism, purification, riddance — the
turning aside of evil influence (aTror/ooTD/). Sacrifices and
offerings were made on the principle do ut aheas — i.e. " I give
in order that thou depart."
As it is still with many a barbarous people, so also in Greece
in early times, before the Hellenic imagination had personified
in human shape the powers of nature, every not quite usual
manifestation of natural force and every unusual natural
object was suspected of harbouring powers hostile to man.
" The earth is full of evil things, and full the sea," saysHesiod.
Pests and plagues and deadly ' snatchers ' and winged disease
were lurking and swarming and flitting about on all sides,
and the evil eye was ever on the watch. Ghosts and ghoulish
things haunted the darkness of night and of the grave.
The souls of the dead manifested themselves not seldom
in the form of snakes, to which propitiatory offerings were
made, and the powers of the nether world, hungering for
blood, were doubtless at times appeased by human sacrifice —
of which many evidences survived to a later age in ceremonies
of substitution or other curious rites whose meaning had long
been lost.^ And in later times, as we shall see, there were
many other survivals of old chthonic ritual, as it is called, con-
nected with the worship of the powers of the earth, especially
with that of the Earth-Mother, Demeter, and of Dionysus.
This religion of dread and exorcism gave place — probably
somewhat rapidly and not permanently — to a religion which
was not only wholly different in its external forms of worship,
but was founded on an entirely different basis, namely, that of
service [Qepa-n-eia), the principle of which was do ut des — i.e.
^ The stories of Isaac and of Ipliigeneia denote the substitution of animals
for the human victim. Aelian tells of a curious rite where a baby calf was
dressed up and furnished with boots [cothurni) and thus sacrificed.
44
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
" I give that thou mayst give." The offering was no longer
made in order to propitiate some dreaded demonic power,
but given to a deity endowed with human feelings and human
reason — one who would surely grant some favour in return for
the service. The gloomy chthonic rites and the horrors of
human sacrifice and the orgies of Dionysus Zagreus, in which
the victim was torn to pieces and devoured raw (with some
idea of ' eating the god '), and all the ' spook ' and mystery
and monstrosity and barbarity and sacerdotalism ^ that is
connected with such religion, disappeared apparently in a
short time after the coming of the Achaeans — for in all Homer
there is scarce a trace of such things.^ It is true that we
cannot infer from Homer's picture (even if it is a true picture
of a certain class) that the bulk of the Greek nation in the
so-called heroic age had renounced the old faith and adopted
the new. Possibly behind the dazzling scene of the Achaean
and Argive hosts and behind all the brilliant ' puppet show '
of the Olympian hierarchy there was still a dark background
in Greece itself where the old monstrous beliefs and the old
ritual still lurked, hke the Python of Delphi before it was slain
by Apollo.
But for a time at least this new and brighter rehgion was
destined to prevail — to become the recognized national religion
of Greece — and before returning to consider some of the
ancient pre-Hellenic deities and their ' supersession ' (as it
has been called) by the gods of the northern invaders, we
should note well how the Hellenic imagination transformed
all the ghouls and pests and other evil and monstrous things
into Fates and Harpies and Sirens and Gorgons, depriving
them thus of the vague, gruesome horror of their mysterious
ww-human nature. Apollo comes with his bright shafts, and
^ The immense number of priests, prophets, hierophants, and other such
mediums connected with the Orphic and similar mystic systems is often
mentioned. Priestly ofl&ce connected with the mysteries was the hereditary
right of certain great famiUes, such as the Eumolpidae. What such things
can develop into may be seen from the history of the Persian Magi.
2 There certainly is the slaughter of Trojan captives by Achilles at the
funeral of Patroclus ; but that was scarcely human sacrifice.
45
ANCIENT GREECE
Heracles, the god of health/ the conqueror of Death itself
and the husband of ever-blooming Hebe — and they put to
flight the swarming hordes of evil things, and the mountain
glades re-echo to the laughter of dryads and nymphs, and the
sands of the sea-shore become the dancing-grounds of ocean
nereids. Even the terrible Furies themselves — though in a
later age still worshipped with mystical chthonic rites as
denizens of Hell — seem to have won for themselves a worship
of service, and almost of affectionate veneration, as the August
and Kindly Goddesses. Instead of hideous and savage rites
and human sacrifice and wild orgies where live victims are torn
to pieces and their bleeding flesh devoured by the worshippers
in their mystical yearning to ' eat the god ' and thus participate
in the divine, we have Homeric prayer and sacrifice and libation,
by which the gods are invoked as beings endowed with human
affections, in the full assurance (scarce ever deceived) of help
and favour ; ^ we have joyous sacrificial feasts at which the
gods themselves sometimes are present in visible shape. " Ever
till now," says King Alcinous (who, though no Achaean, is of
orthodox Olympian creed), " ever till now have the gods
appeared to us in manifest form whenever we offered glorious
hecatombs, and they feast with us, sitting at our side where
we are seated. Ay, and if any lonely wayfarer meet them,
they nowise conceal themselves — for we are nigh [akin] unto
the gods." The common form of invocation to the supreme
deity as ' Father Zeus,' the father both of men and of gods,
whose thunder is often a sign of favour, and who " follows
with his protecting care " even the stranger and the beggar, is
in itself a striking evidence of the new religious spirit, reminding
one much more of the northern All-Vater, Woden, than the
Bull-god of Crete or the monstrous and horrid Dionysus
Zagreus.
In Homer all is intensely human. There is none of that
1 Miss Harrison reproduces pictures in one of which Heracles is beating
to death with his club a little winged pest [ktip) — perhaps a prehistoric bacillus
— and in another an emaciated bald-headed thing — perhaps the bacillus of
old age.
^ Unfulfilled prayer we find occasioually ; e.g. Od. ix. 553.
46
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
' spook ' and that childish dread of the supernatural which
often make folk-lore lose its human interest. We find very
few monstrous shapes (such as the huge octopus-like Scylla,
and the vague terror of the ' Gorgon head ' in Od. xi. 634),
no bull-headed or serpent-tailed men (Proteus is no permanent
monster, and the sirens and sea-nymphs are purely human in
form), no owl-headed Athene or cow-headed Hera, although
the old epithets of these goddesses point to the monstrosities
of an earHer creed. Even the winged Pegasus is omitted in
the story of Bellerophon as told by Homer. It is true that
we have Circe (' Hawk-goddess ') with her wand and her
baleful drugs — but how intensely human she is ! How this
' dread goddess,' this hawk-headed Eastern witch, is trans-
formed into a human being with womanly affections of love
and pity ! In the Homeric Hades, too, one feels, it is true, the
presence of the supernatural. But could anything be more
pathetically human than the meeting of Odysseus with his
mother, or with Elpenor, or with Agamemnon — or with
Ajax ? Here and there in the Odyssey charms and drugs
are mentioned — but never with superstitious awe. The plant
' moly ' which Hermes gives Odysseus as a charm — " black at
the root, but the flower is like unto milk in its whiteness " —
excites in us a sense of delight, not of dread or mystery ;
and when the sons of Autolycus bind for Odysseus the wound
that the boar of Parnassus had ripped in liis leg, and " staunch
the dark red blood with a song of enchantment," we notice it
merely as we should notice some old superstitious habit of
the present day. The Cyclops himself is nothing but an
enormous human being ; and he too prays to Poseidon as
his father, although he speaks contemptuously of the gods
as his inferiors in strength. And how the touch of nature
makes us akin to the divine when Hermes complains of his
weary flight across the boundless expanses of ocean, afar from
the cities of men where he might have obtained a little refresh-
ment at some sacrificial feast ! And how touching is the
motherly pride and joy of Leto while she watches her daughter
Artemis among her attendant nymphs ! The Homeric gods
47
ANCIENT GREECE
are as intensely human as the Pheidian gods that on the
Parthenon frieze await the approaching procession of their
worshippers. And they are the gods of all " bread-eating
races of mortals " — universal deities, not mere local or ancestral
divinities.
This different conception of the supernatural was doubtless
introduced by the northern invaders, whom we may perhaps
speak of under the collective name of Achaeans. The character
of these northmen evidently differed much from that of the
southern peoples whom they conquered. They had the vigour,
the courage, the open, if somewhat overbearing and inartistic,
nature of northern folk ; they had the contempt for all craven
dread of supernatural powers and monstrous things which
characterizes the best of the Aryan people. They looked up
to the heights of the sunlit dome of heaven and to the vast
expanses of cloudland and imagined there the home of the
gods — not in the gloom of a nether world haunted by forms of
horror. They did not hide their dead in shaft-tombs, but sent
them heavenwards in the flames that leaped upward from the
funeral pyre.
lyct us now consider some of the ancient deities and rites
as contrasted with those of the later ' heroic ' age. Out of
a vast and confused congeries of fact and theory I shall choose
just a few of the most intelligible.
As in the case of pre-Hellenic races and pre-Hellenic civiliza-
tion, we have to turn to Crete and Mycenae for most of our
evidence in regard to pre-Hellenic religion. The evidence
supplied by Crete is, of course, only indirectly applicable,
but it seems to confirm and supplement what little is known
about the religion of the Mycenaean and other Aegaean and
Pelasgic peoples, if we may use these words to denote the
early inhabitants of what we mean by ' Greece ' and some of its
adjacent islands.
In the earliest age of which we have evidence no temples
seem to have existed. Probably groves and caverns were
first used, such as the cave at Delphi, or the Dictaean cave in
Crete, the fabled birthplace of the Cretan Zeus, where an
48
J
24. ' Harvester Vase '
25. Cretan Sarcophagus
48
f
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
ancient altar and a table of libation have been found, as well
as the ashes of victims and votive offerings, among which
are numerous bronzed models of the double axe, the symbol
of divinity.
In Crete no remains have been discovered of large temples,
but in the palaces as well as in ordinary houses small
rooms seem to have been set apart for worship, and in one
case, at Gournia, what seems to have been a little much-
frequented shrine (for it was approached by a well-worn
paved path) stood in the midst of the town.
In Greece itself, among the Aegaean and Pelasgic peoples,
if we may draw conclusions from the evidence of later days,
the first objects of religious worship were stocks and stones
— possibly sometimes such meteorites as the images of the
Tauric and Ephesian Artemis, which "fell from heaven."
These were at first formless and unhoused. I^ater they were
shaped into some rough resemblance to the human form,
though generally legless, as we see from old descriptions of
archaic wooden Greek idols {^6am), and from many ancient
images in earth- ware which have been dug up.
In Crete, besides such ancient legless and armless idols, have
been discovered many representations or models of (i) sacred
symbolic objects, (2) divinities.
The symbohc objects evidently signified the presence of
divinity in what is called an-iconic ritual {i.e. a ritual without
actual idols ; such as was used in the Mysteries, where certain
sacred objects were believed to possess a supernatural influence) .
Of these symbols the horns of consecration and the double
axe (see the Cretan Sarcophagus, Fig. 25) are the commonest.
The horns (reminding one of the horns of the Jewish altar,
and evidently connected with the worship of a Bull-god
— possibly Moloch) are depicted frequently in frescoes and
on seals when any religious scene is represented. They
have also been found at Mycenae. The double axe also
occurs on seals and in frescoes, often in combination with
the horns, and is, moreover, found impressed on stucco or
cut on stonework.
D 49
26. Griffins and Pn;i,AR
ANCIENT GREECE
In the great Palace of Cnossus this Labrys, or double axe, is
to be seen on many a pillar or block, and it can scarcely be
doubted that Labyrinth
means ' the house [or
place] of the double axe.'
The word Labrys is said
to be Carian. It occurs
in the title Labraunda,
given to the Carian Zeus.
The termination -nth we
have already noted as
probably Aegaean. What
was symbolized by the
Cretan I^abrys, or double
axe, is not known, but
it has been supposed that
it may have intimated
the combined godhead of
Sun and Moon, or of the ancient Cretan Earth-goddess and
the Cretan Zeus. The symbol is not confined to Crete. It may
be seen on Carian
and other coins
(PlatesI.5andV. 2).
Besides the horns
and the axe we find
the pillar — evidently
also a symbol of
divine presence, as
was probably the
pillar set up by Jacob
at Bethel. In the
picture of the lyion
Gate at Mycenae
(Fig. 2) and in the
figure with griffins it will be seen that between the animals stands
a pillar, whereas in the next illustration we have the same
motive, but the goddess herself has taken the place of the pillar.
50
27. Earth-Goddess and I^ions
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
Another symbol, or sacred object, is a tree that reminds
one somewhat of the ancient Babylonian and Biblical Tree of
28. RiTUAi, Dance and Uprooting of Sacred Tree
Life or of Knowledge. It occurs on gems and seals and in
paintings (see Figs. 7 and 28). Sometimes it is being watered
by grotesque genii, or is being uprooted by a priest, or it
bears great bunches of fruit like
dates, which in one case are being
gathered by a diminutive female.
Another very interesting sacred
object — for such it seems to be, as
it was found in a shrine — is a cross
of grey and yellow marble, which is
exactly like a Christian cross " of
orthodox Greek shape," as Sir
Arthur Evans says. A model of
this cross may be seen in the British
Museum.
Many rude idols have been found — mostly legless and
armless — merely grotesque attempts to represent the super-
natural. Remarkable evidences of demon and bogy
worship are given by numerous seals and gems' (see
Fig. 31), where we find hideous and monstrous combinations
51
29. Genii (Priests ?)
WATERING Sacred Tree
ANCIENT GREECE
of bird, beast, and human being. Perhaps they were used as
charms.^
But the most important fact of this nature that has been
brought to Hght by excavation is that the most ancient Cretan
deity was a goddess whom we meet in Greek mythology
under various names — for doubtless Ge (Earth), Cybele ^ or
Rhea (daughter of Earth and the Great Mother of the gods),
Demeter (Mother Earth), and the ancient pre-Hellenic or
Asiatic Hecate or Artemis (triform and many-breasted) are all
■; 30. Tim ' IvADY Or WlIvD CrEAI^URES '
closely related to this ancient Cretan goddess. We find her,
pictured amidst all kinds of wild animals, as the goddess of
nature, the ' I^ady of Wild Creatures ' [Trorvia Ojjpwi), as was
the later Artemis. Frequently, as we have already seen,
she is attended by lions, or by serpents which coil them-
selves around her. Possibly as goddess of the air she is
given doves and other birds, as goddess of earth she is attended
^ Some hold these monstrous forms to be priests or priestesses in disguise,
perhaps performing a kind of transformation dance.
^ Semele (mother of Dionysus) may also mean ' Earth-goddess ' and be
another form of Cybele. Both Cybele and Dionysus are attended by lions.
Cybele (also Cybelle and perhaps Cybebe) seems to have been the Phrygian
name of Rhea.
52
fsi- Cretan Seai^s (from_Zakro)
ANCIENT GREECE
by lions, and as goddess of the nether world she has the
serpent, thus resembhng the triform Hecate — who was moon-
goddess Selene in heaven, the huntress Artemis on earth, and
identical with Persephone in Hades.
According to the Theogony of Hesiod the first of all things
that sprang from Chaos was Gaia, or Ge (Earth), who by
Uranus (Heaven) was the mother of the Titan-god Cronos
(Time?). The sister and wife of this old god Cronos was
Rhea (Rheia), or Cybele, and their children were the elder
Olympian gods, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus
(who seems to have been not the eldest, though the King of
Olympus). Now Cronos had the habit of swallowing his
offspring, but Rhea fled to Crete and gave birth to Zeus
in a cavern on Mount Ida or Mount Dicte ; or, according
to Hesiod, she gave over the child to " mighty Gaia in
broad Crete to nurse and rear," and Gaia hid it "in an
inaccessible cavern under the divine earth on the Aegaean ^
mount."
It seems therefore, I think, very probable that the ancient
Nature-goddess whose effigies have been found in Crete is
this ' mighty Gaia ' of Hesiod — though doubtless she was
assimilated to her daughter Rhea, who, as the mother of Zeus
Cretagenes, is called the Idaean or Dictaean, or the Mountain
Mother {'ISula, AUrvwa, M}/t>;/3 bpeirj).
We have seen how Greek mythology brings the northern god
Zeus to Crete. His worship there was not grafted on to the old
religion till the advent of northern invaders, who made their
supreme Sky-god the son of the ancient Cretan Earth-Mother.^
On old Cretan seals and gems there appears associated with the
great goddess what seems to be an inferior male deity. He
sometimes stands in a reverential attitude before her (as
perhaps in Fig. 27), and is also depicted as floating in the
1 Aegaean (Aigaios) seems to come from some Pelasgic or Aegaeau word
of unknown meaning. The name of this Cretan mountain may have given
rise to the myth that Zeus was suckled in the Dictaean cave by the goat
Amalthea (Grk. aigeios = ' of a goat '). Later writers derive ' Aegaean '
from Aegeus, the father of Theseus.
- On coins of Phaestus Zeus is represented as quite young.
54
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
sky and apparently beating his figure-of-eight shield with
his spear (Fig. 7). This possibly is meant to represent a
sky-god producing thunder, but he cannot well be Zeus, for
these reUcs date from an age far anterior to the introduction
of the northern god. This inferior male deity was perhaps
fused into the person of Zeus Cretagenes.
There were other locahties that claimed to be the birth-
place of Zeus, among them Thebes and Ithome, and also
the Trojan Ida, but the claims of Crete were generally
recognized.
A curious ancient legend relates that Zeus — weary perhaps
of sovereignty — retired to Crete and died there. His tomb was
said to be on Mount Juktas, near Cnossus. Doubtless this
legend inspired the wondrous description by Dante of the
gigantic image (Hke that of Daniel's dream) of Time, or the
World's Ages, standing within the Cretan Ida. The claim
of the Cretans to possess the tomb of the king of the gods is said
to have caused, or increased, their reputation as liars ; but if
the verse quoted by St. Paul was written by Epimenides
(c. 600) they seem to have had the reputation considerably
before what one would consider the probable date of the
decease of Zeus.
There seem to be also evidences of a younger Cretan goddess,
the daughter of the Earth-Mother, whose presence some suspect
in the stories of Britomartis, Europa, and Ariadne. In later
times she seems sometimes to have been identified with
Aphrodite ( Astarte) , but her true representative in the Olympian
family is doubtless Kore {i.e. the Maiden), the daughter of
Demeter, or Ge-meter, the Earth-Mother. This Maiden, it is
fabled, was carried off by Hades to his realm of darkness
while she was gathering flowers, and under the name of
Persephone was made the Queen of the Underworld, but was
allowed every year to return to her mother Earth — an allegory
of the yearly return of spring (see Fig. 32).
Besides these ancient Cretan deities there are, as we have
seen, many evidences of a monstrous bull-headed deity —
whether of native origin or derived from some t auriform
55
ANCIENT GREECE
Oriental deity, such as Moloch, or from the bull-Dionysus of
Thrace, of whose orgies I have already spoken, it is impossible
to feel certain. " Of the ritual of the Bull-god in Crete," says
Miss Harrison, " we know that it consisted in part of the
tearing and eating of a bull ; and behind is the dreadful
suspicion of human sacrifice." As we have already seen,
Minos was probably the high-priest, and was possibly even
regarded as the incarnation, of this monstrous deity, and may
32. The Return of the Earth-Maiden (here Pandora)
have himself been sacrificed in the Dictaean cave at the end of
his nine years of sovereignty. The later legend makes Zeus
the original Phoenician-Cretan Bull-god, and Minos his son,
but it seems more Hkely that the monstrous deity existed in
Crete long before the advent of Zeus or of the Phoenicians,
and that behind the horrid story of Pasiphae and the
Minotaur " there lurks some mystical ceremony of ritual
wedlock [of the Cretan queen] with a primitive bull-headed
divinity."
How far this ancient Cretan religion was similar to the religion
of pre-Hellenic Greece it is impossible to say. The day may
56
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
soon come when a sudden shaft of Hght will be let into what is
still a very dark corner of history. At present we can only
point to the fact that numerous signs of connexion have been
discovered. The bull is found in Mycenaean art ; the horns
of consecration, the double axe, and the sacred tree occur
on (perhaps native) gems and plaques and rings, and in
many ancient tombs in Greece and the Aegaean islands
small rude idols of stone, bronze, lead, and gold have been
found which seem to represent a Nature-goddess (sometimes
attended by birds) similar to, if not identical with, the Cretan
Gaia.
This is practically all that is known of the religion of Greece
before the coming of the Achaeans and the Olympian gods,
and, except what we are told by Homer and Hesiod, and the
still more doubtful evidence that we gather from what was
related afterwards by Herodotus and other Greek writers,
almost all our knowledge of the Olympian gods and ritual
begins after the Dark Age of some three centuries which
followed the next invasion of northmen, that of the
Dorians.
A few facts, however, seem to emerge here and there, and
these we will consider in combination with what we are told
by Homer. But it must be remembered that Homer wrote
perhaps three centuries after the Achaean, or heroic, age,
and may have indulged in a good deal of imaginative recon-
struction.
In Homer we find the regime of the new gods already well
estabHshed. Each has his or her special functions and
appointed place in the Olympian family, and instead of a
Mighty Mother we have a well-marked patria potestas. There
are, indeed, signs that the worship of these new gods had
already lasted a considerable time, for familiarity had already
bred contempt, and the behaviour of some of the deities as
described in the poems was such as to excite indignation in
the mind of even such a philosopher as Plato.
Of most of these Olympians it is difficult to trace the
lineage. In some cases they are doubtless grand and beautiful
57
ANCIENT GREECE
re-creations, the prime elements of which were deities of the
older religions, Northern, Aegaean, Pelasgian, and also some-
times Oriental. But Zeus is apparently almost purely northern
— the Aryan Dyaus-piter, the Day-Father or Sky-god, and
the Papas or Bronton (Father or Thunderer) of the Phrygians.
He was evidently introduced in a very early age into the
mountainous country in North-western Greece (Epirus, or
' Mainland,' as it was called by the islanders), which, as well
as parts of Thessaly, was then inhabited by Achaeans, or
others of the same race, before they made their great descent
on Southern Greece.^ Even before the coming of the Achaeans
there existed in Epirus the far-famed sanctuary and oracle
of Dodona, where some Pelasgian Earth-Mother gave responses
through her priestesses by the murmuring of her doves.
This sanctuary was, it seems, annexed by the northern Zeus,
who (as Homer tells us) adopted the name of the ' Dodonaean '
or ' Pelasgic ' Zeus, As god of the air he gave his oracles
through the voices of winds moaning and rusthng in his sacred
oak-grove amidst the murmur of f alhng waters and the clangor
of bronzen vessels struck by wind-moved hammers. lyater
he was brought to other Pelasgic and Aegaean lands, and
given the kingship of the new Olympian hierarchy. Apollo
was also doubtless of northern origin, but his many diverse
attributes (as Sender of Pestilence, Sun-god, Harp-god, &c.)
show that he was a re-creation out of various deities. There
was later a Dorian Apollo with special attributes (see Pindar,
Pyth. v.), of whom many old statues ^ seem to be repre-
sentations, but by the Achaeans, if we may believe Homer,
Apollo was worshipped as Phoebus, " the bright sun-god "
and sender of sudden death. Hermes, the Messenger, was
probably a native Aegaean (Arcadian) god. The Hermes
statues of later art seem to be a survival of old legless and
armless idols. Demeter, as we have already seen, was
^ The Achaeans were apparently driven finally from Epirus about the time
of the Dorian invasion of Greece (c. iioo) by a barbaric northern tribe, the
Illyrians. Epirus and Aetolia thenceforth were regarded as mainly barbarian
(non-Hellenic) lands.
^ For these ' Apollos ' see p. 225.
58
33- ^IiNOAN, Mycenaean, and Trojan Ware
c. 2000-1300
See List of Illustrations and Note D
58
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
originally a native Earth-Mother. I^eto and Semele and
Dionysus/ Artemis and others were probably old deities,
but they received many new features and were transformed
from grotesque and monstrous forms into creatures of beauty
and grandeur.
Such wondrous transmutation or re-creation one finds in
all great art, but perhaps nowhere as in Homer, When we
think of some ghoulish Aegaean idol or some many-breasted
Cybele and then turn to the majestic Zeus of Homer, or to
Hermes the Messenger, or to Artemis, the virgin huntress
amidst her forest-nymphs, and when we mark the loving
reverence and trustfulness with which Homer's men and women
address the deities and speak of their justice and their affection,
we realize the enormous and seemingly impassable gulf that
separates the two conceptions of deity — conceptions which
were not separated by any wide gulf of time, but probably
existed for a period side by side. Of course. Homer did not
live in the age that he describes, and his poetic instinct may have
eliminated much of the grotesque and monstrous which still
survived in that age, and may have lent it some features that
belonged to his own ; but, however that may be, the Homeric
gods stand already on the same level as the Olympian Zeus
and the Lemnian Athene of Pheidias, or even the still more
humanly beautiful, if less divinely majestic, Cnidian Aphrodite
of Praxiteles. Indeed, Pheidias confessed that he found in
Homer alone the ideal that he realized in his Olympian Zeus.
It is this transforming and creative power which makes
Greek art and literature by far the most precious legacy of
past ages. Antiquarian and historical research gives us what
is mere erudition when it is not touched to life by a love and
admiration for the creations of Greek imagination and the
revelations of Greek thought. All these excavations and
discoveries in Crete and Mycenae and Troy and elsewhere,
as well as all research and higher criticism in such subjects
^ Homer says but little of Dionysus, possibly avoiding him as associated
■with horrors. He associates him {Od. xi.) with Crete and probably with
the Bull-god, as well as with the East (Nysa) and Thrace (//. vi.)- It was left
for later Greek art to transform him into the joyous, boisterous wjne-god.
59
ANCIENT GREECE
as the Homeric question or the Athenian Constitution, derive
their only real value and interest from the fact that they lead
us towards a better understanding and a fuller appreciation
of the art and literature and philosophy of Greece, and of the
character of her greatest men.
SECTION C : THE 'HOMERIC AGE ' AND HOMER
Homer and the ' Homeric age ' do not really belong to the
same period, for the Homeric poems — even the earliest parts
of them — were not written in the age that they describe, as
is evident from the fact that the poet frequently speaks of
the men of his own age as far inferior to the heroes who fought
at Troy, although these were again inferior to the greater
heroes of an earlier age, such as Heracles {II. v. 304 ; Od. viii.
223, &c.) . But it is necessary to treat the two subjects together,
for these poems are the only evidence of this Achaean or
Homeric age. The Mycenaean shaft-graves have indeed
supplied evidence of an age of unsuspected civilization, but,
as we have seen, great differences are apparent in regard to
dress, armour, disposal of the dead, and probably religion,
between the Mycenaean civilization and that world which
Homer describes. These differences and the necessary supposi-
tion of an almost incredibly rapid and complete development
of another state of things, and of another entirely different
conception of deity, coupled with the fact that we have prac-
tically no evidence whatever of this ' Homeric age ' except
what we are told by the Homeric poems, have made some
writers assert that these poems give merely an imaginative
picture of a world that never existed, and that, except a small
' nucleus ' (some ancient ballad describing the ' wrath ' of a
sea-god, Achilles, against a land-god, Agamemnon, both of
whom had their habitat somewhere in Thessaly, whence they
were transported by later Homeric bards to the Peloponnese),
the Iliad is a farrago compounded by several . generations
of rhapsodists, a kind of epical romance in which the fiction
of some long-past mythical age was depicted and from wliich
60
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
almost all anachronisms ^ were carefully eliminated by the
bards themselves and their critical auditors. The Odyssey,
according to such critics, is of much later date than the older
parts of the Iliad, and was compiled by similar bards, or
perhaps by a single highly gifted bard, from old stories of
adventures in the Euxine, which were transferred to western
seas. 2 Moreover, Odysseus was " only a god," and Penelope
only a goddess.
There certainly is much vagueness in the geography of
the Odyssey, and evident confusion of the far East with
the far West. Circe's original home was Colchis, and
her island Aeaea is said to have been near the sunrise. (She
and her brother Aeetes were both, perhaps, originally
bird-headed Eastern deities.) Moreover, the original home
of the Cimmerians was evidently the Crimea. Altogether
there can, I think, be no doubt that the poems, especially
the Iliad, underwent in the course of centuries of public
recitation a certain amount of pruning and reshaping, that
ancient Aeolic words may have been modernized into the
later Ionian dialect, and that lines glorifying certain families
or places may have been inserted, and possibly also some
episodes. Moreover, it is possible that when the poems
were arranged into books and canonized in the age of Peisis-
tratus (about 520) some readjustment and welding took place.
But any long disquisition on these much-vexed questions
1 Such writers point gleefully to numerous cases where "good old Homer
is caught napping " (to use Horace's expression)— various inconsistencies and
slips of memory, such as occur in the best of poets. They also assert that he
sometimes describes shields as man-covering and as huge " as a tower," and
at other times gives the warriors the small round Carian shield and breast-
plates, &c. — as if different kinds of shield and armour might not have been
in use ! Also they point at the mention of iron {Od. six. 13) as "attracting
[to bloodshed]," whereas iron is elsewhere in the poems used only for knives
and axes — not for weapons. But the ' Iron Age ' had already begun, and it
was doubtless used already for weapons, though ' bronze ' was the usual term
in poetry. How plentiful iron already was is plain from Od. i. 184, where a
whole cargo of it is brought from Temesa (in Italy ?).
^ A French writer, Berard, has endeavoured to prove that the Odyssey is
founded on the log-books of Phoenicians (who certainly as early as the time
of Solomon visited Spain, and perhaps South Africa), and discovers Calypso's
island on the African coast not far from Gibraltar.
61
ANCIENT GREECE
would be here out of place, and I shall merely state my own
slowly formed conviction that both these poems owe their
main structure and most of their details to one great poet,
that the age which he depicted was no mere fiction, and that
he lived near enough to that age to paint, by the help of
traditions and ballads, its main features with very considerable
exactitude. It is a saying of Socrates that " about flute-
playing musicians judge best, and about poetry poets." When
the poet Goethe first read the celebrated Prolegomena of the
German scholar Wolf, the originator of modern Homer-
scepticism, he was puzzled and half convinced. But he very
wisely determined to re-read Homer, and ended by recanting
his half assent to the " subjective stuff and nonsense,"
declaring that "behind these poems there stands a splendid
unity — a single, lofty, creative mind." It was doubtless
a similar poetic instinct, innate in the Greek race, which
preserved the true Homer in the midst of a mass of inferior
ballad-epics (those of the so-called Cyclic poets), many of
which had appropriated his name, and finally sifted out the
true ore and cast aside the rubbish.
The old Boeotian poet Hesiod, whose date and works have
been subjected to a similar critical process, but whom (as I shall
explain later) we may very reasonably believe to have lived
not much later than Homer (possibly c. 850), gives testimony,
of course rejected by the critics in question, that an age of
heroes preceded his own age (the age of iron). In this heroic
age, he says, took place the expedition of the Seven against
seven-gated Thebes, and that against Troy for the sake of
fair-haired Helen. I^astly, Herodotus, whose testimony is
however of a much later date (about 480-430), tells us that
he believed Homer and Hesiod to have both lived 400 years
before his time, and after hearing all that modern criticism
has to say I think we may quite reasonably accept this as
fairly correct, placing Homer from half a century to a century
before Hesiod — i.e. about 900 or 950.
Seven cities claimed to have been the birthplace of Homer.
The presence of Aeolic forms in his Ionic Greek seems to prove
62
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
that lie lived in Soutliern Aeolis, perhaps in Chios, or in Cyme
or in its daughter-city old Smyrna, which was then Aeolian.
(It was afterwards moved a few miles south over the Ionian
frontier. But Ionia perhaps did not already exist as a defined
country in Homer's time.) Some, indeed, imagine that the
oldest strata of the Homeric poems were written entirely in
' ancient Aeolic ' (a dialect related to the later ' lycsbian ' of
Sappho and Alcaeus) , and afterwards worked over into Ionic
(an early dialect of the Ionic used some four centuries later by
Herodotus), Aeolian forms being left when the scansion did
not allow of change. This is, of course, pure guesswork,
as is also the theory that the old Achaeans of Thessaly in-
vented the hexameter rhythm, and that their ancient ballads
about their local feuds formed the basis of the Trojan fiction ;
but until this is proved I tliink we may reasonably believe
that Homer belonged to one of the early ' Ionian ' colonial
families who began to come over about 1040, some 150 years
after the fall of Troy had first attracted Achaeans and other
Greeks to settle in Aeolis. Who these ' lonians ' were I shall
discuss in the following chapter. Possibly Homer, though
himself Ionian, lived across the Aeolian (Achaean) border,
and thus came across the old Aeolic (Achaean) ballads (pos-
sibly in hexameter rhythm) and thence formed his great
epic, finding eager auditors amongst the descendants of those
Achaeans who had sacked Troy and opened up the country
to Greek colonization. Whether Homer himself emigrated
from Greece, or whether he ever visited Greece, it is impossible
to say. Hesiod uses words which have been made to mean
that he met Homer at Chalcis, in Euboea, and conquered
him in a poetical contest ; indeed, a varia lectio of these words
[E. 657) asserts this ; but it is very improbable. Homer how-
ever knew Greece well, though he may never have seen it. The
local colour of his poems is that of the mother- country, and
not of Asia Minor. His gods and his Muses dwell evidently
on the Thessalian Olympus. Achaea, Pylos, Mycenae, Argos,
Phthia, and all other Greek places, are spoken of with a kind
of Heimweh; and how often do the expressions ' homewards,'
63
ANCIENT GREECE
' fatherland/ ' land of liis fathers ' occur ! On the other hand,
Asia Minor is for Homer a wild un-Greek country. Of
Phrygia, Maeonia, I^ycia, and of islands such as I^esbos and
Chios we hear {Od. iii. 170), but no word of Aeohs or of
Ionia as Greek colonies. Miletus is mentioned as ruled by
the " Carians of barbarous tongue." Doubtless Homer hved
after the Dorian invasion of the Eastern Peloponnese (about
iioo), and he mentions Dorians as already in Crete; but
he so entirely ignores them otherwise that it seems hardly
possible that they could have already conquered Argos and
Mycenae, and have become the dominant race in Southern
Greece, which happened, as we shall see later, about 950.
But all these questions as to personality and date are
of very trivial importance in comparison with the priceless
legacy of the Homeric poems — which were not written, as is
too often assumed, for the antiquarian and the philologist.
Possibly some day another Schliemann will excavate not
only the tomb of Zeus in Crete but even Homer's tomb in the
island of los, where the pseudo-Herodotus asserts that he was
buried, and put an end to all our polemics as well perhaps
as to such theories as that Odysseus was " only a god," or
that the authoress of the Odyssey was Nausicaa herself —
which has been seriously affirmed by the talented author of
Erewhon.
It would be out of place here to retell the oft-told tale of
Troy and the Wanderings of Odysseus, but for those who
do not reject the world of Homer as a fiction it is intensely
interesting to examine his evidence — the only evidence we
possess — in regard to this age of Achaean supremacy. I will
therefore note a few points.
In the Iliad we find the Achaeans and their Argive soldiery
under the abnormal (though perhaps for them not uncommon)
conditions of war and camp-life in a foreign land, and although
we learn less of the state of civilization than we might have
learnt had the scene of the epic been laid at Sparta or Mycenae,
we learn much else. In the Odyssey, on the other hand, we
have descriptions of home life : of palaces, of farmsteads
64
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
and orchards and agriculture, of tlie cottages and work of
herdsmen, of townsfolk and their town, of meetings of the
citizens, of busy wharves and arsenals and shipping, of masters
and mistresses amid their servants and thralls ; and, besides
these Ithacan and Phaeacian pictures, we are given particulars
of a chariot journey (evidently on a tolerably good road)
across a part of the Peloponnese and a very distinct picture of
the home of Menelaus and Helen at Sparta, and also a glimpse of
the Mycenaean palace of Agamemnon. By means of all these
various pictures, and by fitting together the almost innumerable
details that we find in both poems, we are able to form a fairly
complete conception of the Achaean world in peace ^ and in
war.
Pictures of religious rites, of sacrifices and Hbations and
funeral ceremonies are frequent, and sometimes we are reminded
of the old rehgion. Thus in the visit to Hades {Od. xi.) we
have a threefold libation to the ghosts of the dead — of honey-
milk, of wine, and of water — reminding us of an ancient
Cretan libation table with three basins found in the Dictaean
cave. Moreover, on the same occasion Odysseus fills a hole
that he had dug in the ground with the blood of victims,
and the ghosts come flocking round it in their longing to drink —
a picture that recalls the ' feeding holes ' for blood libation
which have been found on the summit of Mycenaean tombs.
Again, many instances occur of sanctuaries and altars in the
open air, under oaks and plane-trees and palms {Od. vi. 162),
and there is frequent mention of sacred groves and sacred
precincts. But we also have a few definite references to
temples — such as the "house of Erechtheus " at Athens
(possibly a late accretion) and the " temples of the gods " and
the " shrine of Poseidon " (evidently not a grove) in the
^ In the following very incomplete list every word conjures up some
picture or series of pictures for any one who knows the Odyssey : Spinning,
weaving, dress, beds, tables, chairs, metal-work, inlaying, forging, goblets,
brooches, hunting, fishing, vineyards, gardening, bathing, swimming, horses,
mules, goats, cattle, swine, geese, dogs, lions, eagles, palaces, house-building,
ship-building, raft-building, sailing, rowing, feasting, athletic games, boxing,
draughts, ball-playing, acrobats, dancing, music, law-courts, funerals,
sacrifices, beggars, clothes-washing, wagons, chariots.
E 65
ANCIENT GREECE
Phaeacian city {Od. vi. lo and 266), and in the sixth book of
the Iliad there is given with a few touches a fine sketch of the
temple of Athene in Troy and the seated statue of the goddess,
on whose knees (1. 273) Hecabe lays a peplos, just as was still
done by the Athenians of the age of Pericles at the Panathenaic
festival — a scene depicted on the frieze of the Parthenon.
There are also descriptions of funeral ceremonies, such as the
celebrated picture of the funeral of Patroclus in the twenty-
third book of the Iliad, and the exquisitely beautiful, though
possibly not Homeric,^ scene of the mourning for Achilles {Od.
xxiv.), and the cortege round his funeral pyre, and the pathetic
lines which tell us how Odysseus and his men felled trees and
built a pyre and burnt the body of their comrade Elpenor,
and how they then piled a mound above his buried ashes and
erected on the top of the mound the oar " with which in life
he had rowed amidst his mates," as his ghost in Hades had
implored them to do. Achaean funerals, as we have already
seen, were generally of this character — cremation and burial
of ashes. There is, however, one word {Tapxyeiv) thrice used
in the Iliad which seems to point to some older custom, such
as was prevalent in Egypt, for the word means to ' dry ' (like
smoked fish).
Among the Homeric Achaeans the kingship was hereditary,
although it seems as if the family prerogative had to be con-
firmed by Zeus, probably through oracular response or omens,
for Telemachus allows this {Od. i. 386 sq.) and speaks of the
possibility of some other of the Ithacan princes (whom he also
calls ' kings ' — /3ao-<X»>9) being elected instead of himself.
In the Iliad Agamemnon is the over-lord of all the Achaean
princes and the head of the army ; in the Odyssey Odysseus
is the over-lord of all the Ithacan chieftains and nobles and
possesses large estates and many flocks and herds and the rights
^ The so-called NeKuta 8(VTepa (second visit to the dead), if not by Homer
himself, is worthy of him. It is like a figure by Praxiteles added to an un-
finished group by Pheidias. Some afiirm that the first descent (Book XI)
was inserted (and composed ?) by some Orphic teacher, perhaps Onomacritus,
when the Homeric poems were collected and arranged in the time of Peisis-
tratus. This I prefer not to believe.
66
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
of pasture on the mainland and in Ithaca. The king has a
privy council (Boule) formed of elders and nobles, and there is
also a public assembly (Agora), which in the Iliad naturally
consists of all the lighting men — perhaps of others too, for one
can hardly conceive Thersites as a fighter. In the Odyssey
we have descriptions of both Ithacan and Phaeacian assembhes,
consisting evidently of all the free men of the state. They
seem, as a rule, to have been summoned merely to hear the
decisions of the king and his Boule; but sometimes they
certainly took their own course, breaking up in disorder,
some following one leader and some another [e.g. Od. iii.
1375^.).
The land seems to have belonged mainly to the Achaean
noble families, who probably held their hereditary title from
the king and Boule. There seem also to have been ' common
lands ' (//. xii. 422), and even thralls, such as the swineherd
Eumaeus, could receive in tenant-right a ' lot ' (/cXf/^o?)
from his lord, and those who were not landowners {uKXnpoi)
could engage farm-labourers and evidently hire land for culti-
vation {Od. xi. 490), but the family kleroi (allotments) probably
took up most of the good soil and pasturage. These allot-
ments could be divided among members of a family (in Crete
anyhow, as we see from Od. xiv. 209), but, being held in feu-
right from a liege lord, could not be sold. Hesiod, however,
speaks of the gods granting the blessing of " buying your
neighbour's allotment instead of his buying yours." But
that was later, and in Boeotia.
The Homeric palace, or large house, stood often in a pahsaded
or walled courtyard. It consisted of a portico and a raised
' stoep,' where guests slept, and a great megaron (hall) which
was used for meals and also as a sleeping-place ; but there
were also frequently [e.g. in Odysseus' palace) workrooms and
bedrooms in the back part of the house, those for the women
upstairs. Descriptions are given, more or less full, of the palaces
of Odysseus, Alcinous, Menelaus, Circe, and what I have called
glimpses of Agamemnon's Mycenaean palace and of the quarters
of Achilles in the Greek camp. Circe's palace had a fiat roof
67
ANCIENT GREECE
where guests could sleep. The palace of Alcinous had a frieze,
or coping, of blue glass-paste {cyan) such as has been found in a
palace at Tiryns. Its walls were bronzen (doubtless plated with
bronze, as in the ' Treasury of Atreus ' at Mycenae), and its
doors and door-handle were of gold ; the door-posts and lintel
were of silver and the threshold was of bronze. The palace
of Menelaus is described as gleaming with bronze, gold, amber,
silver, and ivory.
Art treasures, Achaean and Sidonian, are frequently de-
scribed : metal-work, embroidery, fine-woven cloths, carved
woodwork, and other artistic objects. The ' Shield of Achilles '
testifies to a high proficiency in the art of metal inlay, though
we must perhaps allow something for imagination. The art
of writing has already been mentioned.
Exceedingly beautiful are the relations between those who are
bound by ties of affection and kinship. Nowhere in literature
is to be found anything more touching and beautiful than the
love of Achilles for Patroclus, of Andromache and of old
Priam for Hector, of Hector for his wife and child, of Tele-
machus for his mother, of Penelope and of Anticleia for
Odysseus ; and even such love is equalled by the tender affec-
tion of the old nurse Eurycleia and the swineherd Eumaeus
and the old Dolius (all of them slaves) for their masters and
their mistress. When the good old swineherd saw Telemachus
once more, whom he feared the suitors had murdered,
... to welcome his master he hastened.
Kissed him on both of liis cheeks, on his beautiful eyes and his forehead,
Kissed him on both of his hands, while big tears feU from his eyelids.
And in the same way all the maids who had remained
faithful to Odysseus, when they recognized him after the
slaughter of the suitors, crowded round him,
Lovingly kissing his head and his shoulders in token of welcome.
Grasping and kissing his hands.
In Homer there is not much of that high-wrought sentiment
which plays such a large part in modern romance. Indeed,
there is a good deal that would offend the dehcate sensibiHties
of the writer and reader of such romance. An hour or so after
68
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
Odysseus' rather unconventional interruption of their ball-
playing on the river-bank, Nausicaa (who was a lady if ever
there was one) confesses openly and without the slightest
touch of sentiment to her maidens that she would be delighted
to have him as a husband.
Passionate love seems in Homer to be regarded as somewhat
contemptible as well as dangerous. The names of Briseis,
Calypso, and Circe do not awaken very pleasant associations.
Helen bitterly bewails, even before Priam, the madness of
passionate love sent her by Aphrodite, and although the
greybeards of Troy seem to condone it on account of her
irresistible charms, and although — what is still more strange —
Menelaus himself condones it, and lives contentedly with her
after her ten years' infidelity, the general verdict seems to
agree with her self-accusation of ' dog-faced ' shamelessness
and with her self -contempt. Clytaemnestra affords another
example. She is described by Nestor as good by nature ;
but illicit love maddened her and led her to murder her
husband. With the deities passion cannot, of course, lead to
crime, for they are above law, but in their case such emotions
are represented as even more contemptible and ridiculous
than in the case of a mortal ; and when Hephaestus, as an
injured husband, demands compensation of Ares {Od. vii.)
the satire reaches its climax.
Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable than the way in
which the gods — who are generally treated with great respect,
and even veneration — are satirized in this matter. The
Homeric Zeus is a majestic figure, and inspires deep rever-
ence in mortal hearts, but he does not escape ridicule.
Although he sends Hermes to warn Aegisthus against
his design of seducing Clytaemnestra, the Father of the
Gods himself earns an unenviable notoriety in matters of
love, and at such moments stands on a much lower moral
level than mortals such as Hector or Odysseus ; for though
Odysseus was not faultless, the relations between him and
Penelope are very much more edifying and very much more
beautiful than are frequently the relations between the King
69
ANCIENT GREECE
and Queen of Heaven. Indeed, family life on earth is pictured
as being on the whole happier than it is in heaven. In spite
of the fact that a wife was often practically bought by the
suitor who could offer the largest ' bride-gift ' to the parents,
married life in that age, if we may accept Homer's descrip-
tions, was often a life of the deepest affection and of
unbounded confidence — such a life as Odysseus himself
pictured to Nausicaa :
So shall the gods all blessings bestow tha* thy soul desireth —
Husband and home ; and oneness of heart may heaven vouchsafe thee.
Blessing supreme — since nought can be wished that is greater and better
While united in heart and in mind are dwelling together
Husband and wife. 'Tis a sight brings sorrow to wishers of evil,
Joy to the wishers of good. But the joy in their hearts is the loudest.
As a description of a work of art — of an art derived from the
old Mycenaean and Cretan artists — the ' Shield of Achilles '
(//. xviii.) is of great interest to the antiquarian, but its chief
value, of course, consists in the fact that it is magnificent poetry
and that it gives such wondrously vivid, and in their main
features doubtless accurate, pictures of the life of this age — the
age of Achaean supremacy. The fivefold shield was wrought
by Hephaestus of " unyielding bronze and tin and costly
gold and silver." In the centre he fashioned " earth and sky
and sea and the unwearied sun and the full moon and all the
constellations with which heaven is crowned, the Pleiades and
Hyades and Orion and the Bear, who alone hath no share in the
baths of Ocean." Round the outer rim flowed the "mighty
strength of the river of Ocean," and in the middle space were
city scenes and scenes of country life. First we have scenes
of peace within a city — a bridal procession, a court of law ;
then we see a city beleaguered, and warriors, led by Ares and
Athene, arming for a sortie and an ambuscade ; then cattle-
lifting and a general fray. Next come pictures of rural life :
a field being ploughed by many ploughmen, and as each one
reaches the limit of the field he receives a cup of sweet wine,
and turns refreshed, eager to reach again the end of his furrow,
" and behind him it grew black, and looked like ploughed
earth, though wrought in gold." Then we have a reaping
70
THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION
scene, the heavy crop faUing in swaths at the sweep of the
sickles, and being bound into sheaves, while the king looks on
in silence with exultant heart, and beneath a great oak a banquet
is being prepared. Then comes a vintage scene — the luscious
fruit borne in woven baskets amid music and dancing. Then
herdsmen drive their cattle forth to pasture, and nigh to the
watering-place and the waving reed-bed two lions attack and
drag off a bull, while the men vainly urge on their dogs, who bark
furiously but keep aloof. Then in a beautiful valley we see
a great flock of white sheep and the sheepfolds and the shep-
herds' huts. I^astly, there is a dancing-ground " Hke to that
which once Daedalus made in broad Cnossus for fair Ariadne,"
and here maidens and youths are dancing, those crowned with
fair garlands and these with golden swords hanging from silver
baldricks, and two acrobats are turning somersaults amidst
the surrounding crowd while a minstrel makes music with his
harp.
Very interesting, too, is the description of the dress and
the golden brooch of Odysseus. The passage occurs in the
fictitious account {Od. xix.) that he gives Penelope of how
once in Cretan Cnossus he met and hospitably entertained —
himself !
Purple and thick was the cloak that was worn by the godlike Odysseus,
Twofold, knit by a brooch that was fashioned of gold and was furnished
Doubly with sockets for pins ; and the front was embossed with a picture :
Here was a hound that was holding a dappled fawn with his forefeet,
Watcliing it struggle ; and all that beheld were greatly astonished
How, though golden, the hound kept watching the fawn as he choked it.
While in the longing to win an escape with the legs it was writhing.
Further, I noticed the tunic he wore : 'twas of hnen that gUster'd
I^ike to the delicate skin that is peeled from a shrivelling onion ;
Such was the softness thereof ; and it gleamed as the sun in his glory.
71
w o
ON
O
O
o
Pi
X o
iz;
„ o
>^ o
o
p^
Pi
<
2
o
I— t
H
O
(il
C/5
72
W
CO
W
« .
.2 <u
So
•c P-
o
■a
CO
>-l
.Si N
g .g I ° §
2 S ■ " 2
-a «^ £P
a a B ^
S i 3 rt
0,2 O g
I
o fd
o S a>
w
8. si
M 0) Pa
■— XI ^
^ ui ^
!>, ^ °
2 2 rt
^ g -S
.2 o
^§
Ul ■*-»
(/) u
< M
^ O
X)
H
o
2^
* a 0)
o «
S3S<
o 5p o)
^3 -2-
1-1 ■" J2
.2 8
111
1-1 ^ to
Oh
1^ rt s>
■K ^ 5
1.^ (D
•a
d
o
s
'fl
Q
IS
<:
hj
t/5
Q
<
<
z
w
o
><
H
w
o 5)
c8 " CO n
0) *; <u o
3 '^'^
CO J !-■
■• a
a
o
5 - s "-.r
o.a
.CJ
O
a
W .■-^
CO
O N
CQ
•°2
CO m
m
c
• +-»
^_> C/J (/I
V 3 «
n § ^1
o
82
^•3
-< -9
!>< S
J. a
•-I CO
I-'
D -a
a
CO
vt
Q<
O
H ^
o "
o *->
w CO
O O'^ p.
CO Vh ^ "^^ (/]
s .as a
ao
>
i>
X
.M
(A
■0
X
■3
>.
XI
ni
5.^'
i-i
>>
-M CD
rt
u
-as
P
??j^
R-i
<
Men CO o 2
W — ' t? M CO
(1> >»
XI *i-
8 J< B 3
»s o.'tt o 3
■g .J S CO
|<g coo.
0}
be
<
N
C
o
b.S&, ja
CO— o d
K g«8 «
0. 1/1 3
- m p m
"2 a dtl
— ' CO CU
.^ CO
•a
d
CO
•a
.9
'u
V
c
CO
o
d
d -
tof
X3->
o
■a
d
3
be
3
u
"o"
o
00
(0 <ti
c
u
ci d
ra r—
0?
c i^
c/) Slj 2
s s.a "^
> CO o >»
oj'bo^ 15
B d <',1
S 3 r^ M
t/5
^W
^ 0) rt rt en fl
■o 1- d ^j^'
d -, "g o CO 5f
(D N CO CO ^ +J ,r
d, <D a -o t: .y d
^ T3 o 4) CO XI t;
« 2.d 3 " e-"
bO_i t>-cB d beg-
is
fe
'ji
d
■Q
X3
bo
. d
- S'-^
CO 3-r
bo r
rt
1:S&
g « <u S
CO CO ,1
^rv yxi
^ — .2
""i +j CO ^
d COOi >>
ft ?-
T-1 ^^
fTTrl rt H >-•
E.5fe
OJ 0) O
0) <»S ^^
g<«
bo « 2
<ti CO M
cd "bo S^
t/) m'S
4J d^ •
2 2'**2
2S-g
o
o
00
a
o
;2 >^
-id
o c
o o
<N ft
or
w8
bo
o
-a
M o
K
a
, «
> D 5
"> o 2
tn H rt
fi 3 C
1-1 C I— I
v a w
(U m c
in O
w O
^ -2 "
.5 o
C lO
(D (M
1-1 yj
G ■<-» ui ifl rt
c 4j o ti bo
•a
e
'•4->
Rl
N
'H
_o
"3
a
.5
"3
<
C/J.GHT3
.^ s
-♦-» ^ !-»« "-M
" 5! « o
a
o
til .' ..
<D
►-H rt ,»H
5 in P^-'
So C
^SH
Pn
^3 '^ m O
c8
R)
a
o
"2
c/5
■o
a
a
•a
.a a
O ■So in
or:
«>
^ ri 9,'o _
So a
M Ui o
W - rt _
o .2 §-:2W
c 'a m g c
•3 O S « 4)
W V
« o ,5 " > Sj
bj).^^
H
on
3
T3
o l-l
M O
T3
a
o
'^ .2
m n
o I
I/) o
K.
"■S
t^ TJ -t->
S
-i-i
a
H
o
o
in
O
CO
ID
<ll
CI
<u
•c
iU
o
o o
(/J
is
tS 5
a
o
c
s
<
§ W
T a
o S
mi:
.3 "
0)
4)
«
s
a.
a,
a
a
il
^ >
o
J3
fli
a
c
V
u
ca -a
> (O
■c s
c/i 3
2 XI -
B
OS
X
X
bo
W
v
Di
0, X
bo
w —
3
rt
rt
1) 00
■a "
e
t>>
Q
i-cO
cd
S ^ w 3
O o ns c/)
a.
o
H
,,
>^
,3
■**
xn
Q)
■S
13
o<
n
•a
»-4
n
XI
X
S
►«
cd
j3
>>
Q
.2
S 3
rt o
cj ex
12 t/i
^ n)
N CO
P w
is
o
it: cj
3 OJ
JO (3
• aj
t/] en o
CIS biS
bo
rj « I— I u — '
T3 CU I> J5 ">
t^ « o S 9
lu - -1,
^-<
ui'JS "•"
■m'O <« O
VI CO X] rt CJ
bo
■/i.a
3 >
fl c«
u
u
3.2 0.0^ s
CD 5P" h IU "
'^ «J3 «XJ^
ctf cfi en
CO o S
• " 2
cfl cj o 13
4)
tfl -
S "
*J 4-1
nJ tn
m
cciD,-
ft
3
C0T3 ^
x: c m
C/l 0)
3 c«
^ en c
o tn 0)
S O "
.2 -as
rt B c
5Wbo
H O
■a
<
^ g
in u
•o 1-1
o
a a
a p
a'a
■a
o
bO
<
t/1
8-3 -
S S S
i a B
B
o
Q,CJ
in ^ '
2 •-
"3 o
s I
•a
S
i-2g
f« ft o
cj qT3 ■«
o rt o ai)^
^a«-3
^ t/l <■■ ^ TT
S-Ocn-SfO
U 0)
•rt U *-•
cu
CD
■§
o
V
•**
ei
•O
*-4
c<
a
o
: .;g
C [-4
CO^
o <2
Qg
r<
fio
S 60
°2 ♦■a
i5
C9
X]
_ft
■«
IU
o
o
a
o
73
CHAPTER II
THE DARK AGE
(c. iioo TO 776)
The Dorians : The Coi,onization of Aeows, Ionia, and Doris
SECTIONS : DIPYI.ON ANTIQUITIES : HESIOD : THE PHOENICIANS
AND SOME OTHER NATIONS DURING THE DARK AGE
OF the age that we have been considering, that of
the Achaean supremacy, we have in Homer's poems
a wonderfully distinct, though perhaps somewhat
imaginative, picture. These Homeric men and women and the
world in which they lived, although we have no memorials of
them but words, seem very near to us — nearer by far than
many nations of whom we have abundant relics, such as the
Babylonians, Assyrians, and Egyptians — nearer, too, than
many a people of an age not far removed from our own.
Without its vates sacer this Achaean age would doubtless be
as much of a blank as the three centuries which followed it —
an epoch which is indeed fairly rich in myths, but about which
we know for certain much less than we do about the far earlier
Minoan and Egyptian civilizations. One fact, however, is
indubitable. It was an epoch of great invasions or ' migra-
tions,' which rapidly changed the character of the population
and the civilization in many parts of Greece and extended the
Hellenic name to large tracts of country on the other side of
the Aegaean Sea.
First, let us see what the myths say.
Mythical Accounts of the Migrations
Hellen, king of Phthia, in Thessaly, and son of Deucalion
(the Greek Noah), was the mythical ancestor of all the Hellenes.
74
THE DARK AGE
Aeolus and Dorus were his sons, Achaeus and Ion his grandsons
through another son. From these ' eponymous ' heroes were
descended the AeoHans, Dorians, Achaeans, and lonians.
The Aeohans hved in Thessaly and the Dorians in Doris, a
small district in central North Greece. The lonians settled in
the country afterwards called Achaea, and the Achaeans
conquered the whole of the Peloponnese except this district
of the lonians and the mountain strongholds of the Arcadians.
Now in the Peloponnese there had been before the coming of
the Achaeans two great reigning dynasties — the descendants
of Perseus (who is said to have founded Tiryns and Mycenae)
and the Pelopid princes of Pisa, Olympia, and Amyclae, with
whom, as we have already seen, the northern Achaean invaders
probably intermarried and identified themselves. The last
of the Perseid dynasty had been Eurystheus (the king of Argos
who enslaved Heracles). He was succeeded by the Pelopid
Atreus. On the death of Heracles (traditional date 1209)
liis children were exiled from Argos. They endeavoured to
return and recover their possessions, but after Hyllus, the son
of Heracles, had been killed in single combat they promised
to renounce all further attempts for a hundred years. At
the end of this time (1104) they put themselves at the head
of a great army of Dorians,^ who espoused their cause, and
who were finding the little district of Doris between Oeta and
Parnassus too narrow for their needs. This Dorian host,
helped by the Aetolians and Locrians, built a fleet at a port
thereafter known as Naupactus (' Place of Shipbuilding '),
and overran most of the Peloponnese, which was divided among
the Heracleidae and their Dorian allies. The most powerful
of the Peloponnesian monarchs was the Pelopid-Achaean
Tisamenus, son of Orestes (and, therefore, grandson of Aga-
memnon) . He was either slain or else compelled to retire with
^ Plato gives a very different story, namely, that the Achaeans who
returned from Troy were not received by the people at home, and, being
expelled, put themselves under the leadership of a chief named Dorieus
and changed their name to Dorians. They then allied themselves with the
Heracleidae and recaptured the Peloponnese. This is worth mentioning if
only to show the very great variations in such old myths.
75
ANCIENT GREECE
his Achaeans to the northern district of the Peloponnese,
which was, as already stated, inhabited by lonians. These
lonians were driven out by the Achaeans, and took refuge in
Attica.
Now the king of Athens about this time was Codrus, of the
race of Nestor, whose descendants had been driven out of
Pylos by the Dorians. When the Dorians also attacked Attica
Codrus devoted himself to death, and thus (in accordance with
an oracle) saved his country. His sons quarrelled, and when
the oracle gave its verdict for one of them the other went off
with a ' mixed multitude ' consisting to a great extent of the
Ionian refugees, and, making his way from island to island
across the Aegaean, founded colonies on the coast of Asia
Minor, which ultimately developed into Ionia with its twelve
great cities.
The story of the ' Aeolic migration ' is thus narrated by
old writers.
On the 'Return of the Heracleidae ' — i.e. invasion of the
Peloponnese by the Dorians — those of the Achaeans who did
not remain with Tisamenus in Achaea crossed the Isthmus
and made their way to Boeotia and thence through Thessaly and
Thrace to the Hellespont ; or else they reached the port of Aulis,
the very place where Agamemnon had been delayed by winds
and had started with his assembled fleet for Troy, and thence,
accompanied by many Euboeans and others, they sailed across
the Aegaean by the chain of islands that stretches from Euboea
to the Troad . They made settlements in I^esbos and the ad j acent
mainland, capturing or founding twelve cities, of which Cyme,
named after a town in Euboea, was the first — the mother-
city of Smyrna, and mother, or perhaps sister, to the more
famous Cyme in Italy, the Cumae of the Romans.
Other forms of the legend, one of which is given by Pindar,
make this Aeolian migration take place some twenty years
before the 'Return of the Heracleidae' [i.e. in 1124), and
affirm that Orestes himself led the emigrants. According to
the Augustan writer Strabo, Orestes started with them, but
died in Arcadia — a version which agrees with the story of
76
THE DARK AGE
Herodotus that the bones of Orestes were discovered some
five and a half centuries later at Tegea, in Arcadia.
Now under these various myths about the Dorian invasion
and the Aeolic and Ionic migrations there is doubtless a basis
of historical facts, and probably these facts are somewhat as
follows.
Aeolic Migration
Possibly even before the siege of Troy there had been a
considerable stream of migration across the Northern Aegaean
by way of the islands that form a chain between the Pagasaean
Gulf in Thessaly and the Troad. Pagasae is celebrated in
mythology as the port where Jason built the Argo, and whence
the Argonauts set forth on their voyage to unknown eastern
lands, and the legend evidently gives poetic form to some
such early adventures. From Thessaly, which was in early
days the home of the Achaeans and the ' Aeolian Boeotians,'
it is quite possible that bands of sea-rovers, who either called
themselves or were called by their Mysian and Phrygian foes
Aeolians (possibly a corruption of the word Achaeans), made
their way across to Lesbos and the Troad, and that it was
the hostility between these Greek adventurers and the natives
(also of northern Aryan race) which ultimately brought about
the Trojan War and the expedition of Agamemnon and his
allies and the fall of the great Phrygian stronghold.
Even if we accept Homer's account, which gives no
hint of Aeolian or any other Greek settlements in Asia Minor,
it is not unlikely that the fall of Troy may have at once opened
up the south of the Troad and I^esbos and the adjacent mainland
to emigrants from Greece, Achaean and other, who prob-
ably assembled at Pagasae, or Aulis, or some such point of
departure and crossed the Aegaean by the islands. This
theory seems to fit in fairly well with the version of the myth
which makes Orestes head the first band of emigrants not so
very long after the Trojan War and some time before the
invasion of the Dorian Northmen. Doubtless the pressure
of this invasion caused a large increase of emigration to the
77
ANCIENT GREECE
Aeolian settlements, as well as to the country to the south of
Aeolis, which had been till then only sparsely occupied, if
occupied at all, by another section of the Greek race — the
lonians, or lavones, as they called themselves.
Ionic Migration
According to the myths, as we have seen, the lonians
originally inhabited the north of the Peloponnese, and when
pressed by the refugee Achaeans withdrew to Attica, and thence,
under leaders of the Pylian house of Codrus, passed over to
Asia Minor. This would make the Ionic migration a direct
result of the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese ; and doubtless,
as already remarked, this invasion did cause a great exodus of
the conquered peoples, many of whom made their way to
the islands and to Crete, as well as to the mainland on the
further side of the Aegaean.
As Ionia plays such an important part in Greek history, it
is a question of deep interest who these lavones, or lonians,
were. They are only once mentioned by Homer, He
gives them the epithet ' chiton-trailing ' — a strange epithet
for warriors, and never used by any other Greek writer.
They take part in defending the ships against the attack
of Hector, and are apparently closely associated, if not
identified, with the Athenians. All tradition agrees with
Homer in such association or identification. If not actually
Athenians, these lavones, or lonians, were certainly non-
Achaean settlers in Argolis and Attica, and probably of the
same Aegaean or Pelasgic race as the Athenians themselves. For
it seems fairly certain that the Athenians, who always boasted
of their old Pelasgic origin, remained to a large extent as a
race unaffected both by Achaean and by Dorian influence.
They were, as Herodotus asserts, Hellenized Pelasgians and
Aegaeans rather than true Hellenes. In speech and religion
they were Hellenic, just as much as the Achaeans, but in their
deeper instincts there were elements which were derived from
the old pre-Hellenic race and which very possibly accounted
for many of their characteristics and proved the main cause
78
THE DARK AGE
of that rapid and wonderful aesthetic and intellectual develop-
ment which took place later among the Ionic section of the
Greek race.
In the case of the Asiatic lonians probably these aesthetic
instincts were less modified by vigorous Northern influences
than was the case with the Athenians, and doubtless also
in time the enervating climate (though highly praised by
Herodotus, whose native clime it was), as well as the enervating
influences of the wealthy Lydians and the semi-Oriental
Carians and other peoples of Asia Minor, contributed to
produce that Ionian luxury and voluptuousness which were
in such sharp contrast to the o-w^/oocrwr), the self-restraint,
of all that is greatest in Athenian art and character. For some
centuries, however, Ionia, like the Greek colonies in Sicily and
Italy, seems to have far outstripped the mother-country
not only in the size and magnificence of its cities — some of
which were probably never surpassed by Athens itself — but
also in most civihzed arts. For instance, as we have seen,
Ionia probably knew and practised the art of writing for some
time before it was much used in Greece.
The colonists were by no means only lonians. Herodotus
calls them a mixed multitude composed of many diverse tribes
from North and South Greece. Moreover, he states that they
brought no wives with them and intermarried largely with the
Carians. They founded, or captured and refounded, in course
of time the twelve important cities which later formed the
Ionic Amphictiony, Phocaea being the northernmost and the
southernmost Miletus (formerly a Carian city, according to
Homer), which, together with Myus and Priene, lay on the
magnificent Bay of lyatmus, now changed into a vast swampy
plain by the deposits of the river Maeander. These twelve
cities afterwards had a common place of assembly and of
worship, sacred to Poseidon, on the northern slope of Mount
Mycale. Here they met at the pan-Ionic festival, as the
pan-Hellenic world met at Olympia.
But this is anticipating. For the present it suffices to have
pointed out the probability of this Ionian migration having
79
ANCIENT GREECE
begun before the advent of the Dorians in the Peloponnese,
and to have shown the likeHhood that many of these ' Ionian '
emigrants were of non-Hellenic (that is, of Aegaean rather
than Achaean) race. The fact that in Ionia — indeed, on
all the coast of Western Asia Minor — very few traces of
' Mycenaean ' civilization have as yet been discovered need
not disturb us, for these lonians of, say, iioo were by no means
the Aegaeans of the ' Mycenaean ' age, and the fact that the
great Ionian cities were, with the exception of Miletus, con-
tinuously inhabited down to a late age makes it unlikely that
relics of early times have survived. Moreover, what few
relics have been discovered — especially by Mr. Hogarth in
his excavation of the earliest temple of Artemis at Ephesus —
seem at least to have a strong affinity to the relics of Aegaean
and Cretan civilization. Among these are many figurines of
Artemis as Earth-Mother and golden plaques and the double-
axe decoration.
Doric Invasion
Though the colonization of Aeolis and Ionia evidently began
before the great pressure of the Dorian invasion (c. iioo),
it was doubtless owing to that invasion that such multitudes
found their way across the Aegaean. We have already heard
the mythical account of these Dorians and of the ' Return of
the Heracleidae.' These myths probably arose from the fact
that the descendants of these Dorian conquerors tried to make
out some hereditary claim to the countries which their ancestors
had invaded ; but it is, of course, possible that invasion
may have been incited by exiles, a thing that has happened
many times in history. More probably, however, the Dorians
moved southward because they were hard pressed by other
northern tribes.
Northern Greece had been from early ages the scene of con-
stant invasions and of constant migrations. We have already
heard of a great nation of northern barbarians, the Illyrians,
who poured into Epirus and swept the Achaeans eastward
across the Pindus range into the country north of the Peneios.
80
THE DARK AGE
Hither from the north came the Petthaloi, or Thessaloi, and
drove the Achaeans southward to Phthia. For some time
these Thessahans held North Thessaly and reduced the original
natives to serfdom. Then they attacked the Boeotians, who
were, it is said, an Aeolian people at that time inhabiting
the fertile valley of the Peneios in Central Thessaly. The
Boeotians, forced southward, occupied the country known
henceforth as Boeotia ; and it is likely that this invasion
may have caused the Dorians to cross over into the Pelo-
ponnese. These Dorians were apparently just at that time
encamped in the basin between Mount Oeta and Mount
Parnassus (to the north-west of Delphi). The small area^of
this district of ' Doris ' seems to preclude the possibility
that a great host of warriors, such as the Dorians certainly
were, could have made it their settled home for any length
of time. Probably they had made their way down from
the far north, following the great central range of Pindus,
and had for the time occupied what was afterwards known
as Doris and regarded as the original home of the Dorian
race. During their sojourn here or on their moves southward
(which probably went on for years) they seem to have possessed
themselves of the Delphic shrine and oracle, for we find at
a later period ancient Dorian famiHes at Delphi possessing
prerogatives as Apollo's priests.
Doubtless these Dorians were of the same Aryan stock as
the Achaeans. They seem to have worshipped the same, or
similar, deities, and to have accepted the Olympian religion
as they found it in Greece, possibly adding a few features,
such as the cult of the Doric Apollo — possibly that god of the
sun who with his bright arrows slew the Python of Delphi
and banished the old snake-worship. But in many points
they were evidently very different. Instead of assimilating
the civilization of the conquered peoples they seem to have
swept it almost out of existence. But possibly the ' darkness ' of
this age is due mainly to our ignorance. Although no evidence
is forthcoming of anything in the way of art and refinement
in the countries overrun by these early Dorians during several
F 8i
ANCIENT GREECE
centuries, it is just possible that their advent did not cause such
devastation as has been supposed. Still, judging from the
Spartans, who were the only pure Dorians of later times, one
may reasonably believe that their early ancestors, fresh from
the north, were barbarians such as the Gauls or Huns, and it
seems a very natural conclusion that the Aegaean-Achaean
civilization was for a long time almost annihilated in
Greece, except in Attica, which preserved its independence
and helped also to foster civilization in the colonies of Asia
Minor.
The Dorians seem to have been armed with iron, the
commoner use of which metal may have given them a great
superiority in war. They bore round metal shields, and wore
a square woollen cloak, fastened over the shoulders with
brooches (safety-pins) .
We have seen that they built a number of ships at Naupactus.
In these ships many of them evidently crossed over to the
Peloponnese, landing at various points. They conquered all
the south-western parts, driving out the Achaean or Aegaean
lords of Amyclae, near which they founded Sparta — destined,
though without wall or citadel, to become the mistress not only
of lyaconia, but for a time of nearly the whole of Hellas.
But it seems probable that a considerable force of these
Dorians set forth at once in their new-built ships for more
distant conquests. They captured and occupied the islands
of Thera and Melos, and made a descent on Crete, where they
swept away the last remnants of Minoan civilization and
introduced Dorian customs and laws.^ The similarity of
the name of one of the three Dorian clans (Pamphyli) to
that of the people of Pamphylia has induced some writers
to assert that these adventurers even reached and gave their
name and language to that land.
^ The similarity of Spartan and Cretan laws and constitution is noticed
by old writers. Homer speaks of Dorians as one of many diverse races in
Crete — the only time he mentions the name — and possibly calls them ' three-
tribed.' If these are the Dorians of iioo or so the mention is an anachronism,
but it only proves that Homer did not write before that date. ' Pamphyli '
really means ' of mixed races.'
82
THE DARK AGE
In the Peloponnese the Dorians eventually extended their
conquests to Argolis, and it was doubtless their devastating
fire which, about 950, left its marks on the ruins of Mycenae
and Tiryns. Argos now was made the chief city of the Argive
plain, and the Dorian occupation lasted apparently for some
centuries ; but afterwards, although traces of Dorian govern-
ment remained, Argos became a great adversary of Sparta.
The lofty citadel of Corinth, the Acrocorinthus, was also
seized by a Dorian adventurer, Aletes ('Wanderer'), and
the city, under the sovereignty of the Dorian Argive kings,
became, doubtless by virtue of its two seas, a place of maritime
importance. Even Megara was seized and became a thoroughly
Dorian town ; and later (perhaps about 800) the island of
Aegina was also occupied, and for nearly four centuries proved
a Dorian thorn in the side of Athens, until the Athenians
were forced (as we were in the case of the Acadians of Nova
Scotia) to clear the country of its older population and settle
it anew with loyal colonists.
It was probably after thus extending and consolidating their
conquests in the Peloponnese that the Dorian chiefs led bands
of emigrants across the Aegaean, evidently by way of the
Doric islands of Thera and Melos, to Crete and thence to
Rhodes, where they founded, or annexed, the three cities of
lyindus, lalysus, and Cameirus.^ Then the island Cos was
occupied by them, and two cities, Cnidus and Halicarnassus,
were founded on the mainland. These six settlements formed
the Hexapolis of the new oversea Doris — nominally a Dorian
colony, but to a large extent really Carian ; for, especially
in Halicarnassus, which was by far the most important of
these cities, the native Carian element was preponderant,
and ' Carian dynasts ' (among whom we shall later find Queen
1 Mentioned in the 'Catalogue of the Ships' {Iliad, ii.). The Rhodians
also in this passage are described as divided into three (Dorian) clans. But
the ' Catalogue ' is admittedly full of late intercalations. Thera, Melos, and
Rhodes were colonized by Aegaeans long before the coming of the Dorians.
A ' Mycenaean ' cemetery at lalysus has given many evidences of this.
In Thera a volcanic disturbance buried a Mycenaean town, which has been
partially excavated, and in Melos a citadel has been discovered dating from
about 2000.
83
ANCIENT GREECE
Artemisia I and Mausolus) seem to have established their
rule from an early period.
Thus during this so-called Dark Age very great and im-
portant movements and changes evidently took place. The
Aegaean, from which (if Thucydides is right) in an earlier
age the Minoan fleets had swept the pirates and expelled the
Carians, became during this period a Grecian sea, fringed on
all sides, except the extreme north, with Grecian colonies —
which extended, as we shall see later, even to Cyprus. Nor
were the changes in social and political matters less important,
for even in the twilight of the archaic period, before we emerge
into the full light of history, we can discern the fact that
the old monarchical system has already begun to give way,
that to a considerable extent constituted law has taken the
place of absolute government and those unwritten traditional
ordinances {Ot-fxiareg) of which we hear in Homer, and that
the city, with its larger and more systematized community
and its function as political centre of a district, has succeeded
to migratory life and loosely grouped village communities clus-
tered (as in Mycenae) around the stronghold of some chieftain.
Moreover, the sites of towns were affected by the new state of
things, as Thucydides tells us in his celebrated opening chapters.
"When there were now greater facihties for navigation," he
says, "cities were built with walls on the sea-shore, and they
began to occupy isthmuses, with a view to commerce and
security, whereas the older cities, owing to the long continuance
of piracy, were built farther off the sea." Of the cities especially
affected by the disappearance of piracy and the more settled
state of things was Corinth, which took advantage of its
position on the Isthmus, and in early days became a great
emporium and the first naval power in Greece, so that we
may well credit the assertion of Thucydides that the first
triremes were built there ^ — war-galleys of 170 oars with
^ This was not until c. 700, when they were perhaps introduced by the
Phoenicians. The trireme does not seem to have superseded the old fifty-
oared biremes in other parts of Greece till shortly before the Persian wars
(c. 500). In later times warships had often five banks. Alexander and the
Ptolemies built vessels which, it is avSserted, had forty banks !
84
THE DARK AGE
three banks of oarsmen — and that the first Greek naval battle
was between the Corinthians and their own colonists, the
Corcyraeans.
Of other cities in Greece during this Dark Age we have a few
dim myths and a few reUcs, such as the contents of the so-called
Dipylon cemetery at Athens (see Section A) and various objects
found at Argos and Sparta. But when the veil rises and Greek
history begins we find some of these cities, or rather states
(for they had already begun to develop into organized com-
munities), furnished with constitutions and in possession of
much else that necessarily presumes a considerable period of
stable government and prosperity. It will therefore be well
to consider here some of the more important facts connected
with two cities which will later occupy much of our attention,
namely, Athens and Sparta, and see how far these facts, as
they meet our view at the dawn of history (say about 700),
may be traced to their sources in this Dark Age (say between
1000 and 700), although in doing this we shall be forestalling
to some extent. It is, of course, quite incredible that these
three or four centuries between the Dorian invasion and the
beginning of certified history should in Greece itself have been
a total blank, but almost the only proof that it was not so
resides in facts that really belong to the next age — facts which
it may not be too audacious to try to trace to their origin with
the help of more or less mythical accounts given by ancient
writers.
Athens
Of Athens and its ancient mythical history we have already
heard something, namely, how it was perhaps captured, but
not permanently held, by the Achaeans, how it repelled the
Dorians and retained its independence, and how the last of its
kings, Codrus, for his country's sake devoted himself to death
(c. 1044).
Now so great, it is said, was the admiration of the Athenians
for this heroic act of Codrus that they determined to allow
no one else the royal prerogatives, and elected Medon, the son
85
ANCIENT GREECE
of the king/ as their chief magistrate for life, giving him the
title archon {' ruler'). Such is the possibly mythical version
of the fact that early in the Dark Age the absolute monarch in
Athens was superseded by a constitutional and accountable
magistracy — perhaps elected by the nobles out of their own
body. This magistracy consisted probably from the first
of three archons, such as existed (though combined later with
' lawgivers *) down to the time of the Roman Emperors. They
were the chief civil magistrate (called later eponymos, because
he gave his name to the year), the chief military commander
(polemarch) , and the King Archon [hasileus) . The King Archon
may at first have belonged to the royal house, but he held the
merest shadow of kingly power, being allowed to retain little
but the pontifical functions of royalty (as the Rex Sacrificulus
at Rome after the expulsion of the kings and the election of
praetors and consuls). This seems to have been in many
of the states of Hellas the first stage in the evolution of the
later republics. On account of the great increase of ordinary
citizens, traders, agriculturists, and so on, the military element
gradually lost its exclusive political influence, and the king,
as head of the army, lost his political supremac5^ Some
powerful clique or family of nobles then assumed this supremacy,
electing perhaps one of their number as polemarch, or war-
leader, and others as permanent, or annual, civil magistrates.
This state of things — that of a close aristocracy or oligarchy
— we find in early days at Corinth, where the Bacchiad family
for a considerable time held the reins of government. And as
it happened at Corinth, so it also happened in many other cases
that some specially strong-minded and ambitious noble over-
threw the aristocracy (sometimes by coming forward as a
demagogue and obtaining the support of the people) and
constituted himself ' tyrant ' or despot. He differed from a
hereditary monarch by basing his claims on force rather than
1 His younger brother, Neleus, led the emigrants to Ionia (see p. 78). The
archonship was at first a life-office and perhaps limited to the Medontid
family. About 750 its term was reduced to ten years, in 683 it was made
an annual office, and finally the nine chief magistrates were all called
archons,
86
THE DARK AGE
on divine right, and generally surrounded himself with a strong
bodyguard, but not unfrequently he proved a beneficent
ruler, and one that forwarded the material prosperity of the
people far more than was often done by republican govern-
ments. The last stage of evolution was, as we shall see later,
the establishment of a constitutional democracy on the expul-
sion of the tyrannos.
It was either during the reigns of the early Athenian kings
(tradition attributes it to the reign of Theseus) or shortly
after the institution of the archonship that Athens became
the capital of the whole of Attica — an event which was of the
very greatest moment, giving her in time a position as political
centre of an united state which was possessed by no other city
in Greece. In spite of the poverty of its soil Attica had received
many foreign immigrants, such as the Achaean and the Ionian
refugees. We hear of twelve Attic ' kingships ' in the age of
Cecrops. These petty chief tains in course of time, either by com-
pulsion or willingly, became subject to the growing Athenian
power, which extended its dominion first over the plain of
the Cephisus and then over the country east of Mount
Hymettus and north of Pentelicus from Cape Sunion to
Marathon. To the west, over Eleusis and its plain, the new
Athenian state did not for the present extend its sovereignty,
but the whole of the Acte (or ' coastland ') — from which word
is probably derived the name ' Attica ' — formed now a single
community.^ This community was divided into four tribes,
which received old Ionian names, ^ the meanings of which are
obscure. Tradition attributes the formation and naming of
these four ' Ionian ' tribes of Attica to the mythical King
Ion, ancestor of all lonians. Some modem writers assert
that the names were derived from Miletus, where similar tribes
existed. But it seems more reasonable to suppose that they
were names in use among Ionian settlers in Attica, who
probably were divided into four tribes as the Dorians were
^ This (TvvoiKia, or Union of Attica, was commemorated even in the days
of Plutarch by a festival in which offerings were made to the goddess Eirene
(Peace).
3 Geleontes, Argades, Aegicores, and Hopletes.
87
ANCIENT GREECE
into three. Each tribe had its tribe-king, and contained
three phratrias (brotherhoods) and numerous clans and
famihes.^ The famihes of each clan recognized, and perhaps
worshipped, a common ancestor, or a special deity, and were
bound together by various social ties. They had a special
burial-place, and perhaps community in land property.
But besides this it seems probable that from the first these
four ' Ionian ' tribes were divided into the trittyes (thirds)
and naucraries (shipownings) of which we hear so much in
later days. These divisions were perhaps local (like the
original demes, or townships, into which Theseus is said to
have portioned out Attica), but they were evidently made for
purposes of military and naval finance, the naucraries each
probably supplying, as later in Solon's constitution, the equip-
ment of one ship.^
During this period of about three centuries {i.e. from the
abolition of monarchy until the first Olympiad), during which
Athens gradually became the political centre of Attica, the
Athenian state was doubtless, as we find it still in the seventh
century, an aristocracy with democratic tendencies. This
seems plain not only from the political constitution which we
have been considering, but also from what little we know of
the social order. The whole people was divided into three
classes, the Eupatridae ('Well-born'), the Georgi (' lyand-
workers '), and the Demiurgi (' Pubhc Workers '). The nobles
were large landowners. Many of them had removed into the
city from their country estates, which they worked by means
of labourers, who retained a sixth of the produce. The Demi-
urgi were craftsmen of all kinds, such as those who made
and painted those ' Dipylon ' vases which are the sole relics
of this age. Some of the workers probably had a limited
franchise, but there seems to have been a large number
^ In later writers the calculation was i tribe = 30 phratrias. = 90 clans =
2700 families, thus giving 10,800 families in all.
* Until lately this has been doubted, and the word naucraria has been
derived from other sources, because it was assumed that Athens hacl no
fleet before the time of Solon. We shall see that this a.ssumptiou was vfrong.
See Section A.
88
THE DARK AGE
even of the free population who had not the rights of
citizenship.
This is about all we know, or can venture to guess, about
Athens in the Dark Age, except what we may infer from what
is called ' Dipylon civiHzation,' which I shall consider later.
Sparta
I^et us now turn to Sparta, which offers a very interesting
contrast.
After the Dorians had established themselves in the western
and southern part of the Peloponnese some of them seem to
have put themselves at the head of bands of those fighting
men and adventurers who had doubtless accompanied them in
great numbers from the north and to have set forth in quest
of new conquests in lands over the sea. Other Dorian chiefs
in course of time, as we have seen, also doubtless at the head
of armies largely composed of non-Dorians, made themselves
masters of Mycenae, Argos, Corinth, and even Aegina. But
the main body of the true-born Dorians — a body of probably
only some six or eight thousand warriors — seem to have chosen
Sparta, or Lacedaemon, the ancient residence of the Achaean
princes (in Homer it is the residence of Menelaus), as their
permanent abode. It was evidently at this time a place
consisting of several (afterwards five) villages, which even in
a later age were not closely united in one community, and
remained unwalled and without a fortified acropoHs almost
down to the time of the Romans ; for the Dorians despised
fortifications ^ and rehed solely on their superiority in open
battle. They were a comparatively small number in the
midst of a hostile population, and it was evidently with no
small difficulty that they held their own, for even at the
beginning of the so-called historical age of Greece {c. 776)
they were in possession of little more than the valley of the
Eurotas, on which their city lay, and tradition asserts that it
1 Their want of practice in siege operations caused them often great trouble
in wars against the Messenians, and during the Persian and Peloponnesian
wars they had frequently to rely on the assistance of their allies in such
matters.
89
ANCIENT GREECE
was not for over 200 years — i.e. not until the reign of the
Spartan king Teleclus [c. 850) — that they succeeded in
dislodging a remnant of the Achaeans from the ancient town
of Amyclae, about half a dozen miles distant from Sparta.
The aborigines, Aegaeans, Achaeans, Cynurians, or whatever
else they may have been, were either reduced to serfdom
and called Helots (probably ' Captives '), or were allowed
to form free municipalities in the neighbourhood of Sparta ^
without being granted civic rights. These latter, treated,
perhaps, more leniently because they had offered less resistance,
were called Perioeci (' Dwellers round about '), and formed the
mercantile class, the Spartiatae, or true Dorian Spartans, not
deigning to engage in such occupations or to acquire wealth.
The Helots were not slaves. They were in some ways no
worse off than the mediaeval villein or Russian serf, and could
even acquire property, which was more than the Roman slave
was allowed, for even his peculium belonged by law to his
master. But the original Helots had been masters of the
country, and their descendants, conscious of this, and being
doubtless often equal to the Spartiates in civilized instincts,
bitterly resented their lot, and the constant danger of insur-
rection was one of the main reasons why Sparta lived under
martial law. A very striking specimen of the measures adopted
by the Spartans to meet this danger was the Crypteia, or
secret society of young Spartiates, who were empowered by law
to kill at once any Helot whom they might suspect as dangerous.
To cover such glaring injustice by a show of law it was the
custom for certain magistrates (the ephors) every year, when
assuming office, to declare war formally against the Helots !
The whole of the political power lay in the hands of the
Spartiatae, who formed a military caste of no great size.^
As might be expected, kingship was the inherent and permanent
^ Later in the whole of Laconia, where there were a hundred snch townships ;
but they formed no organic state hke the Attic towns— indeed, they were a
constant source of danger to Sparta.
* After Thermopylae (according to Herodotus) Xerxes was told by Dema-
ratus that Sparta contained about 8000 full-grown men. After I,euctra (371)
the Spartans with full citizenship numbered only about 1500.
90
THE DARK AGE
form of rule. The Spartan kings, who claimed an unbroken
lineage from Hercules (extending back a century beyond the
advent of the Dorians), retained the regal office and title, if
with diminished rights, for nearly a thousand years, while
almost every other city of Hellas passed through various
phases of government. Possibly the fact that two kings held
power at the same time, though it sounds a dangerous state
of things, may have limited the abuse of regal power and
helped to preserve kingship from its usual fate. This dual
kingship is said by old writers to have arisen from the diffi-
culty caused by the fact that the king of the Dorian invaders,
Aristodemus, left twins as heirs tohisthrone. Modern M'riters try
to explain it by a possible coalition of two tribes, each of which
insisted on retaining its king ; but the old explanation seems
quite as probable. However that may be, the state of things
was evidently not such as would seem likely to result in a very
satisfactory dispensation of justice, far less in any form of
settled government and constituted law. So it is not surprising
that Herodotus (i. 65) is of the opinion that in early times
the lyacedaemonians were " the very worst governed people in
Greece." But Sparta at some period during the Dark Age
received a very complete and rigid, if not a very highly organized,
constitution. It was not such a constitution as is gradually
evolved to meet the higher needs of a people. It has all the
marks of construction, and the main structure was doubtless
conceived and framed by some one lawgiver. This lawgiver,
according to old tradition, was lyycurgus. He was regent
for his young nephew, King lyabotas, or Charilaus, and either
during this regency or after a period of voluntary exile and of
travel in distant lands, being encouraged by the Delphic oracle
and having gained the support of the chief men of the city, he
procured the introduction of his new constitution. Then, after
having extracted a promise from the people to keep his laws
until liis return, he quitted Sparta for ever. Modern criticism
tells us that " Lycurgus was not a man ; he was only a god " ; ^
^ The phrase seems to be borrowed from Herodotus : " Whether Zalmoxie
was really a man, or nothing but a native god of the Getae, I now bid him
91
ANCIENT GREECE
that his name means ' protector against wolves,' and that
he may have been identical with the ancient Arcadian wolf-
repeUing deity who was called by the Greeks Zeus Lykaios.
All tliis is possible ; but it seems to some minds more natural
that one should begin by being a hero, or a great lawgiver,
and end in being a god. Anyhow, to save time and space
for more important matters, let us accept Lycurgus, whether
a man or only a god, as the great lawgiver who, when the
" very worst governed people in Greece " found things
becoming intolerable, was begged, or allowed, to draw up a
constitution of a very rigid and drastic nature— such a con-
stitution as should be fitting for a military camp where martial
law was to prevail and where the one end of all law and
all social order was to turn out the best soldiers and the best
soldiers' wives.
The following are, shortly stated, some of the chief features
of this constitution as it existed about 700 to 600. It is
impossible to say for certain which portions of the structure
are the most ancient, but there is no reason to doubt that the
greater part had existed, as Thucydides asserts, at least from
about 800, and that many of these ' Dorian ordinances,' as
Pindar calls them, were derived from very early times, if
not, as he believed, from the days of the mythical Dorian hero
Aegimius.
The functions of the two kings were military and religious.
They had supreme command and dictatorial power in war,
and were high-priests of the Spartan Zeus and Apollo. The
kingship was hereditary, but the son succeeded who was
eldest born after his father's accession. In later times (for
instance, during the Persian wars) only one king held military
command. The kings had a council, like the Hom.eric
Boule, called the Gerusia (Council of Elders). It consisted
only of nobles, but they were elected by the people. There
farewell " (iv. 96). Herodotus (i. 65) tells us that Lycurgus " introduced from
Crete the system of laws still observed by the Spartans." This is also asserted
by Aristotle. The resemblances in the Cretan and Spartan constitutions
seem to be limited to a few features such as the syssitia, and are probably due
to Doric influences in Crete.
92
THE DARK AGE
was also a public assembly, like the Homeric Agora, called
the Apella. To this every citizen of thirty years belonged.
In early days it was summoned by the kings, later by
the ephors. The vote of the public assembly was given by
acclamation.
Although Sparta never reached democracy pure and simple,
things had with them, as everywhere else, a tendency towards
democracy, of which the creation of the ephors (possibly not
till about 760) was a proof. The ephors (' overseers ' or
' guardians ') were representatives of the people, like the
tribunes in Roman history, elected after long contests between
the military caste and the working classes, which seem to have
included many who had been degraded from the ranks of the
Spartiatae as well as the lyaconian Perioeci. Every month
the ephors and the kings exchanged vows to abide by the laws
and to support one another's authority. There were five
ephors — one evidently for each of the five villages, or demes,
of which, as we have seen, Sparta was composed. They had
much of the judicial power in their hands, and could even
indict the kings. Two of them accompanied the army in
war.
Thus at Sparta we find a striking example of that mixed
constitution which, when a carefully balanced construction,
has proved elsewhere (as, for instance, in England) more
durable than any other form of government, possessing
something of the stability of the triangle of forces and of an
universe of three dimensions.
More characteristic even than this political machinery
was the social constitution of Sparta, which was regarded
with intense admiration (at a distance) by many other Greek
citizens, and which Plato, struck perhaps by its artistic
symmetry, like that of some great Doric temple, took as the
type after which he constructed the framework of his Ideal
State — although his ideal ruler and ideal citizen had nothing
in common with those of the Spartan lawgiver. ^
^ For a very full discussion of Lycurgus and his ' Laws and Discipline ' see
Grote, Part II, chap, vi
93
ANCIENT GREECE
Many of the details of this ' Spartan discipline ' and many-
stories connected therewith are well known. I shall therefore
merely touch on a few points.
One of the main points was that the Spartiat warrior-citizen
should be wholly free from the degrading necessity of working
to provide for himself and his family. He possessed landed
patrimony which could not be sold or broken up, and this land
was tilled by serfs, who had to supply the lord of the manor
with corn, wine, and fruit. The serfs (Helots) of the Spartan
noble were not his property. They belonged to the state,
which alone could emancipate them ; and this was sometimes
done as a reward for valour in war. Hence arose a class like
the Roman lihertini (freedmen).
Every new-born child was inspected by the tribal authorities,
and if deemed too feeble or unhealthy it was taken to Mount
Taygetus and left there to die. At seven years the boy was
taken from home and was kept in a great military school
until the age of twenty, when he entered the army and was
allowed to marry, but was still obliged to live apart from his
wife in barracks. At thirty he was considered a man and
received the rights of a citizen.
Every Spartan male citizen was obliged to take his meals
at a public ' mess ' [syssition) under the management of the
War Minister — such messes as More imagined in his Utopia,
except that in Utopia messing in the public halls was not
compulsory, and women were also admitted.
The education of the Spartan had an aim very different
from that of the Athenian — anyhow the Athenian of the
higher type in classical times, whose ideal was a truly cultured,
perfectly balanced, harmonious character, not the production
of a highly trained fighter nor professional or mercantile suc-
cess. Money-making and luxury were indeed, theoretically,
despised by the Spartiat, though he seems to have been more
open to a bribe than other Hellenes.^ But his contempt
^ To substantiate this I would refer the reader to Hdt. iii. 148, v. 51, vi. 72 ;
Thuc. i. 129 and 131, ii. 21, viii. 50. What use the gold would be to them in
Sparta, where only iron money was allowed until the time of Alexander the
Great, it is difficult to see.
94
THE DARK AGE
for such things did not spring from any hunger for angels*
food, as Dante calls it. The Spartan youth — as also the
Spartan girl — doubtless received a splendid physical train-
ing, and did full credit to the scientific breeding of muscular
and athletic citizens, but they were, even in the age of Demos-
thenes, ^ for the most part not taught to read, and, according
to Plato, many of the Spartans " could not do the simplest
sum in arithmetic, nor did they care a jot for science, or logic,
or any such things." Thus the governing classes in Sparta
were probably more illiterate than the mercantile Perioeci,
or even the Helots, and had to depend (as was also often the
case among the Romans) on slaves or hired amanuenses.
The love of the Spartans for brevity in speech — which
accounts for the meaning of the word ' laconic ' — is well illus-
trated by the following story, told by Herodotus. Some Samians
came to Sparta to ask for aid against the tyrant Polycrates,
and " had audience of the magistrates, before whom they made
a long speech, as was natural with persons greatly in need of
help. Now after this speech was ended the Spartans replied
that they had forgotten the first half of it and could make
nothing of the remainder. So the Samians had another
audience, whereat they simply said, showing a bag that they
had brought with them, The hag needs flour. The Spartans
answered that they did not need to have said The hag." In
the speeches attributed by Thucydides to I^acedaemonians
during the Peloponnesian War they seem to be quite as fond
of long-winded argument as other speakers. But the pitilessly
curt question by which, Thucydides says, they decided the
fate of the Plataeans certainly savoured of Spartan brevity.
A curious Spartan custom (scarcely traceable to their
northern origin) was that of not only allowing, even in regard
to female dress, a free exposure of the person, but also of
insisting on nudity, in the case of both sexes, on certain public
occasions, such as displays of gymnastic exercises. What
many might regard as a survival of barbarism was regarded
not only by the Spartans, but in course of time (as Thucydides
^ See Grote, ii. 307, and Plato's Hippias Major.
95
ANCIENT GREECE
seems to intimate) by all Hellenes, as a proof of higher civiliza-
tion — though only as far as male nudity was concerned. How
different the feeling in the rest of Greece was in regard to
female nudity can be seen from the fact that, though nude
male statues in early times are the rule, undraped female
statues are extremely rare until about 400.
The Dorian race, like some other northern races, seems to
have possessed very little art instinct ; but, as has happened
in other cases, the intermingling of the vigorous northern
with the softer and more imaginative southern nature produced
a very fine type of artistic character. Many of the Dorian
or half-Dorian cities of Hellas, such as Argos, Sicyon, Syracuse,
Halicarnassus, and Acragas, were distinguished for art — for
their sculpture, their coins, their magnificent temples — while
Sparta, or the dominant class in Sparta, remained to a wonder-
ful degree purely Dorian, and inartistic. Some writers have
suggested that before the introduction of their militar}^ dis-
cipline the tastes of the Spartans were somewhat more cultured
than they were in historical times. However that may be, a
certain amount of art feeling seems to have survived even that
discipline, for although, as Professor Gardner says, " the
traditional notion of the Spartan character is hardly such as
to lead us to expect that Sparta was in early times a centre of
artistic work and influence," nevertheless we do find that
the art of sculpture, probably introduced from Crete, flourished
in Sparta in the seventh century, and we hear of Sparta being
visited by the great lycsbian musician, Terpander (676), and
by the I^ydian lyric poet, Alcman,^ who is said to have made
it his home (c. 650).
