CHAPTER VII.

THE FIRST WAR BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA.

 

THE churlish and suspicious rudeness with which the Athenian troops had been dismissed from Ithome by the Spartans created a reaction in the feelings of the Athenians towards that city. Hitherto, in spite of the efforts of Themistocles and others, and though various causes of complaint had arisen, the two cities had preserved the appearance of friendship. Even those Athenians who would have claimed the supremacy at sea for themselves were willing to allow that the Spartans were the rightful leaders of the Greeks on land. Harmonious action between the great cities was the best warranty of the safety of Greece. But now the irritation was uncontrollable, and it was decided not only to break off the alliance which had existed since 481 B.C., but to take up a line which made it clear that Athens was as willing to support the enemies of Sparta as she had been to support Sparta herself.

Argos was of course at all times hostile to Sparta. As we have seen, the city had recently recovered a considerable degree of power, and at the same time changes had taken place which made the democratic feeling there stronger than ever.

Thus there were now two bonds to draw Athens and Argos together—hatred of Sparta, and democratic sympathies. At the moment both these feelings were almost at fever heat at Athens, owing to the influence of Ephialtes. Under such circumstances the events of 480 B.c. were forgotten ; Athens and Argos became allies.

The step is significant of the change which had taken place in Greece since the Persian war. Then oaths had been sworn binding the patriotic Greeks to take vengeance on those who had so foully betrayed their country ; Argos and Thessaly were outcasts from the circle of Greek cities, and Sparta had herself undertaken an expedition to punish the Thessalians for their conduct. Now the Athenians, to whom all the rest of the Greeks owed their freedom, who had twice abandoned their homes, and undergone the greatest privations in the cause of Hellas, were content to enter into an alliance with a city which, to say the best of her, had pursued a weak and temporising policy. But the Athenians did not stop here. With Argos to aid them they renewed the old alliance with Thessaly, which had existed in the time of the tyrants. They knew by experience that Thessalian cavalry were valuable in the field, and they could reckon on the hatred of the Thessalians for the Spartans. In this second alliance they not only disregarded the part which the great princes of Thessaly had played in bringing Xerxes into Greece ; they forgot the character of the Thessalian people, who were not less treacherous than brave. In the hour of peril, as we shall see, they had bitter reason to repent their mistake.

These proceedings did not amount to open war with Sparta, but they were nothing less than open preparation for war. And they were succeeded by a number of events which made war inevitable. The years 460 and 459 B.C., during which the two cities were nominally at peace, were years of great military activity on the part of the Athenians. Never before did they exhibit so plainly the strength of the city; never before was their strength displayed in a manner so likely to rouse the suspicions of their neighbours.

The Spartans had by this time succeeded in crushing the rebellion of the Helots. For about three years after the dismissal of the Athenians in 463 B.C. the fortress of Ithome held out, then it capitulated, and the defenders were allowed to depart on condition that they would never set foot in the Peloponnesus again. The Athenians, who had recently taken Naupactus, a town near the mouth of the Corinthian gulf, from the Ozolian Locrians, allowed the exiles to settle there. The permission was equivalent to establishing the deadliest enemies of Sparta in a position where they could at any moment land on the shores which they were forbidden to tread.

The next step aroused the wrath of a city which had formerly been on the most friendly terms with Athens, but from henceforth became her most active enemy; a city to whose unsleeping hatred a large part of her misfortunes were due. For some time past the Megarians and Corinthians had quarrelled as neighbouring states in Greece were only too apt to do. Some question of boundaries had arisen, such as centuries before, in the time of Orsippus, had led to war between the cities. Megara was, of course, no match for her formidable rival ; her only hope of justice lay in an appeal to Sparta, as the head of the confederacy to which Corinth and Megara belonged. But Sparta would not interfere ; she was probably unwilling to incur the enmity of Corinth, and unable to perceive what would be the inevitable result of her inaction. She was also still affected by the panic caused by the recent outbreak of the Helots, “ a turn for the worse ” in a long disease which might recur at any time. The Megarians then applied to Athens, where they found a ready reception. Nothing indeed could be more opportune. It was the weakness of Athens that her territory could be invaded without much difficulty from Megara; and through the territory of Megara, along the eastern extremity of the Corinthian gulf, lay the route which connected Peloponnesus and Bceotia. Athenian troops were at once sent to the aid of the

Megarians and, with their consent, garrisons were placed in the two ports of their city: in Pegae on the Corinthian gulf, and in Nisaea on the Saronic gulf. Nisaea was also connected with Megara by long walls, which were protected by Athenian soldiers. By this measure Megara was not only brought into close relations with the Peiraeus, but Athens practically secured a frontier in the Megarid extending from sea to sea, and a station for her ships on the Corinthian gulf. For a time she had effectually blocked the way to Attica from that direction.

At the very time that she was thus irritating her most powerful neighbours, Athens did not hesitate to enter once more upon the conflict with Persia. Egypt had been made a Persian province in 525 B.C.; in the last year of Darius it had revolted, but it was quickly subdued by Xerxes, to whom it had subsequently furnished a very large contingent of ships for the invasion of Greece. In 465 B.C. Xerxes was murdered, and the first years of his successor were occupied with suppressing conspiracies. A rebellion in Bactria then carried him to the eastern edge of his empire. To the- oppressed Egyptians an opportunity seemed to have arrived when there was a reasonable hope of shaking off the hated yoke. Inaros, the son of Psammetichus, the king of Libya, which formed a part of the Egyptian satrapy, seized Mareia, a Persian outpost on the south-western shore of the Mareotic lake. He was at once joined by the greater part of Egypt; the Persian governor was expelled ; and Inaros elected king of the country. For a short time he remained undisturbed, but in 459 B.c. he became aware that a vigorous attempt was about to be made to recover Egypt. His own forces were inadequate to resist the army which was being brought against him, and he sent to Athens for assistance.

For some years after the decisive victories of Eurymedon the Athenians had sent out no expeditions to the East, but at this time they had just despatched two hundred ships to Cyprus. That island, in spite of the victories of Pausanias and Cimon, had never been acquired by the Greeks. It formed no part of the Delian league ; there was neither ally nor colony among its numerous cities. It was a wealthy island, well situated for trade with the East, and exceedingly valuable as a military station. It lay opposite that Cilician plain which formed the rendezvous of the Persian Empire ; it commanded the cities of Asia Minor and the mouth of the Nile. With Egypt in revolt and the Egyptian fleet detached from the service of the king, there was a reasonable hope of annexing the island to the league.

But on receiving the application of Inaros the project of acquiring Cyprus was abandoned for the time, and the fleet was ordered to proceed to Egypt to co-operate with the rebels. Egypt was not only the more valuable prize of the two, a country which could at once supply vast stores of grain, and furnish a number of brave and experienced seamen, but the conquest of Egypt carried with it the conquest of Cyprus. The temptation was irresistible ; the gathering clouds at home were disregarded, and at the moment when the war with the Peloponnesians was inevitable, Athens sent more than half her fleet to the Nile. She may have felt that even without these ships, her position at the head of the Delian confederacy rendered her far more than a match for any combination which would be brought against her ; she probably overestimated the effect of the revolt of the Helots on the Spartan state. Whatever her views, we may observe that she would never have permitted such a division of her forces had she intended to make any serious attack upon Sparta. As yet, it would seem, Pericles was unable either to restrain the Athenians from the Persian war or to concentrate their energies on the conflict with their rival.