Terpander is said to have instituted at Sparta a musical
contest at the great festival in honour of the Carneian Apollo.
He was the musician who added three strings to the tetrachord
of the lyre. It may seem strange that the conservative
Spartans gave him such a friendly reception, for on a later
occasion, when Timotheus of Miletus, who had added four
^ Fragments of songs by Alcman composed for choirs of Spartan girls are
still extant.
96
THE DARK A,GE
strings to the heptachord, visited Sparta, the ephors, says
Cicero, ordered his extra strings to be broken before he was
allowed to compete.
By the way, Terpander seems to have got credit for what
he was not the first to invent, seeing that on a Cretan sarco-
phagus (Fig. 25) of a date at least eight centuries before
Terpander a musician is depicted with a lyre of seven strings.
We know, of course, very little about Greek music of this
age, but it seems that the native Dorian music not only
differed from the I^ydian, Aeohan, Phrygian, and lastian
(Ionian) in * mode ' — whether that means scale or pitch —
but also in rhythm and time, being used generally as
accompaniment to processionals and martial strains rather
than to bardic and lyric poetry. The Homeric KiOapi^ (cithara) ,
or phorminx, was perhaps originally the harp or lute of the
northern races, and probably this instrument rather than the
lyra or chelys (tortoise-shell) — i.e. the Aegaean and Egyptian
lyre — was popular at Sparta, and what dehghted the soul of
the Spartiat was doubtless the old martial ballad or war-song,
such as we shall hear of when we come to Tyrtaeus.
We have wandered somewhat from the Dark Age while
following up things which had their first origins in that erai
Before passing on to what until lately, before the discovery
of the Minoan and Mycenaean civihzations, was regarded as
the beginning of Greek history, I shall in the following sections
briefly discuss two subjects, namely, ' Dipylon ' antiquities
and Hesiod's poems, the consideration of which may throw faint
shafts of light into the obscurity of the two centuries preceding
the first Olympiad. In the third section I shall offer a few
remarks about the contemporary history of certain nations
closely connected with the history of Greece. Of these the
somewhat mysterious Phoenician people specially interests us,
for in early times it came into closer contact with the Hellenic
world than did the great Oriental empires or Egypt, and the
desperate conflict of this Semitic race with the Sicilian Greeks
and later with the Romans lends additional interest to the
subject.
G 97
ANCIENT GREECE
SECTION A : ' DIPYLON ' ANTIQUITIES
The expression ' Dipylon antiquities ' is used rather loosely
to cover all Greek relics of the age to which belong many of the
objects found in an ancient cemetery excavated near the ruins
of the Dipylon — that is, the ' Double Gate ' of Athens, a great
city gate with an inner and an outer portal, probably built
in Periclean times not far from the more ancient and smaller
Sacred Gate, through which the Sacred Way led to Eleusis,
passing through the Outer Cerameicus (Potters' Quarter).
The Cerameicus was used as the cemetery of Athens, and many
beautiful monuments {stelae) of a later age are still to be seen
there, in the ' Street of Tombs.' The ancient cemetery near
the Dipylon was to a great extent covered by later tombs,
under and amidst which have been excavated some hundreds of
ancient graves. Some of these are said to date from the ninth
century or even earlier. In many of the graves of the ' Dipylon
age ' (say looo to 800 B.C.) the dead had been buried unburnt ;
in some their ashes were found. The most valuable relics were
very numerous fragments of pottery, as well as entire vases,
some of which, of large size, were standing upright on the top
of shaft-graves or tile-built tombs. The oldest of this pottery,
which is of red clay painted with lustrous black on a yellowish
surface, is geometric in its style, showing that there had been
a curious relapse from the much earlier Mycenaean style, in
which we have already found sea animals and even human
beings depicted. These early Dipylon vases (see Fig. 35) show
a fine decorative sense, but at first offer nothing but geometric
patterns. Then they begin to introduce animals, and more
generally birds, of an amusingly primitive type. Then they
give other animals, such as horses ; then human figures ; and
finally we have large compositions (found, however, only on
Athenian Dipylon vases) showing an ambitious style of painting
not far removed from that of the first black-figured Attic vases,
such as the Frangois Vase (Fig. 39) . These pictures give by far
the most clear and intelligible information that we possess con-
cerning the ' Dipylon age.' Almost all else besides pottery
98
34- EiPvi^oN Vase
See List of Illustrations
98
THE DARK AGE
seems to have entirely disappeared, except some old founda-
tions and a vast quantity of bronze and terra-cotta objects,
most of which tell us next to nothing.
First to be noticed are the ships. They are biremes, with
forty or fifty oarsmen in two ranks, and this proves that the
Athenians already possessed the beginnings of a fleet and a
considerable skill in shipbuilding and naval matters. The
ships seem even already to be furnished with rams at the bows.
But it also seems to show that these pictures date before the
introduction of the trireme, which was known to the Corinthians
by about 700, as we have already seen ; indeed, the picture of
an Athenian bireme given in Fig. 34 may be of a date two
centuries before 700, and is an exceedingly interesting and
valuable confirmation of what we have heard on the subject
of the Athenian naucrariae (p. 88).
Then we have numerous pictures of horses and of chariots :
first two-horsed chariots, with very primitive horses and with
men whose wasp-waists remind one of Minoan and Mycenaean
art ; and in some cases much of the human figure is concealed
by the great Mycenaean or Minoan figure-of-eight shield,
while in others the smaller round shield is held by the handle.
Then we find — what are not found in Homer — four-horsed
chariots, and also even horsemen. Finally we have scenes
— sea-fights, processions, funeral ceremonies, &c. Some of
the funeral scenes intimate an ostentation and magnificence
quite astonishing in this Dark Age — although not unknown to
us in Homer — the bier being attended by a great number of
chariots or ships.
The general appearance of the Athenians (and doubtless of
other Greek peoples) in the ' Dipylon ' age is depicted graphi-
cally, though perhaps not flatteringly, on these vases. Both
men and women have impossibly narrow waists, and the legs,
when in view, are often enormously thick. Much of this is, of
course, due to want of skill and exaggeration, but the main
features of the dress are doubtless true. The women are
dressed much in the same fashion as the Minoan and Mycenaean
women, in tight bodices and bell-shaped skirts — such as Hesiod
99
ANCIENT GREECE
also describes (p. 107). It is evident that the Achaean peplos of
Homer's women, if it ever became fashionable at Athens in
early days, had in the period 1000-800 given way again
to the earlier Mycenaean style of dress, while the square
Doric dress, with a flap over the shoulder needing a long pin
or fibula (brooch, safety-pin) , such as one sees on the Fran9ois
Vase (Fig. 39), had not yet been adopted at Athens, although
the immense number of very long metal pins and of large
fibulae found with later ' Dipylon ' vases in Boeotia and at
Argos (not to mention Sparta) shows that fashion changed
rapidly, as it is wont to do.^
Everything seems to point to a civilization at Athens in the
Dark Age something like the old Mycenaean, and not much
changed either by the Achaean (Homeric) or the later Doric
influence — at all events, in its earlier stages.
Pottery of the same kind as the Athenian, but not with large
painted scenes, has been excavated from the temple of Apollo
on Mount Ptoos, in Boeotia, and also at Tanagra and Thebes —
mostly geometric in style, but some of it evidently dating from
late Mycenaean times, notably an earthenware box discovered
at Thebes, on which we find the Earth-Mother with her animals
In the great Doric temple of Aphaia and the shrine of
Aphrodite in Aegina much pottery has been excavated, some
of it Mycenaean and some imported or native ' Dipylon '
ware and early Corinthian This pottery supplements the
evidence from Athens.
In the temple of Hera at Argos, excavated by the American
School at Athens, have been found, besides many bronzes and
long dress-pins (used in the Doric female dress), a number of
fragments of vases with pictures of horses and chariots like
those discovered at Athens, and of the same ' Dipylon ' period.
On the island Thera ' Dipylon ' ware and other rehcs of this
age have been found, and what are possibly some of the first
known Greek inscriptions cut on rock.
At Delphi and at Olympia thousands of bronzes dating from
this age have been excavated, all testifying to no mean civiliza-
1 For more on the subject of dres« see Note B.
100
o
o
o
o
I
o
o
CO
«
iz;
O
in
i I
<
o
«
w
<!
a
;^"
o
O
THE DARK AGE
tion and to an enormous cult of certain deities. At Tiryns,
besides much else, we have various representations of the
female dress of the Dark Age, and again we find a tight-fitting
frock, evidently more like the Mycenaean bodice and skirt than
the square Doric chiton fastened at the shoulder with pins.
Contemporary with this ' Dipylon ' ware, found in all these
places and testifying to a civilization very different from the
Spartan, we have the wonderfully beautiful proto-Corinthian
ware, which shows a very advanced state of artistic skill,
but gives us no such pictures of contemporary life as the
Athenian vases. This is unfortunate, for Corinth in this age
was a great trade emporium and a naval power, and it
would be most interesting to discover some evidences of this
Corinthian civilization.
Now, if we turn to Sparta we find something quite different.
Excavations made by the British School of Athens have brought
to light what seems to be the base of the great altar of Artemis
Orthia. This goddess and her altar are mentioned by Xenophon
and by Plutarch.^ Spartan youths were flogged at the altar
in order to test their endurance, and sometimes died under
the ordeal. In or near this old altar and the neighbouring
temple of Artemis Orthia (which existed from early days
down to about 600) a vast number of lead and terra-cotta
votive figures of the goddess, as well as bronzes and fragments
of pottery, were found. The early pottery is geometric and
something like the 'Dipylon,' but the other relics seem to
point to quite a different (Doric) civilization. There are many
grotesque winged figures and evident Earth-Mothers, and also
many nude female figures, which are attributed to Oriental
influence (as being un-Greek), but which surely seem to point
towards the curious Spartan ideas on this subject already
mentioned.
^ In Hdt. iv, 87 we find an Artemis Orthosia at Byzantium, and we hear
of her also in Lemnos. Also the form Orthasia has been discovered at
Sparta. The word Orthia means ' straight ' or ' loud-voiced ' in Greek. It
may refer to the yells of the priests trying to drown the cries of human victims
— for this ceremony of bloody flogging may have been substitutory. But
perhaps it is some northern word in disguise.
lOI
ANCIENT GREECE
SECTION B: HESIOD
The personality of Hesiod has not been questioned Hke that
of Homer. It is perhaps too frequently and strongly affirmed
by Hesiod himself, who names himself and gives us a good
deal about his father and his brother Perses, and a great
deal about his own philosophy of life, whereas nowhere in the
Iliad or the Odyssey is there any personal note, such as we
have in Milton's great epic, nor any suggestion of the poet's
existence, except in the opening addresses to the Muse — unless,
indeed, we are to recognize Homer in his blind bard, Demodocus,
as we recognize Shakespeare in Prospero.
Hesiod's date, however, and Hesiod's poems afford rich
material for the sceptic.
Herodotus, as we have already seen, places both Hesiod and
Homer at about 850 or 900, and he mentions Hesiod before
Homer, as do several other writers. But internal evidence seems
to show that the Homeric poems are older than the Erga and the
Theogonia, and such modern criticism as delights in " bringing
low the strong and diminishing the illustrious," as Hesiod
expresses it, has brought low and diminished his date little
by little until we find him flourishing about 700, seventy years
and more after the first Olympiad.
To discuss the question in detail is here impossible. As in
the case of Homer, I can only state my belief. Much evidence
seems to me to point to about 850 as the date of Hesiod's
poems, and this belief is confirmed by something besides,
and perhaps better than, philological and archaeological
arguments.
About two centuries after Hesiod's age we shall meet with
what is sometimes called the first exact date in Greek history.
It is the date April 6, 648, on which day, astronomers tell us,
a total solar eclipse took place. Now Hesiod tells us something
about the star Arcturus which, although it certainly does not
allow us to make such an exact deduction, does supply us
with very interesting information. He says that Arcturus
had its sunset-rising sixty days after the winter solstice,
102
THE DARK AGE
i.e. about February 19. But Arcturus now rises at sunset in
Greece about March 30, and one can calculate from this
difference (caused by the precession of equinoxes) that Hesiod
probably lived about 2780 years ago. This gives his date
at about 870. He had, of course, no means of observing
very accurately such risings and settings of the stars, and
he may have got his information from some older observer,
so that the evidence cannot be regarded as quite exact, but
within fifty years or so it seems to be trustworthy.
Hesiod tells us that his father came from Cyme in Aeolis,
whither perhaps the family had migrated from Aeolian Boeotia
(Thessaly), and had settled at Ascra, on the northern slopes of
Mount Helicon — a place "bad in winter, wretched in summer,
and never pleasant." Possibly Hesiod was born at Cyme,
and he may have had memories of the softer climate of Asia
Minor, as also of the Aeolic dialect, which he sometimes uses ;
but he seems to have passed his early years at Ascra,
shepherding his father's flocks or working on the farm, and
doubtless often wandering alone on Mount Helicon and
neglecting his work ; and against the theory of his Asiatic
birth stands the fact that, as he tells us, he was only once on
the sea, namely, when he crossed the Euripus Strait, from
Aulis to Euboea, in order to take part in a poetical contest —
at which he won a tripod. Legend, as we have already seen,
asserts that he won that tripod in a contest against Homer
himself. On the death of his father his brother Perses
succeeded in ousting him from his share of the farm by bribing
the judges — " gift-devouring kings," as he calls them.
The poems attributed to Hesiod, and cited as his by Pindar,
Aristophanes, Plato, and other ancient writers, are the Works
and Days {Erga kai Hemerai, i.e. ' Farming Operations and
Lucky and Unlucky Days ') and the Theogonia (' The Genea-
logy of the Gods '). Another poem. The Shield of Heracles,
is generally printed with his works, but is evidently of later date.
The two former poems contain, no doubt, many interpolations
made by rhapsodes and later ' Hesiodic poets,' but there is
much that is undoubtedly authentic and valuable to the
103
ANCIENT GREECE
historian. Moreover, what is of more importance, across the
homespun warp of rules and maxims there runs many a bright
thread of Horatian wit and wisdom and of deep and true
feeling, and at times there comes a golden flash of true poetry,
as in the description of the Five Ages in the Erga and the
celebrated meeting of Hesiod with the Muses on Mount Helicon
which forms the opening of the Theogonia.
As a creative poet and a master of language Homer is incom-
parably the greater, but Hesiod touches at times chords of
far deeper import, giving voice to his own human nature and
that of the common people.
The Erga (' Works and Days ') is addressed to his brother,
most foolish Perses," to whom he gives many a sharp reproof
and much sage advice, in order to save him from being ruined
by his thriftless and dishonest ways and his love of lounging
and gossip. The poem offers us a very graphic picture of
Boeotian country life in the ' Dipylon ' age. Hesiod's love of
the country and of animals and of the stars, his interest in
farming and in ships and boats (in spite of his dislike of the
" churlish sea "), his reverence for Zeus and his laws, his belief
in prayer and in good guardian spirits (1. 122), his conviction
that work is the happiest lot for a mortal, " whatever he may
be in fortune " ; that often " the half is more than the whole " ;
that wealth should not be " clutched at " nor won by guile of
tongue, but accepted as the gift of heaven ; that home-life is far
better than gadding about and gossiping — all this testifies to a
state of mind by no means entirely miserable and discontented
among the country folk of Boeotia, The very epithets and
names that he gives to animals show his delight in them and
his keen observation. The ox is described as if he were, like
the Irishman's pig, a member of the family ; the snail is the
' house-carrier,' the ant is ' the knowing one,' the cuttle-fish
is ' the boneless one,' wild beasts are ' forest-sleepers,' the
swallow is ' early- wailing,' the spider is ' high-hovering.'
Bees, drones, hawks, ravens, nightingales, dogs, mules, are all
mentioned with knowledge and sympathy. The horse (if we
exclude Pegasus) is referred to once only, and that in a line of
104
36. Foundations of Apor,i,o's Tempi<e, West Delphi
104
THE DARK AGE
doubtful authenticity. As regards Hesiod's keen observation
of nature, what could be more Wordsworthian than his likening
of a certain kind of tree-leaf as it unfolds in spring to the
" foot of an alighting raven " ?
But there is a dark side to his picture. He inveighs with
great bitterness against the avarice and injustice of this age
of iron in which fate has set him — this age in which " money is
the life of wretched mortals," and which will go from bad to
worse until, " veihng their fair faces in white mantles. Honour
and Righteous Indignation shall leave mankind and flee away
from the broad-wayed earth to Olympus, to the race of the
immortal gods." He denounces people for their jealousies and
strife and scandal-mongering and eternal lawsuits. " Potter
quarrels with potter and carpenter with carpenter ; beggar envies
beggar and minstrel minstrel . ' ' And his bitterness is especially
intense against the heartlessness and greed and injustice
that he sees in those around him — intensest, perhaps, against
his own brother and the unrighteous judges who have deprived
him of his heritage. He calls upon Zeus to smite with his
thunderbolt, and to send again to earth his daughter. Justice,^
who has been dragged with insults through the streets by
mortals and expelled from her own tribunals — that goddess
who alone can bring back peace and golden prosperity to a
land ruined by tyranny and the idleness of wealth.
We have thus a picture of aristocratic oppression such as
we found also intimated at Athens, and of an unhappy state
of things among the working classes. lyaws and law-courts
and law-court holidays are mentioned, but it is evident that
the power of " deciding questions of ancient right [Oejunarail
by straight judgments," of which Hesiod speaks, too often
lay in the hands of " gift-devouring kings." Hesiod's cry for
justice and for equality before the law is the earliest in European
literature. So, too, he is the first to assert the nobihty of
work rather than that of rank and wealth, and to claim for
^ The word Dike (Justice), or some word derived from it, occurs fourteen
times in thirty lines. Homer's description of the blessings brought by a
good king offers a striking contrast {Od. xix. 109).
105
ANCIENT GREECE
poetry a function higher than that of recounting pretty fictions
in the halls of the nobihty.^
Hesiod touches at times on questions of the deepest import.
His maxims are, however, not always such as we approve.
Thus he tells us that " easy and smooth is the way to evil
and toilsome the way to virtue, steep and rough at first ; but
when one reaches the height then it becomes easier, though
ever difficult " — which reads like a combined quotation from
the Bible and from Dante. But he also tells us to " love those
who love us," to " give to him that giveth, but not to him that
giveth not," and to ask a next-door neighbour to dinner because
he may prove useful in some future village squabble. Again,
" Give good measure," he says, " yes, an over-measure if you
can, so that you may find a sure supply when you need it."
Another of his maxims shows a dry humour and a worldly
wisdom, doubtless learnt by bitter experience. " Even in the
case of a brother," he says, " insist on having a witness — but
do it with a laugh."
In the Erga there are evident signs of that superstitious
dread of the supernatural which we noticed in the older
Greek religion, but which is scarcely perceptible in Homer.
Hesiod speaks with gloomy apprehension of all the curses, the
swarming diseases and things of dread, that have been brought
on the earth by the theft of Prometheus and the creation of
the first woman. Pandora. " The land," he exclaims, " is full
of evil things and full the sea." And he gives numerous rules
for the avoidance of evil results : " Not at a feast of the gods
to cut the dry from the quick on the five-branched thing
[the hand] " ; " not, when men are drinking, to lay the wine-
ladle over the wine-bowl — for 'tis a most fatal thing to do."
1 '' Field-abiding shepherds, shameless ones, mere belly-gods," exclaim the
Muses who bring to Hesiod the staff of laurel, " we know to tell of many
things resembling what is real, but we know also to sing, whene'er we wish,
of what is true. ' ' Doubtless he refers here once more to lounging and scandal-
mongering, such as was connected with recitations of old ballads. It
by no means follows that he considered ' didactic ' poetry higher than such
poetry as that of Homer. He was too good a poet for that ; but he believed,
as Aristophanes did, that the poet was the ' teacher of men ' in the highest
sense.
io6
37- Archaic Statue
Excavated on the Acropolis
See List of Illustrations
io6
THE DARK AGE
Then he gives a long list of lucky and unlucky days, reminding
one forcibly of Old Moore's Almanack,
Lastly, dress is sometimes mentioned. In his description
of the effects of cold weather (which he evidently hated)
Hesiod advises one to get as a " protection for one's flesh " a
thick-woven soft chlaina (mantle) and a chiton (tunic) reaching
down to the feet, and ox-hide sandals lined with felt. This
male attire is thoroughly Homeric ; but the dress of the
fashionable lady among these Boeotian country folk seems to
have been rather of the Mycenaean style, such as we found
in contemporary Dipylon vase-paintings. Doubtless the lady
in question wore a dress of the latest Athenian fashion, with
tight bodice and flounced skirt and well-padded protrusions,
Hesiod is giving advice to a young farmer, such as his brother :
" Don't let yourself be taken in," he says, " by any fashionably
dressed woman who comes trying with wheedling flatteries to
making herself mistress of your farm " — and the real meaning
of the epithet he applies to her is " furnished with a big bustle
behind."
The Theogonia is more Homeric in its language than the
Erga, and of a quite different tone. It is chiefly taken
up with a long account of the genesis of the Universe from
Chaos and with a genealogy of the gods. The presence of
Love as the formative and creative principle in this Hesiodic
Genesis is very remarkable. It forestalls some of the wisest
guesses of later Greek sages. The poem does not throw so
much light as the Erga on life in the Dark Age, but it shows
that a very complex and complete mythology had already
grown up around the hierarchy formed by the superimposition
of the northern on the old Aegaean or Pelasgian deities. The
opening lines of the Theogonia, describing the visit of the
Muses to Hesiod on Mount Helicon, are of very high merit as
poetry, and, together with not a few other passages in his
poems, entirely justify the honour conferred by these daughters
of Memory on one whom a modern writer has called a ' gifted
rustic'
107
ANCIENT GREECE
SECTION C : THE PHOENICIANS AND SOME OTHER
NATIONS DURING THE DARK AGE
Since the discovery of the Minoan and Mycenaean civiliza-
tions the Phoenicians have lost the credit of having introduced
art into Crete and Greece. But they had most of the Aegaean
and Mediterranean sea-trade in their hands for some centuries
— probably from the decline of the Minoan naval supremacy
until the rise of Corinthian and Athenian sea-power (about
1400 to 750). Indeed, in still earher times they seem to have
been a nation of merchant princes, such as Isaiah describes
them (xxiii.). They probably introduced the Egyptian
decimal coinage into Babylon as well as the ' ell.' They are
said to have brought the vine and the olive to Crete. In old
Egyptian monuments the tribute of the Phoenicians includes
the products of many distant lands. In the time of Moses
(c. 1350) they possessed the colony of Tartessus, or Tarshish,
in Spain, and had perhaps already reached Britain and the
Baltic, as well as the west coast of Africa (where later they had
three hundred factories) and the Euxine. Gades (Cadiz) was
founded probably about the time of the Trojan War, and Utica
about 1 100. In the time of Solomon (960) they had fleets also
on the Red Sea, which brought gold from India or South Africa.
Indeed, perhaps these were the oldest fleets possessed by the
Phoenicians, for the men of Tyre and Sidon are said to have
come originally from the Red Sea, or Persian Gulf — perhaps
from the ' land of Punt,' as Abyssinia or Somaliland is called in
an Egyptian inscription of the Vth Dynasty (c. 3000) . Possibly,
too, the Greek name Phoenix, which was believed to mean
' the red man,' or ' the man of the red land ' (land of the sun,
or sun-god ?), may have originally meant ' the man of Punt '
(c/. Latin Punicus, Poenus).
When Herodotus visited new Tyre (c. 450) he was told by
the priests of Melcarth, the Phoenician Heracles, that ancient
Tyre was founded about 2750. If Tyre was the ' daughter of
Sidon,' as we are told in the Bible, Sidon must have existed
from at least 3000, and it was the chief city of Phoenicia
108
THE DARK AGE
until about 1120, when it was conquered by the Phihstines.
A century or so later, in the days of Solomon and King
Hiram, Tyre took the lead. Both Jezebel, Ahab's wife,
and Queen Dido were members of the same dynasty as
Hiram, At this era Assyria became very powerful under
Shalmanezer II, and Tyre was captured by the Assyrians.
Perhaps on account of this Assyrian oppression a large body
of Phoenicians, led, as tradition says, by the Princess Elissa
(Dido), made a new home (c. 825) on the coast of Africa, not
far from the older colony Utica. This new city was Carthage.
The fact that the Phoenicians had settlements in all quarters
of the Mediterranean even in the fourteenth century, and that
they doubtless took with them the worship of the bull-headed
Phoenician sun-god Baal, or Moloch, to whom human sacrifices
were made, has very naturally caused many to believe that
the Cretan bull-worship and the Minotaur and Talos legends
were originally derived from this source, and that the myths
of Theseus and Iphigeneia are reminiscences of the abohtion of
Phoenician human sacrifice by Greek influence. However that
may be, it is evident that the Phoenicians had little or nothing
to do with Aegaean and Cretan art or with ancient Minoan
writing. But they introduced, as we have seen, the alphabet
into Hellas, and they also {pace some modern writers) possessed
no mean craft as ' cunning workers,' as the Bible and also
Homer tell us. Thus a silver wine-bowl described by Homer
was " more beautiful than all others on earth, since it was
wrought by those cunning workers the Sidonians." Another
such crater was given to Menelaus by the king of the Sidonians,
and a beautiful peplos worked by Sidonian women is mentioned.
But it must be allowed that the Odyssey usually gives us a
picture of the Phoenician not as craftsman but as trader
and artful huckster of gauds and trinkets — such a despicable
creature as the Phaeacian Kuryalus describes when pouring
contempt on Odysseus :
Nay, O stranger, and truly I liken thee not to a mortal
Practised in any of all of the contests known to the nations ;
Rather to one that frequents with his well-benched vessel the harbours,
109
ANCIENT GREECE
Skipper, methinks, of a folk of the sea who traffic as chapmen,
Mindful of nought but the bales and careful of nought but the cargo.
Ay and the grab and the gain.
No large settlements were made by the Phoenicians on
Aegaean shores, except perhaps Cameirus, in Rhodes, but they
had numerous marts and purple-factories — one perhaps on
the Isthmus of Corinth and another near the Peiraeus. The
struggle between the Semitic and Japhetic races— a struggle
which, no less than the Persian wars, was to decide the destiny
of Europe — took place, not in the Aegaean, but in Sicily,
where by the eighth century the Phoenicians, Uticans, and
Carthaginians possessed many trade-stations, and whither
during the eighth century, as we shall see, a large stream of
Greek colonists began to find its way. This struggle (with
which the battles of Himera and Crimisus and the Punic wars
are connected) lasted for six centuries, till the total demolition
of Carthage by the Romans in 146.
Of Crete during the Dark Age very little is known. We have
seen that in the heroic age, if we may accept Homer's account,
it possessed, some two centuries after the sack of Cnossus,
ninety or a hundred towns and was inhabited by many different
races, among whom Dorians are mentioned. The great Dorian
invasion a century or so later evidently subjected the whole
island to that race, and for some centuries it was probably
under Dorian kings and had a constitution not unlike the
Spartan, except that there seem to have been no perioeci, but
only serfs and nobles. I^ater we find the kingly office abolished
and an aristocracy in power, and the executive in the hands of
ten magistrates called cosmoi.
Of Cyprus we had some notice during the age of Aegaean
civilization. Mycenaean kings are said to have ruled there in
the fifteenth century. Aegaean pottery of this era, together
with Egyptian scarabs and ornaments of the XVIIIth Dynasty
(Queen Ti and Amenhotep III), have been discovered in a
tomb at Enkomi, near Salamis, and clay tablets have been
found in Egypt inscribed with cuneiform missives to the
Pharaohs from these Mycenaean Cypriot kings. The island
no
THE DARK AGE
was in early ages sometimes subject to Egypt, and on
account of its valuable copper-mines was also evidently
occupied by Phoenicians, but the latest researches (by
Ohnefalsch Richter) seem to prove that Hellenic civilization
and the Olympian gods (Athene, Heracles, Aphrodite, and
others) preceded the Phoenician supremacy, and that the
Phoenician kings destroyed Greek temples and razed Greek
inscriptions.^ If this be so, the Paphian Aphrodite was not
derived from the Eastern Astarte, but Astarte was super-
imposed on the Cyprian-Greek divinity, who seems to have
been a kind of Earth-goddess, or a Spring-goddess (like Kore),
with such titles as ' The Idaean Mother ' and ' She who spreadeth
abroad the roses.' The Greeks who introduced these deities
were, of course, not the Mycenaeans, but Hellenes, and it seems
likely that the old tradition (see Hor. Carm. I, vii., and Virg.
Aen. i. 619) about Teucer, brother of Ajax, having been
expelled from Salamis on his return from Troy and having
founded a new Salamis in Cyprus has for its basis an historical
fact ; for about the time when the colonization of Ionia was
at its height {c. 1050) a considerable body of Greeks, probably
Achaeans with Arcadian and other followers who were pressed
by Dorian invaders, are said to have left Greece and to have
made their way to the old Aegaean colonies in Cyprus. The
chief Greek towns in Cyprus were Paphos, I^apathus, Marion,
Curion, Salamis, and later Soli ; but in some of these there was
also a large Phoenician element. During the next two centuries
and more Cyprus seems to have been ruled by the ' kings '
of the numerous cities, for about 720 the Assyrian monarch
Sargon (who carried Israel away into captivity) conquered the
island, and we find in the inscription on the stele which he
set up there (now in Berlin) seven Yatman (Cyprian) kings
mentioned, and in an inscription of Assarhaddon, the son
of Sennacherib (Fig. 38), ten Cypriot kings are described as
his subjects.
Of Egypt during this age the notices are scanty. In the
1 It seems strange that in these Greek (or Cypriot ?) inscriptions neither
Zeus nor Kore nor Dionysus is mentioned.
Ill
ANCIENT GREECE
period 1120-950 (from the time of Samson and the Phihstine
supremacy in Palestine until the days of Solomon) it was ruled
by the inglorious priestly Tanite Dynasty (the XXIst). Then
Sheshenk, or Shishak, of the XXIInd Dynasty, carried war into
Palestine and captured Jerusalem, as we learn from an inscrip-
tion at Karnak [cf. 2 Chron. xii.). After this Egypt was
evidently overrun by the Aethiopian hosts of whom we read in
2 Chron. xiv., and the XXVth Dynasty was one of Aethiopian
kings. Then, about 674, Egypt is conquered by the great
Assyrian monarch Assarhaddon. The liberation of Egypt
[c. 665) from the Assyrian yoke by Psamtik I with the aid
of Ionian ' men of bronze ' opened, as we shall see later, a new
epoch, and brought Egypt into closer relations with Greece.
The great empires of the East, Babylonia and Assyria, have
hitherto come into no direct contact with Greece, nor even
with the Greek colonies, except, perhaps, in the case of Sargon's
conquest of Cyprus, which has been mentioned. It is enough
to note here that Assyria during the Dark Age was in
constant war with Babylonia, and in the ninth century, under
its great kings Assurnasirpal and Shalmanezer II, conquered
Phoenicia and made head against the Syrian kings of
Damascus.
After the expulsion of the Assyrians from Egypt, and the
rise of the Median power under Cyaxares, these Oriental
peoples will occupy more of our attention ; for one of the
striking traits which especially distinguish the history of
Greece is the fact that we are so often brought into contact
with other great ancient civilizations, and it is of deep import
that, although subjected to such influences, Hellenic art and
literature and philosophy retained an almost perfectly in-
dependent character, and have remained till our own day not
only supreme in beauty of form, but also incomparable for
originality, if we accept that word in its true sense.
112
38. AssARiiADDON, WITH Captivk EcvrTiAX
AND AETHIOPIAN 112
CHAPTER III
FROM THE FIRST OLYMPIAD TO
PEISISTRATUS
(776 TO 560)
An Age of Coi,onization : The Euxine : Sicii:<y : South Itai,y :
The Homei<and : Argos : Sparta : Tyrants and Sages : Athens
SECTIONS : EGYPT AND CYRENE) : LYDIA, LIST OF EASTERN
KINGS : THE GAMES : THE POETS
AlyTHOUGH when we speak of Greek art and literature
and philosophy (the three priceless legacies that Greece
has left us) we instinctively think of Greece itself
and especially of Athens, which in the so-called classic era was
the ' eye of Hellas,' the fact is that Greece owes much
of its fame to its colonies.^ Of colonial origin were Homer,
Archilochus, Terpander, Arion, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus,
Simonides, Anacreon, the younger Simonides, Theocritus, and
other Greek poets. The historian Herodotus was born at
Halicarnassus. All the great early philosophers were lonians.
Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes were of Miletus,
Heracleitus of Ephesus, Pythagoras of Samos, Xenophanes
of Colophon. Of the seven sages four were colonials, and
among celebrated colonial artists may be mentioned Paeonius,
Pythagoras, Scopas, Polygnotus, Parrhasius, Apelles, Zeuxis.
The arts of working in marble and of bronze-casting came, it
is said, from Chios and Lesbos ; sculpture came from Crete.
The coins, too, of many of the cities of Greater Hellas, such as
the beautiful Syracusan coins, were finer than any produced
in the mother-country ; and, lastly, many of the magnificent
* See dates of the foundation of early Greek colonies, p. 479.
H 113
ANCIENT GREECE
temples in Ionia, Sicily, and Southern Italy, of which some are
still standing, were built long before the Parthenon.
It is, indeed, a striking view that the Hellenic world offers
about the end of the seventh century. Greece itself, with no
very large population and in no very highly advanced state of
civilization or art, is already the mother of cities, which
extend from Sicily and Italy, and even the south of Gaul, to
the further shores of the Euxine. The Aeolian and Ionian
and Cyprian Greek cities date, as we have seen, from much
earlier times. Doubtless emigration went on continuously
during the interval, but it is not till about the date of the
first Olympiad that we hear for certain of the first Hellenic
colonies in the West and on the Propontis and Euxine.
The question arises, what were the reasons of this very large
emigration from the old country ? Greece is not a fertile land.
" Want hath ever been a foster-sister to Hellas," said the
Spartan Demaratus to King Xerxes. But doubtless also a
land-grabbing aristocracy (who were glad to get rid of dis-
contents), as well as the wretched state of things that we have
seen described by Hesiod, aggravated much the condition
of the peasant and the artisan, so that without any great
surplus of population ^ there was a natural impulse among the
working classes to get away to freer lands ; and many of the
leisured classes would also be attracted by the love of adventure.
The vast numbers of emigrants may thus be partly explained,
and the huge population of some of these colonial cities was,
of course, partly due to a large native element.
Although in early days serious conflicts took place between
some of the colonies and their mother-cities, such as the naval
war (c. 664) between Corinth and Corcyra already mentioned,
the general result of the expansion of Greece was to strengthen
immensely Hellenic patriotism, if one may use these words
to express the sense of the oneness of the whole Hellenic race — •
or rather of the whole people of Greece, including all its diverse
^ Even two and a half centuries later (430) Athens had only 80,000 inhabi-
tants, half of whom were slaves. At Marathon (490) the Athenian army only
numbered about 9000.
114
39- The ' Francois Vase '
See List of Illustrations
Ii6
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
races, and all its progeny in other lands — in contradistinction to
the outer world of barbarians. The Greek colonies were, as
a rule, more Greek than Greece itself. They looked on the
mother-country with the deepest affection and reverence.
No colony was founded without consulting the great Greek
oracle at Delphi and procuring an oekist (founder appointed
by some Greek mother-city) ; and a flame from the sacred fire
that burnt in the town-hall (prytaneion) at home was carried
abroad in order to light the public hearth in the new city.
They took with them also the religion of their Grecian home.
They sent frequent deputations to the festivals of the metro-
polis, and received with reverence its envoys. The founder
who had been supplied by the city in Greece was often wor-
shipped after his death as a divinity ; and no new colony
was sent forth from a Greek colony without obtaining a
founder from the mother-city.
And for Greece itself the existence of her colonies — of this
great Hellenic community extending over so much of the
then known world — was of great moment. " The influence
of Greater Greece," says the late Professor Butcher, " is the
determining fact in the history of the Hellenic people." Not
only, as was the case in our Elizabethan age, did the opening
up of new worlds stir the imagination and enlarge the vision of
Greek poets and deepen the insight of Greek thinkers, but the
existence of Greater Hellas had much influence in developing,
for good or for evil, the imperial policy of Athens in the days of
her power, and in determining her fate.
The Euxine
Although they were, perhaps, not so ancient as some of the
colonies in the far West, Greek settlements on the Euxine and
the Propontis were founded in very early times. ^ Doubtless
there was trade between the Euxine shores and the Greek
cities of Asia Minor from early days of the first colonization of
Aeolis and Ionia. Indeed, as we have seen, the old fable of
the Argonauts points to the beginnings of intercourse between
^ The plates of coins should be referred to, and the explanations in Note C.
ANCIENT GREECE
Greece itself and the Euxine even before the Aeolian migration.
The Greek town of Sinope, on the south shore of the Euxine,
claimed to have been founded by Miletus about the middle of
the eighth century. It was, old writers say, destroyed by
the Cimmerians, and was refounded about 630. Another
Milesian colony, Trapezus (now Trebizond), lay some 400
miles more to the east, not far from Colchis, the country of
Medea and the mythical Golden Fleece. Probably even in
these early days there were Grecian marts and halting-places
along the coasts of the Propontis and Euxine. On not a few
of these sites regular settlements were in course of time founded
by various Greek cities. Little Megara especially distinguished
itself by founding {c. 685) Chalcedon, on the Thracian Bosporus,
and some thirty years later occupied the opposite shore, where,
on account of the magnificent site that it enjoyed, the city of
Byzantium rose rapidly to importance, and in later times
became one of the most famous cities in the world. Sestos
and Lampsacus (once Phoenician) were settled by Aeolians,
Abydos and Cyzicus by Milesians. These Hellespontine towns
owed their prosperity to the ever-increasing commerce between
the Euxine and the Aegaean and Grecian ports. The trade in
iron and silver and flax and other products from Colchis and
the country of the Chalybes and other lands on the South
Euxine was in course of time supplemented by trade with its
northern shores, where numerous Greek settlements were
made, such as Odessus and Olbia, on the Dnieper mouth, and
Panticapaeum in the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea), while at the
mouth of the river Phasis — where the Argonauts reached the
home of Medea — the Greek town of Phasis arose, and another,
Dioscurias, still closer to the great range of the Caucasus.
On the North Aegaean, too, various cities were now founded,
of which Potidaea, a colony of Corinth, and Methone, a
Euboean settlement, are of the most importance historically.
Cyme in Italy
The western waters of the Mediterranean were navigated
by Phoenician traders in very early times, and some of their
116
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
settlements preceded the first Greek settlements in these parts
by at least 500 years. By about 1350, as we have seen,
Tarshish, or Tartessus, the Phoenician port in Spain, was well
known, and Gades was founded about 1200. Doubtless these
navigators spread the worship of their gods, Melcarth (the
Phoenician Heracles) and the bull-headed sun-god Baal or
Moloch, and hence we have the old Greek legends of Heracles
erecting pillars at the straits near Tarshish and capturing
the cattle of the monster Geryon, and of the sacred cattle
of the sun-god Eelios, which, as Homer tells us, the com-
panions of Odysseus slew in Sicily.^ Herodotus, indeed,
intimates that a hundred years and more before the days
of Odysseus a Greek city. Cyme (Cumae), existed in Italy,
close to what was afterwards known as Lake Avernus, nor
far from the frontier of the great Etrurian or Tyrrhenian
nation — those Tyrseni of whom we heard in connexion with
the Pelasgians, and whom we shall meet again in the time of
Hiero.2 The tradition about this ancient Greek city is repeated
by Virgil ; Daedalus, he says, after flying from Crete to escape
Minos, alighted at Cumae, and hung up his wings there in
Apollo's temple. Cyme is also said by old tradition to have
received Greek settlers from Corsica, where a still more ancient
Boeotian colony of the Thespiadae is asserted to have existed.
Perhaps, however, the first important colonization of Cyme
by the Greeks took place about 800. The colonists were
mainly from Cyme in Aeolis, the home of Hesiod's father,
and from Cyme in Euboea, the mother-city. Chalcidians and
other Euboeans joined, and it is just possible that a small
contingent of Graioi from Boeotia gave to the Italians in the
neighbourhood of Cumae the name which the natives of Italy
first applied to the Hellene race, and by which we now
generally designate it.
^ Od. xii. The seven herds probably have reference to the seven planets.
Can the name Eelios be connected with El, the primitive Semitic name of
God — probably the sun-god ?
* Hesiod (if the passage is authentic) speaks not only of Etruria, but of the
Latins and King Latinus. His connexion with Aeolian Cyme may explain
his knowledge.
117
ANCIENT GREECE
Sicily
The Chalcidians of Buboea and the Cymaeans also founded
(735) the first Greek city in Sicily, Naxos (destroyed in later
times by Dionysius), and not long afterwards Catane (now
Catania), Leontini, Zancle (the ' sickle-harbour,' Hke Drepanon ;
afterwards renamed as Messene), and Himera on the north
coast (celebrated later for the great victory of Greeks over
Carthaginians in 480, perhaps on the same day as the victory
of Salamis ; finally razed to the ground by the Carthaginians
in 409).
Before the coming of the Greeks the eastern half of Sicily
was held by the Sicels, who had probably crossed from Italy
and driven the older inhabitants, the Sicans, towards the
western parts of the island. Besides these there were the
Ely mi, whose chief city was Egesta, and whom tradition
asserted to be descendants of Trojans left there by Aeneas
on his voyage to lyatium. On the Sicilian coasts there were
also numerous Phoenician stations, but no large settlements.
It was not until after the rise of the naval and military power
of Carthage, about 550, that Sicily became the arena of the
great struggle between the Semitic and Hellenic races.
Some 1 of the most famous of the Greek cities of Sicily were
founded by Dorians, mostly in the south-western corner of the
island. Of these cities Syracuse, a colony of Corinth, was the
oldest, and in the same year (734) Corcyra (Corfu) was also
colonized by the Corinthians. ^ The small state of Megara,
which showed such vigour on the Euxine, placed a Hyblaean
Megara on the coast north of Syracuse, and a century later
this settlement, with the aid of the mother-city, founded on the
south-western coast the city of Selinus, famed for its majestic
temples, all built in the two centuries of its existence before
its utter destruction by the Carthaginian Hannibal at the same
^ Our main authority is here Thucydides (Book VI).
^ Both sites had already been occupied by Euboeans, who were expelled.
Corcyra never became of much importance, and after the Peloponnesian War
dwindled to almost nothing, while Syracuse at its prime occupied a larger space
than Rome under the Empire. Its walls were about fifteen miles in length,
those of Rome about twelve. But Rome's population was greater by far.
118
ANCIENT GREECE
time as Himera (409) . The remains of these temples and of the
acropolis form probably the greatest mass of ruins in Europe, and
the metopes of the temples afford some of the oldest and most
interesting specimens of Greek sculpture (see Fig. 60). The
name of Selinus is probably of Phoenician origin, but the word
selinon means ' wild celery ' in Greek, and that the Selinuntines
accepted this meaning is proved by their coins, on which the
plant is depicted (see Plate IV, 5). Possibly Homer's descrip-
tion of Calypso's isle with its " meadows of violets and celery "
may have favoured the interpretation.
About 688 Gela, a Sicel town overlooking the southern sea,
was occupied by Greek Rhodians and Cretans. It became later
a city of importance, and is famous as the home of the great
Syracusan princes Gelo and Hiero, and as the death-place
of Aeschylus. In 581 Gela founded, with an oekist from Rhodes,
the city of Acragas (Agrigentum, and now Girgenti), about
fifty miles distant towards the west, on a lofty site not far from
the sea. Acragas, the city of the notorious tyrant Phalaris
and of Thero, who shared with Gelo the victory of Himera,
became a city of vast population and wealth, as was testified
by the line of magnificent temples on its southern front, some
of which are still standing (see Fig. 76). The greatest of
these, the Olympieion, now a wilderness of ruin, was the
vastest of all Greek temples.
The Greeks did not try to colonize the west of Sicily.^ Here
Egesta (or Segesta), the city of the Ely mi, held sway in alliance
with Phoenicians, whose settlements at Panormus (Palermo)
and on the island Motya gradually developed into important
towns. The people of Motya were afterwards (397) trans-
ferred by the Carthaginians to the great Punic city of lyily-
baeum, on the neighbouring mainland. At the north-west
corner of Sicily, on Mount Eryx, overlooking the sea, stood a
famous temple dedicated to a goddess, called Aphrodite by
the Greeks and Venus Erycina by the Romans — evidently
either a Phoenician Astarte or some Elymian (Phrygian ?)
Nature-goddess.
^ But see Greek temple, Fig. 57.
120
■«M^:'
40. Lacinian Cape and Cor,UMN
41. Poseidon's Tempi^e, Paestum
120
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
'H fxeydXr] "EXXa?— Magna Graecia
We must now return to Italy. Here by the middle of the
seventh century we find some fifteen flourishing Greek cities
occupying almost the whole of the line of the southern coasts
from Brundisium to Cumae ; and by about 550 their number
will have increased to twenty or more, some of them greater
than any city in the mother-country. The earliest of these was
founded in 721 by Achaeans from the Peloponnese, who seem
to have found their harbourless and rugged country, with
its twelve obscure townships, both unattractive and over-
populated, and to have made settlements first in the island
Zacynthus, and then to have made their way across to Italy,
as the south-western extremity of the Hesperian peninsula was
already called.
Here, just within the great gulf, they founded Sybaris, on an
alluvial plain between the rivers Sybaris and Crathis, and some
eighteen years later they planted Croton on a fine harbour,
near to the Lacinian promontory, where still stands a solitary
column of the great temple of Hera which for ages greeted the
Greek as he came from the motherland to Greater Hellas,
and where he was wont to sacrifice and offer gifts before he
sailed further (see Fig. 40). Both of these settlements
became at an early era very great and powerful cities and the
mothers of many other Greek towns. Sybaris is said to have
possessed twenty-five such dependencies and to have ruled
over four of the native peoples. It became a great trade
emporium, and in order to extend its commerce by land-routes
to Etruria and the far West it founded on the Tyrrhene Sea the
cities of lyaos and Scidros and that of Poseidonia (Paestum),
whose magnificent Doric temples are still standing almost intact
(Fig. 41). The wealth and luxury of Sybaris are proverbial.
Its army is said to have numbered 300,000 (perhaps mainly
native troops), and the circuit of its walls to have rivalled
that of Syracuse. But even in the days of Herodotus Sybaris
was only a memory, for in 510 it was utterly destroyed by its
rival Croton, as we shall see later when we come to the life
121
ANCIENT GREECE
of Pythagoras. On the western coast also Croton planted
various towns, of which Terina was one (see coin 13 on
Plate III), Another was on the site of the old Ausonian port
Temesa (or Tempsa) , perhaps mentioned in the Odyssey as an
export-mart for bronze.^
Another great Greek city was Taras, or Tarentum, situate
in lapygian territory at the head of the great gulf which still
bears its name. It is said to have been originally a Cretan
settlement, but about 708 it was occupied by Spartans. Taras
was the only colony ever founded by Sparta, and tradition
accounts for its foundation by a strange story, perhaps invented
to explain the word Partheniae (' The Maidens' Children '), who
are said to have been its first settlers, for it was related that on
their return from a very long campaign against the Messenians
the Spartans found a large number of illegitimate youths,
and that these, after an attempted rebellion, were dispatched
to the far West under the leadership of a certain Phalanthus,
This Phalanthus was afterwards worshipped as the son of
Poseidon, and was represented on Tarentine coins astride a
dolphin (see Plate II, 3). Taras became renowned for its
industrial products — its wool and pottery and dyes — but is
historically connected more with Rome than Greece, although
for a long period, after the fall of Sybaris, it was perhaps the
most powerful and wealthy of all the cities of Greater Hellas.
Two other Greek cities, Metapontion and Siris, stood on the
shores of the Gulf of Tarentum, between Tarentum and
Sybaris. The former was founded by Sybaris with the aid
of the Peloponnesian Achaeans, Siris by the Ionian city
Colophon. 2 No other city of Ionia attempted to found a
colony during this age in the West ; but the Aeolians were
more venturesome, for Phocaea, which had already the
important settlement of Lampsacus on the Propontis, about
600 planted a colony at Massalia (Marseille), near the delta
of the Rhone — the westernmost of all Greek cities, except its
own later settlements in Spain. The Phocaeans also had
1 If so, this {Od. i. 184) is the earliest mention of any Italian town.
* The poet Archilochus {c. 650) writes of Siris as if it were known to him.
122
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
settlements in Corsica, where about 565 (according to Hero-
dotus) they founded a city called Alalia. Some twenty years
later, as we shall see, in order to escape from the Persians,
almost the whole population of Phocaea took ship for Alalia,
but being expelled from Corsica by the Carthaginians and
Etruscans they fled to Rhegium and thence founded Blea
(Velia), on the west Italian coast, to the south of Poseidonia.
It is possible that Xenophanes of Colophon may have fled
to Siris from Asia to escape the Persians, and may have joined
the Phocaean fugitives at Rhegium and have been among the
first colonists of the city, whose name owes its survival mainly
to the fame of the school of philosophy that he founded there.
Among the more important Greek colonies of this age must
be mentioned Cyrene, in North Africa ; but as its foundation
(c. 630) is connected with the opening up of Egypt to Greek com-
merce it will be described later when we consider that subject.
The Homeland : Corinth
The Greeks calculated all their dates from the victory of
Coroebus in the foot-race at the Olympic Games (revived, it
is said, by Lycurgus and Iphitus) in the year that we call
776 B.C. They regarded this as the beginning of the historical
period ; but there is very little known for certain about
Greece — less, perhaps, than we know about the Greek colonies
— during the first century of this epoch.
It is evident that about the eighth century Corinth was
a great mercantile and maritime power. With her newly
invented triremes and her great trading vessels she dominated
two seas. She had founded Syracuse and colonized Corcyra,
which colony had become strong enough by 664 to oppose
her mother-city in the first sea-fight known to Thucydides.
Argos
In the Peloponnese, while Sparta was engaged in long warfare
with the Messenians and at times holding her own with diffi-
culty, Argos seems to have been a leading state. In 668 the
Argives, it is said, defeated the Spartans at Hysiae. They
123
ANCIENT GREECE
captured Mycenae and Tiryns, overran Aegina, and, perhaps,
held for some time all the eastern coast of lyaconia and even
the island of Cythera (see Hdt. i. 82). Corinth, too, is said to
have fallen for a time into their hands. The successes of Argos
at this era are attributed to the famous Argive king Pheidon,
who (as we shall see later) reinstated the people of Pisa in the
management of the Olympic Games and instituted himself
as president, claiming the right through his ancestor Heracles.
His date is, however, very uncertain. ^ To him is also attributed
the introduction of systematic weights and measures, as
standards for which he deposited bars of metal in the great
temple of Argive Hera. The first homeland Greek coins
were struck in Aegina, probably in Pheidon's reign and after
Pheidonian standards.
The Argive hegemony in the Peloponnese seems to have
declined rapidly after the reign of Pheidon, a fact evidently
due to the rise of the Spartan power. According to tradition,
Pheidon's interference at Olympia roused the wrath of the
Spartans, who reinstated the Eleans and expelled the Argives.
Sparta
Sparta during the first century of the historical period,
as we have seen, took but little share in colonization, and her
one colony, Taras, is said to have originated from her political
difficulties. During these years she was mainly engaged in
fighting the Messenians — those western neighbours of hers
who, after a hundred years of warfare, submitted (those who
remained in Messenia) to be treated almost as slaves for two
centuries, and then, having rebelled, were ejected (in 464)
from their homeland, and finally, a century later, were restored
by Hpameinondas, never again to be conquered by their old
enemies, but to become the subjects of Rome.
These Messenians inhabited the south-western corner of
1 Alexander the Great, to prove his right to compete at Olympia, claimed
descent from Pheidon. Pausanias (a.d. 160) asserts that Pheidon presided
at the eighth Olympiad (748), but Herodotus says that Pheidon's son was a
suitor for Agarista, which would make his date about 620, and his father's
about 660.
124
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
the Peloponnese/ cut off from the Spartan valley of the
Eurotas by the great range of Mount Taygetus. Their land
consisted of the fertile plain of Stenyclarus, through which the
river Pamisus flows ; and to the west is a mountainous district
in which the strong fortress of Ithome was built, overlooking
the plain across which Homer describes Telemachus driving
on his journey from Pylos to Plierae and Sparta.
The first Dorian chiefs, who, in order to justify their over-
lordship, claimed descent from Heracles, seem to have resided
at Stenyclarus, on the northern stream of the Pamisus, and
never to have conquered the southern district of Pylos. The
number of these Dorians was evidently small, and in course
of time the dominant race may have been very considerably
merged in the native Messenian people. This may partly
explain the treatment these rebellious half-castes received — as
severe as that accorded to revolted Helots — at the hands of
the pure-bred Dorian Spartiates.
Of the origin and the events of the first Messenian war
(traditional date 743-724) many picturesque legends survive,
handed down by writers who lived much later, but who may
have collected the traditions from the Messenians restored
to their country by Epameinondas (370). These legends tell
of a Messenian hero, Aristodemus, who determined to sacrifice
his own daughter to save his country, then slew her in anger,
and slew himself afterwards on her tomb. They tell of a
Spartan king, Theopompus, who, after man}^ battles, in the
twentieth year of the war captured and razed Ithome and
reduced all the Messenians who did not leave their country
to the same level of serfdom as that of the Helots.
After about forty years the Messenians again rebelled, and a
second war of nearly equal length took place (traditional date
685-668). In the first war some of the other Peloponnesian
states had taken a part, and on the outbreak of hostilities
Corinth again sent aid to Sparta, while on the side of the
Messenians were the Argives, Arcadians, Sicyonians, and the
* Homer mentions Messene, the district of Pherae, and its ruler Orsilochus.
The city of Messene was iirst built by Rpameinondas.
ANCIENT GREECE
people of Pisa. The hero of this war was Aristomenes, under
whose leaderstiip the Messenians inflicted such defeats on the
Spartans that they sent to the Delphic oracle for advice.
This bade them apply to Athens for a leader. The Athenians,
it is said, sent them in disdain a lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus,
and this man by his martial songs so aroused the courage of
the Spartans that, although they were defeated in a great
battle by the Boar's Grave, on the plain of Stenyclarus, they
again renewed the contest, and besieged the Messenians,
it is said, for eleven years in their new mountain stronghold,
Eira. During this siege Aristomenes performed many prodigies
of valour, and was several times taken prisoner ; but he always
managed to escape — once, it is said, even from the great pit
Caiadas in Sparta, into which the Spartans used to cast their
criminals. This feat he performed by grasping the tail of a
fox, which, struggling to get free, showed him the underground
aperture by which it had entered. But no heroism could
save the Messenians. Eira was captured. Many escaped to
Arcadia or to Rhegium and other places over the sea ; the rest
were again enslaved. Aristomenes is said to have gone to
Rhodes, and to have died there.
Fragments of the songs of Tyrtaeus exist, and I shall speak
of them later. They mention some of the events of this second
Messenian war ; but they do not name Aristomenes. The
songs were, says Athenaeus, chanted by a single voice to
the accompaniment of the flute. They consisted in spirited
appeals to the Spartans to show courage in battle and to
maintain law and order [eunomia) at home. It should perhaps
be added that some modern writers regard Tyrtaeus as a
Spartan and the story of his origin as an Athenian invention.
Tyrants (Ionia : Corinth : Megara : Sicyon)
While Sparta was thus laying the foundations of her future
supremacy very important changes had been taking place
in other cities of Greece. We have already seen how the old
hereditary monarchies of Homeric days had in many cases
given place to constitutions wliich were aristocracies in form
126
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
but which contained within them a strong tendency towards
democracy — a tendency that even under the permanent
monarchical system of the Spartan state manifested itself
in the creation of the popular magistracy of the ephors. We
have also noticed the growing demand for constituted law
and the adoption by Sparta of a code possibly founded to some
extent on the laws of Crete and other ancient nations. Besides
the half-mythical Lycurgus we hear of the shepherd Zaleucus,
who (about 664) was authorized by the Delphic oracle to devise
a constitution for the Italian lyocrians, and slew himself for
having unwittingly transgressed one of his own laws ; and of
Charondas, who gave a code to Sicihan Catane ; and ere long
we shall hear of the Athenian lawgivers Dracon and Solon.
The cry for justice — for equality before the law — uttered by
Hesiod was making itself heard. And the great increase of
the trading and labouring classes began to give them a con-
sciousness of power and the desire for self-government. More-
over, the introduction of a new method in warfare helped
greatly towards these ends. Instead of a Homeric Achilles
or a Messenian Aristomenes we have serried ranks of mailed
hoplites, and it is on these infantry-spearmen, drawn from
the poorer classes, rather than on the high-born hippeis
(knights), that the hope of victory now depends.
But the struggle of the people for self-government was long
and difficult. In not a few cases it led to nothing but frequent
and violent changes of constitution, which proved perhaps
more disastrous than a permanent absolutism would have
been. In others its first result was a relapse — or perhaps we
may regard it as an advance towards democracy through a
necessary phase. Aristocracy was exchanged for tyranny.
The process has already been described. Feuds (such as arose
in mediaeval Florence) disunited the aristocratic party, and
some ambitious noble would invoke the aid of the people
against his rivals and succeed in establishing himself as
' tyrant ' — that is, as an unconstitutional despot. ^ Greek
* The word tyrannos (possibly a Doric form of kohanos, a ruler, and con-
nected with the common word kurios, lord, or perhaps an Asiatic word) had
127
ANCIENT GREECE
' tyrannies ' seem to have first arisen in Ionia. About 620 we
hear of a tyrant of Ephesus marrying the daughter of Alyattes,
the king of I^ydia, and about the same time Miletus flourished
exceedingly under the tyrant Thrasybulus.
lycsbos, on the other hand, evidently suffered long and
severely from its aristocrats and despots, being oppressed
first by the oligarchy of the Penthelids and then by tyrants.
The last tyrant seems to have been expelled from Mytilene
by the people under the leadership of Pittacus and the brothers
of the poet Alcaeus, of both of whom we shall learn more
when we turn to the poets and sages of this era. Pittacus
had distinguished himself in war against Athens, and had won
the confidence of the people. He was elected absolute dictator
{aisymnetes) of Mytilene for ten years, during which time he
governed with such wisdom as to render possible the return of
the exiled nobles, among whom was the poet Alcaeus himself.
Of the wealth and splendour of the Ionian cities during
this age of despots, both on the mainland of Asia and on the
Aegaean islands, there is evidence enough, although we know
almost nothing about their history. In the so-called Homeric
Hymn to Apollo (perhaps dating from about 600) a fine de-
scription is given of the magnificence of the great festival on
the island Delos, which was the religious centre of the Ionic
world until the Asiatic lonians instituted their festivals at the
temple of Ephesus.
Indeed, at this time Ionia was apparently far in advance of the
homeland in many civilized arts, and during the age of Solon and
Peisistratus Athens adopted largely Ionian luxury and Ionian
dress — that soft linen raiment and those golden cicalas, worn
even by men as hair ornaments, of which Thucydides speaks
somewhat contemptuously. And probably surpassing Athens
itself in Ionian splendour were the Euboean cities of Eretria
and Chalcis, of which we have already heard as the mothers of
colonies. But they exhausted themselves in a conflict for
no moral significance. It merely signified that the ruler had no hereditary or
constitutional claim. It was perhaps first used by the Greeks with reference
to the I^ydian kings (see Archilochus, frag. 21). The king of Persia was
always Basiletis.
128
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
the possession of the fertile lyelantine plain. So long and
embittered was this war that, if we believe Thucydides, almost
all Greece (as well as Miletus and Samos) took part in it.
These Euboean cities declined rapidly in importance. Chalcis
was crushed by Athens, and the Eretrians were carried away
to Persia by Darius.
In the homeland several important cities during this era
(660-560) fell under tyrannies. Those of Corinth, Megara,
and Sicyon are of special interest.
At Corinth the monarchy of the Heracleid kings had long ago,
as we have already seen, given way to the oligarchy of the
noble, or royal, family of the Bacchiadae. This oligarchy
was overthrown (c. 655) by Cypselus, about whose birth
Herodotus relates a curious old story. The mother, it was said,
belonged to the Bacchiad family, but she was lame, and was
given in marriage to Action, who was poor but of the noble house
of the Lapithae. An oracle had declared that their son would
prove a rock to fall on Corinth and crush lawless power, and
the oligarchs sent men to murder the cliild ; but (as in the
' Babes in the Wood ') the murderers were overcome by pity,
and while they hesitated the mother, I^abda, hid her infant
in a cypsele — either a corn-bin or a great jar (tt/^o?), such as
the one depicted in Fig. 20 — and thus saved him. So he
very naturally received the name Cypselus. The story is,
perhaps, scarcely worth repeating except as an example of the
kind of mjrth that higher criticism rejects as being evolved in
explanation of a name ; but it is also interesting because this
chest or jar connects itself, as we shall see later, with the
celebrated ' chest of Cypselus' — perhaps the earliest Greek work
of art (besides the Shield of Achilles and that of Heracles !) of
which we have a detailed description.
It was probably before, possibly during, the reign of
Cypselus that the naval battle between Corinth and Corcyra
took place which has been mentioned. Corinth evidently
gained the victory, for while Cypselus and his son Periander
held power this city seems to have developed on the north-
western coast of Greece a considerable colonial empire, including
I 129
ANCIENT GREECE
Anactorium, Ambracia, Apollonia, and Leucas — which in the
Homeric age was a peninsula (Nericon, the kingdom of Laertes),
but was now converted into an island by a channel cut through
its isthmus. It was also evidently at this time that Corcyra,
with an oekist of Heracleid descent from the mother-city,
Corinth, founded that city of Epidamnus which, according to
Thucydides, was the first cause of open hostilities in the
Peloponnesian War.
The son of Cypselus, Periander, could claim at least the
shadow of hereditary right, but he seems to have found it
necessary to protect himself by means of a strong bodyguard of
mercenaries and by forcibly ridding himself of troublesome
nobles. In this connexion Herodotus tells almost exactly the
same story that is told by Livy about Tarquin. Periander sent
for advice to Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, who said nothing
to the messenger, but led him through a field of corn and
" broke off and threw away, as he went, all such ears of corn
as overtopped the rest." Aristotle and other writers confirm
the description of Periander given by Herodotus. Together
with Thrasybulus, he is said to have drawn up a regular code
of ' sanguinary maxims,' as Grote calls them, of a Machia-
vellian nature. He is described by Herodotus as at first
" milder than his father," but afterwards a bloodthirsty despot ;
and revolting stories are recounted of his private life (including
the murder of his wife, Melissa, and his quarrel with his son,
whom he outlawed and banished to Corcyra) . So hated was
the tyrant by all that when, in old age, he proposed that his son
should return and take his place at Corinth, and that he himself
should come to Corcyra, the Corcyraeans, in their terror at
the prospect, put the son to death — for which deed Periander
took on them a terrible vengeance. '^
This is one view. Others laud Periander as a wise and just
though a severe ruler, and explain away the alleged acts of
cruelty and oppression as wholesome sumptuary legislation. His
^ See Hdt. iii. 48-53, v. 92. The story of the 300 Corcyraean youths whom
Periander seized and attempted to send to Alyattes of L,ydia is told with
great detail by Herodotus and bears the stamp of truth.
130
'f-'
42. Apoi:<i.o's Temple, Corinth
43. Site of Corinth and the Acrocorinthus
130
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
wisdom was, indeed, so famed in some quarters that his name is
found in some hsts of the Seven Sages. That Corinth rose to
great prosperity under his rule is undeniable, and it is more
than possible that the immense increase of wealth and luxury-
made repressive measures necessary. Of wealth and magni-
ficence an evident proof is what we hear of a colossal golden
statue of Zeus and the famous chest of Cypselus, two of many
splendid offerings made to Olympia by the Cypselid family.
At Delphi, too, the treasure-house of the Corinthians was built,
it is said, by Cypselus ; and there still exists at Corinth a
relic of the age, perhaps of the reign, of Periander — seven great
columns of what was once a mighty Doric temple sacred to
Apollo (Fig. 42). Like others of the Greek tyrants, Periander
seems to have been a patron not only of sculpture and archi-
tecture, but also of music and poetry, for Arion, the Jonah-
like story of whose escape (on the back of a dolphin) when
cast into the sea seems to belong to the region of myths,
was doubtless a minstrel at the Corinthian court. ^ Corinth,
with its two seas, had fleets on both sides of the Isthmus,
and was in touch not only with the Adriatic, Great Hellas,
Sicily, and the far West, not only with the Euxine and with
Miletus and Rhodes and Cyprus, but also with the newly
founded Cyrene and with Egypt, in this age first opened up to
Greek trade. The reign of Periander (625-585) was contem-
porary with the last years of Psamtik I, who liberated Egypt
from Assyria, and the reigns of the famous Pharaoh Necho
and his son Psamtik II. It is an interesting proof of the
tyrant's close connexion with Egypt that the nephew who
succeeded him bore the name Psammetichus.
Megara, of whose adventurous spirit and maritime power
we have already had remarkable evidence in the foundation
of Byzantium and Sehnus, seems to have suffered as much as
any Greek city from a despotic aristocracy. At last, possibly
with the help of the Corinthian Cypselus, a certain Theagenes
estabhshed himself as tyrant {c. 630) by adopting the usual
method of obtaining permission to form a bodyguard and then
* For Arion see Index.
ANCIENT GREECE
exterminating political rivals. After a reign of about twenty-
years his power was overthrown, and Megara became for a
long time the arena of fierce conflicts between the popular
and aristocratic parties, of which what little is known reminds
one by its intensely bitter personal feeling of the old Florentine
feuds rather than of political and social upheavals such as the
Secession of the Plebs. Again and again the nobles were
expelled and the popular party sated their lust for vengeance
by confiscating property, cancelling the debts of the poor,
and demanding even repayment of the interest ; again and
again the nobles returned, and finally established themselves
firmly in power. It is of these troubled times that the poet
Theognis sings. I shall speak of his poems later.
Sicyon, whose small territory lay not far to the west of
Corinth and was under Dorian oligarchs in early times,
seems to have been ruled by tyrants of Ionian blood from the
days of the second Messenian war. Of these only Cleisthenes
is known to history, and that mainly on account of his connexion
with Athens ; for his daughter Agarista, of whose wooing and
wedding Herodotus (vi. 126 sq.) gives us such a graphic and
humorous account, was the wife of Megacles, and mother of
the Athenian reformer Cleisthenes. The Sicyonian tyrant,
it is said, in his hatred of all tilings Dorian and Argive, forbade
at Sicyon the recitation of Homer, who glorifies Argos and
the Argives, and changed the names of the three Doric tribes
in Sicyon into names meaning swine, asses, and pigs.
The Sages
In the later period of the age which we are considering is
found the first distinct evidence of that philosophical thought,
that earnest search after truth, which is one of the noblest
characteristics of Greek civilization. Before the days of
Socrates Greek thought was directed more towards the solution
of physical than metaphysical problems. The so-called Ionic
philosophers propounded theories of wonderful boldness and
penetration on the origin and constitution of the material
universe, wliich formed as it were stepping-stones to doctrines
132
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
on the nature of the soul and of deity. But even before these
Ionic philosophers and others, whom I shall consider at the
end of the age of Peisistratus, we find signs of deep reflexion
on ethical questions, on questions of right and wrong, on the
moral sense as a guide to action, on virtue and vice, justice and
injustice.
Many such reflexions, revealing the deep, fundamental beliefs
of the human heart, we find in Homer — though not stated
didactically — and, as we have seen, the cry for justice is loud
in Hesiod. Of course these beliefs exist in every age ; but it is
not till towards the end of the seventh century that we find
them expressed by Greek thinkers and men of action, and the
form of expression is either the sententious and passionate
verse of the so-called gnomic poets (among whom Solon
and Theognis and the older Simonides are reckoned), or
m^oralizing stories in prose, such as the Fables of Aesop, or else
short, pithy, wise sayings, such as those which are attributed to
the Seven Sages.
Some of these Seven, all of whom flourished in the period
600-550, and whom the next age reverenced for their wisdom,
were men pre-eminent as rulers or lawgivers, and one was
renowned as the first and perhaps the greatest of the Ionic
philosophers. Most of them doubtless wrote, and some of their
writings were probably well known to the ancients, but hardly
anything remains except fragments of Solon's verse, of which
I shall speak later.
According to Plato the vSeven Sages were Thales of Miletus,
Solon of Athens, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus
of lyindus (Rhodes), Myson of Chenae, and Chilon of Sparta.
Others, strangely enough, insert Periander of Corinth in the
place of Myson. Opinions seem to have differed much as to
the authentic list. Not only do the names of the last three
vary considerably, but we have lists of ten, and even of seven-
teen. In later times each of the Sages was credited with
one distinctive maxim, and some of these maxims, such as
" Know thyself," " Nothing too much," " Know thy oppor-
tunity," were inscribed on Apollo's temple at Delphi. Cleobulus
133
ANCIENT GREECE
and his daughter seem to have made a reputation b}'^ their
riddles, and the poet Simonides speaks of this Sage as a ' fooHsh
mortal.' Periander, as we have seen, may have suffered
much from calumny, but if his wisdom, as is likely, was such
as is found in Machiavelli's Principe, we cannot wonder that
Plato omits him.
Athens, 776-560
In a former chapter we obtained glimpses of Athens in the
Dark Age, and saw that she too, like most of the Greek cities,
was at that time under the rule of aristocracies. This con-
tinued during the seventh century. The government was
carried on by archons, whose term of office had been [c. 750)
reduced to ten years. Then, in 683, three annual archons
were instituted. From this time onward a list seems to have
been kept of the archons, the chief of whom gave his name
to the year, and was therefore called the archon eponymos.
As deliberative and legislative council, like the Homeric
Boule, the archons had the Areopagus, consisting of past
archons and fifty-one special judges (ephetae) and other nobles
(Eupatridae) .
The Areopagus, one of the most ancient institutions of
Athens, was originally a court of justice for cases of murder
and homicide, evidently established, like the English ' blood-
wite,' in order to regulate private vengeance. According to
the legend adopted by the Greek dramatists, it was before this
divinely instituted court, and by the votes of the gods them-
selves, that Orestes was acquitted when, chased by the Furies
for the murder of his mother, he sought sanctuary at Athene's
shrine in Athens. As Aeschylus intimates, the court was
closely connected with the worship of the Furies as avengers of
blood, and it is likely that the name Areopagus, which was
conferred to distinguish this court from Solon's Boule, and
was in later ages believed to mean ' The Hill of Mars ' [Areios
pagos), really means ' The Hill of the Arai ' (Avengers)— as the
Semnai, or ' Awful Goddesses,' are called by Aeschylus himself.
The court was gradually empowered to interfere in matters
134
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
of religion and morals, and then in political affairs ; but after
serving as the supreme council of the aristocracy it lost much
of its power under the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes, and
finally (in the age of Demosthenes) was allowed to retain no
authority except in trivial questions of ritual, gymnastics,
public parks, and the like.
The Athenian Ecclesia, the great popular assembly lineally
descended from the Homeric Agora, probably began to gain
more political influence after the institution of annual
archons and of the tribal guilds. There are many evidences
of a considerable advance towards democracy about the
opening of the seventh century. On account of the great
increase of trade and the invention of money, wealth began to
abound and to determine social and political status. As in
the later Servian constitution at Rome, the people (formerly,
as we have seen, divided into nobles, land-workers, and public
workers) were now, or perhaps in Solon's time, for political
purposes classed according to income. Five hundred measures
of corn and oil (or the equivalent) put a man in the highest
class, to which the chief magistracies were confined ; three
hundred gave him the title of knight, and two hundred that of
zeugites, which meant that he belonged to the rank of the well-
to-do peasant, the owner of a span of oxen. Another sign of
advance was the annual election (about 650) of six legislators
(thesmothetae), who, like the Roman decemviri, or perhaps more
like the Roman tribunes of the people, represented a growing
determination to acquire equal rights before the law. These six
thesmothetae, whose office was to examine laws and supervise
justice, were associated with the three supreme magistrates,
so that henceforth we hear of nine archons.
While matters were in this state an event took place which,
perhaps because it is so graphically described by Thucydides,
as well as by Herodotus and by Plutarch, seems to stand out
as the first distinct picture in the history of Athens.
Among the Athenian noble families (Eupatridae) one of the
most distinguished was that of the Alcmaeonidae, a branch of
the Neleid family, which claimed descent from the kings of
ANCIENT GREECE
Pylos. Now in the year 632, when the Alcmaeonid Megacles
was archon, an attempt was made by an Athenian noble,
Cylon by name, who had distinguished himself as winner of
the foot-race at Olympia, to establish himself as tyrant at
Athens. He had married the daughter of Theagenes of Megara,
and, incited by this tyrant's success, and by an oracle which
he misinterpreted, with a band of young Athenians and
Megarian soldiery he seized the Acropohs, trusting in popular
discontent. He was not supported, and, after being blockaded
for some time, he is said by Thucydides (not, however, by
Herodotus) to have made his escape. His comrades were forced
to capitulate. They sought sanctuary at the " altar of the
Acropolis " — evidently that of Athene Polias. " And those of
the Athenians who had been commissioned to keep guard,
when they saw them dying of famine in the temple raised them
up, promising to do them no harm ; but they led them away
and killed them. Others were cut down as they tried to seat
themselves in front of the altars of the Awful Goddesses."
Plutarch adds a graphic touch — one that recalls other examples
of the virtue of divine protection being transmitted by contact.
He says that the besieged, when under promise of quarter
they left Athene's temple, fastened themselves with a rope to
the statue of the goddess and were making their way down
from the Acropohs, when the rope broke,^ and they fled to
the sanctuary of the Furies, which happened to be near, but
were all cut down.
Cylon's unsuccessful raid is historically of importance, for
the belief that a curse had been incurred by Megacles and by the
Alcmaeonidae in this double act of sacrilege influenced the
course of events on more than one occasion. The taint, as
Grotesays, " was supposed to be transmitted to the descendants
of Megacles, and we shall find the wound reopened not only
in the second and third generation, but also two centuries
1 This, according to Plutarch, was urged by the Alcmaeonidae as a defence
against the charge of sacrilege. For other cases of a belief in the efficacy
of attachment see Hdt. i. 26 (where Ephesus, when besieged, is connected
by a cord with the temple of Artemis outside the walls), and Thuc. iii. 104
(where Rheneia is connected with Delos by a chain).
136
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
after the original event." (See Index and Hdt. v. 71, Thuc. i.
126.) For a long time public feeling seems to have been
deeply affected by exasperation mingled with superstitious
dread. At length — perhaps about 625, or perhaps later (for
Solon is said by some to have suggested it) — the Alcmaeonidae
were tried before a special court of 300 nobles and were banished,
those who had already died being disinterred and cast forth
as an ' accursed thing ' beyond the borders of Attica. But
religious excitement and despondent gloom still dominated.
Pestilence appeared, and neither sacrifice nor purification was
of any avail. The Delphic oracle was consulted, and bade the
Athenians seek some healer from a distant land.
It will be remembered that in Hesiod, as well as elsewhere,
there are many evidences of the persistence of the super-
stitious dread of the supernatural and of the belief in the efficacy
of propitiatory rites and charms which were such striking
characteristics of the ancient Greek religion, but which seem
to have crept away for a time into obscure hiding-places at the
advent of the Olympian gods. In a later age we shall find
these superstitions revived in the Mysteries and the Orphic
religion, and it is interesting to notice that also at the period
which we are now considering such vague terrors and beliefs
prevailed very generally. We read of many magicians and
healers, such as the Hyperborean Abaris, and Aristeas of
Metapontion, and Thaletas the Cretan, who was summoned
to Sparta to stay a pestilence, and in connexion with this
ineradicable tendency towards deisidaimonia may be named
the philosopher Pythagoras and the Sicilian Empedocles, both
of whom were regarded as more than human.
The healer whom the Athenians sent for (perhaps about
625, perhaps considerably later) was the Cretan Epimenides,
about whom wondrous tales are told.- He is said to have
fallen asleep in a cave and to have slept (like Rip Van Winkle)
for more than half a century, and to have lived 150 or even
300 years. By his contemporaries, as also by Plato and
Cicero, he was regarded as divinely inspired, and even Aristotle
himself speaks of him as something not quite canny. Besides
137
ANCIENT GREECE
being a prophet and a healer, he was a proHfic poet, and
possibly one very celebrated line of his, on the subject of the
Cretans, has been preserved by St. Paul. As for his visit to
Athens, I will quote what is said by Grote, who does not dis-
miss this very possible case of faith-healing, which is of great
interest both psychologically and historically, with the curt
contempt shown by some other writers. " Epimenides is
said to have turned out some white and black sheep on the
Areopagus, directing attendants to follow and watch them,
and to erect new altars to the appropriate local deities on the
spots where the animals lay down. He founded new chapels
and established various lustral ceremonies ; and more espe-
cially he regulated the worship paid by the women in such a
manner as to calm the violent impulses which had before
agitated them. . . . The general fact of his visit and the
salutary effects produced in removing the religious despondency
which oppressed the Athenians are well attested."
The pestilence very probably departed in the wake of the
religious despondency, but in this disturbed state of public
feeling doubtless political animosities were intensified and
lawlessness grew rampant.
As a drastic remedy the Athenians commissioned Dracon,
the archon of the year 621, to reform the laws and publish a
written code. Dracon's laws were " written in blood," as an
orator of later days expressed it. His reforms seem to have
consisted largely in terrorism. He increased penalties to
such an extent that petty theft was punishable by death, ^
and debt exposed a man to the danger of slavery. Such
relapse to barbarism may have had an effect for a time, but
could not permanently satisfy either rich or poor. The fact
1 See Hor. Sat. I, iii. 115 sq., where the allusion is evidently to Dracon,
Aristotle intimates that even idleness was thus punishable. An Egyptian law
of King Amasis punished with death a man who would not work to support
his family. Dracon's laws have perhaps been misrepresented. He may
have merely codified old and severe laws, some already lapsed. He seems to
have instituted some carefully framed legal forms, such as trials for various
cases of homicide. Even inanimate objects charged with homicide, if con-
demned, were solemnly cast forth beyond the frontier. Also the fifty-one
ephetae (special judges) may have been his creation.
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
that the laws were now fixed in writing was an immense
advantage, but their publication doubtless made the poorer
classes realize all the more keenly the intolerable state of
bondage and misery into which they had been brought by
debt and mortgage and the insolent exactions of the rich,
by which many had been reduced to actual slavery or to the
necessity of selling their own children as slaves to pitiless
creditors.
At this crisis a great and wise man arose who refounded the
state on the basis of true democracy, as some two and a half
centuries later the celebrated Rogations of Licinius set upon
its true basis the Roman republic.
I do not intend to give any detailed account of Solon's
constitution. It is a subject that requires full and special
treatment, and such it has received from writers who regard
the political history of Greece as of great importance. To me
it seems that we have little to learn from Greece in politics —
as little, perhaps, as from her perpetual intestine feuds,
I shall, therefore, while giving a sketch of Solon's personality,
touch very briefly on his reforms.
Solon was born about 638, some seventeen years before the
archonship of Dracon. He claimed descent from Codrus, and
from Poseidon through the Pylian Nestor, and his mother was
a cousin of Peisistratus. But his patrimony had been wasted,
and he took to trade and visited many distant lands, where
he gained not only riches but a knowledge of the world and of
human character and of letters which placed him on a level
probably much higher than that of most Athenians of his
day. It was natural that under such circumstances he should
express his opinions and feelings in a written form ; and that
this form should be verse was almost inevitable, for (as we
shall see in a subsequent section) there was as yet no prose
literature. His high birth and the great reputation that his
knowledge brought him, and perhaps also his newly acquired
wealth, led to his election, in 594, as archon with unlimited
legislative powers, in order that he should discover some
modus Vivendi between the people and the rapacious aristocracy.
139
ANCIENT GREECE
Doubtless his life had brought him much in contact with the
working classes, and at the same time he was closely connected
with the nobility, so that great hopes were placed in his
mediation.
His first move must have startled both parties. On entering
office he should have made the usual public declaration that
he would " preserve undiminished all private property."
Instead of this, he published an ordinance named the Seisach-
theia (the ' Shaking off of Burdens '), which cancelled all
obligations that pledged the liberty of the debtor and set free
all debtor-slaves. 1 Then he repealed all Dracon's laws except
those that dealt with homicide, and having thus cleared the
ground, and having deprived the oligarchic Areopagus of some
important functions, he laid the foundation of the future
Athenian democracy by extending the franchise to the Thetes
(lit. hirelings), the lowest of the four classes, by instituting
the Heliaea, or popular courts of justice, in which every
citizen in turn could take his place among the dicasts (judges
or jurymen), and by introducing election by lot.^ Moreover,
he formed a new council (Boule) of 400 members chosen from
the whole people except the Thetes, and transferred to this
council from the Areopagus the work of preparing measures
to be submitted to the Ecclesia. In addition to these con-
stitutional reforms he limited private land-owning and forbade
exportation of Attic products, except oil. Solon's laws were
written, or inscribed, on tablets or pillars (a^oi'e?, Kup^ei^),
which revolved on a pivot, and were first kept in the Acropolis,
but later, by the advice of Ephialtes, were placed in the
Agora.
Whether it was before, during, or even long after his
archonship is quite uncertain, but the conquest of Salamis
by Athens is said to have been due to Solon's influence. Eleusis
had been annexed long before, but Salamis, lying close in front
^ The Greek expression enl rm (rafiari davelCfiv corresponds to the Latin
nexum ivire. See addictus and nexus in Diet. Ant.
* Lot was used for selecting the nine archons out of forty candidates pro-
posed by the tribes. The Heliaea soon deprived the archons of all judicial
power and became the final court of justice.
140
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
of the Peiraeus, was still in the possession of Megara, and
so often had tke Athenians vainly tried to conquer it that,
it is said, they forbade under penalty of death any proposal
to renew the attempt. Pretending to be in a divinely inspired
frenzy, Solon recited in public some verses in which he passion-
ately denounced the cowardice of ' Salamis-abandoners,' and
called on the Athenians to " cast aside their disgrace " and once
more to " fight for the lovely island." The result of this appeal
was another attack on Salamis, which ended, perhaps by the
arbitrage of Sparta, in the island being separated permanently
from Megara and divided among Athenian cleruchs (' lot-
holders '). It seems possible that Peisistratus acted as
general in this war, and succeeded in occupying Nisaea, the
port of Megara — a military success that perhaps made effective
the Athenians' claim that Salamis had originally belonged to
them.i
Herodotus tells us that the Athenians swore to obey
Solon's laws for ten (Plutarch says a hundred) years, and that
during these ten years he visited Egypt and Cyprus ^ and other
distant lands. If this took place soon after his archonship
he must have returned to Athens about 582, and as he did not
die till about 558 there is an interval of over twenty years
which we must suppose him to have passed at Athens, possibly
making voyages from time to time across the Aegaean. But
even if his visit to Eg3^pt and Cyprus took place much later
(Herodotus says he was in Egypt in the reign of Amasis, who
came to the throne in 570), and if he did not return to Athens
until about 562, there is no reason why between 560 and his
death in 558 he may not have visited King Croesus, as
Herodotus asserts — although this was denied even in Plutarch's
day as chronologically impossible, and is denied by some
modern writers. The well-known story of this visit, so
beautifully narrated by Herodotus, will be given later.
^ Both sides appealed to the mode of burial in the ancient tombs of Salamis.
The Athenians cited the (perhaps interpolated) line in the Homeric ' Cata-
logue of Ships ' in which Ajax, who brought twelve ships from Salamis, is said
to have " drawn them up where the Athenian hosts were encamped."
" In Cyprus he is said to have persuaded a prince to found the city Soli.
141
ANCIENT GREECE
It was probably during the absence of Solon {c. 568) that
the unsuccessful attack on Aegina was made by the Athenians
which, according to Herodotus (v. 87), had such a dramatic
ending and caused a revolution in the dress fashions of Athenian
women, on account of their having stabbed to death with their
long stiletto dress-pins the sole survivor of the ill-fated
expedition (see Note B, on Dress). This attack was repelled
with Argive help ; and for some time to come we shall find
Athens and Argos on anything but friendly terms
Fierce dissensions had again broken out in Athens — so fierce
that for two years no archons were elected. The party of the
Plain, composed of rich landowners, was headed by lyycurgus ;
that of the Coast, formed mainly of the industrial and working
classes, was led by that Megacles who had married Agarista
of Sicyon — a grandson of the Megacles whose sacrilege in the
matter of Cylon had caused a temporary banishment of the
Alcmaeonid family. At last, taking advantage of these
dissensions, a friend and relative of Solon, a man who had
distinguished himself in the war against Megara and had won
great favour among the extreme democrats and other dis-
contents, created a third party, that of the Hills — so called
because it comprised many of the peasants of the Attic high-
lands. This man was Peisistratus, the rise and fall of whose
tyranny will be the subject of the next chapter.
Solon is said to have detected and denounced, but in vain,
the ambitious projects of Peisistratus. He died about two
years after the establishment of the tyranny. His ashes, it
is said, were by his orders strewn over the soil of Salamis.
SECTION A : EGYPT AND CYRENE {c 670-570)
In Section C, Chapter II, I sketched the history of Egypt,
as far as it touches that of Greece, down to its conquest {c. 674)
by the Assyrian monarch Assarhaddon. Some five years later
this great king of Nineveh and Babylon abdicated (weary of
power, like Charles V), and was succeeded by the unwarlike and
literary Assurbanipal, known to the Greeks as Sardanapalos.
142
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
Now of the twelve vassal-kings who still governed Egypt
under the suzerainty of Assyria, one named Psamtik (Psam-
metichus), of Libyan descent, who reigned at Sais, in the
Delta, is said by Herodotus to have been dethroned by his
fellow-rulers and to have fled to the marshes. Having sent
to inquire of the famous Eg3^ptian oracle of Leto, he was told
that " vengeance would come from the sea, when bronzen
men should appear." Not long afterwards some bronze-clad
Carian and Ionian warriors were driven by storms to the
Egyptian shore (modern criticism believes they were purposely
sent by the king of Lydia) , and by their help Psamtik brought
the whole land under his sway, founding thus the dynasty of
the four Saitic kings, and defeated Assurbanipal [c. 664) and
finally drove the Assyrians out of Egypt. He naturally showed
great favour to the lonians and other Greeks, who now for the
first time were allowed to settle freely in Egypt. About 660
the Milesians founded the trade-settlement Naucratis, the
ruins of which have lately been discovered on the west bank
of the Canopus Nile, not far from Sais.^ Greek mercenaries
formed the right wing of the army, and also the garrison in the
new and least remote Egyptian stronghold, Defenneh (called
by the Greeks ' Daphnae,' i.e. Laurels), which Psamtik had
built as a defence against his eastern foes. These favours are
said to have so incensed the native Egyptian soldiery, who had
to garrison the distant Aethiopian and Libyan frontiers, that
they revolted, and 240,000 of them marched south and settled
inAethiopia (perhaps Abyssinia) , four months' journey beyond
Syene (Assouan) and two beyond Meroe (Khartum).
Psamtik reigned for forty-seven years, and extended his
dominions to the boundaries of Syria, but there he was stopped
by the Scythians, who at this period swept over the east of
Asia Minor and were only induced by a large bribe not to
attack Egypt itself. Of Necho, his successor, we have already
heard. He also favoured the Greeks, and they helped him to
^ No large temples but numerous small ones have been found — evidently
tlie ' chapels ' of the various Hellenic settlers. Later a great fortified brick
enclosure, the Helleneion, with large stone storehouses, vras built, probably
by leave of King Amasis.
H3
ANCIENT GREECE
build his triremes and merchant fleets. In his ships Phoeni-
cians circumnavigated Africa. He cut a canal from the Nile
to the Red Sea, and prolonged the vSuez Canal, begun in the
fourteenth century B.C. by King Seti and finished by de I^esseps
in the nineteenth century a.d. He defeated and slew King
Josiah at Megiddo, and advanced as far as the Euphrates,
but was defeated at Carchemish (60 1) by Nebucadnezar, the
young king of the new Babylonian Empire — for Nineveh and
the Assyrian Empire had fallen in the year 606.
His son, Psammis (Psamtik II), made an expedition against
the Aethiopians, or possibly the Deserters ^ who had settled in
Aethiopia. In his army were many Greek mercenaries, and one
can yet see at Abu Simbel, on the Upper Nile, some forty miles
before reaching Wady Haifa, Greek names and inscriptions on
the legs of a colossus (Fig. 44) cut by some of these soldiers.
Psamtik II was succeeded by his son Apries (the Hophra
of the Bible), who gave refuge to a ' remnant ' of Jews after
Judah had been carried away to Babylon by Nebucadnezar
in 587. Among these Jews was Jeremiah, who had been set
free by Nebucadnezar and had in vain tried to dissuade his
countrymen from leaving their native land, but had accom-
panied them to Tahpanhes (Defenneh, or Daphnae), where
they were allowed to settle, protected by the Greek garrison of
the frontier fortress. ^ It will be remembered how Jeremiah
(xliii. 10) buried great stones in clay at the entry of ' Pharaoh's
house ' at Daphnae and prophesied that Nebucadnezar would
come and set up his throne and his royal pavilion above these
stones. Nebucadnezar did come {c. 572), as both Jeremiah
and Ezekiel had prophesied, and overran Egypt right up to
Syene (Assouan) ; and at Daphnae the modern excavator
has found not only Greek pottery in abundance, but the relics
of the burnt palace of Hophra (which " to this day, most
curiously, bears the title of the house of the Jew's daughter"),
and also a square pavement which may possibly be the very
^ Called also ' I<eft-wing men ' (' Asmachs ' =:Abyssinians ?) because deprived
of the place of honour on the right wing ; whence their discontent and rebellion.
* 2 Kings XXV. 26 ; Jer. xl.-xliii. (perhaps partly by the ' Deutero- Jeremiah ').
144
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
stones " hid in the clay " by Jeremiah, above which the king
of Babylon set up his throne and pavilion. Nebucadnezar
and his Babylonians did not remain long, and an unsuc-
cessful expedition by the Egyptian native army against
Cyrene caused disturbances amidst which Hophra (Apries),
although supported by his Greek troops, was dethroned by
Aahmes, known in Greek history as Amasis, in whose reign,
as we shall see later, there was much friendly intercourse
between Egypt and Hellas ; for although Greek mercenaries
had fought against him he was wise enough to forget it.
The unsuccessful expedition of the Egyptian army against
Cyrene was possibly made against the wishes of Apries,
and none of his Greek soldiers took part in it — as was but
natural, for Cyrene (some 200 miles to the west of Egypt) was
a Greek colony. It was founded {c. 630) by aborigines of the
small volcanic island Thera, who had quarrelled with Dorian
settlers. After several failures ^ a site was found in the hills
about eight miles from the coast and about 1800 feet above the
sea, near to a fine spring and in a part of lyibya where, according
to Herodotus, there were three different climates, allowing
harvest during eight months of the year, and such abundant
rains that the natives described the place as one in which
" the sky leaks." Here Aristoteles of Thera founded Cyrene
and adopted the native name Battus (' King '), and for eight
generations the Battiadae held kingly power. About 560
Cyrene founded Barca, which soon rivalled its mother-city.
In its earlier days (c. 580) Cyrene gained literary fame from its
poet Eugammon, who, like other Cyclic poets, tried to finish
the stories of the Iliad and Odyssey. He wrote the Telegoneia,
the story of the son of Odysseus and Circe, and (as Virgil
did for the Romans) connected the legend of Troy with the
history of his countrymen. At a later period Cyrene was
the home of several renowned philosophers and literary men,
and Cyrenaica, with its five prosperous cities, became a very
rich province of the Ptolemies, and afterwards of Rome.
^ Herodotus (iv. 145 5^.) gives a very long story of these Therans and of
misinterpreted oracles, &c. See also iv. 199.
K 145
ANCIENT GREECE
The wealth of the country was largely due to the rather
mysterious plant siiphion — for which see coin 6, Plate VI.
SECTION B : LYDIA {776-S60)
Except Cyrene there was no point of antagonism between
Hellas and Egypt, and the conflict between the Hellenic and
Semitic races in Sicily was yet to come, but in Asia Minor the
Greek colonies had a vast hinterland of Oriental or semi-
Oriental nations — the wild Pisidian tribes, the lyycians,
Carians, Mysians, Phrygians, Lydians — some of them of
Aryan blood largely intermixed with that of the old Cappa-
docian and Hittite aborigines. And behind all these again
loomed during the earlier ages the mighty empires of old
Babylonia, of Assyria, and of the Babylon of Nebucadnezar,
soon to be replaced by the still more dangerous empire of the
Medes and Persians.
Perhaps it is not too much to say that the destiny of
modern Europe was decided by the battles of Salamis
and Himera — which took place, if we may believe tradition,
on the self-same day. Anyhow, it was decided by the
result of the conflict of Hellas with the non-Hellenic world,
especially with Persia and Carthage. It is therefore advisable,
without distracting our attention too much, to keep the chief
of these nations in view.
Down to the conquest of I^ydia by Cyrus (546) the great
empires of the far East had not come into direct contact with
the Hellenic world, except that Greeks in Cyprus had become
subjects of the Assyrian kings Sargon and Assarhaddon, and
Greek mercenaries had fought against Nebucadnezar in Egypt.
In Ionia and Greece itself much had doubtless been heard
of the vast cities and armies of Assyria and Babylonia, and
something of the learning of the East, such as the Chaldaean
astronomy and their system of weights, had been introduced ;
but during the age that we are considering (776-560)
Phrygia and I^ydia formed a buffer between Asiatic Hellas
and the far East, and what at present concerns us is the
146
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
history of these nearer Oriental countries and their relation to
Ionia.
In Phrygia, which enclosed I^ydia on the east, the dominant
race (as we saw in Chapter I) was of Northern (Aryan) stock,
and therefore was akin to the Greek. Phrygians evidently
settled also in Lydia and are the ' Maeonians ' mentioned
by Homer (who knows nothing of ' I^ydians '). They founded
what some writers have even called a ' Heracleid ' (Greek)
dynasty of Lydian kings, who, as also the Phrygian kings
(named alternately Gordias and Midas), lived on friendly
terms with the Ionian and Aeolian Greeks. The wealth and
civilization of both nations were evidently considerable. They
seem to have introduced the alphabet at an early age, and their
music and decorative art had influence on the Greeks. One
King Midas (perhaps the one to whom the fable gives
donkey's ears) made the gift of his royal throne to the temple
at Delphi — the first offering, says Herodotus, made by a
' barbarian.'
But it is of I^ydia that we hear most. Its capital, Sardis.
was built on a precipitous spur of Mount Tmolus, whence
flowed into the Hermus the gold-bearing stream Pactolus —
one of the sources of lyydian wealth. The ' Heracleid ' kings
seem to have brought the country to a high state of prosperity.
Herodotus even relates that these early I^ydians colonized
Umbria, in Italy, and founded the Tyrrhenian (Ktruscan)
nation ; and he tells us that they invented " all the games
that are common to them and the Greeks," and also the use of
gold-and-silver {electron) coinage.
The last of the ' Heracleid ' kings was Candaules.^ He was
slain {c. 716) by Gyges, who established the dynasty of the
native I^ydian Mermnadae, to which Croesus belonged. Gyges
extended the Lydian power over Mysia and endeavoured to
conquer the Greek seaboard of the Aegaean, but about 680
^ An Aryan name meaning ' dog-throttler,' corresponding to KwdyKTjs,
an epithet given by Hipponax to the god Hermes : " O dog-throttler Hermes,
by the Maeonians called Candaules." War-dogs were used by the Cimmerians
and other barbarians. For the dramatic story of Candaules and Gyges see
Hdt. i. 7. Coinage was probably first introduced by Gyges. See Note C.