The situation did not escape the watchful eye of the Corinthians. They were encouraged to resist the next movement of the Athenians by open force. On the coast of Argolis lay the small town of Halieis. Unimportant in itself, the place possessed a convenient harbour, and formed an admirable station for any power which desired to control the navigation of the Saronic gulf. In the hands of the Athenians Halieis would be a rival to Epidaurus and Hermione ; and now that the Argives and Athenians were allies, it might afford Argos some compensation for the loss of her old trading-stations at Epidaurus and Aegina. There were other reasons also which made the acquisition of Halieis desirable to the Athenians. The town was inhabited by the Tirynthians whom the Argives had expelled from their ancient home; and there is reason to suppose that it was in some connexion with Sparta. To the Corinthians and Epidaurians nothing could be more disastrous than an Athenian settlement in this region. Already ships were at Pegae watching the entrance to the great western port of Corinth ; from Peiraeus and Nisaea they commanded the northern half of the Isthmus ; if they were settled at Halieis, the Saronic gulf would be entirely in their hands. The Epidaurians were even more closely touched, as their territory lay nearer Halieis. When, therefore, the Athenians landed on the Argolic coast they were met by a combined force of Corinthians and Epidaurians. It is certain that the Athenians were defeated, though they afterward succeeded in gaining a footing in the town of Troezen, a still better station than Halieis. The defeat was overweighed by a victory over the fleet of the enemy at Cecryphaleia, a small island off the coast. Insignificant in themselves, these skirmishes were not insignificant in the history of Greece. They were the first steps in the disruption of the Hellenic league which had been formed at the Isthmus in the autumn of 481 B.C. for the defence of Greece. For years it ’ .d been obvious that Greece was parting into two camps, but now for the first time had hostilities b’^- en out.

The next movement was of far greater importance, opening a new scene in a drama, in which, more vividly perhaps than elsewhere, we perceive the dire effects of neighbourly hatred and commercial rivalry among the Greeks. Since the general pacification of 481 B.C. Athens and Aegina had been on friendly terms, but now, owing, perhaps, to some hints from the Corinthians, the suspicions of the Aeginetans were aroused. Were they not being surrounded by the Athenian power? Was not their union with Athens treachery to the older allegiance, which they owed to the Peloponnesian confederacy ? At the present moment, with two hundred ships in Egypt, Athens could not be a match for the combined Corinthian and Aeginetan fleets. Whatever the impulse under which she acted, Aegina now went to war with Athens, and all the bitter feelings of the ancient feud were once more aroused. An obstinate battle was fought off Aegina between the fleets of the two cities. The Athenians were victorious, capturing no fewer than seventy of the ships of the enemy. They then landed on the island and proceeded to besiege the city. The Peloponnesians sent over a small force to aid the Aeginetans, but it was of no avail. Meanwhile, the Corinthians, believing that the whole force of the Athenians was now employed, resolved to create a diversion by seizing the passes of Mount Geraneia, which divided Megara and Corinth, and invading the Megarian territory. But the Athenians were equal to the occasion ; they met the Corinthians with a force composed of their oldest and youngest men, under the command of Myronides, a general who had served in the Persian war. The first engagement ended with doubtful success ; a second was decisively in favour of the Athenians.

While such were the achievements of the Athenians abroad, their proceedings at home made it clear that they intended to secure the position they had gained. They had already built long walls to connect the town of Megara with the port of Nisaea; they now united Athens and Peiraeus in the same permanent manner. Of the two walls which were built, one extended from the north-west edge of Peiraeus across the marshy ground to the western wall of Athens, a distance of very nearly five miles. The second ran in a direction almost due south from Athens to the eastern edge of the harbour of Phalerum, a distance of four miles. Such an immense work could not be carried out in one year, and there is some reason to suppose that the walls were begun by Cimon and brought to completion by Pericles. The object of the walls was clear. When thus united with the sea, Athens would be impervious to attacks by land. Even if the Peloponnesians succeeded in passing the Megarian frontier and invading Attica, they could inflict no damage on the city. They could lay waste the cornfields of Thria, or the olivegardens of the Cephisus ; they could consume the harvest and carry off the cattle, but they could never separate Athens from the sea. With the building of the walls the policy of .Athens under Pericles became possible.

It was time for Sparta to stir, if she wished to keep her allies round her. Her reputation was declining; and the recent movements of Athens seemed to shut her out from any participation in the affairs of Northern Greece. So at least the Phocians thought, and they took advantage of the situation to attack the communities of the Dorians who inhabited the northern declivities of Mount Parnassus, one of whose towns they captured. The Lacedaemonians could not allow a state which they acknowledged as their “ mother city ” to be laid waste. Nicomedes, who was regent at the time in behalf of Plistoanax, the young son of Pausanias, was at once despatched to Phocis with a large force of Spartans and allies. He crossed the Corinthian gulf and marched through Boeotia into Phocis, which he quickly compelled to make such terms as he pleased, and restore the captured town. But now a difficulty arose. How were the Peloponnesians to return ? They had crossed the gulf on their way out without attracting the notice of the Athenian ships at Pegae, but they could not expect to do this a second time. To cross Geraneia was still more impossible, for the passes were held by Athenian troops. For the present it seemed best to remain in Boeotia. The delay was not without advantage. If Boeotia could be raised from the degradation into which it had sunk after the battle of Plataea, and made a solid power, it would form an excellent counterpoise to Athens. The natural centre of the country was, of course, Thebes. In 480 B.C. that city had been governed by one or two powerful families, who had been instrumental in bringing the Persians into Boeotia. After the battle of Plataea the leaders of these families had been executed or expelled, but, so far as we can make out, an oligarchy still continued at the head of affairs. This oligarchy the Lacedaemonians now attempted to make the ruling power in Boeotia, by bringing the smaller allies into a sort of dependent alliance with Thebes. And this was not the only result of their stay in Boeotia. The present policy of Athens, external and domestic, was not approved by all the citizens. The limitation of the powers of the Areopagus, the constant prosecutions of Ephialtes, had roused the fiercest passions of the oligarchs. They would gladly have seen some check placed upon the development of the demos, which now, as in the days of Clisthenes, seemed to be carried to victory on a wave of enthusiasm. More especially they were opposed to the building of the long walls, which implied a complete change from Athens as the head of Attica to Athens as a trading city, relying wholly on her fleet. They foresaw that a union of the port and town would give a new accession of strength to the rabble of artisans and sailors. Their influence was no doubt far less in the Peiraeus than in the city, as it was far less in the city than in the country. With these views they entered into negotiations with the Spartans in order to secure their assistance. The negotiations could be carried on the more readily as the Spartans were now at Tanagra, a town in the extreme south of Boeotia, and on the borders of Attica.

Pericles and his friends became alarmed. They were aware of the treachery in the city and resolved to attack the enemy before it went further. They called upon the Argives for one thousand heavyarmed soldiers, and on the Thessalians for a troop of horse. Help came from other cities also, and the whole available force of the city was put in the field. The battle was hotly contested, but ended in favour of the Spartans. The result was largely due to the treachery of the Thessalians, who went over to the enemy in the midst of the engagement, thus depriving Athens of the assistance which was specially needed against the excellent cavalry of the Boeotians. The Lacedaemonians were now at liberty to return home by land. They marched through Megara and the Isthmus, laying waste the country as they went, and on their return they suspended a golden shield in front of the temple at Olympia as a thank-offering for their victory (457 B.C.).

At last the fatal event had happened: Sparta and Athens had come to blows. The result was partly due to the action of the oligarchs at Athens, who wished to call in the aid of Sparta to their own support; partly to the desire to cut off the Spartan army before it could return home. The battle of Tanagra was the first occasion on which the Spartans and Athenians had been in conflict since the time when Cleomenes led his forces—sixty years before— to Athens to expel Clisthenes; it was a step in that fatal progress which soon divided Greece into oligarchical and democratical parties, each eager to pull down the other, let the result be what it might.

The victory cannot have been very decisive, or the Spartans would have been able to support their party at Athens and hinder the building of the walls. At any rate, they made no other use of it than to convey their troops safely home. Whether Boeotia was secure from any further attack on the part of Athens, they did not enquire. Yet it was pretty clear that a territory lying between Phocis and Attica, both of which countries were at the time bitterly hostile to Sparta, was in some danger. The result of their carelessness was soon apparent. Sixty-two days after the battle of Tanagra the Athenian forces were again in Bceotia under the command of Myronides. The battle took place at Oenophyta, not far from Tanagra, and ended in a most decisive victory for the Athenians. All Bceotia was now at their feet. They demolished the walls of Tanagra and reduced the country to the condition of a subject ally. At the same time Phocis passed into the Athenian alliance, while the Locrians of Opus, who may have fought in the allied army against Athens, were kept in submission by the surrender of one hundred of their richest citizens (456 B.C.).

Not long afterwards the Aiginetans, who had been closely besieged since their great defeat nearly two years before, came to terms. They surrendered their ships, dismantled their walls, and agreed to pay tribute to Athens as members of the Delian league. This was a serious loss to the Peloponnesian confederacy. If the Aeginetan fleet was not so large as the Corinthian, and this is doubtful, the Aeginetans were the better and braver sailors. The prize of valour had been awarded to them at Salamis ; their ships were known from Palestine to Campania ; their trade penetrated the remotest valleys of Arcadia. The helpless condition of the Peloponnesians in the face of vigorous action was never more plainly demonstrated than by the loss of Boeotia and Aegina; never was the selfish policy of Sparta placed in a clearer light. Bitter, indeed, must have been the vexation of Corinth when she saw the Athenians not only established on the coast of Argolis and in possession of the ports of Megara, but also masters of new resources by land and sea.

It was a proud moment for Athens. On land she controlled continental Hellas from the Pass of Thermopylae to the Isthmus. Phocis and Megara were willing allies; Boeotia and Locris were subject to her power. At home the long walls secured her from attack. In the Peloponnesus, Argos was her ally ; she had planted a foot in the north-east coast of Argolis, and was on friendly terms with Achaea. Near the mouth of the Corinthian gulf she held Naupactus. On sea she was without a rival. The Delian confederacy, which was rapidly becoming the Athenian empire, extended from Byzantium to Phaselis, from Miletus to Euboea. Aegina, her old rival, was humbled, and Athenian fleets swept the shores of the Peloponnesus at pleasure. The Spartans, the only power now capable of vigorous opposition, were little better than caged wolves.

On the internal politics of Athens the battle of Tanagra had a very important effect. When the Athenian army was in Boeotia, Cimon appeared before the generals and begged permission to take his place among the soldiers of his tribe. He was known to be a firm friend of the Lacedaemonians, and he wished to prove that his friendship did not extend to enemies in the field. But the generals refused ; there was no place for an ostracised citizen in the Athenian army any more than on Athenian soil. Thus repulsed, Cimon adjured those of his followers who were most suspected of sympathy with Lacedaemonians to clear his name from every stain of treachery. They responded to the appeal, and, faithful even unto death, fell on the battle-field to the number of a hundred. Such a proof of patriotism could not be denied or ignored. Pericles, who was himself present at the battle, brought forward a proposal for cancelling the decree of ostracism which had been pronounced four years previously, and Cimon was allowed to return to Athens.

Meanwhile, a cloud was gathering in the East. The great expedition which had been sent out to the assistance of Inaros had at first met with considerable success. Even before it arrived, Inaros had defeated the large army which Artaxerxes had sent against him, under the command of Achaemenes, and had slain Achaemenes with his own hand. The battle-field of Papremis on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile was one of the most famous scenes of Persian disaster. When the Athenian fleet of two hundred triremes sailed up from Cyprus it had no difficulty in defeating the Persian fleet of eighty ships which defended the mouths of the Nile. It ascended the river as far as Memphis and captured two-thirds of that city. But here their success came to an end. The “ White Fortress,” which formed the stronghold of the town, was able to resist their utmost efforts, and the revolution received a serious check.

Artaxerxes was quickly informed of the defeat and death of Achaemenes. New preparations were arranged, for at any risk it was necessary to recover Egypt. Not less than two years (459-457 b.c.)  seemed to have been consumed in getting together a force which should make successful resistance impossible. In the interim Megabazus, a distinguished Persian, was sent to Sparta with a sum of money in the hope that some diversion could be created which would draw the Athenian forces from Egypt. The Spartans were willing enough to take the money, but no active measures followed, and Megabazus soon returned with the remainder of his treasure to Persia.

In the year 457 B.C. Megabyzus, the son of that Zopyrus, whose devotion had recovered Babylon for Darius, marched from Susa to Cilicia, where the forces which he was to command were assembled. He spent no less than a year in practising and drilling his troops, and it was not till the beginning of 455 B.C. that he marched upon Memphis.

The appearance of such a vast armament—the fleet amounted to three hundred triremes—was calculated to fill the Eastern Mediterranean with terror. In spite of the crushing defeats of the Eurymedon ten years before, and the overthrow of Achaemenes at Papremis, Persia could put forth a power which it seemed impossible to resist. The day of vengeance was come at last, and the cities of the coasts and islands would be exposed to the fury of the Phoenician fleet. We may imagine how great was the alarm, when the news came that Megabyzus had utterly defeated Inaros and the Athenians, and had shut them up in Prosopitis, an island formed by two converging arms of the Nile, and a canal which connected them. It was about this time that the chest of the Delian league was transferred from Delos to Athens; a change proposed by the Samians. The only reason given for this change by any ancient author is that found in Justin, who tells us that the Athenians removed the money from Delos lest it should become a prey to the Lacedaemonians, who were abandoning the alliance. It is possible to connect this statement with the mission of Megabyzus to Lacedaemon. But the Samians would certainly be aware of the danger in the East, and it is not improbable that this was the immediate cause of their proposal.

The investment of Prosopitis by Persian troops continued for a year and six months. Weary of the delay, Megabyzus then drained the canal, at the base of the island, upon which the Athenians burnt their ships, in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Persians. The Persian army could now march dry-shod into the “ island ; ” and after a severe resistance it was conquered. Inaros and a number of Athenians escaped to Byblus, but Megabyzus induced them to capitulate by guaranteeing to Inaros his life, and to the Greeks an unmolested return. The Greeks marched through Libya to Cyrene, whence they returned home, “ few out of many.” Inaros was conveyed to Susa, and in spite of the pledges of Megabyzus was crucified at the instance of Amestris, the cruel widow of Xerxes, whose daughter Achaemenes had married.