ANCIENT GREECE
Lydia itself was attacked from the north and east by the
innumerable hordes of a wild northern people called the
Cimmerians,
The Cimmerians (doubtless the originals of Homer's
fabulous Cimmerians on the further shore of the river Ocean)
were probably driven south from their country (Cimmeria,
i.e. the Crimea) by the pressure of other northern tribes.
Whether they came by way of the Danube delta or the
Caucasus is unknown, but they captured the Greek city
Sinope and made it their cliief camp, whence they ravaged
almost the whole of Asia Minor, and even attacked the great
Assyrian king, Assarhaddon. At first Gyges was successful,
and he sent many Cimmerian captives in chains to Nineveh — the
first act of Lydian homage to Assyria, if such it was, that we
hear of. But two years later the Cimmerians again poured
down from the north, slew Gyges, plundered Sardis, and
pressed southwards, where they destroyed Magnesia and burnt
the great temple of Artemis that stood outside the city walls of
Ephesus. Of these hordes of ravaging northern barbarians the
Ephesian poet Callinus speaks (as we shall see in Section D),
and a vivid picture of them is given on a sarcophagus of
Clazomenae (Fig. 45).
Between Gyges and Croesus three kings reigned, Ardys
(678-629), Sadyattes (629-617), and Alyattes (617-560).
During this period we hear of various invasions of West Asia
Minor by Cimmerians, while in the far East the Scythians,
another wild northern people, totally defeated the king of
Media, Cyaxares, and for twenty-eight years (640-612) were
dominant even as far south as the Philistine city of Ascalon,
which they sacked. Indeed, it was only by bribes that
Psamtik I saved Egypt from them.
In spite of these recurring Cimmerian invasions Ardys and
Sadyattes seem to have attacked Ionia. Priene and perhaps
other cities were taken, and Miletus was much harassed by
them. Alyattes finally expelled the Cimmerians. He then
turned his arms against the Greeks, wishing doubtless to acquire
a seaboard for Lydia. He took and utterly destroyed (c. 590)
148
44- Coi^ossi OF Abu Simbel
45. Cimmerians ox the vSARconiACus of Ci<azomenae
148
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
new Smyrna/ which now almost disappears from the history
of ancient Greece, but after warring for eleven years against
Miletus (now under the tyranny of Thrasybulus, Periander's
friend) he made peace, probably because Lydia was assailed
by a new foe, namely, the Medes, who under Cyaxares (the
conqueror of Babylon) and his son Astyages were extending
the new Median empire towards the Aegaean. In the sixth
year this war between Lydia and the Medes was ended by a
strange occurrence. In the midst of a battle the sun was
darkened, and the combatants were so alarmed that they ceased
fighting and concluded a peace. This solar eclipse, the date
of which was May 28, 585, is of interest not only because it
gives us (like the eclipse of 648 recorded by Archilochus)
an exact date, but because it was foretold, more or less accu-
rately, by the philosopher Thales. This was perhaps the first
eclipse predicted by a European. Thales gained his know-
ledge of the lunar cycle (of about seventeen years) and the
astronomical data for calculating eclipses from the Egyptians,
who themselves, it is likely, were indebted to the Chaldaeans
of Babylon. 2 But whatever may have been the source of his
knowledge, the prediction of Thales was a momentous event,
for it was, as far as we know, the very first attempt made in
Europe to lay the foundation of inductive science. It marks,
as Grote says, the beginning in the Hellenic world of scientific
prediction as distinguished from the prophecies of soothsayers,
oracles, and omens.
To seal the peace with Media King Alyattes gave his
daughter in marriage to Astyages, and for the next forty years
Lydia enjoyed, under Alyattes and his son Croesus, brilliant
prosperity, until Cyrus the Persian overthrew the Median
Astyages, and twelve years later (546) attacked and overthrew
the Lydian Croesus also, as we shall see in the next chapter.
^ See p. 63. But Pindar afterwards mentions Smyrna as a ' bright city.'
* Ptolemy, the great geographer and astronomer, although he lived in
Egypt, cites the Chaldaean calculations for eclipses as the earliest {i.e. from
721). Egyptian astronomical knowledge, however, dates at least from the
time of the Pyramids (c. 3000).
149
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
SECTION C : THE GAMES
It is a trite remark that Greece was never a nation ; and it
is true that Hellas, and even the Hellenic homeland, had no
political coherence. Very rarely, as Thucydides says, did the
Greek states take any combined action, and even against the
Persians the combination was by no means complete. Greek
patriotism was not based on the idea of political union, far
less on that of any central imperial power. All imperialism,
all hegemony of Greek over Greek, was as odious as tyranny
to the deeper instincts of the race, and although such
temporary structures as the Athenian Empire and the
Spartan and Theban supremacies arose from time to time,
they were maintained by forces foreign to true Hellenic
genius. But though not united politically, often torn asunder
by intestine feuds, the Hellenic world was united in heart by
sentiments perhaps nobler than those of ordinary patriotism
— by the proud consciousness of kinship not only in blood
but in the deepest sympathies of human nature, such as find
expression in religion and art and literature.
This fact is finely stated in the message sent by the Athenians
to Sparta before the capture of Athens by Mardonius the
Persian : " Not all the gold that the earth contains would
bribe us to take part with the Medes and help them to enslave
our countrymen. . . . There is our common brotherhood,
our common language, the altars and the sacrifices of which
we all partake, and the common character which we bear.
Did the Athenians betray all this, of a truth it would not be
well."
This consciousness, which more and more counteracted
the old antipathies between Doric, Ionian, and other sections
of the race, and inspired all Hellas with a feeling of boundless
superiority over the nations that surrounded it on all sides —
though some of these ' barbarians ' could boast of a civilization
far more ancient and a sense of truth and honour ^ far keener
^ See later remarks on the Persian character. The traitor was never far to
seek among the Greeks, but was scarcely known among the Persians.
ANCIENT GREECE
than that of the Greeks — was fostered by the great religious
festivals held by the mother-cities, to which the colonies of
the Hellenic world sent solemn embassies {Oewpiai) vying
with each other in the magnificence of their offerings.
Also for the Greeks of the colonies there were meeting-
places where great festivals were held, such as the lyicinian
promontory in South Italy, and the island of Delos. This
island, lying in the midst of the Cyclades, which offer easy
transit between Greece and Ionia, was in early times an impor-
tant entrepot. It was also the religious centre of the Ionian
world, famed as the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo and for
the most ancient oracle of the god.^ Every fifth year the
birth of the twin deities was celebrated with magnificence,
amidst a great concourse, vividly described in the ancient
Hymn to Apollo : " Hither gather the long-robed lonians
with their children and chaste wives. They wrestle, they
dance, they sing in memory of the god. He who saw them
would say they were immortal and ageless, so much grace and
charm would he find in viewing the men, the fair-girdled
women, the swift ships, and riches of every kind." (See
also Thuc. iii. 104.) These festivals seem to have been
accompanied by contests in music and poetry. The temple,
with its priceless treasure of offerings, was not touched by
the Persians, who plundered most of the other islands, but
the Delian festivals seem to have ceased during the Persian
supremacy. They were revived with great ostentation by the
Athenians of the Empire, who used to send splendid theorias
in the sacred Delian galley (Salaminia) ; but this revival
was of short duration, for Delos had lost its special sanctity
in rivalry with Delphi, and the centre of religious life for
the lonians had been long since transferred to the great temple
of Artemis at Ephesus, as that of their political life was
transferred to the pan-Ionian assembly on Mount Mycale.
^ Homer speaks only of Apollo's altar in Delos. EJxcavation lias revealed
a sanctuary with small temples of Artemis, Apollo, Ivcto, and Aphrodite —
perhaps built on the site of the great ancient temple. Statues, possibly of
Artemis, have been discovered (see Fig. 50). The original Delian statue of
Apollo was said to have been brought thither by Theseus from Crete.
152
46. Site of Oi,ympia and Vai^e of the Ai<pheios
»^ !! giW !fy! a^L». ^M IJ«Mii
47. HERAION, OtYMPIA
152
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
By far tlie most famous, if not the most ancient, pan-Hellenic
assembly was that held at Olympia, where Heracles is said to
have consecrated (c. 1200) a sanctuary to Zeus, and to have
founded games after his victory over Augeas, king of Elis.
Others even attribute the foundation to Pelops (c.1280) . Tradi-
tion asserts that the games, which had fallen into disuse,
were reinstituted by Lycurgus of Sparta and Iphitus, king
of Elis ; ^ to prove which was shown at Olympia the discus
of Iphitus inscribed with the name of Lycurgus. Perhaps it
was on this occasion that the Eleans, supported by Sparta,
usurped the presidency at the games, held till then by the
people of Pisa, in whose territory Olympia lay, and to whom,
as we have already seen. King Pheidon of Argos (c. 680) for a
time restored their rights. During the seventh century all the
victors were Spartans, Messenians, and Eleans, so that it seems
as if the games were confined to these peoples. After the
Messenian wars (c. 600) we find competitors from other Greek
states, and later many of the most celebrated victors came
from South Italy, Sicily, and other parts of Hellas. None but
pure Hellenes were allowed to compete. Foreigners might be
spectators, but no slave nor any woman was allowed to be
present. 2
From 776 to 724 the games consisted merely of a foot-race of
about three hundred yards. Longer races were then introduced,
and the pentathlon (a fivefold contest in running, leaping,
wrestling, discus- and spear-throwing) and chariot-races, and
lastly the pancratium (combined boxing and wrestling). The
competitors had to undergo a training of ten months and
special practice for a month at Olympia under supervision, and
to make sacrifices and to vow that they would compete fairly.
There were official trainers besides the judges [hellanodicae) ,
who awarded the prizes — wreaths cut with a golden knife from
the sacred olive-tree, which, it was said, Heracles had planted.
1 Traditional date 884. Others give 776, i.e. the year of the victory of
Coroebus, from which the Olympiads are dated.
* Perhaps no married women ; and possibly exceptions were made with
Spartan women. A story is told of a woman being detected in male attire,
but as her son was victor she was forgiven.
ANCIENT GREECE
Marvellous stories were told of the feats of some of the
victors. The distances (fifty feet or so) covered by them in
leaping seem incredible, but how they used the halteres
— i.e. ' leaping weights ' held in the hands while jumping — is
unknown. Of activity and endurance we have a striking
example in the victor of the nine-mile race, who is said to have
continued running after passing the goal, and to have reached
Argos, some fifty miles distant, on the same evening.
The festival took place every fourth year. At first it
was limited to a single day (probably that of the first full
moon after the summer solstice). After the Persian wars
it was extended to five days. The vast multitudes who camped
on the slopes of the Mount of Cronos and the sandy hillocks
between the beds of the Alpheus and the Cladeus, and who
for five days stood in dense throngs around the racecourse and
-palaestra, must have suffered greatly from heat and drought —
for the river-water was scanty and bad, and it was not till a
late age that a reservoir of pure water was made by the wealthy
Roman, Herodes Atticus, No wonder that special sacrifices
were offered to Zeus the Averter of Flies !
A ' holy truce ' was proclaimed for the whole month,
during which all warfare was forbidden and the land of Elis
was considered sacred.
The temenos, or sacred precinct, at Olympia was called the
Altis.^ Within it stood in early days the ancient temple of
Zeus, on the site of which was probably afterwards built the
wonderful structure for which Pheidias made his famous
statue, and where the equally famous chest of Cypselus was
kept. Another temple contained the tomb of Pelops, and
very ancient stone foundations have been excavated which
are believed to have belonged to the temple of Hera and
Zeus — an edifice of sun-baked brick with wooden Doric columns
dating from perhaps looo (see Fig. 47). In an open space
of the Altis stood the great altar of Zeus, and outside the walls
was the Stadion, a racecourse about two hundred yards in
^ Probably the Elean form of lika-os, a sacred grove. The Altis was a
square of about two hundred yards each way, enclosed by great walls.
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
length. Such was Olympia in the age of Lycurgus, and also
of Pheidon ; but in time the old buildings were replaced by
marble temples, and many other magnificent structures arose
within and without the Altis — halls and porticoes and treasure-
houses. More than eighty altars erected to the various deities
testified to the vast numbers of the worshippers, who came
from all parts of Hellas ; ^ the avenues were lined with the
statues of victorious athletes, and both within and without
the temples were erected the masterpieces of renowned sculptors,
such as the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias, the Victory of Paeonius,
and the Hermes of Praxiteles. -
Even in the sixth century, as we shall see, men like
Xenophanes the philosopher spoke disdainfully of the glori-
fication of the athlete. Euripides, too, in the fragment that
survives of his Autolycus, calls athletes the worst of all the
ills of Hellas, and Socrates, one of the hardiest and bravest
of soldiers, spoke of such men with contempt, as did also
Epameinondas.
In a still later age — when chryselephantine statues of
royal Macedonians stood in the Philippeion at Olympia — the
games degenerated into mere professional contests, and
Alexander the Great himself is said to have despised ' athleti-
cism.' Under the earlier Roman emperors the Olympic Games
were celebrated with great magnificence, but were abolished
in A.D. 394 by Theodosius I. His grandson, Theodosius II,
had all the temples burnt. But many a splendid ruin still
remained, and afforded material to Christian church-builders,
as well as to Goths, Slavs, and Turks. At last the great
columns and pediments of the temple of Zeus were overthrown
by an earthquake. Excavations made by the Germans
about 1876 brought to light not only old foundations and
many fragments of architectural sculpture, but also the two
^ As one might infer from its site on the western shores of Greece, Olympia
was frequented far more by the Greeks of Western Hellas than by those of
Ionia. Out of the twelve treasure-houses five were erected by Greeks of
Sicily and South Italy, one by Epidamnus, one by Cyrene, and one by
Byzantium.
" See Figs. 93, 112, and coin 10, Plate III.
ANCIENT GREECE
statues already mentioned, the Hermes and the Victory —
both of them original masterpieces by great Greek artists.
Of these and of the sculptures of the Zeus temple I shall
speak again later.
Pan-Hellenic festivals with athletic and sometimes musical
and poetical contests were held also at Delphi, at Nemea,
and on the Isthmus. For all of them great antiquity was
claimed. The Isthmian Games were said to date from the
age of Theseus and Sisyphus, the Nemean from that of the
Seven against Thebes, while Apollo himself was said to have
founded the Pythian Games at Delphi. But very little is
known of them until they were refounded — the Isthmian
festival, in honour of Poseidon, possibly by Periander of
Corinth, and the Nemean, in honour of Zeus, by the Argives.
These festivals were biennial. At the same time as they were
reinstituted (c. 580) the Pythian Games were revived. At the
original Pythian festival there were probably only contests in
music and poetry. The great temple stood, as the Homeric
Hymn to Apollo says, "in a hollow, rugged glen beneath the
overhanging crags of snowy Parnassus " — a site very unsuitable
for athletic gatherings and horse-races. Nor did the god himself
seem to favour such things, for in the same Hymn the poet
protests in the deity's name against the clatter of chariots and
horses around his temple, and the " drinking of mules at the
sacred fountains." But when an arena was found at sufficient
distance, so that the tumult of games should not disturb the
sanctity of his oracle, Apollo was content and vouchsafed his
favour. This arena was the plain of Cirrha, or Crissa, lying
between Delphi and the sea. The people of Crissa, to whom
belonged the port at which pilgrims landed, levied heavy dues
and otherwise annoyed the people of Delphi, who had control
of the Delphic shrine. These appealed to the Amphictiony ^ —
a religious league of North Grecian states — which espoused
their cause, and with the help of Cleisthenes of Sicyon, after
* AmphicHones means 'dwellers around.' The league was probably begun
by the neighbours of a shrine of Demeter near Thermopylae, and gradually
grew until the Amphictionic Council had great influence. See Did. Ant.
156
48. Vai,e of Tempe and Mouth of River Peneios
49. Site of DE1.PI11
156
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
a struggle of about ten years (the first Sacred War), succeeded
in capturing Crissa (590). They razed it to the ground and
dedicated the Crissaean plain to the service of the Delphian
god ; and on this plain was held the Pythian festival, which
for its musical, poetical, and artistic contests, as well as for
its chariot-races, became scarcely less famed than that of
Olympia itself. French excavators have brought to light the
remains of the great temple and of about six others, as well as a
theatre, stadium, and gymnasium, not far from the Castahan
Fount, and the paved Sacred Way which winds up the huge
stone terraces on which Apollo's temple stood. This Sacred
Way was lined by treasure-houses erected by many of the chief
cities of Greece, and was once filled with priceless works of
art, almost all of which have naturally disappeared, for Delphi
was the prey of plunderers during many ages. Fine architectural
sculptures have, however, been recovered, especially some that
belonged to the Athenian, Sicyonian, and Cnidian treasuries,
and also numerous statues, offerings to the Delphic god. Of
these the most remarkable are a colossal Sphinx dedicated
by the people of Naxos, and the bronze charioteer (Fig. 74)
which was probably erected as a thank-offering for victory in
a chariot-race by Polyzalus, the brother of Hiero.
SECTION D : THE POETS (776-560)
We have seen how by the time of Hesiod the old monarchical
and feudal feeling had largely given way to the natural yearn-
ings for personal liberty and independent thought, and how
such yearnings, thwarted by the rich and high-born oppressor,
found vent in bitter lament and the cry for justice and
equality. The true poet — who ever interprets his age — no
longer deigned to sing the praises of heaven-descended princes.
The epic bard, or rhapsode, indeed, still existed, and the
Cychc writers (so called because they attempted to finish the
whole cycle of the legend of Troy) supplied him with material
such as the Sack of Ilion, the Cypria, the Little Iliad, and the
Telegoneia, and sometimes, for a change, with mock-heroic
157
ANCIENT GREECE
parodies of the Homeric epic such as the Margites, the story
of a booby-hero who " knew many professions but knew all
badly," or the Batrachomyomachia, the ' Battle of the Frogs
and Mice.' And there were (as there are in most ages) poets
who wrote religious verse — hymns for festivals of the gods,
some of them, such as the ' Homeric ' hymns to Apollo and
Demeter, of great dignity and beauty. But all this was a
survival. The spirit of the age was another, and poetry
demanded new forms in which to sing of freedom and fatherland,
love and friendship, wisdom and virtue, life and death.
The first of these new forms was elegiac verse, which in its
original home, Caria and I^ydia, was of a dirge-like character
and was accompanied by mournful flute-music. But the
metre, a couplet consisting of the epic hexameter and a similar
but shorter and more energetic verse with two emphatic
monosyllables, was adopted by the Greeks for their war-songs,
and also for exhortatory poetry {viroQmai) and sententious
maxims (yi'w/xat), and for the expression of personal feelings
and opinions on all subjects affecting human life. Among the
elegiac poets of this age the chief were Callinus, Tyrtaeus,
Mimnermus, and Solon.
The second form was iambic verse, generally of a satiric
character, the chief writers of which were Semonides of Amorgos
and Archilochus.
The third form was lyrical verse. These early lyrical
poets stand on a level immeasurably higher than that of the
elegiac and iambic writers. The best known, though, alas !
by repute rather than from what has survived of their poetry,
are Sappho and Alcaeus, with whom one may perhaps venture
to associate Alcman, Arion, and Stesichorus.
The following brief accounts of these poets and of some of
their surviving works may prove interesting. Further bio-
graphical details will be found in classical dictionaries.
(i) Callinus of Ephesus was perhaps the inventor of the
elegiac couplet. His seems to have been mostly war-poetry.
Among the few verses of his that are extant he calls upon his
countrymen to rouse themselves : " How long will ye lie idle,
158
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
while war fills all the world ? . . . 'Tis honourable and glorious
for a man to fight for his fatherland, his children, and the
wife of his youth. ... It is not possible to escape one's
destined death. . . . Many a man has fled battle and the clash
of arms only to return to his home and find there the doom
of death." In a verse preserved by Strabo Callinus exclaims :
" Now is coming the host of the Cimmerians, those doers of
terrible deeds ! " It is therefore probable that by his war-songs
he roused the Ephesians against these savages, who (c. 678) had
captured Sardis and killed the I^ydian king Gyges, and soon
afterwards burnt the temple of Artemis, just outside the walls
of Bphesus.
(2) Of Tyrtaeus (c. 660) we have already heard. Whether
he was really an Athenian, or whether his birthplace, Aphidna
in Ivaconia, was confused with Aphidna in Attica, is unknown.
Fragments survive of ' Tyrtaean ' marching songs in anapaestic
measure — e.g.
"AyeT\ d) STrapraf evdvdpov
Kovpoi TTUTepav TToKtaratv . . .
— and about eighty elegiac couplets, some of which have a
splendid swing, such as :
TfdvdjifvaL yap kolKov eTrt Trpopa^oicri neaovTa
av8p' ayaduv rrepl rj Trarpl^L papvapevov . . .
Kol TTuda nap ttoSi ^fi? (cal err' dani8oi dcmlb epeiaras . . •
The language is almost pure Ionic, not Doric ; which is
strange if he was really »Spartan. Moreover, his poetry (if
it is his) contains numerous lines almost identical with lines
of Callinus, so that some hold that it was written in Ionia
by some Milesian poet and attributed to Tyrtaeus. Among
Tyrtaean elegiac exhortations [virodmai) are some fine verses
encouraging young warriors not to desert their elders in battle.
" What a foul sight," the poet exclaims, " is a white-headed
warrior lying dead in the front ranks ! But in the youth
everything is seemly ; he is handsome alive and handsome also
when fallen in the van of the battle." Besides, he adds,
bravery is the best policy ; the bold survive, while all the herd
159
ANCIENT GREECE
of cowards perishes. Of his elegy Eunomia {' Good Order ')
about thirty Hnes are extant. In it the poet calls on the citizens
to avoid dissension and to respect the Pythian oracle as the
source of law and order. He mentions the " god-honoured
kings " of Sparta, especially Theopompus, under whose
command, after nineteen years, " we conquered Messenia,
good to plough and good to plant." Another fragment
(possibly genuine) depicts vividly a well-known characteristic of
the Spartans : " The love of money and naught else shall
ruin Sparta. . , . Thus hath golden-haired Apollo prophesied
from his rich shrine."
(3) The poetry of Mimnermus (c. 630) is of a more personal
character. Some of it is addressed to Nanno, a flute-girl.
"What is life," he exclaims, " without golden Aphrodite? "
Old age is a terrible thing ; its doom (/c>/p) is worse than that of
death, destroying both eyes and mind.^ lyike Horace he sings of
the joys of youth, and bids one gather them donee virenti canities
abesf. Perhaps more interesting than his views on this subject
are the verses in which he tells how an ancestor of his drove
in rout the phalanxes of Lydian horsemen on the plain of the
Hermus. This was evidently in a fight between the people of
Smyrna, the poet's birthplace, and King Gyges, who failed to
take the city. Three generations later (c. 590) Alyattes of
Lydia captured and razed Smyrna (see p. 149). But Mimnermus
probably did not live to see this evil day, though he seems
to have survived to the manhood of Solon [c. 600), who
answered his assertion that life was over at seventy ^ by
bidding him substitute ' eighty.'
(4) When Solon was in Egypt, says the grandfather of
Critias in Plato's Timaeus, he heard from the priests (the same
priests who told him that the Greeks were always children)
the wonderful story of the isle Atlantis. " Ay," adds the old
Critias, "if he had not taken up poetry as a mere by-work,
but had worked at it earnestly like others and had composed
1 Perhaps these (cijpes of Mimnermus are the evil spirits, or, as Miss Harrison
has argued, the bacilli, of old age and death. See p. 46.
* Strangely enough, Solon in his Ten Ages gives seventy as the limit, and
Herodotus makes him give the same in his conversation with Croesus.
160
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
a poem on this story that he brought from Egypt, instead of
having been obhged to neglect it on account of all the political
troubles that he found here at Athens, I believe that neither
Hesiod nor Homer nor any other poet would have been more
famous."
In spite of Critias, or even of Plato himself, it is not easy to
believe that Solon could ever have been a great poet. But his
verses are often exceedingly eloquent and forcible, and on
account of his great reputation as statesman and sage they
are of supreme interest. In an age when writing was still a
rare accomplishment and one had to trust mainly to the
living voice those who had anything to say and who wished
to impress it on the memory of their hearers chose a rhythmical
form — which, after all, is the natural mode of expression for
the emotions, and far less artificial than literary prose. ^ Even
laws, it is said, were anciently published in rhythmical language,
and not only sages such as Solon and Bias (who wrote a poem of
two thousand lines) , but also many of the earlier philosophers,
as Parmenides, Heracleitus, Xenophanes, Empedocles, and
perhaps even Thales himself, expressed their doctrines in verse
— a method which, as the magnificent De Rerum Natura of
Lucretius in a later age proved, allows the imagination its
sublimest flights, but which might have its disadvantages
for writers on what is nowadays called philosophy. The
extant verses of Solon are {a) eight lines of his celebrated
verses, originally a hundred, about Salamis ; (6) Exhortations
to the Athenians ; (c) Exhortations to himself ; {d) some
trochaic and iambic verses.
The sense of his lines about Salamis is as follows : "I
came myself as a herald from lovely Salamis, having composed
an order [series] of verses instead of a set-speech. . . . Would
that I had been then [when we gave up Salamis] a man of
Pholegandros or Sicine [little Aegaean islands] rather than an
^ Aesop (c. 570) should here be mentioned. If he wrote his Fables in verse,
as is probable, they were known later only in a prose version ; for Socrates,
when in prison, bidden by the god to " make his life more musical," versified
some of them.
L 161
ANCIENT GREECE
Athenian, for swiftly this report might be spread abroad :
This is an Attic man — one of the Salamis-abandoners."
In his Exhortations to the Athenians he eloquently describes
the ruin brought on a city which loves injustice — how its poor
are sold into slavery and not even the courtyard doors keep out
disaster from a man's home. He sings of Order and Disorder,
and of feuds between rich and poor. " I stood holding before
both a mighty buckler, nor did I let either win unjustly." " It
is hard," he says, " to please all in great undertakings." He
speaks of the Demos, and how it best obeys its leaders when
not given too loose a rein nor held in too tight ; and he addresses
a remark to this same Demos which shows how thoroughly
he understood its nature : " Each one of you singly treadeth
in the tracks of the fox [is foxish in cunning], but when ye
are all together the mind within you is a gaping gooselike
thing ; for ye pay regard to the tongue and the word of any
wheedhng flatterer and look not at all to what is being
done."
The Exhortations to himself contain many wise saws and
maxims — e.g. " Wealth is good, but not when ill-acquired " ;
" God is a righteous judge, not quick to anger as a man."
A very interesting fragment is his Ten Ages, in which he
depicts with almost Shakespearean art the state of man at
every seventh year of his life — from the child of seven shedding
his first teeth to the septuagenarian "ripe to receive his destined
doom of death," an expression inconsistent with his answer to
Mimnermus. He probably lived eighty years himself, and one
of his finest sayings was, " I grow old ever learning many
things."
Of historical interest (if genuine) are the lines that he
addressed to Philocyprus, the Cyprian prince, bidding him
farewell, and wishing him long life at his new city, Soli (see
p. 141)-
Among the fragments of his trochaic tetrameters there is a
rather amusing passage in which he pretends to quote public
criticism of the fact that he followed the example of Pittacus
rather than that of Periander "Solon," he says, "was a
162
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
man of no deep wisdom or judgment, for when God gave
him good things he would not accept them, and, having
enclosed his catch, became nervous and did not haul his big
net to land. If / had got hold of such power and boundless
wealth, even if I had been tyrant of Athens for a single day,
I should have been willing to be flayed to make a wine-skin and
have all my family exterminated."
In his iambics he gives a most interesting account of how
he released debtors and recalled those who had been sold into
foreign slavery.
(5) Horace says that " fury armed Archilochus with his
own iambus." Doubtless iambic rhythm (which in some
languages, such as English, is the natural rhythm of emotional
language) existed before.^ It is found, for instance, in the
Margites, sometimes attributed to Homer, and it was
probably used in chants at Demeter mysteries and other reli-
gious ceremonies ; whence perhaps Archilochus borrowed it, for
his father was a priest of Demeter, and he himself won the
prize for a hymn to the goddess. But possibly the iambic
trimeter (the metre used by the great Greek dramatists) was
invented by this poet of Paros, who used it with dire effect,
it is said, in his scathing satires against I^ycambes and his
daughters. From fragments of his poems (which comprised
elegiacs, iambics, trochaic tetrameters, and also combinations
of various rhythms, imitated by Horace in his Epodes) it seems
that he visited Southern Italy, for he speaks of the " streams
of the Siris, more lovely than Thasos." Also he mentions
Euboea, and describes the Euboean mode of fighting : " not
much bending of bows nor many slings, but the terrible work
of the sword " ; so, perhaps, he took part in the Lelantine war
of Chalcis and Eretria (p. 128). He joined an expedition to
Thasos made by the Parians, attracted by the gold-mines of
that island and of the opposite Thracian mainland ; but it
seems to have been unsuccessful. He speaks of Thasos v/ith
^ The essential difference between the hexametric and iambic rhythms con-
sists in the fact that the spondee (or dactyl) is in equipoise, its two parts
balancing each other and producing a smooth onward motion, whereas the
trochee or iambus (~^ or '-'") causes an agitated, up-and-down movement.
163
ANCIENT GREECE
dislike as a bare, rocky ridge " like a donkey's back." In a
fight with Thracians he lost his shield (a fact that probably
accounts for a similar story about Alcaeus, and certainly
accounts for the imaginative loss of Horace's shield at
Philippi). His lines on the subject may be thus rendered :
Some Thracian's doubtless chuckling o'er an unexpected find —
A brand-new shield, which much against my will I left behind.
Well, anyhow, I saved my life. The shield may go to pot !
Another and a better one can easily be got.
More important for the chronologist is the fact that, perhaps
while he was in Thasos, he witnessed a solar eclipse, for this
gives us the first quite certain date in Greek history, viz.
April 8, 648. " Nothing," he says, " is incredible and impossible
any longer, since Zeus created night at noonday, hiding the
light of the blazing sun ; and pale dread fell upon mortals.
Henceforth all things can be believed and expected. Let none
wonder even if the beasts of the forest exchange with dolphins
and dwell in the briny realms, and the resounding billows
become dearer to them than the dry land, while the mountains
delight those others." Possibly there is reference here to his
former love for the fair Neobule, lyycambes' daughter, now
changed into the bitterest disdain.
But of all that has survived of Archilochus the lines are
the finest in which he addresses his own soul, as Odysseus
does in the Odyssey. " Soul, soul, storm-tossed by desperate
cares, come forth and defend thyself breast-foremost 'gainst
thy foes, and station thyself in safety anigh the ambush of
the enemy. And if victorious, triumph not openly, nor, if
conquered, fall on thy face in thy house and lament, but rejoice
in all that is joyous and vex not thyself too much because of
evil men, remembering that such is the way of mortals." Words
like these and a line such as
Gyges with aU his golden wealth is naught to me,
come like a breath of fresh air across all the long ages of dusty,
dreary warfare and politics that so often form the main subject
of history.
164
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
(6) Semonides, called also Simonides, probably from being
confused with the later poet of that name, was a Samian by
birth, but migrated, perhaps as oekist of a Samian colony,
to the little island of Amorgos. lyike Archilochus, he used the
iambic trimeter for satire ; but his satire was not directed against
individuals, and his only extant complete poem, in spite of some
very caustic passages, is quite Horatian in its playful humour.
This poem, which is of about a hundred lines, describes the
creation of ten different kinds of women — the dirty from the pig,
the sly from the fox, the shameless and inquisitive from the
dog, the stupid from earth, the unstable from water, the obsti-
nate from the donkey, the thievish from the cat, the coquettish
from the horse, the mischievous from the monkey, and, lastly,
the good and industrious from the bee. The last he describes
with as much enthusiasm as Solomon himself, and a couplet
of his preserved by Clement of Alexandria repeats almost word
for word Hesiod's assertion that "nothing can a man win
better than a good woman, or worse than a bad one." Some of
the pictures in this poem of Semonides are exceedingly vivid —
such as that of the coquette, who will take no share in household
duties, but sits afar from the hearth, fearing the soot, and
performs her ablutions and anointings twice or even three
times daily, and " carries on her head a deep mane of hair
all combed out and overshadowed with flowers — a pretty sight
indeed for others, but to her lord and master a misfortune,
unless he be some tyrant or sceptre-bearing king who delights
in such things."
(7) Alcman was born at Sardis, in I^ydia, but his father
was probably Greek. How he came to Sparta is unknown.
Either, like Terpander, he was invited thither, or he came
originally as a slave and gained his freedom and civic honours
by his poetry. He is, according to the canon of the Alexandrine
grammarians, the first Greek lyric poet. His language is the
old I^aconian dialect. He wrote hymns, love- and war-songs,
and Parthenia (songs for Spartan maidens), all of which
seem to have been true songs and of a far higher poetic value
than the verses of Tyrtaeus. The form, too, of his poems
165
ANCIENT GREECE
is very different from that of the elegiac and iambic poets.
They consist of short hnes, mostly trochaic and dactylic,
arranged in strophes and antistrophes — a system invented by
him, amplified by Stesichorus and Pindar, and adopted by
the Attic dramatists for their choral odes — in which also the
Doric dialect is often used. He lived about 670-600, and was
thus probably a contemporary of Tyrtaeus.
Of his poetry numerous fragments remain. Of these the
most important was discovered (written on papyrus) in Egypt
about sixty years ago. It is a Parthenion, meant to be sung
by virgins at the festival of Artemis Orthia (see p. loi). There
are also four hexameters of great beauty, addressed in old age
to the Spartan maidens. He laments that he can no longer
take part in their songs and dances and wishes he were some
bright-coloured sacred sea-bird "that over the foam of the
sea with dauntless heart amid the halcyons flies." His lines
descriptive of the stillness of night have all the vividness,
if not the pathos, of Goethe's Ueher alien Gipfeln ist Ruh'.
(8) Arion {c. 625) was a native of lycsbos, which he left
probably early, before the days of Alcaeus and Sappho. He
spent most of his life at the court of Periander of Corinth, where
he became famous as a minstrel and song-writer. According
to Herodotus, as well as Aristotle, he was " the first to invent
the dithyramb measure." More probably he adapted the
rough measures and boisterous ribaldry of the old Cyclic,
or dithyramb, chorus, sung at vintage dances in honour of
Dionysus. There is nothing of Arion's poetry extant, although
the historian Aelian (third century a.d.) quotes verses in which
Arion himself is supposed to give an account of his rescue by
the dolphin. Aelian also appeals to the inscription on the
bronze statue of Arion and his dolphin erected on Cape Taenarus
to prove the truth of that account ; and perhaps there is
more truth in the story than we believe. Pliny tells of a
dolphin (porpoise) who used to carry a boy to and from
school every day across the bay of Baiae.
(9) Stesichorus (c. 632-556) was born at Himera, in Sicily.
One tradition asserts that he was a son of Hesiod. He incurred
166
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
the hostility of the notorious tyrant Phalaris and fled to
Catane, where he died. His tomb gave the name to one of
the city gates. This name, Stesichorus, he is said to have
received in addition to his original name Tisias because he
was famed as an ' arranger of choruses.' He is said to have
brought the lyric art to perfection in language and rhythm,
but the bulk of his writings seems to have been on epic subjects
— the old Trojan and Orestean legends and the myths about
Heracles. Of these poems numerous fragments survive, but
they are of little interest except the first three lines (preserved
for us by Plato) of the celebrated Palinode with which Stesi-
chorus atoned for having slandered Helen of Troy and thus,
it is said, recovered his eyesight : " It is not true — that story.
Thou didst never embark on well-benched ships nor reach
the battlements of Troy." It was not Helen herself that
Paris carried off, but only a phantom — that ' double ' of
Helen which plays a part in Greek legend and literature and
is intimated in the beautiful episode of the Helena in Goethe's
Faust.
(lo) Alcaeus {c. 645-580) belonged to a noble family of
Mytilene in I^esbos. He took part against the tyrant Myrsilus,
and after the defeat of the I^esbians by the Athenians at
Sigeum (in defence of which stronghold he distinguished
himself — and perhaps lost his shield) he, as well as his brother
and many others of the aristocratic party, went into exile
[c. 596). He seems to have been for some time in Egypt,
where Apries (Hophra) was reigning and Naucratis, the Greek
settlement, was already a flourishing town. Hither, too,
perhaps with Alcaeus, came Charaxus, the brother of Sappho —
and possibly even Sappho herself. The brother of Alcaeus
took service under Nebucadnezar, and may have been at the
sack of Daphnae (see p. 144), but probably he returned with
the poet to Mytilene. Here Alcaeus violently opposed the
democratic party, and when Pittacus {c. 590) was made
dictator (p. 128) he was imprisoned ; but the wise Pittacus
seems to have forgiven him, and probably the two became
friends. A true and tender friendship existed also between
167
ANCIENT GREECE
Alcaeus and Sappho, who was the younger by a few years.
His poetry breathes passionate emotion. He sings of gods
and of men, of war and arms, of love and wine. In verses still
extant he describes the ship of the state (a picture copied by
Horace) tossed on the waves, rolling to and fro with sails
rent and the water rising ever higher in the hull. Two lines
survive addressed to Sappho : " O violet- weaving, holy,
sweetly smiling Sappho, I wish to say something to thee, but
shame prevents me." Of all his poems (ten books of which
once existed) we have but these lines and a few other fragments.
Many of his odes were written in the measure (a stanza of four
lines) invented by him, and named after him — a measure
well known from Horace's translations and imitations of the
Aeolian bard ; known also to English readers from Tennyson's
fine stanzas addressed to Milton.
(ii) Sappho, like Alcaeus, was al^esbian, and had her home
at Mytilene ; but for some years (c. 596-590) she too lived
in exile, perhaps in Sicily — possibly also at Naucratis. At
Mytilene her house, which she named ' The Home of the Muses,'
was the gathering-place of many literary and fashionable
women, and as Lesbos was at this time, it is said, rich in female
writers, some of whom tried to found schools in rivalry of
Sappho and her ill-fated friend, the poetess Erinna, jealousy
and calumny were inevitable. Hence doubtless arose the
tales that sullied her good name — tales which were more
readily believed by the Athenians because of the very different
ideas that prevailed at Athens and among the Lesbians in
regard to the amount of social freedom allowable to women.
Less intelligible is the tale that relates her hapless infatuation
for the mythical Phaon, the ugly ferryman who was rejuvenated
and beautified by Aphrodite, and her fatal leap from the
Leucadian precipice.
Sappho's poetry has the exquisite natural grace and the
delicate but distinct outlines of the finest Greek sculpture —
such sculpture as we see on the frieze of the Parthenon or on
some beautiful Athenian stele. Both in thought and in lan-
guage it offers the very greatest contrast imaginable to what
168
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
is often regarded as the true poetical method of expressing
deep emotion. It affects one not by the display of vehement
passion, but by impressing on one's mind a picture which
haunts the memory and ever afterwards has the power of
stirring one's feelings as if it were a real experience.
Even the fragments that remain of her nine books of poems
allow us to accept without hesitation the judgment of ancient
critics, who were unanimous in their almost reverential admira-
tion. Among these surviving fragments are three probably
complete odes in her favourite measure, invented by her (or
some say by Alcaeus) and known as the Sapphic.^
No translation can give any hint of the beauty and power
of her language, but even a rough prose version of some of
these relics of her poetry may be more useful and interesting
than biographical details and critical comments. First let us
take the ode to Aphrodite :
" Immortal Aphrodite on thy throne of many colours,
daughter of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I implore thee, break not
my heart, O I^ady, with excess of love and of anguish, but come
hither, if ever before thou heardest from afar my cries and,
leaving the golden mansion of thy father, didst yoke thy
car and come ; and swiftly thy winsome sparrows brought thee
over the dark earth, eddying their rapid wings, from heaven
through the midmost aether ; and quickly they arrived, and
thou, O blessed one, smiling with thy divine countenance,
didst ask what ailed me now again, and why again I called on
thee, and what in my maddened heart I wished. Whom dost
thou desire that Persuasion should bring to thy friendship ?
Who doeth thee wrong, Sappho ? E'en if she fleeth, she shall
soon pursue thee ; and if she accepteth not gifts, yet shall she give
them ; and if she loveth not, soon shall she love — yea, even against
her imll. Come to me also now, and set me free from grievous
cares, and all that my heart longs to be fulfilled do thou fulfil,
and be once more my helper ! "
^ Horace used the vSapphic metre twenty-six times and the Alcaic thirty-
seven times. Probably the best example of the metre in English is Canning's
' Needy Knife-grinder.'
169
ANCIENT GREECE
The second is an ode that was discovered not many years
ago among the papyrus manuscripts found at Oxyrhynchus,
in Egypt. It was addressed by Sappho to her brother
Charaxus, at Naucratis, where he is said to have disgraced
himself with his relations by falling in love with the notorious
Rhodopis, who was a slave-girl (a fellow-slave, says Herodotus,
of Aesop the fable-writer), and was redeemed by Charaxus
at a great expense — for which he was " often lashed by Sappho
in her poetry " :
" I implore you. Sea-nymphs, grant that my brother return
hither in safety, and that all things which in his heart he may
desire be fulfilled, and that he may atone for all the errors
of the past and become a joy to his friends and a sorrow to
his enemies ; and to us may he never prove of no account.
And may he wish to make his sister share in his good name,
and may he forget the grievous pain of what in days past
made him mourn and break his heart, as he heard at some
festival of the citizens a wounding word that cut right deep
into the quick and, though ceasing for a time, ere long returned
again."
The third ode, also in Sapphic measure, gives us, without
any attempt at direct description, a picture of a beautiful
maiden beloved by Sappho :
" Ivike unto the gods seemeth to me that man who sits in
thy presence and nigh unto thee listens to thy sweet voice and
laughter, which ever sets a-throbbing the heart within my
bosom. For when I look e'en for a moment on thee, no voice
comes any more, but my tongue fails utterly and a soft glow
at once spreads o'er my face, and I see no more with my eyes,
and my ears are filled with sounds, and the sweat pours down
and trembling seizeth all my body, and I am more pallid than
grass and am so distraught that I seem nigh unto death
itself."
Another short poem, in a different metre, intimates by a
different poetical process, and again without any direct
170
THE AGE OF COLONIZATION
description, the loveliness of Sappho's friend Atthis, who had
married a I^ydian and had gone with him to Sardis :
" Now amidst I^ydian women she shineth in her beauty
as, whene'er the sun is set, the rosy moon, having round her all
the stars, spreads abroad her light o'er the briny sea alike
and o'er the flowery fields ; and the dew lies there, beautiful,
and roses revive and bloom, and fragile chervil and rich-
blossoming melilot."
A very different woman is pictured in another fragment :
" When thou art dead thou shalt lie there, and never shall
there be any remembrance of thee nor any longing for thee
in days to come, for thou hast no share in the roses of Pieria
[poetry and music], but when thy soul has flown forth, also in
the mansion of Hades unnoticed thou shalt flit about with the
dim inglorious dead."
Many other beautiful fragments of Sappho's poetry survive.
Well-known lines of Byron were evidently inspired by her
address to the evening star : " O Hesperus that bringest
back all things which the gleaming dawn dispersed, thou
bringest the sheep, thou bringest the goat, thou bringest the
boy back to his mother."
A graphic picture of autumn is given in a few words : " All
round it pipeth chill amidst the orchard boughs ; the leaves
are quivering and the foliage falls." Another touch of autumn,
recalling Coleridge's " one red leaf on the topmost twig," is
given in what may be the fragment of some marriage-song :
" As a sweet apple blusheth on the tip of the branch, on the
topmost tip, and the apple-pickers have forgotten it — nay,
have not forgotten it, but have been unable to reach it."
Among the many papyrus manuscripts yet undeciphered or
undiscovered we may have the fortune to come upon more of
Sappho's poetry. Indeed, it was lately reported that some-
thing more had been found. Were enough to come to light
to influence modern literature, the gain would be inestimable,
for the great qualities of Sappho's poetry are just what modern
literature lacks most.
171
CHAPTER IV
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS AND THE
RISE OF PERSIA
(560-500)
SECTIONS : POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS : THE ORDERS OF GREEK
ARCHITECTURE : SCULPTURE. DOWN TO THE PERSIAN WARS
TO the student of comparative politics the history of
Athens from 560 to 500 is especially attractive, for
during this period, while the democratic constitution
framed by Solon still continued to exist, as Thucydides says,
in its essential features, the state was for many years under
the absolute control of a single man and his heirs, who, although
the power was seized by the usual methods, may be regarded
rather as constitutional rulers than as despots. That Athens
for a time lost her liberty and emerged from the trial stronger
and better prepared to face the foe of Hellas cannot but be of
deep interest, but the phenomena of political evolution form
by no means the main subject of Greek history. Such pheno-
mena are due to ever-recurring influences working on average
human nature, and they may be traced under various conditions
in the stories of many another nation ; ^ but genius has ever
something new to tell us, and from Greek genius we may learn
what we cannot learn from any other source. I shall therefore
content myself with giving a brief account of the reign, or
tyranny, of Peisistratus and his sons and of the reforms of
Cleisthenes, and shall reserve more of the space at my disposal
for matters of greater importance.
When Solon returned to Athens (c. 562) dissension was at
^ By a strange coincidence the same year (510) saw the banishment of the
Tarquins from Rome and of the Peisistratidae from Athens.
172
50. ' Artemis of Dei<os '
51. Stei<e of Aristion
172
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
its height, and it is quite possible that, finding his influence
of no avail, he again left for the East and visited Croesus,
who ascended the throne of lyydia in 560. In this same year
Peisistratus, the cousin of Solon, and the leader, as we have
seen, of the so-called party of the Hills, consisting mainly of
peasants and ultra-democrats, persuaded the people by means of
a stratagem ^ to allow him a bodyguard, and seized the Acro-
polis. Hereupon his political opponents left Athens, and
he seems to have quietly assumed the reins of government
and to have remained in power for about five years. Solon,
when again in Athens, is said to have appealed to the people
to " pluck the tyrant up by the roots," but in vain. Some
relate that he returned to his friend the king of Soli, in
Cyprus, but from his verses to Mimnermus (if they are
his) it seems likely that he remained at Athens and lived
till c. 558, and found life at eighty not unenjoyable, even
under a despot.
Two or three years later Peisistratus was driven out by the
united parties of the Coast and the Plain, but they quarrelled,
and by the aid of Megacles he returned (c. 550). The stratagem
by which this was effected would be incredible if we did not
know how ineradicable proved the old deisidaimonia — that
eerie dread of the supernatural which was so universal in an
earlier age, and to which the Athenians seem to have been
especially susceptible. The story is that Peisistratus entered
Athens in a chariot on which there stood by his side a stalwart
peasant woman arrayed as Athene, and that the mob accepted
the apparition as genuine and reinstated him in power. Peisis-
tratus had promised to marry the daughter of Megacles
(who was the head of the Alcmaeonid nobles), and he did so,
but he refused to treat her as his wife, for he had a family
by a former wife and was unwilling to connect himself with
descendants of Cylon, who were regarded as accursed. This
led to his second banishment, which lasted for ten years,
^ By displaying self-inflicted wounds. We have a similar story connected
with Sextus Tarquin, and with Odysseus {Od. iv. 244). The grant of a body-
guard was proposed to the Ecclesia by Aristion, whose portrait we probably
have in Fig. 51.
ANCIENT GREECE
until about 540, when, with mercenaries from Argos and
Naxos, he crossed from Euboea to Marathon, surprised or
won over the Athenian troops and entered the city, where he
re-estabUshed himself as absolute ruler, sending the children
of his adversaries as hostages to his friend Lygdamis, tyrant
of Naxos, and expelling the Alcmaeonidae.
The rule of Peisistratus during the next thirteen years is
said to have been wise and beneficial. He feued much of the
land to peasants, encouraged agriculture, extended Athenian
power and commerce abroad, recapturing Sigeum from
the Lesbians and promoting Greek influence on the shores
of the Hellespont, where the Thracian Chersonese was now
governed by an Athenian — the half-uncle of the famous
Miltiades.
About this elder Miltiades a picturesque story is told. He
was, says Herodotus, a victor in the Olympian chariot-race
and a man of high distinction, but an adversary of Peisistratus.
One day (c. 558) as he sat in the porch of his house, probably
brooding over the success of his rival, some wayfarers "in
outlandish garments and armed with lances" approached.
He offered them entertainment, and after the banquet was over
they told him that the Delphic oracle had bidden them take
back with them to their country, the Thracian Chersonese,
the first man who offered them hospitality, for he would help
them against their enemies. Miltiades, perhaps glad to leave
Athens, acceded to their entreaties and became ' king ' of the
Chersonese and a friend of Croesus. He was succeeded in
his office as Thracian prince and Athenian governor of the
Greek settlements on the Hellespont by a nephew, who was
(c. 520) succeeded by the younger and more celebrated
Miltiades.
Under Peisistratus Athens seems to have begun to assert
that hegemony in the Ionic world which she afterwards
attained. The lord of the Ionian mother-city took upon
himself, as Thucydides says, to ' purify ' Delos by removing
all the tombs within sight of the temple. He also ordered that
the Homeric poems, recited at the Delian and other festivals,
174
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
should be collected and arranged and written out in the Attic
script and divided into books. Possibly on this occasion
lines may have been inserted in order to connect Athens with
the great Ionian epic — for, whatever the reason may be, Homer
had said but little about the Athenians and their legends.
This revision of Homer was undertaken by Peisistratus and
his son Hipparchus in order to regulate the hitherto arbitrary
and disconnected recitations of the poem at the great festival
of Athene, which had been lately founded. At this festival
took place the musical and athletic contests and the stately
procession of which we have such precious records in the so-
called Panathenaic prize-vases and in the frieze of the Parthenon
(see Figs. 55 and 85). -
Besides the Panathenaic festival Peisistratus revived or
amplified the vintage festival, which had been held from early
ages in honour of Dionysus (the I^enaia, or ' Festival of the
Wine-vat'), such as we have already heard of in connexion
with Arion at Corinth. At this new festival, which was
called the Great Dionysia, the old dances and songs performed
originally by peasants dressed up as satyrs were in course of
time combined with dialogue and with representations of
old legends, and this ' goat-song ' performance [TpayioSla)
developed little by little into the Attic drama. The chief
composer and director of these Dionysiac performances in
the age of Peisistratus was Thespis, who is often spoken of as
the father of Attic tragedy. He is said to have first introduced
dialogue and to have himself taken the part of the actor who,
in various disguises and with a stained or masked face, con-
versed with the chorus of dancers. The first representation
of this kind at the New Dionysia is said to have taken place
in 535-
During the rule of Peisistratus and his sons the huge
temple of Olympian Zeus was begun and many fine buildings
were erected. Some of these will be described later. One
of his most useful works was a system of pipes by which
Athens was supplied with water, possibly from the Upper
Ilissus, or more probably from Kallirrhoe ('Fair-stream'), a
175
ANCIENT GREECE
natural source near the Ilissus and the Olympieion, to the
south-east of the Acropohs.^
Peisistratus died in 527 and left the government to his
eldest son, Hippias, while the second, Hipparchus (hke a
King Archon), had, perhaps together with a younger
brother Thessalus, the control of religious festivals, literary
and musical contests, and the like.''
For thirteen years Athens seems to have enjoyed an unevent-
ful prosperity under the Peisistratidae. We know really next to
nothing of this period, except that Hippias and his brother
were, like the Medici of Florence, patrons of art, and that
Anacreon and Simonides of Ceos visited their court. Herodotus
speaks of them as oppressive tyrants, while Thucydides, who
was related to the Peisistratidae, but whose judgment was not
likely to have been warped by prejudice, asserts that they
" cultivated virtue and intellect." He allows, however, that
" their tyranny proved galling at last," and that Hippias
ultimately proved not only a tyrant but a traitor to his country.
In 514 Hipparchus was assassinated by Harmodius and
Aristogeiton. He had conceived an infatuation for the
young Harmodius, and having been repelled he insulted the
sister of the youth, refusing her as a ' basket-carrier ' in
the Panathenaic procession.^ So the two friends planned to
kill Hipparchus and his brother ; " but, having suspected," says
1 Remains of the water-pipes of Peisistratus have perhaps been discovered
between the Pnyx and the Areopagus. KalHrrhoe, sometimes depicted on
Athenian vases, changed its ancient name, as Thucydides tells us (ii. 15),
to Enneakrounos ('Nine Fountains'), after the natural spring had been
built over and the waters were collected into a reservoir furnished with
nine distributing pipes. (Herodotus, however, speaks of it as Enneakrounos
in connexion with the old Pelasgic inhabitants.) The spring still exists and
retains its ancient name (Kalhrroi), but almost every trace of the reservoir
has disappeared. The pools formed by the spring are now used by Athenian
washerwomen .
« See Thuc. i. 20 and vi. 54 sq., and Hdt. v. 55. Also the pseudo-Plato in
his Hipparchus says that this prince" first introduced Homer into Greece."
The writer, whether Plato or not, evidently regarded Hipparchus as the chief
ruler — a belief stigmatized by Thucydides.
' According to Herodotus the Gephyraean family to which Harmodius
belonged was originally Phoenician, and was " excluded at Athens from a
number of privileges." Perhaps this was a legal ground for the rejection of
the girl.
176
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
Thucydides, " that information had been given to Hippias by
their accomplices, they abstained from attacking him, as being
forewarned, and as they wished to do something at all hazards,
having fallen in with Hipparchus, who was arranging the
Panathenaic procession, they slew him."
Possibly at first no great enthusiasm was excited by the
act — or else it was suppressed by dread — but not many years
later, after the expulsion of Hippias, statues were erected to
the Tyrannicides, and popular songs, such as the well-known
drinking-song (skolion) composed by the otherwise unknown
Callistratus, ' I'll wreathe my sword in myrtle bough,' prove
how the Athenians had learnt to detest the name of the
Peisistratidae. This hatred was much intensified by the
tyrannical conduct of Hippias after the murder of his brother.
" Being now in greater apprehension," says Thucydides, " he
put to death many citizens, and also kept his eye on foreign
states in whatever quarter he had a prospect of safe retreat
in case of revolution." Doubtless among these foreign states
was Persia.
After four years the revolution came. The exiled Alc-
maeonidae, who longed to return to Athens, had at length
succeeded in obtaining the aid of Sparta in the following way.
The great temple at Delphi had been burnt down, and a public
subscription through the whole of Greece had enabled the
Delphic treasury to contract for its reconstruction. The Alc-
maeonidae undertook the contract, and, using marble instead
of the specified poros, rebuilt the temple with such magnificence
and so won the favour of the Pythian priests that whenever
the Spartans came to consult the oracle the invariable answer
was, " First liberate Athens ! " Sparta, by the conquest of
Tegea and the defeat of Argos, had made herself the head of a
Peloponnesian league, and was strong enough to interfere in
Northern Greece. The first raid into Attica was defeated by
cavalry sent from Thessaly to aid Hippias, but the Spartan
king Cleomenes then led a strong force against Athens, and
Hippias, blockaded in the ' Pelasgic fortress ' {i.e. the Acropolis),
and hearing of the capture of his children, capitulated (510).
M 177
ANCIENT GREECE
He was allowed to leave Attica ' under treaty,' together with
his children, and went, says Thucydides, " first to Sigeum, then
to lyampsacus, and thence to the court of King Darius."
Now the head of the Alcmaeonidae who had been thus
restored to Athens was Cleisthenes. He was the grandson
of Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon, whose daughter married
the Athenian Megacles. Of this Megacles we have already
heard much. It was his daughter (and therefore the sister of
Cleisthenes) whom Peisistratus married and rejected.
On the expulsion of Hippias, whose absolute rule had kept
open feuds in abeyance, political discussion once more began.
Cleisthenes, the personal foe of the Peisistratidae, was naturally
opposed to the old regime, and, as Herodotus expresses it,
" called to his aid the common people." He was opposed by
Isagoras and the aristocratical party. Isagoras, being worsted,
appealed to Sparta, and the Spartans sent a peremptory
order (as they did again seventy-seven years later, in refer-
ence to Pericles) that the Athenians should " cast out the
accursed thing " — the " pollution of the goddess " — namely,
the Alcmaeonidae.^
Cleisthenes was forced to leave Athens. This, however, did
not content Isagoras and his party. They invited the Spartans ;
whereupon King Cleomenes came and expelled 700 Athenian
families. But on his trying to dissolve the Ecclesia and establish
an oligarchy the Athenians rose. The Spartans were blockaded
for two days in the Acropolis, and then accepted terms, pur-
chasing their lives by handing over their mercenaries to the
tender mercies of the Athenians, who put them all to death,
among them a Delphian who, as pancratiast, had won three
victories at the Pythian and two at the Olympic Games,
and whose statue by the celebrated Argive sculptor Ageladas
(the master of Pheidias, Myron, and Polycleitus) was seen
nearly 700 years later at Olympia by the traveller Pausanias.
Cleisthenes and the 700 families were then recalled. Cleomenes
endeavoured to invade Attica again, and although the attempt
failed (the Spartan kings having quarrelled), the Athenians were
1 See about Cylon p. 136 ; also Thuc. i. 126, and Hdt. v. 70.
178
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
so alarmed, if we are to believe Herodotus, that they actually
sent ambassadors to Sardis to sue for the alliance of Darius ;
but they were told that the friendship of the Great King was
only to be bought by earth and water, tokens of vassalage.
Possibly it was not in alarm that they did this, but in arrogance,
for we find them soon afterwards inflicting crushing defeats
on the Boeotians and the Chalcidians (of Euboea), who had
joined the Spartans in their last invasion of Attica. The
rich lyclantine plain (p. 129) was allotted to Athenian settlers,
and many Chalcidian prisoners were kept fettered at Athens
until they were ransomed at two minae apiece (say £8 nominal,
but perhaps £^0 in present value). " The chains wherewith
they were fettered," says Herodotus, " were hung up by the
Athenians in their Acropolis, where they were still to be
seen in my day, hanging against a wall scorched by the Median
flames." From a tenth of the ransom-money a magnificent
bronze quadriga was set up to the left of the old gate of the
Acropolis. ^ Moreover, in a stoa (portico) at Delphi the Athenians
dedicated (as we learn from an inscription lately discovered
there) arms and beaks of ships captured in this war.
The people of Aegina had made common cause with the
Boeotians against their old enemy, Athens. In Solon's time,
as we have seen, the Athenians had attacked Aegina, not long
after their conquest of Salamis, but had been driven out of the
island by the Argives.^ Since that time hostility had smouldered,
but it now broke out openly, and the Aeginetans carried on a
chronic ' unheralded ' war with Athens right down to the
time of the Persian war, making constant descents on the coast
of Attica and on the Athenian port Phaleron. Such was their
embitterment that shortly before the battle of Salamis the
Spartans had to interfere and send Aeginetans as hostages to
Athens in order to prevent Aegina aiding the Persians ; nor
did Aegina cease to be a thorn in the side of Athens till (in 431)
* Pericles perhaps set up another on the right hand (c. 446), and when the
new Propylaea were built (c. 437) they were probably put on new bases.
One of these bases with traces of the inscription quoted by Herodotus (v. 77)
has been found.
* See Hdt. v. 82 sq., and Note B, Dress.
179
ANCIENT GREECE
the inhabitants were expelled and the island was incorporated
in the Attic state.
Thus Athens began to unfold her powers — a fact that
Herodotus justly attributes to her regained political freedom.
" These things show," he says, " that while undergoing
oppression they let themselves be beaten, since they worked
for a master ; but as soon as they got their liberty each man
was eager to do the best he could."
Had this rewon liberty retained the basis of the old Solonian
constitution the old political feuds would have assuredly
reappeared and led even again to some form of enslavement,
but fortune willed it that Cleisthenes should discover a
method by which all the local and clan influences which had
made party feeling so rancorous and dangerous should be
eliminated, and the weal of the state should become the one
object of political activity. Having abolished the four old
Ionic tribes, which were founded on locality, profession, and
wealth, he formed ten tribes solely for political purposes. Each
of these new political tribes consisted of three trittyes (thirds)
taken from three different regions of Attica, so that the tribal
vote was not prejudiced by local influences. Kach tribe had
to supply a contingent of hoplites, some cavalry, ^ and one of
the ten generals of the Athenian army. Fifty men from every
tribe, chosen by lot from a selected number, formed the new
council (Boule) of 500. This council, in conjunction with the
archons and other magistrates, managed all internal affairs
and initiated laws to be sanctioned by the great Assembly
(Ecclesia). But for the dispatch of business the Boule had a
permanent committee. Each of its ten groups of councillors
took it in turn to act as this committee for thirty-six days
(the tenth of the year of 360 days, which was rectified by
intercalating a month every five years). While they sat on
committee these deputies were called prytaneis (presidents),
and their tribe was the ' presiding tribe ' during this space of
^ The tribal regiment was called a ' tribe ' [phyle). The subdivisions were
rA^fis and Xo^oi. See Hdt. vi. iii. In Solon's time Athens could muster
barely a hundred horsemen, and even at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
War only about a thousand.
180
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
thirty-six days (which was called a prytaneia). The people's
Assembly (Kcclesia) probably met, as it did in later times,
every nine days — or it may have been summoned only on
special occasions to sanction a law by plebiscite or to dispose
of some referendum. Of the Areopagus we hear little at this
period. It probably existed with only an empty show of
authority.
Ostracism may have been an invention of Cleisthenes, though
it seems to have been used first in 488. It was an useful method
of getting rid for a time of a dangerous citizen. The council
and Assembly first decided (and could only do it during the
sixth prytaneia) that an ostrakismos was advisable. On a fixed
day barricades were erected in the Agora and every voter of
the ten tribes gave his vote by casting into an urn an ostrakon
(potsherd) on which he had inscribed the name of any citizen
whom he held to be especially dangerous. The man against
whom most votes were given, should his ostraka number at least
6000 — i.e. about a fifth of the number of the voters — was
exiled for ten (later for five) years, but lost neither his citizenship
nor his property.
The Rise of Persia
We must now turn from the affairs of the refounded demo-
cracy of the little Attic state to note the rise of a mighty empire
which ere long will threaten to annihilate the whole of the
eastern while Carthage is endeavouring to annihilate the
western world of Hellas.
It would take us too far afield to follow Herodotus in his
investigations of the origins of the feud between Greece and
the Asiatic ' barbarian,' nor will it be possible to repeat
many of the countless stories that he tells in connexion with
the Ivydian, Median, and Persian kings, stories with which he
allures the reader to Egypt and Scythia and many another
strange land and people before he launches out into the subject
of the Graeco-Persian war.
I have already traced the history of Assyria and Babylon
down to the death of King Nebucadnezar in 562, that of
181
ANCIENT GREECE
Lydia to the accession of Croesus in 560, and that of Media to
the death of Astyages in 559, and we have seen that the great
kings of Nineveh and Babylon had never (except in the case
of Cyprus) come into coUision with the Greeks. But the
early I^ydian kings had attacked and subjugated several of
the Ionian and Aeolian cities, and Croesus, as soon as he was
firmly seated on the I^ydian throne, made himself master of
all the Greek cities on the mainland of Asia Minor except
Miletus, and even made preparations to invade the islands,
but was, says Herodotus, deterred by a witty remark of the
sage Bias.^ Ephesus was the first city he attacked — " The
Ephesians, when he laid siege to the place, made an offering
of their city to Artemis by stretching a rope ^ from the town
wall to the temple of the goddess, which was distant from the
ancient city by a space of seven furlongs." This was evidently
the new temple of the Ephesian Artemis, which was still being
built to replace the old temple burnt by the Cimmerians in
677. After capturing Ephesus, Croesus presented to this
temple, says Herodotus, " golden heifers and most of the
columns." The sculptured drum of one of these columns is
now in the British Museum (Fig. 119). On it were found the
Greek letters BA KP AN .... EN, which
have been (doubtless rightly) restored to BA2IAEY2
KPOISOS ANA0HKEN, i.e. " King Croesus dedicated."
The wealth ^ of Croesus, as that of his ancestor Gyges and
the Phrygian Midas, was proverbial. Although the conqueror
of the Greek cities of Aeolis and Ionia, he was a great admirer
of Hellenic civilization, and his court at Sardis was frequented
by many Greeks of distinction. He made, moreover, many
splendid offerings to Greek temples, of which Herodotus gives
a description that may well excite wonder, if not incredulity.
Shortly after the accession of Croesus, perhaps in 560-559,
Solon not improbably, as we have seen, visited Sardis. Croesus,
* Herodotus says: " Within my own knowledge Croesus was the first to
inflict injury on the Greeks " ; but Alyattes, Sadyattes, and perhaps Ardys
attacked the Greek cities.
* See p. 136, foot-note.
' See Hdt. i. 50 and 92. For the Lydian coinage see Note C, Coins.
182
52. The Croesus Coi,umn
From the earlier Ephesian temple
182
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
a young man of thirty-five in the first flush of kingly pride,
bade the sage tell him whom of all men he had ever met he
deemed the most happy. Solon cited an Athenian, Tellos
by name, who had been blessed with domestic happiness and
had died a soldier's death in defence of his country, and as
second happiest he cited the Spartan youths Cleobis and Bito,
who, when the oxen failed to come, yoked themselves to a car
and drew their aged mother five-and-forty furlongs to the
festival of Hera at Argos, and died in the temple ; and when
Croesus asked him in astonishment how he ventured to put
the happiness of such people on a level with his, Solon replied
that no wealth could give good fortune, and that even a fortu-
nate man cannot for certain be called ' happy ' until he is
dead, for " in every matter it behoveth us to mark well the
end."
Soon afterwards Croesus learnt that all his gold could not
save him from the grief of losing his favourite son, and some
ten years later he was taught the wisdom of marking well the
end. His kingdom had extended itself eastward over all
Phrygia, Mysia, and Paphlygonia, as far as the river Halys,
and hearing of the presumptuous doings of Cyrus and his
Persians and Medes, he got together a great army of I^ydians
and Greeks and crossed over into Cappadocia to challenge the
new foe — not before having consulted the oracle at Delphi.
The Delphic god, though he received gifts of almost indescrib-
able magnificence from Croesus, played him a rather disingenu-
ous trick, bidding him (as Ahab was bidden) go up, for he
would destroy a mighty empire. So vast had the power of
Croesus become that doubtless he had visions of making
himself the king of Media in the place of this usurper who
had dethroned the old Astyages. But the empire that he
should destroy was his own, as the oracle afterwards ex-
plained. After an indecisive battle near the ancient capital
of Cappadocia, Pteria, he retreated to Sardis, which ere long
was stormed by Cyrus. Croesus was condemned to die. He
was placed, with twice seven noble lyydian youths, on a great
funeral pyre. The pyre was lighted, and as the flames shot
183
ANCIENT GREECE
upward he was heard to call aloud three times on the name
of Solon. Cyrus demanded the reason, and when he learnt
it he bade the fire be quenched. But it was too late ; the
flames were not to be mastered. Then Croesus called on
Apollo, and a sudden deluge of rain extinguished the fire.
Cyrus, deeply moved by the miracle, made Croesus his coun-
sellor and constant companion.
Cyrus captured Sardis probably in 546. Thirteen years
earlier he had (according to Herodotus) dethroned the
Median king Astyages. His father, Cambyses, a descendant
of a noble chieftain named Achaemenes, was prince of the
Persians, a race of bold and hardy mountaineers, closely akin
to the Medes, living in the highlands between Media and
the Persian Gulf. This Cambyses married a daughter of
the Median king, and their son, the young Cyrus, putting
himself at the head of a body of Persians, succeeded (in 559)
in conquering his grandfather and establishing the Medo-
Persian Empire, This Medo-Persian Empire, when first Cyrus
mounted the throne, ^ occupied, roughly speaking, the lands
between the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, the Indus, and the valley
of the Tigris. Its chief cities were Pasargadae, Persepolis,
Ecbatana, and Susa. The general name given to this vast
country by its inhabitants was Iran, and these inhabitants
are therefore generally said to have belonged to the Iranian
branch of the Aryan race. In religion they were followers
of Zoroaster and worshipped Mithras, the sun-god. According
to Herodotus they had neither images of gods nor temples nor
^ Herodotus gives a story about the infancy of Cyrus and his childhood at
the court of Astyages which has great similarity to the Roman legend of
Romulus and Remus and King Numitor (Hdt. i. 107 sq.). It should be
mentioned that Xenophon, who wrote later but knew personally the younger
Cyrus, and Ctesias, who was surgeon to that prince's brother (Artaxerxes II),
give versions very different from that of Herodotus. Xenophon states in his
Cyropaedeia, where he describes the bringing up of Cyrus the Great, that Cyrus
never rebelled against his grandfather, but acted as his general and the
general of his son, Cyaxares II (unknown to Herodotus), and that he even
took Babylon (538) as the general of this Cyaxares II (perhaps the ' Darius
the Median ' of Daniel v. 31), whom he later dethroned. Ctesias asserts
that Cyrus and Astyages were in no way related. According to Herodotus,
Cyrus was a great-nephew of Croesus, who married a sister of Astyages,
18+
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
altars, " accounting the use of such things a folly." As fire-
worshippers they probably had no idols, and there seems to
be no trace of ancient Persian (though of course of Chaldaean)
temples, but huge stone altars on open-air terraces have been
discovered which were apparently used for sacrifice to the
sun-god. Probably the Persians had a purer form of Zoroas-
trian fire-worship than the other Iranian peoples, such as the
Chaldaeans and Medes, regarding Height and Darkness as
symbols of the powers of good and evil, also symbolized by
the deities Ormuzd and Ahriman. The priests and religious
teachers, called Magi, formed a very select and influential
caste. Of the character and the customs of the Persians
graphic and full descriptions are given by Herodotus (i. 131 sq.
and elsewhere) and by Xenophon and other writers. It is
here impossible to treat this intensely interesting subject as
it deserves, but it is well to note in passing that, although we
are indubitably right in regarding the result of the Graeco-
Persian conflict with the deepest gratitude, nevertheless we
must allow — as, indeed, did many of the Greeks themselves —
that in some important points the Persian character (which
was evidently very different from that of the Medes and the
Babylonians) was originally greatly superior to that of the
average Hellene. It was no strong character and soon con-
tracted many Oriental and Hellenic vices ; but noble traits
remained. Many acts of magnanimity are related of the
Persian kings, ^ and their contempt for the huckstering
and rhetorical arts and deceits of the Greek Agora, as well
as for the venality and treachery not only of the ordinary
Greek but even of Greek leaders, was frequently and openly
expressed. " The most disgraceful thing in the world, in their
opinion," says Herodotus, "is to tell a lie"; and when he
^ See Hdt. vi. 41 and 119, vii. 136, &c. Even the mad Cambyses was
capable of generous impulses. Doubtless such qualities coexisted with
terrible callousness towards human suffering. As for the painful siibject of
the ever-present Greek traitor, one need only think of Eretria and Thermopylae
and Marathon and Aegina and Thebes and Pausanias and Themistocles and
Miltiades and many other names. For an arraignment of Greek character
see Mahaffv's Social Life in Greece.
185
ANCIENT GREECE
remarks that " the Persians look upon themselves as very greatly
superior in all respects to the rest of mankind," we cannot but
concede that in some respects at least they do offer a very
striking contrast to the less admirable sides of the Greek cha-
racter. Thus one cannot help contrasting such facts as the
treatment by Darius of the Eretrian captives and the terrible
decree passed by the Athenians against Mytilene. It is true
that in this case intense excitement may be pleaded and the
decree was ultimately reversed — so that the process somewhat
reminds one of what Herodotus says about the Persians :
"It is their practice to deliberate upon affairs of importance
when they are drunk, and then on the morrow, when they are
sober, to reconsider it." ^
After his conquest of Lydia Cyrus returned to the far East,
leaving his general Harpagus to reduce the Greek Asiatic cities,
all of which, with the exception of powerful Miletus, had
aided their liege-lord Croesus. Harpagus had no very difficult
task, for these cities, in constant feud, were ever a prey to the
invader. Had they but formed a confederation, as the sage
Thales, it is said,. advised, ^ Ionia and Aeolis might perhaps
have offered a successful resistance to the advance of Persia ;
but the consciousness of disunion in the face of such over-
whelming odds paralysed them, and we are scarcely surprised
when we hear that another sage. Bias of Priene, advised the
lonians to migrate en masse to Sardinia, and that the people
of Phocaea, when besieged, embarked on their ships and sailed
away (most of them) to Corsica,^ while the people of Teos
made for Thrace, where they founded Abdera.
Cyrus meantime had attacked Babylonia. The great
Nebucadnezar had died in 562, and had been succeeded by
several Babylonian kings, the fourth of whom, Nabonid (whose
regal title seems to have been I^abynetus), ruled in great state
at Babylon, where the Jews with Daniel were still in captivity.
^ Sometimes, he adds, they reversed the process. See Tacitus, Germ. xxii.
* Thales is said to have persuaded the Milesians not to aid Croesus. But
Miletus was in alliance with I,ydia, and we hear of Thales himself aiding
Croesus by damming up the river Halys in order to allow him to pass over.
' See p. 123 as to the Phocaeans at Alalia and Elea.
186
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
He had made alliance with Amasis of Egypt, Croesus of Lydia,
and Polycrates of Samos against the usurper Cyrus. The
conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus seems to have lasted about
ten years. In 538 he succeeded in capturing Babylon by
diverting the Euphrates.^ Not content with the mighty
empire that he had now under his rule, he made an expedition
into what is now Russian Turkestan against a Scythian tribe,
the Massagetae. In this remote land, near the Aral lake,
he fell in battle (529). ■ The queen of the Massagetae is said
to have placed his head in a bowl of blood and bade it drink
its fill.- Cambyses, his son, increased the Persian Empire
by the conquest of Egypt.
During the first thirty-four years of the period we are consider-
ing in this chapter (560-500) Egypt had enjoyed independence
and prosperity under King Aahmes (Amasis), whose friendship
with the Greeks has already been mentioned. He had con-
quered Cyprus and had formed an alliance with Polycrates,
the powerful despot of Samos, who, with a strong fleet of
fifty-oared ships of war, had defied Cyrus and Harpagus. All
that Polycrates undertook seemed to prosper. His court,
at which the poets Ibycus and Anacreon lived, and which
Amasis possibly honoured with his presence, rivalled the fame
of that of Periander or Peisistratus, and under his rule the
city of Samos was furnished with its splendid harbour and the
great temple of Hera and many other magnificent buildings,
as well as with the celebrated Samian aqueduct, with its
tunnel of seven furlongs. But the envy of the gods was aroused,
and Amasis, foreseeing the ruin of the Samian tyrant (as all
readers of Schiller's fine ballad know), renounced his friendship.
Perhaps the fact lying beneath the story of the Ring is that
the kings quarrelled ; for we hear that Polycrates sent forty of
his penteconters (which mutinied and never arrived) to aid
Cambyses in his attack on Egypt. Not long afterwards (523),
having apparently broken again with Cambyses, he fell into an
^ Hdt. i. 191. The Belshazzar of Daniel is either Nabonid himself or (as
inscriptions seem to prove) his son, who was acting as governor of Babylon,
** See note at end of this chapter.
187
ANCIENT GREECE
ambuscade laid by the satrap of Sardis, who crucified him.
Ere Cambyses reached Egypt King Amasis had died (525).
His son, Psamtik III, was defeated near Pelusium, and Memphis
was then captured and the whole of Egypt and Cyrene sub-
mitted to the Persians. But, incensed at his failure to conquer
Aethiopia, Cambyses vented his fury in acts of sacrilege (such
as mutilating the corpse of Amasis and stabbing the sacred
bull Apis) and in other deeds so indescribably cruel and
foolish that one is forced to believe that he was insane. One
assassination, that of his brother Bardyia, or Smerdis, who
was regent of some of the eastern provinces of the empire,
caused the fall of the tyrant ; for a false Smerdis, one of the
Magi, named Gaumata, pretending to be the murdered prince,
proclaimed himself king, and Cambyses hastened homeward,
and somewhere in Syria either met his death by an accident,
as related by Herodotus, or committed suicide, as is stated
by the Darius inscription at Behistun.
The false Smerdis, keeping himself out of sight in his palace
to avoid detection, held power for eight months so firmly that,
according to the Darius inscription, " no Persian or Mede had
the courage to oppose him." But seven nobles, who, by means
of one of the women of the royal harem, Herodotus says,
discovered that he possessed no ears and was a Mede and a
Magian whom Cambyses had thus punished for some offence,
slew the pretender and a great number of the Magi. One of
these nobles, Darius, the son of the satrap Hystaspes, was
elected king. Herodotus gives a graphic description of how
it was arranged that the man should be king whose horse
neighed first, and how the groom of Darius won the royal
crown for his master. Some modern critics, however, reject
the story as childish, and assert that Hystaspes ^ was the
legitimate heir of Cyrus. The probability is that the false
Smerdis was a pretender put forward by the party of the
Medes and Magi (who, although Persian priests, were of Median
^ Hystaspes was, according to Herodotus, " governor of Persia" (iii. 70).
In the Behistun inscription he is called a general of his son Darius (!) and a
satrap of Parthia.
l8S
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
extraction), and that his overthrow meant the triumph of the
Persian royal house of the Achaemenidae, to which Darius
(as Xerxes asserts in Hdt. vii. ii) unquestionably belonged ;
and Darius strengthened the tie by marrying Atossa, a daughter
of Cyrus, who had been Cambyses' queen.
Darius began to reign in 521, and reigned for thirty-six
years. After suppressing revolts that broke out more than
once in Media and Babylonia and forced him to capture
Babylon twice, he confirmed the Persian sovereignty in his
western empire by placing Phrygia, I^ydia, and Ionia under
satraps, to whom the tyrants of the Greek cities of the main-
land paid tribute and furnished troops and ships as vassals
of the Great King. Samos, too, which under Polycrates had
defied Darius, was conquered and ' netted ' and given over to
the brother of Polycrates, who had won the friendship of the
young Darius when he was in Egypt with Cambyses. ^
But it was not only in war that the empire of Darius was
great. It attained a wealth and a magnificence of Oriental
civilization which in ancient times were probably never
equalled. "^ The gold staters of King Darius, known as ' Darics '
(probably the ' dram ' of Ezra and Nehemiah) , circulated
throughout Hellas. The chief cities were connected by care-
fully kept roads, and there was a system of royal mails carried
by relays of horses and couriers {ayyapela). The ' royal
road ' between Sardis and Susa, some 1500 miles in length
and with about a hundred stations, was traversed by pedes-
trians in about ninety days, and by a post or courier, of course,
in far less time. (Herodotus, who describes it fully, probably
travelled by this route.)
After he had reigned about eight years Darius, it is said, con-
ceived a desire to punish the Scythians for their invasion of
Media, which had taken place about a century before (p. 148).
Whether this was his real object or whether his purpose was
the conquest of Thrace and the acquisition of the gold-mines
^ For this storj' see Hdt. iii. 139 ; and for the process of ' driving ' or
' netting ' a hostile country see Hdt. iii. 149, vi. 31.
- See Hdt. iii. 89 s(j. for an account of the revenues of Darius from his
immense empire of twenty satrapies.
189
ANCIENT GREECE
of this country and of Dacia is questioned. Herodotus had
far better opportunities than we have of learning the truth,
and there can be little doubt that the professed object was
what he asserts it to have been, but there is no less doubt
that what he describes as a disastrous failure resulted in the
establishment of Persian supremacy in Thrace, and even in
Macedonia, for the next fifteen years or so.
As for the story that Herodotus gives us of this Scythian
expedition, it certainly contains a good deal that sounds
impossible, especially in regard to the distances traversed in
a comparatively short time ; but the chronicler himself had
visited Scythia (he had been, for instance, four days' journey
up the river Bug, and evidently knew the Dnieper and its
sturgeon), and had collected an immense amount of informa-
tion about the country, as well as reports, more or less founded
on facts, about the nations further north, and what he relates
has a deep interest for every one except the purely scientific
historian. He tells us that Darius collected an army of
700,000 men and a fleet of 600 Greek ships. The ships, or
some of them, he sent up the Danube, and ordered a bridge
to be thrown across the river above the delta. His army
crossed the Bosporus by another bridge, constructed by the
Samian Mandrocles (who afterwards gave to the Heraion at
Samos a picture of the passage of the troops, with Darius
seated on his throne in the foreground) , and two marble pillars
with inscriptions in Greek and Assyrian were erected. One of
these Herodotus seems to have seen later at Byzantium.
Having reached the Danube, Darius left the Ionian Greeks
in charge of the bridge, and, giving them a leathern thong in
which sixty knots had been tied, he bade them untie one
every day, and if he had not returned when the last had been
untied they were to sail home. He then set out " with all
speed," and, following the retreating Scythians, marched as
far as the Maeotic lake (Sea of Azof) and the Don, and even
perhaps the Volga ! But the Scythians doubled and re-entered
their own country, and baffled and harassed the returning
Persians ; and some of them, stealing ahead, reached the
190
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
Danube and urged the Greeks to destroy the bridge. This
proposal was strongly seconded by Miltiades, who was now,
as we have seen, the Greek ' tyrant ' of the Chersonese, and
had been obliged to join the expedition. But when Histiaeus
of Miletus opposed it, saying that their existence as tyrants
depended wholly on Persia, the Greek leaders decided (to the
great disdain of the Scythians, who called them the " faith-
fullest of slaves ") only to break the bridge for a distance of a
bow-shot from the Scythian side, and to await the return of
Darius, though the sixtieth knot had long ago been untied.
At length the Persians arrived, " It was night, and their
terror when they found the bridge broken was great. . . .
But there was in the army of Darius an Egyptian, who had a
louder voice than any other man in the world. He was
bid by Darius to stand at the water's edge and call Histiaeus
the Milesian, who, hearing him at the very first summons,
brought across the fleet. . . . Thus the Persians escaped from
Scythia." And Darius, having reached Sestos, took the bulk
of his army across the Hellespont and returned to Sardis.
But, although Herodotus seems to regard the return of the
king as a flight rather than a dignified withdrawal after a
successful campaign, 80,000 men were left behind in Europe
under the command of Megabazus, who " subdued to the
dominion of the king all the towns and all the nations of
these parts." For some time the whole of Thrace and the
islands of the North Aegaean remained in the possession of
Persia, and tribute was probably exacted from the Macedonian
king.i After the revolt of Ionia in 499 the Thracians (whom
Herodotus calls " the most powerful people in the world,
except, of course, the Indians") threw off the Persian yoke,
and were forthwith invaded by the Scythians, who succeeded
even in driving Miltiades out of the Chersonese.
The fourth book of Herodotus consists mainly of his account
of Scythia and the Scythians. Whatever may be its value
from the standpoint of the historical critic, it is very fascinat-
ing. Much that he recounts is founded on his own experiences
^ For the fate of one Persian embassy demanding tribute see Hdt. v. 17.
191
ANCIENT GREECE
and may be accepted as trustworthy, and as for the stories
that he retails about the fabled lands beyond the Tanais
(Don) — about the one-eyed Arimaspi and the treasure of
sacred gold guarded by griffins (recalling the Rheingold and
the dragons of the Siegfried legend), and about the Hyper-
boreans and the ' Perpherees,' those maiden-messengers who
brought (possibly from Britain) gifts packed in wheat-straw
to the shrine of Artemis in Delos, and died there, and were
honoured as deities with the hair-offerings of Delian youths
and maidens * — all such things he merely repeats on hearsay
for whatever human interest they may possess, and he especially
warns us that much of it was derived from a very weird person,
namely, a poet and traveller named Aristeas, a kind of
' spectre-man,' as Herodotus calls him, who was said to have
vanished on several occasions and to have reappeared after
the lapse of years — once, indeed, after the lapse of over three
centuries ; having recounted which fact, Herodotus uses his
favourite formula and allows that " enough has been said
concerning Aristeas."
The geography of Herodotus is a subject too large to discuss
fully here. I must content myself with one or two of his
remarks. " I cannot but laugh," he says, " when I see numbers
of persons drawing maps of the world . . . and making the
ocean-stream running all round the earth, and the earth itself
an exact circle, as if described with a pair of compasses, with
Europe and Asia of just the same size." Doubtless here he
is making a thrust at Hecataeus, his predecessor in history-
writing, who composed a text to the map that Anaximander
made of the world (p. 205). He then proceeds to give his own
ideas as to the shape and relative size of the three continents,
and asserts that Europe is by far the largest — so much larger
that he " cannot conceive why three different names, and
women's names especially, should have been given to what is
really only one continent." In one point at least he was
right. " As for I/ibya," he says, " we know it to be washed on
^ Hdt. iv. 33. It reads like the legend of some St. Walpurga. Herodotus
himself saw their graves " on the left as one enters the precinct of Artemis."
192
53- Tomb of Cyrus
From Dr. Sarre's ' Iranische Felsreliefs ' [Ernst Wasmiith, A.-G., Berlin)
54. The OiyYMPiEioN, Athens
192
k
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
all sides by the sea, except where it is attached to Asia."
He gives as proof the circumnavigation of Africa by Pharaoh
Necho's Phoenician sailors/ but he rejects just the one bit
of evidence that for us is conclusive. " On their return," he
says, " they declared (and I for my part do not believe this,
though perhaps others may) that in sailing round lyibya they
had the sun upon their right hand " — i.e. on looking towards
the noonday sun the east was to their right. Another attempt
to circumnavigate Africa was made, says Herodotus, by a
nephew of Darius, who was condemned to death for some
crime, but respited on condition that he should "sail round
lyibya." He seems to have got as far as the Guinea coast,
where he discovered a " dwarfish race," but his ships " refused
to go any further " (perhaps on account of the south trade-
winds), and he returned and (like Walter Raleigh) was put to
death in execution of the former sentence.
NOTE ON THE TOMBS OF CYRUS AND DARIUS
(See Figs. 53 and 73)
The story related by Herodotus about the death of Cyrus
seems inconsistent with the fact that his tomb (a cenotaph ?)
was to be seen at Pasargadae, where Alexander the Great
visited it — and punished severely those who had pillaged it.
There still exists at Pasargadae (if the ruins in the valley of
the Murghab are really the remains of the ancient capital of
the Achaemenid princes) a square building on an eminence
amidst desolate scenery which may be this celebrated tomb of
Cyrus, once surrounded by luxuriant parks. It is now called the
' Tomb of Solomon's Mother.' Here there have been discovered
many stones inscribed with the name of Cyrus, and also a
relief of a four-winged figure surmounted by a curious structure
Hke an Egyptian headdress — possibly a portrait of Cyrus set
up by Cambyses. Darius abandoned Pasargadae and built,
sixty miles further down the valley, the magnificent city of
Persepolis, called by the Greeks "the richest city under the
1 See p. 144.
N 193
ANCIENT GREECE
sun " — until Alexander plundered its treasury, where lie
found 120,000 talents of gold. On the site of Persepolis
enormous ruins still exist of the architectural works and
sculptures of Darius and Xerxes. There is a huge pylon or
portal with winged bulls, and some of the hundred columns
of the immense Hall of Xerxes, and the great flight of steps
that led up to his palace, which, it is said, Alexander set on
fire, incited by the notorious Athenian courtesan Thais. On
the side of the Royal Mount near Persepolis are the tombs of
Darius and of some of the later Persian kings, as well as
many monuments of the Sassanidae, who ruled Persia during
the Roman Empire and until Persia fell into the hands of the
Mahometans. The tomb of Darius is cut out of the solid
rock in the middle of a perpendicular precipice (Fig. 73). At
Behistun in Media, between Babylon and Ecbatana, on the
face of the rock in a precipitous gully there may still be
seen the sculptured relief that records, with inscriptions in
three Oriental languages, the victories over revolted provinces
which Darius gained in the first three years of his reign.
SECTION A : POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS (560-500)
How far the political state of a country influences art is a
question difficult to answer. Perhaps it might be possible
to discover some apparent connexion between the events
related in the last chapter and the fact that in the Hellenic
world during this period, although many magnificent temples
were erected and sculpture was beginning to show signs of
the coming glory, as far as we can judge from surviving
fragments no really great poetry was written — nothing at all
comparable with that of Sappho or Alcaeus — while during the
next century or so more great poetry, as well as great sculpture
and architecture and oratory and philosophy, was produced by
one single city of Greece than we can perhaps find in any other
century of the world's history.
At Athens, as we have seen, the first beginnings of the
Attic drama were made, during the rule of the Peisistratidae,
194
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
by Thespis, who introduced dialogue into the rude choruses
of vintage festivals. He was followed by Choerilus and
Phrynichus and Pratinas and others, by whom these Dionysiac
performances were developed into drama. All these three
must have written plays of no mean value, for they contended
not unsuccessfully with Aeschylus himself in his younger
days. Of their works we know scarcely anything. Choerilus
wrote something like 150 pieces. Phrynichus gained a tragic
victory in 511, and some eighteen years later had the mis-
fortune to write a drama representing the capture of Miletus
by the Persians (494), which so painfully affected the Athe-
nians that he was fined 1000 drachmae. Sixteen years later
(478) he gained the prize with the Phoenissae. In this play
he gave a description of the battle of Salamis which Aeschylus
is said to have imitated in his Persae.^ But we are here
encroaching on what belongs to the next century.
Of other Greek poets, or verse-writers, of the period 560-500
the most notable are Theognis, Xenophanes, Ibycus, Anacreon,
and Simonides of Ceos.
It may be remembered that one of the cities which fell
under the rule of a tyrant was Megara. About the year 640
Theagenes overthrew the aristocratic party and held power
for some time ; but he was ejected, and for the next century
the state suffered from endless conflicts between the nobles
and the people, in the midst of which troubles the Athenians,
at Solon's instigation, wrested Salamis from Megara, and
even for a time occupied her port, Nisaea. Among the nobles
banished during a temporary supremacy of the democratic
party was Theognis. He seems to have spent many years
in exile in Sicily and Euboea (c. 550), but to have returned
and lived at Megara until the Persian peril was imminent ;
for in his poem he prays Apollo to " keep far from this city
the savage host of the Medes." Of the 1368 lines in elegiac
metre which are attributed to Theognis (collected about
400 B.C.), about half — those addressed to a young nobleman,
Gyrnus — are perhaps authentic. They pour the bitterest
1 See p. 315. In Aristophanes' Frogs (1296) this charge seems rebutted.
ANCIENT GREECE
contempt on the ' bad ' and ' cowardly ' (/ca/co), SeiXoi) —
cant terms among the aristocrats for the working classes — and
call upon the ' good ' and ' brave ' {ayadoi, ecrOXoi) to trample
on the neck of their hated inferiors and to keep themselves
from the contamination of the common herd. Theognis
laments that Megara is still the same but her people are all
changed, that for the sake of gold the noble deigns to wed the
daughter of the vile plebeian, and that those who once were
the good are now base and vile. Historically all this is of
interest. It seems also to have been thought valuable
educationally, for it was much used by schoolmasters and by
lecturing Sophists ; but regarded as poetry it is very poor
stuff, about on a level with Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy,
or even below it, being tainted with virulence and a maudlin
pessimism. ^
Of a very different character are the verses of Xenophanes.
He is, as we shall see, more important as a thinker than as a
poet, but the vigorous lines in which he expressed some of his
convictions are very notable not only for their thoughts
but also for their form. In his chief poem (He pi ^va-eoo^, ' On
Nature '), of which fragments survive, he inveighs against the
popular anthropomorphic conception of Deity, and especially
against Homer and Hesiod for attributing human weaknesses
and follies to the gods. " God," he says, " is wholly Sight and
wholly Thought and wholly Hearing, and with no effort He
rules all things by the working of His mind. . . . There is one
God, supreme among divinities and men, like unto mortals
neither in body nor in thought." The Aethiop, he says, makes
his gods black, the Thracian makes his blue-eyed and blond,
and if horses and oxen and lions had hands and could write
and do handiwork as men, they would have formed con-
ceptions and made images of gods in their own likeness.
We possess also fragments of his elegiacs, in which are found
many wise and manly sayings about self-restraint and the
1 He steals, and spoils in stealing, the well-known saying, which King Midas
learnt from the god Silenus, and which Sophocles used with such pathetic
effect, that " The happiest lot is never to have been born — or to return as soon
as possible thither whence we came."
196
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
true enjoyment of life, and a fine passage in which he contrasts
the glory won by Olympic victors with that which wisdom
confers on a man. " If any one should win by swiftness of foot,
or in the pentathlon, there where is the precinct of Zeus by the
streams of the Pisa, or else by wrestling, or by being skilled
in painful boxing, or that formidable contest that they call
the pancratium, he would be granted a conspicuous front seat
at the games, and food would be given him by the city from
public funds and a gift such as to be an heirloom for ever ;
or e'en if he won the victory by means of his horses, and not
by his own strength, he would gain all these things . . . but
he would not deserve them as I do ; for better than the
strength of man or of horses is our [human] wisdom."
Xenophanes was born at the Ionian city Colophon, but left
it (some say, banished on account of his heretical poem) at
the age of twenty-five. In the fragment which tells us this
he says that he is already ninety- two years old, having
"tossed about through Hellenic lands" for sixty-seven years.
In another fragment he asks himself : " How old wast thou
when the Mede arrived ? " It seems probable, therefore, that
he left Colophon on account of the Persian invasion under
Harpagus (c. 545), when the Phocaeans abandoned their city
and sailed to Corsica. We have already seen (p. 123) that he
possibly joined these Phocaeans in founding Elea, where he
is said to have lived in very modest circumstances to about
his hundredth year. We shall hear more of him as a philosopher.
At the semi-Oriental court of Samos we find the poets Ibycus
and Anacreon (c. 550-522). Ibycus, a native of Rhegium,
is said to have been tutor to Polycrates. From the few lines
that we possess of his voluptuously imaginative poetry, and
from the fact that he is called by Suidas the " maddest of all
love-poets," one may infer what was his influence on the youth-
ful prince. But it should be remarked that, as far as one can
judge from a few lines, there was in Ibycus (as also in the
genuine Anacreon) intense passion without any of that effemi-
nate sentimentality which is found in later Greek love-poetry.
His conception of Bros is that of a strong and terrible deity,
197
ANCIENT GREECE
" like the Thracian Boreas blazing with lightning," or of an
insidious and mighty wizard : " From under dark eyebrows
shooting forth ravishing glances with enchantments of every
kind, he casteth me into the immeasurable toils of the Cyprian
goddess." He is said also to have composed epic poems similar
to those of the Cyclic writers. The story of his death at the
hands of robbers and of the detection of the crime has become
well known through Schiller's fine ballad, The Cranes oflbycus^
Anacreon was a native of Teos, in Ionia. When the city
was taken by Harpagus (544) he migrated to Abdera, in Thrace.
Thence he came to Samos, and lived there until the crucifixion
of Polycrates in 523, when Hipparchus is said to have sent a
trireme to bring him to Athens. Here he spent some years,
but probably returned to Abdera or Teos. He died two years
after the battle of Salamis, at the age of eighty-five, choked
by a grape-stone. The Athenians erected a statue of him
(seen by Pausanias) in the characteristic guise of a drunken
old man. Much that passed under the name of Anacreon is
evidently the product of ' Anacreontic ' poets of later times.
Some of these Anacreontic odes are exceedingly clever and
pretty, such, for instance, as the Address to a Painter, which
was adduced by Lessing, in his Laocoon, as an example of the
kind of pictorial description that poetry should not attempt.
It is nevertheless very charming, and ends in a most ingenious
conceit. " Come, good painter," exclaims the poet, " paint
my absent mistress as I bid thee." He then gives exact details
— the soft black locks, the ivory brow, the milk and roses of
the cheeks, the marble neck and bust ; but, as if feeling the
uselessness of all such word-painting, he bids the painter stop,
and, turning to the picture created by his own imagination, he
calls upon it to speak and answer him. It is exceedingly clever
and pretty. But this is not how Homer and Shakespeare
make us realize the beauty of Helen and Juliet. Probably,
however, we form quite a wrong idea of Anacreon's poetry
when we associate him with such delicately worded trifles,
* Schiller imagines him journeying from Rhegium to Corinth to take part
in the Isthmian Games.
198
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
for in fragments of what is undoubtedly his work we find a
very different style and some quite different conceptions.
Thus, like Ibycus, he gives us a picture of lyove (Bros) which
offers a very striking contrast to the winged, roguish, rose-
fettered urchin of the Anacreontics. " I^ike a smith, with
mighty hammer," he says, " Eros smote me and plunged me
in a wintry torrent." This is the Eros of the older poets and
sculptors, the first-born of the gods of whom Hesiod sings,
the strong-limbed, manly Eros of Praxiteles, not the chubby
little Cupid with his toy bow and quiver whom we meet so often
in Hellenistic and Roman art.
One generally associates Simonides of Ceos (556-467) with
Marathon and Thermopylae. But while he was a boy Croesus
was still reigning, and he was already nearly thirty years of
age when Peisistratus died. About 525 he was invited by
Hipparchus to leave his home on the island of Ceos and to
come to Athens, where Anacreon was then living. When
Hipparchus was murdered by Harmodius and Aristogeiton
he went to Thessaly, probably to the court of the Aleuadae,
the princes of lyarissa, whose submission to the Persians prob-
ably occasioned his return to Athens. Here he became intimate
with Themistocles and was held in great honour for his
learning and poetical genius. Four years after the battle of
Salamis, when he was eighty years old, he gained the prize
at the Great Dionysia — the fifty-sixth public prize for poetry,
as he tells us, that he had won. Soon afterwards, together
with his nephew, the poet Bacchylides, he went to Syracuse,
where, at the court of Hiero, he met Aeschylus and Pindar.
He died at Syracuse, aged eighty-nine, in 467. Thus his life
extended almost from the age of Solon to that of Pericles, and
he was a contemporary for a few years of both Thales and
Socrates. In considering him one is therefore obHged either
to anticipate or to defer considerably. He seems to have
produced a great amount of poetry in his long life — hymns
to the gods, funeral eulogies and elegies, triumphal odes,
dithyrambs, and odes in honour of victors at the games. In
such odes he, as also his nephew BacchyUdes, had a powerful
199
ANCIENT GREECE
rival in Pindar, by whose sublimity of imagination and majesty
of language, it is said, they were both eclipsed. Nevertheless
some of the fragments of his poetry that survive are as fine as
almost anything in Pindar, and the subject is certainly some-
times on a far higher level than that of the ordinary Pindaric
ode. In an encomium on those who fell with Leonidas he
says : " Splendid was the fortune of those who died at Thermo-
pylae and glorious their fate. Their tomb is an altar ; instead
of wails there is remembrance, and lamentation is changed into
praise ; such a shroud neither decay shall e'er destroy, nor
time, that conquereth all. This resting-place of brave men
hath received to dwell within it the glory of Hellas." The
metres of these odes are probably such as had been used from
an early age in musical compositions. They seem to be
conditioned by various musical rhythms (Doric, Aeolic, Ivydian,
&c,.), and to be, as Horace says with reference to Pindar, free
from all law,^ except that the poem has certain divisions
(strophes, antistrophes, epodes, &c.). Simonides is remem-
bered chiefly on account of the famous lines, quoted by Hero-
dotus, that were engraved on the monuments at Thermopylae. ^
Herodotus does not mention Simonides as their author, but
Cicero and other writers do. Another couplet, on the
Athenians who fought at Marathon, is attributed to Simonides
by the rhetorician Aristides, and some lines of his beginning
" I am the bravest of beasts " may have been composed as the
inscription for the stone lion which, as Herodotus tells us,
was set up at Thermopylae in memory of I^eonidas. Earlier
in life (c. 506) he wrote, it is said, an epitaph for the Athenians
who fell in the Chalcidian war. Simonides is said to have
invented, or introduced, the letters n, w^ ^, \p.
1 Of the forty-four extant odes of Pindar only two have any decided metrical
similarity, and these two are addressed to the same person and probably
form one consecutive piece.
* Thus translated by Rawlinson :
Here did four thousand men from Pelops' land
Against three hundred myriads bravely stand ;
and
Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell
That here, obeying her behests, we fell.
200
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
The Philosophers
Some of the older Greek philosophers, such as Xenophanes,
Parmenides, and Empedocles, may be classed also among the
poets, and others, such as Thales and Pythagoras, would
perhaps be conceded a like honour if their writings had sur-
vived. The incomparable insight into the life of things which
distinguishes Greek thought from what often usurps the name
of philosophy was due mainly to the poetical spirit that
animated it. As Plato tells us, the truths which are the object
of the ' lover of wisdom ' cannot be learnt in the same way
as scientific facts, but only by the help of our imaginative
faculties and by contemplation ; and his statement is con-
firmed by Aristotle himself, who says that " poetry is more
philosophical and more worthy of serious regard than history."
In the Greek thinkers of the period that we are examining
there are noticeable three distinct methods of regarding the
universe. The Ionic philosophers, fixing their gaze on the
visible order of things, endeavoured to discover the prime
element or self-created and self-moving elementary substance
to which the material universe owes its origin and existence.
The Eleatic school, of which Xenophanes was the founder,
sought the one true existence behind appearances, denying
the reality, or even the very existence, of the material world.
Pythagoras taught that the life of things — that which alone
gives them any true existence — is the relation that they bear
to the one life of all (as numbers to unity), and that their
nature and their reality as objects of the sensible universe
depend on the relation that they bear (hke numbers) to one
another. Thus, all things being bound together into a cosmos
by proportion, the universe is of the nature of harmony. To
give any full and systematic account of the theories of these
early Greek thinkers is here impossible, but if the essential
characteristics of the three schools are kept in mind the follow-
ing facts will perhaps fall into place and offer a fairly intelligible
picture,
Thales of Miletus (c, 636-546) was the first of the Ionic
201
ANCIENT GREECE
' Physicists/ and is regarded as the father of Greek philosophy,
as well as the chief of the Seven Sages. Herodotus asserts
that he was of Phoenician origin, and possibly the Semitic
strain may account for genius in his case, as it has done in
others. When Thales was still a young man, Miletus, then
" a rich and powerful city " and the mother of many colonies,
fell under the rule of the tyrant Thrasybulus (p. 130), the
friend and Machiavellian adviser of Periander; and it remained
under his rule for more than forty years. Thales is said to
have visited Egypt and to have acquired there the knowledge
of geometry and astronomical calculation which enabled him
to foretell the eclipse^ that put an end to the battle between
Astyages of Media and the Lydian king Alyattes (585) . Possibly
he also learnt in Egypt a certain amount of geology — enough
to make him a ' sedimentarist ' and a believer in water as the
prime element — for Herodotus, who also was in Egypt, gives
us a long description of the formation of the country by alluvial
deposit, which he held to have been going on for some 12,000
years. Miletus was harassed a good deal by Alyattes, but
under Croesus the Milesians (almost alone of the Ionian Greeks)
retained their independence, and Thales is said to have advised
his fellow-citizens not to aid the Lydian king against Cyrus —
advice which probably saved the city from being taken by
Harpagus. But the anxiety caused by the advance of Persia
is shown by the fact that Thales tried to persuade the lonians
to form a ' confederation,' with Teos as capital. It must have
been soon after this that he died.
Whether Thales wrote anything is not known. What we
know of his doctrines we learn from Plato, Aristotle, and other
writers. The fact that he chose water as the prime substance
should be connected closely with the fact that he conceived
such prime substance to be in perpetual motion, and mind,
^ The Chaldaeans, from whom possibly (but not probably) the Egyptians
learnt their astronomy, are said to have registered, or calculated, eclipses
from about 720. They are said to have believed the world to have existed for
172,000 years. But the Indian sages claim an antiquity of two million years
for their astronomical tables, and doubtless the most ancient names of the
constellations are of Indian origin.
202
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
or intelligence, to be present wherever there was motion ; ^
and, as motion exists everywhere in the universe, he asserted
that " all is full of gods," and that even the kinetic power of
the magnet and of amber proved their possession of what he
called a ' soulless soul ' (or ' lifeless vitality '). Cicero, indeed,
says that Thales spoke of the ' Mind of the Universe ' as being
equivalent to ' God,' but it is probable that his theories were
unconnected with religious ideas — that is, that they were
entirely materialistic and without any assumption of a spiritual
or intellectual ' first cause,' such as was proclaimed later by
Anaxagoras. Consequently, in order to account for move-
ment he was obliged to conceive his prime substance as self-
moving, and, indeed, self-created, and was thus driven to face
the same difficulties that all materialists are forced to encounter.
Some writer has remarked that " a lake formed by the Maeander
now covers the native city of the man who taught that every-
thing comes from and returns to water." The story of his
falling down a well into his favourite element while star-
gazing is perhaps a playful invention.
In connexion with Thales it may be interesting to raise the
question how far, if at all, Greek philosophy was indebted to
the philosophy of the East. It is indubitable that Thales and
Pythagoras, and perhaps other early Greek philosophers,
visited Egypt, and perhaps other Eastern lands, and it seems
possible that, as far as their external form is concerned, some
of the doctrines of Greek thinkers, such as that of ' trans-
migration,' had an Oriental or Egyptian origin,* and that the
belief in the immortality of the soul, which we find so strongly
asserted by Socrates, was not evolved by Greek thought, but
introduced from Eastern sources ; moreover, in Vedanta
philosophy there are doctrines of ' abstraction ' and of the
triune nature of the Deity (as Intelhgence, Matter, and Multi-
tude) which have a singular resemblance to the Socratic
doctrine of the " release and purification of the body " and to
^ Cf." And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The
theory of Thales is like that of the modern Monist.
* Herodotus asserts this (ii. 123), but no proof has been found of it in
Egyptian monuments.
203
ANCIENT GREECE
the Monad and Triad doctrine of Pythagoras, and others that
closely resemble the Eleatic denial of the reality of the sensible
world ; but it is surely not impossible that the human mind
is so constructed that it may (perhaps must) arrive at similar
formulae ; or, if it be true that Greece accepted certain forms
of Eastern thought, it is no less true that Hellenic genius
reinspired these forms with a new life so that they are as truly
original creations as Hamlet or Faust.
The human mind seems generally to find no insuperable
difficulty in forming a vague conception of an inert prime
element (more or less immaterial) existing from all eternity ;
but for the conception of a cosmos, an ordered, differentiated
universe, or even of ' matter ' itself, it is necessary to account
for the ordering force, and one instinctively rejects the ' self-
moved ' material prime element of Thales and the ' self-moved '
atoms of Democritus, of which we shall hear later. This
difficulty accounts for the creative I^ove (Eros) of Hesiod,
the "love and hate of the atoms" of Empedocles, the Nous
(Mind) of Anaxagoras, and all other such attempts to visualize
and personify the mysterious power which manifests itself in
motion and life, and it is not surprising that Anaximander
(c. 610-545), a contemporary and fellow-citizen, perhaps a
disciple, of Thales, should have attempted to go a little further
toward the realm of the Immaterial in his search for a first
cause of motion. He is said to have been the first Greek
philosopher who wrote a prose work. Of this work (entitled,
as usual. About Nature) nothing but a few quotations survive,
but they prove that the author proclaimed as the prime element,
or rather the first ' principle ' (for he was the first to use the
word apxv), what he called ' the infinite ' or ' unconditioned '
{to a-ireipov) , by which he probably meant matter not exactly
in a chaotic state, but with its elements {crroLxe'ia) not yet
differentiated.^ But his apxh is really quite as materialistic
as that of Thales, and is less conceivable. Instead of ' self-
^ See Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. Plato uses to ciTreipov for primal ' matter '
regarded merely as a passive, potential, formless existence — and this seems
practically what Anaximander meant.
204
55- Bl<ACK-FIGURED VaSKS
c. 700-500
See List of lllusliatinns and Note D
204
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
movement ' he lias to imagine ' counteracting forces,' such as
heat and cold, dryness and moisture, in order to produce a
cosmos. His theory that living things were evolved out of
damp matter and that men as well as all other animals were at
first fish-like has affinity to modern morphological doctrines.
He is said to have invented the sun-dial (though Herodotus
credits the Babylonians with the invention) and to have made
a map of the world and an astronomical globe. The map is
said to have been engraved on a brass tablet, and was perhaps
the very one which [c. 499) Aristagoras of Miletus took over
to show the vSpartans the extent of the Persian Empire, and
for which Hecataeus wrote a text. A third Milesian, Anaxi-
menes, proclaimed as the apxh an illimitable element of the
nature of air — the life-breath, as it were, of the universe. This
seems a relapse ; but we know too little of his doctrines to be
certain. The earth he believed to float sustained in the midst
of air, and he is said to have been the first (Greek ?) to teach
that the moon's light came from the sun. If, as it is said, he
taught Anaxagoras (born in 500) and was himself a disciple
of Anaximander, he must have lived to a great age.
In connexion with these Physicists may be mentioned
Heracleitus of Ephesus, for, although he lived somewhat later
(c. 540-470), and although his genius was of a strikingly original,
imaginative, and independent character (justifying his proud
remark, " I have gone to no teacher but myself," and perhaps
even justifying the gift of his own book to the temple of Artemis
as the most precious offering he could make), nevertheless
the fact that he accepted a ' prime element ' makes it convenient
to class him with the other Ionian philosophers.
During most of the life of Heracleitus Ephesus was under the
sovereignty of Persia and the rule of Greek tyrants. But he
evidently lived to see the day of liberation, for in his work
On Nature he pours bitter disdain on the Ephesian democracy
for having banished his friend Hermodorus (who, by the way
some twenty-six years later helped the Roman decemviri
to draw up their Twelve Tables). This would seem to prove
that he wrote the book after the recovery of Sestos by the
205
ANCIENT GREECE
Athenians and the Hberation of Ionia from the Persian yoke
(478). .
To judge from the 136 short fragments of his writings
that survive Heracleitus expressed himself in very trenchant
aphorisms. The following are some of them : " War is the
father of all things " {i.e. all things are evolved by antagonistic
forces) ; " No man can wade twice in the same stream " {i.e.
material objects are always changing) ; " The wisest of men is
an ape to the gods " ; " I,ife is the death of gods, death their
life " ; " Men are mortal gods, gods immortal men " ; "A man's
character is his destiny " ; " lycaming teaches not wisdom."
In connexion with this last aphorism he added : " Otherwise
learning would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras and
Xenophanes and Hecataeus." Still more strongly he expressed
himself about Homer and Archilochus, saying that they
" ought to be whipped." Such language is intelligible enough,
so that probably it was the abstruseness of his doctrines rather
than his words that won him the title ' the Obscure.' Even
Socrates confessed that there were many things in the book
of Heracleitus that needed a ' DeHan diver ' to bring them up
from their obscure depths.
Heracleitus held fire to be the prime element. Possibly he
was led to the choice by Oriental (Zoroastrian) influence. But
by ' fire ' he meant a subtle, fiery, aetherial substance rather
than flame. Of this self-kindled, ever-vibrating fiery aether
he conceived the human soul and the soul of the universe,
and even Deity itself, to consist.^ Doubtless fire, or heat,
was believed by him (as it is, or was until lately, believed
by modern science) to be caused by, or to be, vibration or
undulation, and it was evidently as a most striking form, or
symbol, of perpetual and inconceivably rapid motion that he
chose it, for all his philosophy was founded on the axiom that
there is no true existence except in motion, in mutation,
development, action, transition. " All is in flux " {-rrdpra pel)
* Anticipating by some 2400 years the assertion of the modern Monist,
who tells us that the only possible God is "the sum total of the vibrations of
the Ether." Socrates was accused by Aristophanes (of course falsely) of having
enthroned ' Aetherial Vortex ' in the place of Zeus,
206
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
was his fundamental dogma. There is no such thing as a
permanent state of being. Being (existence) consists in change.
Nothing exists except in merging its identity in something else.
Thus, " Death is life, life is death," and " Sleep and waking
are the same," or (if I may slightly change his form of expres-
sion and put some of his aphorisms into the words of three
great modern poets), "There is no Death ! What seems so is
transition," ^ " To sleep is to wake," and " Living are the dead,
and I am the apparition, I the spectre." Such doctrines, so
unintelligible to the many, probably credited him with the
obscurity and melancholy which have attached themselves
to his memory.
Of the life and poems of Xenophanes I have already spoken.
His philosophy offers a very striking contrast to that of Hera-
cleitus, and forms a part of the first rude foundation on which
was reared the Ideal Theory of Plato.
Heracleitus asserted that nothing truly exists except in so
far as it is in motion, mutation, transition — that is, as a link
in the endless chain of cause and effect. Xenophanes, on the
contrary, asserted that all motion and mutation and transition,
as well as the things that they affect, are merely appear-
ances, the multitudinous phenomena of the senses {to. TroXAa),
which are not existent except so far as they stand in relation
to the one eternal and immutable Reality, the " unmoved
source of motion" and the only source of all being. In his
poetry, as we have seen, he gives this immutable and eternal
Reality the name of God. As a philosopher he calls it the
One — an expression used also by Pythagoras and by Plato.
But though he held that things of the senses (the Many) are
non-existent in their variety and their mutations and their
relation to one another, he asserted that they exist truly by
virtue of their relation to the One. Thus the keystone of
the Eleatic school is ra Travra ev (' All things One ') rather
than TO ev Km TO. iravra (' The One and the Many '), which
was the formula of Platonic philosophy ; and we should regard
^ In the Phaedo Socrates (or Plato) speaks of transition from life to death
and from death to life in reference to the immortality of the soul.
207
ANCIENT GREECE
the creed of Xenophanes as pantheistic rather than duaHstic—
that is, as identifying spirit and matter rather than separating
them by an impassable gulf, as Plato seems to do. But how-
ever that may be, it is clear that Xenophanes himself allowed
the practical existence of sensible objects and of change and
motion— allowed, as Socrates did, that such phenomena,
although not the objects of true knowledge, could be used as
' rafts ' to carry us across the sea of human life — whereas some
of his successors, such as Parmenides and Zeno, insisted on the
absolute non-existence of the natural world, and were thus
landed in absurdities. Under Zeno the sublime philosophy
of the founder degenerated into metaphysical quibbles and
paradoxes and puzzles about the infinitely small and great,
such as the puzzle of Achilles and the tortoise. He denied not
only the absolute reality but also the practical existence of
the sensible world and the possibility of motion — a doctrine
refuted, it is said, by an unbeliever who rose from his seat
and walked across the lecture-room, or lecture-portico, of the
philosopher. Hence the expression Solvitur amhulando.
The one doctrine of real importance in the philosophy of
Xenophanes, and that which places it on a level quite different
from that of the Ionic Physicists, is that which asserts the
reality of things to depend on their relation to the one true
existence — a doctrine substantially the same as that of Socrates,
who taught that everything exists by virtue of its true, not its
apparent, cause, and that the only true knowledge is the
knowledge of the true cause of things.
Pythagoras (c. 570-490) was a contemporary of Xenophanes
and a generation earlier than Heracleitus. He and Xeno-
phanes, living only some 120 miles distant from each other in
Southern Italy, may be supposed to have met ; but there was
evidently not much mutual admiration, if we may judge from
some very contemptuous verses of Xenophanes . ' ' They relate, ' '
he says, " that once when he [Pythagoras] was going past
while a puppy was being whipped, he was touched with pity
and exclaimed : ' I^eave off ! Beat him not ! for he is the
soul of a friend of mine. I recognized it at once by his voice.' "
208
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
Pythagoras was a Samian, but about 540, after having visited
the East and Egypt/ he left vSamos, perhaps in order to escape
from the frivolous court of Polycrates, and settled in Croton.
Here he seems to have gained great influence with the wealthy
aristocratical party. Three hundred Crotoniats he formed into
an Order, bound together by vows of allegiance and secrecy,
after the fashion of Freemasons, whom they also resembled in
possessing secret signs. On new members a period of proba-
tion, some say of seven years, was imposed, during which they
were tested in their powers of keeping silence (like the Trap-
pists) and in keeping their temper and in mental capacities.
Only a few were initiated into the secret (esoteric) doctrines
and rites, which were perhaps of an Orphic character, and
seem to have been specially connected with the worship of
Apollo ; and it is possible that Pythagoras was identified by
his followers with Apollo and that he laid claim (as Empedocles
did later) to supernatural powers. The rule of the Order
seems to have included strict abstinence from animal food —
a practice necessarily involved in the creed of transmigration
of souls. 2 Music and athletics formed an indispensable part
in the system. When a member wished to leave the Order
he was presented with double his original subscription and
allowed to depart, but over his seat in the refectory was
erected a monument, and funeral rites were celebrated to
intimate his philosophic decease. To the chief lodge (so to
speak) at Croton were affiliated others in Taras, vSybaris,
Metapontion, and other towns.
Perhaps it was owing to the political influence of these
aristocratical Pythagorean societies that in 510 (the year when
Tarquin and Hippias were expelled) Croton utterly destroyed
* Herodotus evidently alludes (ii. 123) to him, though he declines to mention
his name, when he speaks of certain Greek writers having appropriated and
published as their own the Egyptian (?) doctrine of Transmigration. In
iv. 95 he calls him " not the meanest of Greek philosophers."
* Beans were also taboo, if we are to take Horace's joke seriously {Sat.
II, vi. 63), who intimates that some relative of Pythagoras had been a bean.
Grote rejects Pythagorean vegetarianism as a fable because Milo nmsi have
had a meat diet !
o 209
ANCIENT GREECE
Sybaris/ which had led into the field, we are told, an army of
300,000 men, against whom Milo, the celebrated Pythagorean
wrestler (six times Olympic victor), did deeds like those of
Samson. Soon after this the popular party, under the leader-
ship of Cylon, gained the upper hand in Croton, and the
Pythagorean societies fell under ban. Milo's house, where
forty disciples were assembled, was set on fire by the mob,
and all but two perished — possibly Pythagoras among them ;
but some say that he had fled to Taras some years pre-
viously, and thence to Metapontion, where 400 years later,
Cicero tells us, his tomb was to be seen.^ Probably Pytha-
goras, like Socrates and many other wise men, wrote nothing,
although there is a story of his having left all his writings to
his daughter Damo, with orders not to publish them — a com-
mand that she kept, although in great poverty. There are
extant so-called ' Golden Verses ' (seventy-one hexameters)
which are attributed to liim, but they are evidently a late fabri-
cation. One of his disciples, Philolaus, who is said to have
escaped from the conflagration and taken refuge in Greece,
incorporated the doctrines of the school in a book (of course
called On Nature), but only a few questionable rehcs of this
book, as also of about ninety other works by the older
Pythagoreans, survive (including some fragments ascribed to
Archytas, the famous Tarentine mathematician, well known to
readers of Horace) . The disappearance of these old records is
doubtless due to the fierce persecutions to which the sect was
exposed. For the life and doctrines of Pythagoras we are
almost entirely dependent on a few comments of Aristotle
and on the writings of Porphyry and lamblichus, neo-Platonists
of the third century a.d., at which epoch, at Alexandria, there
was a great revival of the mystical doctrines of the school and an
attempt to proclaim Pythagoras as the anti-Christian Messiah.
1 Sixty-seven years later, after a vain attempt to revive Croton, Thurii
was founded (443) in the vicinity. Herodotus probably took part in the
founding of Thurii and saw the ruins of Sybaris.
^ In Cicero's time the revival of Pythagoreanism was beginning. In early
days the Romans, when bidden by an oracle to erect a statue to the wisest
of the Greeks, erected one to Pythagoras.
210
56. Ancient Bi,ack-figured Amphora
See List of Illustrations and Note D
2IO
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
Plato himself borrowed largely from Pythagoras. Timaeus of
lyOcri, a Pythagorean, is said to have been Plato's teacher, and
in the dialogue Timaeus Plato propounds views on the physical
universe which are perhaps mainly Pythagorean ; but it is
as impossible to say how far they are Platonized as to say how
far the doctrines of Socrates were Pythagorized by Plato.
In the Phaednts Plato uses, doubtless merely as a parable,
the doctrine of Transmigration and of the ten periods of the
soul as it was taught by Pythagoras, and the Platonic theory
of Ideas is founded on Pythagorean and Kleatic doctrines of the
One and the Many.
The main thesis of the Pythagorean system of philosophy
is that the human mind recognizes within itself certain laws
without which thought is impossible, and in these laws it
possesses a revelation of the natural laws to which the structure
of the universe is due. Now of these intellectual laws those
of nuynher are the most immutable and categorical, and the
universe (both the sensible and the intellectual) is an ' imita-
tion ' or ' realization ' of the laws of number, where Deity is
the omnipresent Unit or Monad — of which all numbers consist,
though it is itself no number — and prime (brute, chaotic) matter
is the Duad, and the ordered Cosmos (formed by the addition
of the creative Monad to the chaotic Duad) is the Triad. ^
Now, strictly speaking, the sensible universe, according to
this theory, is number realized in space, and when number is
realized in space it is geometry. Therefore we find that with
Pythagoras, as with Plato, geometry was the foundation of
all true science. He himself is said to have discovered the most
important fact of the equality of the square on the long side of
a right-angled triangle to the sum of the squares on the shorter
sides — and to have sacrificed a hundred oxen as thank-offering. ^
But in his philosophy he seems to have adopted numbers, as
being more readily expressive of ratio and proportion than are
^ Natural objects (under three dimensions) are triads, and human nature
is a triad, and the mind's conception of Deity is also a triad. Later Pytha-
goreans made the Four represent solidity, the Five quality (colour, &c.), the
Six vitality, the Seven mind, and so on.
^ Hardly consistent with his transmigration and vegetarian principles !
211
ANCIENT GREECE
lines and areas. As numbers are dependent for their individual
existence on the unit, so sensible objects are dependent for
their specific existence on their true cause — the One, or Deity.
But the existence of natural objects as phenomena depends on
their relation to all other such objects (nothing being of any
meaning or value, or conceivable, by itself), in the same wa}^
as every intelligible number stands related, in a certain ratio
or proportion, to every other number. Thus all things of the
senses are knit together into one harmonious whole, and the
natural universe is a Harmony ^ — such as also modern science
proclaims it to be " Throughout the processes of Nature,"
says Tyndall, " we have interdependence and harmony, and
the main value of physics as a mental training consists in the
tracing out of this interdependence and the demonstration
of this harmony."
In passing it may be observed that many phenomena seem
(though this may be merely due to the constitution of the
human mind) to be the results of the vibration of some one
prime element (' ether ' ?) at different rates, so that we have
light and electricity and the octaves of sound and colour, and
possibly of taste and smell, all related and standing in certain
numerical ratios each to the other. But their specific exist-
ence, as light and sound and so on, is due, as Pythagoras
expresses it, to their relation, not to each other, but to the
Unit. Thus, when Professor Romanes asserted that with one
persistent force and one prime matter he could account for
the universe, Darwin answered : " I could not disprove it if
some one should assert that God had given certain attributes
to force so that it develops into light, heat, electricity, and
magnetism — and perhaps even into life."
This doctrine of the harmonious system of the universe is
one of the most suggestive and illuminating of all parables.
But scientifically Pythagoras was, of course, on the wrong
lines. He attempted to force Nature into accordance with
his theories ; and of this we have a striking instance in the
^ Hence the Pythagorean ' mvisic of the spheres,' which onr ears are too
dull, or from long famiUarity too callous, to perceive.
212
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
fact that, in order to complete the mystic ' Decad/ he added
a tenth to the then-known nine celestial bodies which circled
round the central Fire or Watch-tower of Zeus. This tenth
body he called the Antichthon (' Counter-earth '). How such
a method differs from that by which Neptune was discovered
need scarcely be explained.
The gulf between Physics and Ethics Pythagoras conceived
to be bridged by music, which is at once a subject of intellectual
research and a means of affecting the emotions. The explana-
tion of the musical intervals and of harmony as due to propor-
tion is attributed to him, although some accounts of his experi-
ments are apocryphal, seeing that hammers of different weight
do not produce different notes from the same anvil or bell.
But he seems to have discovered the fact that- a chord at the
same tension vibrates in proportion to its length : that half
the length produces the octave above the original note, two-
thirds produces a musical fifth, three-fourths a fourth, and
eight-ninths a major tone.
Thus from Physics to Ethics, from the sensible world to the
world of mind and morals, we pass by the bridge of Music —
climb the Beanstalk, as it were, and find ourselves in a fairy-
land where our dull, boorish materialism not seldom wakes to
find itself ' translated ' and invested with an ass's nowl. Even
in this realm Pythagoras, or later Pythagorean philosophy,
ventures to use the scale of Number and reads off vice as
imperfect and virtue as perfect proportion — a virtuous life
(i.e. virtue realized in action) as the straight line, abstract
justice as the square number, and a just life as the geometric
square. The soul he defines as a ' self-moving number,' or
triune Monad, and thus asserts it to be of the same nature as
Deity — a connexion that doubtless encouraged his claim to
supernatural powers. These formulae are, of course, merely
little curiosities preserved for us by later writers, and are of
no value except as curiosities ; nor can we regard otherwise
such stories as that of the recognition by Pythagoras in the
temple of Hera at Argos of the shield whicn he had used (as
Euphorbus, the Trojan) in a former life. But, however
213
ANCIENT GREECE
unworthy of serious regard they may appear to some minds, such
a parable as that of Metempsychosis, with its gradual redemp-
tion of the human soul by purification, initiation, and intuition,
until it is fit to dwell with the gods, and such an imaginative
conception as the harmony of the universe and the music of
the spheres, are (as Aristotle himself allows) of more value to
the true thinker than much that goes by the name of scientific
metaphysics. The main structure of the Pythagorean philo-
sophy, however dimly it looms through the ages, is of impres-
sive grandeur — a watch-tower of Zeus overlooking the infinities
of space and time.
SECTION B : THE ORDERS OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE:
SCULPTURE, DOWN TO THE PERSIAN WARS
Something has already been said about the primitive
shrines of the Mycenaean age and the temples of Homeric
times, and some of the temples of the earlier historic period
have been mentioned. Others will be mentioned later in
connexion with liistorical events and with sculpture, and further
information will be found in Note A at the end of this book,
and can be supplemented by reference to the Index and the
List of Illustrations.
But without attempting to trace minutely the evolution of
the Greek temple or to describe the technical details of Greek
architecture (on which points full information can be found in
dictionaries and text-books) it may be well to state here the
main characteristics of the different orders and to add a few-
facts in connexion with some of the chief temples.
The original shrine, generally of wood or sunburnt brick,
was an oblong, or rarely a round, building, like the ancient
Greek house, with a porch. Sometimes this porch had side
walls and perhaps a couple of wooden pillars in front, so
that the whole building consisted of a hall (the shrine proper,
or moi;) and a closed forecourt (TryooVao?).^ Then the row
of pillars or columns was extended across the whole front of
^ Ex. the Treasure-house of Megara at Delphi.
214
M
in
W
O
w
W
W
>-r
Ph
S
tt
H
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
the building and the side walls of the porch were omitted, so
that an open portico was formed.^ Then a porch or portico
was placed at both ends of the building. 2 Next, a row of
columns was extended all round the building, which was said
to be peripteros — i.e. winged, or aisled — and sometimes the
portico had two rows of columns.^ I^astly, two rows of columns
were placed all round, and there were also columned porches
at both ends of the building itself.* Such a temple was called
dipteros, ' two- winged.' The interior sanctuary (the vao^ or
crrjAfo?, in which was the statue of the divinity facing east, so
that the light of the rising sun should illuminate it) had side
walls, but frequently had also inside them two rows of columns
(as in the great Paestum temple) , forming aisles and perhaps
supporting the roof. These interior aisles were sometimes
formed by two tiers of small columns, one on the top of the
other. Whether the interior building was generally, or ever,
hypaethral — i.e. open to the sky — is not quite certain. Certain
it is that the statue was not often unprotected by a roof ;
and it is probable that the open space was only just enough
to allow of sufficient light, as in the Pantheon at Rome.
The number of columns in the front of a temple was two,
four, six, eight, or ten. The side (counting the corner columns)
had generally one more than double the number of the front
columns. Thus the Parthenon is 8 x 17, the Theseion is
6 X 13, as also is the temple of Zeus at Olympia ; but Paestum
is 6 X 14, and so is the splendid temple at Segesta (Fig. 57).
The three orders of Greek architecture are the Doric (espe-
cially used in Western Hellas), the Ionic (at first peculiar to
Ionia), and the Corinthian. In the motherland we find all
three styles, but the Doric is the most ancient.
The Corinthian, with its slender shaft and its capital orna-
mented with rows of acanthus leaves, need not occupy our
attention now, for it was first invented about the time of the
Peloponnesian War. The earliest specimen known (c. 430)
1 Ex. the Erechtheion. * Ex. the Nike temple at Athens.
* Ex. the Zeus temple at Olympia and the Parthenon.
* Ex. the Artemis temple at Ephesus,
215
ANCIENT GREECE
is said to have been a single column (now lost) inserted in the
Ionic court of the Doric temple at Phigaleia (Fig. 84). Other
fine examples are the monument of I^ysicrates (Fig. 136),
the ' Temple of the Winds,' and the splendid columns of the
Olympieion at Athens (Figs. 54, 134), erected by the Emperor
Hadrian.
The Doric order has a baseless, somewhat tapering column,
surmounted by a capital composed of a thick slab {abax, or
abacus) lying on a very flat oval moulding (the echinus). The
columns bear a plain architrave (' main beam '), which supports
the frieze and the projecting cornice.
The Ionic order has a slenderer column, ^ standing on a base,
and bearing a capital whose main characteristic is two large
spiral volutes (evidently an artistic modification of the ox-heads
which occur in Oriental architecture, e.g. in the Persepolis
columns). The columns carry an entablature composed, as
in the Doric order, of architrave, frieze, and cornice, but the
face of the architrave is cut into three planes, each pro-
jecting a little above the one below it, and the friezes of the
two orders differ essentially. This difference of the friezes will
be noted at once in pictures of Doric and Ionic temples.
It will be seen that the Ionic frieze is one undivided space,
either plain or filled with a line of figures in procession or
otherwise forming a continuous series, whereas in the Doric
temples the frieze consists of numerous spaces (metopes),
either left plain or else filled each by a single group of
figures, 2 and every metope is divided from the next by a
kind of tablet of three bands sundered by flutings (triglyphs).
These triglyphs are said to represent the ends of the rafters,
which were visible in the old wooden temples, and the small
1 The Ionic column scarcely tapers at all. Its height is 16 to 18 semi-
diameters (modules). That of the Parthenon columns is 12. In the great
Paestum temple it is only 8, and in the Apollo temple at Corinth (the
most ancient perhaps in Greece) it is only yf . The columns of Atreus' Treasury
and the I/ion Gate (Mycenae) taper downwards.
2 In the Parthenon the external frieze consisted of metopes and triglyphs,
but the frieze of the inner building was Ionic in character, although the
columns were Doric. This is the frieze, representing the Panathenaic
procession, which is in the British Museum.
216
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
spherical ornaments {mutules) below and above the frieze are
supposed to represent rain-drops, or perhaps nail-heads.
Another characteristic, especially in the Doric style, is
that the column not only tapers considerably but it has a
slight outward curve (called the entasis) in the middle, the
object of which may have been to correct some optical error
in perspective. In the Parthenon this bulge is scarcely per-
ceptible. In the temple of Demeter at Paestum, or still
more in the ' BasiHca,' it is disagreeably noticeable (Fig. 41).
At Phigaleia it seems entirely absent.
The columns of all three orders have almost always parallel
flutings. The Doric are sharp-edged, shallower, and fewer
(twenty in the Parthenon), the Ionic and Corinthian gene-
rally separated by fillets, semicircular, and numbering from
twenty-four up to thirty-two. vSometimes the lower part of
the Ionic column was left plain, or (as at Ephesus) was used for
sculptured reliefs. In later times spiral flutings were sometimes
used.
In point of size, especially in regard to height, Greek temples
are, of course, not comparable with our cathedrals, nor with
the great temples of the East, and, as Herodotus himself remarks,
" although the temple of Ephesus is worthy of note, and also
the temple of Samos, if all the great works of the Greeks could
be put together in one they would not equal " things that
are to be seen in Egypt. The length of the Olympieion at
Acragas (Girgenti), the largest temple in the Hellenic world,
but (like its Athenian namesake) never completed, was 363 feet ;
that of the Samian Heraion was 346, that of the (earlier)
Ephesian temple was 342, and that of the Parthenon is 227
feet. St. Paul's Cathedral is 513 feet long and St. Peter's at
Rome is 613 feet.
Sculpture, down to the Persian Wars
In a former section we considered some of the main charac-
teristics of the religion that preceded the introduction of the
Olympian hierarchy, and noticed how the feelings of awe and
dread for the supernatural revealed themselves in grotesque
217
ANCIENT GREECE
and horrible effigies, which were regarded with superstitious
reverence. This fetish-worship was by no means eradicated
by the new Olympian religion. Although we find Httle or no
trace of ' spook ' or superstitious awe in Homer, who seems
to shrink instinctively from all that is grotesque, monstrous,
and uncanny, the old deisidaimonia survived (as we saw in
Hesiod's case) side by side with the brighter and more openly
professed Olympian orthodoxy, and during the sixth century
there seems to have been a great recrudescence of ' chthonian '
cult, aggravated by the introduction and spread of the Orphic
creed and rites and the institution, or revival, of Dionysian
and Eleusinian Mysteries. This subject we shall meet again
when we come to the philosophers of the fifth century. At
present it will suffice to note the fact that Greek sculpture
was apparently a direct evolution from the fabrication of
grotesque fetish-idols, although it is impossible by any analysis
to discover the vital force which effected this wondrous develop-
ment—a development which in many cases, such as that of
Egypt and of Assyria and of other Oriental nations, has scarcely
taken place at all, and in no other case has been so rapid
and so perfect as in Greek art. Certainly we cannot account for
it by what we call civilization. In our sense of the word the
Persian Empire was in the age of Aeschylus and Pheidias at a
higher stage of civilization than Greece, and in the Hellenic
world the advent of a more scientific learning and research
and criticism was contemporary with the degeneracy, and was
soon followed by the disappearance, of all true art, until its
renascence in other forms. But however inexplicable it may
be, it is an incontestable fact that within less than two centuries
the superstitious awe attaching to some ghoulish monstrosity
or some formless stock or meteorite gave place to reverence
for the images of a Pheidian Zeus or Athene — reverence paid
not so much to the present deity as to the manifestation of the
grand, the serene, and the beautiful.^
1 The testimony of many writers to the effect produced by the Pheidian
Zeus at Olympia is very striking. " Let a man sick and weary in soul," says
one of these, " who has passed through many distresses and sorrows, whose
2l8
An Attic Hydria of the Middle Black-figured Period 218
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
The vital power which effected this development revealed
its workings not only in sculpture but also in other creations
of Hellenic genius — in Greek literature, Greek thought, Greek
mythology, and Greek theology, all of which bear testimony
to a genius essentially formative and artistic — perhaps we
may say essentially sculpturesque — a genius well described
as the converse of that of the Jewish nation, and one for which
the dangers of idolatry were to a great extent neutralized by
poetic imagination and reverence for the ideally beautiful.
Doubtless the imaginative and allegorical pictures of the
Olympian gods and the Olympian creed which we find in the
art of Homer and Pheidias and the dramatists do not reveal
to us the gross anthropomorphic superstitions of the populace,
w^hich were, as we have seen, as bitterly denounced by Xeno-
phanes as was Jewish idolatry by Isaiah. Doubtless, as in every
age, the religion of the thinker and the true artist was not that
of the people, but in spite of all the superstitions in which it
was involved (and we need only think of Socrates to realize
them) this anthropomorphism of the popular theology was
a result of the same formative spirit to which was due the
evolution of Greek sculpture from the formless or grotesque
effigies of the early age of Greece.
Whether we should regard Greek plastic art as lineally
descended from Aegaean it is not easy to say. Aegaean
plastic art (as we see by the Vaphio cups) attained an
astonishing proficiency, but was apparently swept out of
existence by the Dorians. It may have survived and been
the germ from which sprang the glories of the Periclean age,
but it is foolish to refuse to recognize in Hellenic art, as in
Hellenic thought, the presence of many elements derived from
other sources — from Crete, Lydia, Phrygia, the East, and
Egypt — and to insist on an ' autochthonous ' originality in
the case of Greek sculpture or Greek thought which cannot
be claimed for Giotto, Dante, or Shakespeare. But whether
pillow is unvisited by kindly sleep, stand in front of this image ; he will,
I deem, forget all the terrors and troubles of human life." (Quoted by
Professor Bury.)
219
ANCIENT GREECE
of Aegaean or other origin in regard to some of its elements,
the art of classical Hellas is, of course, original in the true
sense of the word, being a re-creation — and that, too, into a
far higher existence.
Genuine statuary is said to have begun in Greece about
600, and the so-called ' archaic ' period extends to the end of
the Persian wars, say 480. Of this period I shall give a brief
review, prefaced by a few remarks on the fetish-worship which
preceded the attempt to represent deity, and later also the
human form divine, as a thing of perfect beauty.
The ancient Greek idol was often merely a symbol of divine
presence— sometimes a rude figure (such as one finds in
thousands on sites of temples) of clay or wood or lead, fre-
quently grotesque or monstrous, sometimes a formless stock, ^
or a ' heaven-fallen ' stone, or a pillar, such as we hear of in
the Bible and see in the lyion Gate at Mycenae and in pictures
of the Karth-goddess. Real statuary assuredly existed in
Greece (as, of course, in Egypt and the East) before the sixth
century,'^ and rich and elaborate relief-work was produced,
as we see from the descriptions of the famous Cypselus chest
and the carved throne of the Apollo image at Amyclae. The
former, which Pausanias saw some 800 years later in the
Heraion at Olympia, was presented probably by Periander,
and was asserted to have been the actual chest in which
Cypselus was hidden by his mother (c. 655). In any case it is
probably the most ancient specimen of artistic Greek carved
work (if it was by a Greek artist) of which we have historical
record. The reliefs, in cedar wood, ivory, and gold, represented
mythological subjects (Pelops, Heracles, Perseus, &c.) in thirty-
three panels arranged in five parallel rows. The Amyclaean
^ These old wooden idols were called ^6ava (' carved things '). See Hdt. v. 82.
^ E.g. the gold and silver dogs and the golden torch-bearers of Od. vii.
and the Apollo statue intimated by //. i. 28, and the statue of Athene in II. vi.
92 and 303, evidently imagined in a sitting position. A colossal gold-plated
statue of Zeus was given by Cypselus or Periander (c. 600) to Olympia. Also
we hear of an artist of Rhegium, Clearchus, who at a very early period made
a bronze statue (not cast, but plated) of Zeus at Sparta. Moreover, there is
a stone sculpture still existing in Greece that is far older than Homer — the
Lions of Mycenae.
220
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
throne was also decorated by about twenty-seven reliefs
(probably in bronze), and was supported by figures of the
Seasons, the Graces, Tritons, &c. It was the work of a lyydian
(Magnesian) artist, Bathycles, who may have come to Sparta
in the time of Croesus (say 550), but whose date is possibly
considerably earlier. This was a work produced by a foreign
artist 1 as a throne, or screen, for a Greek god. But in what
form was that god represented ? He was, as Pausanias tells
us, a bronzen pillar, some 45 feet high, " with head and hands
and feet attached." Such old fetishes, pillars and logs and
meteorites, sometimes quite formless or else shaped into
some rude resemblance to humanity or to some monstrous
thing, and decked out with ornaments, were not seldom pre-
served reverentially in temples — hidden away like Bambini
and relics and displayed only on solemn occasions — long after
a splendid statue of the deity had been erected in the sanc-
tuary. At Troy we hear of the Palladium, and at Ephesus
and on the Tauric Chersonese of the heaven-fallen image of
Artemis, and in the Brechtheion there was kept an old Koavov
of Athene long after the Pheidian goddess had been erected in
the Parthenon, and at Phigaleia existed (and was renewed
in bronze by Onatas of Aegina) a monstrous horse-headed
Demeter. Doubtless of the nature of the ancient wooden or
clay idol were the ' Aeacidae '—the images of the old Aeginetan
heroes Aeacus, Telamon, and Peleus of which Herodotus tells
us. The Aeginetans, he says, when appealed to by the Thebans
for help, " sent them the Aeacidae," and the Thebans, " relying
on the assistance of the Aeacidae," ventured on war, but were
beaten ; whereupon they returned the Aeacidae and " besought
the Aeginetans to send them men instead." Moreover, in
spite of this experience, just before the battle of Salamis,
^ Lydia, Phrygia, and Lycia all seem to have readied an advanced stage
in plastic art before Greece, and doubtless, as well as Egypt, Crete, and the
East, contributed many important elements for the development of Greek
sculpture. The great rock-relief of ' Niobe ' (probably the Earth-Mother
Cybele) on Mount Sipylus in Lydia is very ancient, and so are recently dis-
covered tombs in Phrygia with lions like those of Mycenae. Sculptured
monuments of high antiquity, probably of Hittite provenance, have lately
been discovered at Pteria, the ancient capital of Cappadocia.
221
ANCIENT GREECE
says Herodotus, "a ship was sent by the Athenians toAegina
to fetch Aeacus and the other Aeacidae."
According to tradition, the first sculptors and workers in
metals were superhuman beings, such as Hephaestus and the
fabled tribes of Phrygian Dactyli and Cretan and Rhodian
Telchines and I/emnian Cabiri and the Cyclopes. Then we
hear of Daedalus. The name may be an epithet (' the artificer ') ,
but there is no good reason to doubt that it was given to some
great worker in metals and sculptor and inventor (possibly
even of wings!), whom legend and Homer ^ connect with Minos,
and thus also with Theseus and Athens, intimating doubt-
less the artistic connexion between Crete and Greece in the
Minoan age.
Daedalus is said to have made statues that could see and
walk, and even run away if they were not chained to their
pedestals ! This we may accept as an imaginative way of
saying that he first gave usable-looking legs to statues and
opened their eyes and freed their arms.'^ But it will be seen
that he and his followers, the DaedaHdae, did not succeed
at once in banishing the type of the old image with cone-shaped
or columnar nether extremities and arms glued to its side,
or with its figure swathed in massive drapery and forming a
solid piece with the marble on which it is seated — as if doomed
to sit there for all eternity.
After about 600 the sculptors and masterpieces mentioned
by old writers become very numerous, but of many nothing
survives but the name. For our object it will be enough to
limit ourselves to what can be illustrated by extant monuments.
Of these relics there are several well-defined types, in which we
trace the evolution from the primitive idol to a statue of high
artistic value.
(i) The first of these types is a figure whose lower half,
though no longer a mere column or block, is columnar, with the
1 Homer frequently uses cognate words {8ai8dXeos, SatSuXXeiv, &c.) in
connexion with artistic decoration, but only mentions Daedalus as the maker
of a dancing-ground for Ariadne. With ' Daedalus ' cf. the half -mythical
sculptor ' Smilis ' {aniXr} = sculptor's chisel).
* Something analogous can be said of Giotto.
222
58. Statue from the Branchidae Tempi<e
59. The ' IlARPV TOMR '
222
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
legs undefined and entirely hidden by a stiff, shapeless skirt,
below which the feet protrude side by side. The arms are
attached to the sides, the drapery has no real folds or texture,
but is a solid mass marked with conventional lines. The head-
dress is of an Egyptian or Oriental character, generally with
broad flat masses of hair hanging down in front of each shoulder.
This type is well illustrated by the ' Naxian Artemis ' (Fig. 50)
discovered in Delos, where Nicandra of Naxos dedicated the
image to the goddess, and by a similar, but headless, statue
found near the site of the great Hera temple in Samos.
(ii) Secondly, there are heavily draped seated figures
which, in early examples, seem, as has been said, to form one
solid piece with the block or throne on which they sit. Of
this type the Branchidae statues (which are in the British
Museum) offer fine examples. The specimen given in Fig. 58
is inscribed with the name ' Chares of Techiussa,' probably
some great Milesian, possibly a tyrant of Miletus long before
its destruction by Darius in 494. (See Note A at the end of
this book for the Branchidae temple.)
The Cretan statue given in Fig. 6 was perhaps of the same
character. The lower half is wanting, but not only the flat
masses of pendent (probably false) hair but also the general
pose remind one forcibly of seated Egyptian statues. It is the
only specimen extant of Cretan sculpture of this period, and
shows perhaps the style of the followers of Daedalus, such as
Dipoenus and Scyllis, who are said to have introduced statuary
(c. 580) from Crete into the Peloponnese. This statue is
perhaps considerably older than any of those from the temple
of the Branchidae.
(iii) Thirdly, we have winged figures, possibly an imitation ^
from Oriental art. In classical Greek art wings are rare, as
being unnatural. In Oriental art we often have four or six
wings, and it seems just possible that the oldest Greek Victory
(Nike) extant may have had six. It is a very uncouth thing,
1 For wings in Greek sculpture I may perhaps refer to an appendix in my
edition of Virgil's Aeneid, i. (Blackie&Son). In later sculpture Victory, Cupid,
and Death are winged. See Fig. 119 and p. 419.
223
ANCIENT GREECE
but is highly interesting as one of the first Greek statues with
unmistakable legs — legs, too, that are bent. Perhaps the
goddess was represented flying. From small bronzes that
repeat the type it seems probable that the figure floated,
suspended by the drapery. Its wings were probably coloured.
It has a rather sour archaic smile and an elaborate system of
forehead curls and pendent tresses. It is also interesting
because it may be the actual statue referred to by Aristophanes,
who says that Achermus of Chios was the first to make a
winged Nike. It was discovered in Delos, whither many
statues were sent as offerings from other Aegaean islands,
and a pedestal was discovered near it on which were the names
of Micciades and Achermus, the Chian sculptors, whose date
is about 570. Winged figures occur also on vases and in other
paintings of this period. They are sometimes purely decora-
tive (as perhaps on the Clazomenae sarcophagus. Fig. 45),
sometimes they represent a winged Artemis, sometimes
Harpies, Fates [Ktipe?), genii, or evil spirits. The finest
example of this (of about 550) is the famous ' Harpy tomb,'
a monument evidently of Greek (Ionic) work, but discovered
in Lycia and now in the British Museum (Fig. 59). The
winged bird-like figures are doubtless death-goddesses who are
carrying away the souls of the dead. The central portion
represents probably Hades, the king of the lower world, or
else a deceased hero, receiving gifts — a motive found on many
Greek tombs, the earliest examples being very ancient Spartan
gravestones.^ These sculptures formed a part of the frieze of
a massive square monument, some 30 feet high. The relief
was elaborately painted, but the colours have quite disap-
peared. From frescoes on the internal walls of the sepulchral
chamber it seems as if the monument was used in early
Christian times by a ' Stylite ' (a hermit who lived on the top
of a column).
(iv) Fourthly, we have draped figures, mostly female, in
which the arms are, in later examples, no longer attached to the
sides, but bent and projecting forward (made of a separate
^ Cf. the (later) stele of Hegeso, Fig. 106.
224
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
piece and inserted) or crossed over the body ; and the left foot
is almost always advanced. In these statues the drapery
is no longer massive and conventional, but treated with a
skill that shows a very great advance. Of this type we have
striking examples in the fourteen female statues excavated
some twenty-seven years ago on the Acropolis (p. 228). Their
date is probably about 520 to 500.
(v) Lastly, a large number of later archaic Greek statues
belong to what is called the ' nude male ' type.^ They are
full length, and fully developed in limb, and show great ana-
tomical knowledge and artistic skill. They seem not seldom to
represent the god Apollo ^ (thence are commonly known as
' Apollos '), but are evidently sometimes statues of athletes.
Nude ' Apollos ' of this type have been found in Naxos,
Thera, Melos, and other places. A very striking early example,
now at Munich, was found at Tenea (between Corinth and
Mycenae). It has the antique Egyptian ' wig ' and the
archaic grimace, but the anatomy is finely treated. The
finest examples, however, come from Boeotia, especially from
the sanctuary of Apollo on Mount Ptoon. They are archaic
in style, but give evidence of a careful study of the human body,
and are the first distinct intimations of that mastery of the
Greeks in statuary which has never been approached. In
connexion with these ' Apollos ' should be mentioned the
statues of athletes. We hear of wooden statues of athletes
erected at Olympia about 540, and one at Phigaleia perhaps
as early as 560. The chief makers of athlete statues were
the sculptors of Argos and Sicyon. Ancient writers speak of
the great pre-eminence of these schools, and doubtless their
statuary, which consisted at this epoch mainly of avSpidvreg
{' men-portraits ') rather than ayak/j-aTa or a^a^^/xara (images
for worship or dedication), had a very great influence on
Attic art. Unfortunately — perhaps because they worked
mostly in bronze, which tempted the plunderer — nothing of
* These various types are given by Professor E). Gardner in his Handbook
of Greek Sculpture.
2 A colossal nude Poseidon was found at Sunion in 1906.
P 225
'c
ANCIENT GREECE
any importance, except a bronze statuette of a very heavily
built athlete, has survived, and we must content ourselves
with the facts that the Argive Ageladas ^ was the master of
two of the most illustrious Athenian sculptors, Pheidias and
Myron, as well as of Polycleitus (who himself was perhaps an
Argive), and that Canachus of Sicyon made for the Branchidae
temple a bronze Apollo which was carried off by Darius and
restored by Seleucus.
The reliefs on Attic tombstones of this period may be men-
tioned in connexion with portrait sculpture. Of these the
most interesting is that of Aristion (Fig. 51), probably the same
Aristion who proposed giving a bodyguard to Peisistratus
(c. 560). Although archaic in style, it shows the very dehcate
modelling and finish for which the early Athenian school is so
remarkable.
Thus, very faintly and discontinuously amidst all the
complexities of the subject, we are able to trace the evolution
of the statue of the classical period from the primitive ^oavov.
In doing this we have left unnoticed some very important
facts connected with the use of statuary for architectural
purposes. I shall, therefore, add a few words about, firstly,
the sculptures from the ancient temple at Selinus ; secondly,
the archaic sculptures excavated on the Athenian Acropolis ;
and, thirdly, the Aeginetan marbles.
(i) On the site of the most ancient of the temples at Selinus,
in Sicily (see Note A), have been discovered some metopes
(reliefs on a Doric frieze) which are probably the oldest extant
perfect specimens of Greek architectural sculpture. Origi-
nally they were coloured and had a dark blue background,
but only faint traces of colour remain. They date from about
600, and are thus some half-century older than the Croesus
column, and still older than the ' Harpy tomb ' (Figs. 52, 59).
Three of the earliest of them, casts of which are to be seen in
the British Museum, represent Perseus cutting off the Gorgon's
^ See Hdt. v. 72 for the Olympian victor (c. 520) whose statue by Ageladas
was seen at Olympia by Pausanias. As Ageladas also made a statue of Zeus
for the Messenians at Naupactus in 459, he must have lived and worked to
a great age.
226
6o. EUROPA ON THE BUI.1,
Metope from temple at Selinus
226
il
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
head, Heracles carrying the Cercopes ^ suspended Hke rabbits
to the two ends of a pole, and a chariot with its four horses
facing the spectator — a clever bit of perspective. Some of
the figures are exceedingly uncouth, misproportioned, and dis-
torted, and the faces repulsive with their goggle eyes and mean-
ingless stare, but they are interesting as being original Greek
work (Selinus having been founded by Megara), and showing
no such evidence of Egyptian, Cretan, or Oriental influence
as is noticeable in much of the early sculpture that we have
been considering. The Selinus metope of which Fig. 60
gives a representation is from another temple, and is perhaps
of somewhat later date (say about 580). It is of very much
more artistic conception and execution, and has considerable
dignity and vigour and dehcacy in detail, although it is
thoroughly archaic in its outlines and perspective. The subject
— Europa being carried by the bull across the sea (intimated
by a dolphin) from Phoenicia to Crete — seems to point to
Cretan workmanship or influence.
(2) After the departure of the Persians, who had twice
(in 480 and 479) sacked Athens and had burnt or broken down
as far as they could every temple and monument, the Athenians
at once set to work to rebuild on a more magnificent scale,
and in order to obtain a larger area on the Acropolis they
erected (on the advice of Cimon or Themistocles) strong walls
on the upper slopes and filled in the spaces between these
walls and the top of the hill, using for this purpose the relics
of the old temples — such as the ancient temple of Athene
Polias — which had stood on the summit. During the years
1882-87 these spaces were thoroughly searched, and many
statues and inscriptions and architectural fragments were
excavated, which have thrown a great deal of light on the
question of Athenian sculpture in the sixth century. The
most important of these finds are {a) remains of the pediments
of some very ancient temples, (b) remains of the pediment
of the temple of Athene Pohas— rebuilt by Peisi stratus— and
(c) a series of fourteen female statues, more or less perfect.
1 For these mischievous little gnomes see Rawlinson's note to Hdt. vii.216.
227
ANCIENT GREECE
(a) The ancient pediments (to be seen in the AcropoHs
Museum at Athens) are of yellow limestone {poros). One
represents Heracles killing the Hydra ; in another he is wrest-
ling with Triton, the ' old man of the sea,' while from the other
corner is advancing — perhaps against Zeus, who was his great
adversary — the horrid monster Typhon, with three human
heads and busts (reminding one of Dante's Geryon, whose
face was that of a just man), and a winged body with inter-
woven snakes for feet, and a long dragon tail. All these
monsters were originally painted in bright reds and blues
and greens, like terra-cottas, and set against a coloured back-
ground. They doubtless date from a time earlier than that of
Peisistratus — probably from about the same period as that of
the Selinus sculptures. So shocking to the modern Hellenist
does their barbarous monstrosity appear — especially when
imagined in their pristine glare of colour — that some suppose
them to be products of the Dark Age, and to have been buried
out of sight long before the advent of the Persians, as offensive
to public taste. Perhaps one was the pediment of the ancient
shrine of Athene Polias before it was rebuilt by Peisistratus.
{b) The pediment of the old temple of Athene was in Parian
marble. Its fragments have been successfully reconstructed
into a ' gigantomachia ' — a battle between Athene and giants.
Three she has overthrown, and is striking at one with her
spear while she holds extended the aegis — originally gorgeously
decorated with red and blue and green scales, The date of
this marble pediment may be about 540. It was probably
erected by Peisistratus when he turned the old shrine of Athene
into a Doric temple (see Note A) .
(c) Fourteen female draped statues in Parian marble
(eight of them with heads) were excavated, mostly from the
fiUed-up space between the Erechtheion and the north-western
wall of the Acropolis. What they represent, whether priestesses
or donors or dedicated portraits, is unknown. Perhaps they
stood in or near the old temple of Athene. They are all in
slightly different attitudes, but all are erect, with left foot
advanced and forearm projecting horizontally, as if they held
228
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
some offering in the hand (Fig. 37), The dress — evidently
that which prevailed at Athens in the age of Peisistratus —
consists of a long crimpled Ionic chiton, fastened above the
upper arm with small brooches {irepovai, fibulae) or buttons,
and a peplos, doubled and fastened over the right shoulder
hy fibulae. In some cases the peplos is wanting ; in others it
is fastened, like a Doric chiton, over both shoulders. The
drapery, of which parts were richly decorated and coloured,
is of exquisitely delicate and elaborate workmansliip, though
in this, as in the type of face and otherwise, there is a great
difference between the earlier and the later of these statues.
Some have the goggle eyes and meaningless stare or grimace
of archaic sculpture ; in others the face shows considerable
character and is very finely modelled, giving evidence of a
great advance in the direction of that feminine grace and
delicacy which is one of the characteristics of early Attic
sculpture, and to which, when wedded to the manly vigour of
the athletic Argive school, we owe the development of the
highest types of Greek plastic art — those which we associate
with the names of Pheidias, Myron, and Praxiteles.
Before the excavations on the Acropolis we possessed scarcely
any relics of Athenian sculpture during the period preceding
the Persian wars. Nor was this surprising, for the Persians
were not only intensely embittered against Athens and therefore
wreaked their vengeance by wholesale destruction, but they
were also fire-worshippers and therefore iconoclasts. In
Asia Minor the Ephesian temple was the only one spared by
Xerxes, and in Attica every shrine and every image was
destroyed or mutilated. This explains the total disappearance
of many buildings and works of art mentioned by ancient
writers. And much that was made of valuable material
and was transportable was doubtless carried off to the East.
This probably accounts for the disappearance of the bronze
four-horse chariot which is said to have been erected on the
left hand of the steps leading up to the Acropolis, as a trophy 1
of the victorious Chalcidian campaign of 506. It certainly
^ Pericles probably set another in its place.
229
ANCIENT GREECE
does account for the temporary disappearance of another
work of art — the bronze statues of the tyrannicides Harmodius
and Aristogeiton, made by the sculptor Antenor, whose name
occurs on what is believed to be the basis of the largest and
best preserved of the ' Tauten ' (' Aunts ') — to use a name
that has been given to the draped female statues lately de-
scribed. These bronze tyrannicides were carried off by Xerxes,
but restored to Athens by Alexander the Great, or one of his
successors, and were seen by Pausanias standing in the
Athenian Agora side by side with the marble statues (possibly
replicas from memory) which had been erected at once (c. 477)
to retrieve the loss. Now for the most part of the six
centuries between the age of Xerxes and that of Pausanias these
groups — one in bronze and the other in marble — were among
the most familiar sights in Athens. They seem to have been
spared even by the rapacious Sulla, and by Caligula and Nero
himself, but possibly found their way to Constantinople
with the bronzen Athene and the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias.
Anyhow, they disappeared. But not many years ago re-
productions of one of the groups on a vase and a coin and a
marble chair (now at Broom Hall, in England) led to the
recognition of two statues in the Naples Museum (Fig. 61)
as copies — it is uncertain whether of Antenor's bronzes or the
marbles of Critius and Nesiotes. Probably Antenor's statues
(if we may judge from the ' Tante ' attributed to him) were
much more archaic in style than these dramatically animated
figures. It should be remarked that the figure with the
chlamys on the left arm is that of Aristogeiton, the elder of
the two tyrannicides, and that the original statue had a bearded
head, for which in modern times a youthful beardless head of
fourth-century work has been substituted.
The last Athenian statue that I shall mention here belongs
as regards date rather to the next period, for Calamis, the
sculptor who probably made it, was born only some ten years
before Pheidias and survived liim (having, it is said, made a
statue to Apollo, the Stayer of Evil, to commemorate the
cessation of the great plague of 430). Calamis is classed by
230
o
w
<
H
w
"O
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
ancient writers among the greatest Greek sculptors, and the
Hst of his works is long. He made many famous statues of
gods, and was also celebrated for his horses. He is said to have
been an Athenian, and his style was probably that of the
earlier Attic school, which, as we have seen, was distinguished
for its grace and delicacy rather than for athletic muscularity
and vigour. Of his works we possessed until lately not one
single specimen, and it is by no means certain that we now
possess one, but it seems likely — especially as he is known to
have accepted various commissions from Hiero of Syracuse
and to have made him several bronze horses. The statue in
question (Fig. 74) is an exceedingly fine bronze which was
found at Delphi about fifteen years ago. It represents a
youthful charioteer, who stood originally on a chariot at rest, to
judge from fragments of the horses that have been found. The
tranquil, self-possessed dignity of the figure, the careful and
graceful treatment of the long charioteer robe, and the ex-
ceedingly delicate modelling of the arms, hands, and feet offer
a striking contrast to the bold, Michelangelesque work of the
Peloponnesian athletic schools. Upon the basis a fragmen-
tary inscription contains the word polyzalos {' much-loved '),
which may be a name ; and possibly the group was dedicated
by Polyzalus, brother to Hiero. This high-bred youth is
therefore possibly Polyzalus himself or some younger member
of the princely Syracusan family. It is known that Hiero
won chariot-races at Olympia.
(3) The so-called Aeginetan marbles, remains of the two
pediments of the temple of Athene (or, if we may infer so from
an inscription found on the site, the temple of a local goddess
named Aphaia), were discovered in 1811. Casts are to be seen
in the British Museum, but the originals are in the Glyptothek
at Munich, restored and reconstructed by the Danish sculptor
Thorwaldsen (Fig. 63). A more successful reconstruction (the
models of which are also in the Munich Museum) has been made
by Professor Furtwangler, who in 1901 excavated further frag-
ments. He divides the combatants into groups, and makes
the archers shoot towards the corners instead of towards the
231
ANCIENT GREECE
centre, where Athene stands, and fills up the two corners
with two prostrate bodies. The scene of the west pediment is
evidently some episode in the Trojan War in which Aeginetan
heroes (Aeacidae, such as Ajax and Achilles ?) took part, and
the subject of the east pediment seems to be the earlier expe-
dition against lyaomedon of Troy made by Heracles and
Telamon, king of Aegina. Both the figures of Athene are stiff
and archaic. Possibly they are old statues belonging to the
temple before the erection of the other figures — which date
evidently from the years following the battle of Marathon.
Some of the figures had bronze armour originally. At this
epoch paint or gilt was used only for dress, ornaments, eyes, lips,
and hair. The nude was mostly represented by plain or tinted
marble. Its surface was very often oiled and polished and
slightly coloured, both in the case of Parian and also in that of
the somewhat yellower Pentelic (Attic) marble, which came
into use during the fifth century. The glittering white of
Carrara marble, unrelieved by any colour, as we see it in
modern sculpture galleries, would have seemed repellently
cold and inartistic to the Greek. The dismay that we gene-
rally feel at colour in statuary and architecture may be an
evidence of very refined sensibility, but it is essentially un-
Greek.
The sculptor of these pediments is not known for certain,
but probably it was Onatas, the most celebrated of the Aeginetan
school, which was evidently closely related to the Pelopon-
nesian schools of athletic sculpture. Before Onatas, another
famous Aeginetan sculptor, Smilis, had made the Samian
Hera ; and ancient writers give us to understand that Aegina
in early times was famed for its sculptors, but of this we possess
almost no evidence except these Aeginetan marbles ; and the
Aeginetan school, even if famous, was short-lived, for the
existence of Aegina as an independent state was blotted out
by Athens in 455. Onatas is said to have made statues for
many cities both in Greece and Western Hellas, and, like
Calamis, to have received commissions from Hiero for bronze
horses and charioteers. He also made warrior groups for
232
A
-sssr
i
H
<
ji
^■-'(ffi ^^^
m
,
r
imi
M
Mn '-- '' & B ■
1 uilESa
H^it^^^^^^^^^l
>l.v ,■>>
S*rj
l!«d0#
■^S^ i'-l
►^r^'tl
^- T'^SU"^^''
"9. ,+■
62. Tempi^e of Aphaia, Aegina
63. Aegina Pediment
232
THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS
dedication at Olympia and Delphi. It is therefore very-
probable that the pediments of the Aegina temple were his
work. They show remarkable anatomical knowledge. The
modelling of the limbs is exact and firm. But the faces are
those of mere fighters or athletes, entirely devoid of higher
human interest, and, except perhaps technically, these
specimens of Aeginetan art stand lower than many older
sculptures, and very much lower than the best Attic alt of
the next period.
233
CHAPTER V
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
(500-478)
SECTIONS : THE GREEKS AND CARTHAGINIANS IN SICILY :
PINDAR
IN the last chapter the thread of the narrative was dropped
at the arrival of Darius at Sardis after his Thracian and
Scythian expedition of 512. He had left Megabazus with
an army of 80,000 men in Thrace, the greater part of which,
as well as Paeonia, to the west of the Strymon, was brought
under Persian dominion and remained tributary to the Great
King for some fifteen years.
When Darius left Sardis for Susa he appointed his brother
Artaphernes satrap of the western province of the Persian
Empire. The Greek cities on the mainland were governed by
Greek tyrants who were responsible to this Persian satrap at
Sardis. For some years things went on quietly. Then came
the explosion known as the Ionian revolt, and this was followed
by the Persian invasions of Greece : first (after an unsuccess-
ful attempt by Mardonius) the invasion by the fleet and
army of Darius under the command of Datis and Arta-
phernes, who were beaten at Marathon ; then the far
more serious invasion by Xerxes, whom the Greeks defeated
at Salamis.
The story of the Ionic revolt and the Persian invasions is
told by Herodotus in the last four books of his history. With
an art that veils itself in seeming artlessness he leads us leisurely
onward with his simple, unaffected tale, lingering ever and
again over what some may deem unessential details, and making
long and delightful digressions, but leaving nevertheless in
the mind a far more distinct picture than that which we gain
234
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
from many more scrupulously critical and correct accounts.
Those who have the leisure for such reading, and are not forced
by a scientific conscience or by the exigencies of examination
to use the more sceptical and accurate compilations of modern
historians, will find in Herodotus, or in the admirable, though
rather free, version of his history by Canon Rawlinson, the
best and most attractive of all descriptions of this period.
The same kind of sensation as one has when gliding gently and
steadily over a smooth blue sea, with now and then a slight
pressure of the hand on the tiller, will be experienced as the
story is followed, with now and then a glance at some foot-note
which respectfully corrects or supplements the statements of
the Father of History.
This episode of the world's history is so well known and has
been related so often that I shall not attemj^t to give any very
detailed account of it. Moreover, whatever value the story,
as told by Herodotus, has for the true student — and it has
much — consists in its panoramic effects and its revelation of
human and national character, and this value is not increased
by a too anxious reconstruction of battles and other military
operations, or a too anxious scepticism as regards statistics. I
shall therefore briefly state the main facts, and then add a
little colour to the bare outline by quoting descriptive passages
from Herodotus or other sources.^
It will be remembered that Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus,
who had accompanied Darius on the Scythian expedition,
had persuaded his fellow-Greeks not to break down the bridge
over the Danube. The king bade him name his reward.
He asked for the gift of the town Myrcinus, on the river
Strymon, near the site of the future Amphipolis, and at once
began to fortify it and to collect troops — a procedure which so
aroused the suspicions of Megabazus, the commander of the
Persian army in Thrace, that he sent word to Darius. The
result was that Darius, who was still at Sardis, informed
Histiaeus that he could not bear his absence any longer and
^ Quotations in this chapter are all from Herodotus, unless otherwise stated.
My versions are founded to some extent on Canon Rawlinson's translation.
ANCIENT GREECE
ordered him to come to Sardis, and thence took him to Susa,
where for twelve years he led the envied life of a " benefactor
of the king " — gnawing his heart with anger and longing for
an opportunity for revenge.
Now the government of Miletus had passed into the hands of
Aristagoras, the son-in-law of Histiaeus. He quarrelled with
a Persian commander, Megabates, with whom he had made
an unsuccessful raid on Naxos, and (perhaps encouraged by a
message from Histiaeus tattooed on the head of a slave)
resolved to incite a general revolt of the Hellenic cities against
Persia. Democracies were set up in place of tyrannies, and
Aristagoras himself, having resigned his government, visited
Sparta and vainly tried to win the aid of King Cleomenes.
He then went to Athens, and " it being easier," says
Herodotus, " to deceive a multitude than one man, he suc-
ceeded with the Athenians, who were 30,000, though he had
failed with Cleomenes. They voted that twenty ships should
be sent to the aid of the lonians . . . and these ships were the
beginning of trouble between the Greeks and the barbarians."
The Eretrians joined with five triremes. With their fleet thus
powerfully reinforced, the lonians, had they followed the
advice of the historian Hecataeus to fortify some island,
might have held their own in the Aegaean and on the
coast, but, having landed near Bphesus, they marched up to
Sardis "with a great host," and took it. The city contained
many houses built of reed, and, a fire having broken out, it
was burnt (497). The Greeks hastily retreated, but were
overtaken and cut to pieces by Artaphernes and the Persians,
and though the revolt spread to Cyprus and Caria and the
Propontis, it was suppressed. Aristagoras fled to Myrcinus
and met his death in Thrace, but Miletus still headed the
revolt against Persia. Histiaeus, having at length persuaded
Darius to let him return to the West in order to pacify
his fellow-Greeks, aroused the suspicions of Artaphernes at
Sardis and fled. He tried in vain to re-enter Miletus. Then
he took to piracy in the Hellespont, but at last was caught and
put to death by the Persian satrap, an act reprimanded by
236
C.f. TiiK ' Darius Vask '
236
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
Darius, who, when the head of Histiaeus was brought to him,
bade it be buried honourably " as the head of a man who had
been a great benefactor to the king and his people."
The Persians then with a vast land force, and with 600 ships
drawn from Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt, prepared to lay
siege to Miletus. The Greek fleet of 353 triremes assembled
at the island of Lade — now a hillock in the midst of the wide
swampy plain which was once the splendid Latmic bay at the
mouth of the Maeander. Treason and cowardice gave the
victory to the barbarians. The Samians deserted in the midst
of the battle and sailed home.^ Miletus was captured (493).
" Most of the men were killed. The women and children were
made slaves. Those whose lives were spared were carried to
Susa, but received no ill-treatment from Darius, who established
them at Ampe, a city on the Persian Gulf near the mouth of
the Tigris. The sanctuary [of the Branchidae] at Didyma
was plundered and burnt." (See p. 223 and Fig. 58.)
On his expulsion from Athens in 510 Hippias, the son of
Peisistratus, had lived first at Sigeum. The Spartans had
tried to restore him, but had been foiled by their allies. He
then did his utmost to gain help from Persia, and Artaphernes
had threatened Athenian envoys at Sardis that " if they
wished to remain safe, they must receive Hippias back " ; but
nothing had come of it. Though now an old man of seventy,
Hippias himself, who was now at Susa, had doubtless urged his
claims with Darius during these last dozen years or so, and had
rejoiced at the anger of the Great King against the Athenians
and at the subjugation of the lonians. It was, however, not
the laments of the old Hippias but the burning of Sardis
that determined Darius to wipe out Athens and Eretria
from existence and transport their inhabitants to the far East.
In the spring of 492 he ordered Mardonius, " a youth lately
married to Artazostra, the king's daughter," to take a great
fleet from Cilicia to the Hellespont, whither a vast army was
sent to meet him. (On his voyage along the Ionian coast he
* Shortly afterwards a large number of the Samians " of the richer sort "
went off to Western Hellas and occupied Zancle (Messina).
ANCIENT GREECE
" put down all tlie tyrants and established democracies " — a
fact that Herodotus regards as " a marvel.") He crossed the
Hellespont successfully with all his land army, but his fleet was
wrecked while attempting to round the dangerous promontory
of Athos. "It is said that the number of ships destroyed
was nearly 300, and the men who perished were more than
20,000. The sea around Athos abounds in monsters, and some
of the men were seized and devoured by these animals."
After subjugating a Thracian tribe, from whom he had
suffered great losses, Mardonius withdrew to Asia, " having
failed disgracefully."
When Darius had first heard of the burning of Sardis, " laying
aside all thought of the lonians, who would, he was sure, pay
dearly for their revolt, he had asked. Who are these Athenians ? "
— as Cyrus once had asked, Who are these Spartans ? — " and
when he was informed, he called for his bow and placed an
arrow on the string and shot into the sky, exclaiming, Grant
me, Zeus " — he probably said Ormuzd — " to revenge myself on
these Athenians ! Then he bade one of his attendants every
day when his dinner was served thrice to repeat these words :
Master, remember the Atheniajts ! " And now the failure of
Mardonius had deepened his resentment and his determination.
He transferred the command of the armament to the Mede
Datis and to his own nephew Artaphernes, who had probably
succeeded his father as satrap at Sardis. A mighty fleet was
collected by the seaport towns tributary to Persia, and heralds
were sent demanding earth and water from the islands and
also from the cities in Greece, a large number of whom, says
Herodotus, including Aegina, sent the required tokens of
submission. But the heralds " were thrown at Athens into
the barathron " — an oubliette for criminals — " and at Sparta ^
into a well, and bidden to take therefrom earth and water." Then
Datis and Artaphernes, " with orders to carry the Athenians
and Eretrians away captive and to bring them into the presence
^ Probably the flight of the Spartan king Demaratus to the court of Darius
in 491 had incensed the Spartans. I^ater two Spartans voluntarily went to
Susa to atone for this murder of the heralds with their lives, but were freely
pardoned by Xerxes (Hdt. vi. 134-136).
238
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
of Darius," took their fleet of 600 triremes across tlie Aegaean.
They burnt the city of the Naxians and took hostages from other
islands, but by the command of Darius they spared the temple
and treasure of Delos, ^ on which island Datis landed and made
a burnt-offering of 300 talents of frankincense. " After his
departure," says Herodotus, " Delos (as the Delians told me)
was shaken by an earthquake — the first and last that has been
felt there to this day." In passing we may remark that
Thucydides (ii. 8) says exactly the same of an earthquake
that occurred at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. The
great fleet then reached Euboea. Eretria had begged Athens
for help, and 4000 Athenian settlers were directed to act as
auxiliaries, but these, finding the Eretrians meditating flight
or treason, escaped from Euboea. After a siege of six days,
two traitors, " both citizens of good repute," betrayed the city
to the Persians. It was plundered and burnt, and most of the
citizens were carried away to Susa. " King Darius," says
Herodotus — and it is another example of Persian magnanimity
— " before they were made his captives, cherished fierce
indignation against these men for having injured him unpro-
voked, but now that he saw them brought into his presence
and subjected to him he did them no further harm, and only
settled them at a place called Ardericca, 210 furlongs from
Susa. . . . And here they continued till my time, and still
spoke their old language."
From Eretria, by the advice of the old Hippias, the Persians
crossed over to Attica. " And because there was no place in
all Attica so convenient for their horse as Marathon, and as it
lay, moreover, quite close to Eretria, therefore Hippias con-
ducted them thither." Of the three Attic plains offering a
favourable landing-place, the Thriasian, the Athenian, and the
Marathonian, the last — about twenty-two miles from Athens —
^ A still more striking example of the regard that Darius and his Persians
— but not Xerxes — showed for the temples of Apollo (whom they perhaps
identified with the Sun-god) is the fact that Datis, after his defeat at Marathon,
having found a gilt image of Apollo that his men had looted, took it to Delos
in his own ship and begged the Delians to restore it to its temple in Greece —
which was not done for twenty years.
ANCIENT GREECE
was for the Persian armament by far the most accessible ;
and doubtless Hippias remembered vividly how, fifty years
before, he had accompanied his father, Peisistratus, in his
successful expedition from Eretria, and how they had landed
at Marathon and had surprised and routed the Athenian
army.
" When intelligence of this reached the Athenians, they
likewise marched their troops to Marathon, and there stood on
the defensive, having at their head ten generals, of whom one
was Miltiades." They seem to have chosen the rather shorter
and steeper path that skirts round Pentelicus to the north,
for we find them " drawn up in order of battle in the sacred
precinct of Heracles," to the north-west of the Persian encamp-
ment. " Before they left the city, the generals had sent off
to Sparta a herald, who was by profession a trained runner. . . .
He reached Sparta " — some 135 miles distant — " on the very
next day. . . . The Spartans wished to help the Athenians,
but were unable to come to their aid at once, being unwilling
to break the established rule. They could not march out of
Sparta on the ninth, when the moon had not yet reached its
full. So they waited for the full of the moon." These state-
ments, so composedly made by Herodotus, amaze one. Why,
we ask, had not the Athenians secured the aid of the Spartans
and other allies long ago ? Surely all that had happened in
Euboea was known to them. Surely they knew that their
turn would come next. And the fact that Aegina, and perhaps
Thebes, and other Greek cities had sent earth and water to
the barbarians ought surely to have made them still more
anxious to organize resistance — if they meant to offer resistance.
And how is it credible that a highly civilized Greek people,
the people that prided itself on being representative Hellenes,
the foremost of Greek states, the head of a powerful league of
Greek cities, should have let a superstition which nowadays
scarcely any longer incommodes the traveller in Central Africa
prevent them sending help when the very existence of Greece
was at stake ? It would truly be incredible had we not in
Greek history other similar cases, and no explanation can be
240
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
found except, as Grote says, in a most astounding " attribute
of Greek character " — or perhaps we might more justly call it
Spartan character. One can but cite such instances and leave
them to explain themselves. Other cases, as we shall see,
occurred in connexion with Thermopylae and with Salamis.^
The battle has been described and ' reconstructed ' times
without number. I shall content myself with noting a few
points of interest. The Athenian hoplites numbered perhaps
9000 and the gallant little Plataean contingent 1000. The
total Greek loss was 192 ! The Persians had about 200,000
foot and 10,000 cavalry ; but all this armament could not well
have taken part in the fight. They lost, says Herodotus, 6400
men and seven ships. The rest of the great fleet — some 600
triremes and many transports — at once sailed south and rounded
Sunion, with the evident intention of capturing Athens, possibly
incited to do so by a signal, the flashing of a shield from the
top of Pentelicus, a treacherous act which none has ever
explained, but which was attributed (Herodotus thinks wrongly)
to the Alcmaeonidae. The walls of the city had been demolished
by the Peisistratidae, and it could have offered no resistance
had not the Athenian army, leaving Aristides and his regiment
to guard the field, hastened back (Herodotus only says " with all
possible speed," which has sometimes been interpreted as "on
the same day"), and the Persians, seeing them and probably
learning the approach of the 2000 Spartans, who had at length
started, abandoned their project and sailed away. " After
the full of the moon," says Herodotus, " 2000 Spartans came
to Athens. So eager had they been to arrive in time that they
took only three days to reach Attica. They came too late for
the battle, but as they had a strong desire to see the Medes,
they continued their march to Marathon, and there viewed the
s ain. Then, after bestowing great praise on the Athenians
for their achievement, they returned."
Before passing on let us note a few points of personal interest.
^ See Hdt. vi. 106, vii. 206, ix. 7 ; Thuc. iv. 5, v. 54. One is reminded of
the Jews refusing to fight on the Sabbath during the siege of Jerusalem by
the Romans.
Q 241
ANCIENT GREECE
After the Greek wings had closed in and routed the victorious
Persians in the centre and had chased them to the sea, " they
laid hold of the ships and called for fire ; and it was here
that Callimachus, the polemarch, after greatly distinguishing
himself, was slain . . . and Cynaegeirus, the son of Euphorion,
having seized on a ship by the decoration at the stern, had his
hand cut off by the blow of an axe, and thus perished." This
Cynaegeirus was the brother of the poet Aeschylus, who
himself, as well as another brother, Ameinias, was present at
the battle ^ and probably took part in the celebrated charge
of the Athenian hoplites. That Callimachus was the ' pole-
march ' — that is, the official commander-in-chief of the ten
generals (each perhaps in command of a phyle of looo men) —
is allowed by Herodotus, but he states that Miltiades won over
Callimachus to give his casting vote for risking the battle,
and that the other nine generals, " when their turn came to
command, gave up their right to Miltiades," who nevertheless
" waited until his own day of command came," and then won
the battle. This has been questioned, for it is asserted that
daily command by rotation came into practice later ; but there
is no sufficient reason to doubt the account given by Herodotus,
and in any case Miltiades was practically, if not ofiicially,
the victor of Marathon— as the Athenians, too, thought, for
besides the ten pillars on the field of battle in memory of the
fallen a monument was, it is said, erected in honour of him.
It will be remembered that he had succeeded his uncle as
tyrant of the Chersonese. He had incurred the resentment of
Darius by voting for the destruction of the bridge over the
Danube (p. 191) and by conquering and handing over to the
Athenians the islands of I^emnos and Imbros, and on the failure
of the Ionic revolt he had fled to Athens. His son, Metiochus,
had been captured by the Persians. (" Darius, however,
when the Phoenicians brought him into his presence, was so
far from doing him any hurt that he loaded him with favours,
^ He doubtless also fought at Salamis — so vividly described in his Persae —
and at Plataea, and an Ameinias, possibly this brother of his, greatly dis-
tinguished himself at Salamis.
242
65. Pythagoras
66. Aeschyi,us
67. MlI<TIADES
68. ThEmistoci,ES 242
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
giving him a house and estates and also a Persian wife.")
His popularity at Athens was partly due to the acquisition of
Lemnos and Imbros and partly to his hostility to the Peisis-
tratidae, who had assassinated his father Cimon (celebrated
for having thrice won with the same mares the four-horse
chariot-race at Olympia) ; moreover, his experience in war
and his knowledge of the Persians doubtless led to his election
as general.
Besides Aeschylus and Callimachus and Miltiades two
famous men, afterwards great rivals, Aristides and Themistocles,
took part in the battle — the former as general, the latter a
young man of perhaps twenty-six.
Some thirty years later, in the great public portico near the
Athenian Agora known as the Poikile Stoa (the ' Painted
Portico '), the Michelangelo of antiquity, Polygnotus, depicted
the battle of Marathon. He seems to have chosen three
scenes : the first was the charge of the Athenians and Plataeans,
the second was the slaughter of the Persians in the swamp,
the third showed the attack of the Greeks on the ships. The
Persian leaders, Datis and Artaphernes, and the Greek generals
Callimachus and Miltiades and others were portrayed —
Cynaegeirus, too, seizing the stern of the vessel.
Something should perhaps be said here about the Spartan
leaders — though they were conspicuous for their absence.
We have several times already heard of the Spartan king
Cleomenes. He had reigned since about 520, and had helped
to eject Hippias, but had failed in a second expedition to
Athens. He had resisted the appeal of the Milesians and the
bribes of their envoy, Aristagoras.^ As was often the case
(an inevitable and perhaps intentional result of the curious
dual system), the two Spartan kings had quarrelled. Cleomenes,
who was wild and impulsive (touched, indeed, with insanity,
^ See Hdt. v. 49 sq. for the story of the bronzen map and the dismissal of
Aristagoras for having suggested to the Spartans a three months' march up
to Babylon ; and how the little Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes, and after-
wards wife of her half-uncle I^eonidas, saved her father from accepting the
bribe.
243
ANCIENT GREECE
if we are to believe Herodotus), succeeded finally, a year before
Marathon, in persuading the Delphic oracle to declare his rival,
King Demaratus, to be illegitimate. Demaratus fled to the
court of Darius,^ and we shall find him later as the trusted
adviser of Xerxes. A year after Marathon Cleomenes was
proved to have tampered with the Delphic oracle in order to
dethrone his rival, and took to flight. He was allowed to return,
but showed signs of insanity and was fettered and placed under
the guard of a Helot, and committed suicide. lyconidas, his
half-brother, succeeded, and when he died at Thermopylae
Cleombrotus and then Pausanias held the regency for his son
Pleistarchus. Demaratus was succeeded by lycotychidas, who
reigned till 469.
The counsel given by Solon to Croesus to " mark well the
end " has a striking application in regard to many — indeed, to
most — of the famous leaders and statesmen of Greek history.
The end of Miltiades is especially painful. He used his
popularity to persuade the Athenians to put a fleet of seventy
fully manned ships at his disposal, " without saying what
country he was going to attack, but only that it was a very
wealthy land, where they might easily get as much gold as
they could carry away." In order to avenge some private
wrong he attacked the island of Paros ; but after besieging the
town in vain, he was persuaded by a Parian prisoner, a priestess,
to steal some sacred object — for this was apparently his purpose
in going by night to a Parian temple. On his return he injured
himself when jumping from the wall of the precinct, and he
returned invalided to Athens. Here he was impeached for
having deceived the Athenians. His life was spared, but he was
fined fifty talents. " Soon afterwards his leg gangrened and
mortified ; and so Miltiades died ; and the fine was paid by his
son Cimon."
What was the end of Hippias is uncertain. Herodotus
gives a graphic picture of the old man landing at Marathon,
and " marshalling the companies of the barbarians as they
^ Many famous Greeks went over to the Persians. I need only mention
the two ' saviours of Greece, 'Themistocles and the victor of Plataea, Pausanias.
244
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
disembarked " ; but we hear no more. Had he been killed in
the battle we should have surely heard of it. Some assert that
he retired to I^emnos, which was now for a time reoccupied
by the Persians, but was reannexed by Athens after Salamis.
We hear of Peisistratidae — perhaps sons of Hippias — at the
court of Xerxes.
The occurrences in Greece during the interval between
the battle of Marathon and that of Salamis proved of very
great moment in deciding the fate of the Hellenic race. lyet
us first consider these, and then turn to Persia and the vast
preparations of Darius and Xerxes for wreaking vengeance on
Athens.
The perpetual hostility between Athens and Aegina has been
frequently mentioned, and it will be remembered that the
Athenians had denounced Aegina to Sparta for having sent
earth and water to the Persian king, Sparta, the head of a
great confederation to which even Athens belonged, had lately,
by means of a rather mean ruse,^ defeated its great rival
Argos, and had almost exterminated the Argive warriors —
so that the city " was left so bare of men that the slaves
managed the state and administered everything until the sons
of those who were slain by Cleomenes grew up." Sparta,
therefore, felt justified in acting in a high-handed manner,
and, having taken hostages from the Aeginetans, handed them
over to the Athenians. After Marathon these hostages were
demanded back by the Aeginetans, but the demand was
refused by Athens, and continual fighting went on between
the two states from about 487 until 483, when, in prospect of
renewed invasion by the Persians, the Greek states assembled
on the Corinthian isthmus and decided to patch up all
quarrels.
Probably, as Herodotus says, " the breaking out of this
Aeginetan war was the saving of Greece ; for hereby the
Athenians were forced to become a maritime power."
Even in the Dark Age, as we have seen, Athens possessed
a considerable navy ; but as a maritime power she was then
1 Hdt. vi. 78.
245
ANCIENT GREECE
out-rivalled by Corinth, and in later days by Corcyra and
Syracuse, and had held her own with much difficulty against
Aegina. The quarrel with this neighbouring island-state
induced the Athenians now to build ships, and the man who
suggested this (doubtless foreseeing Salamis) was the great
statesman Themistocles.
Even before the battle of Marathon he had been archon,^
and had carried a measure for the fortification of the Peiraeus
and the preparation of docks in the three natural harbours ;
and the work was begun ; but it was not completed until
after the Persian wars. Themistocles, as we are told by
Thucydides in a masterly analysis of his character (i. 138),
was " the best judge of things present with the least delibera-
tion, and the best conjecturer of the future," This insight
and foresight made him believe that the safety of Greece
and the future greatness of Athens depended on her sea-power.
Marathon had been a victory for Athenian hoplites — the high-
class citizens of Athens, whose political leaders were Aristides
and Xanthippus. Themistocles, though no professional party-
leader or demagogue, gained the allegiance of the mercantile and
naval part of the population, of that ' nautical rabble ' on which
Aristophanes — the praiser of good old Marathonian times —
pours such contempt. The claims of the Peiraeus were begin-
ning to make themselves heard. It was felt by some that
Athens, if she was to be a great maritime power, should not
be at the distance of four miles from the sea, and doubtless the
transference of the city to the Peiraean peninsula would have
saved her from enormous difficulties and expenses (such as
those connected with her Long Walls) ; but the feeling against
abandoning the ancestral site and the Acropolis was exceedingly
strong and prevailed. The policy urged by Themistocles was
that of fortifying the harbours of Athens and increasing her
navy. About the year 483 fortune offered him the following
opportunity. " The Athenians, having a large sum of money
^ If this was, as stated, in 493-2, and if he was born, as stated, about 514,
he would have been only about twenty-one years of age. Hitherto the open
beach of Phaleron had sufficed for the warships.
246
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
in their treasury, tlie produce of the mines at Laurion [near
Sunion], were meaning to distribute it among the full-grown
citizens, who would have received ten drachmae apiece, when
Themistocles persuaded them to build with the money two
hundred ships " — more probably to raise their navy to this
number — " to help them in their war against the Aeginetans.
. . . The new ships were not used for this purpose, but became
a help to Greece in her hour of need."
About the personality of Themistocles and his two chief
rivals, Xanthippus and Aristides, a few words should be said.
He was the son of a middle-class Athenian, Neocles. His mother
was a foreigner, a Thracian or Halicarnassian. He oweid,
therefore, his citizenship to the late reforms of Cleisthenes,
and his early political pre-eminence under such unfavourable
conditions to very unusual abilities. His meteor-like career
and fall will be related in connexion with historical events.
Probably no one ever earned more justly the name of a
saviour of his country, nor that of a traitor — although many
illustrious Greeks contest with him the latter title to fame.
Xanthippus was connected through his wife, Agarista
(a niece of the reformer Cleisthenes), with the celebrated
Alcmaeonidae. He was a leader of the old democratic party,
which held to the reforms of Cleisthenes against the more
advanced radical and nautical doctrines of Themistocles.
In 483, things having come to a crisis between the two parties,
an appeal was made to ostracism and Xanthippus was banished
(see Fig. 75). At the battle of Salamis he returned, was made
admiral in place of Themistocles in 479, and fought at Mycale.
He was the father of Pericles, who began to take part in public
affairs about 469.
Aristides was of noble Athenian family. He was, as we have
seen, one of the generals at Marathon. In the following year
he was archon. He had been an intimate friend of Cleisthenes
(who had evidently died about 500) . His character gained him
the surname ' the Just.' He took part with Xanthippus
in opposing the policy of Themistocles, and like him was
ostracized (483 or 482). In this connexion a rather trite
247
ANCIENT GREECE
story should perhaps be retold. An illiterate voter appealed
to a bystander to scratch on his ostrakon (potsherd) the name
Aristides. The bystander, who happened to be Aristides
himself, complied with the request, but asked the man why he
wished to ostracize Aristides. " Because," was the answer,
" I'm so tired of hearing him called the Just." Aristides,
permitted to return, took part in the battle of Salamis, as we
shall see, and became a great power in the state. To him and
Cimon, the son of Miltiades, was chiefly due the building up
of the Athenian Empire. He lived to see the ostracism of
Themistocles, and died, almost in poverty, in the year 468.
Let us now turn to Persia. After the return of Datis and
Artaphernes the determination of Darius to chastise Greece
seems to have urged him to collect a still vaster armament.
But in the midst of these preparations he died (485). His
latter years had been troubled by the quarrels of his sons
in regard to the succession. Artabazanes was the eldest,
but was born before, whereas Xerxes was born soon after,
the accession of Darius. Moreover, the mother of Xerxes was
Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus and widow of Cambyses, and
she was regarded as the chief wife of Darius. He therefore
(influenced also, it is said, by the arguments of the exiled
Spartan Demaratus, who had himself lost his kingship through
a question of legitimacy) appointed Xerxes as his heir. Xerxes
was a mere youth. He was at first " coldly disposed towards
a Grecian war," and gave his attention to subduing Egypt,
which had revolted, and over which he set his brother Achae-
menes as satrap. (Achaemenes led the Egyptian naval contingent
in the invasion of Greece, and was afterwards killed in Egypt.)
After his return from Egypt Xerxes called a council and pledged
himself " not to rest till he had taken and burnt Athens."
The plan was warmly supported by Mardonius, who had con-
stantly incited Xerxes to avenge the Persians, and had been
seconded by messengers from the Aleuadae (the Thessalian
princes who had espoused the cause of the Persians), and by
certain Peisistratidae (perhaps sons of Hippias) , as well as by an
' oracle-monger,' Onomacritus by name, who had long ago been
248
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
banished by Hipparchus from Athens for having forged
prophecies under the venerable name of Musaeus. This
Orphic seer " had pHed Xerxes with his oracles, and the
Peisistratidae and Aleuadae had not ceased to press him with
their advice, till at last Xerxes had yielded." But his uncle
Artabanus was strongly opposed to the attempt, extolling
the invincible bravery of the Greeks, while Mardonius sneered
at them as cowards, saying, " Though I went as far as Mace-
donia and came little short of reaching Athens itself, yet not a
soul ventured to come out against me to battle." Xerxes
was disquieted by the advice of his uncle ; but he had a vision
which bade him keep to his former decision, and after the
vision had twice appeared he bade Artabanus don the royal
robes and lay himself on the royal bed. The vision then
appeared also to him, and " threatened him and endeavoured
to burn out his eyes with red-hot irons." So he was convinced ;
and, encouraged by still another vision, Xerxes sent forth
orders to all the nations in the Persian Empire to collect men
and horses and chariots and transports and ships of war.
Herodotus uses all the resources of his inimitable art in
order to impress one with the incomparable vastness of the
armament of Xerxes. Some of his statistics may perhaps be
questionable, but in spite of all that it has suffered at the
hands of scepticism and criticism his account of the invasion
still remains by far the most worthy of perusal, for it is a work
of art and not merely a bare enumeration of well-authenticated
facts. As my space allows me only the choice between con-
structing a narrative from provable statistics and offering
some of the innumerable pictures delineated by Herodotus,
I shall adopt the latter course, leaving it to the reader to fill
up, if necessary, the numerous gaps by reference to some
shortly told history of Greece.
" In the first place, because the former fleet had met with so
great a disaster at Athos, preparations were made there during
three years. Detachments were sent by the various nations
whereof the army was composed. These relieved each other
in turn and worked at a moat beneath the lash. The people
249
ANCIENT GREECE
dwelling about Athos also bore a part in the labour. Athos
is a great mountain stretching out far into the sea, and where it
ends towards the mainland there is a neck of land some twelve
furlongs wide, the whole extent of which is a level plain, broken
only by a few low hills " ; and the modern name of the locality
(Provlaka) means 'the canal in front [of the mountain].'