The disasters of the Athenians were not yet ended. After the capture of Prosopitis, and in ignorance of the event, a squadron of fifty triremes sailed into the Mendesian arm of the Nile. Here they were immediately attacked by land and sea, and the larger part was destroyed.

So after six years ended the great expedition of the Athenians to Egypt. It was the most severe disaster which had overtaken Athens ; the first failure in a long series of successes against Persia. To most men the catastrophe would appear an unmixed evil, but Pericles might reflect that such a severe lesson would teach the Athenians not to waste their strength on distant expeditions; and that the transference of the chest from Delos to Athens would in the end prove an ample compensation for the terrible reverse which had fallen on his city.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LAST YEARS OF CIMON.

PLUTARCH found among his authorities a story that Pericles had made it a condition of Cimon’s return to Athens, that he should himself be left undisturbed in the control of the domestic policy of the city, while Cimon led out the fleet against Persia. Whether this story is true or not, it is a fact that Cimon took little or no part in the “ Hellenic war” after his return.

In the years which immediately follow the conquest of Boeotia, we hear of two expeditions against the Peloponnesus. In 456 B.C. a fleet was sent round the peninsula under the command of Tolmides, a general who, like Myronides, had distinguished himself in the Persian war. He burned the dockyards of the Lacedaemonians at Gytheum, attacked and captured Chaicis, a Corinthian colony near the mouth of the Evenus, outside the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, and carried the Athenian arms with success into the territory of Sicyon. A short time afterwards (453 B.C. ?) Pericles was again in the territory of Sicyon, and again the inhabitants were defeated, but no lasting settlement was effected. In the same expedition Pericles attempted to gain possession of Oeniadae, a city in Acarnania, lying in the lakes near the mouth of the Achelous, but without success. We hear nothing of the details of these campaigns, though they were famous in their day, and created a great impression in Greece, but we see that Athens is now endeavouring to obtain the complete control of the Corinthian gulf, as she had obtained the control of the Saronic gulf. The attacks on Sicyon were no doubt made with the intention of rendering it impossible for a Peloponnesian army to cross from Sicyon to the opposite shore, as the Spartans had done in their invasion of Phocis in 457 B.C. It was useless to guard the passes of Geraneia if Spartan troops could be conveyed from Sicyon to Creusis.

These attempts were not rewarded with encouraging success, and in the north of Greece Athens met with a definite repulse. At Tanagra, as we have seen, the Thessalian cavalry went over to the enemy. The truth was that the common people of Thessaly were always on the side of the Athenians, whom they regarded as the champions of liberty, and the great family of the Aleuadae also thought it worth while to cultivate their alliance. But the nobles and knights of Thessaly—the class between the dominant family and the subjects—were more inclined to Sparta than to Athens. This middle class was in the ascendant, as we may see from an incident which occurred at this time. Orestes, the son of Echecratidas, the king of Thessaly, was expelled from Pharsalus. He appealed to Athens for help. The application came when the Egyptian expedition was either destroyed or in a hopeless condition ; yet the Athenians sent a force of Boeotians and Phocians under Myronides, the hero of Oenophyta, to restore Orestes. Nothing was effected. The forces reached Pharsalus, but they failed to take the city, and so annoying were the attacks of the Thessalian horse, that they could not venture far from their camp. In a short time they returned home bringing Orestes with them. All hope of acquiring influence in Thessaly was at an end.

Meanwhile matters were going from bad to worse in Egypt. When the crash came, the Athenians must have felt that the situation was grave (453 B.C. ? ). What use would Persia make of her great success? Would she assume the offensive and endeavour to recover what she had lost at the Eurymedon, or perhaps to avenge the defeat of Salamis ? What would the feeling of the allies be? Would they regard the defeat of the Athenians in Egypt as an indication of declining power? The expenses of the war with Egypt had compelled Athens to impose heavier contributions on the subject cities, and symptoms of the discontent, which was soon to break out on the Asiatic coast, may have shewn themselves. If she was to retain her hold on the Delian confederacy, it was necessary for her to appear once more in the East with an imposing force.

There must also have been considerable distress at home. The constant service harassed the hoplite class and the loss of men was very great. It may have been with the combined intention of stilling discontent, and securing the power of Athens, that Pericles began, about this time, to send out a number of colonies. In 453 B.C. Pericles himself took one thousand colonists to the Chersonesus, which he secured once more from the attacks of the barbarians on the north. In the same year Tolmides conducted another thousand to Euboea, where already no fewer than four thousand Athenians possessed plots of land. And not long afterwards a large number were settled in Naxos. These colonists were of the class known as “ cleruchs ” or lot-holders. They did not cease to be citizens of Athens, many of them perhaps never left the city, but they were provided with plots of land at the expense of the subject or conquered countries. If the colonists left Athens their presence ensured the obedience and loyalty of the regions in which they were planted ; and those who chose to remain at home, living on the produce of their lots, were perhaps by this means qualified to bear the expenses which fell on the heavy-armed soldier.

Under such circumstances, peace with Sparta was almost a necessity for Athens. What forces she had must be devoted to the recovery of prestige in the East, on which the very life of the Delian league was largely dependent. The great commander, whose name would inspire confidence among the allies, was still in the city, and, in spite of the repulse of 463 B.C., Cimon was on friendly terms with Sparta ; a grata persona, through whom negotiations could be opened. By his intervention a truce was concluded between the two cities for five years. The shortness of the time proves that neither side looked on the present situation as tenable. But the Spartans were irritated and discouraged by the naval expeditions which harassed their coasts, and owing to the loss of Aegina and the humiliation of Corinth, the fleet of the confederacy was seriously damaged. To us it seems almost ludicrous that two belligerent cities should make a peace which was obviously nothing more than a breathing space in which to prepare for the renewal of hostilities on more favourable terms. But in Grecian politics such arrangements were common. It is even stated, though perhaps without sufficient authority, that after the battle of Tanagra Athens succeeded in obtaining a truce for four months from Sparta, in order that she might recover from the blow which had fallen upon her,—and reassert her superiority over Boeotia!

When it was known at Argos that Athens had entered, or was about to enter, into a truce with Sparta, it became necessary to reconsider the situation. If Argos remained unprotected, and Sparta was freed from the fear of attack from Athens, she might have reason to expect the worst. The work of the last ten or fifteen years, during which she had slowly consolidated her power, might be undone in a single battle. Moreover, she had gained nothing by her alliance with Athens. That city, it was clear, sought her own advantage, and not the advantage of Argos. Under such circumstances it seemed prudent to enter into negotiations with Sparta. In 481 B.C. Argos had proposed a peace for thirty years ; she now renewed the offer. Sparta accepted it. Knowing that the truce with Athens was nothing more than a cessation of hostilities, it would be an advantage to be secure on the side of Argos, when the war broke out again. A peace was concluded between the two cities ; and in spite of the subsequent commotions which shook Hellas, it ran out to the full term, coming to a close in 421 B.C.