Distinct traces of Xerxes' canal are still visible. The isthmus is
formed of deposits of sand and marl, and its highest part is
only 50 feet above sea-level, so that the cutting of a canal was
a comparatively easy task. " It seems to me," says, never-
theless, our historian, " that Xerxes was actuated by pride,
wishing to display his power and to leave a memorial to posterity,
for, although it was possible with no trouble at all to have the
ships drawn across the isthmus, he ordered that a canal should
be made of such width as to allow two triremes to pass abreast
with oars in action."
Xerxes met the main body of his Eastern troops in Cappa-
docia, and spent the winter of 481 at Sardis. Meantime all the
contingents of nearly fifty different nations, land and sea forces,
were assembling near the Hellespont, and preparations were
being made to throw a double bridge across the strait. " Near
Sestos and just opposite Abydos there is a rocky tongue of
land which runs out for some distance into the sea. Towards
this tongue they constructed a double bridge from Abydos,
the Phoenicians making one line of it with cables of white flax,
the Egyptians for the other using ropes of papyrus. But
after the channel (which is seven furlongs wide) had been
bridged it happened that a great storm arose and broke the
whole work to pieces. Now when Xerxes heard thereof he
was filled with wrath and straightway sent orders that the
Hellespont should receive three hundred lashes, and that
fetters should be cast into it. Nay, I have even heard it said
that he bade branders take their irons and brand the Helles-
pont. And while the sea was thus punished by his orders,
he also commanded that the overseers of the work should lose
their heads."
So a new bridge was built. Six hundred and seventy-four ships
250
A Late Black-figured Hydria
250
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
of war (triremes and penteconters) were arranged in two lines,
and over each of these were stretched by means of capstans six
huge cables, some of flax and some of papyrus (the former weigh-
ing not less than fifty-seven pounds the cubit) . Transversely
were laid immense planks, and a road was formed with brush-
wood and earth, and fenced with a high boarding, so that the
animals should not see the water. Then Xerxes set forth from
Sardis. " At the moment of departure the sun suddenly quitted
his seat in the heavens, though there were no clouds in sight. "^
The omen was favourably interpreted by the Magi, and Xerxes
" proceeded on his way with great gladness of heart. . . .
First of all went the baggage-carriers and the beasts of burden,
and then a vast crowd of many nations . . . then in front of
the king a thousand picked horsemen of the Persian race
and a thousand spearmen ; then ten sacred horses richly
caparisoned and the holy car of Zeus [Ormuzd] drawn by eight
milk-white steeds with their charioteer on foot ; for no mortal
may mount upon the car. Next came Xerxes himself, in a
chariot drawn by Nisaean horses — but when the fancy took
him he would alight and travel in a litter. Then immediately
behind the king a thousand spearmen, the noblest of the
Persians, and a thousand Persian horsemen ; then ten thousand
on foot, all picked men. And of these last one thousand carried
spears with golden pomegranates at their lower ends instead
of spikes, 2 and these encircled the other nine thousand, who
bore on their spears pomegranates of silver ; and the thousand
Persians who followed after Xerxes had golden apples."
On reaching Ilium (Troy), where the water of the Scamander,=^
naturally enough, ' ' failed to satisfy the thirst of men and cattle,"
1 Here our chronicler seems to have made a sHp, and to have transferred
to this occasion an ecHpse which occurred in the preceding spring — probably
before the departure of Xerxes from Susa.
2 In the monuments of Persepolis such pomegranates or apples may be
recognized.
^ The Scamauder has, like many rivers in hot countries, a wide bed, but
is reduced to a small brook in summer. It was now fairly early in the year ;
but, as in other cases where the veracity of Herodotus has been questioned,
it is very easy to believe that a host of perhaps a million with innumerable
beasts of burden would soon exhaust the drinkable water of such a stream.
251
ANCIENT GREECE
Xerxes (as afterwards Alexander) ascended the citadel, and
" made an offering of a thousand oxen to the Trojan Athene,
while the Magi poured libations to the heroes who were slain at
Troy." Thence he arrived at Abydos, and from a white marble
throne (or platform) viewed all his land forces and all his ships ;
and when the appointed day had come " they burnt all kinds
of spices on the bridge and strewed the way with myrtle boughs,
while they anxiously waited for the sun, hoping to see him as
he rose. And now the sun appeared ; and Xerxes took a
golden goblet and poured a libation into the sea, praying the
while with his face turned to the sun ; and after he had prayed
he cast the golden cup into the Hellespont, and with it a
golden bowl and a Persian sword of the kind that they call
acinaces. I cannot say for certain whether it was as an offering
to the sun-god that he threw these things into the deep, or
whether he repented of having scourged the Hellespont. . . .
And as soon as Xerxes had reached the European side, he stood
to contemplate his army as they crossed under the lash. And
the crossing continued during seven days and seven nights,
without cessation or pause."
From Sestos the land forces marched westwards and met the
fleet at Doriscus on the Thracian sea-coast, near to the river
Hebrus. Here Xerxes numbered his forces. " A body of ten
thousand men was brought to a certain place and made to
stand together as close as possible ; then a circle was drawn
round them and the men were let go ; then, where the circle
had been, a fence was built about the height of a man's middle,
and the enclosure was filled continually with fresh troops,
till the whole of the army had thus been numbered." The sum
total was 1,700,000. Herodotus takes this as the number of
Asiatic foot-soldiers, and adds 80,000 horsemen, and also camel-
riders and charioteers, and half a million seamen— the crews
and soldiers of 1207 triremes and 3000 smaller vessels. Thus,
together with some 300,000 men pressed into service in Europe, ^
he makes 2,641,610 combatants, and to these he adds the same
* Also quite half the naval force was supplied by Greeks, or nations of
Greek lineage.
252
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
number of non-combatants, arriving at a grand total of over
five millions. Doubtless the nobles were attended by their
harems and large retinues, but the Persian and Median
picked troops only amounted, including the famous 10,000
' Immortals,' to about 24,000 (Hdt. vii. 40, 41) — about one-
hundredth of the whole army, which was mainly a motley
host of picturesquely dressed savages, many of them only armed
with light javelins or flint-headed arrows (or " staves with one
end hardened in the fire "), and certainly well able to look
after themselves without such slaves and attendants as, for
instance, the Spartan hoplites took into battle.^ As for the
number of combatants given by Herodotus, we need not whittle
it down to about a seventh, as is done by some sceptics. Six
millions, it is said, took the Red Cross, and a million combatants,
with a ' vast multitude ' of followers, composed the host of
invaders in the First Crusade under far less favourable com-
missariat conditions. Doubtless the provisioning of such a vast
multitude as this army of Xerxes was difficult, but those who
have had experience of Africans and Orientals know how re-
sourceful they are, and it should not be forgotten that immense
stores had been laid up beforehand in Thrace, and that the
whole country, according to Herodotus, was drained of its riches
by the enormous strain put upon it (Hdt. vii. 25 ; see also
vii. 118-120, where the cost of one meal is reckoned at about
£100,000, and the joke is made that " if the order had been to
provide breakfast as well as dinner, the people of Abdera must
have fled, or have been entirely ruined ").
The descriptions given by Herodotus of the warriors of
the forty-six different nations, with their various weapons and
costumes, are most graphic and interesting, but are too long to
repeat. Doubtless he draws largely on his own reminiscences,
for he travelled much in the East and in Africa. Some of
his word-pictures are corroborated by Persian and Egyptian
monuments. In one case — that of the Aethiopians — it seems
that the fashions in battle costume have remained unchanged
for some 2400 years, for, substituting zebras for horses,
^ At Plataea each Spartan hoplite was accompanied by seven Helots.
253
ANCIENT GREECE
I have seen exactly the same in equatorial Africa. " When
they went into battle," says Herodotus, " they painted their
bodies half with chalk and half with vermilion. . . . They
wore on their heads the foreheads of horses with ears and mane
attached to the scalp, the mane serving as a crest and the
ears standing stiffly upright." ^
Among the many commanders may be noted Mardonius,
the brother-in-law of Xerxes, and Achaemenes, his brother,
and that other unfortunate brother of his, Masistes, whose
tragic story is told by our historian (ix. io8 sq.), and that
queen of Halicarnassus, Artemisia, who distinguished herself
so highly at Salamis, and whose " brave and manly spirit
moved the special wonder " of her fellow-countryman
Herodotus.
At Doriscus the king, having reviewed his land army,
" exchanged his chariot for a vSidonian vessel, and, sitting
beneath a golden awning, sailed along before the prows of all
his vessels," drawn up at some distance from the shore, " with
fighting men upon the decks accoutred as for war." Elate
with pride, he turned to the exiled Spartan king Demaratus,
asking whether the Greeks would dare to oppose such an
armament. The answer was memorable : " Poverty hath
at all times been a fellow-dweller with us in the land, but
Valour has come to us as an ally whom we have gained by
wisdom and strict laws. . . . Brave are all the Greeks, but as
for the I^acedaemonians they will never accept slavery. As for
their numbers do not ask ; for if only a thousand take the
field they will meet thee in battle, so will any number, less or
more." Thereat Xerxes laughed and rejoined : " Let them
be five thousand and we shall have more than a thousand to
each one of theirs " ; " and much more he said in contemptuous
ridicule ; and Demaratus answered all, and added : ' Though
they be free men they are not free in all respects, for law is
their master. This master they fear more than thy subjects
fear thee, and his commandment is always the same, for-
bidding them to flee whatever be the number of their foes,
^ Heracles sometimes thus wears his lion-skin. Cf. also Virg. Aen. xi. 680.
254
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
and requiring them to stand firm and to conquer — or else to
die.' "
From Doriscus the vast armament marched westward,
crossed the Strymon, and arrived at Acanthus, near the Athos
canal. Then, passing through Chalcidice, it reached Therma
(later named Thessalonice after the sister of Alexander the
Great). The fleet meanwhile sailed through the canal and
rounded the promontories of Sithonia and Pallene, gathering
fresh supplies of men and ships and provisions from the
numerous Greek cities on the coast. During the land march —
which followed the same route as that later traversed by St.
Paul — " the camels were set upon by lions which came down by
night " ; and Herodotus adds : " The whole of that region
is full of Hons ^ and wild bulls with huge horns, which are
imported into Greece."
From Therma King Xerxes beheld in the far distance the
mountains Ossa and Olympus, and embarking on a Sidonian
vessel he visited the mouth of the Peneios (Peneus), which dis-
charges its waters through the narrow vale, or ravine, of Tempe
(Fig. 48). "Wise men, truly," he remarked, "are they of
Thessaly, and good reason they had to change their minds,
for nothing more is needed but to fill up the gorge with an
embankment, and lo ! all Thessaly would be laid under water."
And possibly he was right, for Thessaly was once a great lake, *
until, as Herodotus beheved, the gorge of Tempe was formed
by volcanic disturbance, or by erosion. The remark of
Xerxes alluded to the fact that the Thessalians had begged the
southern Greeks to make a stand at the pass of Tempe, Ten
thousand hoplites were dispatched — the Athenian contingent
under Themistocles — but the Macedonian king, Alexander I, sent
to warn them of the vastness of the Persian army, and when
it was discovered that there were several other practicable
1 Aristotle confirms this. Tradition from the age of Heracles to that of the
Nibelungenlied asserts the presence of lions in Europe. The ' wild bull ' is
probably the auerochs (urus). Classical writers also tell of bonasi (wild oxen),
alces (elk), bubali (buffalo ?).
2 The Greek tradition of the Deluge is connected with Thessaly, the Greek
Noah, Deucalion, having been king of Thessalian Phthia.
ANCIENT GREECE
passes from the north (by one of which Xerxes led his
army) the troops were recalled ; whereupon the Thessalians,
doubtless to the great satisfaction of their Aleuad princes,
who had long before held treasonable correspondence with
Xerxes (Hdt. vii. 6), " warmly espoused the side of the Medes,
and were of the greatest service to Xerxes during the war."
This expedition had set out while Xerxes was at Abydos ;
for when the Greeks had learned for certain that the invasion
would take place, they had convened an assembly, under the
presidency of Sparta, at the Corinthian isthmus. It was the
first time in Greek history that a congress of all the states of
Greece had been summoned — the first time (with the exception
perhaps of the Trojan War) that all Greece, indeed all the
Hellenic world, was called upon to co-operate against a common
enemy. Besides deciding to defend Thessaly, they agreed to
put an end to all feuds among themselves, such as that between
Athens and Aegina, and between Sparta and Argos. In spite
of the jealousy of Athens, Sparta was given the leadership
on land and on the sea. They determined also to send an
appeal to Gelo, the powerful lord of Syracuse, and to Corcyra
and Crete. Also they at once dispatched spies to Sardis,
while Xerxes was still there. The spies were detected, but
sent back unharmed by Xerxes, " after having been taken
round the Persian camp and having viewed everything to their
hearts' content " ; for he expected that the Greeks, when they
heard of the vastness of his army, would submit and " save
him the trouble of the expedition." The embassy to Gelo,
" whose power was said to be far greater than that of any
single state in Greece," failed because he demanded the chief
command — or, anyhow, the command of the naval forces —
and when this was indignantly refused he dismissed the envoys
with the contemptuous remark : "Ye have, it seems, no lack
of commanders ; but ye are likely to lack men to receive their
orders." The Corcyraeans made lavish promises, but failed
to keep them — " watching to see what turn the war would
take." The Cretans, warned by an oracle, refused point-
blank. The Argives, when asked to lay aside their feud
256
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
and aid in repelling the Persians, applied to the Delphic oracle,
which, in cowardly fashion, bade them " warily guard their
own head." They then made, hke Gelo, extravagant demands,
and ultimately stood aside — probably in collusion with the
Persians. " Some," says Herodotus, " go even so far as to
say that the Argives first invited the Persians to invade
Greece, because of their ill-success against lyacedaemon " —
nor is this impossible, for at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War both the Athenians and the lyacedaemonians, according
to Thucydides (ii. 7), " intended to send embassies to the
Persian king and to the barbarians in other parts, whencesoever
either hoped to gain assistance."
On their return from Thessaly the Greeks once more took
counsel together on the Corinthian isthmus. " The opinion
prevailed that they should guard the pass of Thermopylae,
since it was narrower than the Thessalian defile, and at the
same time nearer to them. Of the pathway by which the
Greeks who fell at Thermopylae were circumvented they had
no knowledge as yet. At the same time it was resolved that
the fleet should proceed to Artemisium, in the region of
Histiaeotis [in Northern Euboea],"
The Greek fleet of rather more than 300 warships, of which
200 were suppHed by Athens, took up its station near Arte-
misium, and the Persian fleet arrived at the precipitous
promontory of Magnesia, which is formed by the long ridge
of Mount Pelion. They had sent forward ten swift ships,
which succeeded in capturing three Greek vessels on the look-
out, and when fire-signals ^ from the island Sciathos informed
the Greeks of this disaster they " quitted their anchorage
at Artemisium, and, leaving scouts on the Euboean heights to
watch the enemy, withdrew to Chalcis, intending to guard
the Euripus " — the narrow strait between Euboea and the
mainland. But the movements and sequence of events as
1 Evidently some code was used by the Greeks, for such news could not
have been foreseen. For fire-signals see Aesch. Agam. 29 and 272 sq. ; Thuc.
ii. 94, iii. 22, 80 ; Hdt. vii. 182, ix. 2 (where a system of signals between
Attica and Sardis is mentioned). The news of Plataea is said to have reached
Mycale on the same day (see p. 273).
R 257
ANCIENT GREECE
described by Herodotus are difficult to follow. One great
fact emerges — the wreck of 400 vessels of the Persian fleet,
which had taken up a dangerous position off the harbourless
Magnesian coast-line. " The ships of the first row were moored
to the land, while the rest swung at anchor further off. The
beach extended but a very little way, so they had to anchor off
the shore, row upon row, eight deep. In this manner they
passed the night ; but at dawn calm and stillness gave place
to a raging sea and a violent storm. . . . Such as put the loss
of the Persian fleet at lowest say that 400 ships were destroyed
and that a countless multitude of men perished ^ and a vast
amount of treasure was engulfed." To some the fact may
appear not worthy of mention, but it may help one to realize
better the Greek character when we learn that the people of
Delphi " earned the everlasting gratitude of the Greeks "
for cheering them with the oracle that " the winds would do
Greece good service," and that the Athenians attributed this
storm to the sacrifices and prayers that they offered to Boreas
(to whom later they erected a temple on the banks of the
Ilissus). It is also psychologically if not historically interesting
to note that the winds were influenced also by the entreaties
of the foe, for " after the storm had lasted three days, at length
the Persian Magi, by offering sacrifices to the winds and charm-
ing them with the help of conjurers, succeeded in laying the
tempest ; or perhaps," adds Herodotus, " it ceased of itself."
The loss of 400 vessels out of their immense fleet was a matter
of no vital importance to the Persians. They moved round
Cape Sepias to the shelter of the great Pagasaean Gulf and
took up station near the port whence Jason in the Argo put
forth on to the high sea, called from that fact ' Aphetae.'
Meantime the Greeks had returned to Artemisium and managed
to capture fifteen stray Persian vessels. Although terribly
alarmed at the huge fleet of Xerxes, they held their post
(Themistocles, it is said, having received a bribe of thirty
talents from the Euboeans, and having given five to the
Spartan admiral Eurybiadas), and in several engagement^
^ As also at Salamis, for the Persians could not swim (Hdt. viii. 89).
258
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
did considerable damage to the enemy and captured thirty-
more of their ships. But the Persians, determined on their
part to capture the whole Greek fleet, and " not let even a
torch-bearer slip through their hands," sent a squadron of
200 warships to circumnavigate Euboea and seize the strait of
the Euripus. News of this was brought to the Greeks, it was
said, by a diver — a Greek of Scione, ScylHas by name. " I
marvel much," says Herodotus, " if the tale commonly told be
true. 'Tis said he dived into the sea at Aphetae and did not
once come to the surface till he reached Artemisium, a distance
of nearly eighty " — really sixty — " furlongs. Many things
are related of this man that are plainly false, but some seem
to be true. For my part I think he made the passage to
Artemisium in a boat."
The 200 Persian ships never arrived at their destination.
" Heaven so contrived it that the Persian fleet might not
greatly exceed the Greek, but be brought nearly to its level.
The squadron was therefore entirely lost about the Hollows of
Buboea."
The Greeks had scouts on watch near Thermopylae and
near Artemisium, ready to sail at any moment with news.
The watches in the Maliac Gulf " now arrived at Artemisium
with the news of what had befallen lyconidas and those who were
with him." Forthwith the Greek fleet sailed off southward,
through the Euripus, and the Persians captured Histiaea and
overran the north of Euboea.
Themistocles had cut inscriptions on the rocks at various
places on the coast, entreating the lonians and Carians not to
fight against their ancestors, and pointing out that it was
through them that Greece had incurred the enmity of the
Persians. Whether this had any result we are not told, and
whether any of these inscriptions are extant I cannot say.
Meanwhile the battle of Thermopylae had been fought.
It was the wish of the I^acedaemonians and their Pelopon-
nesian allies that Northern Greece should be abandoned to its
fate, and that a stand should be made at the Isthmus. But
they were conscious that it would be vain to hold the Isthmus
259
ANCIENT GREECE
if the Persians had the supremacy on the sea/ and that their
safety depended on the fleet, two-thirds of which belonged
to Athens. To please the Athenians, therefore, they sent a
small body of men northwards. " They intended presumably,
when they had celebrated the Carnean festival, to hasten in
full force to join the army ; and the rest of their allies intended
to act similarly, for it happened that the Olympic Games fell
exactly at this period. ^ None of them expected that the
contest at Thermopylae would be decided so speedily ; there-
fore they were content to send forward merely an advance-
guard." lyconidas took with him 300 vSpartan veterans^
and some 3000 other Peloponnesians, and was joined by about
3000 from Northern Greece, including 400 Thebans, whom he
" made a point of demanding from Thebes, because the
Thebans were strongly suspected of being well inclined to the
Medes " — a suspicion which, if we can believe Herodotus,
was fully confirmed by their shameful surrender in the midst
of the fight at Thermopylae, where they suffered the indignity
of being branded as fugitive slaves by the Persian victor
(Hdt. vii. 233. But later writers know nothing of this, and
perhaps Herodotus was influenced by the bitter anti-Theban
feeling prevalent after the Persian wars).
The pass of Thermopylae has been much broadened by
alluvial deposits. A swampy plain of about two miles now
separates the waters of the Maliac Gulf from the precipices
of Mount Kallidromos. Formerly the pass itself (by the hot
sulphur springs) was about fifty feet wide, and there were two
other places where it was still narrower, that to the east
1 In a fine passage (vii. 139) Herodotus expresses his convictions on this
point and, Doric as he was by origin, shows his impartiahty. " I cannot
see," he says, " what possible use walls across the Isthmus could have been
if the king had had the mastery on the sea. If, then, a man should say that
the Athenians were the saviours of Greece, he would not exceed the truth."
With this compare the advice given to Xerxes by Demaratus (vii. 235) —
viz. to send ships to attack the coasts of Laconia, and " the Isthmus and the
cities of the Peloponnese will surrender without a battle."
2 Cf. p. 240.
' All fathers with sons living. Sparta only possessed 8000 full-grown
Spartiats, if we are to believe Demaratus. The numbers given by Herodotus
(vii. 202) do not seem to agree with the inscription that he quotes (vii. 228).
260
"^SSfc-'l
69. Thermopyi,ae
70. Tomb of L,eonidas (?
260
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
allowing only the passage of a single wagon (Herodotus how-
ever speaks of marshes between the road and the sea). At
Thermopylae itself there were the remains of an ancient wall,
built by the Phocians as a defence against the Thessalians.
This the Greeks now repaired, and here they determined to
make their stand, Xerxes took up his headquarters at
Trachis, just to the west of the pass, and " after waiting four
days, expecting that the Greeks would run away, he grew
wroth with their impudence," and sent Median troops, who
were beaten back with great loss, and then commanded his
Immortals to attack. " They, it was thought, would soon
finish the business." But they too were repelled, and " during
these assaults, it is said, Xerxes, who was watching the battle,
thrice leaped from the throne on which he was sitting, in
terror for his army." On the third day the traitor appeared.
Ephialtes,^ a man of Malis, offered to guide the Persians by
a steep pathway across the mountains so as to cut off
the Greeks in the rear. Xerxes sent Hydarnes with the
Immortals — probably not all the Ten Thousand. They
ascended the ravine of the stream Asopus, between the
Trachinian cliffs and Mount Oeta (famous in connexion with
the legends of Heracles), and surprised at break of day and
put to rout the thousand Phocians who were guarding this
mountain path. Leonidas, having learnt the fact from a seer
and from deserters, ^ dismissed all the Greeks except his 300
Spartans, the Thebans (whose fidelity he suspected), and
700 Thespians. It is just possible that he detached other
troops — numbering perhaps about 2500 — in order to oppose
the Immortals ; but we hear of no collision. According to
Herodotus, the devoted band of Spartans and Thespians,
having retreated to a hillock, were assaulted on both sides
1 It is but fair to say that Herodotus names others ; but he feels so certain
that he " leaves this name on record " as that of the real perpetrator. Ephialtes,
anyhow, had a price set on his head by the deputies of the Amphictionic
Council, which, by the way, had its ancient meeting-place at Anthela, in the
pass of Thermopylae.
2 Both rather strange sources. The seer was Megistias, who refused to desert
Leonidas and was killed and had the honour of an epitaph by Simonides
(Hdt. vii. 221, 228). Who the deserters could have been is not easy to say.
261
ANCIENT GREECE
and massacred, while the Thebans surrendered. I^ater and
more rhetorical writers describe the battle with ridiculous
exaggeration. One asserts that the Spartans not only drove
back the Persians to their camp, but that lyconidas snatched
the diadem from the head of Xerxes. The account given by
Herodotus bears the impress of truthfulness and impartiaHty
■ — except possibly in regard to the Thebans. The loss of the
Persians he gives at 20,000 (probably too many) and that of
the Greeks at 4000, including many Helots {seven of whom
generally attended each Spartan). He asserts that Xerxes
gave permission to the seamen of the fleet to come and view
the battlefield, and buried or concealed all the Persian dead
except a thousand. " It was indeed most truly a laughable
device — on the one side 1000 men lying strewn all about the
field, on the other 4000 crowded together on one spot." Two
brothers of Xerxes were among the slain. The body of
Ivconidas was maltreated by Xerxes, who cut off the head
and crucified the trunk. This act excited the wonder of
Herodotus : "for the Persians are wont to honour those
who show themselves valiant in fight more than any nation
I know " — a statement that is confirmed by many of his
anecdotes. The sulphur springs still exist, and their water
is bluish green, just as it is described by Pausanias. About
a mile to the west of these springs is a round hillock which
is probably the mound (/coXwj/o?) on which the Spartans
and Thespians made their last stand. " The hillock," says
Herodotus, "is at the entrance of the pass " — i.e. as one
comes from the west — " where the stone lion stands ^ which
was set up in honour of lyconidas. . . . The slain were buried
where they fell, and in their honour and for those no less who
were slain before I^eonidas sent away the allies an inscrip-
tion was set up . . . and another for the Spartans alone."
For these inscriptions (rejected as later bombast by some
modern critics) see p. 200. It will be noticed that 4000
" from Pelops' land " are mentioned. On a column at Sparta,
which was seen six hundred years later by Pausanias, were
^ This lion existed till the time of Tiberius.
262
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
engraved the names of I^eonidas and his 300 Spartans — or
299, for one, being ill, or not returning when sent on a message,
escaped. He was treated with great contumely, but " wiped
away all his disgrace at Plataea," where he was slain.
The Persian army now poured into Phocis, Boeotia, and
Attica. The Phocians took refuge on Mount Parnassus, and
the temple of Delphi was only saved by the aid of the god,
who repulsed the barbarian plunderers by lightning and by
hurling down from the heights great masses of rock — seen
afterwards by Herodotus. The Thespians and Plataeans,
who alone of the Boeotians had not surrendered, jfled to the
Peloponnese, and their towns were burnt and plundered.
Attica was ravaged. When Athens was reached it was found
to be deserted, except for a small garrison in the Acropolis,
who had " barricaded the citadel with planks and boards,"
in accordance with what they held to be the meaning of a
Delphic oracle. For the Pythian god, though he defended
his own treasure, gave what seems craven counsel in this
hour of need. He had bidden the Argives " warily guard
their own head," and when the Athenians sent messengers to
Delphi they were consternated by the answer that all was
lost — head and body, hands and feet — and that they were to
depart from the sanctuary and " o'erspread their hearts with
woes" ; and when they as suppliants implored a more comfort-
able response, the priestess answered that Athene could gain
no more from Olympian Zeus except the promise that their
' wooden wall ' should remain undestroyed. Some interpreted
this literally, and demanded that the Acropolis should be
fortified with wood and be strongly garrisoned, and this seems
to have been done. But Themistocles (whom some accuse
of having prompted the oracle) persuaded the great majority
that by the ' wooden wall ' was meant the fleet, and the ques-
tion now to be decided was whether to " quit Attica without
lifting a hand and make a settlement in some other country "
— as the Phocaeans and Samians had done — or to venture a
sea-fight. In any case Athens would have to be abandoned
for a time. Themistocles and his fellow-generals " issued a
263
ANCIENT GREECE
proclamation that every Athenian should save his children
and household as best he could. Whereupon some sent their
families to Aegina, some to Salamis, but the greater number
to Troezen. This removal was made with all possible haste,
partly from the desire to obey the oracle, but still more for
another reason." This reason was that the huge serpent which
lived in the temple of Athene Polias (or was supposed to live
there, for Herodotus throws doubt on its existence) no longer
consumed its honey-cake ; "so they believed that the goddess
had already abandoned, the Acropolis." Xerxes therefore
found and sacked a deserted city. The Persians set fire to
the wooden wall of the Acropolis, and after two weeks' siege
scaled the north side by a secret path, massacred the garrison,
and destroyed the temples and statues. (The destruction was
completed on the later occupation by Mardonius.)
Meantime the Spartans under Cleombrotus (the regent for
the child-king, Pleistarchus, son of Ivconidas), together with
their allies — Arcadians, Corinthians, Eleans, and others— were
busily fortifying the Isthmus. They blocked the Scironian
Way, which led past precipitous rocks on the eastern shore,
and then " decided to build a wall right across the Isthmus.
Stones, bricks, timber, baskets filled with sand, were used . . .
and they laboured ceaselessly night and day." Their policy
was not only selfish but foolish, for had Themistocles carried
out his threat made to the Spartan admiral Eurybiadas, to
sail away with all the Athenians and refound the city of
Siris in Italy, little would have availed them their Isthmian
wall.
Councils were held now on both sides. The fleet of Xerxes
had arrived off Phaleron, and he came aboard a ship (probably
his favourite Sidonian vessel) and " sat in a seat of honour ;
and the sovereigns of nations and the captains of ships were
sent for, and took their seats according to the rank assigned
them of the king. In the first seat sat the king of Sidon, and
after him the king of Tyre, and then the rest in their order.
And Xerxes sent Mardonius and questioned each whether
a sea-fight should be risked or no. And all gave the same
264
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
answer, advising to engage the Greeks, except only Artemisia."
The speech of Artemisia, as given by Herodotus, was audacious
in its contempt for the seamanship of the king's alHes and for
its advice to risk no naval engagement. It was fully expected
that " her life would be forfeit." But Xerxes took it
good-naturedly and " gave orders that the advice of the
greater number should be followed, and resolved that he
himself would be an eye-witness of the combat."
The council of the Greeks was of a stormier character.
The Spartan admiral Eurybiadas, seconded by the Corinthian
captain Adeimantus, insisted that the fleet should retire to
the Isthmus, and thus abandon Salamis, Aegina, and Megara ;
and fierce altercations took place between them and Themis-
tocles, who when bidden to be silent, " since he was a man
without a city," replied with justice that his 200 ships of war
were as good as any city in Greece. Eurybiadas, conscious
that the only safety for the Peloponnese lay in these ships
(for of 378 warships the Athenians supplied 200), at length
yielded ; but Themistocles still feared the influence of the
Peloponnesians, and sent a secret message to the commanders
of the Persian fleet, saying that " fear had seized the Greeks
and they were meditating a hasty flight." Forthwith the
Persians " landed troops on the islet Psyttaleia, between
Salamis and the mainland, and advanced their western wing
towards Salamis ^ so as to enclose the Greeks, moving forward
at the same time their centre so as to fill the whole strait as
far as Munychia."
At this critical moment Herodotus brings on to the stage
Aristides. He and Xanthippus and other political exiles
had been recalled while Xerxes was still in Thessaly, but he
seems to have delayed his return, and is now just in time to
co-operate with Themistocles (to whom he offers reconciliation)
and to announce to the council of sea-captains that " he has
come from Aegina and has barely escaped, for the Greek
fleet is now entirely enclosed by the ships of Xerxes."
1 Diodorus, but not Herodotus, says that 200 Egyptian vessels were sent
round Salamis to the south to cut off the retreat of the Greeks.
265
ANCIENT GREECE
While they still doubted a Tenian trireme, which had deserted
from the Persians (" and for this reason the Tenians were
described on the tripod at Delphi among those who overthrew
the barbarian"), arrived and confirmed the news. The battle
of Salamis (September 20, 480) is described graphically by
Herodotus (vii. 84 sq.), and also by Aeschylus {Persae, 359 sq.),
who was an eye-witness but as a poet perhaps may have
drawn somewhat on his imagination. The main features in
both descriptions are similar. Numerous modern reconstruc-
tions have been made, and almost every detail given by older
writers has been questioned or modified. Some theorists
{e.g. Gobineau and Chamberlain) have even doubted whether
any real sea-battle took place.
The main body of the Greek fleet engaged the Phoenicians
and the rest of the Persian centre in the strait between
Salamis and Mount Aegaleos (at the base of which Xerxes
sat on his throne viewing the conflict), " fighting in order and
keeping their line, while the barbarians were in confusion and
had no plan in any of their movements, so that the result of
the battle could scarce be other than it was." The immense
number of the Persian ships proved disastrous to them.
While attempting to overwhelm the Greeks they crowded
tumultuously into the narrow strait, and the repulse of the
foremost lines threw all the vast throng of vessels into
inextricable confusion (vii. 89). Then the Aeginetan ships,
which formed the right wing of the Greek fleet, ^ managed to
turn the left wing of the Persians (held by the lonians) and
charged the disordered centre of the enemy's fleet, while
Aristides, " taking a number of Athenian hoplites which were
drawn up on the shore of Salamis, landed them on the islet
of Psyttaleia and slew all the Persians by whom it was
occupied." The attack of the Aeginetans decided the battle. ^
1 Either inside the strait or on the south-east coast of Salamis.
2 They were accorded the first prize for valour {ra dpia-Te'la). The Corin-
thians were, perhaps unfairly, accused by the Athenians of having tried to
desert in the midst of the battle. Aeschylus represents Xerxes as tearing his
raiment and uttering shrieks when he saw the slaughter on Psyttaleia. I
have omitted the well-known story of Artemisia sinking a friendly ship to
save herself (Hdt. vii. 87).
266
71. Bay of Sai^amis
72. WaI<I,S of THEMISTOCtES
266
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
The Persians collected their vessels at Phaleron, and the
Greeks, " expecting another attack, made preparations."
But Herodotus represents Xerxes as in a great state of panic.
" He made up his mind to fly ; but, as he wished to hide his
project alike from the Greeks and his own people, he set to
work to carry a mound across the strait to Salamis, and at the
same time began fastening a number of Phoenician merchant-
ships together to serve at once for a bridge and a rampart."
But his brother-in-law Mardonius was not deceived, for " long
acquaintance enabled him to read all the king's thoughts,"
and with the approval also of Artemisia, who reminded Xerxes
that he had burnt Athens and thus had gained the purpose of
his expedition, the plan was formed that the king should
return to the East overland, that the fleet should at once sail
to the Hellespont to guard the bridge, and that Mardonius,
after escorting the king through Thessaly, should retain 300,000
men, including the 10,000 Immortals, for the purpose of com-
pleting the conquest of Greece.
If all the tales told of the return of Xerxes are true it was
as disastrous as Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Herodotus
himself refuses to believe that the king " never once loosed
his girdle till he came to the city of Abdera, not feeling himself
till then in safety " ; but he tells us that famine and disease
so thinned the ranks of his troops that he reached the Helles-
pont with a mere fraction of his former army. Aeschylus
draws on his imagination and gives us a fine picture, scarcely
less impressive than that of the disaster of Pharaoh's host
in the Red Sea. He tells us how the Strymon, frozen over in
a single night and unfrozen by the heat of the next day's sun,
swallowed up great numbers of panic-stricken fugitives. By
some Xerxes is said to have taken ship from Eion (on the
Strymon) and to have been nearly lost in a storm — during
which, in order to lighten the vessel, a great number of Persian
nobles, " having made obeisance, leaped overboard." Others
say that he reached the Hellespont, but found the bridge
destroyed by storms — not that this was of much consequence,
for his fleet had arrived.
267
ANCIENT GREECE
The Greeks had pursued the ships of the enemy only as far
as Andros. Themistocles had tried to induce them to con-
tinue the pursuit and annihilate the Persian fleet, but the
Peloponnesians were still afraid that the land forces of Xerxes
might march against the Isthmus, and refused to set sail.i
Then, it is said, Themistocles once more sent a messenger
(the same faithful slave, Sicinnus, the tutor to his sons) and
informed Xerxes that it was by his own influence that the
pursuit had been abandoned. Possibly this was a fabrication
of later days, after Themistocles had proved a traitor ; possibly
it was a result of that preternatural insight into the future
with which he is credited by Thucydides. However that
may be, he is said to have urged this act as a reason for
expecting favour when he reached the court of Xerxes as an
exile.
That the journey of Xerxes was not a flight is apparent from
the fact that the troops which had accompanied him to the
Hellespont not only returned to Thessaly, where they rejoined
Mardonius, but also during their return march undertook,
under the command of Artabazus, the reduction of the cities
of Olynthus and Potidaea. Olynthus was captured and all
the inhabitants were " led out to a marsh and put to death."
Potidaea stood a siege, and treason, for three months, and
ultimately many of the besieging Persians were caught by a
spring- tide or bore and, " not being able to swim, perished
immediately." " The Potidaeans say," remarks Herodotus,
" that what caused this spring- tide was the profanation by
these very men of a temple and image of Poseidon. And in
this they seem to me to say well."
Mardonius now sent as envoy to Athens the king of Mace-
donia, Alexander I, who had ties both with the Athenians and
with Persia. In the name of the Great King forgiveness and
friendship were offered. But the Athenians answered : " So long
as the sun keeps his present course we will never join alliance
1 Cleombrotus, in command at the Isthmus, had intended to follow up the
retreating Persian land forces, but had been stopped by — an eclipse ! This
happened, they say, at 2 p.m. on October 2, 480.
268
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
with Xerxes" ; and to the Ivacedaemonians, who had hastily
sent an embassy to oppose Alexander, they declared : " Not
all the gold that the whole earth contains would bribe us to
take part with the Medes. . . . First, there is the burning and
destruction of our temples and the images of our gods. . . .
Then there is our common brotherhood with the Greeks, our
common language, the altars and sacrifices at which we all par-
take, the common character that we bear. Did the Athenians
betray all these, of a truth it would not be well. While one
Athenian remains alive we will never join alliance with Xerxes."
Mardonius therefore, though the Thebans advised him to stay
in Thessaly and send gold to the leaders of the Greeks, marched
down upon Athens. " But on his arrival he did not find the
Athenians. They had again withdrawn, some to their ships,
the greater number to Salamis. So he only gained possession
of an empty city." This was in July 479. The reason why
the Athenians had again withdrawn was because the Spartans
had refused to leave their Isthmian wall and march north to
help in opposing Mardonius, alleging in excuse (as so often they
had done) a religious festival — this time the ' Hyacinthia.'
Mean and selfish as such conduct appears, especially in contrast
to that of the Athenians, it was soon to be proved once more
that when face to face with the foe they possessed a splendid
courage. To them was mainly due the great victory of Plataea,
which for ever liberated Greece from the Persian invader.
The Athenians, dispossessed of their city, though they had
for a second time rejected with disdain the proposals of Mar-
donius, sent word to the vSpartan regent Pausanias (Cleom-
brotus having died soon after the eclipse) that they, and also
Megara and Plataea, would be forced to surrender to the Mede
unless the Lacedaemonians would help them. Hereupon
5000 Spartiats were ordered to start northwards under the
command of Pausanias. They were accompanied by many
Helots and Perioeci and other Peloponnesians, and joined
by the Athenians under the command of Aristides, so that the
whole army may have numbered 70,000 men, among whom,
according to Herodotus, there were 38,700 hoplites.
269
ANCIENT GREECE
Mardonius, when he heard of this army, resolved to with-
draw to Thebes, as Attica was too hilly for his cavalry and
there was " no way of escape from the country except through
defiles." Before leaving Athens he completed as far as possible
the destruction of the city and its temples, leaving the
Acropolis a waste of ruins. His army, sa57^s Herodotus, num-
bered about 300,000 and perhaps 50,000 Greek auxiliaries.
About six miles to the south of Thebes he built a huge fort,
" a square of about ten furlongs each way," with ramparts and
towers formed of trees that he cut down in all directions. His
army he encamped along the Asopus, which flows through the
plain between Thebes and the great range of Cithaeron, the
boundary between Boeotia and Attica. Here, with his rear
covered by the Thebans, he awaited Pausanias, who crossed
into Boeotia, and, finding the enemy blocking the way, disposed
his forces on the north slopes of Cithaeron. For ten days the
armies faced one another. The Greeks were much harassed
by the cavalry, having themselves no horse ; but in the skir-
mishes the leader of the Persian horsemen, Masistius, a splendid
warrior with golden breastplate, was slain ; whereupon the
Persians " made great lamentation, shaving all the hair from
their heads and cutting the manes from their war-horses and
sumpter-beasts, while they vented their grief in cries so loud
that all Boeotia resounded with the clamour." Day by day
the numbers of the Greeks increased, but so great was the
self-confidence of the barbarians that Artabazus advised
Mardonius merely to wait, as the Greeks would never venture
down into the plain, and to harass them and cut off their
supplies and ply the leaders with bribes. The Persian horse
did indeed cut off their communications by occupying the
passes in their rear, and succeeded in reaching and choking
up the fountain Gargaphia on which they relied for water.
But Mardonius was impatient for a battle, and decided to
attack, and, according to Herodotus, the news of this decision
was brought to the Greek outposts by the Macedonian king
Alexander.
The battle is exceedingly difficult to ' reconstruct.' I shall
270
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
not attempt to describe, far less to explain, all the false moves,
the blunders, and the unobeyed orders that have complicated
the question. The chief facts seem to have been that the
Athenians, after accepting the proposal of Pausanias that they
should oppose the Immortals and Persian picked troops, were
ordered to fight the Thebans and other renegade Greeks, and
that when the decisive moment came they were held in check
by their opponents and were unable to take any great part in the
actual rout of the barbarians. This rout was effected mainly
by the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans. After falling back and
being followed up by the main body of the Persians, they
halted for some time — losing many men by the arrows of the
foe, shot from behind the line of wicker shields, while they
sacrificed and calmly waited for favourable omens — and then,
the omens allowing it, they swept forward, broke through the
array of wicker shields, and put the whole host of the enemy
to flight. " The barbarians many times seized hold of the
Greek spears and broke them ; for in boldness and warlike
spirit they were nowise inferior to the Greeks, but they were
without real shields, and far below their opponents in skill
with weapons. . . . The fight was hardest where Mardonius,
mounted on a white horse and surrounded by the bravest of
the Persians, the Ten Thousand, fought. So long as he was
alive these troops resisted, but when he fell,^ and those with
him, all the others took to flight." Artabazus, seeing how
the day was going, wheeled off with 40,000 men and made his
way northwards. The Thebans, after fighting with desperate
fury and losing 300 men, retreated to their city. Most of the
routed Persian army fled for refuge to their wooden rampart,
closely followed by the Spartans, who, however, being unskilled
in siege operations, had to await the arrival of the Athenians
before they were able to take the fortification.^ A terrible
massacre ensued. Only 3000 are said to have survived out
of the immense host ; but possibly many escaped and joined
1 His body was treated with respect by Pausanias, but was stolen.
2 C/. Thuc. i. 102. The Spartan city itself was without walls. The Spartans
despised and hated such defences, as is seen from their bitter opposition to
the building of the Athenian Long Walls.
271
ANCIENT GREECE
Artabazus, who with great difficulty reached Byzantium and
crossed to Asia. The spoil was enormous/ and during many
years afterwards the Plataeans used to find treasures of gold
and silver on the battlefield. The loss of the Spartans is given
by Herodotus at 91, of the Tegeans at 16, and of the Athenians
at 52 (though Plutarch states the whole loss, probably including
Helots, at 1360). It would therefore seem that, in spite of
the fierce depreciation to which their conduct in the battle
has been subjected by some writers, the Athenians had a
certain amount of fighting. Of the Corinthians and Megarians
Herodotus says that they were drawn up at some distance and
did not know that a battle was being fought ! At last they
learnt the fact and rushed forward, but were cut to pieces by
the Theban cavalry. The Spartans were given the chief credit
for the victory. " The Athenians," says Herodotus, " and
the Tegeans fought well, but the prowess shown by the lyacedae-
monians was beyond either." Pindar gives Sparta the chief
praise. Aeschylus, too, attributes the victory to the ' Doric
spear.' A tenth of the booty was set aside for the Delphic
treasury, and colossal bronze images of Zeus and Poseidon
were erected at Olympia and the Isthmus respectively. At
Delphi was dedicated, says Herodotus, " the golden tripod
which stands on the bronze serpent with three heads close to
the altar." On the base of the supporting pillar, formed of
three serpents, were inscribed the names of the Greek states
which had joined to repel the Persian invader. This base is
still to be seen in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, whither
it was removed by Constantine the Great. ^
The battle of Plataea was fought probably on August 12, 479.
" On the same day," says Herodotus, " another defeat befell
the Persians at Mycale, in Ionia." The Greek fleet had started
in the spring to aid the lonians, who had entreated their help
1 The throne and scimitar of Mardonius and the golden breastplate of
Masistius were still to be seen in the Athenian Acropolis in the time of
Pausanias, 600 years later.
» Discovered in 1880, when Constantinople was occupied by the Western
Powers. Mahommed II, on the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, smashed
the jaw of one of the serpents with bis battle-axe (Gibbon, ch. 68). See p. 284.
272
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
against the Persians. But it had got no further than Delos,
for " all beyond that seemed to the Greeks full of danger and
swarming with Persian troops." For some months it lay idle
at Delos. But on the urgent appeal of the Samians the Spartan
king I^eotychidas, induced by favourable omens (especially
by the lucky-sounding name of the Samian envoy), decided
to attack the Persian fleet, which lay in the lee of Samos.
When the Greeks reached the Samian coast near the great
temple of Hera, the Persians, who shrank from a naval battle,
dismissed all their Phoenician vessels and stranded the rest
on Cape Mycale, where they had a land force of 60,000 men
under the command of Tigranes. The Greeks disembarked
and after a desperate fight carried the ramparts of the naval
camp and burned the ships, the Athenians especially distin-
guishing themselves, and the victory being rendered more
easy by the wholesale desertion of the Ionian auxiliaries of
the enemy. According to Herodotus, the news of the victory
at Plataea, which had been gained on the very same forenoon,
arrived in time to cheer the Greeks while advancing to the
fight. This is, of course, rejected as a fable by many writers.
Possibly fire-signals (if visible by day) may be the explanation.
If not, perhaps it may have been one of those cases in which
the knowledge of an event seems to have been transmitted
over great distances by some unexplained agency — such as
the Greeks named ' divine rumour ' {<pmv, oWa) .
The Greek fleet then sailed to the Hellespont, but when they
found Xerxes' bridge destroyed the Spartans went home.
The Athenians, however, laid siege to Sestos, still in the
possession of the Persians, and late in the autumn of 478 they
succeeded in capturing it. " This done, they sailed back to
Greece, carrying with them, besides other treasures, the shore
cables from the bridge of Xerxes, which they wished to dedicate
in their temples." ^ These are, all but a few lines, the last words
of the history of Herodotus.
^ One is forcibly reminded of the chain cables still to be seen hanging in
the Campo Santo at Pisa.
8 273
ANCIENT GREECE
SECTION A : THE GREEKS AND CARTHAGINIANS
IN SICILY (500-478)
While Greece was fighting for her existence against the
Persian invader the Greeks in Western Hellas were also
struggling against an Asiatic race — the Phoenicians and the
Phoenician colony of Carthage. It seems, indeed, probable
that Carthage and Persia were acting in concert.
We have already noted the rise of the Greek colonies in
Sicily and Southern Italy. During the first period of their exist-
ence the Phoenician settlements in Sicily gave them little or
no trouble, but these offered a valuable base to the navies of
the rapidly growing Carthaginian state, which, in alliance with
the powerful and piratical princes of Btruria, began to gain
supremacy in the Western Mediterranean, and almost annihi-
lated, as we have seen, the Phocaean fleet at the battle of
Alalia, off the coast of Corsica (c. 535). Carthage now domi-
nated Sardinia and Corsica, and intended to dominate Sicily.
Indeed, as early as about 565 a Carthaginian army, commanded
by Malchus, had landed in Sicily, and seems to have won a
battle against the tyrant Phalaris of Acragas. But it was not
till the era of Xerxes that the Carthaginians made a serious
effort to wrest the island from the Greeks. Meanwhile Hellenic
civilization and power in Greater Greece, in spite of devastating
intestine wars and such disasters as the annihilation of Sybaris
by Croton, had reached a very high stage of development.
The chief cities of Sicily had fallen into the power of despots.
In the north Himera was ruled by Terillus. In the south and
east Acragas (Agrigentum) and Syracuse ^ were ruled by Thero
1 For reference the following may be useful : Syracuse founded by Dorians
734 ; under aristocracies and democracies till the despots Gelo (485), Hiero
(478), Thrasybulus (467) ; then democracy ; besieged by Athenians 413 ;
democracy overthrown lay Dionysius (405-367), whose son, Dionysius the
Younger, was finally dethroned by Timoleon in 343. In passing it is interesting
to note that Sicily for some 3000 years (perhaps for much longer) has been
the arena of racial strife. One need only mention the following names to
recall such conflicts : Sicals, Sicanians, Elymi, Phoenicians, Greeks, Cartha-
ginians, Romans, Franks, Odoacer, EJast Goths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans,
Germans, French, Aragon princes. Bourbons.
274
-??^>^
73. Tomb of Darius
*&^-
74. Charioteer found at Dei,pui
TheMISTOKLES,OF THE DeME
Phrearroi.
XoavGL-7T7to<^'A^('i4)govoc
Xanthippos son of
Ahr iphron.
75. Ostraka of ThemistocIvES and Xantuippus
274
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
and his son-in-law Gelo, and attained very great prosperity
and power under these despots. Gelo, originally a general of
Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, had succeeded to the lordship
of that city, and when appealed to by the exiled Syracusan
Gamori (landed nobility) had reinstated them and at the same
time seized the power also in Syracuse. He gave over the
tyranny of Gela to his brother Hiero, and as ruler of Syracuse
adorned the city with many fine buildings and with magnificent
docks and raised her to the rank of a great naval power, while he
increased her wealth and her population greatly by transferring
thither many of the richer inhabitants of captured Camarina
and Hyblaean Megara — the poorer being sold into foreign
slavery ; for he " regarded the demos," says Herodotus, " as
a most unpleasant neighbour." While Gelo and his brothers,
Hiero, Polyzalus, and Thrasybulus, kept their magnificent
court at Syracuse, the city of Acragas, though not yet adorned
with its splendid temples,^ became wealthy and powerful under
the rule of Thero, whose daughter Demarete became Gelo's
wife ; and when Thero quarrelled with Terillus and drove him
out of Himera, and Terillus appealed to the Carthaginians for
aid (as Hippias appealed to the Persians), the lords of Syracuse
and Acragas combined to oppose the foreign invader. It was
at this moment that the envoys from Greece came to beg Gelo
for assistance against Persia ; ^ and it can cause no wonder that
he was unable to promise it, though he possessed a "far larger
fleet and army " than any other Greek state. The Cartha-
ginians, about 300,000 men under Hamilcar, landed at Panor-
mus (Palermo) and besieged Thero in Himera. Gelo hastened
to his relief, and by a ruse gained entrance to Hamilcar's naval
camp. Then, profiting by the confusion, he assailed the land
camp also. The struggle was fierce and long, but the victory
complete. Half the Punic army was massacred ; the rest
were enslaved. Only one single vessel, we are told by Diodorus,
1 Built by slave labour after the battle of Himera. See Note A (5).
2 See p. 256. Gelo is accused by Herodotus of having sent three ships to
Delphi under the command of a certain Cadmus, who took with him " a
large sum of money and a stock of friendly words, and was to watch and see
what turn the Persian war might take."
275
ANCIENT GREECE
reached Carthage. A fine picture is given by Herodotus,
which is well worth a moment's pause, although it may not
represent an historical fact ; indeed, Herodotus, as often, gives
the thing for what it is worth — and it is worth much from a
standpoint other than that of the scientific historian.
" After the battle Hamilcar disappeared. Gelo made the
strictest search, but he could not be found, dead or alive. The
Carthaginians, who take probability for their guide, give the
following account. Hamilcar, they say, during all the time
that the battle raged, which was from dawn till evening,
remained in the camp [near the shore] sacrificing and seeking
favourable omens, while he burned on a huge pyre the entire
bodies of victims. Here, as he poured libations on the sacri-
fices, he saw the rout of his army ; whereupon he cast himself
headlong into the flames, and so was consumed and disappeared.
Whether it happened in this way or not, certain it is that the
Carthaginians offer him sacrifice." The oft-repeated assertion
of old writers that the leaders of armies, both Greek and Roman,
would refuse to give battle without obtaining favourable
omens ^ often gives one pause. Here is the case of the
commander of a Carthaginian ^ army absenting himself all day
from an important battle for such purposes.
The battles of Himera and Salamis (as those of Mycale
and Plataea) were believed to have been fought on the
same day (September 20, 480). It is, of course, possible that
this was not so ; but there is little to be gained by doubt-
ing it. From the spoil a large present was made by the Syra-
cusans to Demarete, the wife of Gelo. The silver coins, called
Demareteia, struck on this occasion, some of which still exist,
are exceedingly beautiful (see coin 6, Plate IV). At Himera
exist the remains of a temple near the mouth of the river.
It may have been the very temple before which Hamilcar
offered sacrifice to Poseidon.
Gelo died in 478, the year of the capture of Sestos by the
* The well-known exception of P. Claudius and the refractory chickens
was followed by a crushing defeat !
2 Hamilcar is said to have been Greek from his mother's side, and at
Himera to have sacrificed, not to Phoenician deities, but to Poseidon.
276
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
Athenians, the last event recorded by Herodotus. The reign
of his brother Hiero therefore really belongs to our next period ;
but it may be better to anticipate a little for the sake of con-
tinuity. During the twelve years of his reign Syracuse was
probably the most notable city of the Hellenic world, both
for its power and for its patronage of the fine arts. At the
court of Hiero and at that of Thero of Acragas we find Simo-
nides, Bacchylides, Pindar, and Aeschylus. The victories of
Hiero and others of the Sicilian princes at the Olympic and
Pythian chariot-races were celebrated by the first poets of the
day. The exact dates of some of these victories (extending
from 482 to 472) have been lately ascertained by means of
papyrus manuscripts discovered in Egypt ; and at Delphi not
many years ago was excavated the famous bronze statue of the
charioteer (Fig. 74) dedicated by Hiero's brother Polyzalus,
evidently as a thanksgiving for victory. Beneath all this
display there was doubtless much to disgust — much tyranny
and inhumanity, 1 much insolent, if magnificent, patronage
of genius. Of all this there are evidences not only in recorded
acts of barbarity, but even in hints dropped by Pindar himself,
in spite of his evident admiration of the feudal pomp of the
Syracusan court. One feat performed by Hiero justly earned
the gratitude of Hellas. The people of the Greek city of
Cumae, or Cyme, in Italy (see p. 117), were hard pressed by the
Etruscans — the same Etruscans, or Tyrseni, whose pirate-
fleet had rendered so much aid to the Carthaginians, the same
people who had espoused the cause of the Tar quins and had,
under their king, I^ars Porsena, besieged Rome some thirty
years before. Hiero sent his fleet and inflicted a crushing
defeat on the Etruscans. Of this victory we possess a most
interesting memorial (Fig. yy) — a bronze Etruscan helmet,
found (1817) at Olympia. Its inscription says : " Hiero and
the Syracusans [dedicate] to Zeus Tyrrhenian spoil from
Cyme." In the splendid ode that Pindar wrote to celebrate,
primarily, the victory which Hiero's horses gained at the
1 Sinister stories are told of Hiero's conduct towards Polyzalus, who had
married Deraarete.
277
ANCIENT GREECE
Pythian Games in the same year (474) he also alludes to the
victory of Cyme, and prays Zeus that " the Phoenician and
the war-cry of the Tyrseni may remain in peace at home,
having seen the grievous ruin of their sliips before Cyme."
In 472 Thero of Acragas died. His son quarrelled with
Hiero and was overthrown, and Acragas became a free republic.
Not long after Hiero' s death in 467 his brother Thrasybulus,
who succeeded him, was expelled on account of his cruelty
and avarice, and Syracuse also became free. Its further
connexion with Greece will occupy our attention when we
come to the ill-fated Sicilian expedition of the Athenians and
to the visits of Plato to the court of Dionysius.
SECTION B : PJNDAR (522-442)
Pindar and Aeschylus were contemporaries, but the plays
of Aeschylus are perhaps better considered in connexion
with those of the other Attic dramatists, whereas Pindar,
bo'^h m feeling and in form, belongs to a different school.
Although it is full of wise saws and pious sentiments, and
parades with great pomp and solemnity the dogmas and
legends of the popular religion, the poetry of Pindar — such at
least as we possess — is for the most part a majestically magnilo-
quent glorification of wealth and high birth and success ;
while Aeschylus, though for a time he enjoyed, as did Pindar,
the regal patronage of the Syracusan court, moved in quite
another, and a far higher, world of thought and feeling, and in
his dramas pictured, in language of still more superb audacity
and with a far sublimer imagination, the wrestlings of the
human soul against the mysterious decrees of Fate.
Pindar was born at or near Thebes about 522. He studied at
Athens, and when still a youth of sixteen composed dithyrambs
for public festivals. On his return he came under the influence
of the Theban poetess Corinna, some fragments of whose lyrics
have been discovered in a papyrus manuscript. She advised
liim to introduce mythology into his poetry. The result was
a hymn written for the Thebans, twelve lines of which are
278
\
76. Tempi^e of ' Concordia '
77. ' HiERo's Helmet '
278
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
extant. In these twelve short hnes there are twelve different
proper names and sixteen epithets, mostly long made-up
words. This hymn is said to have introduced every mytho-
logical character connected with Thebes. No wonder that
Corinna's criticism was, " One should sow with the hand and
not with the whole sack." He seems soon to have become
noted as a poet. The earliest of his epinikia (' songs of victory '),
all of which we probably possess, was written in 502. It was in,
honour of a Thessalian youth who had won the foot-race at the
Pythian Games, and it extols the Aleuadae {Pyth. x.) . But Pindai
did not share the Medizing propensities of these princes. He
belonged to the small minority at Thebes which sympathized
strongly with the victors at Marathon and Salamis and Plataea.
Indeed, it is said that (perhaps later in life) in consequence
of his praises of Athens [XiTrapai . . . KXeivai 'AOai^ui) he was
severely fined by his fellow-citizens, and that the Athenians
made him their public guest {irpoKevof;) and paid him twice
the sum and erected a bronze statue to him. His poetry
was greatly admired by Alexander I of Macedonia ^ — who,
as we have seen, submitted to Persia, but was Greek at heart — •
and also by Thero of Acragas and Hiero of Syracuse, for both
of whom he wrote numerous enkomia (panegyrics) and epinikia.
In 473, a year after the great victory of Hiero at Cyme, Pindar
went to Sicily, where he lived for about four years. Here he
may have met Aeschylus (who, however, probably went there
first in 468), and certainly met Simonides (who died c. 468)
and the nephew of Simonides, the lyric poet Bacchylides,
who was also employed by Hiero to celebrate his victories at
the games. 2 In 468 Pindar was again in Thebes, whence he
sent a fine ode [01. vi.) to Syracuse. Hiero was at this time
suffering from a serious disease, and in 467 he died. In the
next year Pindar wrote two of his finest odes [Pyth. iv. and v.)
1 As lovers of Milton's sonnets know, Pindar's house was consequently
spared by Alexander the Great (as it had been already by the Spartans).
2 Bacchylides was regarded by some ancient writers as a formidable rival
of Pindar, but fifteen of his poems discovered lately among Egyptian papyrus
manuscripts seem to prove that, though he possessed elegance and taste, he
was a poet of no high order.
ANCIENT GREECE
for Arcesilaus IV, king of Cyrene — a descendant of Battus
(see p. 145) — and it is just possible that the poet visited Cyrene
and also Rhodes. In 460 he wrote one of his epinikia, and
another in 452, at Olympia. His last poem was a hymn to
Persephone, of which three words are extant. He is said to
have died at Argos, in the theatre.
There were .seventeen volumes of Pindar's poems — hymns,
paeans, ' dithyrambs, dirges, enkomia, epinikia, and others.
Besides about 150 fragments of other poems, we possess, prob-
ably complete, the forty-four epinikia, or odes of triumph,
which were written in honour of victors at the games —
Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian — and were recited
at banquets or festive processions (/cwyuoi). The earliest
(P. X.) has been mentioned. Another early one (P. vii.) is in
honour of an Athenian, Megacles, perhaps a son of the reformer
Cleisthenes, and it is interesting to note that this ode, as also
the only other written for an Athenian (iV. ii.), is remarkably
short, and that there is a good deal said about avoiding envy.
The date is that of the battle of Marathon, and Megacles
had already been twice ostracized — so, what with the Medizing
tendency of the Thebans and the democratic dislike of hero-
worship at Athens, we cannot wonder at Pindar's brevity and
sage advice. Exceedingly fine and historically the most interest-
ing are the numerous epinikia composed for Thero and Hiero —
' King of Syracuse,' as the poet calls him, using a title that
Hiero assumed about 478. In one of these (P. i.) Pindar cele-
brates the victory gained by Hiero's chariot horses (or perhaps
by his celebrated racer Pherenikus) at the Pythian Games in
474, and alludes (as we have already seen) to the still more
important victory won at Cyme in the same year, and also
to the battles of Salamis and Plataea and Himera. " I will
claim a reward," he says, " from Salamis for the sake of the
Athenians, and at Sparta I will tell of the fight before
Cithaeron where the Medes with their crooked bows were
smitten, and by the well-watered banks of the Himera I will
pay the sons of Deinomenes [Hiero and his brothers] the hymn
that is their due for deeds of valour." Fourteen of the odes are
280
THE PERSIAN INVASIONS
for Sicilian victors, and not a few are in honour of Aeginetans,
for whom Pindar seems to have had a special partiality. In
a series of six of his ' Nemeans ' he extols the Aeacidae, and
contrasts the noble character of Ajax with that of Odysseus,
of whom he says : " I deem that his fame became greater than
his deeds and sufferings through the sweet singer Homer."
The metre of the Pindaric odes seems at first sight — as it
seemed to Horace — to be quite arbitrary. But, although
there is scarcely any resemblance between the metres of the
various odes, each of them consists of parts (strophes, epodes,
&c.) in which the same or a similar metre recurs. The
rhythms were doubtless based on the kind of music (Doric,
Aeolic, Lydian, &c.) to which the poems were set. Grandeur
of expression, often rising to sublimity but sometimes sinking to
magniloquence, is the striking characteristic of Pindar's poetry.
Although he possesses no such sublimity of imagination ^ as
Aeschylus, or Dante, or Milton, the onward rush of thought,
clothed in superb language, is magnificent. He compares
himself to an eagle. " I send thee," he says, " this mingled
draught of honey and white milk — late indeed ! but amidst
the birds of the air the eagle is swift : he marketh from afar,
and, swooping suddenly, seizeth with his talons the tawny prey ;
but cackhng jackdaws haunt the lower ground." Gray, too,
has pictured for us the Theban eagle as
Sailing with supreme dominion
Thro' the azure deep of air ;
and Horace in one of his finest odes has likened Pindar to a
mighty torrent, and to a wild swan winging its way through
the realms of cloudland.
Although he accepted many strange myths for artistic
purposes, Pindar protested strongly, as Xenophanes had done,
against all that was derogatory of the dignity of the gods.
"It is seemly," he says, "for a man to speak nobly of the
deities." And although for artistic purposes he makes use
1 The finest imaginative picture in Pindar is perhaps that of the eagle of
Zeus lulled to sleep by the tones of Apollo's golden lyre (P. i.). The paraphrase
by Gray in his Progress of Poetry does it very poor justice.
281
ANCIENT GREECE
of the Olympian gods, in most cases when he is expressing
his own beliefs he speaks of ' God ' as Xenophanes and other
sages, and indeed Homer himself, had done. " One must not
strive with God," he says, " who now exalteth the one and
now giveth great glory to others." God, he tells us, " o'ertakes
the eagle in its flight and passeth the dolphin in the sea."
If God does not " swiftly put forth his hand to the helm of
the state, it is oft no easy task for the rulers to guide it
aright."
He is full of wise, if rather trite, saws and maxims. The best
of them is perhaps preserved by Herodotus and Plato : " I^aw
is king of all." Others are : " Future days are wisest v/itnesses "
(which reminds one of Solon) ; " Silence is oft wisest for a man " ;
" We all die but once." His wisdom does not bear the impress
of deep conviction ; it is purely decorative — like exquisite
embroidery. Not a few dark threads of melancholy and
embitterment sometimes traverse the web — due perhaps to
the rivalry of other poets, and to that ' envy ' of which he
sometimes sings — possibly also to a too close contact with
regal wealth and luxury. Pythagorean and Orphic influences
can perhaps be traced in some passages where he speaks of
purification and initiation, and of the rewards and punishments
in a future life. A fine picture of the life of spirits in Elysium
is given in a fragment of one of his dirges, reminding one of
similar pictures by Virgil and Dante and of passages in Plato's
Phaedo. In another fragmentary dirge he speaks thus of
death : " By a happy destiny all travel towards a bourne
where they are loosed from toil. The body, indeed, followeth
almighty Death, but still alive remaineth a shadowy image
of vitality, and this alone is of origin divine." The Orphic
teachings doubtless were associated with much superstition
and priestcraft, but, together with Pythagorean mysticism,
they helped by their imaginative parables to keep alive in
the hearts of many the beliefs that lie at the root of all true
religion.
282
CHAPTER VI
THE RISE OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
(478-439)
SECTIONS : ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE : AESCHYLUS.
HERODOTUS, PHILOSOPHERS OF THE PERIOD
THE capture of Sestos is, as we have seen, the last event
recorded by Herodotus in his history of the Persian
invasions ; but Persia continued to hold important
posts in Thrace,^ and, although after Mycale the Ionian and
Aeolian cities regained autonomy, the barbarian was still at
their gates ; nor was it unHkely that Xerxes would attempt
to revenge himself on Greece itself. The need for combined
action was therefore strongly felt. Hitherto Sparta had been
regarded as leader. Although the victories of Marathon and
Salamis had been due mainly to Athens, and although her
ships formed the bulk of the Greek fleet, the allies had hitherto
refused to submit to Athenian leadership, and the supreme
command both on land and on the sea had been held by
Spartans — by Eurybiadas at Salamis, by Pausanias at Plataea,
and by I^eotychidas at Mycale. How the command of the
allied fleet was acquired by Athens, and how she made herself
the head of a great anti-Persian confederacy, and how out of
this leadership {nytjuiovLa) in less than twenty years she developed
an empire {apxn) which extended its victories even to Cyprus
and Egyptian Memphis, has been recounted by many writers ;
and although this period lies between those described in detail
by Herodotus and by Thucydides, enough is told by both,
especially by Thucydides,'^ to render possible a fairly satis-
factory reconstruction.
1 Doriscus was evidently still Persian when Herodotus wrote vii. 106-107.
2 Thuc. i. 89 sq. and the speech of the Athenians in i. 74. Other sources are
inscriptions, Plutarch, and Nepos.
283
ANCIENT GREECE
But it is not my purpose to follow closely the evolution of
the Athenian Empire, nor the varying fortune of those long-
protracted struggles for supremacy which often fill so many
pages of Greek history with their wearisome and ever-recur-
ring details of battles and sieges and seditions and revolts
and butcheries. Such things, it is true, form the main staple
of one of the greatest of histories — that of Thucydides — but
they are so skilfully interwoven, now with the brilliant
rhetoric and the intricate arguments of fictitious speeches,
now with some subtle analysis of character or motive, now
with some trenchant criticism or the vivid description of a
beleaguered town or plague-stricken city or sickening butchery,
that we are at times almost persuaded that these miserable
squabbles and atrocities are, as he believed them to be, not
only more worthy of record than what Herodotus calls " the
great and wonderful deeds of the Greeks and barbarians " in the
Persian wars, but even of more consequence to posterity than all
the legacies of Greek art, Greek poetry, and Greek philosophy.
A " possession for ever " doubtless his book will remain, but
not by reason of its minute record of events, many of which
have no longer any value except in so far as they may at
times give us a fuller view of the dark side of Greek character.
The transfer of the naval command from Sparta to Athens
happened thus. In the year following the capture of Sestos
(in which lycotychidas and the Spartan ships had taken no
part) a fleet composed mainly of Athenian and Ionian vessels
was put under the command of the Spartan Pausanias, who
as the victor at Plataea enjoyed great popularity in spite of
his overweening arrogance.^ He made for Cyprus and cleared
the island of the Persians ; then he sailed to Byzantium.
Here he laid himself open to the charge of Medism. He was
accused of releasing Persian prisoners, assuming Median
^ On the dedicated tripod (p. 272) he had caused only his own name to be
inscribed as the conqueror of the Mede. The Spartans erased the distich and
engraved the names of the cities (Thuc. i. 132). This doubtless rankled in his
mind, and (as seen in Cleomenes) the peculiar temperament and training of
the Spartans seem to have induced a tendency towards unbridled passion
and insanity.
284
78. Group of Gods, Parthenon Frieze;
79. The ' Strangford ' Shield
284
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
habits and dress, and even of treasonable correspondence with
the Great King/ and was recalled to Sparta. The Ionian
allies hereupon, weary of arrogant despotism, begged the
Athenians to assume the command of the fleet, and although
another admiral (Dorkis) was sent out from Sparta, he was
not recognized. The acquiescence of Sparta seems remarkable,
but was probably due to the influence of the military caste
of the old school, which regarded sea-power as an illusion.
To this influence was also probably due a raid on Thessaly
made about this time {c. 476) by the Spartans under their
king Ivcotychidas, who landed in the Gulf of Pagasae, and
might perhaps have annexed the whole of Thessaly unless
he had proved as venal as many of his compatriots. He
was convicted of receiving bribes from the Persian-loving
Aleuadae, and only saved his life by seeking sanctuary at
Tegea.
Here we may perhaps glance at the question of what
Thucydides calls the entirely different character of the
Spartans and the Athenians. Many of these differences
have been noted by the Attic historian, who during his exile
of twenty years had special opportunities for studying them,
and it would be a most interesting, if exceedingly difficult,
task to collect all that he has said on the subject, to compare
it with what has been said by Herodotus and other ancient
writers, and to see how far it is borne out by historical facts.
1 His letter to Xerxes, proposing to marry his daughter, and the reply of
Xerxes, are given by Thucydides. The fate of Pausanias may be best related
here, so as to avoid discontinuity. He hired a private trireme and returned
to Byzantium, where he conducted himself like a Persian magnate and was
guilty of many excesses. He even got possession of Sestos, but the Athenians
sent Cimon with a squadron and expelled him. Having retired to Cleonae in
the Troad, he renewed his intrigues with the Persians and was again summoned
to Sparta, where, suspected of inciting a rising among the Helots, and being
also convicted by a ruse (see Thuc. i. 133) of his correspondence with Persia,
he fled for sanctuary into a small building in the precinct of Athene and
was walled up there by the ephors and died of starvation (471). Although he
was carried out of the sanctuary while still breathing, the Delphic oracle
ordered atonement for the pollution ; and this ' pollution ' was urged as a
charge by the Athenians when, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War,
they themselves were ordered by the Spartans to cast out the Alcmaeonid
' pollution ' in the person of Pericles.
285
ANCIENT GREECE
From various passages — such as the speech of the Corinthians
in i. 70, where the contrast is strongly brought out, and in
i. 141, where Pericles points out the practical advantages
possessed by Athens, and his great speech (iii. 39-40), where
he delineates the main features of Spartan and Athenian
character — one may gain a fairly clear impression of his finely
drawn distinctions, but to restate that impression in any other
form, especially in a still more concise form, is almost im-
possible. These passages should be studied. In passing I
can but offer a few epithets such as may perhaps occur to the
reader of Thucydides as roughly intimating his judgments.
The Spartans he seems to regard as eminently dilatory,
enslaved to tradition and system, unimaginative, illiterate,
boorish, short-sighted and narrow in policy, unenterprising,
unideal, incapable of foreseeing difficulties, cold-blooded, tena-
cious, heroically but stupidly regardless of danger and death,
and incredibly superstitious and venal. The character of the
Athenians he seems to consider a rare composite of the prac-
tical and the ideal : they are at once " most enterprising and
most prudent," " lovers of the beautiful but also of economy,
lovers of learning but also of manliness," magnanimous but
severe (alas! we might add, often inhumanly cruel), generous
but exacting, sanguine, impulsive, imaginative, brilliant, versa-
tile, restless but capable of strenuous and protracted effort,
fascinating but false. The last two epithets may be exemplified
by the intense affection and the intense hatred that, far more
than Sparta, Athens seems to have excited under various
conditions. The enthusiasm for Athens among the Ionian
Greeks at the formation of the Confederacy was evidently
very strong, but it was soon to be followed by a detestation
as universal and still more intense, so that at the beginning
of the Peloponnesian War " the good wishes of all men made
greatly for the lyacedaemonians ... so angry were most with
the Athenians, some of them from a wish to be liberated from
their rule and others from a fear of being brought under it." ^
^ Thuc. ii. 8. All quotations in this chapter are from Thucydides, if not
otherwise specified. Dale's translation has been used to some extent.
286
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
During the next few years we hear but little of Sparta.
We have chiefly to note the foundation and rapid development
of the so-called Confederacy of Delos— the work especially of
Aristides and Cimon ; and, secondly, the important changes
effected at Athens by the influence of Themistocles.
The Confederacy of Delos
The alHes, especially the lonians, had begged Athens to
assume the naval command. This led to the formation of a
league, nominally anti-Persian, under the hegemony of Athens.
The isle of Delos, the sacred ancient gathering-place of the
Ionic race, was chosen as headquarters and as treasure-house.
In course of time the Confederacy included about 260 towns
(Aristophanes says a thousand !), situate mostly in Ionia and
AeoHs and the adjacent islands and Euboea. According to its
wealth each state had to contribute its share in fully equipped
vessels, or the equivalent in tribute {(l>6po?). Most of the
smaller and some of the greater states preferred the latter
method, and thus practically subscribed to the enlargement
of the Athenian fleet, and what was at first the voluntary
subscription of a confederate was soon regarded by Athens as
the tribute of a subject. The work of valuation was entrusted
to Aristides, and his estimates gave such general satisfaction
that they remained in force for half a century. To Cimon,
the son of Miltiades, was given the command of the confederate
fleet. His first feat, after expelling Pausanias from Byzantium,
was the capture of Eion — stubbornly defended by the Persian
Boges, who finally lit a pyre and flung his wife and children
and slaves and himself into the flames. A year or two later
(473) Cimon distinguished himself by capturing from pirates
the illustrious isle of Scyros, and still more by discovering, as
was believed, the bones of Theseus, who, tradition asserts,
when expelled from Athens was murdered on this island by
lyycomedes (the king at whose court Achilles lived for some
time disguised as a girl). The bones were brought to Athens,
and possibly the Theseion was built to receive them ; but this
is doubted (see Note A). Some five years later (468) the
287
ANCIENT GREECE
confederate fleet, after having driven the Persians from several
Lycian and Carian cities, gained a brilHant victory over the
Persian fleet at the mouth of the Eurymedon in Pamphylia.
About 200 of the enemy's vessels were destroyed, as well as a
reinforcement of 80 Phoenician ships that arrived after the
battle, and the Greeks are said to have disembarked and
routed the Persian land troops on the same day.
Shortly before this battle, doubtless with the full approval
of Athens, though also doubtless not with the full approval of
the confederate council (for Thucydides speaks of it as the
" subjugation of an allied city contrary to agreement "), Cimon
had reduced by force the island of Naxos, which had signified
its intention of withdrawing from the Confederacy. The
Naxians were henceforth treated as ' subject allies ' of Athens,
and this precedent was soon followed by similar cases. Thasos
quarrelled with Athens about a gold-mine and ' revolted '
(for thus the Athenians now described withdrawal from the
league). After two years it was reduced (463), having hoped
in vain for the aid of the Lacedaemonians, who were prevented
from keeping their promise by an earthquake — and this time
a really serious one, as we shall see later.
One after another the states of the Confederacy, discontented
with Athens for using the funds and the fleet against Greeks
instead of against Persians, were either reduced by force or
acquiesced in being treated as tributaries of the Athenian
Empire, until only Chios, I^esbos, and Samos were still autono-
mous and not liable to military service under Athenian com-
manders, although obliged to contribute contingents to the
confederate fleet ; and, if we allow ourselves to look forward
a few years, we may note here that in 454 the treasury was
removed from Delos to Athens and the Confederacy came prac-
tically to an end, although this name still continued to be used
officially instead of the word ' Empire ' {apx^) — a word odious
to the democratic Hellene, except in the case of such lovers
of freedom as the Athenians, who, as Goethe said, loved no
freedom but their own. From its full development in 454 until
its total collapse at the end of the Peloponnesian War this
288
88^
NOiaSSHX '18
NOLNns NO aidtKax 'Og
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
Athenian Empire existed just half a century. But this is
anticipation, and we must now return and note what has
been occurring at Athens itself.
Themistocles and Events at Athens
In a former chapter I touched upon the personality and
political tenets of the four leading Athenians during the
Persian invasion, namely, Themistocles, Xanthippus, Aristides,
and Cimon. To Themistocles it was mainly due that Athens
had become a maritime power and had conquered at Salamis.
Xanthippus had succeeded him in the command of the fleet, and
had won the battle of Mycale. Aristides had distinguished him-
self at Marathon and at Salamis, and had commanded at Plataea,
and was the chief organizer of the Confederacy. Cimon, the
youngest of the four, the son of Miltiades, was actively occupied
in extending the oversea empire of Athens. He and Aristides
belonged to the older school of Cleisthenic republicanism,
opposed to the more advanced democratic and ' Peiraean '
influences of Themistocles, and were politically in sympathy
with Xanthippus ; but between Cimon and Xanthippus was
a very strong hereditary hostility, for Xanthippus had been
the chief accuser of Miltiades. Themistocles was not a pro-
fessional party politician, nor was he, as the other three, of
noble family. He stood, therefore, somewhat apart, but exer-
cised great influence on the decisions of the Kcclesia. Even
before the battle of Marathon, in 493, he had as archon per-
suaded the Athenians to begin the fortification of the Peiraeus
and the formation of new docks. These operations had been
stopped by the Persian invasions. On his suggestion they were
now renewed, and walls round Athens itself were begun,
enclosing a greater space than those demolished by Peisistratus
and by the Persians. Hereupon Sparta sent envoys to propose
the stoppage of the work and the demolition of all fortifications
in Greece ; but Themistocles, says Thucydides, went to Sparta
and deluded the authorities with various excuses, while at home
" the whole population, men, women, and children, worked at
the building, sparing neither private nor public edifice. . . .
T 289
ANCIENT GREECE
And the building still shows even now " — as its relics do even
in our day — " that it was executed in haste, for the foundations
are laid with stones of all kinds, and many columns from
tombs and sculptured blocks were inserted." Thus ere long
Themistocles was able to inform the I^acedaemonians that
" Athens was already w^alled and capable of defending itself,"
and that " as the Athenians had abandoned their city without
the leave of Sparta, so without her leave they intended to
have their city walled."
Besides the erection of city ramparts there was an immense
amount of clearance and rebuilding to be done in Athens
itself and on the Acropolis, where, as we have already seen,
the debris of the old temples and sculptures was cast into
the spaces between the new walls and the newly levelled
plateau. On this plateau arose the new temples, which will
be described later. The new walls of the Acropolis were
probably erected, not by the advice of Themistocles, but by
that of Cimon, since we hear of the southern wall being built
out of the spoils of the battle of the Eurymedon (468), when
Themistocles was an exile at Argos, or perhaps already a
fugitive in Asia.
Whether he was suspected of Medism or of receiving bribes,
or whether arrogance made him unpopular, or whether his
political opponents persuaded the Ecclesia that he was a danger
to the state, is not known, but that he was ostracized is certain
— and the fact is illustrated, if not proved, by the potsherd
bearing his name that may be seen in the British Museum
(Fig. 75). This was probably in 471, the same year in which
Pausanias met his fate. For some years he " had a house at
Argos and used to travel about the Peloponnese." Then,
apparently about 467, the Lacedaemonians accused him to the
Athenians of having taken part in the intrigues of Pausanias.
He fled, first to Corcyra, then through Thessaly (aided by the
king, Admetus) to Asia, and ultimately reached Susa. Here
he wrote a letter to Artaxerxes, who was now king (his father,
Xerxes, having been murdered by Artabanus in 465) , claiming
recognition as a " benefactor of the king " for his messages sent
290
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
to Xerxes (p. 268) and asking for a year's grace in order that
he might learn the Persian language. At the end of this time
he presented himself and gained such favour with the Persian
king — to whom he proposed plans, never to be carried out,
for the conquest of Greece — that he was made governor of
Asiatic Magnesia and was supplied with bread and wine by
the cities of lyampsacus and Myus. Thus he lived, as a Persian
magnate, till about 450. The story that he poisoned himself
with bull's blood probably arose from a statue that was erected
to him in Magnesia, which represented him pouring a libation
while standing near a slain bull. " His relations say that his
bones were carried over to Attica and buried there without
the knowledge of the Athenians." A tomb in the rock near
the Peiraeus lighthouse is still shown as the tomb of Themis-
tocles.
Aristides had died ^ in the year of the battle of the Eury-
medon (468), and Cimon was thus for a time without any
powerful political opponent. But Xanthippus, his hereditary
enemy, now dead or retired, had left behind him a son who
was to attain by his splendid gifts of intellect and character an
almost absolute control of the state. Nor was it long before the
popularity of the victor of the Eurymedon — the generous and
jovial old sailor whose plentiful lack of wit had been proverbial
in his earlier days and whose preferences were still for wine-
bouts and aristocratic boon companions rather than for states-
manship and philosophy — suffered total eclipse. Ostracism —
the almost inevitable fate of the eminent Athenian statesman
— came upon him under rather dramatic circumstances. He
had always obstinately maintained that the one object of
Athens should be to extend her oversea empire and harass
Persia, and that she should recognize the supremacy of Sparta
on land and live at peace with her — a doctrine that won
him the contemptuous sobriquet of the I^aconizer or Philo-
Laconian. Now in 464 a very severe earthquake laid Sparta
1 He is said to have died so poor that he was buried at public expense.
Some of his descendants, fortune-tellers and beggars, were granted rations
by the state. The descendants of Themistocles were wealthy and respected.
One was a friend of Pausanias the traveller.
291
ANCIENT GREECE
in ruins. Many Spartans perished, and the opportunity was
seized by the Messenian Helots, who, after defeating the
Spartans with the loss of 300 men on the plain of Stenyclarus,
fortified themselves (as their forefathers had done) on Mount
Ithome. For more than two years they defied the Spartans,
who at last appealed for assistance to Athens — the Athenians
being skilled in siege operations. Cimon, in spite of the oppo-
sition of Pericles and another newly risen anti-oligarchical
politician, Bphialtes, carried the Assembly with him by his
sailor eloquence. " Consent not," he exclaimed, " to see
Hellas lamed and our city without her yoke-fellow ! " Four
thousand Athenian hoplites were sent under his command to
help in the siege of Ithome ; but Ithome was not easily to be
taken, and the Spartans, perhaps suspecting treason, suddenly
and insultingly dismissed the Athenian troops. The indignation
at Athens was intense, and Cimon was ostracized. For about
two years longer Ithome defied capture. At last the Messe-
nians capitulated on the condition that they should leave the
Peloponnese ; and Athens offered them a site for a new home
at Naupactus, the haven on the Corinthian Gulf which, it will
be remembered, was so called because it served as a ship-yard
for the Dorians on their invasion of the Peloponnese. It had
been lately occupied by the Athenians as a naval station, a
kind of Gibraltar commanding the entrance of the gulf and the
trade with Western Hellas. In a later age we shall hear again
of these Messenians of Naupactus (see Figs. 93, 122, and
pp. 336, 396).
Soon after the ostracism of Cimon the friend of Pericles,
Ephialtes, was assassinated — probably in revenge for his
attacks on the ancient and aristocratic council of the Areo-
pagus, which he accused of corrupt practices and caused to
be deprived of the relics of its political power, leaving it nothing
but jurisdiction in cases of homicide and a few religious func-
tions,^ Pericles nov/ and for the next thirty years stood alone
at the helm of the state, often, it is true, fiercely assailed, but
only for one short period opposed by a rival of any importance.
^ 1 See remarks on the Eumenidex, p. 319.
292
O
'A
W
w
Ah
W
W
n
o
m
W
Ph
o
w
1^
(^
00
ii»iM]'iiiri"l*l
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
The ' age of Pericles,' if we limit the name to these thirty
years and except the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War,
offers comparatively little of moment in its military and
political occurrences, but much that is of supreme literary and
artistic interest. It is true that the fame of Pericles himself
rests mainly on his statecraft, and it was to his genius and
his good fortune that Athens owed a measure of peace during
the time of her greatest artistic and intellectual activity, but,
putting aside the question whether a policy which resulted
in the universal hatred of Athens and the acclamation of Sparta
as the liberator of Greece was really a great policy, what the
Periclean age has of value for us is very slightly connected
with the facts of its political history. These facts I shall
therefore state as concisely as possible.
461-459. After Cimon's banishment Athens breaks with
Sparta and forms an entente with Argos (the Oresteia of Aeschy-
lus reflects this feeling). Megara puts itself under the pro-
tectorate of Athens. Long Walls are built between Megara and
its port Nisaea and garrisoned by Athenians, who thus com-
mand the passes of Geraneia leading to the Isthmus. A fleet
of 200 Athenian and confederate ships cross from Cyprus to
Egypt to assist the lyibyan king Inaros to free Egypt from
the Persians. They sail up the Nile as far as the Pyramids
and capture Memphis, except the ' White Citadel,' which holds
out for years. (Finally, in 454, Artaxerxes sends a great
army and besieges the Greeks on a Nile island, which he takes
by diverting the stream. The Greeks burn their ships and
capitulate and are allowed to retreat to Cyrene. A reinforce-
ment of fifty triremes sent from Athens is annihilated by the
Phoenician fleet in the Nile.)
458-450. The occupation of Megara by Athens causes war
with Corinth and with Aegina. The Athenians, though many
of their warships are in Egypt, capture seventy Aeginetan
vessels and force Aegina to surrender the rest and to be enrolled
as subject state in the Confederacy. The lyacedaemonians
send troops to Northern Greece to defend their mother-country,
293
ANCIENT GREiECE
Doris, against the Pliocians, and use tlie opportunity to re-
establish a Boeotian league, with Thebes at its head, to counter-
act Athens. On their return they threaten Athens and rout
the Athenians at Tanagra, but soon afterwards Athens re-
occupies Boeotia. At the battle of Tanagra the exiled Cimon
had appeared and offered to fight as hoplite. His request
was refused, but he was allowed to return to Athens. Some
years later he negotiates a five-year truce between Athens
and Sparta. He is reinstated as admiral of the confederate
fleet, and once more renews naval operations against Persia.
During the blockade of Cition in Cyprus he dies. From 458
to 455 the two lyong Walls from Athens to the Peiraeus are
built (p. 297).
448. After the death of Cimon the Greeks and Persians
seem to have agreed to abstain from hostilities. It is doubtful
whether a formal treaty was made. Thucydides does not
mention it. Some later writers assert that Callias, brother-in-
law of Cimon, went to Susa to ratify it and that the Persian
king promised to send no ships into the Aegaean or the Pro-
pontis, nor to cross the river Halys, nor to claim the Greek
Asiatic cities, except those in Cyprus, which were surrendered
to the Phoenicians. A copy of this treaty, it is said, was
engraved on a column at Athens. As we hear soon after
(Thuc. i. 115) of a satrap of Sardis, some of these details are
evidently incorrect.
447. Boeotia revolts and the Athenians suffer a severe
defeat and lose many prisoners at Coroneia. Euboea revolts,
but is reduced by Pericles. Even Megara, which had volun-
tarily put itself under Athenian protection, finds Athenian
imperialism too hard a taskmaster, or possibly is induced to
revolt by the oligarchical faction, and massacres the Athenian
garrison. Then a Peloponnesian army invades Attica.
446. Thirty Years' Peace is concluded. Athens agrees to
surrender Megara and Achaea, and it is stipulated that neither
side shall tamper with the other's allies. The terms are
humiliating for Athens and for the policy of Pericles. The
loss of Megara and the Long Walls of Nisaea deprives Athens
294
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
of the command of the Isthmus of Corinth, and exposes her
to attack from the Peloponnese.
g'445-431. During these fourteen years Pericles has absolute
control of the state, not by virtue of any special official position
(he is officially only one of the ten strategoi, or generals, re-
elected yearly) , but merely through strength of character and
intellect. About 443 a politician named Thucydides (not the
historian, but the son of Melesias), a relative of Cimon, heads
a party that violently opposes the imperial policy of Pericles,
asserting that even the weal of the empire should not override
justice and honour. These ' little Athenians ' (so to speak)
sit apart in the public Assembly to show their contempt of
the malodorous demos and its hero, whom they accuse (doubtless
with some justice) of misappropriating the funds of the Con-
federacy for the purpose of adorning Athens and carrying on
her wars against fellow-Greeks. Pericles argues that as long
as the allies are protected satisfactorily by Athens they have
no right to interfere with the finances — an argument well
suited to win the approval of an imperialistic mob. Thucy-
dides, who seems to have been an orator scarcely inferior to
Pericles himself, and who evidently stood on a higher level
of political morality, is said to have complained, and doubtless
with much reason, that " even when he had thrown Pericles
he denied that he had fallen and talked over those who had
seen him fall." It is therefore not surprising that when
Thucydides proposed a trial by ostracism he himself was
banished (443). It was perhaps in the same year that after
an unsuccessful attempt had been made by the Sybarites to
refound their city (destroyed by Croton in 510), Pericles
settled the pan-Hellenic colony of Thurii near the site of
Sybaris — a fact the more interesting because both Herodotus
and the orator I^ysias were probably among the first colonists,
and because Hippodamus (p. 298) laid out the plan of the
new city on the new method, with streets at right angles, as
he did at the Peiraeus.
439. Samos, one of the three autonomous allies and the
richest of them, now shared the fate of Naxos and of many
295
ANCIENT GREECE
others of the confederates. The Samian oligarchy quarrelled
with Miletus, and refused to accept the arbitration of Athens,
which was in favour of the Milesians, some say because Aspasia,
who was Milesian, influenced Pericles ! Pericles himself
probably went out in command of the fleet and established
a democracy ; but the exiles returned, and again Pericles
went out; this time having as a fellow-s^m^^^os the poet
Sophocles, who had lately gained great fame by his Antigone.
After a blockade of nine months Samos surrendered her fleet
and paid looo talents indemnity. Also Byzantium revolted,
but was forced to return to allegiance. Perhaps it was at this
time that Pericles visited the Euxine with a large fleet, and
sailed as far as the Crimea. In his funeral speech in honour
of those who fell in the Samian war his eloquence is said to
have produced an extraordinary effect. He was crowned as
an Olympic victor. But Cimon's sister Elpinice (who seems
not to have accepted Pericles' definition of the ideal woman
as one about whom least is said) reproached him publicly with
having triumphed over fellow-Greeks, while her brother had
triumphed only over the barbarian.
We have now arrived at events (the sedition at Epidamnus
and the sea-fight of the Corcyraeans against the Corintliians)
which were among the immediate causes of the outbreak of
the Peloponnesian War, and it will be better to reserve them for
consideration in closer connexion with the war. Also whatever
more there is to be said, or quoted, on the subject of the policy
and character of Pericles will be more intelligible if deferred to
the end of his career. In the following sections a brief account
is given of some of the important artistic and literary works
produced during the period that we have been considering.
SECTION A : ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE
(f. 478-431)
When the Athenians returned to their city after its second
occupation by the Persians and the withdrawal of Mardonius
in 479 they at once set to work, as we have seen, to clear away
296
8^. Parthenon, from West
84. Arill.I.o'S Tl'-.Ml'I,!', rillCAI.EIA
2y6
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
the ruins and to rebuild. They were also persuaded by
Themistocles to surround Athens with new ramparts and to
fortify also the Peiraeus, and, probably by Cimon's advice,
they set aside some of the spoil taken from the Persians at the
Eurymedon for the building of the great south wall of the Acro-
polis, and perhaps also for clearing and enlarging the plateau
and either attempting to restore the old temple of Athene Polias
(see Note A, 14) or laying foundations for new temples. More,
however, was not accomplished until about twenty years later,
when Pericles, at the zenith of his power, induced the Athenians
to vote a large sum (partly their own and partly taken from
the treasury of the confederates) for the erection of the
Parthenon, which was built on old foundations, but after a
new plan, devised by the architect Ictinus.
But before we come to the Parthenon and its sculptures a
few words should be said about some works of great political,
if not artistic, importance, namely, the port of the Peiraeus
and the IvOng Walls which connected it with Athens. The
fortifications of the Peiraeus, as also the first formation of docks
in its three natural inlets, Munychia, Zea, and ' The Harbour,'
of which Cantharus (' The Cup ') was the part used by warships,
were due to the influence of Themistocles, and probably the
I^ong Walls were begun or planned before his exile ; but they
seem to have been finished between 458 and 455. These
walls diverged considerably in order to include both the
Peiraeus and the open bay of Phaleron, the beach of which,
some two miles in extent, offered an easy landing-place for
an invader. About 443 Pericles induced the Athenians to
remedy this defect by building another long wall parallel to
the northern wall, and at a distance from it of about 400
yards, thus forming a far narrower and more defensible fortified
passage of about four miles between the port and the upper
city. After the completion of this third wall the old Phaleron
wall was no longer kept in repair, and the open beach of
the Phaleron bay was deserted for the quays and marts of the
new harbours. The town of Peiraeus, spreading round the
great harbour and Zea, and up the slopes of Acte and Munychia,
297
ANCIENT GREECE
was laid out on a new plan, in rectangular blocks, by the
Milesian architect Hippodamus, who also laid out the new
cities of Thurii and Rhodes, and whose name was given to
the chief market-place in the Peiraeus. A fine Emporion, or
' Place of Commerce,' and a spacious colonnaded ' Show-place '
(Deigma) for imported merchandise were constructed, and a
thousand talents spent on new docks and an arsenal.
The Peiraeus has of late years recovered its ancient name as
well as its ancient prosperity. As late as 1835 it was known as
Porto I^eone. This name its little fishing hamlet received on
account of the ancient stone lion which once stood at the
entrance of the harbour, and which was carried off by the
Venetians in 1687 and now stands in front of the arsenal at
Venice.
Having secured their city and their port by ramparts and
long walls, the Athenians were easily won over by Pericles
to believe that it was their duty to show their gratitude for
deliverance from the barbarian by erecting worthier shrines
to the gods. They had still stored up in their treasury a
great amount of Persian spoil, and the yearly tribute of their
subject allies was about 600 talents — some at least of which
they thought it justifiable to use in adorning the imperial
city. On the Acropolis, in the place of the ancient temples
burnt by Mardonius, had arisen — or perhaps had only been
begun — a new shrine to receive the old wooden idol of Athene,
which had doubtless been hidden away during the barbarian
invasion. And Cimon, who did not believe in fortifying the
city, had built a strong portal and a south wall for the citadel.
Moreover, on the plateau inside Cimon' s Gate statues were
again erected, among them (c. 460) a colossal bronze Athene
by Pheidias, then about thirty-five years of age, and some ten
years later perhaps his scarcely less famous I^emnian Athene
(see Fig. 87 and List of Illustrations).
The greater statue — which was dedicated from Persian
spoils and was sometimes called the ' Promachos,' or Champion
Goddess — is said to have been, together with its pedestal,
66 feet high. In representations of the Acropolis on coins
298
ANCIENT GREECE
it overtops considerably the Parthenon and the Propylaea.
The crest on the helmet and the gilded tip of the spear served,
says Pausanias, as a landmark for sailors, like the gilt angel
on the Venetian Campanile. The statue stood on the Acropolis
for eight centuries, and was then probably taken to Constanti-
nople, and was there destroyed by a mob in a.d. 1203. The
Ivcmnian Athene was a smaller bronze statue dedicated by
the Athenian colonists of Lemnos. This island, as we have
seen, was gained for Athens by Miltiades shortly before the
battle of Marathon, and the colonists probably commissioned
Pheidias to make the statue about 450.
But Athens possessed no longer — indeed, she never had
possessed — any shrine worthy of her goddess, any temple so
majestic as that of Delphi or of Olympia or Ephesus or
Samos or Sicilian Acragas or Selinus, or even far-away Italian
Paestum.
So keenly did Pericles feel this that in 448, having perhaps
failed in getting money voted by the Athenians, he induced or
allowed them to send an embassy to the other Grecian states
proposing a pan-Hellenic congress in order to discuss various
matters, especially the restoration of the temples burnt by
the barbarians. Naturally the " twenty elderly Athenians
were rebuffed," as Grote tells us. Sparta cared little for grand
temples and such things, and doubtless regarded the proposal
as a sly stroke of policy for increasing the imperial power of
Athens. Perhaps this rebuff effected what the eloquence of
Pericles had failed to effect.
The chief buildings erected by the Athenians in this period
were the Parthenon (c. 445-438), the Theseion, the temple on
Sunion, the Odeion, the new Propylaea (437-432), and the Hall
of Mysteries at Eleusis. Besides these we may note the
splendid temple of Apollo at Phigaleia, in Messenia, designed
by the Athenian Ictinus, the chief architect of the Parthenon.
Three of these, and also the Erechtheion, which was somewhat
later, are described in Note A at the end of this volume.
Of the others the following brief account may be useful.
The Propylaea {i.e. the Gate-porticoes) took the place of the
300
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
fortress-portal built by Cimon, and were for show rather than
for defence. The edifice was designed by Mnesicles and built
between 437 and 432. It consisted of a massive wall in which
were pierced five gateways, and on each side of the wall was
a portico of six Doric columns. Through the central gateway
ran the main road. The other gateways, two on each side, were
on a higher basement, reached by several steps of marble and
one of black Eleusinian stone. The gateways had massive doors,
whose ' harsh thunder ' is mentioned by Aristophanes. The
inner roof of the fore-portico was supported by six Ionic
columns. This central building was to be flanked by projecting
wings with colonnades backed by spacious halls. The north
wing, much of which, together with considerable portions of
the central building, still exists, was fairly well completed,
and contained a portico and a hall (Pinakotheke) in which
votive paintings were hung, some of them probably by the
famous painter Polygnotus. (He had probably already painted
his fresco (?) of the battle of Marathon in the Stoa Poikile,
near the market-place, and a picture of the Descent of Odysseus
into Hades for the I^esche of the Cnidians at Delphi.) The
south wing, however, was never completed, either because of
the Peloponnesian War or else because the ground had already
been consecrated as the site of the temples of Brauronian
Artemis and Athene Nike, and the priests refused to give it
up. Whatever may have been the reason, the little temple of
Athene Nike was built on this projecting cliff, as is explained
in Note A.
The Odeion, or Music Hall, was built soon after Pericles had
got rid of his opponent Thucydides (442) and was able to
indulge more freely his wish to spend public money on splendid
structures. Its site was on the south-west slope of the Acropolis,
not far from the theatre of Dionysus. (A far greater Odeion
was built three centuries later near the Propylaea by Herodes
Atticus. In passing note that the theatre of Dionysus, in which
all the masterpieces of the Attic drama were first performed, was
at this time only a somewhat primitive stage facing the
Acropolis, on the natural slope of which the audience was
301
ANCIENT GREECE
accommodated with wooden benches or dug-out seats. The
huge auditorium, capable of holding 30,000 spectators, was
excavated and furnished with stone seats in the fourth
century.)
The Hall of Mysteries at Eleusis was constructed about the
same time to replace the old building destroyed by the Persians.
The design was by Ictinus, and the superintending architect
was Coroebus. The inner temple (Telesterion, or ' Place of
Initiation ') was partly built into the rock of the Bleusinian
acropolis. It was afterwards (c 310) furnished with a fine
Doric colonnade. The Mysteries were celebrated here down to
A.D. 396, when the building was burnt by Alaric.
The Parthenon was begun about 445, some three years before
the ostracism of Thucydides. It is therefore probable that his
indictment of Pericles was based mainly on the great expenses
demanded for this magnificent temple.^ The designer was
Ictinus, the builder Callicrates, and to Pheidias was entrusted
the decorative work. It is regarded as the purest type of Doric
architecture, the characteristics of which I have explained
elsewhere. Its dimensions are 228 by loi feet ; its peristyle
consists of 8 X 17 columns of about 35 feet. At both ends there
is a double portico, the inner row of columns standing on a level
with the inner temple and two steps above the stylobat (base-
ment of the outer columns) . The sanctuary containing the gold
and ivory statue of Athene by Pheidias, which was 38 feet high,
formed the larger (eastern) part of the inner temple, and was
enclosed by walls and divided lengthwise, like a church with
its nave and two aisles, by two rows of small columns arranged
in two tiers, one above the other. The statue stood facing the
eastern portal, so as to receive the light of the rising sun, or
perhaps the sunlight from the open space in the roof— if the
Parthenon was a hypaethral temple. Behind this sanctuary
(called the Hecatompedos, or ' Hundred-foot Shrine,' being 100
Attic feet in length) was a smaller compartment with its
1 Grote gives 3000 talents as perhaps spent at this time on public buildings
(say ;^70o,ooo, representing three times as much in modern money). The
gold on the Athene statue weighed 40 talents. In the treasury at the beginning
of the Peloponnesian War were 6000 talents (Thuc. ii. 13).
302
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
entrance at the west end of the temple. This was the ' Par-
thenon ' proper. It was perhaps so named because it was
(besides being the treasure-house) the dwelhng of the maiden
priestesses of the goddess, and it may have given its name to
the whole temple. But possibly the word ' Parthenon ' (' Room
of the Maiden,' or ' the Maidens ') was originally applied to
the temple itself, although it seems that at first it retained
the name of the old temple of Athene Polias. Apart from its
sculptures and regarded only as a building, the Parthenon
possesses, even in its present state, a beauty and dignity such
as we seek in vain in other ancient ruins, however impressive.
It is as impossible to analyse and define such qualities as to
discover by dissection the causes of what is great and beau-
tiful in the art of Pheidias or of Sophocles ; but it is possible
to note the wonderful care that in the best Greek architecture,
as in the best Greek sculpture and poetry, was given to details
of symmetry and proportion. Doubtless in order to render
the perspective effect more perfectly harmonious and to lend
a certain undefinable grace and beauty to the whole building,
the use of the absolutely straight line was avoided to a great
extent. The columns not only taper gently, and gently diminish
the width of their flutings, but have the slight convexity in
their middle parts which is known as entasis. They also all
lean very slightly inwards, and the corner columns are slightly
thicker than the others. Even the steps of the marble basement
are not exactly horizontal, but have a slight convexity. By
what rules, if by any, the Greeks thus attempted to eliminate
the imperfections of natural perspective as presented to us by
our dull senses it is impossible to say.
The Parthenon was built of Pentelic (Attic) marble, which
was first used about this time, all finer architectural and
statuary work having been until now done in the imported
Parian marble. The Pentelic stone contains a certain amount
of iron, to which is due the rich golden tint that it acquires.
As has been stated elsewhere, colour was used for the decora-
tion of Greek temples and statuary very much more freely
than we are willing to believe, accustomed as we are to Greek
303
ANCIENT GREECE
architecture and sculptures deprived of their original colours
and to the dazzling white of Carrara marble in modern statues.
How far the Parthenon was decorated externally with colour
is not easy to discover, but probably the columns and architraves
were left uncoloured (though ornamented with wreaths,
shields, &c.) or were only slightly tinted, while the mouldings
and other decorations were brightly coloured, as well as the
dress and other details of the pediment sculptures and the
reliefs of the metopes and frieze, all of which had doubtless
a background of dark red or blue. Above the architraves
of the outer colonnade (as in all Doric temples) the frieze
was divided by triglyphs into metopes. These metopes,
ninety-two in number, were all sculptured in very high
relief. As each forms a distinct picture it is easy to
understand why metopes generally represent concentrated
and vigorous action, every group being self-balanced and in-
dependent. In the Parthenon the metopes depict contests
between Centaurs and lyapithae and between Greeks and
Amazons (Fig. 82), and possibly (on the north side, where the
reliefs are very weather-worn) scenes from the Trojan War.
Fifteen of the best are in the British Museum. Some are
exceedingly vigorous and wonderfully balanced, and were
possibly the work of Pheidias or of Myron, who excelled in poise
amidst violent action (as in his Discobolos and his Marsyas) ;
these have a decided likeness to the high-reliefs of the Theseion.
Others again are of very inferior design and workmanship,
and were probably by disciples of the ' athletic ' school of
Argos.
The frieze of the Parthenon (much of which is in the British
Museum) was a continuous frieze, as in an Ionic temple, and
ran above the inner columns of the porticoes, all round
the outside of the walls of the sanctuary. It could thus be
seen by those who walked, or a procession which marched,
round the Parthenon, and " the figures would seem to advance
as the spectator moved " (Gardner).
Being under the colonnade and only lighted from below, the
sculptures (especially the lower portions) were in very low reHef ,
304
i^-^.
'■^i
'mmn
Wt
85. Portions of Parthenon Frieze;
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
so as to avoid too deep shadows. The continuous (Ionic) frieze
is, of course, well adapted for the representation of processions.
The subject of the Parthenon frieze is the Panathenaic pro-
cession, the great solemnity that took place every fourth year
in connexion with the Panathenaic games, and in which all the
richest and noblest born, all the magistrates and colonial and
foreign representatives, all the youth and beauty of Athens,
took an eager part. The procession consists of knights on
horseback, charioteers, victims for sacrifice, musicians, maidens
carrying the sacred vessels and baskets, the archons and other
dignitaries ; and over the main portal of the temple is seated
in dignified expectation, awaiting the procession of worshippers,
Athene herself with all the other Olympian divinities — a
magnificent group. Nigh at hand is a priest with the sacred
robe ipeplos) which was offered to Athene on these occasions.
There is an unity of design as well as a similarity of workmanship
in the whole frieze from which it is fairly safe to conclude that it
was mainly the work of Pheidias himself, or carried out under
his direct supervision. Perhaps there is a concentration of
power in a single statue which may make it a more wonderful
product of creative art than any sculptured group or continuous
frieze can be (the difference being somewhat analogous to
that between a drama and an epic) , but by reason of its incom-
parable grace and beauty the Parthenon frieze, even in its
present state, holds something of the same place among works
of sculpture that the Odyssey holds among works of poetic
literature, while the groups of the two pediments may perhaps
be likened to the Iliad.
The sculptures of the pediments, doubtless also designed
by Pheidias and executed under his direct supervision, were
still more wonderful for their masculine beauty and power
than the frieze was for its beauty of delicate grace. So much
we can tell from their scanty and mutilated remains — most of
which miay be seen in the British Museum. It is impossible for
me to attempt any full description here, or to discuss the very
numerous and diverse theories as to the meaning of the various
figures and the way in which they were grouped. A fairly
u 305
ANCIENT GREECE
satisfactory reconstruction, or rather restoration, made by
the Austrian sculptor Schwerzek, is given in Fig. 86. All
such reconstructions are considerably indebted to drawings
of the Parthenon that were made by a French artist, Carrey,
in 1674, a few years before a German gunner of the Venetian
forces besieging the Turks in the Acropolis succeeded in
dropping a shell into the Turkish powder magazine, which
was located in the Parthenon, with the result that a great
part of the temple, until then in fair preservation, was
demolished and many of the sculptures were shattered. The
Venetian commander endeavoured to carry off the figure of
Poseidon and the horses of Athene's chariot, but the whole
group fell and was broken to pieces. In 1801 the English
ambassador, Lord Elgin, procured a firman allowing him
to " remove a few blocks of stone and figures," and removed
the greater part of the metopes, frieze, and pediment sculptures
— perhaps fortunately, as they were thus saved from further
destruction by weather and vandalism.
The subject of the east pediment was the birth of Athene.
The central figures are lost. They perhaps represented the birth
as it is frequently depicted on old vases, where the goddess
in the form of a small fully armed figure springs forth from
the head of Zeus, which has been smitten by Hephaestus with
his hammer ; or more probably Pheidias chose a moment
of more dignity, and represented the goddess already in full
stature by the side of her father. An extant but mutilated
figure is believed to represent Iris starting to take the news to
mortals. In the left corner Helios (the sun) is rising from the
sea in his chariot, and in the right the moon (Selene) is descending
with her chariot into the waves. The other figures, sometimes
called ' Theseus ' (or ' Olympus '), ' The Three Fates ' (or ' The
Seasons '), and so on, are all of uncertain meaning. The subject
of the west pediment was the contest of Poseidon and Athene for
the land of Attica (see p, 32). Poseidon produced, to support
his claim, a spring of salt water, and Athene made an olive-
tree spring forth. (Both were preserved as objects of reverence
in the ancient ' house of Erechtheus,' which was replaced by
^06
w
'#^.
o
^
o
^
w
a
■«
Eh
?^
«
*2
<
i»j
Ph
S
-«
w
u
M
^
fH
.
t<
^
c
?^
-o
5/5
H
a
Iz;
w
s
S
M
^
Q
•SA
w
to
CM
o
w>
W
H
•d
CO
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
the Erechtheion.) The central group of Poseidon, Athene,
and the horses of Athene's chariot were destroyed as has been
explained. Carrey's sketch depicts Poseidon as a huge nude
figure starting backwards in amazement before Athene, much
as Marsyas does in Myron's group (see Fig. 88 and explanation,
p. 309). The chariot of Poseidon, on the right, was probably
drawn by sea-horses. Reclining figures that once filled the
corners may perhaps have represented the streams Ilissus and
Cephisus, between which Athens lay. But the relics are too few
and too mutilated to serve for any certain recon.struction, and
it may be safer to confine one's admiration to them as single
figures and as examples of unrivalled skill in the technique of
sculpture — " marvellous translations into marble," as they have
been called, " of flesh and of drapery."
Pheidias was born about 500, so he must have had distinct
memories of Marathon, and perhaps fought at Salamis and
Plataea. Among his earliest works was a group (Miltiades
amidst gods and heroes) erected at Delphi, probably by
Cimon to commemorate Marathon and his father. His
colossal bronze Athene has already been mentioned, and his
Athene Lemnia. Of his chryselephantine Athene Parthenos
we are forced to form our only conception from two most
unattractive statuettes and a few gems, busts, and coins
(Figs. 89, 90, 91). After the dedication of the Parthenon
in 438 (though the chronology is uncertain) Pheidias seems to
have spent five years at Olympia working at his great statue
of Olympian Zeus, which ancient writers describe as the most
majestic and impressive of all images of the gods. The throne
on which Zeus was seated was probably, with its supporting
pedestal (22 feet broad), the most magnificent work of decora-
tive sculpture ever produced. Every available surface was
used for reliefs or paintings. The statue itself was about 40 feet
high, and the whole monument perhaps over 60 feet, so that,
it was said, Zeus could not stand up without putting his head
through the roof. On the extended right hand of the god
stood a Victory, on his sceptre perched his eagle. ■, Rough
imitations of the monument and of the head of this Pheidian
307
ANCIENT GREECE
Zeus may be seen on coins (Plate VI, 8, and Plate III, lo),
and some of these heads are incomparably more satisfactory
than any relic we possess of the Athene ; but this is all that
is extant to help us to form any conception of the greatest
masterpiece of Greek sculpture. Caligula tried to remove the
statue, but portents, it is said, deterred him.
It was probably after his return to Athens, about 432, that
Pheidias was accused (by the enemies of Pericles) of peculation
and sacrilege. He was able to refute the first charge because,
by the advice of Pericles, he had made all the gold ornaments
of the Athene detachable, and could thus prove that he had
used the whole of the forty talents entrusted to him. The other
accusation was based on the fact that he had introduced his
own portrait and that of Pericles in the decorations of Athene's
shield (see Fig. 79 and List of Illustrations) . It is said that he —
the great artist who had been lately the pride of Athens and
of all Greece — was condemned on this trivial charge and thrown
into prison and died there — a fact almost incredible if we had
not the cases of Anaxagoras and Socrates and others to prove
how fatal were the results of giving judicial powers to a bigoted
and litigious populace, whose vaunted reverence for law
was merely a reverence for their own verdicts, not for any
principles of justice and humanity. The creation of the
dicasteries, that much-lauded gift (confirmed by the wise
Pericles himself) to the Athenian mob, led to the pernicious
influence of sophists and rhetoricians and inflammatory talk
of all kinds, and the consequences were inevitable.
Contemporary with Pheidias were the sculptor Calamis,
renowned for his Attic grace uninfluenced by Argive ' athleti-
cism ' and renowned for his horses (see the Delphic charioteer.
Fig. 74 and p. 231), and Alcamenes, a lycsbian, and Paeonius, of
Mende in Thrace. These two are said by Pausanias to have
made the fine pediment sculptures for the magnificent temple
of Zeus at Olympia (c. 450, some years before Pheidias was
summoned to make the great statue) . Many of these sculptures
have been recovered — enough to allow of a fairly complete
reconstruction of the two pediments, which represented the
308
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
race of Pelops and Oenomaus and the fight of the Centaurs
and Ivapithae. Except one majestic statue with outstretched
arm — perhaps an Apollo— the excavated figures have not,
however, raised our esteem for these sculptors. Nor can
one easily believe that such a heavy, stiff, and somewhat
antiquated style could ever have been practised by a sculptor
who (perhaps when an old man and influenced by the Attic
grace of Pheidias) was able to produce such a miracle of delicate
beauty and lightness as the ' Nike of Paeonius,' one of the
two great art treasures discovered by the excavators at
Olympia (Fig. 93).
Another and perhaps greater contemporary of Pheidias was
Myron [c. 500-410), an Attic sculptor, who seems to have studied
under Ageladas at Argos, probably together with Pheidias,
and to have adopted the Argive ' athletic ' style. We have fine
copies of two at least of his works — the well-known Discoholos
(' Quoit-thrower ') and the equally well-known figure of the
satyr Marsyas starting back when confronted by Athene.
This group is described by Pliny and others, but the second
figure was supposed to have been irrecoverably lost. Not
many years ago was discovered at Rome what almost
certainly is a copy of the Athene, It is in Frankfurt, and
I am fortunate to be able to give a photograph of it (Fig. 88) .
The original was in bronze, a material preferred by the
Argive school and well adapted for statues representing violent
motion — or, rather, that momentary poise in the midst of
motion which is so conspicuous a characteristic of Myron's
works and is selected by lycssing (in his Laocoon) as an
essential characteristic of all great sculpture.
SECTION B : AESCHYLUS : HERODOTUS : PHILOSOPHERS
OF THE PERIOD
How the Attic drama originated in Doric dithyrambs and
in ' goat-dances ' performed at vintage festivals in honour of
Dionysus, the wine-god, has been told, and we have seen how
dialogue was introduced (perhaps by Thespis) between the
309
ANCIENT GREE.CE
chorus and its leader, and also how the performances were
transferred from the vintage gatherings ' in the marshes '
outside Athens to a primitive theatre on the south-eastern
slope of the Acropolis, where later the great theatre of Dionysus
was constructed.
In the time of Aeschylus (525-456) various innovations were
made, some of them doubtless by him. A second ' hypocrite '
[i.e. ' answerer,' or speaker) was added, so that the narrative
and the ' drama ' (action) became much developed and more
independent of the chorus, which now fell more into the back-
ground. Masks and costumes were improved and the high
buskin [cothurnus, like the Elizabethan chopin) introduced.
Statues, houses and temples, curtains, painted rocks and groves
and other scenery, doors for exits and entrances, and other such
stage apparatus, began to take the place of the central thymele
(altar) round which the old dances had been performed, and,
by about 430, movable platforms, wheeled or revolving on
pivots, cranes, and other machinery for the descent and ascent
of deities, became common. But to the end the classical Attic
drama retained much of its original scenic simplicity. It
was always more sculpturesque than pictorial. Sophocles
introduced a third, perhaps a fourth, actor ; but this number
was seldom, if ever, exceeded. Spectacular effects seem to
have been almost entirely disregarded, and nuances of by-play
and facial expression were made impossible by the great size
of the open-air theatres and by the masks of the actors. The
one thing of importance — and it must have been exceedingly
difficult, needing mechanical aids — was audible and effective
recitation both of dialogue and of chorus, for text-books were
unknown, and the vast audiences would doubtless be eager
to hear and criticize the new versions of the familiar legends
that generally formed the subjects of these dramas.^
It has already been mentioned that Aeschylus fought at
1 The Persians of Aeschylus was a striking exception. So was the Capture
of Miletus, by Phrynichus (p. 195). The knowledge of the audience and the
supposed ignorance of the characters in the play as to the approaching cata-
strophe allowed place to that ' dramatic irony ' which is especially associated
with Sophocles.
310
\-j. Probabi,e Copy of the Pheidian
Athene I,emnia
88. Probable Copy of
Myron's Athene 310
Marsyas group
See T,ist of Illustialic
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
Marathon, where his brother Cynaegeirus was killed. Probably
he was present also at Salamis and at Plataea, and some believe
that the ' Ameinias of Pallene ' who at Salamis first attacked the
Persians was the youngest of his brothers. ^ He first competed
for the tragic prize about 499, and first won it in 484. He is
beheved to have invented the ' trilogy ' — a group of three
connected, or unconnected, tragedies, followed usually by a
semi-comic ' satyric ' play. In 468 he was defeated by the
young Sophocles, amidst great public excitement. Cimon in
this year brought the bones of Theseus from Scyros, and he
with his nine fellow-generals were asked to act as judges,
and decided in favour of Sophocles. It has been said that
either on this account or because he was beaten by Simonides
in the composition of the Marathon epitaph (which, however,
was in 489 !), or else because he was accused of revealing
the Kleusinian Mysteries or of impious language (perhaps in
his Prometheus, where Zeus is blasphemed), Aeschylus withdrew
to the court of Hiero at Syracuse. It seems, however, that he
had already been in Syracuse (about 475-470), where he
must have known Simonides and Pindar. Hiero died in 467,
and the poet, who was again in Athens in 465, returned to Sicily
after the production of his Oresteia at Athens, and died (456)
at Gela — killed, it is said, by being struck on the head by
a tortoise dropped by an eagle, in fulfilment of a prophecy
that he should perish by a ' stroke from heaven.'
Of the seventy or more tragedies attributed to Aeschylus
we possess only seven complete, ^ but these seven are more than
enough to prove that in dramatic power and sublimity he is,
with perhaps the one exception of Shakespeare, the greatest
of poets, and in majesty and might of language unrivalled.
His plots are simple, and in the earlier dramas there is a want
^ Hdt. viii. 84, 91 ; Aesch. Pers. 409 ; also scholia of the Medici MS.
pi.j The preservation of classical works is due mainly to the critics and writers
of Alexandria, where there was a vast library (destroyed by Omar in a.d. 641) ,
foundedby the Ptolemies (c. 300 B.C.). They chose what was most popular and
what best illustrated their theories of art. Sophocles wrote, it is said, 130
plays, of which only seven are extant. Of Euripides we have about twenty,
and half the Hypsipyle, lately discovered.
ANCIENT GREECE
of movement, the chorus sometimes being unduly prominent
and using exceedingly obscure language ; but the dramatic
effect is often overpowering. " Terror," says Schlegel, " is
his element, and not the softer affections. ^ He holds up a
Medusa's head before the petrified spectators." His mind
seems to have been deeply imbued by awe of mysterious
powers — such powers as we hear of in the old religion of Greece
and the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries. ^ There is constant
reference to expiation and purification and the averting of
evil, to dreams and oracles and portents and spectral appari-
tions and to the ancient chthonian (infernal) deities, especially
to the primal Earth-Mother. In some passages, says Paley,
there is scarcely a word that does not involve some mystic
doctrine. In splendid contrast to this background of gloom,
with its sinister Fates and terrific Furies, stand the figures of
the gods of Olympus, the benign sunhght deities — Zeus and
Apollo and Athene. To these also Aeschylus pays reverence,
but rather perhaps as personifications of Nature and agents
of those supreme spiritual powers of good and, evil the mani-
festations of whose irresistible will are intimated under such
names as Fate and Destiny and Justice and Retribution, and
that Infatuation that maddens a man and goads him on to
insolence and impiety and tempts him to " kick against the
altar of Righteousness."
Aeschylus is said to have belonged to the aristocratic
anti-popular party of Aristides and Cimon, and to have
opposed the innovations of Themistocles. But his glorifica-
tion of the battle of Salamis seems scarcely consistent with a
bigoted anti-naval policy, and his Eiimenides is not, as is
1 In the Frogs of Aristophanes is an amusing scene (in Hades) between
Aeschylus and Euripides, where the claims of the two poets are tested by
Dionysus — partly by means of a balance to weigh their verses. Aeschylus
boasts that " nobody ever accused him of describing a woman in love." " No,"
says Euripides, " there's nothing of Aphrodite in you ! " " And may there
never be ! " answers Aeschylus.
2 It is notable that Aeschylus was born at Eleusis, and as a child may have
received many such impressions ; and this may account for the charge of
" revealing the mysteries " in his poetry. Cicero says that he was " almost a
Pythagorean," and certainly there is much in his poetry that recalls Pytha-
gorean doctrines.
312
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
sometimes imagined, directed against the action of the party
of Ephialtes (p. 292), but is rather a recognition of the Areopagus
as the supreme court for cases of homicide. His reverence for
the divine rights of kingship is very perceptible, and he seems
to have been much impressed by the magnificence of the
Persian court. Indeed, one may perhaps trace an Oriental
influence in some of his imaginings, which at times are scarcely
Greek in their audacity and grotesqueness — a quality noticed
by Aristophanes, who makes Euripides ridicule the ' horse-
cocks ' (griffins) and ' goat-stags ' of Aeschylean drama.
No translation can reproduce the splendours and sublimities
of the verse of Aeschylus, but some idea of the greatness of
his dramatic power may be gained by reading even an unpre-
tentious prose version, not of selected passages, but of an
entire play, or, still better, of the great Trilogy — perhaps the
mightiest drama in all literature. The pages of a volume on
Ancient Greece could scarcely be better filled than with such
a version ; but I shall have to content myself with giving a
brief account of the seven extant plays.
(i) The Suppliants is probably the earHest extant Greek
tragedy. Some connect it with the alliance of Athens and
Argos and the Egyptian expedition of 460-459. But from the
style and the antique form of the drama, which consists mainly
of chorus, it seems certain that the true date is about 488.
The suppliants, who form the chorus, are the fifty Danaides
who with their father. King Danaus, have fled from Egypt to
Argos in order to escape hated nuptials with their cousins,
the fifty sons of King Aegyptus. They plead for protection as
descendants of Argive lo, whose wanderings (in the form of
a heifer) had brought her to Egypt. Pelasgus, the Argive king,
grants their prayer and repels the insolent black herald who
demands their surrender. There were only two actors, as
Danaus and the herald were played by the same person. The
trilogy consisted of the Egyptians, the Suppliants, and the
Danaides. In the last the Danaides were, it is believed, tried
for the murder of their cousins (whom after all they had been
compelled to marry), and were seemingly acquitted, although
ANCIENT GREECE
according to the well-known legend they suffered punishment
in Hades. It is unlikely that Aeschylus introduced the senti-
mental exception of Hypermnestra, who alone — splendide
mendax — out of pity or love, is said to have disobeyed her
father and spared her husband (Hor, C. Ill, xi.).
(2) The Seven against Thebes (467) was preceded in a trilogy
by Laws and Oedipus, and follow^ed by a satyric play, the
Sphinx. For the story of the expedition of the seven heroes
see p. 33. In the Frogs of Aristophanes Aeschylus describes
it as a play "cram-full of Ares." The moment chosen is that
of the assault on the city. After a long and vivid report by a
messenger who describes the assailing host to the chorus of
Theban women and the king, Eteocles stations a Theban hero
at each of the seven gates, and, goaded by the Erinys of a
father's curse, in spite of the entreaties of the chorus and
his own foreknowledge of inevitable death, determines to meet
his brother Polyneices in mortal combat, in which both are
slain. Antigone and Ismene then appear, mourning their
brothers in a very beautiful and pathetic lamentation, in which
the younger echoes in somewhat different form the broken
utterances of the elder sister. In defiance of the proclamation
of the new "ruler of the Cadmean city" (Creon), Antigone
now states her determination to bury Polyneices, her brother.
Thus we are brought to the moment with which the Antigone
of Sophocles opens ; and modern criticism gravely (and perhaps
not unreasonably) suspects that this last scene may have
been added by some later writer in order to link the Seven up
with the Sophoclean play.
(3) The Persae is the only extant Greek tragedy dealing
with contemporary history. It was performed at Athens
(with other plays on legendary subjects) about eight years
after the battle of Salamis. Possibly it was written in Sicily
for King Hiero and first performed at Syracuse. The scene is
laid in Persia, in front of the tomb of Darius (Fig. 73 and p. 194),
near Persepolis,^ where, awaiting Queen Atossa, is collected a
1 The "city of the Persians" (1. 15) may, I think, be Persepolis ; but Susa
and I^cbatana are alone mentioned by name.
89-91. Three possible Copies of the Pheidian Athene 314
See List of Illustrations
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
band of twelve elders — ' Faithfuls.' They chant of the crossing
of the Hellespont and of the innumerable host that has accom-
panied Xerxes to Greece, but express their anxiety at hearing
no news. The mother-queen Atossa approaches. She too is
full of anxiety about her son Xerxes, and has been disturbed
by strange dreams, and will offer libations at the tomb of her
deified husband. A messenger now arrives and relates the
disasters of the Persians. The descriptions of the battle of
Salamis and the terrified flight of Xerxes and the catastrophe
at the river Strymon (see p. 267) are exceedingly fine, and
most interesting as the earliest picture that we possess of
any great historical event in Greek history — if we exclude
the Homeric poems ! The ghost of Darius now rises from
the tomb, and to him Atossa recounts the disastrous story
of the invasion, whereat the spirit of the Great King, full of
mourning and of wrath at the folly of his son, prophesies the
utter defeat of the Persians at Plataea — being able, as are
the spirits in Dante's Inferno, to foresee the future, though
ignorant of the present. After the disappearance of the ghost
of Darius, Xerxes and his retinue arrive in a pitiable state
of despair and terror, and the play ends amidst their heart-
rending lamentations — a scene that, however unhistorical,
must have highly delighted an Athenian audience.^
(4) Prometheus Bound was written perhaps a few years
after the great eruption of Aetna (c. 478; see Thuc. iii. 116),
which is mentioned prophetically (1. 375). But the highly
developed form of the play, with its finely finished metrical
and rhetorical language and the predominance of the dramatic
over the lyrical element, and the possibility of a third actor
(though Prometheus may have been an effigy), as well as
the probable use of stage machinery {e.g. in the case of the
ocean nymphs, whose advent is heralded by the flutter of
wings) , has induced some to give it a much later date and even
needlessly to question its authenticity.
^ In the Frogs Dionysus exclaims {d, propos of the Persae) : " Ay, truly,
and I was delighted when news was brought of the death of Darius." There
seems some slight error here.
ANCIENT GREECE
The other plays of the trilogy were the Fire-bearmg
Prometheus and the Loosing of Prometheus. Of the last some
fragments survive, as well as a Latin version by Cicero of
about thirty lines — enough to prove that we have lost a
magnificent Greek drama on the same subject as Shelley's
very un-Greek Prometheus Unbound. The fable of Prometheus
(with whom Epimetheus and Pandora are sometimes asso-
ciated) is of great antiquity and probably of Eastern origin.
Aeschylus borrows names and the main features of his picture
from Hesiod's Theogonia. He depicts the Titan, a divinity
of the old dynasty of Cronos and the benefactor of the human
race, fettered to the side of a precipice in the Caucasus, but
still defying the power of Zeus and refusing to divulge
the oracle of Themis which threatened the overthrow of the
usurping Olympian deity. Prometheus is visited by the
ocean nymphs and their father Oceanus. To him he recounts
all the blessings of civilization (letters, numbers, astronomy,
houses, horses, ships, &c.) that he had brought to mortals,
whom he depicts as having been weak and miserable and
living " like frail ants in sunless caverns " before liis gift of
fire,^ and he refuses the counsel of the sea-god to make peace
with Zeus. Then lo, who has also been greatly wronged by
Zeus and is now in the form of a heifer wandering through
the world (from Argos to Egypt via the Caucasus), appears
on the scene. She relates her wanderings and Prometheus
foretells her future, and how her progeny (the Danaides) will
return to Argos, and how an Argive hero (Heracles, a son of
Zeus) will come to set him free, and how Zeus himself will have
to appeal to him for help — power and deity have to appeal to
knowledge. Hermes then visits him, but his arrogant behests
are repelled with scorn, and amidst a terrific storm and earth-
quake the drama ends. It is interesting to note that although
the real scene of the sufferings of Prometheus was, according
to scholiasts, the " European shores of the Ocean," the spot
1 The golden age of Cronos seems inconsistent with this. Horace and
others attribute diseases and degeneration to the advent of fire and the
gifts of Pandora. The fable has analogy to that of the Tree of Knowledge.
316
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
intimated by Aeschylus (Scythia is mentioned in our play,
and the Caucasus in a fragment of the Loosing) became so
localized that Pompey the Great during the Mithridatic war
undertook a long journey in order to visit it.
(5) The Oresteia, or ' Story of Orestes/ consisting of the
Agamemnon, the Choephoroe (' Ivibation-carriers '), and the
Eumenides {' Furies '), won the first prize in 458. Soon
afterwards Aeschylus went for the second time to Sicily,
probably in order to produce the play there also. It is the
only extant Greek trilogy. The (lost) satyric play by which
it was followed was Proteus, which probably depicted the
entertaining adventure of Menelaus among the seals. ^
The Agamemnon [opens with the monologue of the sentinel
who so long has watched at night for fire-beacons announcing
the fall of Troy. Suddenly the signal flashes in the far distance,
and he hurries forth to the queen. A band of Argive elders
enters. In an ode of great sublimity they sing of the long,
disastrous war, and of portents and of the direful curse that
broods over the house of Pelops. Clytaemnestra now appears
and exultingly proclaims the capture of Troy and the return
of the king ; but our suspicions are aroused by the gloomy
chants of the elders, who forebode some terrible catastrophe.
A herald arrives. He describes the sack of Troy and then
announces the approach of Agamemnon, who ere long ap-
pears, followed by chariots laden with spoil and by captives,
among whom is Priam's daughter, the prophetess Cassandra.
Clytaemnestra welcomes her husband with feigned joy and
reverence, and offers friendly words to her hated rival,
Cassandra. The chorus once more utters its dark forebodings,
and Cassandra, foreseeing the impending terrors and her
own fate, breaks forth into lamentation and describes the
ghastly visions that she sees in her ecstasy. Then she rushes
1 Od. iv. The only extant satyric play is the Cyclops by Euripides. The
subjects of these lighter plays were often taken from Homer ; e.g. Nausicaa,
or The Washerwomen. It is noticeable that Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia
at an age (sixty-seven) when nowadays men are regarded as past work,
especially creative work. Sophocles wrote many of his finest plays between
his sixty-fifth and ninetieth years.
ANCIENT GREECE
into the palace to meet her fate, while from behind the scenes
we hear the groans of the murdered king. The palace door
opens and we see Clytaemnestra standing by the body of her
murdered husband and hear her proudly, insolently, confess
the crime and justify it as righteous requital for the sacrifice
of her daughter Iphigeneia. Here she is joined by Aegisthus,
her accomplice in infidelity and murder, amidst whose fierce
altercation with the elders the drama ends.
The Choephoroe tells the same story as the Eledra of Sopho-
cles and of Euripides (to which it forms a most interesting
contrast) — namely, the return of Orestes (who had been sent
away to Phocis when a child by his mother Clytaemnestra),
the recognition of him by his sister Blectra, and the slaying
of the queen together with her paramour by her own son,
who has brought her the false tidings of his own death.
The character of Electra is wonderfully drawn, and that of
Clytaemnestra is perhaps even more impressive in its defiant
pride and almost majestic lyady-Macbeth-like insolence than
in the Agamemnon. The ' libation-carriers ' are the maidens
who, together with Electra, have been ordered by the queen,
because of an evil dream, to make offerings at the tomb of
Agamemnon — probably in Mycenae. The drama ends by a
vision of the Furies, beheld by Orestes, who flees in terror
before them.
The opening scene of the Eumenides is before the great
temple at Delphi. The aged Pythian priestess enters the
shrine to offer prayers to the goddess Earth and other ancient
deities and then to take her seat on the oracular tripod. >She
returns terrified and scarce able to say what she has seen :
a suppliant at the central altar, his hands and sword dripping
with blood, closely surrounded by a band of slumbering
monstrous forms — like Gorgons or Harpies, but wingless,
black, distilling filthy ooze from their eyes and snorting forth
in sleep their fetid breath. She has scarce ended when Apollo
comes forth leading Orestes. He promises him safeguard to
Athens, entrusting him to the care of Hermes. The temple
door has remained open, and within we see the Furies lying
318
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
asleep around the central altar — the " navel of the earth " —
above which arises a spectral form, the ghost of Clytaemnestra,
which calls on the sleepers to awake and pursue. With
horrid moans and groans they answer, still asleep ; then,
waking, they find their victim fled, and chanting their terrible
song they dance wildly round the altar, till Apollo drives
them forth from his temple. The scene now changes. Orestes
is embracing the statue before Athene's temple on the
Athenian Acropolis. The Furies arrive and claim their
victim, uttering their terrible cry for vengeance in a
magnificent hymn in which they chant of sin and inexorable
retribution. But Athene appears in her four-horse chariot.
She bids the herald summon the council of the Areopagus,
" the best of my citizens." Perhaps the scene is supposed to
be changed to the ' hill of Ares ' (or rather ' of Curses ' —
i.e. of the Avenging Goddesses). Apollo appears to advocate
the cause of Orestes against the accusing Furies. The judges
cast their ballots into the two urns. The votes are equal.
Athene gives the verdict in favour of Orestes, and the
rage of the Furies against the ' younger deities ' is allayed,
and even their blessings are elicited, by the promise of Athene
to assign them a special sanctuary " near the house of
Erechtheus " (probably in the dark cleft still existing amid
the north-eastern crags of the Areopagus). Here they are to
be worshipped as the ' Eumenides,' or ' Kindly Goddesses.'
Herodotus
The passages that have been quoted from Herodotus in
connexion with the Persian invasions will have shown, to
some extent, the character of his work. Much has been
written about it, both in praise and in depreciation, but for
those who care to read the book itself — of which there are
good annotated translations — such criticism is mostly super-
fluous. Here I shall content myself with offering a few
biographical data and a few general remarks.
As historian Herodotus was preceded by Hecataeus of
Miletus and Hellanicus of Mytilene. The former has already
319
ANCIENT GREECE
been mentioned in connexion with the Ionic revolt and as
having written a geography {Travels round the Earth) for the
map or globe of Anaximander. His history is mentioned
several times by Herodotus, who also speaks of his having
been in Egypt. The ' Attic history ' of Hellanicus is men-
tioned by Thucydides.
Herodotus, who tells us (ii. 143) that he was not accus-
tomed to " boast of his family," was born (c. 484) in the
Dorian city of Halicarnassus in Caria, whence he withdrew,
or was banished, in consequence of a revolt against the
ruler, or tyrant, Lygdamis — the grandson of that Queen
Artemisia whose courage at Salamis was so admired by
Xerxes, and also by his historian. Probably in Samos or
Lesbos he acquired the Ionic dialect in which he wrote —
apparently a selection from the four forms of the ordinary
Ionic combined with Attic and epic elements. His travels
extended to Scythia (nearly to the Crimea), Babylon, and
Elephantine (near Assouan). He seems to have returned
to Halicarnassus and aided in expelling Lygdamis. His
evident admiration for Athens seems to confirm the assertion
that he lived there, under the patronage of Pericles, for some
time. It is even stated that the Athenians presented him
with ten talents (some £2500) for reciting his history at the
Panathenaea (c. 446) . Also perhaps he recited it at Olympia ;
and Thucydides, then a boy, is said to have been present —
and to have shed tears ; but chronology makes this improb-
able. In 444-443 the Athenians and the cityless Sybarites
founded Thurii, close to the site of ruined Sybaris, and
Herodotus may have been among the first colonists. He
may also have composed his history (from previous notes)
at Thurii, and perhaps he died there about 426. Some say
that he (as also the orator Lysias) returned to Greece, and
that he died at Pella, in Macedonia. From his mention
(i. 130) of a revolt of the Medes against Darius, which was
thought to be the revolt of 408 against Darius II, instead of
the earlier revolt against Darius Hystaspes, it has been wrongly
believed that Herodotus lived until nearly the end of the
320
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
Peloponnesian War. In spite of all the sins of omission and
commission laid to his charge by the modern historical
critic — his inaccuracies, his credulity, his reverence for
prophecies and oracles, his belief in the efficacy of images
and prayer and sacrifice, his tendency to seek for supernatural
causes, his partiality, and so on ^ — this " naive, uncritical,
entrancing story-teller " possesses gifts that many a more
scientific chronicler might well envy. By his keen powers
of observation he has collected an immense amount of interest-
ing and curious information in regard not merely to events
but also to customs and character and cities and countries,
and much else, and, what is of even greater importance, his
human sympathies allow him an insight into the true causes
of things which Thucydides, with all his skilful analysis of
secondary and superficial motives, does not possess. The
great agent in shaping outward circumstances, as Professor
Butcher says, is the human will. But human will is pro-
foundly influenced by beliefs and feelings that lie very deep
in human nature, and into these depths mere critical acumen
has no such insight as that which is sometimes vouchsafed
to the ' naive ' and sympathetic spirit.
Philosophers of the Period
The Eleatic philosophers Parmenides and Zeno have already
been mentioned as followers of Xenophanes (p. 208), and it
has been shown how his doctrine of the one eternal and im-
mutable Reality, the source and cause of all the natural
universe, degenerated in course of time into a barren denial
of the existence (even the temporal, practical existence) of
sensible things, and of the possibility of motion. With Par-
menides the sublime philosophy of his master still retained
much of its elevation and aroused the reverent admiration of
Socrates and of Plato, who speaks of his " wondrous depth."
As an old man Parmenides is said to have visited Athens
1 Sometimes he ventures to express a doubt {e.g. " or perhaps the wind ceased
of itself "), or prays gods and heroes to forgive his scepticism. He was very
far removed from a credulous fool or a bigot. " My duty," he says, " is to
report all that is said, but I am not obliged to believe it all."
X 321
ANCIENT GREECE
(c. 448), and Plato describes (possibly invents) a very interest-
ing interview in which Socrates, then quite a young man,
imparts to him his newly conceived Ideal theory and is en-
couraged by him to develop and apply it more boldly. Indeed,
it was the Eleatic belief in the one immaterial Reality —
involving the denial of the absolute reality of sensible objects
— that was the foundation of the Socratic (or Platonic) belief
in the divine Will as the one true cause of all things. This
denial of the real existence of natural objects has ever en-
countered the ridicule of the uninitiated, but, " paradoxical
as it may appear, this insistence on the unreality of the sensible
world is the only way in which worth and meaning can be
given to it." Misunderstood, it leads to all kinds of extrava-
gant absurdities, as it did in the case of Zeno, who wasted his
energies on endless intellectual puzzles and quibbles about
the impossibility of motion and the non-existence of place
and so on. He is interesting merely because the Sophists
were (though they may not have acknowledged it) his lineal
descendants. With them, as with him, there was no absolute
truth, and consequently no absolute knowledge. Their highest
object was intellectualism and rhetorical artifice — that art
of Belial, " to make the worse appear the better reason."
Zeno is said to have accompanied Parmenides to Athens in
448, and to have been at that time about forty years of age.
The only important literary relics of these two Eleatics are
about a hundred hexameters by Parmenides, besides a I/atin
version of about fifty more. In one fragment he offers us a
fine imaginative picture — a vision in which he is borne aloft,
in a chariot drawn by the horses of Wisdom, out of the night
of Ignorance and through the portal of the goddess Justice,
up into the sunlit realm of Knowledge. In other fragments
he insists again and again on the existence of the One and the
non-existence of the Many, and he asserts that all sensible
things are resultants produced by two counteracting principles,
such as cold and heat, darkness and light, force and inertia.
Bmpedocles of Acragas, the last of the great colonial sages,
was a man of supreme intellectual powers and of a most extra-
322
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
ordinary character. His personality is half hidden in fable,
for he claimed supernatural powers as a divinity exiled for
a time from heaven, and was reverenced as such. Mounted
on a chariot, clad in purple robes, and crowned with Delphic
laurel and with gold, he made triumphal progress through
Sicily. Many miracles of healing are attributed to him. It
is even said that he raised the dead. By his art — perhaps by
draining a marsh — Sehnus was freed from pestilence (see coin 5,
Plate IV). Some assert that he threw himself into the crater
of Aetna (as happens in Matthew Arnold's poem) to solve the
mystery of existence. Others say that after a banquet, when
all his companions had fallen asleep, he disappeared, and, like
Elijah, was borne aloft to heaven. The modern critic is more
inclined to accept the statement of Timaeus, the historian of
Sicily, that he took ship for the Peloponnese and died there.
That he was a great poet is proved by the magnificent eulogy
addressed to him by Lucretius, and also by a fragment of about
470 Hues from his poem on Nature, which is grand in language
and contains some highly imaginative metaphors. His philo-
sophy seems to have combined some of the main doctrines of
the Ionic, Eleatic, and Pythagorean schools. Like Xenophanes
he believed in the one real existence, and denied the testi-
mony of the senses to be absolutely true. He developed a
cosmology, founded on the four elements. These elements,
however, are not ' self -created ' or ' self -moving,' as with the
old Ionic sages ; they are mere material (vX»?) subject to the
influence of immaterial forces, which he named ' love ' and
' hate,' the attraction and repulsion caused by which set up
an eddying motion and thus formed the natural world out of
chaos. Should ' love ' finally conquer, the world would relapse
into a state {airoiov) where there is no counteraction, no contra-
distinction, no genus or species or other differentiation, and
where everything is everything else. He seems to have origi-
nated the theory of ' emanations ' (adopted by Democritus, and
described by Lucretius) — that is, the giving off by natural
objects of minute particles that affect those elements of our
sense-organs which are of the same nature. Hence the doctrine
323
ANCIENT GREECE
" Like is affected by like," which was later applied even to
things immaterial — as by Plato to the relation between the
intellect and its cognate Ideas.
The attribution of affections and will to elemental matter
(or to prime monads, i.e. atoms) converted the universe, so to
speak, into a living and sensitive thing, such as Virgil describes
in a celebrated passage [Aen. vi. 723 sq.), but was in reality
no more intelligible than the old Ionic doctrine of self-created
and self-moving prime elements. The one great difficulty
remained, and for the materialist still remains, viz. to account
for this omnipresent Will or Energy in Nature. " Amid the
mysteries," says Herbert Spencer, " that become the more
mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain
the one absolute certainty that we are ever in the presence
of an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed."
To attempt to explain it as due to chemical affinity, gravity,
magnetism, or any such natural force does not in the least
help towards a solution. We still ask : Whence comes the
force that causes these physical manifestations ?
It was Anaxagoras who first gave a definite answer to this
question. He held, indeed, that matter was eternal, infinite,
indestructible, and uncreated (for his mind refused to believe
in "creation from nothing "), but he believed that it existed
originally in a chaotic state in which " all things were to-
gether [oiuLov] " — that is, not differentiated and distinguishable
— until " Mind [Nou?] came and arranged them into a Cosmos."
This Mind, or Intelligence, is conceived by Anaxagoras as
not immanent in matter, far less as identical with matter,
but as an immaterial ordering Will, self-existent (e0' envToii),
omniscient, and " with supreme lordship over all things."
Thus we have no longer a materialistic explanation of the
universe (which, in spite of their doctrines in regard to the
Deity, was still apparently held by Xenophanes and others
like him), and no longer a Monistic identification of mind
and matter, nor even such ' Higher Pantheism ' as that
described by Tennyson, but a distinct confession of a spiritual
cause of the ordered universe.
324
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
Both Plato and Aristotle, however, complain that Anaxa-
goras (as is the case with many of us) only called in this divine
Intelligence when in difficulties — so that Socrates is said (in the
Phaedo) to have given up the study of his works because the
writer had not the courage to apply his own doctrine in physical
questions. But, timid guess as it was, it was apparently the
first conception by a Greek thinker of a God of infinite power
and goodness, such as was proclaimed by Socrates, so that
we cannot be surprised at the words of Aristotle : " When one
of them said that there is in Nature an Intelligence that is the
cause of the order of the universe, this man appears alone to
have been sober among the wild speculations of his prede-
cessors."
Anaxagoras (c. 500-428) was a native of Clazomenae, in
Ionia. Probably soon after the battle of Salamis he went
to Athens, where he lived for about thirty years. He was an
intimate friend of Pericles, and his teachings exercised great
influence on Euripides. In 450 he was accused of impiety
by the Athenian mob and the high-priests of Olympian ortho-
doxy, and only escaped death by the eloquent pleadings of
Pericles. He retired to lyampsacus, where he died in 428.
325
CHAPTER VII
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
(431-404)
SECTIONS : THUCYDIDES : SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES. ARISTO-
PHANES : DEMOCRITUS, THE SOPHISTS, SOCRATES :
SCULPTURE
IN 445 a Thirty Years' Peace had been concluded between
the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, who had been
in a state of almost continuous hostility for about
fifteen years. This peace had lasted only some twelve years —
those years during which the Parthenon and the third Ivong
Wall of Athens and the docks and marts of the Peiraeus were
built — when events occurred that led to the declaration of
war by Sparta. The conflict lasted for about twenty-seven
years. After the first ten years of ineffectual warfare, consist-
ing mainly of such reprisals as were possible between a maritime
and a land power, a respite was given by the Peace of Nicias
(421), but the break was so short that, with Thucydides, we
may regard the war as scarcely interrupted. Hostilities were
soon renewed. Had the Athenians remained true to the policy
of Pericles and renounced all ambitious attempts to increase
their oversea empire, they might have retained their maritime
supremacy ; but, under the influence of such demagogues and
adventurers as Cleon and Alcibiades, they embarked on the
disastrous Sicilian expedition (415), by which, and by the revolt
of almost all their allies, their power was fatally undermined
and rapidly sank, until Sparta, which had built ships and had
even stooped to solicit the powerful aid of Persia against the
' enslaver of Greece,' crushed the Athenian fleet at the battle
of Aegospotami, captured Athens, razed her Long Walls, and
put an end to her empire (404).
^26
92. The ' Meidias Vase
See I,ist of Illustrations
326
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
The story of this Peloponnesian War (as we call it, regarding
it from the Athenian point of view) is told very fully by Thucy-
dides down to the year 411, and is continued by Xenophon
in his Hellenica. I^ater historians have repeated, sometimes
with a vast amount of comment, all the details of every little
skirmish or political compHcation. Doubtless during these
twenty-seven years many heroic deeds were done, and some
memorable events took place, as well as many that every true
lover of Greece would gladly forget ; but there is a very great
deal to be found in the hundreds of pages often devoted to
this war which is for us of no importance whatever — except
when we associate it with memories of Thucydides. All these
miserable fightings and butcheries, all this hateful intestine
strife and hatred and treason and inhumanity, bulk so largely
in the ordinary Greek history because they have been recounted
by a writer perhaps unrivalled for graphic description, for
brilliant rhetoric, and for powers of subtle analysis. I do
not purpose to make any attempt to describe fully the
details of the war, but shall give a concise statement of the
chief events of this period and then some descriptive passages
from Thucydides.
The Peloponnesian War (431-404)
In the last chapter we followed the course of events down
to the revolt and reduction of Samos in 439. Some five years
later incidents occurred in connexion with two Corinthian
colonies, Corcyra and Potidaea, which (as Corinth was the
great maritime rival of Athens) induced the Athenians to
interfere, and led to remonstrance and finally an ultimatum
from Sparta, as the head of the Peloponnesian league and the
champion of the liberties of Greece.
The trouble began at Bpidamnus (Dyrrhachium, in Illyria),
a colony of Corcyra (Corfu). The Bpidamnians, harassed by
exiled ohgarchs, appealed to Corcyra, and, obtaining no aid,
with the advice of the Delphic oracle turned to Corinth,
which sent them troops. The Corcyraeans forthwith blockaded
Epidamnus. Corinth sent seventy-five ships against them, but
327
ANCIENT GREECE
the Corcyraeans had a large fleet, and, after defeating the
Corinthian ships, captured Epidamnus. Then Corinth, highly-
indignant, resolved to collect a great navy. Both sides appealed
to Athens, and Athens (though it was a hostile act against the
democracy of Epidamnus) was induced by the prospect of
such strong maritime support against her future Peloponnesian
enemies to make an alliance with Corcyra, and sent ships.
A naval battle then took place (433) off the Sybota islets, near
Corcyra. The Athenian ships held aloof at first, but interfered
to save the Corcyraeans from defeat. The Corinthians sailed
homewards, much incensed at the breach of the Thirty Years'
Peace — a charge repelled by the Athenians, who asserted that
Corcyra had belonged to neither of the two great confederacies,
and that Athens had a right to defend her new ally.
Another complication with Corinth arose in the regions
Thraceward. Potidaea, on the isthmus of Pallene, was a
Corinthian colony, but had become a tributary ally of Athens,
and was now ordered by the Athenians to eject its Corinthian
officials. It refused. Corinthian forces were sent to support
its revolt, but were defeated, and Potidaea was closely invested
for two years by the Athenians.^ Corinth now appealed to
vSparta, which was itself incensed at Athens for having (on
the advice of Pericles) excluded Megara from its ports and marts.
An Athenian envoy was, perhaps accidentall}^ present at Sparta,
and was allowed to answer the Megarians and Corinthians.
Thucydides has taken the opportunity to give us some brilliant
speeches, which, though fictitious, probably represent fairly
accurately the arguments on both sides. The Peloponnesian
confederates, he tells us, held two assembhes, and the Corin-
thians were allowed a final speech, in which they vehemently
incited Sparta to overthrow the ' despot city ' which was
trying to enslave all Greece. In spite of the prudent advice
of the king, Archidamus, the violent war-speech of an ephor
carried the assembly, and, after receiving encouragement
from the Delphic oracle (which did not feel ashamed of thus
1 A monument now in the British Museum extols those who fell on the
Athenian side.
328
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
inciting fratricidal war), and after making various trivial
demands {e.g. that Athens should cast out the ' pollution '
in the person of Pericles), Sparta sent an ultimatum : " The
Athenians can avoid war if they restore the independence
of the Hellenes."
The speech of Pericles at this juncture was (if we accept
the version given by Thucydides) a splendid example of fiery
and yet dignified oratory. He advised a temperate answer and
a proposal of arbitration, but a decisive refusal of all unjusti-
fiable demands. Regarding war as inevitable, he reviewed
the resources of both sides and pointed out that the lyacedae-
monians, having neither ships nor money, could not carry on
any protracted war. Formerly Themistocles had advised the
abandonment of Athens ; Pericles now advised the Athenians
to trust not only to their wooden but also to their stone walls,
and to abandon their open country to devastation. He beheved
in a Fabian policy of exhaustion. War was inevitable, was
indeed practically declared, but they still, says Thucydides,
had intercourse without heralds, until early in the year 431,
when the first act of open hostility took place — an attack by
the Thebans on the town of Plataea, which, though Boeotian,
had always remained faithful to Athens. The attack failed and
a massacre of Theban prisoners — the precursor of many such
barbarities, if that word can be appHed with double intensity
to the Greeks themselves — was the signal for the beginning of
the long and miserable civil war.
Archidamus and his Peloponnesians forthwith invaded
Attica, from which flocks and herds had been removed toEuboea
and the inhabitants to Athens, where the overcrowding was
terrible. Pericles, in spite of fierce opposition, prevented the
Athenians from sallying forth against the foe. The fleet was
sent against the Peloponnese and Peloponnesian colonies,
but very little was effected. In their excitement and alarm,
and perhaps in order to relieve the overcrowding of the city,
the Athenians decided to expel the whole population of Aegina
and to settle the island with Athenians. The Aeginetans
found a home at Thyrea in Ivaconia, as the Messenians had at
329
ANCIENT GREECE
Naupactus, but a few years later were captured and enslaved
by the Athenians.
To what a degree our interest in the war is purely literary
is plain from the fact that for many the most memorable
event of this first year is the great speech of Pericles — a funeral
panegyric in honour of those who had already fallen/ and
whose bones were now buried with great ceremony in the
Cerameicus without the walls. This celebrated speech, reported
by one who was himself doubtless present, must have been so
impressed on the memories, and perhaps also the tablets, of
many that we may feel sure that we possess in the famous
eleven chapters of Thucydides much of what Pericles actually
said. Indeed, all the three great orations of Pericles that
Thucydides has preserved — the first in favour of war, the
second in honour of the fallen, and the third, spoken shortly
before his death, in self-defence against his assailants — have,
in spite of many a brilHant Thucydidean antithesis, an im-
press of originality which we find in no other of his reported
speeches.
In the second year of the war, after the annual invasion and
devastation of Attica, a calamity befell Athens which probably
contributed more than the bloodiest defeats to her final
overthrow. 2 Out of perhaps 100,000 citizens about a fifth,
besides an " indiscoverable number " of slaves, foreigners, and
others, died of a terrible plague ^ which continued for two
years, and after a year's intermission broke out again with
great virulence. A vivid description — as vivid as anything
in Boccaccio, Defoe, Virgil, or I^ucretius — is given by Thucy-
dides, who was himself struck down by the disease, but
recovered. In the midst of this distress Athens made over-
tures of peace, but they were rejected. Pericles meanwhile had
1 Fig. 104 represents Athene contemplating a stele with the names (pos-
sibly) of these same warriors.
2 See Note A (Phigaleia). A statue to Apollo, the ' Averter of Pestilence,'
by Calamis was dedicated in Athens about 430.
' Probably some maUgnant form of variola, now extinct ; evidently not
the bubonic plague. Curiously, no account is given by the great physician
Hippocrates, who lived from 460 to 356,
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
made an unsuccessful sea-raid on the Peloponnese, and on his
return was vehemently assailed, and fined, and deprived of his
post as strategos. His eloquent and dignified defence caused
a revulsion of feeling and he was reinstated in his command,
but many sufferings had of late fallen upon him. He had
been constantly lampooned and satirized and insulted both
by political and private enemies.
His friends Pheidias and Anaxagoras, the greatest artist
and the greatest philosopher of the day, had been assailed
by bigotry and calumny ; the one had died in prison, the
other was an exile. Aspasia, with whom he hved, and whose
house was a centre of intellectual and artistic life, had been
accused, perhaps by Cleon, of impiety and immorahty. Both
his sons (by a wife from whom he was separated) died of the
plague, and the blow seems to have left him a broken man.^
A year or so later he died, it is said from a low fever after an
attack of the plague. As he lay dying and seemingly uncon-
scious, his friends, says Plutarch, spoke together in praise of
him, but he heard it and interrupted them saying : " What
chiefly gives me pride is that no Athenian ever put on mourning
for any act of mine." By friends and enemies alike the wonderful
eloquence of Pericles is attested. Aristophanes describes him
as the Olympian Zeus hurling his flaming thunderbolts, and
Plato extols his " majestic intelligence." His character and his
policy are graphically described by Thucydides (see p. 348),
and though the partiality of the historian is apparent,^ we
may rather accept his estimate than the suggestion of Plutarch
that he corrupted the people by display and by distributions of
public money and by " nursing up the city in elegant pleasures "
in order to maintain his personal power, or the accusation
of his assailants that he " fanned up the war " to escape the
charge of peculation. At the same time, while fully allowing
1 Plutarch describes him as breaking down into uncontrollable tears and
sobs at the funeral of his favourite sou, Paralus. The elder, Xanthippus, was
a mauvais sujet and caused him much trouble. His son Pericles, by Aspasia,
was legitimatized before the death of his father.
2 In spite of the fact that he was related to the family of Cimou, the here-
ditary opponent of Xanthippus and Pericles.
ANCIENT GREECE
his integrity and sincerity, it is possible to doubt the wisdom
of a pohcy which, although opposed to imperialistic adventure,
was in support of an empire that had been built up on a
foundation of tyrannical injustice, extortion, and bloodshed,
and was doomed to perish by the hatred that it inspired
not only in the rest of the Hellenic world, ^ but also among its
so-called allies.
While the plague was raging an armament had been sent to
storm Potidaea, which still held out, but a fourth of the troops
had perished by the disease and the rest returned. Early
in 429, however, the town surrendered to blockade ^ after
such sufferings that the garrison had fed on the bodies of the
slain. Fair terms were granted, which intensely displeased the
Athenian mob, who had looked forward to a great capture of
slaves and a wholesale butchery to gratify their resentment.
About the same time the Spartans massacred a number of
prisoners captured at sea and cast their bodies out for the
birds and beasts. The Athenians retaliated by murdering
Spartan envoys who had fallen into their hands and by serving
the bodies in like fashion. Henceforward acts like these and
of still greater ferocity became common, till at Aegospotami
from three to four thousand Athenian prisoners were butchered
in cold blood.
The chief events of the next five years (429-424), besides
the almost annual devastation of Attica, were the capture of
Plataea by the I^acedaemonians, the revolt and reduction of
Mytilene, the revolution and massacre at Corcyra, the capture
of Spartans on Sphacteria, and the defeat of Athens at Delion.
The following brief accounts of these facts will be supplemented
later by descriptive passages from Thucydides.
In 429, instead of devastating Attica, Archidamus and his
Peloponnesians cross the ridge of Cithaeron, and the Plataeans,
on the (never fulfilled) promise of aid from Athens, determine to
stand a siege. The account that Thucydides has given of this
1 Thucydides, though an Athenian, tells us that at the beginning of the war
public feeling through the whole of Greece was " greatly in favour of the
lyacedaemonians " as adversaries of the 'despot city.'
2 Socrates served as Athenian hoplite in this campaign.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
siege, with all its picturesque details of vallation and counter-
vallation, of mines, battering-rams, and so on, and of the escape
of about half the garrison, who on a moonless winter night
amidst a storm of wind and rain scaled the besiegers' walls
and waded across the flooded moats, covered with fragile ice,
and reached Athens in safety — this picture has made the
siege of little Plataea, with its garrison of 400, and later only
200, Plataeans and 80 Athenians, as famous as that of Syracuse,
Saguntum, or Magdeburg. Athens, either from cowardice or
because of the plague, thought it best to forget its promised
aid, and at last, in the summer of 427, the Plataeans surrendered
at discretion. In vain they apiDealed to the memory of Mara-
thon and their heroic ancestors and to the tombs of the Spartans
who fell at the battle of Plataea. Commissioners sent from
Sparta to decide their fate put to each man only the question
whether in the present war he had done any service to the
Spartans or their allies. All the 200 were slaughtered, as well
as some Athenians, and Plataea was razed to the ground.
While Plataea was still being besieged (428) Mytilene, the
capital of lycsbos, nominally still an autonomous ally of
Athens, was induced by the oligarchical party to assert, as
Samos had done, its independence. Lesbian envoys appealed
to the Greeks assembled at the Olympic Games, and Lesbos
w^as admitted into the Peloponnesian league. The Athenians,
though much crippled by the plague and by want of money,
dispatched forty ships under Paches and blockaded Mytilene.
The Spartans also sent a fleet, but it returned without daring
to attack the Athenians, and ultimately the democrats in the
city forced the authorities to capitulate on the condition that
its fate should be decided by the Assembly at Athens. At
Athens there had come to the front a politician named Cleon.
The character of Cleon as drawn by Aristophanes, who was an
aristocrat in politics and his private enemy, as well as by
Thucydides, who was banished by his influence, is that of a
loud-voiced, brutal, overbearing demagogue, one of the most
pernicious products of the dicasteries and the Ecclesia ; and,
after making all due allowances for personal dislike and for
333
ANCIENT GREECE
political rancour, as well as for the exaggerations of comic
caricature, this tanner or leather-seller, who has been sedu-
lously whitewashed by some modern writers, seems to have
really been something very like the picture given by his
two great contemporaries. That on one occasion, as we
shall see, he gained a remarkable success, and that his chau-
vinistic war-policy may have been more to the advantage of the
Athenian Empire than that advocated by the milder-tempered
Nicias, can be allowed without causing us to exchange the
portrait of the man given us by Aristophanes in his Knights
for that offered by writers who describe him as a " great
Opposition speaker," not more unnecessarily virulent than
Demosthenes, Cicero, Milton, or Chatham, and withal a
discoverer and castigator of social and political scandals and
a true friend of the poorer classes. This man proposed that
all the grown-up men of Mytilene should be put to death, and
his proposal was passed. A ship of war was forthwith sent
with orders to Paches to carry out the terrible verdict. But a
revulsion of feeling set in. On the next day the Assembly was
again summoned, and by a small minority, in spite of Cleon's
efforts, the decree was revoked. A swift vessel was dispatched
to overtake the trireme, which had the start of a day and a
night. Paches had already received the warrant and was
preparing to execute it when the reprieve arrived. The Athe-
nian mob was satiated with the blood of about looo ring-
leaders who had been sent to Athens, and Paches, on his return,
was arraigned on some charge and committed suicide in the
presence of the Athenian burghers who were judging the case.
One of the most vivid scenes depicted by Thucydides is
that of the horrible massacres of the Corcyraean oligarchs by
their fellow-citizens which took place at this period (427-425) .
The episode, with all its revolting details^perhaps as revolting
in their inhuman, unnatural ferocity as anything in the world's
history — has been recounted by many writers.^ The event is
only indirectly connected with the Peloponnesian War, and
very slightly, if at all, with the history of that Greece which is
1 See Thuc. iii. 71 sq.,iv. 45 sq. ; Grote, \. and lii.
334
THE PELOPONNESI AN WAR
of any importance to us. The last scenes of the insane butchery
of fellow-Greeks and fellow-citizens, as described by Thucy-
dides, together with his reflexions on moral and pohtical feeHng
in Greece at this time, will be given or referred to later. Here
it is only necessary to say that the trouble was begun by the fact
that Corinth sent back to Corcyra the 250 high-born prisoners
whom they had captured in the sea-fight off Sybota (433) . The
rest of the prisoners they had sold as slaves, but had kept and
treated with especial lenience these nobles, with the intention
of using them later for the establishment of an oligarchy in
Corcyra. The occasion now presented itself, as Athens was
weakened by the plague and distracted by the Lesbian revolt.
The return of these prisoners was the signal for a revolution,
in which, after some temporary successes and many atrocities,
the oligarchs were overwhelmed and driven out. They returned
and entrenched themselves in a stronghold, Istone, but finally
capitulated to the Athenians and the democrats and were all
massacred.
Another important event of this first period of the war, also
vividly described by Thucydides, is the capture of some 300
Spartans on the island of Sphacteria. An Athenian fleet had
been dispatched in 425 to interfere in the affairs of the Sicilian
cities and to help the democratic party at Corcyra. As they
coasted round the Peloponnese the Athenians had fortified and
occupied Pylos,i the promontory which together with Sphacteria
forms the great landlocked bay famous in modern history under
the name Navarino. The Spartans sent considerable forces by
land and by sea to eject the Athenians, who were commanded by
Demosthenes and numbered 200 with perhaps 1000 Messenians.
The Athenian fleet then hastened back from Corcyra and
defeated the Peloponnesian vessels, forcing them to run ashore
at the north end of the bay. They then blockaded Sphacteria,
on which was the main body of the picked land troops of the
Spartans. The alarm was so great at Sparta that a truce was
made in order that envoys should be sent to Athens to treat
for peace. The stranded Spartan ships and others, sixty in
1 The Homerie ' sandy Pylos,' Nestor's town, was probably in the vicinity.
335
ANCIENT GREECE
all, were handed over to the Athenians on the promise that
they should be restored at the expiration of the truce — a
promise which, by the way, was not fulfilled. At Athens all
right-thinking men were doubtless inclined for peace, and it
would have been a wise decision, and one that might have
affected deeply the future of the Hellenic race and of European
civilization, had the Athenian people taken advantage of
their good fortune to end honourably this most foolish and
detestable civil war.
But the evil passions of the mob and their greed for the
aggrandizement of the empire were stirred up by Cleon. Nisaea
(the Corinthian port), the ports of Megara, the whole of Achaea,
and Troezen was the price that Athens demanded for peace ; and
the demand was refused. But the blockade of Sphacteria lasted
long and the mob at Athens grew impatient. " If I were
commander," bragged Cleon before the Assembly, " I would
soon do it ! " At these words Nicias, the siraiegos, who had
been bantered by Cleon for not going off to Pylos and capturing
the Spartans, rose up and offered to cede his command to the
demagogue. The mob was tickled, and insisted. Finally Cleon
accepted, and with a band of mercenaries, refusing the offer
of Athenian hoplites and promising, doubtless amid great
laughter, to return within twenty days with the Spartan
captives, he set out for Pylos, and, to the amazement of all
and the discomfiture of many, within the stipulated twenty
days he and Demosthenes returned with the Spartan prisoners
— nearly 300 men. The fight had been very severe. The
Spartans had been driven with heavy loss gradually back till
they had taken their last stand, as at Thermopylae, on a
height ; but, when circumvented, as at Thermopylae, they
doubtless felt no such enthusiasm for their cause as those
around Leonidas had felt, and they surrendered — a course
never before taken, perhaps, in Spartan warfare. Sphacteria
was strongly garrisoned with Messenians from Naupactus,
whose exultation at the crushing defeat of their ancient foe
found, and still finds, expression in a gift that they made from
the spoil to the sacred precinct at Olympia — a splendid figure
336
93- Tim Nike (Victory) of Paeonius
336
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
of Victory floating aloft amidst trailing wind-blown drapery —
the work of the sculptor Paeonius (Fig. 93).
In the next year (424) the Athenians captured the island
of Cythera — a formidable base for naval operations against
Sparta. Also Nisaea and its Long Walls (built by themselves
c. 460) fell into their hands. Athens was now at the acme of
her success, and might have well accepted the generous terms
offered by Sparta. But some Ate seems to have goaded her
onward to ruin. Elated by good fortune and incited by the
ambitious militarism of the sfrategos Demosthenes and the
harangues of Cleon, the populace determined to take revenge
on Thebes for the defeat of Coroneia and the loss of Boeotia.
The crushing overthrow of Delion (424) was the result.
The Athenian general, Hippocrates, was slain and his army
of 7000 hoplites and 20,000 light-armed troops was routed
by the Thebans, who used, apparently for the first time, a
formation (twenty-five deep) like that of the phalanx, to
which their future victories were mainly due.
With the battle of Delion is associated the name of Socrates.
He is said to have fought with great courage and to have
contributed much to an orderly retreat, thus saving many
Hves, among them that of Alcibiades.
After the defeat at Delion (424) disaster overtook the
Athenians also in Thrace. The Spartan Brasidas, who had
already distinguished himself at Pylos and Megara, with a
strong body of Peloponnesian hoplites, had traversed Thessaly
and Macedonia, where he joined forces with Perdiccas, the
Macedonian king, and invaded the Athenian possessions in
Thrace, proclaiming himself as their liberator from slavery.
His chivalrous and humane character seems to have favoured
his success no less than his courage and the rapidity of his
strategic movements. Acanthus, Stageiros, and other cities
welcomed him, and by a forced march he surprised Amphipolis,
which came to terms with him before the arrival of the
Athenian ships from Thasos under command of Thucydides,
the son of Olorus, as the historian calls himself when relating
the mishap Thucydides rescued Eion, the port of Amphipolis
Y 337
ANCIENT GREECE
at the mouth of the Strymon, but this did not save him from
banishment, which, he tells us, lasted twenty years (424-404) .
Disheartened by the defeat at Delion and by the brilliant
successes of Brasidas in Thrace, the Athenians concluded a
truce, for the purpose of considering the terms of a definite
peace. Two days, however, after the truce had begun the town
of Scione (on Pallene, south of Potidaea) opened its gates to
Brasidas and welcomed him with enthusiasm, offering him a
golden crown as the liberator of Greece from Athenian slavery.
At Athens the exasperation was intense, and Cleon carried a
proposal that Scione should be razed and all its male inhabi-
tants be slain — which was eventually done. Cleon himself
was sent with forces to Thrace, and in a fight under the
walls of Amphipolis both he and Brasidas fell. Their deaths
strengthened the hands of Nicias and others who wished to put
an end to the war, and in 421 the so-called Peace of Nicias
was concluded for fifty years. Prisoners and places captured
during the war were to be restored ; but Amphipolis refused
to belong again to Athens, and Athens refused to evacuate
Pylos, and in spite of all the efforts of the prudent Nicias, who
was thwarted by the intrigues of the brilliant and unprincipled
young Alcibiades, formal peace soon relapsed into overt
hostility. Sparta and Athens were nominally in alliance, but
Alcibiades brought about an alliance also between Athens and
Argos, which state had set itself at the head of a new Pelo-
ponnesian league, thus defying the supremacy of Sparta. Such
a state of things could not last. Sparta put an army into the
field, and the allied forces of the Argives, Mantineians, and
Athenians suffered a severe defeat at the battle of Mantineia
(418).
For two or three years no great event, we are told, took
place except the capture of Scione and the massacre of all its
male inhabitants, and an entirely unprovoked and unjustifiable
attack by Athens on the island of Melos, which was quite
independent and had taken no part in the war. On the proposal
of Alcibiades it was commanded to subject itself to the Athe-
nian Empire, and on its refusal it was besieged and reduced ;
338
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
all the adult males were massacred, all the women and children
sold as slaves. Thucydides gives us in full the arguments
used by the Melians and by the Athenians at a conference held
before the perpetration of this hideous atrocity. The cold-
blooded inhumanity of the Athenians, their insolent assertion
of the right of the stronger and their impious appeal to the
example of the gods themselves to support that claim, affect
one like the prelude to some terrific catastrophe in a tragedy
of Aeschylus, and prepare us for the calamity that is shortly
to befall Athens and her empire.
The pitiful story of the Sicihan disaster is well known to
readers of Thucydides and has been retold by many writers,
who have vied with each other in depicting anew all its pathetic
and harrowing incidents. What makes it so especially pitiable
and horrible is the fact that this ferocious fratricidal conflict
was due to nothing but the insatiable greed for dominion and
supremacy on the part of that Hellenic people to whom for
many reasons we owe an inestimable debt of gratitude. As
the main object of this book is to draw attention to some of
these reasons rather than to recount external history, and as
this Sicihan episode has little or no connexion with the true
inner life of Greece and would be, even as framework, of little
assistance to us, the following facts may suffice.
The Greek cities of Sicily and Southern Italy owed their origin,
some to Dorian, others to Ionian founders, and, although their
own intestine feuds and their own struggle for existence against
the Carthaginians and Etruscans were for them matters of
prime importance, their sympathies were doubtless enlisted
on the side of their respective mother-cities in the long war
that was desolating the land. But, in spite of the progress of
democracy, sympathy with Sparta, increased by a growing
resentment against the ambitious and tyrannical conduct of
Athens, had become ever stronger, and when in 425 the
Athenian fleet, sent, as has been related,^ to support I^eontini
against Syracuse, at last reached Sicily it could do nothing,
1 This fleet had to retiirn from Corcyra to Pylos, where it was detained for
some time.
339
ANCIENT GREECE
for at a conference of the Sicilian cities it was decided (on the
proposal of the Syracusan Hermocrates) to lay aside dissension
and to brook no foreign interference in Sicilian affairs. So
incensed were the Athenians at this wise and most justifiable
decision that they punished severely by fines and banishment
the two admirals of their fleet, Sophocles and Eurymedon.
Unhappily political rancour in Sicily led to further appeals
for Athenian interference, and in 416, when called upon by
Segesta for aid against Selinus, the Assembly, cajoled by the
fascinating eloquence of Alcibiades, in spite of the warnings
of Nicias, determined to send a large armament of some 140
triremes and 500 transports, under the command of Alcibiades,
Nicias, and Lamachus, to support Segesta and other anti-
Dorian cities in their revolt against the authority of Syracuse
— the reduction of which city was the prime object of the
expedition.
Just before the expedition sailed a strange event occurred —
the mutilation of the busts of Hermes which stood in front
of temples and many private houses. The excitement and
alarm was such as might be caused in some Roman Catholic
countries by a wholesale mutilation of roadside crucifixes and
Madonna images. Whether it was an act of drunken vandalism
or of impiety or had political meaning was never discovered.
Possibly it was perpetrated by paid agents of Sparta or Syra-
cuse. Alcibiades was suspected, and evidence was forthcoming
that he had indulged in profane mimicries of mystic Eleusinian
rites. The fleet had already started, but orders were sent
for his return. At Thurii he managed to get ashore and ere
long was at Sparta, where he revealed all the schemes of the
Athenians, vented his disdain of democracy as ' acknowledged
folly,' and induced the Spartans to fortify Deceleia, in North-
western Attica — a stronghold which proved most troublesome
to Athens.
The investment of Syracuse both by land and sea by Nicias —
who after the gallant Lamachus had fallen was the sole general
— seemed at one time not unlikely to succeed. But Nicias
was slow and unenterprising. Moreover, the Syracusans were
340
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
fighting for their homes and their hberty, while he and many
of his men, when they thought of Marathon and Salamis,
must have felt but little enthusiasm for their task. Soon,
however, they themselves had to fight for their lives, for,
their blockade on the land side being ineffective, Syracuse
was reinforced by the Spartan Gylippus (who with four ships
had reached Himera and had collected 3000 men), and they
therefore abandoned the higher ground and entrenched them-
selves on Plemmyrion, near the sea. Here they were closely
invested by the Syracusans and finally driven to camp on the
marshy western shores of the great harbour near the mouth
of the river Anapus.^
A fleet of seventy-three triremes under the command of
Eurymedon and Demosthenes was sent from Athens for their
relief and entered the harbour in triumph. But also the
enemy had gained large reinforcements, and after some fruitless
attempts to act on the offensive the newly arrived generals
persuaded Nicias to embark the troops and withdraw by sea
to some place of safety. This was still practicable, and the
armament would have doubtless escaped had not an eclipse
of the moon taken place (August 27, 413). The soothsayers
insisted on the departure being deferred for a month, and
Nicias yielded to the superstitious clamour of the soldiers.
The Syracusans, learning the intention of the Athenians to
escape, attacked with seventy-six vessels. Though five miles
in circumference, the space afforded by the harbour did not
allow the Athenians to take advantage of their superiority
in manoeuvring. They were worsted and Eurymedon was
slain. Then the Syracusans blocked the exit of the harbour
with vessels and chains, and a desperate conflict took place,
the walls of Ortygia, the heights of the upper city, and the
shores of the harbour being crowded with innumerable specta-
tors as in a mighty amphitheatre, while the two fleets — about
1 Ancient Syracuse lay on the island of Ortygia (joined to the mainland by a
causeway) and extended up the heights of Achradina and Tyche, and later
included the more westerly heights of Epipolae, which the Athenians at this
time occupied at first with their circumvallation. The Great Harbour is formed
by Ortygia and Plemmyrion, between which there is a narrow exit.
ANCIENT GREECE
200 vessels, carrying thousands of armed men — struggled for
mastery. At last the Athenians were driven back to their
camp, and in spite of the entreaties of Demosthenes refused to
make another effort to break through the barrier. It was then
decided to attempt a retreat by land. In a state of pitiable
distress and despair they started — a host of about 40,000.
The march was directed inland with the object of reaching
friendly Sicel territory. After four days they reached a
precipitous hill, the Ascraean cliff, where the road passed
through a narrow ravine. This was strongly occupied by the
enemy, and the fugitive army turned southward. The rear
division, under Demosthenes, was surrounded and capitulated.
Nicias, after pushing forward desperately under enormous
losses for two days more, surrendered to Gylippus. The chief
captives — Athenians and their allies — some eight thousand
in number, were consigned for months to the stone quarries of
Achradina and Bpipolae, in which deep, unsheltered dungeons
many perished miserably. The survivors were treated as con-
victs or sold as slaves — a fate that doubtless befell all the
rest of the prisoners.^
In spite of much that the true lover of Greece may well
leave to chroniclers of the horrors and political insanities of
which ordinary Greek history so largely consists, the intense
human pathos of this Sicilian disaster as related by Thucydides
makes it a most impressive and memorable episode. The
remaining nine years of the war, two of which only are described
by him, offer far less of interest. Athens had lost two-thirds of
her ships and probably half her trained fighters. Incited by the
renegade Alcibiades, almost all her alhes now revolted. Sparta
made an infamous treaty with the satrap Tissaphernes, giving
over the Ionian Greek cities to Persia in return for financial
aid against Athens. But Alcibiades, who had fallen into
disfavour with the Spartans and had taken refuge with Tissa-
phernes, persuaded him to transfer his aid to the Athenians
1 Browning's Balaustion should be read in this connexion. In commemora-
tion of their victory over the invader the Syracusans issued some very beau-
tiful coins of the same type as the Demareteia (coin 6, Plate IV) struck after
the battle of Himera.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
on condition that an oligarchy should be set up at Athens.
This was effected (411). A council of Four Hundred with
practically absolute powers was instituted, but the army and
fleet assembled at Samos (which had remained faithful to
Athens) declined to recognize it, and a counter-revolution took
place re-establishing the democracy. In the midst of all
these political dissensions the Spartan fleet more than once
nearly took Athens by surprise, and succeeded in defeating
a hastily raised Athenian squadron off Euboea and causing
that island to revolt. The sea-power of the Spartans and
their allies had become almost equal to that of the Athenians,
but the latter gained several naval successes in the next few
years (Cynossema, Cyzicus, Byzantium), some of them due
to the strategic genius of Alcibiades, who made a triumphal
entry into Athens and was given supreme command of all
land and sea forces.^ In 407, however, a slight defeat induced
the mob to dismiss their hero, who retired in disgust to the
Thracian Chersonese. 2 In 406 the sea-fight of Arginusae
(near I^esbos) was won by the Athenians — a victory memorable
chiefly for the fact that six of the victorious commanders
(among them the son of Pericles) were accused of having
abandoned the crews of certain disabled vessels, and without
due hearing or legal process were condemned to drink hemlock.
In passing it is interesting to note that the only man among
the state-councillors {prytaneis) who, not overawed by the
popular clamour, persisted in his protest against this illegaUty
was Socrates.
The final triumph of Sparta in the war was largely due to
funds supplied by Persia, especially by Cyrus, the younger
brother of King Artaxerxes. Cyrus had been sent as satrap
to Sardis ^ by his father, Darius II, and was strongly attached
1 The leaden plate on wliich the curses of the priests against liim (as
profaner of Mysteries) had been inscribed was cast into the sea by the
hysterical demos.
2 Hence he tried to reach the court of Artaxerxes in Susa, but was prevented
by Pharnabazus, and in 404 was murdered, probably through Spartan influence.
* Tissaphernes was ousted by Cyrus at Sardis and given the less important
satrapy of Caria, which explains his hostility to Cyrus. Pharnabazus continued
as satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia till about 387.
343
ANCIENT GREECE
to tiie Spartan interest and to Lysander, the Spartan com-
mander, to whom he even entrusted his satrapy when he was
called to the deathbed of his father in 405. In this same year,
at Aegospotami (' Goat's Rivers '), on the coast of the Thracian
Chersonese, Lysander captured almost the whole of the Athe-
nian fleet (of about 170 vessels) while the crews were on land.
Between 3000 and 4000 Athenians were made prisoners and
were all put to death. The Athenian commander-in-chief,
Conon, escaped, but, fearing to return to Athens, took refuge
with Evagoras, king of Salamis, in Cyprus. Lysander then
blockaded the Peiraeus, while the kings Agis and Pausanias
with the Spartan army invested Athens. A conference of
the Peloponnesians was called, which voted that the city
which for so long had enslaved Greece should be razed and
her whole population sold into slavery. But, like Florence,
Athens was saved by the magnanimity of her great rival.
Sparta refused to destroy a city that had done such noble
service against the barbarian invader. The conditions imposed
(at first rejected by the influence of the demagogue Cleophon,
a lamp-maker and a worthy successor of Cleon) were that
Athens should become the ally and acknowledge the supremacy
of Sparta ; that she should give up all her possessions except
Attica and Salamis, and all her ships ; that the lyong Walls
and fortifications should be pulled down, and that all exiles
should be recalled. After the terms were ratified, the
Spartan fleet entered the Peiraeus (April 404) and the
Athenians aided in demolishing the walls to the sound of
flutes and the jubilant shouts of the Peloponnesians, who
imagined that at last the day of freedom for Greece had
dawned.
Even in this hour of humiliation the Athenians found it
necessary to spend their remaining strength in the insane fury
of political strife and intestine bloodshed. A supreme council
of thirty (known as the ' Thirty Tyrants ') was instituted
under the approval of I^ysander, who occupied the Acropolis
with his Spartans. To the Thirty belonged Theramenes, a
former member of the Four Hundred, and Critias, a violent
344
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
oligarch, who had been exiled by the democrats.^ These two
quarrelled and Theramenes was put to death. But the exiled
democrats under Thrasybulus fortified themselves in the
stronghold of Phyle, on Mount Parnes, and seized the Peiraeus,
where Critias was slain in a fight. The Thirty were deposed
by the Athenian mob, and, to make matters worse, a Council
of Ten was elected, strongly supported by I^ysander. At last
the Spartan king Pausanias intervened, and by his counsel
and the influence of advisers from Sparta reconciliation and
general amnesty were proclaimed, and the ferocious and
turbulent Athenian demos had a season of enforced quiet under
" the laws of Solon and the institutions of Draco." ^
SECTION A : THUCYDIDES
The History of Thucydides has been mentioned and quoted
several times already, and his main characteristics as a writer
have been noted. All that is known for certain about his
life and that is of any importance has been already related
except what may be gathered from the following quotations
and except the facts, if they are such, that during his exile
he lived for some time at the Macedonian court, and that he
was also in Sicily and perhaps present at the fight in the Great
Harbour, and that not long after his return from exile (c. 403)
he was assassinated at Athens, or, according to others, by a
robber in Thrace. From internal evidence it would seem that
the first three or four books of the History, except two passages
1 It did not redound to the popularity of Socrates that both Alcibiades
and Critias had been among his followers as young men. Socrates, however,
again showed his character by refusing to obey an illegal command of the
Thirty. The orator Lysias, afterwards a considerable power, barely escaped
the Thirty by fleeing from Athens.
2 It is strange how differently the acts of the Athenian demos affect some
minds. Grote speaks of " a generous exaltation of sentiment and an absence
of ferocity such as nothing except democracy ever inspired in Grecian bosoms."
In so far as a democracy means self-rule it is ideally the highest form of
government, but, even if it may not be indispensable (as in the case of Plato's
ideal republic) that all self-rulers shall be philosophers, it is surely necessary
that they shall be incapable of such insanities and atrocities as those perpe-
trated by the Athenian mob.
345
AJNCIENT GREECE
inserted later, were finally composed (from his notes) during
his exile in the pause that occurred after the Peace of Nicias
(421), and that he at that time considered the war as finished ;
but in Book V he protests against this view, and regards the
subsequent (Deceleian) war as a continuation of the original
war, which he asserts (v. 26) to have lasted twenty-seven years.
The work ends abruptly at the year 411. Probably he had
collected material for the rest, which had not been put into
hterary form at the time of his death. Book VIII was perhaps
' written up ' from such notes — some say by his daughter, or by
Xenophon. Without the slightest intention of presuming to
offer what journalists call an ' appreciation ' of Thucydides, per-
haps I may note once more his critical, analytical, sceptical
(or, rather, agnostic) attitude, and his ' surly ' reserve, as it
has been called — qualities which are possibly admirable in an
historian and which offer a striking contrast to the urbanity
and humanity of Herodotus. Whether with all his descriptive
powers, his analytic subtleties, his briUiant antitheses, and his
polite scepticism he has the breadth of view and the deeper
insight that are sometimes vouchsafed to more childlike and
sympathetic natures may perhaps be doubted. He mentions
Hesiod and Homer, makes Pericles say, " We need no Homer
to praise us," and quotes Homer for historical purposes. But
he gives no evidence of any sense for art or poetry or philosophy,
such as is frequent in Herodotus. Such contemporaries as
Aeschylus, Pindar, Sophocles, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Pheidias
he does not deign to mention, and never alludes to art, I
think, except on one occasion (the famous (piXoKoXovjuef /xer'
evreXeiag, " We love what is beautiful with economy "). There
is, I think, in his book no sympathetic mention of any
woman, such as of Artemisia, Atossa, Agarista, Gorgo, and
others in Herodotus ; indeed, hardly any woman is named but
Brauro, who murdered her husband. King Pittacus. Perhaps
Thucydides, like Euripides (whom he must have known at
Athens and also at the court of Archelaus in Macedonia),
was a confirmed misogynist. Anyhow, he was no admirer of
female notorieties, and evidently agreed warmly with what
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
he makes Pericles say : " Great is her glory who is least talked
of among men either for good or for evil." Herodotus, being a
colonial and having lived long in Ionia, was not hampered
by old-fashioned Athenian proprieties and could allow range
to his broader sympathies as regards women.
(i) Thucydides and his Book
" Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war
between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, how they
warred against each other, having begun directly it broke out,
with the expectation that it would prove important and more
worthy of description than any that had preceded it. . . .
As for what was said on either side, it was hard to remember
the exact words, both for me, in regard to what I myself
heard, and for those who reported it to me from other
quarters ; but as I thought they wgi?<'^ have most Hkely spoken
on the subjects from time to time before them, while I held
as closely as possible to the general sense of what was really
said, so I have recorded it. But with regard to the facts
and deeds of the war I did not think right to state what I
heard from a chance informant, nor what seemed to me
probable, but I have related only those events at which I was
myself present and those which, after learning them from
others, I have investigated with all possible care in every
detail. . . . Now for recitation perhaps the unfabulous
character of my work will appear not very attractive, but all
who shall wish to study what really happened and what is
bound by reason of human nature to happen again — in the
same or similar forms — for such to judge it to be useful will be
sufficient. The work is meant to be a possession for ever
rather than a prize composition to be Hstened to for a passing
hour. . . . The same Thucydides, the Athenian, has also
written of all these things in order as they severally happened,
by summers and winters, until the I^acedaemonians and their
alhes put an end to the empire of the Athenians and captured
the I^ong Walls and the Peiraeus. ... I lived on through
the whole of the war, being of an age to apprehend events
347
ANCIENT GREECE
and using my judgment in order to gain accurate knowledge.
It was moreover my lot to be an exile from my country for
twenty years after my command of the expedition to Amphi-
polis, and being, by reason of my banishment, present at the
transactions of both sides, especially of the Peloponnesians, I
was enabled to gain at my leisure a better acquaintance with
them." (i. i and 22 ; v. 26.)
(2) Character and Policy of Pericles
" But not long after, as a mob is wont to do, they again
elected him general and entrusted all public affairs to him
. . . and as long as he was at the helm of the state in time of
peace he governed it with moderation and kept it in safety,
and during his rule it was at the height of its greatness ; and
when the war broke out he again seems to have foreseen the
capabilities of Athens also in this respect. For he said that
if they kept quiet and attended to their navy, and did not try
to increase their empire during the war and thus imperil the
safety of the state, they would prove successful — whereas
they did exactly the contrary in all these matters, and in
other matters too, which apparently had nothing to do with
the war, their policy was actuated by selfish ambition and
greed and proved fatal to themselves and to their allies. . . .
And the reason [of his success] was that, wielding a powerful
influence by means of his reputation and intellect and being
manifestly and absolutely beyond the range of bribery, he
controlled the populace with a free rein so that they followed
his guidance, not he theirs, because he said nothing to please
them for the sake of gaining power by improper means, but was
able on the strength of his character to contradict them even
at the risk of their displeasure. Whenever, for instance, he
perceived them to be unseasonably and insolently self-reliant,
by his words he dashed them down to alarm, and when, on the
other hand, they were unreasonably terrified, he would restore
them to self-confidence. It was in name a democracy, but in
reality was absolute rule carried on by the foremost man of
the state." (ii. 65.)
348
94- Herodotus
95. Thucydides
y6. Pkrici<es
97. AlXIBIADES 348
THE PELOPONNESI AN WAR
(3) The Plague
"It is said to have first come from Aethiopia and to have
spread over Egypt and Ivib5^a and most of the king's territory.
On the city of Athens it fell suddenly, first attacking the people
in the Peiraeus, so that it was reported that the Peloponnesians
had thrown poison into the tanks. . . . Now, every one,
whether physician or private person, can say what he thinks
as to its probable origin and the causes that he considers
sufficiently powerful to have produced such a distemper. I
shall simply describe it and state clearly its symptoms so that
any one who notes them may not fail to recognize it if ever
it should break out again ; for I myself had the disease and I
saw others who were attacked by it.
" The year, as was generally allowed, happened to be par-
ticularly healthy as regards all other disorders, and if any one
did have any previous illness it always developed into this.
In other cases persons who were quite well were suddenly and
without any apparent reason seized at first with violent
feverish headaches and their eyes became red and inflamed,
and the internal parts, throat and tongue, at once assumed a
bloody appearance and emitted a strange and noisome breath.
Then sneezing and angina came on, and in a short time the
pain descended to the chest, accompanied by violent coughing,
and as soon as it settled in the stomach it produced vomiting
. . . and in most cases the empty retching caused violent
spasms. Externally the body was not excessively hot to the
touch, nor was it pallid, but reddish, livid, and broken out in
small pimples and sores ; internally there was such intense
heat that they could not bear even the very lightest garments
or fine linen to be laid upon them, nor to be anything else but
naked, and most gladly would have thrown themselves into
cold water ; indeed, many among those who were not taken
care of did throw themselves into tanks, overcome by their
unquenchable thirst ; and it made no difference however much
or little they drank. . . . And the birds and quadrupeds that
prey on human bodies either did not come near them, though
349
ANCIENT GREECE
there were many unburied corpses, or perished after tasting
them. . . . And what added much to the distress was the
crowding into the city from the country, especially in the
case of the newcomers, for as there were no houses for them
they lived in stifling cabins in the hot season of the year, and
the mortahty spread uncontrolled, the bodies of the dying
lying one on the other or rolHng about half dead in the streets
and round all the fountains, in their craving for water. The
sacred precincts also, in which they had camped, were full of
the corpses of those who had died there, for the calamity was
so overwhelming that men, not knowing what was to become
of them, came to disregard everything both sacred and profane
alike. . . . Such was the calamity which befell Athens and
by which it was afflicted, the people dying within its walls
and the land being devastated without," (ii. 48 sq.)
(4) The Night Escape from Plataea
" They made ladders equal in height to the siege- wall of
the enemy, calculating it by the layers of bricks where the
wall looking towards them happened not to be plastered.
Many counted the layers at the same time, and although some
were bound to miss the correct number, most would hit it,
especially as they counted often and were at no great distance.
Thus they ascertained the right length of the ladders, guessing
it from the thickness of the bricks. Now the rampart consisted
of a double line of walls, which were about sixteen feet apart,
and between these walls quarters had been built and assigned
to the men on guard ; and they were continuous, so that it
seemed to be one thick wall with battlements on both sides.
And at intervals of ten battlements there were large turrets
of the same breadth as the rampart, extending across to its
inner and to its outer front, so that there was no passage
alongside the tower, but they passed through its middle. Now
at night, whenever it was wet and stormy, they left the battle-
ments and kept watch from the towers, as these were at short
distances from each other and were roofed. . . . When all
was ready, having watched for a stormy night with rain and
350
THE PELOPONNESI AN WAR
wind and at the same time moonless, they sallied forth. First
they crossed the moat that encircled the town, then they got
up to the enemy's wall without being noticed by the sentinels,
who could not see far through the darkness and could not hear
them because the clatter of the wind drowned the noise of
their approach ; moreover, they kept far apart so that their
weapons might not clash together and attract notice ; also they
were lightly equipped and were shod only on the left foot as
security against the [slippery] mud. Thus they reached the
battlemented rampart at a point between two towers, knowing
that here it was unguarded. First those who carried scaling-
ladders approached and planted them ; then twelve light-armed
men, with only daggers and breast-plates, mounted . . . then
more with javeUns, whose shields, to faciHtate the advance,
others carried in the rear, ready to hand them over as soon
as they came upon the enemy. When now a considerable
number had mounted, the sentinels in the towers discovered
them, for one of the Plataeans in catching hold of the battle-
ment dislodged a tile, which made a noise when it fell ; and
forthwith a shout was raised." [The Plataeans nevertheless
seized two towers and all got safely over the double wall ;
but outside the external wall, as a defence against any attack
from Athens, the Peloponnesians had dug a second moat,
on the inner edge of which the fugitives now found themselves,
and in the meantime 300 of the enemy with torches were
rapidly approaching " outside the wall and in the direction of
the shouting."] " Now the Plataeans from their dark position
on the brink of the moat saw the enemy better and directed
their arrows and javelins against the unprotected parts of
their bodies, while they themselves were hidden and still
less easily discerned on account of the torches, so even the last
of them got safely across the moat, though with difficulty
and after great efforts, for ice had formed upon it, not firm
enough to walk upon but watery, as usual with a wind more
easterly than north ; and the night, being snowy and with a
wind of this kind, had made the water in it deep, so that they
crossed with heads barely above the surface ; but all the same
351
ANCIENT GREECE
it was the violence of the storm to which they owed their
escape." (iii. 20 sq.)