When affairs had been settled at home, the Athenians prepared a new expedition to the East. Cyprus was once more the object of attack, and Cimon was the commander. It was now more necessary than ever to hold a station which should command Cilicia and Egypt. In the spring of 449 B.C. a fleet of two hundred ships, supplied by Athens and her allies, was sent out. Sixty ships were detached for the assistance of Amyrtaeus, who, even after the annihilation of the forces of Inaros, could bid defiance to Persia in the impenetrable swamps of the Delta. With the remaining one hundred and forty Cimon sailed to Mareion, on the west coast of Cyprus, whence he passed along the south shore and laid siege to Citium, which was at this time governed by a Phoenician prince. The city was defended with the stubborn spirit which has made the sieges of Phoenician cities so famous in military annals. Ere long the Athenian fleet began to suffer from famine, and, to increase the misfortune, their great commander fell sick and died. On his death-bed he is said to have given orders for the besieging forces to retire and conceal the news of his death. But retirement was impossible ; a Phoenician fleet had already appeared on the north coast of Cyprus ; to refuse an engagement would imply the cession of the Eastern Mediterranean. In spite of the weakness created by famine and the loss of their leader, the Athenians put to sea and sailed upon the enemy. The battle took place off Salamis, and ended in a complete victory for Athens. The defeated Phoenician vessels fled to the shore, where the army was drawn up to protect them, but the Athenians followed close, disembarked and defeated the army no less than the fleet. Thus the achievement of the Eurymedon was repeated, and Athens once more proved her immense superiority over the Persian power. On its return home the fleet was rejoined by the ships from Egypt, which do not appear to have rendered any efficient service to Amyrtzeus. Cimon’s corpse was brought to Athens and buried in the sepulchre of the Philaidze, outside the Melitian gate of Athens.

The balance was once more in favour of Hellas in the East, but the success was far from complete, and it had been purchased at severe cost. The Phoenician fleet had been defeated, but Cyprus was as far as ever from being annexed to the Delian league. The island remained a dependency of Persia ; Persian troops could land on it; Phoenician princes ruled in most of the cities. Hellenes and Hellenism had but a precarious footing. The coveted post, from which Greece could have thwarted the embarkation of troops from the Cilician plain and held the Phoenician and Egyptian fleets in check, passed from henceforth out of the grasp of Athenian generals.

And Cimon was dead. The great commander, who for nearly thirty years had led the allies to victory, would lead them no more. We first hear of him in 480 B.C. as an Athenian knight, cheerfully hanging up his bridle in the temple of Athena, in recognition of the change which made it imperative for every Athenian to fight on board ship, as Themistocles demanded. From 478 B.C., when Xanthippus the hero of Mycale disappears from sight, Cimon is associated with Aristides in the command of the fleet. With him he founded the Delian confederacy. From this time forward he was the life and soul of every military undertaking ; it was he who secured the Thracian coast for Athens ; it was he who quelled the revolt of Thasos ; it was he who inflicted the terrific defeat of Eurymedon on the Persian army and fleet. Even after his death his name seems to have inspired victory. He was the greatest seaman Athens ever knew—the Nelson of his time.

His manners and character were those of a soldier. Tall in stature, with hair curling close to his head, and winning eyes, he was a well-known sight in Athens. His accomplishments made him a welcome guest at every social gathering ; a song from Cimon was remembered by those who heard it, while others listened attentively to the stories which he could tell in abundance of his military life and experiences. His wealth was great and his liberality unbounded. At times indeed his profusion was such that his enemies accused him of seeking to win the people by unworthy means. He would command his well-clad servants to exchange garments with aged beggars, or he would remove the fences which protected his gardens and orchards, bidding all who passed take what they chose. Or he would squander small coin among those who were willing to pick it up. But he also applied his wealth to nobler uses. He adorned the city with the spoils taken from the enemy ; the market-place was planted with trees, to afford the shade so grateful in the fierce heat of summer ; the Academy was irrigated and laid out with clear racing courses and pleasant walks ; the foundations for the walls which connected Athens and the harbour were begun. The Acropolis was prepared for a new temple; and Pheidias was employed to erect the great bronze statue of Athena, whose bright spear could be seen even by the mariners off Sunium.

Two charges have been brought against Cimon. It is said that he hunted Themistocles out of Athens, thus depriving the city of her greatest man, and that he prevented the destruction of Sparta at the moment when destruction was possible. The charges are not without foundation, though there is much to say on the other side. Cimon and Themistocles were opponents ; and Cimon was the winner. But we may observe that Themistocles was never employed as a general in the field after 480 B.C., and though he served Athens in other ways, he did so at the cost of provoking the animosity of Sparta. Whether Themistocles would have succeeded as well as Cimon and Aristides in organising the Delian league, is open to question. It was doubtless a grievous misfortune for Athens that she could not retain Themistocles, but the blame of the expulsion may have been due to his own conduct not less than the jealousy of his enemies. That Cimon persuaded the Athenians to send help to the Spartans at a moment when it would perhaps have been possible to destroy their power by supporting the Helots is undeniable. He was always the firm friend of Sparta ; he never accepted the doctrine that Athens and Sparta could not work together; and under his management they probably would have worked together. Co-operation on the lines of Pericles and Themistocles was impossible ; to both of these statesmen Athens was an imperial city, and Sparta a rival who must be crushed. To speak of them as Pan-Hellenes is a mistake ; they were Pan-Athenians. But Cimon was sincerely Pan-Hellenic, so far as any Greek could be so. He knew that the loss of Sparta would be an irreparable loss to the Hellenic name. He wished to see the two great cities of Greece drawing together in harmony, at peace at home, and united in making war on Persia. With his death all hope of continuing that war, and all hope of lasting peace between Athens and Sparta came to an end.

 

CHAPTER X PEACE AND THE SECOND WAR WITH SPARTA

 

 

The death of Cimon marks an epoch in the history of Athens. He was the last of the great generals who thought it the mission of Hellas to be at war with Persia. With him closed the generation of the “ Heroes of Marathon.” For the next fifty years Greece is occupied with the duel between Athens and Sparta; and it is only when this disastrous episode comes to an end with the fall of Athens that the traditional policy is resumed by Agesilaus, the king of Sparta. Cimon was also the last leader of his party, who led it as a soldier rather than as a statesman. Those who came after him had other views, and other means of carrying them out. The soldier and the politician began to diverge. In this respect the aristocratical party suffered even more than their opponents. Pericles, if not a great, was a respectable general, as generals 118 went in Greece; Cleon rendered his country one important service; Alcibiades, if we may count him among the democrats, was probably the greatest military genius of his time. But, with the exception of Nicias, the aristocrats hardly possessed a man after Cimon, who by his success in the field could add to the power of his party at home.

Pericles was now the foremost man in Athens, but he was not yet without opponents. A few years had still to elapse before he could win that undisputed mastership of the city, which he held when at the height of his influence ; and they were years full of events. The truce with Sparta had hardly been concluded when troubles broke out at Miletus. That city was famous of old for its factions, though for the last century, partly owing to a better government, and partly to the disastrous Persian conquests which merged party quarrels in submission to a master, we hear little of them. On the reception of Miletus into the Delian league, the oligarchical section were in power, and the Athenians made no attempt to introduce a change. The reception probably took place very soon after the battle of Mycale (479 B.C.), when the democratic spirit was by no means strong enough at Athens to require a similarity of political views in allied states. The victories of the Persians in Egypt may have altered the sentiments of the Milesian oligarchs, and inclined them to closer union with Persia. Or the growing democratical spirit at Athens may have induced the “ demos ” at Miletus to put forward new claims.