(5) CORCYRAEAN ATROCITIES
" They [i.e. the democrats] then began to massacre all of their
political opponents whom they had happened to catch, and
dispatched, while they were landing them, all those whom
they had persuaded to go on board. They also went to the
sanctuary of Hera and persuaded about fifty of the suppliants
to take their trial, and then condemned them all to death.
Most of them were not to be persuaded, and when they saw
what was being done they slew one another there in the sacred
precinct. Some hanged themselves on the trees, others killed
themselves as they could. During the seven days that
Eurymedon remained there with his sixty ships the Corcyraeans
went on murdering those of their fellow-countrymen whom
they beheved to be hostile to them. They accused them of
abolishing democracy ; but some were killed for private
enmity, and others were slain by their debtors for money owed
them. Every kind of death was experienced, and all that is
wont to happen at such times happened now, and still worse ;
for father slew son and men were dragged out of sanctuaries
and slain near them, while some were walled up in the temple
of Dionysus and thus perished. So bloody was the course of
the revolution." (iii. 81. See also remarks by Thucydides in
82, 83.)
" When the Corcyraean [democrats] had caught them, they
confined them in a large building. Then they took them out
by twenties and led them roped together through two ranks
of heavy-armed men, who smote and stabbed any personal
enemies they saw. And men with whips went by their side,
hastening on their way those who were going too slowly. As
many as sixty they had thus led forth and butchered without
raising the suspicions of those in the building, who thought
they were being removed to some other place. But when
they learnt the truth (some one having informed them) they
refused to leave the building. So the Corcyraeans, not
352
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
being disposed to force their way in by the doors, climbed up
on to the top of the building, and, having broken through
the roof, began to hurl the tiles and shoot arrows down on them.
And they defended themselves as best they could, while at
the same time many tried to kill themselves by thrusting
down their throats the arrows discharged by their assailants
and by strangling themselves with the cords of certain bedsteads
which happened to be in the building and by strips that they
tore off their clothing, and thus in divers ways during the
greater part of the night (for night came on during these atro-
cities), either by laying hands on themselves or by being
struck by missiles from above, they perished. And when it was
day the Corcyraeans piled them in cross layers on wagons and
carried them out of the city ; and all the women who had been
captured in the fortress [Istone] they enslaved." (iv. 47 s^.)
(6) Sea-fight in the Harbour of Syracuse
" When the Athenians came near the bar [formed by
vessels and chains stretched across the harbour mouth]
they charged, and with their first onset they got the better
of the ships posted near it and tried to loosen the fastenings.
But soon afterwards the Syracusans and their alHes bore down
on them from all quarters, and the fight no longer went on
only near the bar, but became general all over the harbour ;
and it was a severe engagement, such as no previous one had
been. . . . And as a great number of vessels attacked each
other in a small space (indeed, never had so many fought together
in so small a space, for altogether they fell scarcely short of
two hundred) ramming was little used, as to back water or to
break through the enemy's line was impossible, but collisions
were more frequent, just as one ship might chance to run into
another while flying from or attacking its adversary. Now,
as long as a vessel was bearing down on another those on the
decks used javelins and arrows and stones in great quantities
against it, but when they came to close quarters the seamen
fought hand to hand and tried to board each other's ships,
and on account of the narrow space it often happened that
z 353
ANCIENT GREECE
while they were charging others they themselves were being
charged, and that two, or even sometimes several, vessels
were forcibly^entangled round one. . . . The foot-soldiers
of both sides on shore, while the result of the sea-fight hung
in the balance, experienced an intense anguish and conflict of
feelings, the man of Sicily being eager for still greater honour and
the invaders fearing to fare still worse than hitherto. For since
with the Athenians all was staked on their ships their anxiety
as to the result was like none they had ever felt before . . .
and every kind of clamour was to be heard, lamentation and
triumph, ' Tliey conquer ! ' ' They are beaten ! ' and other such
various exclamations as a great armament in great danger
would be constrained to utter — until finally, after the fighting
had lasted for a long time, the Syracusans and their allies
routed the Athenians, and, following up their advantage
brilliantly, with great shouting and cheering pursued them to
the shore." (vii. 70 sq.)
(7) The Retreat from Syracuse
" It was pitiable, not only because of the fact that they were
retreating after having lost all their .ships and all their high
hopes, and having brought themselves, and Athens too, into
peril, but also because on leaving the encampment they all
had to look upon things grievous to the sight and grievous to
the mind ; for the dead were unburied, and whenever any
saw one of his friends lying there he was filled with grief and
with fear ; and the living who were being abandoned, the
wounded and the sick, were to the living much more painful
than were the dead, and more piteous than those who had
perished, for, betaking themselves to entreaty and to waihng,
they drove them into despair, begging to be taken, and calhng
upon each one individually, if they saw anywhere any friend
or relation, and hanging on to their comrades as they were
on the point of departure, and following as far as they
could ; and if strength or bodily power failed they were left
behind not without many adjurations to the gods and many
groans. So the whole army, filled with tears and distress of
354
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
this kind, did find departure easy, though it was from a hostile
country and though they had already suffered woes too deep
for tears, and were full of anxiety as to their sufferings in the
unknown future. They resembled nothing so much as a city
starved out and trying to escape by stealth — and no small
city, for the whole multitude that started numbered not less
than forty thousand." (vii. 75.)
(8) The Surrender
" The Athenians pressed on towards the river Assinarus,
being urged to do this by the attacks of the enemy and also
by weariness and the craving for water ; and when they
reached it they cast themselves into it with no further regard
for order, every one wishing to get across first, while the enemy
assailed them and made the crossing difficult. For, being
compelled to advance in a dense mass, they fell on the top of
one another and trod one another down, and some were killed
by falling on the javelins and baggage, and others got entangled
and were swept down-stream. On the further bank, which was
precipitous, stood the Syracusans and launched their missiles
down on the Athenians while most of them were drinking
eagerly and crowding together confusedly in the hollow river-
bed. Moreover, the Peloponnesians came down to attack them,
and slaughtered those especially who were in the river. And the
water was forthwith spoiled, but none the less it was drunk by
them together with the mud, all bloody, and was even fought
for by most of them. At last, when many dead bodies were
already lying one upon the other in the river and the army had
been cut to pieces, some of it in the river-bed and whatever
part escaped thence by the cavalry, Nicias surrendered to
Gylippus." (vii. 84.)
SECTION B : SOPHOCLES : EURIPIDES : ARISTOPHANES
In the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides we
can trace the same kind of development — or, as some would
call it, degeneration — that is noticeable in the three principal
355
ANCIENT GREECE
stages of Greek sculpture. First we have the supernatural,
the mysterious, the terrible, the sublime — forms of more than
mortal grandeur and a spirit ofttimes majestically disdainful
of ordinary humanity ; then man's nature idealized and the
perfect balance and exquisite symmetry of the human form
divine — the mortal as he should be rather than as he is, such
as we see him in the heroes and heroines of Sophocles and in
the works of Polycleitus and the still more gracious forms of
Praxiteles ; then the attempt to portray in sculpture and in
sculpturesque drama the diversity and passion and movement
of actual life, with details which, however significant and
interesting they may be in life itself, often become trivial or
offensive when borrowed by the artist for purposes of sensa-
tion, pathos, or prettiness.
A vast amount of learning and acumen has been employed
in studying and contrasting the special characteristics of
these three great poets, and for those who take interest in such
questions there is an abundance of literature, from the Frogs
of Aristophanes (of which Frere's sprightly version is good
reading) to the latest modern ' appreciations,' German,
French, or English. More satisfactory it is, of course, to
form one's own opinion by reading the plays themselves, of
which fair verse translations exist, or, still better, by seeing
them acted ; for these old Greek poets are still a living
power on the stage, and, even when roughly translated
into modern languages, their works produce surprising
emotional effects on audiences to a great extent ignorant
of the original poems and of the subjects that they treat.
The ' appreciation,' moreover, of the literary critic is not
always very trustworthy or edifying, for he is too apt
to use the foil of depreciation — and that not merely for
purposes of comedy, as did Aristophanes — and to waste
our time in formulating his ideas about the ' unfeminine '
and ' degenerate ' heroines of Sophocles, the ' disagreeable
features ' of Antigone and her ' vast inferiority to Alcestis,'
and so on, or in expressing his contempt for the beggar-
heroes, the enamoured dames, the querulous old men, the
THE PELOPONNESI AN WAR
effusive rhetoric, the sophistries, and the ' absurdities ' of
Euripides.^
Few perhaps can admire equally things so different as the
stern grandeur of Aeschylus, the perfect art, the sculpturesque
strength, dignity, and beauty of Sophocles, and the vivid
colouring, the living warmth, and varied movement of Euri-
pides ; but even though we may with Aristophanes place
Aeschylus (or Sophocles in his absence) on the throne of tragedy,
we must surely be insensate if we do not feel moved by much
in the plays of Euripides, by his passionate, almost Words-
worthian love for our common humanity and for the beauty
of Nature, and by his pathetic power, which has never,
perhaps, been equalled except by Shakespeare — a power so
supreme that Aristotle, the master of all critics, calls him
"the most tragic of the poets." How deeply he aroused
the admiration of the ancients is shown by the fact that
eighteen of his plays (as against seven by Sophocles) have
survived, besides a great number of fragments, which still
receive frequent additions from Egyptian papyri. Dante, the
greatest of mediaeval poets, refers to him, though he mentions
neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles. Browning's Balaustion,
besides being a tribute of intense admiration from a great
modern poet to
Euripides, the Human
With his droppings of warm tears.
And his touches of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres,
is founded on an historical fact that proves how magical
among the ancients was the influence of the last Athenian
tragedian. " Numbers of the Athenian captives in Sicily,"
says Plutarch, " were saved by Euripides, and when they had
returned home they greeted him with gratitude and related
how by singing his poems, as much as they could remember,
they had been released from slavery, or how, when wandering
1 See, for instance, Schlegel's Dramatic Literature. Such sophistries as the oft-
quoted " My tongue swore it, but my mind remained unsworn," may not prove
that the poet himself approved of mean mental reservations, but they certainly
do bring us down to a very low level. Cf. Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece.
357
ANCIENT GREECE
about after the battle, they had by the same means procured
food and drink." Aehan, too, tells us that Socrates seldom
went to the theatre except to see some new play of Euripides,
and the philosopher is even suspected of having had a hand in
some of these plays.
A few biographical facts and a brief account of some of
the chief plays of Sophocles and Euripides may be of more
use than comment, ^''i r-^ ''
Sophocles was born about 495 at Colonus, near Athens. He
is said to have led the chorus of boys at the rejoicings after
Salamis, " dancing and playing on the lyre around the trophy."
As already related, he conquered Aeschylus in 468, when
Cimon and the other generals voted for his Triptolemus. About
440 he brought out his Antigone, which, probably against his
wishes, procured him his election as a general in the expedition
against Samos (p. 296). " I do my best," he is said to have
remarked, " since Pericles will have it so ; but I am no general."
In 413, after the Sicilian disaster, he was elected, doubtless
unwillingly, as one of the ' Advisers ' {-TrpoftouXoi) who coun-
selled the establishment of the Four Hundred. He died in 406,
in his ninetieth year. Of his 130 (or 113) dramas perhaps half
were written in the last third of his life. Seven are extant.
The Antigone {c. 440) continues the story of the Aeschylean
Seven against Thebes. In spite of the commands of her uncle
Creon, who, after the sons of Oedipus had slain each other,
has reinstated himself as king of Thebes, Antigone determines
to bury her brother Polyneices — which she does by sprinkhng
dust on Ms dead body. She is condemned to be buried alive in
a tomb. Haemon, Creon's son, who loves her, kills himself,
and his mother, Eurydice, also commits suicide. The strong
and impulsive character of Antigone forms a fine contrast to
that of her timid younger sister Ismene, but perhaps its strength
is rather too virile.
The Ajax, which seems from its form and style to be of early
date, has for its subject the overthrow of a noble mind by the
consciousness of shame. As a so-called psychological study it
is comparable with King Lear or Hamlet, In order to follow the
358
98. SOPHOCI,ES
358
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
internal action one must read the play. Its external action is
simple. The arms of the dead Achilles have been adjudged to
Odysseus. Ajax in his furious indignation determines to make
an onslaught on the Achaean princes, but is afflicted by Athene
with a sudden fit of insanity, during which he slaughters a
number of sheep and cattle, believing them to be his foes.
On his recovery his sense of shame drives him to suicide. After
the catastrophe the play drags on rather wearily. Odysseus,
though his great rival, persuades the Atridae to give Ajax
burial.
The Electra treats the same subject as the Choephoroe of
Aeschylus and the Electra of Euripides, with which I shall
compare it later. The contrast between two sisters, Electra
and Chrysothemis, is not unlike that depicted in the Antigone.
One of the finest passages in the play is a description given to
Electra by an old man of a chariot-race at the Pythian Games,
in which, as he reports, Orestes was killed. The lament of
Electra over the funeral urn in which she believes the ashes of
her brother to be is as beautiful as anything in literature, and
for dramatic effect the last scene, where Aegisthus, believing
it to be the corpse of Orestes, unveils the dead body of
Clytaemnestra, is probably unsurpassed.
The Trachiniae (so called from the chorus, consisting of
maidens of Trachis, near Thermopylae) describes the fearful
end of Heracles. The legend is that when Nessus the Centaur
was killed by Heracles with an arrow that had been dipped
in Hydra poison he bade Deianira, the wife of Heracles, pre-
serve some of his blood as a love-charm. Being jealous of lole,
a princess captured by Heracles, Deianira steeps a robe in this
poisoned blood and sends it to him for a sacrificial ceremony.
The robe cleaves to his flesh and the venom enters his body.
In his madness he seizes lyichas, his companion, by the feet and
hurls him into the sea, and writhes in terrible anguish while
trying to tear the cHnging poisoned robe from off his Hmbs.
He is borne in a litter, or ship, to Trachis, his home. Deianira
hangs herself. Heracles bids his son Hyllus bear him to the
peak of Mount Oeta and place him on a pyre of wood and
359
ANCIENT GREECE
set it aflame. Hyllus at last obeys, and the play ends as
Heracles is being carried away. From other writers we learn
that Hyllus refused to light the pyre, which was done by a
shepherd, Poias, who was passing by. This Poias was father to
Philoctetes, to whom he bequeathed the bow and arrows
given him in gratitude by Heracles. Some say that Philoctetes
himself lit the pyre and was given the weapons.
Oedipus Tyrannus was probably composed in the year (430-
429) of the Great Plague, to which there is evident allusion
in the well-known opening Unes. Although written long after
the Antigone, this drama and the Oedipus at Colonus {c. 420 ?)
were doubtless intended to form together with it a Theban
trilogy on somewhat the same lines as those of the Aeschjdean
trilogy to which, as is believed, the Seven against Thebes
belonged. The story of Oedipus — how he, as was fated, slew
his own father and was wedded to his own mother, and how he
discovered the terrible truth and blinded himself — scarcely
needs recounting. The art with which all is made to lead up
to the awful catastrophe, and with which the contrast is
depicted between the powerful and haughty monarch of the
opening and the blinded and humiliated sufferer and outcast
of the later scenes, is supremely great. In the second play
the old blind king, led by his daughter Antigone, comes to the
grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, a village near Athens (the
birthplace of Sophocles). He feels conscious that his involun-
tary crimes have now been atoned for and that the Avenging
but Kindly Goddesses ^ will receive him. His other daughter,
Ismene, now joins him, and Creon of Thebes appears and tries
to carry off the two girls. Theseus, the Athenian king, re-
covers them and protects the suppliants. Him the blind
Oedipus, as guided by some inner light and by the calHng
of a voice, leads to the place (perhaps the sanctuary chasm
of the Eumenides) where it is fated that he shall die ; and
here he passes away from sight.
In the Philoctetes is related how Odysseus and Neoptolemus
1 The sanctuary itself was in a cleft of the Areopagus, near the Acropolis,
two miles from the village of Colonus.
360
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
(son of Achilles) intend to carry off from Lemnos the son of
Poias, Philoctetes, who (see above) possessed the bow and
arrows of Heracles, without which Troy could not be taken.
Philoctetes had been stung by a viper, and the loathsome sore
thus caused on his foot had induced the Greeks before Troy
to banish him to Lemnos. He refuses to return, and at first
Neoptolemus consents to aid Odysseus in using guile ; but his
nobler nature revolts, and he confesses all to Philoctetes.
Heracles then appears from heaven and induces Philoctetes
to change his mind.
It is interesting that in two at least of these plays the main
action is founded on motives such as are not present, or not
easily to be discovered, in any drama of Aeschylus — on the
dictates of what we call conscience, or the moral sense — on
those inviolable unwritten laws of the heart which are higher
than all ordinances proclaimed by human authority in the
name of justice or religion. Both Antigone and Neoptolemus
obey that voice by which, as Goethe says in his Iphigenie, the
gods speak to us through our hearts. Antigone, " daring a holy
crime," perishes, but, like Cordelia, proves herself a conqueror
over death. Neoptolemus, like the heroine of Goethe's play,
will dare or suffer anything rather than practise a mean deceit.
Here, I think, is intimated a very essential difference between
the ethical teaching of the two poets. As we have already
seen, Aeschylus depicts man in his struggle against inexorable
Fate — against the external and immutable laws of Necessity ;
but Sophocles points to a moral law within the heart, which to
obey is to conquer destiny and death. ^ In Euripides we have
indeed at times admirable courage and defiance of misfortune,
but it is the courage and defiance of the Stoic. There is no
deep sense of the eternal laws of the conscience, nor even a
^ " The interest of a Sophoclean drama is always intensely personal, and
is almost always centred in an individual destiny. In other words, it is not
historical or mythical, but ethical. Single persons stand out magnificently in
Aeschylus, but the action is always larger than any single life. ... In
Sophocles vast stirroundings fall into the background and the feelings of the
spectator are absorbed in sympathy with the chief figure on the stage, round
whom the other characters (the chorus included) are grouped with the minutest
care." — Professor Lewis Campbell.
361
ANCIENT GREECE
tragic battling against an overwhelming fate, for all is guided
by Chance rather than by Necessity, and the gods themselves
are little else but useful stage machinery.^ He gives us a picture,
often intensely real and moving, of human character amid
the various accidents of life ; but, as tragedy was still limited
to the myths of gods and heroes, the purely human element
often causes a descent from the sublime to the commonplace,
and even to the ridiculous, so that the remark is not so unjust
as it may seem that Euripides was the precursor of the New
Comedy. Indeed, the writers of this later comedy of
common hfe and character, such as Menander, acknowledged
Euripides as their model, especially in dialogue, where clever
repartee, smart epigram, and quotable apophthegm were in
request.
Euripides was born, some say, in Salamis on the very day
of the battle {c. September 20, 480). When twenty-five years
of age he was ' granted a chorus ' (officially allowed to compete) ,
but did not win the prize till fourteen years later. Of his ninety-
two plays, it is said, only four or five were crowned, which
seems to show that his popularity was very much greater than
his appreciation by contemporary critics.
Late in life (about 408) he withdrew to Thessaly, and thence
to the court of King Archelaus of Macedonia, possibly on
account of the domestic troubles which embittered so much
of his life, or because his philosophical and political sentiments
exposed him to danger at Athens. He died in 406, a few
months before Sophocles. The story that he was torn to pieces
by dogs possibly arose from the fact that in his last play, the
Bacchae, written probably in Macedonia, Pentheus is torn to
pieces by infuriated Bacchanals.
Of the eighteen extant plays of Euripides (excluding the
Rhesus, which is probably a later imitation, but including
the Cyclops, the only surviving classical satyric drama) perhaps
the finest are the Alcestis (438), Medea (431), Ion [c. 420),
and the two Iphigeneias (412-408), the stories of which are well
1 In nine out of the eighteen extant plays of Euripides the problem is solved
by the appearance of a deus ex machina.
362
99- Euripides
362
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
known and need not liere be recounted. ^ But in order to
illustrate some cliaracteristics of the poet a few remarks may
be made on one of his less known dramas, the Electra. All
three of the great Athenian dramatists treated the subject of
the Electra, and all three dramas are extant. The main action
of the Choephoroe and of the Sophoclean Electra has already
been briefly intimated. Euripides has chosen the same story,
namely, the return of Orestes, his recognition by his sister and
the slaying of Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus ; but he has used
a very different setting, his object doubtless having been to
bring it all nearer to us — " menschlich naher," as Schiller
expresses it. The scene opens, not before the palace of Argos
or the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae, but before a cottage,
out of which steps forth an old peasant. In a long prologue —
an introductory device much used by Euripides — he explains
for the benefit of the audience, though evidently talking to
himself, that Electra had been forced by her mother to marry
him, and that she lives with him, but as a daughter, not as a
wife, Electra then enters, bearing on her close-shorn head a
pitcher, and, in spite of the dear old man's entreaties, insists
on performing the menial work of the household. With such
a mise-en-scene we might have had a very pathetic and withal
a dignified play ; but, unfortunately, there is much that one
might think more adapted to satisfy the taste of the tragical-
comical players in Hamlet than that of an Athenian audience.
After the catastrophe Electra puts a wreath on- her brother's
head, while he holds the head of Aegisthus suspended by its
hair ; she then pours vituperation and sarcasm on the dead
man's head. When Orestes, in his alarm (though he sees no
Furies, as in the Choephoroe), determines to flee, Electra
exclaims, a little irrationally, " Who will now marry me ? "
The play is wound up by the appearance ex machina of Castor
^ The Alcestis is finely translated by Browning (in Balaustion). The recon-
structions of the Medea by Grillenparzer and of the Iphigeneia in Tauris
by Goethe are interesting as not unsuccessful attempts at re-creation in
the modern spirit. The imitations by Racine and Voltaire are, as Goethe
says, mere parodies. Professor Murray's translations into English are
popular.
ANCIENT GREECE
and Pollux, who order Py lades to marry Electra and to give a
liberal compensation to the peasant.
But perhaps nothing in the whole play ' lets us down ' quite
so much as the deliberate and sarcastic way in which Euripides
expresses, through Electra (11. 524 sq.), his disapproval of the
means used by Aeschylus to bring about the recognition,
namely, a lock of hair and footprints. Certainly the scar
that he uses for the purpose has Homeric precedent and is
more satisfactory ; but the attack on his great predecessor is
surely in bad taste and much out of place in a work of art.
In the Iphigeneia in Aulis the dea ex machina, or rather the
substitution of a fawn instead of the victim by the invisible
Artemis, is in keeping with the old legend, but in the case of
the Iphigeneia in Tauris the deadening effect on our sympathies
of such contrivance is apparent when we think of the solution
of the knot by Goethe, who in the place of a stage divinity
makes the power of courage and truth on the part of Iphigeneia
save her and her brother from the infuriated Scythian king.
In some of his dramas, such as the Phoenissae, in which the
Oedipus story is employed, Euripides alters the old legends
very considerably or uses rare versions. He even gives con-
tradictory versions in different plays. In the Helena the
heroine (whom Homer and Herodotus state to have been in
Egypt, evidently on her way back from Troy with Menelaus)
never reaches Troy at all. What accompanied Paris to Troy
was a wraith. The true Helen was all the time in Egypt,
in charge of King Proteus. Schlegel calls it the " merriest
of tragedies." But I prefer to end with Goethe's words,
referring to Schlegel, rather than with Schlegel's disparage-
ment. " If a modern critic," he said, " must pick out faults
in so great a master of drama, he should do it on his knees."
The names are known of 104 Greek comic poets. About
forty were writers of the prisca Comoedia, the Old Attic Comedy
{c. 480-390) , and produced something like 360 plays. Of these
nothing worth mention has survived except eleven, out of
perhaps forty, of the comedies of Aristophanes. How great
364
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
our loss is we cannot tell. Aristophanes was a great poet as
well as a comedian. " The Graces," said Plato, " chose his
mind for their dwelHng." But, excepting his work and
Terence's paraphrases of Menander, we have no evidence that
there was much of permanent value in all this immense output
of comic verse, and for our purpose it will suffice if, after a
few remarks on the rise of Greek comedy, we consider briefly-
some of these eleven plays that have been preserved by the
admiration of Alexandrian critics.
Tragedy, as we have seen, originated at the vintage festivals,
where the peasants, disguised as goat-eared satyrs, or dressed
in goatskins, danced and sang their ' goat songs ' and dithy-
rambs in honour of Dionysus, and in course of time introduced
dialogue and representations of old legends, both tragical and
satyric.^ Comedy, the song of ' revelry ' (/caj/zo? — which is
also the name of the god of revelry), originated, as Aristotle
tells us, in festivals connected with the divinities of fertility,
at which much carneval licence was allowed (as at the Roman
Saturnalia), much coarse jesting and abuse and repartee and
pasquinade and comic dialogue (as with the old lyatin
Fescennine songs), accompanied by processions and dances of
mummers and maskers in all kinds of quaint and indecent dis-
guises. (On old Attic vases may be seen such maskers depicted
— disguised as birds or other animals, and in one case as knights
mounted on the back of slaves.) I^udicrous acting was then
introduced — first mere improvised mummer-show. We hear
of an early and rather mythical Attic comic poet, Susarion, but
it was in Sicily that comic plays were first learnt for recitation,
and it was Kpicharmus, of SiciHan Megara (about 500, somewhat
1 Plutarch says that after the Thespian tragical performances had come
into vogue the common people were discontented, missing the old humour of
the original ' tragedy ' — i.e. the ' goat ' or ' satyr ' song — and asked : " What
has this to do with Dionysus ? " Therefore humorous ' satyric ' dramas were
often acted in connexion with the later ' tragedies,' which had become too
serious for public taste. In the greatest of all tragedies, Shakespeare's, there
is humour — unintelligible to minds like Voltaire's, but not to minds like
that of Socrates, who affirmed that every tragic poet should also be a comic
poet. Plato, too, calls jesting the " sister of earnestness," and Horace tells us
that it often decides great things better and quicker than seriousness.
ANCIENT GREECE
later than Thespis, the Attic founder of tragedy), who first com-
posed parodies, or burlesques, of old legends. A few small frag-
ments of his plays are extant. This old SiciHan comedy was
transplanted to Athens in the age of the Persian invasions, and
rapidly struck root. It was ere long recognized by the state,
and the comic poet was granted a chorus like the tragedian,
and allowed to compete publicly for a prize. Among the
first Athenian comic poets we hear of Chionides, Magnes,
Crates, Cratinus, and Bupolis. The last two were early
contemporaries and rivals of Aristophanes. Crates was
perhaps the first to raise comedy above personal lampoon
and to attack vice and folly in the abstract. Under Pericles
great licence was allowed to the comic poet, but he might be
impeached for " doing wrong to the people " by attacking un-
fairly their magistrates. During the trouble with Samos (440)
comedy was suppressed, and again when democracy fell in
411, and although it revived with the democracy it was no
longer allowed to satirize public characters.
Of the life of Aristophanes (c. 445-380) very little is known.
He produced his first play, the Banqueters, in 427, when
" hardly more than a boy," and two years later he won the first
prize with the Acharnians, the earliest of his extant comedies.
It was directed against the iniquity and folly of the war. A
good old Attic farmer, angry at the constant rejection of peace,
sends a private embassy to the Spartans and secures immunity
for himself and his family. He rails off his property and
invites his neighbours to an open market and all the blessings
of peace, including a fine banquet. The play teems with
political allusions. The consequent comphcations, social and
political, are most ludicrous. The chief butts of the satire are
the demagogues and Euripides.
In the Knights (424) a most audacious attack was made
on Cleon, just then elated by his success at Sphacteria (p. 336).
It was the first play that Aristophanes exhibited in his own
name, and as no one dared to play the part of Cleon, nor even
to make a mask for the character (see 1. 232), the poet himself,
it is said, undertook the role with his face stained, as in old
366
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
times, with wine-lees. Cleon is represented as the drunken
and crafty Paphlagonian slave and ' demagogue ' of the old
gentleman, Demos (the People), and is finally outwitted by
a sausage-seller. After ridding himself of his pestilent ' dema-
gogue ' the old Demos appears rejuvenated, takes again into
favour his honest servants Nicias and Demosthenes, and is
enthusiastic for good old Marathonian times. It was probably
on account of this play that Cleon brought an action against
Aristophanes to prove that he was an ahen and not entitled
to exhibit plays. What grounds there were for the action is
uncertain, though it is possible that the poet's father came
from Aegina, or Rhodes. Anyhow, the suit failed, and Aristo-
phanes prided himself later on his Heraclean contest with the
monster ; but he never again ventured on any such violent
personal attacks on public characters, unless we except
Euripides, and perhaps Socrates.
The Clouds (423) is directed especially against the sophists
and rhetoricians and the ' modern education.' An old gentle-
man, deep in debt, takes his son (evidently typical of Alci-
biades) to Socrates to be educated in the new sophistry, so
as to free himself from his creditors by forensic quibbles ;
but he suffers so much from his up-to-date offspring that he
burns down the Socratic ' thinking shop ' on the stage. The
attack on Socrates is elsewhere described (p. 377). It is evident
that the humour was understood by even such an admirer of
Socrates as Plato, for he sent the play to Dionysius, and in
the Symposion he speaks with admiration of Aristophanes.
In the Wasps is satirized the mania for lawsuits and serving
as jurymen (dicasts), whereby all home Hfe and professional
duties are neglected, the whole male population swarming
like wasps to the law-courts. In 421 Aristophanes exhibited
his Peace, in which (in reference to the Peace of Nicias, concluded
in that year) a peace-loving Athenian flies up to heaven,
mounted on a dung-beetle, in search of the Goddess of Peace.
In heaven, however, he finds only the Demon of War, pounding
up the cities and races of men in a gigantic mortar. Peace
has been hurled from heaven and lies buried in a deep pit,
^^7
ANCIENT GREECE
whence all the nations of Greece haul her forth with ropes.
The Birds (414), in which the building of ' Cloud-cuckoo
City ' is described, probably alludes to the great air-castle
that the Athenians were endeavouring to erect by extending
their empire to Sicily. The play appeared shortly before the
disastrous end of the Sicilian expedition. In the Frogs (405)
the god Dionysus descends, like a second Heracles, to Hades —
crossing the Styx amid loud croaking of the chorus of frogs —
in order to bring back Euripides (who had lately died) to give
the Athenians, now in great political trouble, his sage advice.
Dionysus finds him disputing with Aeschylus the right to the
throne of tragedy, and finally Aeschylus returns to earth with
Dionysus, leaving Sophocles as his representative in Hades. In
the remaining extant plays social questions are dealt with. In
the Plutus we have the unjust distribution of wealth and the
question of communism. In the coarse but exceedingly
humorous Lysistrata and the Women in Parliament we have the
rights and political influence of women (who institute a socialistic
state with community of wives). In the Thesmophoriazusae
the women assembled at the festival of the Thesmophoria, to
which no men were admitted, swear to avenge themselves on
Euripides for his misogyny, and finally amidst indescribable
excitement detect the presence of his brother-in-law, whom
he had persuaded to enter the assembly in female disguise.
SECTION C : DEMOCRITUS : THE SOPHISTS : SOCRATES
Greek thought delineates or suggests in sculpturesque out-
line every philosophy worthy of the name, and especially
distinct is the picture that it offers us of the gradual develop-
ment of the conviction that the ordering force omnipresent
in the universe cannot be accounted for by any supposed
' self-creation ' and ' self-movement ' of prime matter, but
solely by the existence of an IntelHgence and a Will that not
only manifests itself in the sensible world, but is also recogniz-
able by the mind as the one Reality. Theoretically, at any
rate, Anaxagoras had reached this doctrine, and we shall see
368
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
later how Socrates and Plato accepted it as the foundation
for their philosophy. But here it is necessary to note a
remarkable genius of the materialistic or ' mechanical ' school,
whose influence aided the development of those brilliant
intellectualists and fashionable lecturers known as the Sophists.
Democritus of Abdera, in Thrace, was born in 460, and is
said to have hved until 361. He was perhaps the son of that
Damasippus who entertained Xerxes at Abdera. After some
years of travel, of which he writes somewhat boastfully, he
resided at Athens, and seems to have excited the dishke of
Anaxagoras (his senior by forty years), probably on account
of his self-conceit and mockery — which may have earned him
the sobriquet ' the Laugher ' (6 ycXwj/) . Plato, too, is said
to have disliked his writings so much that he wished to collect
and burn them. Lengthy fragments of these writings remain.
His style is praised by Cicero as similar to that of Plato. His
physical theories were derived from Leucippus, of whom nothing
is known. They come to us mainly through Epicurus {b. 341)
and the Roman poet Lucretius. He, or Leucippus, is regarded
as the founder of the atomic theory, which has been largely
held by modern science and which supposes matter to consist
of minute sohd particles {not infinitely divisible, as Anaxagoras
beheved) possessing weight and the power of coherence. These
' atoms ' Democritus conceived as infinite in number ; therefore
it was necessary to assume a boundless space to accommodate
them. Through this boundless, dark Inane streamed like
everlasting rain the endless torrents of atoms, clashing together
and by fortuitous concurrence forming " another and another
frame of tilings for ever," as is described by Tennyson in his
poem Lucretius. By giving his atoms weight Democritus
assumed persistent gravity — which is absurd in the case of
bodies moving endlessly through boundless space. Moreover,
atoms acted upon by any such force would " ruin along th'
illimitable Inane " for ever in parallel fines without colliding.
He, or perhaps Epicurus, saw this difficulty and tried to meet
it by asserting that Necessity (self-created from all eternity),
or else Chance, as a kind of side wind, caused the atom-streams
2 A 3<^9
ANCIENT GREECE
to deviate, collide, and combine, thus forming all the objects
of the natural world, and by the coherence of specially fine
and durable particles forming also living organisms and even
spiritual beings and the Deity himself. Thus is the materialist,
if he is not content with agnosticism, ever forced to assume
some immaterial first cause, even though he may not vouchsafe
it intelligence or will. As ethical thinker Democritus preached
(so did Epicurus later) moderation and virtue as the means
of attaining cheerfulness — a comfortable state of mind
{ivOvjixlt}) like the Stoic's aequus animus ; and since no one
is willingly unhappy, the one thing necessary for virtue he
held to be knowledge. This seems very like what Socrates
taught, but the ' knowledge ' of Democritus (seeing that he
believed in nothing but his atoms and his Inane) was something
very different from that of Socrates, who, if we are to believe
Plato rather than Aristophanes, regarded the investigation
of physical causes as, at the best, an innocent form of recrea-
tion, and likened the erudite and fashionable intellectualists
of the day to men eagerly scanning and discussing shadows
cast on a cavern's wall, while the rhetoric by which they
degraded the search for truth into a mere display of dialectic
skill he disdainfully put on the same level as the art of cookery.
And yet some of these Sophists — whom Aristotle describes as
" trading in false wisdom " — were men of great learning, exceed-
ingly ' well educated ' from our modern point of view.^ Such
was the Sicilian Gorgias, who was sent (427) as an ambassador
to Athens and excited there by his eloquence intense enthu-
siasm. Such was Protagoras of Abdera, friend of Pericles
and Euripides, whose philosophy was summed up in the asser-
tion that " man is the measure of all," and who, according to
Plato, made by his teaching more money than Pheidias and
ten other sculptors, and was impeached at Athens for asserting
that he was " unable to know whether the gods exist," and is
said to have perished at sea while fleeing to Sicily. However,
1 Some regard the Sophists as valuable ' spreaders of enlightenment,' and
assert not only that Socrates was called a sophistes by contemporaries, but
that there was no essential difference between his teaching and theirs.
370 •
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
whatever their merits may have been, their ideal, which was
that of the mere intellectuahst, was entirely false, in the judg-
ment of Socrates, who, when the Delphic oracle proclaimed
him the wisest of men, interpreted it to mean that he alone
was fully conscious of his own " nothingness in regard to
wisdom." But perhaps I cannot use my limited space better
than by giving two pictures, copied roughly from Plato, of
some of these professional lecturers. The first is from the
Hippias Major.
Hippias of Klis, the popular teacher and lecturer, has been
bragging to Socrates how he had been sent on embassies of
state and had also been going from city to city lecturing on
science and literature and history and logic and ethics and the
like, and winning huge renown and a large fortune by his
discourses. " Going to Sicily," he says, " in a very short time
I made more than 150 minae [say £600, or much more accord-
ing to the present value of money]. Indeed, I am inclined to
think that no two other Sophists, name whom you will, ever
acquired so much money. And even at Sparta, where the law
prevents a foreigner from giving instruction to the young,
everybody flocked to my lectures and lavished much praise
upon me.
" Socr. But in the name of the gods, of what kind were those
lectures for which they gave you such rewards and praises ?
On what subjects do they so delight to hear you harangue ?
No doubt they were the subjects in which you have such sur-
passing knowledge — the stars and the celestial phenomena.
" Hipp. Yes, sometimes. But the Spartans will hear no
word on such subjects,
" Socr. Then I suppose it was about geometry and mathe-
matics.
" Hipp. Not at all. Most of the Spartans are ignorant of the
most elementary rules of arithmetic.
" Socr. Then was it logic and the art of persuasion ? Or
perhaps that subject in which you of all men are so expert in
accurately distinguishing and defining, I mean letters and
syllables and the harmony of words and rhythms ?
371
ANCIENT GREECE
" Hipp. The Spartans care nothing for such subjects.
" Socr. Well, do tell me — since I cannot find it out by myself.
" Hipp. It was about genealogies of heroes and distinguished
men, and about the migrations of tribes and settling of colonies,
and the antiquity and first founding of cities — in a word, every-
thing concerning ancient history. And I have been obhged
for their sakes to work up these subjects and perfect myself
in that kind of knowledge.
" Socr. By Zeus, Hippias, it was fortunate that they didn't
want you to give a list of all the archons from the time of Solon !
" Hipp. Why so, Socrates ? Upon hearing fifty names
repeated only once I will undertake to remember them."
Thus Socrates (or Plato) banters the self-conceited intellec-
tualism of the lecturing Sophist.
The other picture is from Plato's dialogue Protagoras, in
which Socrates describes, with sly humour, a scene in which
are introduced many of the more famous Sophists.^
" Entering, we found Protagoras walking up and down the
portico, and with him, on one side, were Callias, Paralus, and
Charmides, and on the other Xanthippus, the son of Pericles,
and Antimaerus of Mende, who bears the highest reputation
of all the disciples of Protagoras, and is studying with a view
to hereafter being a Sophist himself. Others followed behind to
catch what was said, seeming chiefly to be foreigners whom
Protagoras brings about with him from every city through
which he travels, charming them [/c»]Xa)j/] with his voice, as
Orpheus of old, while they under the fascination follow the
voice ; some also of our countrymen were in the train. As
I viewed the band [x^p^^^l I was delighted to observe with
what caution they took care never to be in front of Protagoras,
but whenever he turned, those who were behind, dividing on
either side in a circle, fell back so as still to remain in the rear.
' Him past, I saw ' (to speak in Homeric phrase) Hippias of
Elis enthroned beneath the opposite portico ; around whom,
on benches, sat Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others. They
^ I have here borrowed from the version given by Archer Butler in his
Lectures on Ancient Philosophy.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
seemed to question Hippias concerning the sublimities of
nature and the revolutions of the stars, while he, reposing
upon his throne, resolved each successive difficulty. Presently
I came upon Prodicus of Ceos, who was not yet risen, but lay
cushioned in a retired chamber among bedclothes, and around
him were Pausanias, Adimantus, and others. The subjects
of their discussion I could not gather from without, though
extremely anxious to hear Prodicus ; for I hold him to be a
man of wisdom more than human ; but the perpetual rever-
beration of his voice — an extremely deep one — confused the
words in their echoes."
To give any full account of the teachings of Socrates, or even
a bare outhne of the great structure of Ideal philosophy built
thereupon by Plato, lies far beyond the range of this volume.
I shall only offer a few biographical facts and a few remarks
and quotations for the purpose of intimating the nature of these
teachings and this philosophy rather than of describing their
exact form. For the life and personality of Socrates we are
chiefly indebted to the Dialogues of Plato and the Memoirs of
Xenophon ; for his doctrines, although Aristotle tells us some-
thing, we have to investigate the fundamental principles of
Platonic philosophy, endeavouring to distinguish them from the
superstructure ; for how far Socrates used the forms of thought
and imagination (such as those of Ideas, and the allegories
of Metamorphosis and Prenatal Existence) attributed to him
by his great disciple is quite uncertain ; nor can we feel quite
sure that Plato has given us a perfectly trustworthy picture
in all details even of such scenes as the trial and the last hours
of his master. Still, it seems incredible that he should have
misrepresented the essential tenets and the personality of
Socrates, for it would have been at once detected and resented
by those who had known him, and who, to use the words of
one of them, had loved him as " the wisest and justest and
best man they had ever known."
Of the external life of Socrates we know comparatively little,
but we know enough to recognize a noble attempt to practise
373
ANCIENT GREECE
what he taught. " In my hfe," he said a few hours before his
death, " I have striven as much as I was able, and have left
nothing undone, to become a true philosopher. Whether I
have striven in the right way, or whether I have succeeded or
not, I suppose I shall learn in a Httle while, when I reach the
other world, if it be the will of God."
The philosopher was born about 469 in the demos Alopeke
(' The Place of Foxes '), not far from Athens. His father was a
sculptor, or rather a ' stone- worker,' and he himself attained
such proficiency that a group of three draped Graces made by
him was to be seen on the Acropolis, Pausanias asserts, six
centuries later.
He received the ordinary ' musical ' and gymnastic educa-
tion of an Athenian citizen — an education in the arts patro-
nized by the Muses and in athletic exercises— the object of
which was something very far removed from professional or
mercantile success. His knowledge of Homer and other old
poets was evidently extensive. From Xenophon we learn
that he was " fond of studying the treasures that wise men of
old had left in their books," such as the abstruse philosophy of
Heracleitus, whose book, lent him by Euripides, he is said
to have greatly admired, but to have found at times so difficult
that "it needed a DeHan diver." With the mathematical,
astronomical, and philosophical works of Pythagoras he was
acquainted, and in the Phaedo he tells us that when young he
was passionately fond of physical science, but that he aban-
doned it later as dealing, not with realities, but appearances,
and as useless except for merely practical purposes or as a
recreation. He seems to have had an iron constitution and to
have borne unflinchingly pain and fatigue and the extremes
of heat and cold, so that the soldiers, says Alcibiades, " looked
angrily at him." He went, at least in later years, always bare-
foot, and wore the same coarse, homely cloak in summer and
winter alike. His features were not at all such as one associates
with intellect or with Hellenism. Neither friends nor foes spared
their jests on his satyr-like physiognomy, with its broad^nose,
its wide, thick-lipped mouth, and its prominent, glaring" eyes.
374
I
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
In the Symposion Alcibiades likens him to a figure of the
satyr-god Silenus, which, when opened, discloses images of
the Olympian gods. " He thinks all such things as beauty and
riches of no value and spends his Hfe among us in irony and
jest. But when he is serious and is opened, I know not if any
of you have seen the images within. But I have seen them,
and they appeared to me so divine, golden, all-beautiful^
and wonderful that I was ready to do in an instant whatever
Socrates might command."
In 432, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War,
Socrates served as a hoplite in Thrace, at the siege of Potidaea,
and here he saved the life of the wounded Alcibiades. At the
battle of Delion, in 424, where the Athenians suffered a serious
defeat, he behaved, as Alcibiades tells us in the Symposion,
with great courage in covering the retreat, and perhaps saved
the Hfe of Xenophon, carrying him a long distance. Two years
after Delion Socrates fought a third time for his country at
the battle of Amphipolis, and once more distinguished himself
by his courage and endurance. He was now forty-seven years
old. Some time before this he had taken to frequenting the
markets and colonnades and other public places and talking
in a familiar way to any one, rich or poor, who cared to listen
and answer his questions, " babbhng," as Alcibiades puts it,
" about market-donkeys and coppersmiths and shoemakers
and tanners" — testing those who thought they were wise and
proving that they knew nothing truly, and didn't even know
that — plaguing high-priests with some such elementary question
as "What is religion? " or the learned with " What is know-
ledge ? " and poHticians with " What is justice ? " — refusing to
accept cant definitions and current valuations but going back to
primary, indisputable facts and simple, distinct conceptions,
to the true nature and true value of everything — beginning
discussion with some such tiresome, elementary question ^ as
" Do you allow that justice is anything ? and if so, what is it ? "
1 The true subject of Plato's Republic is Justice, the ordinary conception
of which is described by Socrates. He compares the high-priests of Justice
in Athens to men who undertake to tame some savage animal. They learn
375
ANCIENT GREECE
— implanting thus in minds filled with the conceit of false
knowledge the seed of self-knowledge and endeavouring to make
men realize their own ignorance as the first step in the search
for wisdom. As Bacon in science, so Socrates in a higher sphere
set himself and others the task (as Bacon says of himself) of
" throwing entirely aside received theories and conceptions
and applying the mind, thus cleansed, afresh to facts." It is
this inductive process, this search for a solid basis of fact
on which to build up a general law, that Aristotle held to be
the most important factor in the teachings of Socrates.
Socrates likens himself to a troublesome gadfly, and doubtless
he did arouse great resentment among the fashionable and self-
conceited intellectualists and the high-priests of Olympian
orthodoxy, as any man is bound to do who goes about
annoying respectable people with inconvenient questions on
matters which should be left to the care of theologians and
cabinet ministers. Doubtless, too, the fact that his example
incited the young to disprove the wisdom of their elders by
the application of the Socratic scrutiny must have winged a
deadly shaft of accusation against him. " I go about," he
says in his Apology, " testing and examining every man who
has the reputation of being wise, and if I find that he is not
wise, I point out to him on the part of the God that he is not
wise. And I am so busy in this pursuit that I never had leisure
to take any part worth mention in public matters nor to look
after my private affairs. I am in very great poverty by reason
of my service to the God." Twice, however, we hear of
his taking part in pubHc affairs (pp. 343, 345), and on both
occasions, unsupported and at the peril of his life, he refused
to give his sanction to gross injustice.
That Socrates had gained notoriety and had aroused ani-
mosity even as early as the battle of Delion is proved by the
celebrated scene in the Clouds of Aristophanes (423) in which
he is depicted as a believer in strange deities (such as Aether
its moods, learn what sounds provoke and soothe it and how to manage and
coax it, and having thus discovered the temper and caprices of the many-
headed beast, the public, they call that justice which it likes, and that injiistice
of which it disapproves.
roo. Socrates
lOI. Pl,ATO
I02. Aristophanes
103. I,YSIAS
376
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
and King Vortex — deities not unknown to modern science)
and as a swindling Sophist and a corrupter of the young. But
especially he is represented (of course quite falsely) as a scientist
impiously prying into the secrets of Nature, suspended mid-air
in a basket in order to examine the nature and motions of the
heavenly bodies, and endeavouring to calculate the length
of the leaps of a flea by dipping its feet in wax and using the
impression as a measure. Aristophanes was not personally
hostile to Socrates (at least in the Symposion the two seem
on quite friendly terms) , but he was a staunch Conservative, a
praiser of old Marathonian times, rigidly orthodox, strenuously
imperialistic, and apparently quite incapable of distinguishing
Socratic wisdom from the blatant intellectualism and the
atheistic materialism of the day. Suspicion and resentment
gathered year by year until at last the storm broke, and he
who was among the Greeks the first to proclaim a God of perfect
wisdom and goodness, whose will is the true cause of all
things, and to assert that he " held it more certain than any-
thing else that the soul exists after death and that it will be
better in that other hfe for the good than for the evil," is
condemned to die as a malefactor, on the charge of " not
believing in the gods of his country " and for " corrupting the
young," exemplifying to no small extent in himself that " truly
just man " whom in Plato's Republic he thus describes : " He
will be misjudged, despised, and hated ; he will be condemned
as unjust and as an evil-doer ; he will be scourged, tormented,
fettered, have his eyes burnt out ; and lastly, after having
suffered all manner of evil, will be crucified." The last scenes
— those of his trial, imprisonment, and death — are well known,
and to give any worthy picture of them is here impossible.
I can only refer those who have not yet read it to the vivid
and touching account given by Plato in the Apology, the
Crito, and the Phaedo.
Doubtless many of the wisest and best were deeply shocked
and grieved. The great Athenian rhetorician lyysias is said
to have composed a speech for Socrates to use in his defence —
but Socrates would not use it. Diodorus (who Hved in the age
377
ANCIENT GREECE
of Julius Caesar) and other writers assert that even the Athe-
nian rabble bitterly repented their act, and put to death the
accusers of Socrates. It is said that certain verses of the
Palamedes of Euripides (" Ye have killed, O Greeks, the all-
wise, the nightingale of the Muses . . . ") made the audience
burst into tears. Such hysterical changes of public sentiment
are common enough, but although there were many who, like
Xenophon and Plato and Phaedo and Crito and Simmias,
loved Socrates as the " best and wisest man they had ever
known," it is not at all probable that the Athenian mob and
its leaders were capable of repenting what they believed to
have been a perfectly justifiable and wise extermination of
a noisome and intolerable influence. Justifiable, from the point
of view of the dicast, it may have been, and some liistorians,
such as Grote, who regard with favour the Athenian dicast,
speak of the " marked and offensive self-exaltation " and the
"insulting tone" — such a tone as " dicasts had never heard
before" — with which Socrates forced his judges to "uphold
the majesty of the court and the constitution," To some of
us the unwritten law which Socrates by his character and his
teaching proclaimed was of a majesty inexpressibly more
sacred than that of the Athenian dicasteries, to which with
such calm dignity he submitted himself.
Some of the intellectual and imaginative forms in which
Socrates, perhaps, clothed his beliefs will be mentioned on a
later occasion. Here I add only a few more words about the
methods that he used — so entirely different from those employed
by the fashionable lecturers and teachers of his day. His
wisdom consisted, as he tells us, in the consciousness of his
own ignorance. " I never professed," he says, " to teach any
one any knowledge." He did not profess to impart ready-
made opinion, but by quiet discussion he tried gradually to
bring about a certain attitude or frame of mind such as would
prove receptive of truth. One of these methods was what is
known as Socratic irony. In one way the ' irony ' of Socrates
was, of course, no pretence — for he was deeply conscious of his
own ignorance — but he often pleaded ignorance in order to
378
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
elicit the definitions of his opponents or hearers. " Here is a
specimen of your well-known irony," exclaims some one in the
Republic. " I knew all the time that you would refuse to answer,
and would pretend ignorance and do everything rather than
answer a straightforward question." How far the respect that
Socrates often shows for the learned ignorance of his opponents
was pretended or sincere it is not always easy to discover, but
his ' irony ' never has any tendency to sarcasm ; it is always
good-natured and modest ; but nevertheless it must have often
given great offence to self-conceit. Another Socratic method
is what he calls the maieutic, or ' midwife ' method. In
playful allusion to the profession of his mother, Phaenarete,
he says that he too merely helped at the birth of thought —
helped the labouring mind to produce its offspring — something
that shall be its own by the rights of nature, not merely
a supposititious foundling picked up in the gutter of public
opinion.
The word ' dialectic ' (discussion) is used nowadays in rather
a loose way to describe any of the artifices of disputation ;
but the dialectic of Socrates (or Plato) in its highest sense is
the discourse of the mind on the beliefs of the soul — the mani-
festation in thought and words of that " discussion of the soul
with herself which takes place without the voice." But, as
Dante tells us, " form accords not always with the intention of
art," and even the serenest self-communion may seem sometimes
to take the form, in Plato's dialogues, of rather exhausting and
apparently quibbling disputation. To those of us who are
impatient for conclusions the long-drawn discussion may at
times seem tedious and unprofitable. In some cases no
conclusion at all is arrived at, and one looks in vain for any
dogmatic summing up, such as no modern writer on such
subjects could afford to dispense with, if he had any respect
for the critics. How entirely different the object of Socrates
was from that of most who argue may be seen from what he
says in the Phaedo : "I am not in the least anxious that
any one present should believe in my theories, except just as
may happen. ... If this is not true, then something like it
379
ANCIENT GREECE
may be true." He knew well that the highest truths were not
to be thus attained and formulated— a fact that is well stated
in a letter written probably by Plato himself.^ " About
these things," he says — he means the highest objects of
philosophy — " there never was and never will be any treatise
of mine. For a matter of this kind cannot be expressed in
words like other kinds of learning, but by long familiarity and
living together with the thing itself a light, as it were of a
flame leaping forth, will suddenly be kindled in the soul and
will nourish itself there."
Perhaps it may be asked : "Of what nature, then, was
this inexpressible object of the Socratic philosophy ? And
what is the use of this dialectic, or of any intellectual process,
if it cannot hope to attain and formulate the highest kind of
truth ? "
What Socrates (or Plato) believed to be attainable by intel-
lectual processes is explained in one of the most interesting
and most difficult of the Platonic dialogues, the Theaetetus,
where Socrates comes to the conclusion that the highest
certainty attainable by the mind is what he calls " a true
opinion with reason " — that is, an observed fact which is
confirmed by other facts and can be classed under a general
law. Such inductive truths he accepted as ' rafts,' seaworthy
enough to waft us over the waters of intellectual and practical
life.
But there are truths beyond the reach of the unaided mind
— truths of which the knowledge is identical with virtue (so
that wrong-doing is only due to ignorance of such truths, and
"nobody is willingly — but only ignorantly — wicked"). To
gain a vision of such truths and realities is possible by means of
some contemplative faculty, the " reasoning part of the soul,"
as it is called in the Phaedrus, and dialectic in its highest
sense, as the " voiceless discussion of the soul with herself,"
induces these seasons of calm weather in which such visions
1 The Seventh Epistle, which describes Plato's relations with Dion and Diony-
sius in Sicily, and seems, although sometimes questioned, to be genuine. (See
Selections from Plato, edited by T. W. RoUeston.)
380
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
are vouchsafed. And should we wish for some intimation
of the nature of these truths, after which Socrates searched so
earnestly, perhaps we cannot do better than turn to the
definition that he has given of true philosophy. If we consult
a text-book of modern philosophy ^ we shall find that " Philo-
sophy proper is the science of the phenomena and laws of
Mind," or something similar. If we open the Phaedo we shall
find that " True philosophy is nothing else but the study of
how to die and to be dead."
But perhaps the following passage may still more clearly inti-
mate of what kind was that knowledge of the true nature and
cause of all things which was the aim of Socratic philosophy.
" When I was a young man," says Socrates in the Phaedo,
shortly before drinking the cup of hemlock, " I was wondrously
desirous of that kind of wisdom which they call natural science.
It seemed to me a very grand accomplishment to know the
causes of everything, and I tossed myself in speculating
whether matter, when by alternations of cold and heat it has
arrived at a certain state of putridity, generates life — and
whether it was the blood or air or animal heat or the brain
that generates intelligence and the senses, and thence memory
and opinion. . . . However, I received no advantage from my
inquiries. . . . But once I heard somebody reading out of a
book which he said was by Anaxagoras, and when he came to
that part in which he says that Intelligence [Nouc] orders
and is the cause of all, I was delighted and thought it an excellent
idea that Intelligence orders everything and puts it where it
is. But from this grand hope I was swept away when I read
the book and found that the man made no use of this Intelli-
gence in the ordering of the cosmos, but talked about airs
and aethers and waters and all kinds of strange things. And he
appeared to me like one who should first assert that all the
actions of Socrates are due to intelligence, but should then
declare that I am sitting here because my body is composed
of bones and muscles, and that the muscles being elastic and
^ Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures. I suppose the definition applies rather to
' psychology,' as it is now called.
3^1
ANCIENT GREECE
the bones solid enable me to bend my limbs, and that this is
the reason why in this crouching attitude I am sitting here,
utterly ignoring the true reason,, namely, that, since the
Athenians thought it better to condemn me, on this account I
also have thought it better to sit here, and more honourable
to remain and endure whatever punishment they may have
ordained. Otherwise, by the Dog, I think these muscles and
bones would have long ago been somewhere in Megara or
Boeotia." ^
SECTION D : SCULPTURE {c. 440 to c. 400)
To divide anything of such vitahty and continuous growth as
Greek sculpture into distinct periods is perhaps unwise, but
much of what was produced between the chief works of Pheidias
(c. 450-432) and those of Scopas and Praxiteles (c. 390-360)
seems to possess marked and interesting characteristics.
Nothing is more striking in the wonderful development of
Greek art and literature during the fifth century than the
rise and pre-eminence of Athenian influence. We have already
seen how in the earlier part of the century the influence of
the ' athletic ' Peloponnesian school found its way into Attica,
especially through Ageladas, the master of both Pheidias and
Myron, and how this vigorous, masculine style, wedded, as it
were, to Attic grace and deHcacy, produced the incomparable
art that we still admire in the Parthenon frieze and pediments.
In its turn the new and beautiful Athenian style influenced
the sculpture of the Peloponnese and extended even to such
distant regions as I^ycia and Western Sicily.
(i) At Athens itself we find Ivycius, son of the great sculptor
Myron. Nothing of his has survived, but he is less of a mere
name than many once famous Greek artists, for besides the
numerous works mentioned by old writers, such as the cele-
brated group at Olympia representing the combat between
Achilles and Memnon, he made one or more of the bronze
i Phaedo, xlv. sq., abbreviated in parts.
382
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
equestrian statues that once decorated the Propylaea,^ and
on the basis of one of these his name may still be read. Another
Athenian sculptor, a Cretan by birth and Cresilas by name,
is of greater interest, for in the British Museum may be seen
what is a fine copy (Fig. 96) of his bust of Pericles, the basis
of which has been discovered during the excavations on the
Acropolis. It is supposed to be an ideal rather than a realistic
portrait — " not so much an accurate presentment of the
features of Pericles as an embodiment and expression of his
personality." It was probably one of the first statues of public
men erected at Athens. As in the case of coins, portraiture
in Greek sculpture was rare till the fourth century. Even the
statues erected to victorious athletes were usually, it is supposed,
not realistic portraits, nor were, as a rule, in earlier times, the
figures on tombstones. On the other hand, we have the
statues of the Tyrannicides as early as about 500, and such
portraits as that of Aristion, about 550 (Fig. 51). A figure of
Miltiades, as we have already seen, stood in the Marathon
trophy at Delphi, and Polygnotus introduced portraits into
his pictures, and Pheidias did the same in the case of the
notorious shield of Athene (Fig. 79) ; but until this bust of
Pericles was set up, evidently to record the founder of the
Parthenon and the Propylaea, no great Athenian seems to
have been honoured by a public statue in his lifetime.
Another Athenian sculptor of this period, Strongylion, has real
interest for us, for one of his works, a colossal bronzen figure
of the wooden horse of Troy, is mentioned {c. 414) by Aristo-
phanes, and its basis has been discovered on the Acropolis.
(2) Attic influence in the Peloponnese is well exemplified in
the temple of Apollo at Phigaleia, in Arcadia (Fig. 84 ; Note A) .
It was built either after the Great Plague of 430 or about ten
years later by the Athenian Ictinus, the architect of the
Parthenon. The frieze, which is complete, is now in the
British Museum. It represents combats between Centaurs
^ The great bronze four-horse chariots, one erected after the Chalcidian
war in 506 and another probably by Pericles about 446, were probably placed
on new bases when the new Propylaea of Mnesicles was built, c. 437, and
perhaps the statues by I^ycius were then erected.
ANCIENT GREECE
and I^apithae and between Greeks and Amazons. Although
the execution appears to be by local workmen and is defective,
the design is undoubtedly by some great Athenian sculptor,
and the figures and the grouping and the splendid, though
roughly finished, drapery recall the Parthenon sculptures.
An exceedingly finely balanced and vigorous group is that of
which Heracles and the Amazon queen form the centre.
But perhaps the greatest triumph of Attic influence is to
be noted in the celebrated Argive (or Sicyonian) sculptor
Polycleitus, who is said to have been a fellow-pupil of Pheidias
in the studio of Ageladas at Argos. Polycleitus continued
the traditions of the Argive school, with its heavy-limbed,
strongly muscular, and highly unintellectual athletes, but he
combined with massive strength a certain amount of Pheidian
grace and proportion, so that his statues were regarded as
almost perfect representations of the highest ideal of the human
form, and, although the numerous marble copies that we
possess doubtless give a very poor idea of the bronze originals
(which are said to have been of an exquisite finish) , we can still
recognize in the Spear-hearer and the Diadoumenos (an athlete
binding a fillet round his head) something of what formerly
excited such great admiration. The former (the Doryphoros)
represents a nude athletic figure holding a spear sloped over
his left shoulder, and was known as the ' Canon ' — that is,
the ' Rule ' or standard of perfection in proportion — and
served as an embodiment of the rules which Polycleitus pub-
lished in a treatise of like name. But he did not limit himself
to the athletic style. Influenced doubtless by the Athene
Parthenos and the Olympian Zeus, he made a great chrysele-
phantine statue of Hera for her temple near Argos ; and this
Hera is praised by some ancient writers as equalling or even
surpassing the Pheidian statues. The goddess was enthroned
and crowned and held a pomegranate in one hand, and in the
other her sceptre, on which was perched a cuckoo. The head
of this Hera given on Argive coins (Plate V, 7) is certainly very
much more beautiful than any relic of the Athene Parthenos.
On the site of the Heraion near Argos have been found fragments
384
^"■
104. Mourning Athene
105. Stele with Woman
carrying Vase
/^'■#'' .
106. Stele of hegeso
107. Figure from Greek Tomb
384
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
of its sculptures, which both in the grace and variety of the
figures and the floating or clinging drapery reveal a strong
Attic influence ; and many of them are in Attic (Pentelic)
marble. An exceedingly beautiful female head in Parian
marble, now at Athens, perhaps belonged to the pediment,
or to a decorative statue. If these sculptures are by Poly-
cleitus, as some believe and many hope, he must have been
much more influenced by Attic grace than could be inferred
from his Spear-bearer or from his heavily built and square-jowled
Amazon (Fig. io8), and if more of his work were extant we
should probably feel no surprise when ancient writers give
the palm for ' art ' to Polycleitus and for ' grandeur ' to
Pheidias.
(3) The Nereid Monument, probably a regal tomb, was
discovered by Sir Charles Fellows in Lycia. Its remains,
lying scattered by earthquake, were brought to England in
1842 and are to be seen in the British Museum. On a square
base, ornamented v/ith two bands of frieze, rose an Ionic
building, between whose columns stood female figures in float-
ing drapery, probably representing ocean nymphs (Nereides)
skimming over the surface of the sea. Some of these recall
vividly the beautiful Victory of Paeonius (Fig. 93), and the
subjects and style of the friezes show unmistakable resem-
blance to Attic work (such as the friezes of the Athene Nike
temple at Athens) and to the Phigaleian sculptures. The
date of the Nereid Monument is probably about 420. Another,
and perhaps older, Ivycian monument which reveals similar
influences has been found at Trysa, and is now at Vienna.
It is, however, very weatherworn, being made of soft stone,
and not, as the Nereid tomb, of Parian marble.
(4) Greek tombstones {a-rrj^cu) are to be seen in many
museums, and at Athens especially there is a very large number
of beautiful specimens of Attic work, found in the Cerameicus
and in Athens (some built into the walls of Themistocles),
and at the Peiraeus and elsewhere in Attica. Some of these,
such as that of Aristion (Fig. 51), keep something of the form
of the original stele {i.e. column), which was anciently erected
2B 385
ANCIENT GREECE
on the tumulus, and in older examples the single figure is
perhaps more often a portrait than it was in later times, when
tombstones seem not seldom to have been bought ready made,
it being enough if they represented fairly well the required
age and sex. The single figure often represented the deceased
occupied in some characteristic pursuit ^ — as an athlete with
his strigil and oil-flask, or a child with a bird or a toy, or a hunter
with his dog, or a lady (as in Fig. io6) with her jewels, or the
warrior in battle (Fig. 109).
Many of the most beautiful and pathetic of these stelae
date from the fourth century, but, as is natural in the case
of funeral monuments, the designs are generally old and
carry one back sometimes to Pheidian days. The original
narrow pillar gave way considerably to broader tombstones,
and the sculptured relief was often enclosed in an archi-
tectural framework. Frequently we find a family group
represented, and a scene of farewell — a maiden perhaps
having her sandals put on, as a sign of departure, or a man
clasping affectionately the hand of his wife, or his child, or his
aged father or mother. No relics of antiquity bring us nearer
to past ages than these Athenian tombstones, nor do any
surpass them in calm and delicate beauty.
1 Thus in the Odyssey Elpenor begs that his oar shall be erected on
his tumulus.
386
CHAPTER VIII
THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN
SUPREMACY
(404-362)
SECTIONS : XENOPHON : SICILY AND THE CARTHAGINIANS :
PlyATO : SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURE, AND PAINTING
THE story of the Persian invasions is associated with much
that is great in Greek character and much that is inte-
resting in the history of humanity, and the rise and fall
of the Athenian Empire deserves study, in spite of many
tedious and many revolting details, not only on account of
the incomparable skill with which it is depicted by Thucydides,
but also because it has many points of contact with the true
history of Greece — with the history of that Greece which alone
retains any importance for our age. But the period that
intervened between the fall of Athens and the rise of the Mace-
donian power is not of this nature. It offers, indeed, some
splendid examples of courage and self-devotion, which we
must needs admire, however little we may sympathize with the
causes that called them forth ; but the endless quarrels and
battles and political combinations, details of which, raked
together from old authors, compose what is generally called
the history of this rather dreary interval, no longer possess for
us any appreciable value, except perhaps as an exercise for
the memory. I shall, therefore, give only a short summary
of the external events of these forty-five years, during which
the baneful lust for ' supremacy ' ever again reared its head,
until a semi-barbaric empire arose against which ancient
Hellas, drained of her life-blood by internecine strife, was
powerless to stand.
387
ANCIENT GREECE
(i) The Spartan Supremacy
At Aegospotami (405) I^ysander had captured nearly the
whole of the Athenian fleet, and shortly afterwards Athens
was forced to renounce almost all her empire and to acknow-
ledge the supremacy of Sparta both on sea and land. For
thirty years Sparta had proclaimed herself as the liberator
of Greece from the enslavement of the ' despot city.' At the
beginning this claim had been sanctioned by the enthusiastic
approval of the greater part of the Hellenic world, and at the
end of the war the Long Walls of Athens had been pulled down
to the music of flutes and amid jubilant shouts welcoming the
dawn of the new liberty. But the enthusiasm was short-lived.
It was soon apparent that Sparta had no intention of granting
independence to the cities that acknowledged her supremacy.
Athens was, like a wounded lioness, too dangerous to meddle
with. For a year or so a Spartan harmost (' regulator,' or
commandant) with his troops had occupied the Acropolis, and
a decarchy (oligarchy of ten) managed the civil government,
but the wisdom of the Spartan king Pausanias, doubtless
influenced by the success of the political exiles under Thrasy-
bulus, finally allowed the re-establishment of the democracy,
while in the subject cities of the Confederacy, now under the
control of Sparta, rapacious harmosts and subservient decarchies,
from whom there was no appeal (as there had been under the
Athenian Empire), for a long time continued to exercise
the worst kind of tyranny. Sparta proved herself wholly
incapable of founding any pan-Hellenic Empire. During her
short-lived supremacy her one object was her own territorial
extension, both in Greece and in Asia, and not only did greed
and a brutal and stolid militarism render her incapable of any
conception of pan-Hellenic federation or even any true imperial
policy, but she also stooped to the meanest treachery against
the Hellenic world. The descendants of the heroes of Thermo-
pylae and Plataea, after overthrowing the Athenian Empire by
Persian aid, purchased by the betrayal of the Ionic cities, and
after proving faithless to their barbarian allies and attacking
388
SPARTA AND THEBES
the western satrapies in the hope of Asiatic plunder, and after
losing their naval supremacy at the battle of Cnidus (394),
overpowered by the Persian fleet under the command of the
fugitive Athenian admiral Conon (p. 344), proved capable
of once more abandoning the lonians and of accepting the
humiliating peace (that of Antalcidas, or the ' Peace of the
Great King ') by which Persia was recognized as the overlord
and arbiter of the Hellenic states — and this merely in the hope
of securing their own supremacy in their miserable quarrels
with their neighbours in Greece. This hope was frustrated by
the victory of Thebes at I^euctra in 371.
Such is the bare outline of the Spartan hegemony, and into
this framework the following facts will easily fit themselves.
Of the first period the most important fact is probably the
expedition of Cyrus, related by Xenophon in his Anabasis
(see Section A of this chapter). It will be remembered that
Cyrus had been sent by his father, Darius II, to supersede
the satrap Tissaphernes at Sardis. He was the favourite of
his mother. Queen Parysatis, and had been saved by her
influence when his elder brother, Artaxerxes, who had succeeded
Darius in 405, had endeavoured to put him to death on a charge
of high treason, brought by Tissaphernes. He was intimate
with the Spartan I^ysander, whom he liberally supplied with
money, and being a great admirer of Greek discipline and
courage and fully aware of the powerlessness of Oriental forces
against even a small body of trained hoplites, he determined
to dethrone his brother, and set about enlisting Greek mer-
cenaries ; and in this he was helped by the Spartan government,
who placed 700 men at his disposal. Ere long he had collected
about 100,000 native troops and a body of 10,600 Greek
hoplites under the command of Clearchus, a Spartan harmost
who had been banished for trying to make himself the tyrant
of Byzantium.
Cyrus had led his army through Phrygia and I^ycaonia and
as far as Tarsus in Cilicia before the Greeks discovered that the
object of the expedition was not, as had been given out, the
punishment of the robber tribes of Pisidia, but a more distant
389
ANCIENT GREECE
goal, and it was not till they reached the Euphrates at
Thapsacus that they learnt that they were marching against
the Great King. By lavish promises of pay they were induced
to proceed. The vast hosts of Artaxerxes barred their progress
at Cunaxa, some sixty miles north of Babylon. Although the
left wing of the barbarians fled in panic at the charge of the
Greeks, their centre and right outflanked and surrounded the
much smaller army of Cyrus, who in an ecstasy of fury led a
band of horsemen against his brother and actually succeeded
in wounding him with a javeHn,i ^^^ ^vas struck in the eye by
the javelin of a Carian soldier, and, together with all of his
faithful ' table-companions,' was overpowered and slain (401).
Commanded to lay down their arms, the Greeks refused to
obey, but they accepted the guidance of Tissaphernes, who
misled them towards the north across the Tigris. Clearchus
and Proxenus and three other generals and twenty captains
1 " Wounded him through the corslet, as says Ctesias the physician, who
also says that he himself healed him " {An.i.8). Ctesias was a Greek, a native
of Cnidus, who for seventeen years was the physician of Artaxerxes and wrote
a history of Persia, of which we possess abstracts given by the writer Photius.
SPARTA AND THEBES
were induced to visit the camp of Tissaphernes for a parley,
and were massacred, together with their attendant soldiers.
Then Xenophon the Athenian, though he had no rank, having
joined the expedition as the guest of Proxenus, took the lead,
and under his guidance and that of the Spartan Cheirisophus
the Greeks, striking boldly northward through Kurdistan and
Armenia, after many sufferings and losses succeeded in reach-
ing the Kuxine Sea at Trapezus (Trebizond), whence, partly
by sea and partly by land, they made their way to Chalcedon,
on the Bosporus. After serving for a time in Thrace they —
the 6000 that still remained together — crossed over again to
Asia Minor, where they found service against Persia under
the Spartan general Dercyllidas and under King Agesilaus,
with whom the remnant returned to Sparta. With these
survivors of the Ten Thousand was Xenophon, who for a time
had returned to Athens, reaching it a few weeks after the death
of his much-loved master, Socrates (399). Of his subsequent
life, as well as of his Anabasis and other works, more will be
said later.
The death of Cyrus and the return of Tissaphernes to vSardis,
intent on revenge, naturally alarmed the Greeks in Asia.
They appealed to Sparta, and the Spartans, to whom the
expedition had revealed the impotence of Oriental forces
against Greek discipline, tempted by the hope of rich plunder
and possibly the annexation of the Persian Empire, sent troops
under Thimbron and then under Dercyllidas. But after
some successes they made a truce with Tissaphernes and
Pharnabazus and sent envoys to Susa to propose alhance
and the betrayal of Greek Asia. The proposals were rejected.
Artaxerxes had determined to prosecute the war by sea, and
had set Conon, the exiled Athenian admiral, over 300 Phoenician
and Cihcian ships. Thereupon (in 396) the Spartans sent
out with large reinforcements their king Agesilaus, who,
lame and puny in stature but big with courage and ambi-
tion, regarding himself as a second Agamemnon,^ dreamt of
^ He tried to sacrifice, like Agamemnon, at Aulis before starting, but was
expelled by the Thebans — an insult he never forgave. His succession to his
ANCIENT GREECE
conquests such as some sixty-six years later Alexander realized.
Having got rid of the troublesome and ambitious I^ysander
(who shortly after was killed at Haliartus, in Boeotia), he
defeated Tissaphernes — who was consequently deposed and
murdered by a successor sent from Susa by the influence of
Parysatis — and occupied Phrygia, the satrapy of Pharna-
bazus ; but affairs in Greece compelled the Spartans to recall
him. Reluctantly renouncing his schemes of Oriental conquest,
he left his brother-in-law, Peisander, in command of the Greek
fleet and returned with his troops by the overland route —
that of Xerxes — through Thrace and Macedonia.
The troubles in Greece that had recalled him were due to
the insolent and overbearing conduct of the Spartans, who
had ahenated their allies, almost exterminated the Kleans,
expelled the fugitive Messenians from Naupactus (p. 336),
and caused Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Thebes (incited by
Persian emissaries) to form a hostile league. Fighting had taken
place near Corinth ^ and at Haliartus, in Boeotia, and when
Agesilaus arrived from the north a fierce and bloody battle
took place at Coroneia (Western Boeotia), in which the Spartans
were technically victorious ; but their king, who was himself
nearly trampled to death in the fight and was disheartened
by the news of the defeat at Cnidus, retreated to the Pelopon-
nese, crossing over from Delphi, as the confederates held the
Isthmus. Only a week or two before Coroneia (August 394)
there had been fought a naval battle near Cnidus, in which
Peisander had been slain and his fleet utterly routed by the
Persian fleet under the command of Conon. The result of
this defeat was that all the Greek cities of Asia expelled the
Spartan harmosts and acknowledged Artaxerxes as their
overlord. The satrap Pharnabazus then with his Persian
brother Agis, the fellow-king with Pausanias of Sparta, had been secured
(in spite of an oracle that warned against a ' lame monarch ') by Lysander,
who, being foiled in a project to establish his own military dictatorship,
and believing that he would easily rule such a cripple, voted for him against
the son of Agis, I,eotychidas, whom he accused of illegitimacy — as son of
Alcibiades.
^ See explanation of Fig. 109 in I<ist of Illustrations.
io8. Amazon by Poi.yci<eitus
109. STEIvE OF Dexii^eos
-%
no. From the Mausoi,eum
III. Head of Cnidian Aphrodite
392
SPARTA AND THEBES
fleet cruised round Greece, overawing the Spartans, and he
ahowed Conon with the crews of some of the Persian ships to
land at the Peiraeus and help the Athenians to rebuild their
lyong Walls. Thus ended the naval supremacy of Sparta,
which had lasted ten years (404-394).
Her land supremacy Sparta still upheld, though with ever-
increasing difficulty. Even in Asia Minor she still warred
against Persia, for the Great King had again disdainfully
rejected her overtures for purchasing his alliance by the
betrayal of the Greek Asiatic cities. At length, however,
an impolitic and somewhat ungrateful act of Athens — the
support of the Cypriot king Evagoras in his revolt against
Persia — gained for Sparta the favour that she craved, and
Artaxerxes listened graciously to the pleadings of her envoy,
Antalcidas, and issued a decree claiming for himself Cyprus
and all the Hellenic cities in Asia, and proclaiming himself
the arbiter of Greece. " If any," he said, " refuse to accept
this peace, I shall make war on them with ships and with
money." This decree was engraved on tablets that were
set up in all the chief sanctuaries of the Grecian states. To
such a depth of humihation by its insane fratricidal feuds had
Greece demeaned herself before the barbarian. Nor did even
such a foe of Persia as Agesilaus seem to feel the humiliation.
He strongly favoured the ' King's Peace ' (generally known
as the ' Peace of Antalcidas '), and laughingly remarked
that " the Persians were I^aconizing."
On the strength of this understanding with Persia, and a
similar understanding with the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius, the
Spartans began again to act in a high-handed fashion. The
city of Mantineia, in Arcadia, had at times given them trouble.
They now razed it and dispersed the population into the five
country villages of which it had originally (c. 470) been formed
— an act worthy of Darius or Xerxes. Three years later
(382) lyacedaemonian troops on their way towards Macedonia
(where a confederation was beginning to cause Sparta suspi-
cions) seized the citadel of Thebes — a violation of peace and
an act of tyrannical insolence denounced by all right-minded
393
ANCIENT GREECE
men in Hellas, such as the venerable orator Lysias and Isocrates,
and regarded sorrowfully by Xenophon, the lover of Sparta,
as the fatal deed that brought down heaven's just retribution.
This retribution came surely but somewhat slowly. The
Cadmeian citadel was recaptured by Pelopidas with a band
of Theban exiles, disguised as women, and under the new
tactics and the discipline of his friend, the great Theban
general Epameinondas, the military power of Thebes rapidly
grew till she became the head of a Boeotian confederacy, and
as the rival of Sparta won the alliance even of Athens, her
hereditary enemy.
Moreover, Athens had already, since the crushing defeat
of the Spartan fleet at Cnidus, regained her naval superiority
and was again endeavouring to found another confederacy,
if not another empire. In 376 she won a naval victory over
the Spartans near the island of Naxos, and her new fleet,
under Timotheus, the son of Conon, cruised triumphantly
around the coasts of the Peloponnese, and an attack that
the Spartans, aided by the Sicihan Dionysius, made on Corcyra
was foiled by the Athenians. But Athens became jealous of
the rising power of Thebes. She consented to an alliance
with Sparta (the ' Peace of CalHas,' 371). Thebes was to have
been included in the peace, but refused to take the oath except
as the head of the Boeotian confederacy. " Will you leave
the Boeotian cities independent ? " asked the Spartan king
Agesilaus. " Will you leave the Peloponnesian cities in-
dependent ? " replied Epameinondas. The name of Thebes
was therefore struck out of the treaty.
Athens was now once more a ' great power,' and had
Sparta been content to allow her the naval supremacy and
to retain for herself the hegemony on land, this Peace of
Callias might possibly have brought about some such pan-
Hellenic federation as that which the Athenian orator
Isocrates had so enthusiastically described in the Panegyric
that he delivered before the Greeks assembled at the Olympian
festival (p. 437). But two new forces had arisen to disturb
the equilibrium — Thebes and Thessaly ; for the mihtary chief
394
7^:;j^w:^mkmi^!^?k<mMm>s^?''^W^^^^'^^'^
w
w
o
CL,
^
(-T
o
fe
CO
o
<!■>
(f)
W
>»
:s
«
m
^
w
"S
W
>.
(4
«3
a
H
SPARTA AND THEBES
{tagos) of Thessaly, Jason, tyrant of Pherae, was aspiring
to play a part similar to that borne so successfully a little
later by Philip of Macedon. Relying on his powerful Thes-
sahan cavalry, a large body of paid hoplites, and a rapidly
increasing navy, he dreamed of uniting all Hellas under his
command, and when in 371 the Spartans were routed and
slaughtered by the Thebans at Leuctra, not far from Plataea,
in Boeotia, it was Jason who, though he arrived too late to
help the Thebans, dictated the terms. He behaved as the
victor, and overawed all Northern Greece, threatening to
usurp the rights of the Amphictionic Council and to elect
himself president of the Pythian Games — possibly even to
seize the treasury at Delphi. But after four years his career
was cut short by assassination, and the power of Thessaly
subsided as rapidly as it had arisen.
(2) The Theban Supremacy (371-362)
I^euctra was won by the tactics of Epameinondas. He
adopted and improved a formation already used by the
Thebans at Coroneia. He drew up his men in a wedge, fifty
shields deep, which cut through the twelve-ranked Spartans,
as Xenophon says, " like the beak of a charging trireme." A
thousand Lacedaemonians, among them King Cleombrotus and
four hundred Spartiats, were slain. During the next nine years
the Thebans held the coveted ' supremacy,' and again and
again invaded the Peloponnese under their ' Boeotarch '
Epameinondas, while Pelopidas made frequent expeditions
into Thessaly and Macedonia to support the cities against the
despots and to extend the Theban hegemony.
Both in the Peloponnese and in Thessaly the Theban
influence, guided by the wisdom of Epameinondas, was on the
side of liberty, and in the midst of continual bloodshed we
hear of certain acts that proved beneficial and of permanent
value. Two great means of defence against tyranny, whether
of a despot ruler or a despot city, are confederation and
synoecism — that is, the centralization of a scattered population
into fortified towns. This had induced Sparta to raze the
395
ANCIENT GREECE
Arcadian city of Mantineia and disperse its inhabitants, and
no sooner was Sparta rendered powerless by the defeat at
lyeuctra than the Mantineians rebuilt their home and sur-
rounded it with a double line of walls, in spite of the impotent
remonstrances of old King Agesilaus. An Arcadian con-
federation was then formed, and by the advice of Epamei-
nondas a new federal capital. Megalopolis (' Great Cit}^ '),
was founded not far from the lyaconian border, on an affluent
of the Alpheus. Thirty-eight village communities formed
the bulk of its population. It was encircled by a strong
double line of fortifications more than five miles long. The
remains of its theatre and the great federal assembly-hall,
the Thersilion, are still to be seen.
Epameinondas and his Thebans now invaded the Pelopon-
nese. They crossed the Eurotas by Amyclae and (what no
foe had ever done before) approached and threatened
Sparta itself, and, had not prompt assistance arrived from
allied Peloponnesian towns, the unwalled city would prob-
ably have been taken. ^ Epameinondas then crossed into
Messenia, where on the slopes of Mount Ithome, using the
site of the old stronghold for the new acropolis, he founded
the city of Messene, to populate which the Messenian
exiles, ejected in 399 from Naupactus by the Spartans and
scattered through the whole of Hellas, came flocking. This
new city — a I^iberia in which the former thralls of Sparta were
now free citizens of a hostile state planted on Spartan terri-
tory — held its own until (in 146) it was incorporated in the
Roman Empire. The fortifications of Messene are described
by the traveller Pausanias as the strongest he had ever seen,
and the remains (Fig. 122) are still impressive.
In her distress Sparta now appeals to Athens and to Diony-
sius of Syracuse. Athens, jealous of Thebes, consents to an
alliance. Dionysius sends troops — but soon withdraws them.
Constant fightings take place, among them a ' tearless battle,'
1 The number of Spartans with full citizenship at this time is said to have
been no more than 1500. To fill up the ranks of the fighters thousands of
Helots had been emancipated.
SPARTA AND THEBES
in which on the Spartan side not a man is killed. Vain attempts
are made to patch up peace by a conference at Delphi. Then
a general appeal is made to Persia to arbitrate in the insane
fratricidal strife, and Artaxerxes (gained over by Pelopidas,
who went as envoy to Susa) graciously issues a rescript dic-
tating terms of peace favourable to Thebes and insisting on
the recognition of Messenian independence. But even the will
of the Great King proves powerless.
Also in Thessaly and Macedonia the Thebans were combating
Spartan and Athenian influence and supporting liberty against
despotism — the federated cities of Thessaly against the succes-
sors of Jason of Pherae, and the free cities of Chalcidice against
the Macedonian kings (Alexander II, and afterwards the usurper
Ptolemy Alorites) . Pelopidas succeeded in making all the north
of Thessaly a Theban protectorate and in forcing Macedonia
to acknowledge Theban supremacy. From the usurper Ptolemy
he took hostages, one of them being the boy -prince Philip
(afterwards the famous Philip II of Macedon), who was sent
to Thebes, where he was trained in Theban military science —
soon to be used with such fatal consequences. But fortune
deserted the gallant Pelopidas. He was caught and imprisoned
by Alexander of Pherae, and it needed all the promptitude and
diplomacy of his friend Epameinondas to rescue him. Some
three years later he set forth for a third time from Thebes
(against the warnings of an ominous solar eclipse, July 13, 364)
in order to aid the Thessalian cities against the tyrant, and at
the ' Dogs' Heads ' (Cynoscephalae) , crags that rise on the east
of the Pharsalian plain, he fell in battle, having rushed into
the ranks of the enemy at the sight of his hated adversary,
as Cyrus did at Cunaxa. Athens meantime, aided by the skill of
its generals Iphicrates and Timotheus (son of Conon), had been
rapidly consolidating her new empire in the Aegaean and in
the parts Thraceward. To check this a Boeotian fleet of 100
triremes was built, and Epameinondas, scouring the Aegaean
and the Propontis, succeeded in disaffecting several of the
Athenian subject allies.
Thus the state of unstable equilibrium continued. For
397
ANCIENT GREECE
some years there was an interminable succession of fights
and alHances and quarrels and endless political combina-
tions and recombinations, fighting, between Pisans and
Eleans, even going on in the sacred Altis of Olympia
during the celebration of the games. The ridiculous folly
of all these squabbles is evident from the fact that we find
even Mantineia, which had been destroyed by Sparta and
rebuilt by the aid of Thebes, now deserting Thebes and
fighting on the side of Sparta.
To prevent further disaffection and to defend Messene and
Arcadia the Thebans under Epameinondas now made their
fourth descent on the Peloponnese. They once again nearly
captured Sparta, the surprise planned by Epameinondas being
foiled only by the swiftness of a Cretan runner. Then on the
plain to the south of Mantineia, which city also he just failed
to capture by surprise, Epameinondas (in the autumn of 362)
out-manoeuvred the Spartans and their alhes, and, as at
Leuctra, the mighty wedge-formed column of the Thebans,
like the ram of a trireme, came sweeping obliquely down on the
right wing of the enemy, broke through the ranks of the I^ace-
daemonians, and put the whole army to flight. In the excite-
ment of the pursuit Epameinondas fell mortally wounded,
and with his dying breath he advised the Thebans to make
peace. As at Liitzen and at Quebec, the joy of victory was
changed into mourning, and for Thebes the loss was irreparable.
Her supremacy was doomed, for it had been sustained by the
genius and the personality of her great general, and even he
had been unable to combine Boeotia into a compact and per-
manent state. All that was great in the Theban supremacy —
and there were elements of real greatness in it — was due to
Epameinondas. The unanimous verdict of ancient writers,
including even the Sparta-loving Xenophon, affirms him to
have been not only a great military leader, but also in personal
character one of the noblest of the Greeks — frinceps Graeciae,
as Cicero calls him.
Xenophon says that the battle of Mantineia (in a preliminary
skirmish of which, by the way, his son Gryllus was slain) was
SPARTA AND THEBES
expected to be a very decisive engagement, but that it left
things in a " ten times more unsettled " state; and this is
probably true, except that it confirmed the independence of
Messenia and Arcadia. Sparta had sunk low even before the
battle. To what depths she descended is apparent from the
fact that as early as 365 the white-haired King Agesilaus,
perhaps partly actuated by his old hatred of Persia, but also,
it seems, moved by the hope of high pay, had taken Spartan
troops across to Asia to fight as mercenaries for Ariobarzanes
in his revolt against the Great King ; and now, after Mantineia,
being eighty-four years of age, he took a thousand mercenaries
to Egypt to aid in another rebellion against Persia. In Egypt
the old warrior was at first treated scornfully on account of
his lameness and insignificant person, but his military services
brought him a fee of 230 talents. On his homeward journey
he died, at the harbour of Menelaus in the territory of Cyrene.
SECTION A : XENOPHON
Most of the facts that are known about Xenophon's life
have been mentioned in connexion with Socrates and with the
expedition of Cyrus. He was born near Athens about 444, and
he seems to have lived over ninety years. After his return
to Athens in 399 (p. 391) he was banished, probably on account
of his relations with Cyrus. He rejoined the remnant of the
Ten Thousand in Asia Minor, and, having returned overland
with Agesilaus to Greece in 394, fought on the side of Sparta at
Coroneia. The Spartans then gave him an estate in Triphyleia,
near Olympia, where with his family he passed twenty years
of quiet country life ; but when Sparta, after the ' King's
Peace,' began to stir up strife and had seized the Theban
Cadmeia, Triphyleia became a bone of contention, and the
Eleans succeeded in ejecting Xenophon. His sentence of
banishment was repealed when Athens made alliance with
Sparta (374) , but whether he returned to his native city or spent
the rest of his life at Corinth is unknown. Besides the Anabasis
he wrote the Cyropaedeia, an imaginative account of the
399
ANCIENT GREECE
boyhood of Cyrus the Great and of the early Persian court
and nation, and the Memoirs of Socrates, and the Hellenica,
a chronicle of the Spartan and Theban supremacies. He also
wrote a book about hunting, and although a soldier and a
leader of men he was evidently happier amid natural sur-
roundings, country scenes and wild animals, than amid the
clash of arms and the turmoil of fratricidal wars. His keen
observation and his picturesque descriptions of remote regions
and of wild men and animals lend a charm to the Anabasis
which is entirely wanting in the Hellenica. His piety, which
recognized the will of heaven in every event and believed
implicitly in the efficacy of vows and sacrifice, reminds one less,
perhaps, of the childlike naivete of Herodotus than of the manly.
God-fearing character of such a soldier as Gordon. The follow-
ing passages from the Anabasis are characteristic of his style :
" Now there was a certain Xenophon, an Athenian, accom-
panying the army neither as a general nor a captain nor a
common soldier, whom Proxenus, an old family friend, had
invited to come over from Greece, promising to obtain for him
the friendship of Cyrus. When Xenophon had read the letter
he informed Socrates about the expedition ; and Socrates,
fearing that friendship with Cyrus might inculpate Xenophon
with the Athenians, seeing that Cyrus zealously supported
the Spartans against Athens, advised him to go to Delphi
and ask the god about the expedition. So Xenophon went
and asked Apollo to which deities he should offer sacrifice
and prayer so as best to undertake the journey that he con-
templated and succeed and return in safety. And Apollo gave
answer and told him to what gods to sacrifice. But Socrates
blamed Xenophon because he had not first inquired whether
it were better to go or not. ' However,' he said, ' since you
put the question in this manner, you must do all that the god
commanded.' " (iii. i.)
" In this region the country was one great plain, as level
as the sea, and covered with wormwood ; and whatever other
shrubs and reeds grew there were all fragrant, like aromatic
400
114. Thk Satyr (Faun) of Praxitei,es
40
SPARTA AND THEBES
pot-herbs ; and not a tree was to be seen. And there were all
kinds of wild animals, especially wild asses, and many ostriches,
and also bustards and gazelles. When one chased the wild
asses they would gallop off and then halt, for they were much
swifter than the horses, and as soon as the horses approached
they would do it again, and it was impossible to catch them
except by posting hunters at intervals and taking up the
chase with fresh horses. Nobody got an ostrich. Those who
chased them on horseback soon gave it up, for the bird drew
off at great speed, using the feet for running and lifting herself
along with the wings, as with a sail. But the bustards [wild
turkeys] can be caught if one follows them up quickly, for
they fly only a short distance, like partridges, and soon tire ;
and they are very good eating." (i. 5.)
" Thence they marched three stages, five parasangs [i.e.
about nineteen miles in three days], over a plain, through deep
snow. The third stage proved difficult, and a biting north
wind opposed them, piercing through everything and freezing
their very blood. One of the augurs suggested sacrificing to
the wind. This was done, and every one remarked that the
violence of the wind decreased perceptibly. The snow was
six feet deep, so that many of the beasts of burden and of the
menials perished, and about thirty soldiers. They got through
the night by lighting fires, for they found a large store of wood
where they encamped ; and wherever a fire was ht the snow
melted and great pits were formed right down to the ground,
and one could thus measure the depth of the snow. . . . But
those who had fallen behind on the march had to camp without
food or fire, and some of them perished, and although dense
masses of the enemy were pressing on the rear, frequently
capturing broken-down pack-animals and fighting with each
other over them, it was nevertheless necessary to leave behind
those of the soldiers who had been blinded by the snow and
those whose toes had been rotted off by the cold. . . . And'they
caught sight of a dark patch, where there was no snow, and
thought it had melted ; and so it had, on account of a stream
which was steaming in a gully near by. And they left the fine
2C 401
ANCIENT GREECE
of march and sat down there and refused to move. And
Xenophon, who was bringing up the rear, when he perceived
it, used every art and means of persuasion to induce them not
to give up, telHng them that great masses of the enemy were
close behind ; and at last he grew angry. But they told him to
kill them, for they simply could not go any further." (iv. 5.)
" Their homesteads were underground, with openings like
the mouth of a well, but below they were extensive. For
beasts of burden there were entrances excavated, but the
people descended by means of ladders. In the homesteads
there were goats, sheep, cattle, fowls, and their young. All
the beasts in the place were fed on hay. There was also wheat
and barley and pulse and barley-wine in bowls ; and the barley-
corns themselves were there, level with the brims ; and reeds
without joints were lying in the bowls, some of them large,
others small ; and one was expected, whenever one was
thirsty, to take a reed and suck." (iv. 5.)
" When the vanguard had got to the top of the hill a great
clamour arose. And Xenophon and the rearguard, when they
heard it, thought that some other hostile bands were making
an attack. But as the shouting became louder and nearer,
and each company as it came up started running towards
those who continued to shout, and the uproar became greater
as the crowd increased, Xenophon felt that it must be some-
thing of importance. He therefore mounted his horse, and
together with Lycius and the cavalry rode forward to the
rescue ; but soon they hear that the soldiers are shouting
The sea ! The sea ! and are passing the word to their comrades.
Thereupon all set off running, even the rearguard, and the beasts
of burden were driven forward and the horses ; and when all had
reached the summit they began to embrace each other, generals
and captains and everybody, shedding tears of joy." (iv. 7.)
[In explanation of the following passage it should he stated
that a tithe from the ransom of certain prisoners had been
entrusted to Xenophon for dedication to Artemis, and that
402
SPARTA AND THEBES
he had for a time deposited this money in the great temple
of Artemis at Ephesus.]
" But when Xenophon was banished, and was already
settled at Scillus, near Olympia, Megabyzus, the warden of the
Ephesian temple, came over to attend the Olympic festival,
and restored the deposit. So Xenophon, having received
the money, purchased a precinct for the goddess in a place
pointed out by the god [Apollo ?]. A stream called Selinus
[' Wild Celery River '] happened to flow through the place,
just as a river Selinus flows past the temple of Artemis at
Ephesus ; and in both there are fish and shells ; but in the
precinct at Scillus there are chases [preserves] of all kinds of
game. And he built an altar and a shrine from the same
money, and henceforward he used to devote to the goddess
the tithes of all the produce of the estate at a sacrificial festival
in which all the townspeople and neighbours, both men and
women, took part, camping in booths and being supplied by
the goddess with meal, bread, wine, dried fruits, and a share
of the consecrated portion of the sacrifice, and also a share
of the game ; for with a view to the festival a hunt was got
up by the sons of Xenophon and of the other townspeople,
and grown-up men joined in it, if they wished. The quarry
consisted of wild pig, gazelles, and deer. Now the place lies
on the road between Sparta and Olympia, about twenty
stades [2\ miles] from Olympia, . . . And around the shrine
was planted a grove of cultivated trees, the fruits of which
grow ripe and edible. And the shrine was a small model of
the great Ephesian temple, and the wooden image \Z,6avov\
was like the image at Ephesus, as far as cypress wood can
resemble gold." (v. 3.)