Whatever the cause, about 450 B.C. the oligarchs attacked the people, and renounced their connection with the Delian league. The people, of course, appealed to Athens; the oligarchs sought aid from Persia. It became necessary for the Athenians to interfere. -The government of Miletus was reconstructed in the interests of the people, and an Athenian garrison was placed in the city for their protection. Five Athenians were chosen to administer the affairs of the city, and all suits at law for the value of more than one hundred minae (about ,£335) were to be brought to Athens for decision. We may observe that this last provision is an indication of that development of the law courts which became so marked a feature of Athenian democracy.

Similar disturbances took place at Erythrm and at Colophon, and similar measures were taken to restore order. The decree by which the constitution of Erythrm was reorganised has come down to us, and parts of it may still be read. The document is interesting, for it was doubtless framed either by Pericles or under his influence. It expresses the Periclean views of the best and safest form of government for an independent state in the interest of Athens. Erythrae was to be ruled by a senate consisting  of one hundred and twenty members, chosen yearly by lot. No citizen could offer himself for election if less than thirty years of age. From the senators when elected an oath was required under the most solemn sanctions: “To the best of my power I will advise what is lawful and good for the people of Erythrae, the Athenians, and the allies. I will not revolt from the people of Athens and their allies, or help others to do so ; I will not go over to the enemy, or help others to do so ; I will not receive an exile or help others to do so, nor any of those who have taken refuge with the Medes, without the sanction of the Athenians and the state. I will not put any Erythraean to death without the sanction of the Athenians and the state. If any citizen slay another, he shall be put to death ; and if any citizen sin against the gods, he shall be put to death ; if anyone offend against the alliance he shall be banished, and his property shall be given to the Erythraeans. If anyone is convicted of betraying the city of Erythrae to tyrants, he shall be put to death, and his children also.” The Erythraeans were to send victims of not less value than three minae to the Panathenaea, and, in return, each Erythraean was allowed to have a portion of the sacrificial food, not exceeding a drachma in value . A further oath bound the citizens of Erythrae to be faithful to the Athenians and the allies. There were also regulations about the government of Erythrae, and the duties of the officers or “ overseers ” whom Athens sent to the city, but owing to the imperfect state of the inscription we cannot read what these were.

In these regulations we see that Athens identified herself with the confederacy: treachery to the alliance was treachery to her. And she did not hesitate to plant garrisons of Athenian soldiers in the citadels of allied cities, if the step seemed necessary to secure their allegiance, or to reduce them to the condition of subject cities by claiming the sovereignty in their administration of law. Naxos and Thasos, Miletus and Erythrae, were no longer confederates on equal terms, but on compulsion ; their contributions went to swell a fund which made resistance on their part more and more impossible. Even more significant were the results of the transference of the chest from Delos to Athens. The old Ionian place of gathering was no longer the centre of the confederacy; to Athena and not to Apollo were dues paid and victims brought. The whole administration of the league and its funds was conducted at Athens, and perhaps by this time by Athenians. At Athens, too, the more important law-suits of the confederates were decided.

By common consent all operations against Persia were discontinued after the death of Cimon. Neither Pericles nor his opponents cared to renew the war. But the Athenian sailors and soldiers remembered how Cimon had led them to victory, and the sailors and soldiers were an important element in the state. Pericles could not fail to perceive the importance of securing their good-will. Hitherto they had probably been inclined to take sides with the party to which Cimon belonged, in spite of the democratic measures of Pericles. But now that their great commander was dead, they were no longer carried away by the enthusiasm of the soldier for his general, an enthusiasm against which a merely political leader is powerless. A slight impetus might bring them round to the side which had made them a power in the state. Pericles saw his opportunity, and used it. He had already sent colonies to Eubcea, Naxos, and the Chersonese, which had been of service in improving the condition of the citizens and securing the empire. He now turned his thoughts to regions lying outside the range of the confederacy, if indeed we are right in placing at this date the establishment of a colony at Brea in Thrace and the voyage of Pericles into the Pontus.

Our knowledge of the colony at Brea is due to the fortunate accident which has preserved the decree under which the colony was sent out. But for this we should know nothing beyond the mere fact that the Athenians had sent out a colony to Brea— a sufficient proof, if the proof were needed, that our knowledge of this period is scanty and uncertain to the last degree. From the decree we learn that ten commissioners (Geonomi, “ dividers of land ”) were to divide the land among the colonists. Democlides, the author of the decree, was chosen to be the founder of the colony, with full powers. All the temples and sacred precincts already existing on the site were to be carefully preserved, but no new ones were to be provided. The colonists were to send a bull and two sheep to the Panathenrea, and an emblem to the festival of Dionysus.

The merchants of Athens had long carried on a trade in corn with the ports of the Black Sea, where the innumerable colonies which Miletus had planted were so many stations for shipping the products of the interior to Greece. And if it be true that Aristides died in the Pontus, the expedition of Pericles was not the first which the Athenians had undertaken in that direction. But it was probably the first time that an Athenian general had appeared beyond the Bosphorus with an imposing force. The immediate cause of the expedition seems to have been an application from the inhabitants of Sinope for aid against their “tyrant,” Timesilaus. This “tyrant” was, no doubt, an officer representing the Persian power in the city, and any attempt to expel him was equivalent to an attack on the Persian king. This did not prevent Pericles from taking the allied fleet into the Black Sea, or from leaving Lamachus behind with thirteen ships to aid the citizens of Sinope, who, with this reinforcement, succeeded in driving out Timesilaus. Six hundred Athenians were afterwards sent to the city to occupy the lands and houses of the tyrant and his party. This is the only specific act which is recorded of the expedition, though Plutarch tells us, in a vague manner, that Pericles settled all the petitions which the Greek cities brought to him, and exhibited to the barbarian princes and potentates around the greatness of his power and the confidence with which his fleet sailed wherever they chose, and subjugated every sea to themselves. The barbarian princes and potentates would be Teres, the king of the Odrysians, whose dominion extended from the Hebrus to the Danube, and his son-in-law and neighbour beyond the Danube, Ariapeithes, king of Scythia, both princes of great vigour and capacity. The Greek cities on the western shore of the Pontus paid tribute to Teres, and those on the northern were of course the neighbours of the Scythians. It was of great importance that these princes should be on good terms with the Greeks, and a timely display of force was likely enough to impress them with a sense of the power which, if need were, could come to the aid of the Greek colonies. But even in the Greek cities there were potentates. In Panticapaeum, the most important trading station in the Pontus, a family was ruling which claimed descent from Archaeanax, the ancient king of Lesbos. It is quite possible that Pericles entered into friendly relations with a city from which more corn was exported than from any other, for at a time when the granaries of Egypt were passing into the hands of the Persians, such a step would be especially opportune. Whether the connexion was due to Pericles or not, we find, in the fourth century, the princes of the Cimmerian Bosphorus making presents of corn to Athens, and treating the city with the greatest respect and consideration.

This was perhaps the most lasting gain of the great expedition. Sinope, if relieved for the time, fell back under the dominion of Persia. And we have no certain evidence that the Athenians established themselves at any other point. It is true that we afterwards find them in possession of Nymphaeum, a port a little to the south of Panticapaeum, and that twenty years later than this expedition, they hold a post at Chrysopolis, at which they taxed the corn ships on their way from the Pontus. There is, however, no proof that we ought to connect these establishments with the voyage of Pericles.

Meanwhile, in spite of the peace, events were taking place which showed that Sparta and Athens were still rivals for the supremacy in Greece. In <448 B.C. the Phocians made an attempt to secure possession of the temple at Delphi. The shrine lay in their territory, and they had long regarded it as wrongfully taken from them. Relying, perhaps, on the power of Athens in Northern Greece, they now seized it for themselves. The Delphians appealed to Sparta, who at once responded. Troops were once more sent across the bay of Corinth, and Delphi was restored to the Delphians. In return for the timely assistance the Lacedaemonians received the right of consulting the oracle first, and their name was inscribed on the front of the great bronze wolf, which stood near the principal altar at Delphi. No sooner had the Lacedaemonians departed than Pericles marched to Delphi at the head of a force of Athenians and gave the temple once more to the Phocians. The honour of first consultation was now given to the Athenians, and their name appeared on the right side of the bronze wolf. Thus were Athens and Sparta written up as competitors at the most central shrine of Hellas. These events were known as the “ Sacred War.” For the moment no result followed; but it was now plain to Northern Greece that in any revolt against Athens they could reckon on the support of Sparta.

It was not long ere the revolt came. While we hear of distant expeditions and colonies on the part of Athens, nothing is recorded of any measures by which her authority was secured in Bceotia. That authority rested on the presence of a democracy in the various states, a democracy which was resolved that Bceotia should ''ot be subject to Thebes, even though it must be subject to Athens. The people had been raised to power by the expulsion of the opposite party, but Athens had taken no steps to render the exiled oligarchs powerless for mischief. They gradually returned home, and formed a party, especially in the north of Boeotia, where Chaeronea and Orchomenus had resisted the Athenian supremacy. It was an anxious and difficult moment for Athens. To send a small force might entail defeat; to send a large one would require time. Tolmides, who ranked second to none as a general at this time, was in favour of immediate action. Pericles thought the numbers of the army insufficient, and foresaw the disastrous consequences of a defeat. His fears were disregarded. Tolmides carried the day. With an army of auxiliaries and one thousand Athenian troops, for the most part volunteers from the higher families, he set out for Chaeronea. By rapid and energetic action he was enabled to capture the town, but here his success ended. He found his forces too small for the numbers which gathered round him. Retreat was inevitable, and retreat was the signal for the enemy to attack. As he passed the town of Coronea, the rebel forces fell upon him and inflicted a severe defeat. His army was destroyed ; many were slain, among them Tolmides himself; many were taken prisoners, and remained as hostages in the hands of the enemy. The Boeotians were absolute masters of the situation ; a single battle had utterly overthrown the Athenian supremacy in their country. They refused to give up the captives unless the Athenians agreed to evacuate Bceotia, and these terms the Athenians accepted. The oligarchs—the bitter enemies of Athens —returned to their cities, burning with the proverbial hatred of exiles. From this time forward union or common action between Athens and Bceotia was impossible. The Phocians also and the Locrians, finding themselves cut off from Athens, declared their independence. Thus without being able even to put her whole force in the field, Athens saw herself deprived of all her continental power. A single day had removed her frontier from Thermopylae to Cithaeron.

The battle of Coronea was probably fought in the spring of 446 B.C. The summer had even worse news to bring. The island of Euboea had formed a part of the Delian confederacy from the first; for more than thirty years it had been the faithful ally of Athens, and for two generations Athenian citizens had been settled as colonists in it. But the oligarchs of Bceotia appear to have been able to inspire the oligarchs of Euboea—the remnant of the old proprietors who had suffered heavily at the hands of Athens—with their own courage and hope. What if Euboea also could shake off the yoke of the conqueror? The moment seemed favourable now that all Northern Greece was independent. Sparta would doubtless support the attempt ; perhaps she had already pledged herself to do so. For the five years’ truce was on the point of expiration ; and even if it had not expired, the Spartans were not over-scrupulous about agreements, when it was possible to make an effective attack on the enemy. So Euboea revolted. Her action was part of a wider plan. No sooner had Pericles crossed over to the island than Megara threw off her allegiance ; the Athenian garrison was partly cut down, and partly compelled to take refuge in Nissea. And when the way over the Isthmus, was thus opened the Spartans hastened to take advantage of it. Plistoanax, the youthful king of Lacedtemon, invaded Attica with a Peloponnesian force. Thus was Athens surrounded on every side; and a combined attack on the city seemed inevitable.

Athens had no army to put in the field which could for a moment stand against the enemy, if they had time to unite. Pericles saw where the danger lay, and also how it was to be met. He returned in haste from Euboea, which, owing to his command of ships, he had pretty much at his mercy, to Attica. The Peloponnesian army was already on the Thri-asian plain near Eleusis, and had begun to devastate the country, when suddenly, without any apparent reason, before even meeting with the Athenian troops, it returned home. In the minds of the Spartans there could be but one solution of the strange event: their king and his adviser, Cleandri-das, must have been bribed to leave Attica. The suspicion was probably correct; Pericles hiijaself refused to account publicly for all the money which passed through his hands as general; he merely announced that he had spent a large sum on “ a necessary purpose.” This necessary purpose was supposed to be the retreat of the Peloponnesian army from Attica. The Spartans fined their king on his return, 9

and as he was unable to pay the sum, he fled in fear for his life to the temple of Zeus Lycseus in Arcadia, where for the next nineteen years he remained in a dwelling so constructed that he could at any moment retire into the temple of the god. The throne passed to his son Pausanias, who was still a child. Cleandridas did not even venture to return to Sparta; in his absence he was condemned and his property confiscated ; we hear of him subsequently at Thurii, and his famous son, Gylippus, was the saviour of Syracuse.

Pericles was now able to return to Eubcea. He took over a force of fifty triremes and five thousand hoplites, with which in a very short time he reduced the island to submission. From the Boeotians no assistance whatever was sent, and without it the Eubceans were quite unable to meet such a force as that of Athens. Only in Histisea, a district in the extreme north, do we hear of vigorous resistance, and even there the rebels were soon overcome. Their punishment was severe ; the Histiaeans were expelled, and their territory was divided among two thousand Athenian colonists. In the south of the island the constitution of the city of Chaicis was re-arranged, and here, as in the case of Erythrae, the inscription containing the details of the arrangement has been preserved. We can still read the very words in which Pericles, or his agent, determined the relation of the subjects to the sovereign city. The Chalcidians were compelled to swear that neither in word nor deed would they revolt from Athens, and should anyone revolt, they were pledged to give information at once. Chaicis was to pay the tribute imposed on her by Athens after due inquiry, and to supply forces to Athens according to her ability, and in every way to be a faithful and efficient ally. On their part the Athenians guaranteed to the Chalcidians the possession of their city. Without a formal trial no Chalcidian was to be punished with loss of civil rights, banished, imprisoned, put to death or punished in his property. In every action the accused was to be legally cited, and without such citation no sentence could be pronounced. Any embassy from Chaicis which visited Athens was to be brought before the assembly by the Prytanes within ten days of its arrival.

Similar arrangements were made with the rest of the cities of Euboea. Documents exist regulating the trade of the new colony in Histiaea with Athens, and arranging for the settlement of small actions at law by the appointment of local judges. In all these decrees we observe that Athens does not deal with Euboea as a member of the confederacy ; she is a conquered territory, a subject of Athens, and bound to serve her interests without reference to any others. More plainly here than elsewhere do we see the head of the alliance formed after the battle of Mycale emerging into the tyrant city which entered into the Peloponnesian war.