SECTION B : SICILY AND THE CARTHAGINIANS
The struggle between the Hellenic and Semitic races in
Sicily was probably more important for the future of humanity,
and was certainly on a larger scale and of a more interesting
nature, than the intestine strife that for a century exhausted
403
ANCIENT GREECE
Greece, and after humiliating her before the barbarian left
her an easy prey to Macedonia. But the connexion between
Western and Eastern Hellas after the disastrous Sicilian
expedition was slight. We hear of triremes and troops sent
to the aid of Sparta by the elder Dionysius ; Plato visits
Syracuse in the vain hope of founding a model state ; Corinth
commissions Timoleon and a thousand mercenaries to eject from
Syracuse the second Dionysius ; Archidamus, son of the old
warrior Agesilaus, takes Spartan troops across to help Tarentum
{c. 338) against the lyucanians, and is slain on Italian soil ;
but, on the whole, the later history of the Sicilian and Italian
Greeks has little to do with the history of Greece proper.
They formed no part of the world-empire of Alexander and his
successors, but continued to struggle for existence against
Italian tribes and the Phoenician power until Rome swallowed
up both them and their foes.
For my present purpose a very brief resume of Sicilian history
during this period will suffice.
After the crushing defeat of the Carthaginians at Himera
in 480 they gradually re-estabhshed their power in Western
Sicily, and when, about 410, Segesta appealed to Carthage for
aid against its rival Selinus, the Carthaginian shophet (general)
Hannibal, grandson of the Hamilcar who perished at Himera,
was sent from Africa with 100,000 men. He sacked Selinus
and then attacked Himera, which, although Syracusan ships
rescued some of the inhabitants, was captured and utterly
destroyed ; and Hannibal sacrificed with torture 3000 captives
on the spot where Hamilcar was said to have leapt into the
flames (p. 276). In 406 he blockaded Acragas. A pestilence
broke out among his troops and he himself died. After eight
months the besieged salhed forth at night, leaving sick and
aged behind, and reached Gela in safety. Himilco, Hannibal's
successor, massacred the abandoned Acragantines and sacked
the place. (But the gigantic temples survived the sack, and the
city was afterwards rebuilt by Timoleon, though the great
Olympieion was never finished. Finally it was captured
by the Romans (210), and, as Agrigentum, was one of the
404
115- The Apollo Sauroctonos of Praxiteles 404
SPARTA AND THEBES
chief cities of the Roman province of Sicily.) In 405 Gela
was taken by Himilco, in spite of the assistance of Syracuse,
or possibly with the connivance of the tyrant of Syracuse,
Dionysius.
This Dionysius, a man of obscure origin, who had risen to the
position of sole military authority in Syracuse (profiting by
political feuds between democrats led by Diodes and aristocrats
led by Hermocrates — both of whom had been expelled), had
persuaded the people to allow him a bodyguard, and, in the
same way as Periander and Peisistratus, had seized the chief
power, which he retained for thirty-eight years. To assure
his position he made peace with the Carthaginians and recog-
nized their lordship over almost the whole of Sicily, but in
397, having extended his sway over Catane, lycontini, and
other cities, he felt strong enough to renounce the compact.
Thereupon Himilco blockaded Syracuse, and Dionysius was
reduced to such straits that he tried to make his escape.
Pestilence, however, once more attacked the Carthaginian
troops, encamped in the marshes of the Anapus, and Himilco
was glad to purchase safe retreat with a bribe of 300 talents,
leaving all his allies behind to be massacred by the Syracusans.
The empire of Dionysius now extended rapidly. In 393
he defeated Mago, a Carthaginian, who came over with a great
army from Africa, and by 384 we find him master not only of
all Sicily except the western extremity, but also of a great
part of Magna Graecia (Italian Hellas) and of Bpirus, the
Greek mainland opposite Corcyra. He even planted on the
distant shores and islands of the Adriatic various colonies,
such as Ancona, Issa, and Hadria, near the mouth of the Po.
Syracuse was at this time the greatest and most powerful
city of all Hellas. It had 500,000 inhabitants and was enclosed
by a fine of ramparts, which encircled not only the original
stronghold on the island Ortygia and the higher ground of
Achradina, Neapolis, andTyche, but also the heights of Epipolae
— a fine about eighteen miles long, considerably longer than
the Aurelian walls of Imperial Rome. (Massive ruins of the
fort Euryalus, at the western angle of the ramparts, still
405
ANCIENT GREECE
exist, and beneath them a labyrinth of underground passages
and chambers.)
Dionysius cultivated art and literature, and, after many
failures that excited much ridicule at Athens, one of his
tragedies is said to have won a prize ; but he seems to have
been jealous of real genius, to judge from his relations with
Plato, who in 388 is said to have visited his court, and to have
soon left it under a cloud — indeed, according to one report,
he was sold as a slave to the Spartans by the despot ! On the
other hand, stories are told of the wisdom and generosity
of Dionysius, one of which is well known through Schiller's
ballad Die Burgschaft.
When Dionysius the elder died in 367 (perhaps in consequence
of a great banquet held after his tragic victory at Athens) he was
succeeded by his son Dionysius II, a weak and self-opinionated
young man. The new lord of Syracuse at first was under the
influence of a wise adviser, Dion, the brother of one of the late
tyrant's wives. Dion invited Plato to return to Syracuse,
suggesting that he might attempt to realize the model state
the outline of which he had sketched in his Republic. Plato
gladly fell in with the suggestion, for it was his belief that
such a model state was a possibility in case " fortune should
bring a wise lawgiver in the way of a young ruler who was
intelligent, brave, and generous." Unluckily the young ruler
in this case proved a failure, or perhaps Plato, like Milton,
was too exacting with the young. (In accordance with the
rule of his academy, " I^et no one enter who is ignorant of
geometry," he insisted, it is said, on putting his royal pupil
and the whole court of Syracuse through a preliminary course
of this science, holding that, as Euclid remarked to King
Ptolemy, " there is no royal short cut to geometry.")
Dionysius soon afterwards (360) succeeded in expelling his
mentor, Dion, and Plato was allowed to return, doubtless
somewhat disillusioned, to his Academeia on the Cephisus.
Once more, perhaps persuaded by Dion, who was at Athens,
Plato acceded to the request of Dionysius and returned (357)
to Syracuse, whence he seems to have escaped with his Hfe
406
SPARTA AND THEBES
only through the influence of the Pythagorean Archytas.
About the same time, while Dionysius was absent on an
expedition to Italy, Dion returned and was enthusiastically
received as their ruler and lawgiver by the Syracusans.
However, their hopes were disappointed. Dion developed
tyrannical procHvities and was assassinated in 353, and a
few years later (346) Dionysius returned and re-estabhshed
himself in the stronghold of Ortygia. In 344, hearing that the
Carthaginians were preparing a vast armament for the invasion
of Sicily, the Syracusans appealed to their mother-city, Corinth,
and ten ships with 1000 hopHtes were sent under the command
of Timoleon. This man had once saved his own brother's
life in battle, but had afterwards killed him, or instigated
his murder, to save the state from his treasonable plots.
Abhorred by many as a fratricide and admired by others as
a patriot, he had long lived in obscurity, but was now given
the chance of proving his real character. He was welcomed
as deliverer by many of the SiciHan cities, and ere long
Dionysius capitulated and was allowed to retire to Corinth,
where he spent the rest of his hfe in fashionable diversions,
and, it is said, in presiding over a school, or literary academy —
perhaps in imitation of his old teacher !
Timoleon succeeded in ejecting the tyrants from many of the
Sicihan cities and uniting the Hellenic power against the
Carthaginians, who were planning another great invasion.
In 339 they brought over an army of 70,000 men and 10,000
horses in a fleet of more than a thousand vessels. Timoleon's
forces amounted to less than 10,000 ; but on the river Crimisus
he gained a complete victory. Many thousands of the enemy
were slain or drowned, 15,000 were made prisoners, and
immense spoil was captured. Carthage was glad to make
peace and to confine herself to the western end of the island.
Timoleon now resigned his powers and retired to an estate near
Syracuse. He had become totally blind. Plutarch tells us
how at times he visited Syracuse and was drawn in a car into
the middle of the great theatre amid the deafening applause
of the immense multitude, who listened with reverence to his
407
ANCIENT GREECE
words. He died in 336, only two years after his great victory
— in the year that Alexander the Great ascended the Macedonian
throne.
The Syracusan democracy lasted till 317, when Agathocles,
a potter, made himself tyrant. The Carthaginians had once
more overrun all Sicily. They defeated Agathocles at Himera
and blockaded Syracuse ; but Agathocles boldly transported
an army to Africa and for years laid waste the Carthaginian
territory. Finally he established himself as the king of
Sicily. In 270 Hiero II was elected king of Sicily. At first
he sided with the Carthaginians against the Romans, but
afterwards became the faithful ally of Rome. His grandson,
Hieronymus, reverted to the Carthaginians, and Syracuse was
thereupon (212) besieged and captured by Marcellus and
became the chief city of the Roman province of Sicily.
SECTION C : PLATO
Some of the facts of Plato's life have been given in connexion
\7ith Socrates and with Dionysius.
It is only necessary here to add that he was born at Athens
in 428, and became a follower of Socrates when about twenty
years of age. After the death of his master he lived for a
time at Megara, and seems to have visited Cyrene, Egypt, and
possibly other Eastern lands, as well as Sicily and Magna
Graecia, where he became intimate with Pythagorean and
Eleatic philosophy. When forty years of age (after his first
visit to Dionysius) he acquired a small estate on the southern
slope of Colonus, and for the next forty-two years, except
during his two later visits to Syracuse, occupied himself by
writing his dialogues and by teaching in his own house or in
the gymnasium and avenues of the Academeia — a place of
public resort, named after the old hero Academus, and laid
out by Cimon — adjacent to his garden. All his chief works,
thirty-six dialogues, have come down to us. Of these the
Republic consists of ten and the Laws of twelve books.
In the case of Socrates it is the personality of the man and
408
I.-..
n6. DEMETER
408
SPARTA AND THEBES
the fundamental principles of his teaching that are of interest ;
with Plato it is rather the superstructure of thought and
imagination that is important, not only for the consummate
grace and power of his style — which is perhaps the most perfect
in all prose literature, reminding one of the movements of some
strong and beautiful animal — nor only for the poetic faculty
by which he bodies forth the forms of things unknown and
intimates to us in parables what " cannot be communicated
directly by words like other kinds of learning," but also for the
illumination and insight that his intellectual conceptions bring
us. No more can here be done than to indicate the more
important of these intellectual conceptions, and give one or
two specimens of his imaginative parables.
Aristotle tells us that Plato as a young man was much
impressed by the doctrines of Heracleitus, as taught by the
Athenian Cratylus, concerning the ceaseless movement (flux)
and instability of all things and the impossibility of any certain
knowledge founded on phenomena. These doctrines, which
we find constantly in Plato (generally attributed by him to
Socrates) , were doubtless confirmed by his study of the Bleatic
philosophy, such as that of Parmenides ; but he, or Socrates
(with whom we may henceforward identify him), was too wise
to accept the paralysing Eleatic denial of the practical reality
of the natural world. While holding the sole absolute reality
of the One he accepted the Many as practically real, as ' rafts '
useful for wafting us over the sea of earthly life. And for
intellectual existence also he accepted such ' rafts.' In the
Phaedo he says that he had given up gazing directly at absolute
truth, lest he should be blinded as those who gaze too long at
the sun, and had sought its reflected image — i.e. he had given
up pure contemplation, as apt to paralyse thought and action,
and had taken to forming intellectual conceptions, which he
accepted as temporary rafts, to be abandoned at any time if
they did not prove seaworthy.
When Socrates gave up the study of natural science, won-
dering how any one could be so blind as " not to be able to
distinguish between a true cause and that through which it
409
ANCIENT GREECE
operates," he went back, like Descartes, to fundamental
principles and the simplest possible conceptions, " I began
thus," Plato makes him say, " I assumed what I judged to
be the strongest principle " — the strongest beam for his raft
— " and then accepted as true whatever was in agreement
with it." What one of these strongest principles was he tells
us in the Phaedo. " Nothing," he says, " has any reality
except so far as it participates in the real Existence, or Idea,
of which it is the manifestation. , , , If any one tells me
that a thing is beautiful because it possesses a rich colour, or
a certain shape, or so on, I bid farewell to such statements,
for they only confuse me. I keep to the simple, uncritical,
and perhaps foolish opinion that nothing else causes it to be
beautiful but the presence, or operation, of ideal Beauty. How
this takes place I cannot say, but I do assert that all beautiful
things become such through ideal Beauty,"
In another passage he puts it thus : No two material things
were ever perfectly equal. What then do we mean by saying
that things are equal ? We must mean that they more or
less approach that perfect Equality which, as it exists nowhere
on earth, we must have seen in some other life, before the sleep
and forgetting of our birth ; and just as we are reminded of a
person by a portrait, so when we see two things nearly equal
(" longing for Equality ") we are reminded of that truly existing
ideal Equality of which they are the imperfect manifestation.
This is the Platonic doctrine of Reminiscence {Anamnesis),
which connects itself with the doctrine, or parable, of a conscious
prenatal existence, and, as we shall see later, with that of
Transmigration (Metempsychosis) .
In order to gain any satisfactory view of Plato's doctrine
of Ideas, it is necessary, I think, to regard it from various
standpoints. Firstly, the parable of the One and the Many
is useful. Secondly, an Idea has some analogy to what one
calls an Archetype — and one may conceive, if one can, such
Archetype as an independent objective existence, of which
all the individuals of a genus, or species, are more or less imper-
fect copies ; or, from the opposite standpoint, we may consider
410
SPARTA AND THEBES
it (though Plato tried not to do so) as a mere generalization, or
abstraction, existing only in our own niinds. Again, an Idea
may sometimes be regarded as the real Cause, or lyife, of a thing.
For instance, when the scientist analyses the protoplasm and
finds nothing left in his pot but water, carbonic acid, and
ammonia, and exclaims, " lyO, here in my pot is the First
Cause ! " the intellectual conception or parable of an Idea of
life — an ideal Reality, a true Cause, existing in all eternity
quite independent of "that through which it operates" — is
helpful, just as a raft. And there is another way of regarding
the Platonic Idea which is sometimes useful. In the case of
both things and persons there are certain accidental qualities
which seem to affect only the senses and the mind and to
make no difference in our feelings, whereas there are other
elements, both in things and in persons, which appeal straight
to our affections, and it is these elements that compose the
real person or the real thing. So we may, perhaps, say that
the Idea is that real inner Self of a thing or of a person which
appeals to our heart rather than to our mind. Thus Plato
speaks of that ecstasy of ' divine madness ' which we experience
when we recognize in earthly forms the reflexion of that divine
Idea of beauty or of truth which our soul has seen and loved in
a former existence.
As in every allegory, there are in this parable of Ideas various
points against which our understanding stumbles. Firstly, it
is not easy to understand how our mind is related to these
Ideas, and how we apprehend them, or are certain of their
existence as Reahties. They seem to be mirrored darkly in
our mind as Reminiscences, and to be contemplated by some
special " reasoning part of the soul." Secondly, in regard to the
presence or operation of the Idea in material things Plato
himself says, " How this takes place I cannot say." It is
the same kind of question as that of the connexion between
mind, or life, and matter. In such cases one has once more to
take refuge in allegory, and Plato does so when he tells us that the
material universe is an ' imitation ' and that it ' participates in '
and ' has community with ' the Perfect and Eternal and Divine.
411
ANCIENT GREECE
By allowing that all things participate in Perfection he
endowed the natural world with a certain reflected reahty and
dignity, such as lends a value to earthly existence, but (as
Socrates is made to confess to the old Parmenides in the
dialogue of this name) he was also obliged to suppose an
Archetype, or Ideal, of everything, even of ugliness, of filth, of
evil. To such an " unfathomable abyss of absurdity " was he
led by his theory. And yet he retained his theory as the most
seaworthy raft he could find, and on this ' strongest principle '
he reared a structure that has proved for many a refuge against
the blasts of materialism.
The following are specimens of Plato's imaginative allegories :
" ' Imagine,' says Socrates, ' people in a subterranean place
like a cavern, with an entrance expanding to the light across
the whole width of the cave. Suppose them to have been
in this cavern from their childhood with chains on their legs
and necks, so as only to be able to look towards the inner part
of the cave, and unable to turn their heads round. And suppose
behind, between these fettered men and the light, a low stage
or parapet, like those on which mountebanks show their
curious tricks. And imagine that along this parapet pass men
bearing all kinds of things raised aloft — human statues and
figures of animals and all kinds of utensils.'
" ' You mention,' says Glauco, ' a strange comparison and
strange fettered men.'
" ' Yes,' answers Socrates, ' but such as resemble us human
beings. Now I suppose you will allow that they can see nothing
but only the shadows thrown by the light on the further wall
of the cavern ? '
" ' How can they,' says Glauco, ' if all their life they have
had their heads thus fixed ?
" ' Such people as these, then, will believe that there is
nothing truly existing except these shadows ? ' ?. ^^ ^.?
" ' Necessarily.' "^f ' -"
" ' Well, then, if one of them should be loosed and made
suddenly to rise up and turn his head round and look towards
412
SPARTA AND THEBES
the light, and in doing this should be so pained and blinded
by the splendour as to be unable to behold the things of which
he had formerly seen the shadows, do you not think he would
turn away from the light and seek again the shadows and believe
that they alone are real ? '
" ' He certainly would do so.'
" ' Well, but if some one should drag him thence by force
up the steep and rough ascent and never stop till he had drawn
him right up to the sunlight, would he not be distressed and full
of indignation ? And when he had come up into the light and
his eyes were filled with its splendour, would he be able to see
any of the things that are there called real ? Would he not
require time so as to become accustomed to it ? And first he
would perceive shadows best, and then the images of things
reflected in water, and after that the things themselves. . . .
Last of all, he would be able, I think, to perceive and contem-
plate the sun itself.'
" ' Assuredly,' answers Glauco.
" ' Well, then, when he remembers his first habitation and
the wisdom that was there, and those who were his companions
in bonds, do you not think he will esteem himself happy by
the change, and pity them ?
" ' He will, greatly.'
" ' And if there were any honours and renown and rewards
among those fettered men for him who most acutely perceived
the shadows that passed along the wall, and who best remem-
bered which were wont to pass foremost and which last, and
which of them went together, and from this knowledge were
even able to foretell what was coming, does it appear to you
that he would be desirous of such honours, or envy those who
are thus honoured and rewarded ? Or would he not wish, as
Homer says, To work as the hireling of some portionless man,
or to suffer anything, rather than to hold such opinions and
live in such a fashion ? '
" ' I think,' says Glauco, ' that he would rather suffer and
endure anything.'
Now consider this. If such an one should descend once
ANCIENT GREECE
more into the cave and resume his seat, would not his eyes
be filled with darkness in consequence of coming back suddenly
from the sunlight ? And should he now be obliged to give his
opinion about those shadows, and dispute about them with
those men who are there, eternally chained, whilst still his
eyes are dazed and before they have recovered their former
state, would he not afford his companions laughter ? And would
it not be said of him that, having ascended, he had returned
with his eyes damaged, and that it is wrong to attempt to go
up to the light, and that should any one ever try to liberate
them and lead them up to the light, if ever they should lay hands
upon him, he should be put to death ? '
" ' They would most certainly,' says Glauco, ' put him to
death.' " [Rep. vii.)
" Let us compare the soul to the combined energies of a
winged chariot and a charioteer. The horses and charioteers
of the gods are all noble and of noble descent, but those of
other natures are very various. With us men the charioteer
does indeed direct the chariot, but of the horses one is well
proportioned and well bred and the other is quite the reverse ;
whence it results that the work of guiding the chariot is exceed-
ingly difficult. ' ' [These winged chariots are described as soaring
up to the apse of heaven preceded by the host of the divine
charioteers.] " The sovereign ruler Zeus leads the van, guiding
his winged chariot and disposing and controlling all. After him
comes the host of the gods and divine powers in eleven com-
panies, Vesta (the Central Fire) alone remaining in the palace
of the immortals. And as they ascend to the zenith of heaven's
vault the chariots of the deities, always in perfect balance,
advance with lightness and ease, while the others toil on with
difficulty, for the evil courser drags down earthwards the car,
unless he has been right well trained by his driver. Here comes
the great and sore trial of the soul. The souls of the immortals,
when they have reached the zenith, place themselves on the
outer surface of the heavenly vault, and the revolution carries
them round and they behold that region above the sky of which
414
117. EiRENE AND Pl,UTUS
By Cephisodotus
414
SPARTA AND THEBES
no earthly poet has ever sung nor ever shall sing worthily
where true Existence (Reality) dwells, colourless, formless,
impalpable, not to be contemplated except by the mind that
guides the soul. . . . Such is the life of the gods. Among the
others that soul which best follows and resembles the divine
lifts the head of the charioteer into the upper region and is
carried round by the revolution, but it is much troubled by
its horses and with difficulty contemplates true Existences.
Another is now lifted, now depressed. The plunging of its
horses allows it to see some Existences and not others. The
rest follow afar, eager to contemplate the higher region, but
are powerless to do so and are carried round beneath the surface.
They clash together and fall one over the other, each attempting
to get to the front ; they crowd, they battle, they toil, and by
the awkwardness of their charioteers many are lamed and
many lose the best part of the plumage of their wings, and
after painful and unavailing efforts are foiled in gaining a
view of Reality and are obliged to find their aliment in the
fodder of opinion. Such a soul, becoming fattened on the
gross food of vice and forgetfulness, gravitates, loses its wings,
and falls to earth, and takes to itself a body ; but the law pro-
tects it from animating the body of a beast in its first stage."
The philosopher then describes the destinies of the undying
soul passing through various forms of death — sinking perhaps
even below the level of the beasts, until it is cast as incurable into
Tartarus, or rising in the course of ten earthly lives and through
ten millenniums of purgatory until it regains its wings and
finally reaches heaven, where it " dwells for ever with the gods."
In one case only this period is abridged— in that of the lover
of Wisdom, whose soul recovers its wings after the third mil-
lennium. During his earthly existence he prizes above all else
the reminiscence of those Realities which in a former life he
has beheld. " The man who turns these precious recollections
to good account," says Plato, " shares perpetually in the true
and perfect Mysteries and himself becomes perfect. For
withdrawn from earthly interests and attached to things divine,
ANCIENT GREECE
he is warned by the multitude to give up his folly. They
treat him as an idiot. They see not that he is inspired."
(Phaedrus, 246.)
SECTION D: SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURE, AND
PAINTING TILL THE ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER
There is a striking difference between the sculpture of the
fourth century and that of the fifth. In the fifth almost all
works of sculpture were public dedications. Even the statues of
victorious athletes and charioteers, erected by cities or tyrants
or other wealthy persons, were for the most part national
monuments and seem to have been generally rather of a typical
character than personal — as is seen also in the case of sculptured
tombstones and in such idealized portrait busts as that of
Pericles (Fig. 96). The gods, too, were represented as majestic
and somewhat impersonal beings beyond the range of mortal
affections. In the fourth century sculpture became (as in
Homer poetry long before had been and as in the plays of
Euripides even the drama had now become) more individual,
personal, and emotional, and the artist began to inspire his
statues of the divinities with human feelings, and to lend them
the subtle distinctions of personal character, without, how-
ever, disturbing (as was done later by the more emotional
Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman sculpture) the perfect balance
of dignified self-restraint that is essential in all great plastic
art. The great sculptors of this period are Praxiteles and
Scopas (c. 390-340). In connexion with Praxiteles should
be mentioned his father (or maybe his elder brother), Cephiso-
dotus, a copy of one of whose statues is at Munich. This work
(Fig. 117) represents Eirene (Peace) as a benignant matron
holding on her left arm the infant Plutus (Wealth). It very
forcibly illustrates the new tendency, its touch of nature and
human affection reminding one of the Madonna and Child of
mediaeval art. Also it is interesting because the attitude and
motive are almost identical with those of the one work that we
possess by the hand of the son, or brother, of Cephisodotus —
416
SPARTA AND THEBES
the famous Praxitelean Hermes with the infant Dionysus. This
Hermes (Fig. 112) was found by German excavators, about the
year 1877, in the Heraion at Olympia (Fig. 47 and Note A).
It is doubtless the very same statue that Pausanias saw there
and described as " a Hermes of marble, carrying the infant
Dionysus, a work of Praxiteles." It is the only extant ancient
Greek statue that we know for certain to be the actual work
of one of the great Greek sculptors — though perhaps we may
not be wrong in believing parts of the Parthenon frieze and
pediments to be the work of Pheidias, or in attributing the
Charioteer to Calamis, or the Aeginetan marbles to Onatas.
The Hermes has elicited much enthusiastic admiration from
experts on account of its wondrous technical perfection, but
to many it does not appeal strongly. There is a well-groomed,
somewhat dandified air about the god, and the child, " whose
proportions are those of a much older boy," seems far less
attractive than the infant Plutus of Cephisodotus — indeed,
more of a homunculus than a real child.
The masterpieces of Praxiteles, according to old writers,
were the Aphrodite of Cnidus, the Bros of Thespiae, the Satyr,
and the Apollo Sauroctonos {' the lyizard-killer '), It is said
that the famous professional beauty Phryne, to whom Praxi-
teles had promised a statue, wished to discover which he
considered the best, and told him that his house was on fire,
whereupon he exclaimed that he was ruined if his Satyr and
his Eros were burnt. The Cnidian Aphrodite, regarded by
many old writers as the most beautiful of all statues, was, it
is said, offered to the Coans, who, however, preferred a draped
goddess.^ The people of Cnidus thereupon bought it, and
during many years it attracted multitudes of visitors to their
town. The Bithynian king Nicomedes offered to pay off the
public debt of Cnidus in exchange for it, but in vain. From
Cnidian coins, on which it is represented, copies of the statue
have been recognized. The best of these is in the Vatican
(Fig. 118 is from a cast taken before the statue was clothed,
1 And yet Coae vesies had a bad repute as almost invisible garments affected
by fashionable women in Rome !
2D 417
ANCIENT GREECE
by papal orders, in a tin skirt. See also Fig. iii). The face of
the Vatican statue is very much more beautiful than that
which we find on Cnidian coins, and may give us some idea
of the original, which the Greek writer Lucian praises so highly
for its loveliness. The goddess shows strong human feeling, a
natural shrinking, as it were, from even her own unveiled
presence, but it is combined with perfect self-command, dignity,
and repose, whereas in the Graeco-Roman Venus dei Medici
(which copies the motive) we see affectation and assumed
embarrassment before human spectators.
Of the Bros no copy is known. The god was., to judge
from coins, probably represented as a full-grown youth and
with long wings — more like the strong, manly Eros of antiquity
than the chubby Cupid of later times. The so-called Cupid
of the Vatican may be a reminiscence of it. The little Boeotian
town of Thespiae, Phryne's birthplace, to which she gave the
statue, became as celebrated by this means as Cnidus.
The Satyr, of which the ' Faun of the Capitol ' is perhaps
the best extant copy, needs no description (see Fig. 114). It
is well known from Hawthorne's Transformation. A fine
torso in the lyouvre is thought by some to have belonged to
the original statue.
Of the Apollo Saurodonos (perhaps a bronze) marble copies
exist, of which the best, though evidently a late and rather
weak and emasculated imitation, is to be seen in the Tribuna
at Florence (Fig. 115). ^
Praxiteles was the inheritor of the early Attic manner, in
which beauty of form was pre-eminent, rather than a follower
of Pheidias, whose style combined all the best quahties of Attic
grace with the masculine vigour of the Argive school. He is
credited with many great works of which no known relic is
extant except small and vague reproductions on coins. Possibly
many of the well-known but unauthenticated statues in our
galleries may be derived from some Praxitelean type — though
the general motive may be sometimes more ancient. The
genius of Praxiteles probably created many types of grace
and beauty which deeply influenced Hellenistic and Graeco-
.|i8
1 1 8. The Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxitei,ES
418
SPARTA AND THEBES
Roman art, but they were too often spoilt by tlie false
sentiment and prettiness of tlie later sculptors.
Scopas of Paros excelled in dramatic expression of strong
emotion, which in his open-eyed and strenuous faces and figures
offered a striking contrast to the calm restraint and dreamy
beauty of Praxiteles, and was a quality more Peloponnesian
than Attic. Although he is sometimes described as the Greek
Michelangelo, we have no certain proofs of this greatness.
Two heads with traces of intense passion on their mutilated
faces have been excavated at Tegea, the temple at which
place he is said to have rebuilt, and also a decidedly fine figure
and head that may perhaps belong to each other and represent
Atalanta. These are sometimes attributed to him, as also the
head ^ of a Demeter statue in the British Museum (Fig. ii6),
which was discovered at Cnidus. The Roman writer Pliny
tells us that Scopas sculptured one of the columns of the new
temple of Artemis at Ephesus (begun about 355 ; see Note A).
Fragments of the drums of several of these columns are in the
British Museum. One is fairly complete and of great beauty
(Fig. 119). It probably represents the scene between Alcestis,
Death, and Hermes the Guider of Souls. It is totally unlike
what we should expect from Scopas, Its delicate beauty of
form and sentiment is decidedly Attic — and far more like the
work of Praxiteles than anything we know of Scopas. It is,
however, probably by neither of these sculptors, for many
artists were employed.
The influence of the passion-fraught style of Scopas on later
art was evidently very strong, and as Praxitelean beauty
degenerated into effeminacy and coquetry, so the dramatic
vigour of Scopas led to such inartistic strenuosities as the
Pergamon Altar, the Farnese Bull, and {pace lycssing !) the
I^aocoon. Probably numerous sculptures exist which are
more or less close imitations of his works, such as of his cele-
brated raving Bacchante. The Apollo Citharoedus at Rome
i The head is of Parian marble and of far finer work than the body, which,
although grandly designed, is of inferior execution and of inferior Cnidian
marble.
419
ANCIENT GREECE
(a statue of the god singing to his harp) and the Venus Vidrix
of the Ivouvre may possibly be copies of his works. Of the
Niobe group I shall speak later.
A subject of great interest in connexion with Scopas is that
of the Mausoleum of HaHcarnassus, the magnificent monument
erected by Artemisia (352-
350) to her husband Mauso-
lus, lord (dynast) of Caria.
It was an oblong building
with thirty-six Ionic columns
(Fig. no) on a high base-
ment decorated with reliefs.
Above the columns was prob-
ably a frieze, and this was
surmounted by a roof in
the form of a pyramid with
twenty-four steps, on the
top of which was a chariot.
Pliny, who thus describes it,
tells us that Scopas and four other famous Greek artists
were employed on the sculptures. The Mausoleum stood
till perhaps the tenth century of our era, and it was
almost entirely demolished by the Knights of St. John, who
used the material for building the castle of Budrum, and
burnt most of the marble sculptures for lime. All that
remained was excavated and brought to England about 1857,
and is in the Mausoleum Room of the British Museum. Some
of the fragments of the frieze reliefs (Greeks and Amazons and
Centaurs) show a dramatic vigour such as one might expect
in a work of Scopas, and in the relief depicting a chariot-race
there is a fine figure of a charioteer leaning forward on his
long chiton (like the Delphi charioteer) which may well be by
him. But by far the most interesting relic of the Mausoleum
is the very striking and noble statue of Mausolus (Fig. 120),
which probably stood inside the building, not on the roof
beside the chariot, as is intimated by its position in the Museum,
for, although found near the remains of the chariot, the statue,
420
The Mausoleum
Reconstruction by Adler
iig. Drum of Coi^umn
From the later temple of Artemis, Ephesiis
420
I
SPARTA AND THEBES
as also that of Artemisia, seems too small in proportion to
the chariot, and too well preserved to have stood in the open
and to have sustained a fall from such a height. The statue
is evidently a realistic portrait of the Carian prince, the features
being decidedly non-Hellenic.
A word should be said here on the subject of painting,^
which since the time of Mandrocles (p. 190) and of Polygnotus
(p. 243) had attained great development. As, however, the
v>^orks of the great Greek painters have entirely perished, the
subject has little value except for the antiquarian. It will
sufl&ce to mention a few names. Apollodorus the Athenian
is said to have first given attention to the effects of light and
shade {chiaroscuro) , or rather what Plutarch calls apochrosis —
i.e. tone, or the gradations not only of light into shade but of
colour under the influence of light and shade. By such means,
as Pliny says, he first painted men and natural objects realisti-
cally and so as to ' attract observation.' Zeuxis of Heraclea,
who was patronized by King Archelaus and may have met
Euripides and Thucydides at the Macedonian court, was a
great master of colour, and especially excelled in depicting
female beauty of the heroic type. The Helen that he painted
for the people of Croton, using as models five of the most
beautiful Crotoniat maidens, was one of his most famous
pictures. (See Note A, ' Temple of Hera I^acinia,' and
Fig. 40.)
Parrhasius of Ephesus, who lived mostly at Athens [c. 400),
was somewhat younger than Zeuxis and rivalled him in splen-
dour of colouring and grandeur of form. He called himself the
' prince of painters,' and according to Pliny was the most
insolent and arrogant of artists, not even excepting Zeuxis.
Many other painters are named, and many of their pictures
are described by old writers and many anecdotes are related
about them, but the complete loss of all such works makes the
subject almost valueless in comparison with that of Greek
sculpture.
^ For vase-painting see Note D.
421
CHAPTER IX
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA : PHILIP
AND ALEXANDER
(TO 334)
SECTIONS: ISOCRATES, AESCHINES, DEMOSTHENES, LATER
PHILOSOPHERS : LYSIPPUS, HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE
WB have seen how after Mantineia the Theban .supre-
macy rapidly declined, and how Athens once more
began to build up an oversea empire. In this she
might have been successful had it not been for the rise of two
semi-Hellenic powers, Caria and Macedonia. Whether she would
have held her own against the maritime expansion of Caria,
which under Mausolus seems to have been very remarkable,
it is idle to speculate, for both she and her rival were swallowed
up by Macedonia, and it is a question of more practical import
whether an united Greece ( if such a thing is conceivable) might
not have succeeded in resisting the Macedonian conqueror,
against whom the miserable feuds that for seventy years had
drained, and were still draining, her life-blood now left her
powerless.^
When Thebes was at the height of her power Pelopidas had
brought even Macedonia under Theban influence, if not under
Theban dominion, and to assure the fidelity of the Macedonian
ruler (at that time a usurper, Ptolemy Alorites) he had sent
as a hostage to Thebes the young Macedonian prince, Philip,
afterwards the victor at Chaeroneia and the father of Alexander
the Great.
Until this time neither Macedonia nor Thessaly had really
1 Of course another view can be taken. One may regard Macedonia as a
Hellenic state and Philip and Alexander as the beneficent founders of a vast
Hellenic Empire in which the petty squabbles of the Greek cities found peace
as brawling streams when they reach the sea, to use a Dantesque simile.
422
I20. MAUS0I,US
422
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
come within tlie range of Hellenic politics. We hear indeed of
Thessalian cavalry under their king, Cineas, coming to help
Hippias (c. 510) and defeating the Spartans, and of constant
wars between Thessalians and Phocians (Hdt. vii. 176), and of
the Thessalian Aleuadae, who sided with the Persians and
fought for them at Plataea ; and later we hear of a Spartan
attempt to subjugate Thessaly (476) and the wild attempt of
Jason of Pherae, after the battle of Leuctra (371), to seize the
hegemony and place himself at the head of the Hellenic world
(as did afterwards Alexander) ; but Thessaly was not regarded
by the southern Greeks as a part of Hellas, and Macedonia,
though its kings claimed to be of Hellenic blood, was looked
upon as scarcely less a barbarian country than Scythia itself.
The race that in the early age of Greece inhabited Macedonia
was probably related to the Thracians and the Phrygians. It
was of Aryan stock (as the remains of the language prove) , but
not Hellenic — that is, neither Achaean nor Doric. Later the
coast region and the more fertile inland plains were overrun
by Hellenes from the south, who drove the natives to the hills.
These Greeks, or semi-Greeks, of the lowlands regarded them-
selves as ' companions ' of the king. They composed the royal
bodyguard and, hke the Norman nobility, formed a distinct
class. It was long before the wild Macedonian hill tribes, as
well as the Paeonians, Thracians, and Illyrians, were sufficiently
subjugated and civilized to coalesce with their conquerors and
to form a powerful nation.
The Macedonian kings, as has been said, claimed to be of
Hellenic descent — a fact that Demosthenes fiercely denied,
calling Philip Ha" pestilential Macedonian [oXtOpog Ma/ctSwv
— a Macedonian pestilence] and in no way related to the
Greeks." But it was proved to the satisfaction of the judges
when Alexander I, who had entered for the foot-race at
Olympia, was challenged as a non-Hellene. " He proved
himself to be an Argive," says Herodotus, who in another
passage (viii. 137) gives us a very picturesque story about
three Argive brothers, descendants of Temenus (and therefore
of Heracles), who fled (c. 700 ?) to Illyria and thence crossed
4-23
ANCIENT GREECE
to Macedonia " and took up their abode near a place called
the Gardens of Midas, where there are roses of incomparable
sweetness, many with sixty petals. And above the gardens
rises a mountain called Bermius,^ which is so cold that none
can reach the top. . . . And from this place by degrees they
conquered all Macedonia."
Such is the legend that intimates the reflux of Hellenes from
the south. The youngest and cleverest of the brothers, Per-
diccas, founded the dynasty of the Macedonian kings. The
fifth of these, Amyntas I, was contemporary with Peisistratus
and submitted to Megabazus, the general of Darius (p. 191).
His son and successor, Alexander I, about whose assassination
of some Persian envoys Herodotus tells a weird story (v. 22),
was obliged to side with the barbarians during the Persian
invasion, and was sent by them as ambassador to Athens ;
but he is said to have been secretly in favour of the Greeks
and to have clandestinely imparted to them at Plataea the
plans of the Persians. He competed at the Olympian Games
as above stated, and set up a golden statue at Delphi (Hdt,
viii. 121). Perdiccas II lived during the Peloponnesian War
and changed sides more than once. Then came Archelaus,
who was a great admirer of Greek civilization and art, and
entertained at his court many Greek notabilities, such as
Euripides, Thucydides, Agathon, and Zeuxis. The relationships
of the succeeding Macedonian monarchs will be best explained
as follows :
Amyntas II (393-369)
Al<EXANDER II (369-367) PERDICCAS III PhII,IP II
Miurdered by usurper Ptolemy (364-359) (359-336)
Alorites, wlio is killed by Perdiccas |
Amyntas
(Put aside by Philip and Ai,ExandER III
afterwards executed by (Great)
Alexander) (336-323)
1 Now Verria, the range running north of Olympus and separated from it
by the valley of the Haliacmon. Under the range lay Aegae (Edessa), the old
capital and burying-place of the Macedonian kings. Archelaus made Pella
the capital.
424
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
When Perdiccas III fell fighting against the Illyrians his
brother Philip was probably acting as his gerent. After
crushing the Illyrians, Phihp, probably by the invitation of the
nobles, put aside his young nephew Amyntas (to whom he after-
wards married one of his daughters) and assumed the crown.
Philip's education in Thebes had given him a deep insight
into Greek character and Greek politics. He possessed great
intellectual gifts and a genius for diplomacy. Under a frank
and attractive personality he concealed a subtle cunning and
an ambition that was as unscrupulous as it was boundless.
Conscious that the last appeal was to force, he gave the greatest
attention to the formation and training of a powerful standing
army, the efficiency of which was much increased by the use
of newly invented engines of war (catapults, &c.), and also by
the introduction of a new formation — that of the famous
Macedonian phalanx, the idea of which Phihp probably took
from the deep wedge-like column invented by Epameinondas
and used with such effect at Leuctra. The single phalanx (at
least later) consisted of about 4000, and its ordinary depth
varied from sixteen to thirty-two (that of the old Spartan
phalanx having seldom exceeded eight) . The men were heavily
armoured and bore great shields. Their principal weapon was
a very long spear (the sarissa), and the files were so arranged
that the spears of even the fifth rank protruded three feet in
front of the first rank. The greater phalanx sometimes con-
sisted of four such bodies of about 4000 each ; but even the
single phalanx was unwieldy, and if once broken was useless.
Otherwise its impact was almost irresistible.
But Philip did not trust only to his army. By the acquisition
of Thracian mines and by getting Thasian miners to work the
gold in the neighbourhood of his town, Phihppi, newly founded
on the site of the ancient Crenides, he obtained large revenues
(see Note C, on Coins), and it was by gold that he gained many
of his successes.^
1 Diffidit urbium Portas vir Macedo . . . munerihus (Hor. C. Ill, xvi.)-
Juvenal calls him the callidus emptor Olynthi. Cicero tells us that Philip
used to say he could take any town into which an ass could climb laden
with gold.
425
ANCIENT GREECE
Philippi and its gold-mines brought Philip and the Athenians
into collision. Amphipolis, at the mouth of the Strymon, cut
him off from the sea and commanded the access to the gold-
bearing range of Mount Pangaeus. This city, a colony of
Athens, had been more or less independent ever since the time
of Brasidas (p. 338), and the Chalcidian Confederacy of Greek
towns, headed by Olynthus, had tried in vain to gain it as an
ally. By cunningly playing off Olynthus against Athens Phihp
duped both of them and captured Amphipolis, and soon after-
wards Pydna and Potidaea fell into his hands. This happened
in 356 — the year in which his son Alexander was born ; and,
as Plutarch remarks, the year brought Philip a third gift of
fortune, namely, an Olympic victory.
It is not my purpose to follow closely the tortuous and per-
plexing course of events during the next twenty years. Some
of the more important details will be given later in connexion
with Demosthenes. The following brief summary will suffice
to show how the crafty Macedonian took advantage of the
rivalries and dissensions of the Greek states, and how he
deluded the hopes of those who, as Isocrates and Eubulus
and Phocion, more or less openly and warmly hailed him as
the healer of the feuds of the Greeks and their leader against
the barbarian foe. We shall see how he extinguished the
last possibilities of liberty and of nationality and of that
self-government whereof the Hellenic world, by its never-
ending fratricidal wars and its political animosities and
atrocities, had proved itself to be unworthy.
Between 357 and 355 Athens has once more, as of old, serious
troubles (sometimes called a ' Social War ') with her allies.
Byzantium, Rhodes, Chios, Cos, I^esbos, Corcyra, all revolt.
Expeditions are sent, first under a young firebrand. Chares,
and the old warrior Chabrias, the victor of Naxos, and when
Chabrias is defeated and slain the veteran commanders
Timotheus (son of Conon) and Iphicrates are dispatched to
support Chares. This fiery and dissolute son of Ares accuses
his more prudent colleagues of cowardice, and the Athenian
mob, evidently influenced by bribed demagogues, actually
426
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
condemns Timotheus and imposes a fine of lOO talents, so that
the old admiral has to escape to Chalcis, where he dies. Chares
then allies himself with the revolted satrap Artabazus and so
incenses the Great King, Artaxerxes III (Ochus), that he
threatens to aid the revolted allies of Athens. Mausolus,
too, the dynast of Caria, who had acquired a large fleet and
had annexed lyycia, actually affords them aid, so that finally
the Athenians are obUged to recognize the independence of
many of the subject states of their new empire, the whole
revenues from which now amount to no more than forty-five
talents yearly.
Meanwhile a disastrous quarrel had broken out between the
Thebans and the Phocians. Phocis was accused of having
cultivated a part of the sacred Crissaean, or Cirrhaean, plain
near Delphi. Some ninety years before (448) the Phocians
had with the aid of Athens seized Delphi, but had been
ejected by the Spartans, who restored the Delphians.^ On
the present occasion the Athenians openly and the Spartans
secretly sided with Phocis, which had of late become powerful
enough to contest the ' supremacy ' with Thebes and to occupy
Thessaly, and had renewed her claim (founded on a line in
Homer) to the possession of ' rocky Pytho.' Being fined heavily
by the Amphictionic Council, the Phocians, led by Philomelus,
seized Delphi. The Thebans, however, defeated them and
Philomelus perished, leaping over a precipice to save himself
from capture. The Phocians were then led by Onomarchus,
brother of Philomelus, who hired a large body of mercenaries
with the treasures of the Delphic temple.
At this juncture (353) Philip of Macedon intervened. He
had just captured Methone,^ on the Thermaic Gulf, the last
ally of Athens in that quarter, and pushing down into Thessaly,
after two serious repulses, utterly routed the Phocians and
killed Onomarchus ; but, finding Thermopylae and Boeotia
occupied by the Athenians, he returned to Macedonia, and
1 The three ' Sacred Wars ' of c. 590, 448, and 356 should be noted.
2 He is said to have lost an eye during the siege. As Demosthenes said,
" To gain empire and power Philip had an eye knocked out, a collar-bone
broken, an arm maimed, and a leg lamed."
427
ANCIENT GREECE
turned his attention to the conquest of Thrace and the
Chersonese.
It was now that Demosthenes, who for the last three or four
years had been attracting notice by his pubHc speeches, came
forward to attack Phihp. PubUc affairs at Athens were at
this time under the guidance of a political party the chief
leaders of which were Eubulus and Phocion. The former had
proved himself a wise financier as president of the public
Theoric Fund, and his policy, as well as that of the strategos
Phocion, was that of non-aggression, of peace and amity among
the Greek states, and of friendliness and confidence towards
Macedonia — without probably going so far as the old orator
Isocrates, who seems almost to have hailed Philip of Macedon as
the heaven-sent leader of Hellas. Whether was wisest the policy
of this moderate party, the pro-Macedonian pan-Hellenism
of Isocrates, or the fierce miso-Philippic, self-centred, and
exclusively Athenian patriotism of Demosthenes, is not an easy
question to answer satisfactorily. The programme of Isocrates
was what was destined to be carried out — except that Greece
was to become enslaved by the heaven-sent Macedonian leader
— but it is impossible not to feel moved by the fiery indigna-
tion and the eloquent zeal of the great Athenian orator,
however much one may deplore a state of things in which an
irresponsible and excitable democracy is swayed by mere
oratory.
Phihp, as we have seen, had already possessed himself of
AmphipoHs, Potidaea, and other Athenian towns in Chalcidice
and the neighbourhood. He now (351) threatens Olynthus,
the chief of the Greek Chalcidian Confederacy. Demosthenes
endeavours by his Olynthiac orations to rouse the Athenians,
but the peace party is slow to move, and Philip, by means
of his war-engines and his gold, gains possession of the town.
He razed it to the ground and enslaved the population. Then
he attacked the Chersonese, and thus threatened to cut off the
Buxine trade, on which Athens largely depended for supplies
— a move by which at last public feeling was thoroughly excited
and the influence of Demosthenes strengthened.
428
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
Meanwhile the ' Sacred War ' between the Phocians and
Thebans had been continued from year to year with no decisive
results, although both Athens and Sparta had sent large
contingents to help the Phocians, whose leader, Phayllus, a
brother of Philomelus and Onomarchus, freely plundered the
Delphic treasury to pay his mercenary troops. At last Athens,
weary and possibly somewhat ashamed of her Phocian aUies,
was meditating friendship with Thebes, when Philip, quick to
see and seize his opportunity, made overtures to the Athenians.
They forthwith dispatched to Pella an ambassador, Philocrates,
with nine officials in his train, among whom were Demosthenes
and his great rival, Aeschines ; but the wily Macedonian seems
to have been too clever for them all, and to have once more
found his gold effective. He sent commissioners to Athens, and
a second Athenian embassy visited Pella and was kept waiting
for weeks till he returned from a Thracian expedition, and then
had to dance attendance on him while he marched through
Thessaly ; and when at last they were allowed to return, with
the humiliating treaty at length fully ratified, they were
closely followed by Philip, who this time found Thermopylae
unoccupied and the Phocians at his mercy.
Great was the indignation and the consternation at Athens
when it was realized that, instead of crushing Thebes, Philip
meant to annihilate Phocis. The partisans of Demosthenes
were full of impotent fury, and he himself fiercely assailed
Aeschines ^ and Philocrates on the charge of accepting bribes
from Philip and playing a treasonable part as peace-com-
missioners ; but the Athenian mob was paralysed with
fear and sent congratulations to Philip, renouncing their
support of the Phocians. Every town in Phocis, except Abae,
was then razed to the ground and the inhabitants dispersed
into small hamlets. For this act Philip had craftily obtained
the sanction of the Amphictionic Council, which also decreed
1 He was, however, cowed for the time by an attack made by Aeschines
on Timarchus, one of his associates of evil repute, and did not renew the
charge until 343, when Philocrates evaded trial by flight and Aeschines,
who was supported by Eubulus and Phocion, made a plucky defence and
was acquitted — though doubtless he had accepted Philip's gold.
429
ANCIENT GREECE
that Phocis should, restore b}^ yearly payments all that had
been taken from the Delpliic treasury. The Macedonian
kmg, as a Greek potentate, was then given the votes in the
Amphictionic Council (see coin 9, Plate V) which had been
possessed by Phocis, and as champion of the Delphic god he
was granted the presidency of the Pythian Games, which
happened to be celebrated in this year (346). At Athens this
was regarded as insufferable. No delegates were sent to the
festival. Philip contemptuously ignored the insult, but sent
a formal notification of his election, which was equivalent to
an ultimatum ; however, he deferred open hostility till a
more convenient season.
Such was the sequel of the dishonourable Peace of Philo-
crates, in which Athens had been thoroughly outwitted by the
craft and the rapidity of Philip. She was forced to conceal her
shame and indignation under a show of servility. Even Demos-
thenes himself thought it advisable in his speech On the Peace
to advocate a temporizing submission, while at the same time
his fury against his personal enemy, Aeschines, was, as we
shall see, intensified by the failure of his impeachment. More
worthy of our respect, even if we cannot allow it our full
sympathy, was the action of the ' old man eloquent,' Isocrates
— now in his ninety-first year. By his written speeches and
letters he had for a long time persistently and quietly asserted
his belief in Macedonian hegemony, and he now addressed to
Philip a letter full of dignity, urging him to assume the leader-
ship against Persia and begging him to prove that he was not
plotting against the liberties of Greece.
Between 346 and 341 this Peace of Philocrates, though a
hollow affair, continued to remain formally unbroken, in spite
of the vehement attacks made on the Macedonian king by
Demosthenes, whose Second Philippic (344), by its outspoken
accusations of perfidy, proved that the orator had recovered
from his temporary mood of submission. Philip took but little
notice. He was waiting for his opportunity. Meantime he
ravaged Illyria, occupied Thessaly, and, having built a con-
siderable fleet (ostensibly against Persia), began to menace the
430
121. The Liox of Chaeroxeia
122. Arcadian- Gate, MessexE
430
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
Athenian settlements on the Chersonese, whereby Athenian
and Macedonian troops actually came into collision. Hereupon
PhiHp, with crafty impudence, sent a letter of remonstrance
to Athens, recounting his grievances and complaining that
the Athenians had rejected his overtures and refused arbitra-
tion. A result of this was a speech by Demosthenes In Answer
to the Letter of Philip, and another Concerning Affairs in the
Chersonese, and these speeches were followed up by the
still louder war-blast of the Third Philippic. Moreover, the
orator actually tried to practise what he preached. He went
to the Hellespont and persuaded Byzantium and Perinthus to
secede from alHance with Phihp. But the man of deeds recked
little of the man of words. He forthwith captured various
Greek towns on the Propontis and brought up his siege-engines
against Perinthus, and tried to surprise Byzantium. In these
undertakings, however, he was foiled by the advent of a large
Athenian fleet under Chares and Phocion. For a few months
he withdrew into the wilds of Thrace in order to punish rebel-
lious Scythian tribes ; but the open defiance of the Athenians
had determined him to take his revenge on the first oppor-
tunity.
This opportunity soon came. The cultivation of the sacred
ground near Delphi (anciently called the Crissaean or Cirrhaean
plain) had once more excited the votaries of the god. This time
it was the town of Amphissa that had perpetrated the sacri-
lege, and the Amphictionic Council called upon PhiHp, as the
champion of the deity, to punish the offender.
In the spring of 338 he marched southward ; but instead
of attacking Amphissa he seized Elateia, a town of Northern
Phocis, and began to entrench himself. At Athens the news
caused an indescribable panic. On the advice of Demosthenes
an embassy was sent^to beg the Thebans for support, and a
combined army of Thebans and Athenians, with a few auxi-
liaries from Corinth, Megara, and Euboea, marched to meet
the Macedonians. A few miles before they reached the frontier
of Phocis they were met, on the plain of Chaeroneia, by the
army of Philip, and suffered a disastrous defeat (August 7,
ANCIENT GREECE
338). The battle is said to have been decided by a brilliant
charge of the Macedonian ' companions ' (horse-guards) , led
by Alexander, then a youth of eighteen/ but the result was
mainly due to the larger numbers of the Macedonians and their
superiority in arms, training, and generalship — for the best of
the Athenian commanders was Chares, and he was opposed to
Philip himself. The Thebans who fell were buried on the field of
battle, and beside the cemetery was erected a great stone lion,
which was still in position in the days of Pausanias, but sub-
sequently was overthrown and covered with earth. Not many
years ago the fragments were excavated, and quite lately they
have been reconstructed (see Fig. 121).
Demosthenes was present at the battle as hoplite, and saved
himself by flight. It is said that Philip, after celebrating his
victory at a banquet, came reeling drunk to the field of battle
and jeered at his prisoners and the flight of the great orator,
singing in triumph the words (that happened to make a comic
iambic verse) Ar^juocrOevr}? ArtiuocrOevovg Uaiaviev^ rdS'' elirev —
" Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes, of the deme Paeania,
thus spake."
But among the captives was an Athenian orator named
Demades, who, though a bitter adversary of Demosthenes and
an advocate of Macedonian supremacy, was so moved by
disgust as to tell Philip that " though fortune had given him
the part of Agamemnon he was playing the part of Thersites."
This sobered the king, and instead of resenting the remark
of Demades he took him into his confidence and sent him as
envoy to Athens. Moreover, he had the magnanimity, or the
diplomatic wisdom, to treat the Athenians with surprising
lenience, and to win their approbation by his severity against
the Thebans. He sent back all the Athenian prisoners unran-
somed and laden with gifts, while he occupied the Cadmeia of
Thebes with a Macedonian garrison. He then marched south-
wards, and after accepting the submission of all the Pelopon-
nese except Sparta, whose territory he ravaged, he held a
1 'Alexander's oak,' under which, it is said, his tent was pitched, still
stood some centuries later.
432
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
congress at Corinth and was appointed chief commander of
the Greek states against Persia.^
War was formally declared against the barbarian, and after
consolidating his northern dominions, from Ambracia to
Byzantium, the Macedonian generaHssimo of Hellas began
to collect a great army for the invasion of Asia.
But Philip's dream of Oriental conquest was not to be
realized. He had already sent across to Asia the vanguard of
his army under the command of his generals Parmenio and
Attains, and was intending soon to follow, when his life was
cut short. Olympias, the mother of his son Alexander, was an
Epirot princess, daughter of the king Neoptolemus, who traced
his descent from the son of Achilles. She had perhaps inherited
the proud and wrathful temperament of her great ancestor,
and possessed the somewhat savage characteristics of Bpirot
women, who were noted for their wild excesses in the worship
of Dionysus. Her uncanny habits (one of which was the
keeping of poisonous snakes) and her violent temper seem to
have repelled PhiHp and to have exposed her to the suspicion
of insanity — a suspicion that seems justified by not a few acts
of her son. Philip, who is said to have possessed a considerable
harem besides his queenly spouse, took to himself as consort
(perhaps after formally repudiating Olympias) the niece of
his general Attains, Cleopatra by name. At the wedding feast
the intoxicated uncle of the bride called upon heaven to bless
the marriage with a ' legitimate ' heir to the throne of Mace-
donia, and Alexander, in furious indignation at the insult, hurled
a wine-goblet at Attalus. Philip seized his sword, but reeled
and fell as he rushed at Alexander, who left the banquet-hall
exclaiming, " I^o, the man who wishes to cross from Europe to
Asia, but falls as he crosses from one couch to another ! "
Olympias and her son fled — she to her brother Alexander,
king of Epirus, he to Illyria. Philip, however, offering the hand
of a daughter to his brother-in-law, and bringing his powers
1 Artaxerxes III was poisoned by the eunuch Bagoas in 338, and his son
Arses was also murdered by him (336), whereupon the all-powerful Bagoas set
Darius III on the throne. In 338 Athens entreated Persia for help against
Philip, but was ' haughtily and barbarously ' repelled.
2E 433
ANCIENT GREECE
of persuasion to bear on the young Alexander, succeeded,
strange as it may seem, in effecting the return of the fugitives.
In the spring of 336 the marriage of PhiHp's daughter and
the Epirot king was solemnized with great magnificence at
Aegae, the ancient capital. On the following day a public
procession took place, during which a young man suddenly
rushed forth from the crowd and plunged a sword into Philip's
side, killing him on the spot. He was pursued and cut down
by the royal guards. It is said that his motive was to revenge
an outrage of Attains which Philip had refused to punish ;
but doubtless he was also instigated to the deed by Olympias.
That Alexander knew and approved is not probable, although
one of the accomplices, Alexander of Lyncestis, who was fore-
most in acclaiming him as the new monarch, not only escaped
the punishment that Alexander threatened against the con-
spirators, but later enjoyed the friendship of the king and was
loaded with honours.
The existence of ancient Greece as a free country (a nation
she never had been) is often said to have ended with the disaster
of Chaeroneia. Her history is henceforth, after a few vain
attempts to regain liberty, for many years merged in that of
Macedonia, and is no longer of much interest except in so far
as by her art and hterature and philosophy she " took captive
her barbarian conqueror." ^
But perhaps we may regard the departure of Alexander for
the East in 334 as the real beginning of the Hellenistic age, for
ere this took place he had asserted the Macedonian supremacy
and crushed out all hope of resistance by a chastisement still
more terrible than that of Chaeroneia. ^
Demosthenes had proposed to celebrate Philip's death by
a public thanksgiving and to pay honour to the memory
of his assassin. The proposal had been indignantly opposed
by the more noble-minded Phocion, who, in words that recall
the rebuke administered by Odysseus to old Eurycleia,
1 Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit . . . (Hor. Ep. II, i. 156) applies
equally well to Macedon and to the later conqueror, Rome.
* Once more, after Alexander's death, Athens persuaded other Greek cities
to join her in revolt, but was finally overwhelmed at Crannon, in 322.
434
123- Al,EXANDER
124. ISOCRATES
■"^■.ui
^-i'
1
r
125. Aeschines
126. Epicurus
434
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
exclaimed that "nothing shows a more dastardly nature than
to rejoice over the death of an enemy." But pubhc jubilations
took place in Athens, and Demosthenes poured his contempt
on the young king, whom he likened to the Homeric ' Margites '
— the well-known type of a blatant braggart. Other cities also
began to show signs of disaffection, and embassies were being
sent to Persia and to Attains, who had declared for his niece's
infant son. But with astounding rapidity Alexander swept
down on Greece, suppressed an insurrection in Thessaly,
strengthened the Macedonian garrison in Thebes, received a
submissive embassy from Athens, called a congress at Corinth
(where he was appointed generalissimo of Greece in the place
of his father, and had his celebrated interview with the Cynic
Diogenes), and then hastened back to chastise the Thracians
and other northern tribes, whom he chased over the Danube,
and finally turned his arms against the western tribes of
Illyrians and Taulantians and reduced them to submission.
A rumour now reached Greece that Alexander had been
slain in battle. Demosthenes produced a man who swore that
he had witnessed it. The Thebans blockaded the Macedonian
garrison in the Cadmeia, and called on Athens and other cities
to rise. But suddenly, ere any plan had been developed, a
Macedonian army was reported in Boeotia, and scarce had
the Thebans recovered from their delusion that he was dead
when Alexander was before their walls, and soon after he was
in possession of their city. A terrible massacre took place.
Six thousand were butchered and thirty thousand enslaved.
The Greek allies of Alexander, the Phocians, Plataeans, and
Orchomenians (or perhaps the delegates of the Corinthian
Congress), were commissioned to decide the fate of Thebes.
The city was razed to the ground and her territory divided
among other Greek states. Only one single house was left
standing — the house of the great Theban poet. Perhaps the
temples were spared, although Milton tells us that
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, wheu temple and tower
Went to the ground.
435
ANCIENT GREECE
Alexander, it is said, repented this destruction, and attri-
buted his fits of uncontrollable fury (in one of which he killed
Cleitus, who had saved his life) to the anger of the wine-god
Dionysus, who specially favoured Thebes. The city, thus
cruelly destroyed in 335, was rebuilt by Cassander in 316,
but never again became of much importance.
The conduct of the Athenians on this occasion, although
allowance may be made for panic, seems very contemptible.
A few days after deciding to send troops to aid Thebes in her
revolt they sent an embassy to Alexander congratulating him
on the annihilation of the rebellious city. Alexander replied
by demanding the surrender of Demosthenes and other anti-
Macedonian demagogues, and Demosthenes owed his life to
the intercession of Phocion.
The name of Phocion reminds us that we should not judge
the Athenian people solely by the decrees of popular assemblies,
the verdicts of dicasteries, and the rancour and sophistries of
orators. Although scorned by the militant imperialism and
Demosthenic patriotism of the day as a pro-Macedonian and
an advocate of peace at any price, Phocion, hke doubtless many
other wise and honest men in Athens, sincerely, if mistakenly,
believed in what he held to be a higher form of patriotism,
not merely Athenian, but Hellenic, and he was, what can be
said of very few Greek political celebrities except Aristides
and Timoleon (and certainly not of Demosthenes), as "mani-
festly proof against bribery " as Pericles himself. It is pleasant
to be able to end this brief chronicle of the external history of
ancient Greece with an anecdote which is well invented, if
not (though it possibly is) perfectly true. Alexander sent
Phocion a present of a hundred talents. Phocion asked how he
had deserved such a distinction. " Because," rephed the envoy,
" the king regards you as the only just and honest man in
Athens." " Then," answered Phocion, " I beg him to allow
me to remain such."
Alas ! justice and honesty force one to add that some eigh-
teen years later, amidst frenetic acclamation, this ' one just
man' was condemned to death for treason by the Athenian
436
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
Assembly — to the same death as that by which Socrates had
died — and that not long afterwards they celebrated his funeral
obsequies at public expense and erected a statue to his memory,
thus honouring him as a patriot and martyr.
SECTION A: ISOCPIATES : AESCHINES : DEMOSTHENES :
LATER PHILOSOPHERS
Isocrates (436-338) was an Athenian. Among his teachers
were Socrates (who in Plato's Phaedrus prophesies great things
of him) and Gorgias. He first taught rhetoric in Chios, and
afterwards in Athens, where he acquired great reputation and
wealth. Of his twenty-two extant orations the best known
are the Panegyricus and the Areopagiticus. On account of
his timidity and weak voice, as he tells us, he renounced public
speaking, and even the Panegyricus, an early work and osten-
sibly addressed to a national assembly [Travi'jyvpi^), such as
that at Olympia, may not have been delivered in pubHc. The
one great idea that dominated Isocrates all through his long life
was the possibility of putting an end to the insane fratricidal
strife of the Greek cities for ' supremacy ' and of uniting them
against the common enemy. It was shortly after the humi-
liating ' Peace of the Great King ' (Peace of Antalcidas) in 387
that he wrote his Panegyric — fifty years before Chaeroneia,
and some thirty years before Philip's accession. At this time
he had not yet given up the hope that Athens and Sparta
might be reconciled and might share the hegemony, Athens
supreme on the sea and Sparta on land. He begins by lament-
ing (as Solon did) that while honours are showered on athletes
no honour awaits the wise counsellor, for rhetoric with its
sounding brass and its sophistries fascinates public regard,
" depreciating what is important and exalting trivialities,
talking in a new-fangled way of old things and in archaic
fashion of new." He next states his case for the amicable
division of the supremacy, and then launches out into eloquent
and enthusiastic praise (hence the later meaning of ' pan-
egyric ') of Athens, showing how from the legendary age of
437
ANCIENT GREECE
the heroes down to the present she had deserved well of Greece
and had won, and lost, and yet once more was winning, a
supremacy as queen of the sea. He defends her (not very
successfully) against the charge of despotism and inhumanity.
Then he turns to Sparta and speaks of Thermopylae and
Plataea, and how she has won a right to military supremacy
on land. He then points out how, in spite of her great size,
Persia had never been able to hold her ground before Greek
courage, and he cites Marathon and Cunaxa. Then he returns
to the burden of his lamentations against the civil wars of
Greece, and bids his imaginary hearers think of the glorious
and exhilarating poetry, such as that of Homer and of Aeschy-
lus, that describes the victories of Greeks over barbarians,
and reminds them (forgetting the Seven against Thebes, but
otherwise reminding them with justice) that no great Greek
poetry described the quarrels of Hellenes with each other.
And very justly, too, he inveighs against the shameful peace
lately dictated by the Great King, and once more turns with
rapture to the visions of an united Hellas and of the conquest
of Asia Minor by the Greeks. One of these visions was indeed
in a fashion reahzed, but under a hegemony of which he at
that time did not dream.
The Panegyric was applauded as a triumph of literary oratory,
but the visionary politics of Isocrates were not taken seriously
by the Athenian public, and even by men like Phocion they
were probably regarded as of such stuff as dreams are made
of. Athens and Sparta could no more share hegemony than
nowadays could England and Germany, though between the
Ionic and the Doric Hellene there existed a closer relationship
than that between Anglo-Saxon and Teuton.
The Areopagitic Oration (after which Milton named his
famous treatise on the liberty of the Press) was written c. 355,
after the so-called Social War, in which Athens had lost some
of her chief subject-alHes. It was not spoken, but is addressed
to the Athenian Ecclesia. After warning the Athenians
against their love of money and display and their arrogant
self-conceit, and urging a return to simplicity and manliness.
-^^^^s^^^sfcHiM
127. Demosthenes
438
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
he points out the perils that threaten them, and then states
(what must have excited many a smile) that the only means
of safety is to restore the old Solonian and Cleistheuic
democracy and to revive the supreme authority of the ancient
and aristocratic court of the Areopagus.
In 346, when a peace (that of Philocrates) had been made
with Philip, Isocrates, as we have seen, addressed him a letter.
" This is," he says, " no sudden and passing whim of an
imbecile old man, but a belief that I have held all my life.
The hour is now come. Under thy leadership Hellas shall
conquer Persia." But he entreats Philip to prove that he is
not plotting against the liberties of Greece.
What Isocrates thought of Philip's rapid acquisition of
Hellenic cities and of the fate of the Phocians it is not easy to
discover. Whether the tidings of Chaeroneia did cause, as Milton
asserts, the death of the ' old man eloquent,' and whether it
was caused by grief or by a sudden access of hopeful enthu-
siasm, are questions that have received very diverse answers.
Aeschines
Of Aeschines, the great rival of Demosthenes, we possess
only three orations — that against Timarchus, that on the
Embassy, and that against Ctesiphon. All three are directed
against Demosthenes. After the failure of his attack on
Ctesiphon, who had proposed that Demosthenes should be
presented with a golden crown in the great theatre at the
festival of the Dionysia, Aeschines, not having gained a
fifth of the votes, was heavily fined, and escaped to Rhodes,
where he founded a school of rhetoric. He died at Samos
n3i4.
Demosthenes
Many of the facts of the life of Demosthenes have already
been related, for his rhetorical activity is intimately connected
with the pohtical events of the last period that we have con-
sidered. For some time after the departure of Alexander
for the East in 334 we hear comparatively little of him. The
439
ANCIENT GREECE
cause celebre of the Golden Crown was decided in 330. We
possess the speeches of both orators, and can Hsten, as it
were, to the very tones of the passionate denunciations that
they thundered at each other. The speech of Aeschines,
with its scathing review of the Hfe of Demosthenes, is so
irresistibly eloquent that, like his audience at Rhodes, to whom
he recited it, we can hardly believe it possible that it should
have failed — until we read the reply of Demosthenes, which,
if it does not impress us so much with its sincerity and straight-
forwardness, is incomparably greater in eloquence.
In 324 the general Harpalus, whom Alexander had left to
administer the satrapy of Babylon, having revolted, passed
over to Greece with a fleet of thirty ships and much treasure
and endeavoured to incite the Greek cities to join him. Har-
palus was murdered, and 700 talents of his money were seized
by the Athenians to be handed over to Alexander. Half of
the money disappeared, and Demosthenes was condemned of
theft or of gross negligence. He was imprisoned, but escaped,
and lived in Troezen and Aegina till Alexander's death,
when he was recalled. But Antipater, Alexander's gerent
in Macedonia, crushed the Greeks at the battle of Crannon
(322) and Demosthenes fled. He was overtaken by Anti-
pater's emissaries on the islet of Calaureia, near Troezen,
where he had taken sanctuary. When arrested he poisoned
himself.
In the oratory of Demosthenes, as in that of Cicero, there
is nothing of the sublime. Its characteristics are passionate
intensity, dauntless courage in attack, unrivalled skill in defence,
and an incomparable mastery over words. He used a language
free, natural, personal, direct, perfectly plain and unaffected,
entirely untainted by the rhetoric of the schools. He depended,
not on an elegant and decorated diction, but on force, vigour,
and dramatic emphasis — such as he meant when he said that
the three things necessary for the orator were Acting (vTroKpicri?),
Acting, and Acting. A few lines from his Third Philippic,
though they suffer much in translation, may illustrate this.
How different his feeling about the fratricidal wars of the
440
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
Greek states was from that of Isocrates is very evident from
the opening words.
" Ay, and what is more, you know well that whatever wrongs
were done to Greeks by the Spartans or by us were at any
rate done by genuine sons of Greece, and one might regard
it just in the same way as when a son who by birth is the
genuine heir to a large property indulges in some pursuit not
admirable or right. Such conduct in itself certainly deserves
to be blamed and reprimanded ; but one cannot regard it
as if he did not belong to the family and were not the heir,
whereas if a servant, or some supposititious child, were to
destroy or spoil what was not his own, good heavens, how
much more readily would every one declare that he was a
scamp and deserved their anger ! But concerning PhiHp and
his doings they have no such feelings — and yet he is not only
not a Greek and no connexion of the Greeks, but not even a
barbarian of any country of which one can speak with respect.
He is just a pestilential Macedonian — of a country from which
one never could buy even a decent slave."
Tne following passage is, in the original, a good specimen
of his vigour and his pugnacity — and perhaps also of his
ingenuity, for in many of the manuscripts the word which I
have translated by ' hirehng ' is in this passage accented on
the first syllable, ju.ia-OwTO'i, whereas the accent generally falls
on the last, and this seems to confirm the truth of the
story that Demosthenes purposely mispronounced the word,
and that the audience, far more shocked at the false accent
than at any iniquity of Aeschines, shouted out juicrOujTO'i —
thus at the same time correcting the orator's mispronunciation
and answering his question as he desired.
" As for what then took place, there is much more that I
could]]say. But I think I have said enough — perhaps more
than enough. And it is his fault if I have, for he so drenched
me with the dregs of his own rascality and that of his rascally
conduct that I was obliged to clear myself before those who
441
ANCIENT GREECE
are too young to remember the facts. But even before I said
a word you yourselves were probably thoroughly disgusted —
those of you who knew about his hireling servility. He,
forsooth, calls it intimacy and friendship, and on some late
occasion spoke about my ' insulting his friendship with Alex-
ander.' Where did he get it from ? How did he earn it ?
/ wouldn't call him a ' friend ' either of Philip or Alexander — •
I'm not such an idiot — uilless one ought to call reapers, or
others who do anything for hire, the ' friends ' of those who
hire them. No ! I call you a hireling — formerly of Philip
and now of Alexander ; and so do all these gentlemen. If
you don't believe me, ask them ! — or, rather, I'll do it for
you. . . . Which, O Athenians, do you think Aeschines to be —
Alexander's friend or his hireling P . . . You hear what they
say ! " [De Corona, 242.)
Later Philosophers
The greatest teachers, knowing that truth, as Plato says,
"cannot be communicated like other branches of learning,"
have ever been more anxious to intimate, and to enforce by
word and deed, deep-lying principles than to formulate doctrines
and build up systems. Of such nature was the teaching of
Socrates. He wrote nothing, and it is probable that the
underlying principles that he enforced were intimated by him
in a much less systematized form than that in which they are
presented by Plato. It was therefore natural that his followers,
when they began (as was inevitable) to formulate and systema-
tize, should split up into various schools. The doctrines of
these diverse schools of post-Socratic philosophy, being in-
timately connected with the later philosophy, that of the
Romans and the early Christian ages, he beyond the scope
of this volume. I shall therefore only say a few words on the
subject.
Besides Plato, Socrates' greatest disciple, who, as we have
seen, founded the Academic school, should be mentioned
Eucleides, Aristippus, and Antisthenes, who founded respec-
tively the Megaric (Dialectic), the Cyrenaic, and the Cynic
442
■iW^WT^
H
O
JH
05
M
<
06
CI
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
schools. To the Cynics belonged Diogenes, and the Cynic
philosophy led towards Stoicism, which was founded by Zeno
of Cyprus about the same time as Epicurus of Samos was
proclaiming his philosophy (c. 300).
Far more famous (at least in mediaeval and modern times)
than any of these philosophies was that of Aristotle and his
followers, the so-called Peripatetics. Aristotle was born at
Stageiros (or Stageira), a town of Chalcidice, which was
destroyed by Phihp, but rebuilt, at the philosopher's request,
by Alexander. In 342 Aristotle was invited by Phihp to act as
tutor to the young Alexander, and remained at Pella till 335,
when he settled at Athens, and for thirteen years taught at
the Lyceum. He died in Euboea in 322.
SECTION B : LYSIPPUS : HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE
Scopas and Praxiteles, as we have seen, flourished from
about 390 to 350. Towards the end of this period we hear
of Leochares, who together with Scopas w^as employed by
Artemisia to supply sculpture for the Mausoleum. He is of
interest also because he was the designer of the gold and ivory
images of Philip II and his family which were erected in the
Philippeion, a hall built at Olympia by the Macedonian king.
Moreover, the bust of Isocrates (Fig. 124) may be founded on
his statue of the orator which was erected at Bleusis, and the
well-known group of Ganymede and an eagle, copies of which
are to be seen in museums (the best of them in the Vatican) ,
was probably his work. Considered as a realistic production,
the latter offends by the evident impossibility that the bird
could lift such a weight — though Professor Gardner tells us
that " boy and eagle strain upward in an aspiration like that
which Goethe expresses in his poem of Ganymede " — and
regarded as a work of art, it seems to fail entirely in satisfying
one's imaginative faculty. It is doubtless clever, but surely
rather too much of the tableau vivant type.
Somewhat younger than Teochares was Tysippus, Vv^hose
name one associates with Alexander, for it is said that the
443
ANCIENT GREECE
monarch allowed no sculptor but L-ysippus and no painter
but Apelles to portray him — that is, probably, other
artists were denied a sitting after having once " failed to
render," as Plutarch says, " his manly and leonine aspect
while trying to represent the bend in his neck and the emotional
glance of his eyes." Lysippus was of the school of Sicyon —
the athletic school of Polycleitas — but his ideal of the manly
form was more lithe and slender than that of his predecessor,
with a smaller head (an eighth instead of a seventh of the
total height). It is said that he put a coin in his money-box
whenever he received payment for a commission, and at his
death 1500 coins were found within it ; and yet until lately the
only extant statue believed to be a copy of a work of his was
the Apoxyomenos of the Vatican (an athlete scraping himself
with a strigil), to which was sometimes added the bust of
Alexander found at Alexandria and now in the British Museum
(Fig. 123), the best of many such portraits. But the French
excavations at Delphi have brought to light an exceedingly
fine statue of the athlete Agias, probably a marble replica of
a bronze original— a much finer work of art than the Apoxyo-
menos. The face, though not highly intellectual, is of a far
nobler type than that of any known statue by Polycleitus
or Scopas, or than that of the Praxitelean Hermes, and the
skill shown in the splendid nude figure displays the great
artist, not merely the anatomical expert.
Lysippus produced several works of enormous size, among
them a colossal Zeus at Tarentum, sixty feet high, and a Sun-
god (Hehos, or Baal) in a four-horse chariot at Rhodes —
anticipating the Colossus of Rhodes, which was by his pupil.
Chares— and a huge seated Heracles, of which he made a
minute copy as a table ornament for Alexander — a statuette
which, if we are to believe Martial, afterwards belonged to
Hannibal and Sulla.
A statue of Alexander by Lysippus, described by Plutarch,
represented him (somewhat as in the bust, Fig. 123) gazing
upwards with the head a little bent to the left (in consequence
of a wound), a defect, Plutarch tells us, imitated by some of
444
129. Aphrodite of Mei,os
444
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
his successors. The ' leonine ' face with its overhanging
mane of hair and its ' swimming ' eyes, in whose depths passion
and madness seem to lurk, became a type which long pervaded
sculpture, so that not a few extant works of the later period
are either evidently meant for portraits of Alexander or
contain reminiscences of the type created by I^ysippus ; and
doubtless Apelles, whose famous picture of Alexander repre-
sented him wielding a thunderbolt, helped to confirm this
type. A magnificent work of art which is doubtless a product
of the school of L-ysippus — possibly even a work of Ivysif)pus
himself, who is known to have made groups representing
Alexander in battle and hunting with his companions — is the
so-called Alexander Sarcophagus (Fig. 130). It was found,
together with others,^ at Sidon, and is now in the Constanti-
nople Museum. On it "we seem to recognize the features of
more than one Macedonian warrior besides Alexander himself,
and their peculiar helmets and arms are rendered with accuracy,
as well as the swathings and drapery " — and the braccae or
anaxyrides — " of their Persian opponents." It is probably
the best preserved of all monuments of antiquity. The colours
with which the marble was stained are still plainly visible.
" No one," says Professor Gardner, " who has not seen this
sarcophagus can realize the effect produced by a correct and
artistic application of colour to sculpture."
Another product of this period, and one which illustrates
the tendency towards bigness and theatrical pose, is the well-
known and often much-admired group of Niobe and her
children. The original was brought to Rome, probably from
Cihcia, about 35 B.C. Pliny describes it and tells us that it is
" doubtful whether it was by Praxiteles or by Scopas." It is
most evidently by neither. Although free from the contortions
1 E.g. the ' Tomb of the Satrap,' and the ' I,ycian Sarcophagus ' (of about
420 perhaps), with Attic influence, such as we see in the Nereid Monument
(P- 385). and a sarcophagus with eighteen most beautiful female figures, ' the
Mourners,' reminding one of Athenian tombstones. The Alexander Sarcophagus
is of Pentelic (Attic) marble. It is not supposed to have contained his body.
A sarcophagus in the British Museum (brought from Alexandria) has better
claims to this honour.
44.S
ANCIENT GREECE
of later Hellenistic art, it shows neither in its forms nor faces
nor drapery nor attitudes the characteristics of the best Greek
sculpture. The group probably stood, not in the pediment
of a temple, but on some rocky elevation against a background,
and possibly statues of the vengeful deities, Apollo and
Artemis, were placed on some higher level. Good ancient
copies of fourteen of these figures are to be seen in the Niobe
Hall of the Uffizi at Florence, Some of them were dug up at
Rome in 1583, and may possibly be the statues seen by Pliny.
Hellenistic Sculpture
It may be useful to add a few words indicating the main
features of later Greek sculpture.
After the conquests of Alexander Greek art died down to
the root, though it did not become entirely extinct, in the
mother-country, but its scions, planted in Eastern soil, flourished
exceedingly. The religious characteristic of old Greek statuary,
the main function of which was to produce images of the gods
and heroes, has been to a large extent lost. Sculpture is
now used a great deal for portraiture, and for personifica-
tions such as of Wealth and Peace and Fortune and of
countries and cities,^ and the tendency towards the colossal,
already observed in I^ysippus, becomes stronger. This is
especially noticeable at the two great centres of Hellenistic
art, Rhodes and Pergamon. In Rhodes, according to Pliny,
more than a hundred huge statues existed, of which the greatest,
the famous bronzen Colossus, made by Chares, was 105 feet
high. It represented the Sun-god (see coin 13, Plate VI).
The well-known groups of I^aocoon and the Farnese Bull
were brought to Rome from Rhodes, and are wonderful
illustrations, though comparatively small, of later Rhodian
work, with its Michelangelesque mastery over huge masses
of material and its ostentatious display of anatomical know-
^ Europe and Asia are figured on the little Arbela tablet (given in my
Quinius Ciirtius), and a very beautiful seated female figure representing the
' City Antioch,' by a pupil of Lysippus, is given in Gardner's Handbook.
In earlier art a river was often personified by a river-god (or bull), and a city
by its tutelary deity ; but that was an essentially different method.
446
. ^BSPIHt ^*iiS^
..-Aa
A?ii.5piuraMgp» ■
:a:i::.
130. The ' Ai,EXANDER Sarcophagus '
446
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
ledge. In connexion with this taste for the gigantic may be
mentioned the bronze equestrian statues of, perhaps, Castor and
Pollux on Monte Cavallo at Rome, which are evidently a Greek
work and of this period — although an inscription (of the age
of Constantine) attributes them to Pheidias and Praxiteles !
The other great Hellenistic school of sculpture was the
Pergamene. Attains, the third king of Pergamon, the Troad
city which was later the Hterary rival of Alexandria, erected
many statues and groups to commemorate his victories, espe-
cially those over the Gauls (Galatians), whom he had forced
to settle down in the province henceforth known as Galatia.
Many of the bases of these sculptures have been discovered,
and from the way in which the feet of the statues have been
carefully cut out of the pedestal it is certain that the figures
were carried away to Rome or Constantinople, One of these —
or possibly only a copy of the original bronze — is the Dying
Gaul (in the Capitol at Rome), formerly called the Dying
Gladiator. Other sculptures of smaller size, representing
battles of Greeks with Persians, Athenians with Amazons,
and Greeks with Gauls, were placed by Attains on the Athe-
nian Acropohs. The son of Attalus, Eumenes, made Perga-
mon famous by means of the enormous base (lOO feet square)
on which, surrounded by a colonnade, stood the altar of Zeus.
On this altar-base there were friezes w^hose huge contorted
figures represented the battle of the Giants against Zeus and
all the di major es et minor es of the Greek Pantheon, aided by
numerous non-Hellenic deities and by various demi-gods,
each of the great divinities attended by his or her sacred
animal — a " writhing mass of giants with whom their divine
antagonists are inextricably entangled," reminding one of
the horribly impressive giant-frescoes by Giulio Romano in
the Mantuan Palazzo del Te. The weather-worn remains of
these Pergamene sculptures are now at Berlin.
Of the many other extant statues that are attributed to the
earlier Hellenistic age, or the preceding period, perhaps the finest
are the Aphrodite of Melos, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Nike
of Samothrace (Figs. 129, 131). The Aphrodite was discovered
447
ANCIENT GREECE
on the island of Melos in a grotto, in which also a fragment of a
pedestal was found bearing a few words of an inscription that
contained the last part of the artist's name, viz. ' sander '
or ' xander,' and gave Antioch on the Maeander as his home.
The sculptor is unknown, but from the character of the writing
the inscription was believed to date from about lOO. How-
ever, it is quite uncertain whether this fragment ever belonged
to the pedestal of the statue, and it has now disappeared. To
judge from the statue itself one cannot but believe that it dates
from a much earlier period. " For a conception of the female
figure at once so dignified and so beautiful," says Professor
E. A. Gardner, " we have to go back to the sculpture of the Par-
thenon, and we see the same breadth and simplicity of modelling
in the drapery as in the nude. . . . The sculptor who made this
Aphrodite must have lived in spirit in the age of Pheidias."
The Apollo Belvedere is by some attributed to Leochares,
merely by reason of some supposed similarity (perhaps in
technique) to the Ganymede. This attribution I find quite
impossible to accept. Modern criticism has rightly pointed
out that the Apollo shows what might be called a degradation
of Praxitelean grace and a loss of mascuHne vigour. The
attitude is somewhat theatrical, and the modelling of the nude
is smoothed away so much and the limbs are made so slender
that we have an almost painful idealism and unreality. But
in spite of all this it remains unquestionably one of the most
magically beautiful of all Greek statues, although only a marble
copy of a bronze original.
The Victory (Nike) was discovered on the island of Samo-
thrace, and is now (headless, alas ! and armless) in the I^ouvre.
The trophy was erected by Demetrius Poliorcetes to commemo-
rate a naval victory won in 306. The goddess — a magnificent
figure with wind-swept draperies like the Nike of Paeonius, but
more stately — stands on the marble prow of a warship with
her wings outspread, reminding one of the vision of Dante
on the shore of the Purgatorial Mount — the angel standing
on the vessel with his snow-white wings outspread as sails,
Trattando I'aere con reterne penne.
448
131. The Nike of Samothrace
448
NOTE A
GREEK TEMPLES
IN order to avoid the distraction that would be caused by
frequently interrupting the narrative, or by dealing with
the subject in several widely separated Sections, I have rele-
gated to this Note a few details concerning the chief Greek
temples of different ages. The chronology is, of course,
not always certain. The Index and List of Illustrations
should be consulted. Pictures are given of thirteen of these
temples.
(i) The Heraion (Temple of Hera), at Olympia. Doric :
6 X i6. Built perhaps c. 900. The stone foundations
(probably the most ancient reUc of a Greek temple extant)
were originally surmounted by walls of sunburnt brick and
wooden pillars. Stone columns were gradually substituted,
which accounts for the fact that, to judge from the remains
of thirty-six of the columns and of twenty capitals, they were
almost all different. Pausanias saw one old wooden pillar
still remaining. Nothing has been found of an entablature,
frieze, &c. The Hermes of Praxiteles was found in this temple,
buried in the clay of the sunburnt bricks.
(2) Temple of Apollo, Corinth. Doric : 6 x 15. Probably
built by Periander, c. 600. Seven monolith columns of rough
limestone, originally overlaid with yellowish stucco, still
stand and bear a part of the architrave. They are finely pro-
filed, with a noticeable entasis, but are shorter than usual in
proportion to the thickness, the height (23 1 feet) being only
7| modules (semi-diameters), and the capitals are remarkably
massive.
2F 449
ANCIENT GREECE
(3) Temple of Apollo, Delphi. Built to replace the
ancient temple, burnt down in 548. The architect was
Spintheros of Corinth. A fourth of the expense was to be
borne by the Treasury of Delphi, and the rest was raised by
subscription through all Hellas (even Amasis of Egypt con-
tributed). But the Alcmaeonidae undertook the construction
(thus probably saving the Treasury much expense), and
carried it out in a more splendid manner than was stipulated
in the contract, using Parian marble in many parts instead of
poros or tufa. The remains show that the columns were of
white tufa coated with stucco, and that the outer colonnades
were Doric and the inner Ionic. The pediments contained
figures of Apollo and other deities and the nine Muses. To
the architrave were attached golden shields, offerings of the
Athenians after the battle of Marathon. In the vestibule
were engraved the sayings of the Seven Sages — e.g. " Know
thyself," &c.
(4) Temple of Athene (or Aphaia), Aegina, in the north-
eastern corner of the island. Doric : 6 x 12. Built perhaps
before 500. The pediment sculptures were erected probably
soon after the battle of Salamis. Twenty-two columns are
still standing, bearing the entablature. They are of yellow
limestone covered with stucco. The sculptures of the pedi-
ments were discovered in 181 1, and bought by the Crown
Prince of Bavaria. They were restored and reconstructed
by Thorwaldsen, the great Danish sculptor, and are preserved
in the Glyptothek at Munich. An inscription excavated in
1901 seems to show that the temple was sacred to Aphaia, a
" local goddess with affinities to Artemis."
(5) Temples at Selinus and Acragas (Sicily). The remains
of seven ancient Doric colonnaded temples, some of great
size, built probably soon after the foundation of the city,
c. 628, are to be seen at Selinus, in South-western Sicily,
where a wilderness of enormous ruins covers the acropolis and
an adjacent hill. The greatest of these temples, called the
Apollonion, was almost as large as the huge Olympieion at
Acragas, and was, similarly, not finished when the city was
450
GREEK TEMPLES
taken by the Carthaginians in 409. Some of the still unfinished
column drums are to be seen in a quarry three miles distant.
The most ancient of the Selinus temples had the unusual
proportions 6 x 17. Many of its huge columns are lying in
a row side by side, just as they fell when a great earthquake
(it is not known when) overthrew all the temples of Selinus
and some at Acragas. Some very ancient metopes from the
frieze of this temple are preserved at Palermo.
At Acragas (lyat. Agrigentum, Ital. Girgenti) many splendid
temples were erected by Thero after the victory over the
Carthaginians at Himera in 480. A portion of the still older
Athene temple is yet to be seen forming a part of a church
inside the city, but the temples erected by Thero lined the
south city wall, and from their lofty plateau overlooked the
sea. Of these the unfinished Olympieion was the greatest
Greek temple in existence, as its widespread ruins testify. The
magnificent ' Concordia ' temple (Doric : 6 x 13) is one of the
finest and most perfect Greek temples extant (Fig. 76) , and the
so-called temple of lyacinian Hera (also 6 x 13), of which many
columns still stand on an elevated site, is one of the most
impressive of all ruins. The name ' Concordia ' is due to a Latin
inscription which has nothing to do with the temple, and the
' Lacinian ' temple got its name from a mistake made by Phny,
who states that Zeuxis painted for Agrigentum a picture of
Helen of Troy, whereas it was painted for the temple of Hera on
the lyacinian promontory (see paragraph 11 of this Note).
(6) Temple of Apollo at Didyma (now Hieronda), near
Miletus, called the Temple of the Branchidae, who were the
priestly family in charge. It was famed for its antiquity and
wealth and for its oracle. The original temple perhaps dated
from the early days of Ionian migration (say about 1000) . In
603, before the battle of Carchemish, Pharaoh Necho presented
his cuirass to the temple. Also Croesus made costly golden
offerings (Hdt. i. 92) . The building was plundered and burnt by
the Persians after the capture of Miletus in 494 (possibly without
the consent of Darius, who, as a letter of his to the satrap of
lonia^proves, felt great reverence for this oracle of Apollo).
ANCIENT GREECE
The Branchidae were accused of having surrendered the temple
and treasure, and to save them from the vengeance of the
lonians Xerxes transplanted them to Sogdiana (Turkestan),
not far from I,ake Aral, where they founded a Greek town,
some 2000 miles distant from Miletus. But about 170 years later
Alexander, when greeted on his victorious campaign by this
httle Greek colony, revived the accusation and massacred every
man, woman, and child— one of the foulest deeds that his
insanity perpetrated. The Branchidae temple was rebuilt in
the age of Alexander, and probably by his orders, and was said
to be the greatest Greek temple in Asia Minor — so great that
it could not be roofed ! Some of the magnificent Ionic
columns are still standing, buried to a third of their height,
which is said to be 60 feet.
But by far the most ancient relics of Didyma are some of
the great seated figures which fined the ' sacred way ' from the
temple to the sea (about two miles). These date from about
550. Several are in the British Museum (see Fig. 58, and
Hdt. i. 92, 157, V. 36, vi. 19).
(7) Temple of Artemis, Ephesus — about a mile north-east
from the ancient city. The first temple was burnt by the
Cimmerians about 678. The second, which during the siege of
Ephesus by Croesus was attached to the city by a rope (p. 182),
was finished during his reign and received many gifts from him,
including the sculptured drums of some of the columns, one
of which is in the British Museum (Fig. 52). The huge Ionic
front columns rested, it is thought, on great square blocks
which brought their shaft bases on a level with the floor of
the temple, and these blocks, as well as the lowest drums
of the columns, were decorated with bas-reliefs. This second
temple — the only Greek temple spared by Xerxes — was burnt
down (by Herostratus— merely, it is said, in order to perpetuate
his name !) on the very night when Alexander the Great was
born (356) . The third was begun at once and finished about 300.
Alexander offered (c. 334) to bear the whole expense if he were
allowed to have the fact recorded by an inscription ; but his offer
was declined with the rather clever excuse that " it was not meet
GREEK TEMPLES
for one deity to build a temple to another." (No such scruples
seem to have deterred Croesus !) This third Ephesian temple
was a copy of the second (see sculptured drum, Fig. 119), but on
a more magnificent scale, and was the largest temple of the
Greek world. It was regarded as one of the Seven Wonders, and
continued in use (see Acts xix.) till the abolition of paganism.
(8) Temple of Apollo at Phigaleia, or Bassae (' The Ravines,' a
village near Phigaleia, in Arcadia), stands on a fine site among
mountainous solitudes. It was probably built to enclose an
ancient shrine of Apollo Epikouros ('the Helper'), and was,
says Pausanias, erected in hope of averting the Great Plague
of 430 — and seemingly not in vain, for Thucydides says the
disease did not spread to the Peloponnese. The architect was
Ictinus, who built the Parthenon. It is Doric, 6 x 15, but the
inner temple had ten Ionic and one Corinthian column (now
lost). What is unusual, it faces north and south; but the
inmost shrine (probably the ancient sanctuary around which the
temple was built) had its door to the east, so that the image
of the god faced the rising sun. The great bronze statue of
Apollo was taken by Megalopolis. It was replaced by a marble
statue, of which fragments, as well as twenty-three tablets of
the frieze, are in the British Museum. In spite of earthquakes
about thirty of the thirty-eight external columns are standing.
(9) The Temple of Segesta. The Sicilian city of Segesta
(Greek Egesta) was situate in the mountainous north-west
coast of Sicily, It was originally the chief city of the Sicihan
Ely mi (see p. 118), who had a town and a great temple on Mount
Eryx, a promontory some 2000 feet above the sea, dedicated
to Aphrodite (or rather to Astarte, the Phoenician goddess).
But Greek influence afterwards prevailed, as is testified by a
magnificent Doric temple that now stands in majestic solitude
among the hills, not far from the ancient site of Egesta. Its
columns are of rough stone without flutings, and the fact that
they were never finished gives us a clue to the date of the temple.
The cessation of the work was probably due to the troubles
caused (about 410) by the quarrel between Segesta and Selinus,
which ended in Segesta calling on Carthage for aid and in the
453
ANCIENT GREECE
destruction of Selinus and the establishment of Carthaginian
supremacy in Western Sicily.
(10) The Temples at Paestum, in Southern Italy. Posei-
donia, called Paestum by the Romans, was a colony of Sybaris,
founded c. 524. Of its three Doric temples that of Poseidon
(6 X 14, built about 450) is by far the finest, rivalling the
Parthenon and the ' Concordia ' in its splendid proportions.
The so-called 'Basilica' is unusually broad (9 x 18). It is
perhaps more ancient, but the architecture is not so perfect.
It was divided down the middle by columns, the two portions
having probably been sacred to different deities. The
temple of Demeter, as it is called, is less massive than the
Poseidon temj^le, and the columns have an exaggerated entasis,
but it is a splendid ruin.
(11) Temple of Hera Lacinia, near Croton. One solitary
column (Fig. 40) remains of this great Doric temple, built
probably about 480-450 to replace the ancient temple which
was for centuries the first landmark that greeted the Greek
on his way to the far West. Here he generally landed and
made sacrifice. The marble-roofed temple was surrounded by
pine-groves where were erected statues of Olympic victors. It
was the assembly-place of the Greeks of Greater Hellas, and
festivals were celebrated here, with athletic games. It possessed
great riches — amongst other things a pillar of gold and a picture
of Helen by Zeuxis. Hannibal here slaughtered 2000 Italian
mercenaries and put up a brass tablet (used by Polybius) to
recount his victories. In a.d. 1600 the temple was still almost
intact, but was demolished by a bishop, Lucifero by name.
Two columns were left. One was overthrown by earthquake
in 1638.
(12) Temple of Hera at Samos. Of this, the greatest
Greek temple known to Herodotus, only one Ionic column
remains. It stands not far from the sea-shore about four
miles from the ancient city of Samos. The temple was finished
by Polycrates and burnt by the Persians, but rebuilt in the
time of Herodotus.
(13) The Parthenon is regarded as the ideal of Doric
454
132. Tempi,e of Athene Nike
133, Erechtheion
454
GREEK TEMPLES
architecture. For details as to its proportions, 