The prompt and complete reduction of Euboea was an immense service to Athens. But even with this success her condition was sufficiently deplorable. Four years had elapsed since Cimon’s death, and already she had sunk far below the military eminence which she then occupied. Operations against Persia were not so much as thought of. The land empire was irretrievably lost; the way from Peloponnesus was again open. The allies in Argos and Thessaly were estranged; Euboea, the greatest and nearest of her allies, had been in open revolt. And this was not all. From the lists of the tribute paid by members of the league which have been preserved in inscriptions, we find that in the assessment of the year 446 B.C. the amount of tribute is very considerably reduced ; a large number of cities either withdrew from the alliance or did not pay tribute. In the period 450-447 the number of contributing cities may be put at 190 to 200 ; in 446-440 the average is 170, and the total amount of contributions only reached 434 talents, of which not more than 400 talents were really paid. In Caria and Lycia more especially there were many defections ; the retirement of the Greeks after the battle of Cyprus left them at the mercy of the Persian satraps.

Such a sudden fall from the height of her prosperity naturally produced a feeling of despondency at Athens. It was clear that she could not now keep her allies in hand and sustain the burden of a war in Hellas. At all costs she must come to terms with Sparta and her allies. In the winter of 446-445 B.C. ten plenipotentiaries were sent to Sparta, through whom the Thirty Years’ Peace was concluded between the cities. The Athenians renounced all their acquisitions in Peloponnesus: Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen, and Achaea. For the rest, each state was to retain its possessions; the Athenians were not to admit Lacedaemonian cities, and the Lacedaemonians were not to admit Athenian cities into their league without the permission of the other side, but any city which was independent of either alliance might join whichever of the two it pleased. The zEginetans were apparently to remain independent, but to pay a certain contribution to the Athenian alliance ; that is, they were not to be reduced to the condition of the Euboeans. The Argives had no part in the peace; they were already at peace with Lacedaemon, and they might, if they liked, make a separate peace with Athens. Should any differences arise between the cities they were to be settled by arbitration. The terms of peace were engraven on stone and set up at Athens, and in the shrine of Apollo at Amyclae. A bronze copy was also to be seen at Olympia.

 

CHAPTER X.

 

THE conclusion of peace left the Athenians to their confederacy and their internal politics. There could not now be any difference about war with Persia or peace with Sparta; but it was still possible to contest the development of the democracy, the personal ascendancy of Pericles, and the treatment of the allies.

After the death of Cimon the oligarchical party at Athens had been led by Thucydides, the son of Melesias, a man of high character and a kinsman of Cimon. The better to keep together the party, which had suffered so severely by the death of their great leader, Thucydides organised the oligarchs into a compact body. Hitherto the members had sat here or there in the assembly as they pleased ; now they were combined into a single body, and sat in a special place.

Such a consolidation was doubtless needed if the party was to hold its own against Pericles, who was rapidly carrying all before him. For years past he had provided a subsistence for many of the poorer citizens by means of his numerous colonies—no fewer than five thousand Athenians must have been sent out to the “ cleruchies ” in the interval between 453 B.C. and 444 B.C. The new system of juries had also been established on the fall of the Areopagus, and the jurymen were paid—a second source of income to the poor. Such measures were beyond anything that the private liberality of Cimon—splendid as it was—could achieve ; and on Cimon’s death no other aristocrat came forward to aid his party with his purse.

Pericles did not stop here. Since the cessation of the war with Persia there had been fewer drafts on the public purse, and the contributions of the allies were accumulating in the public treasury. A scrupulous man would have regarded the surplus as money of the allies, which could only be spent on objects connected with their protection, and with their approval. Pericles took another view. He plainly told the Athenians that so long as the city fulfilled the contract made with the allied cities, and kept Persian vessels from their shores, the surplus was at the disposal of Athens. Acting on this principle, he devoted a part of it to the embellishment of the city. With the aid of Pheidias, the sculptor, and Ictinus, the architect, a new temple began to rise on the Acropolis in honour of Athena—the celebrated Parthenon or “ Virgin’s Chamber,”—the unrivalled triumph of architectural skill, of which we shall speak in a later chapter. Other public buildings were also begun about this time. Athens was in fact a vast workshop, in which employment was found for a great number of citizens. Nor was this all. Though little inclined to war, Pericles was sufficiently aware of the value of the Athenian fleet to take steps for preserving its efficiency. For eight months of the year sixty ships were kept at sea with crews on board, in order that there might be an ample supply of practical seamen. These crews wert largely composed of the poorer citizens, who were glad to receive pay for their services. Thus by direct or indirect means Pericles made the state the paymaster of a vast number of citizens, and the state was practically himself, with these paid citizens at his back. At the same time the public festivals of the city were enlarged and adorned with new splendour. There were innumerable processions and spectacles, contests and dramas to delight the Athenians ; and that all might attend the theatre in which the plays were acted, Pericles provided that every citizen should receive from the state a sum sufficient to pay the charge demanded from the spectators by the lessee.

We may look on these measures as the arts of a demagogue who seeks by spending the public money to secure the public favour. Or we may say that Pericles was able to gratify his passion for art at the expense of the Athenians and their allies. Neither of these views is altogether untenable ; and both are far from including the whole truth. Pericles did undoubtedly seek by every means in his power to win an undisputed position at Athens ; and undoubtedly he had a passion for art and literature. He was, if we please to say it, a demagogue and a connoisseur. But he was something more. Looking at the whole evidence before us with impartial eyes, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that he cherished aspirations worthy of a great statesman. He sincerely desired that every Athenian should owe to his city the blessing of an education in all that was beautiful, and the opportunity of a happy and useful life. If Solon had laid down rules, not less excellent than precise, for the education of the Athenian youth, Pericles would go further, and educate the Athenian man. The promise of youth is always beautiful; perhaps it was nowhere more beautiful than at Athens ; but it is the performance of manhood which sets the stamp of value on life. Pericles wished to influence that performance, and raise it to a higher level; he sought to unite a passionate enthusiasm with clear and definite aims. Whether these aspirations could be realised at all; whether they ought to be realised in the manner in which Pericles sought to realise them, are questions which admit of discussion ; perhaps the experience of the world has driven us to confess that while leisure is necessary for the development of the highest natures, the mass of men are only kept from ruin by severe and continuous labour. But there is no reason to doubt that such aspirations were cherished by Pericles.

The organisation of the oligarchy by Thucydides and the development of the democracy by Pericles naturally caused the opposition between the two to become more marked than it had hitherto been. Now, for the first time, as Plutarch informs us, were the words “ oligarch ” and “ demos ” heard in Athens. They were words of evil omen; though as yet neither side can have perceived in what the opposition would end. A democracy in a prosperous country is a very different thing from a democracy in a poor country; an oligarchy which seeks to defend its power differs widely from one which seeks to defend its wealth. But, sooner or later, the opposition of the Few and the Many passes over into the opposition of the Rich and the Poor.

The oligarchs determined to pull down Pericles, if it were possible. Above all things they endeavoured to cut off the supplies from which he supported his schemes. They pointed out the discontent which prevailed among the allies, who found their money used in adorning Athens, not in forwarding the purposes of the league. They argued that the money was either required for the purpose for which it was given, or it was not. If it was not required, let less tribute be demanded. Was Athens to be dressed out, like a vain and extravagant woman, with the spoils of others? Already some allies had thrown off their allegiance; others were paying diminished sums. Euboea, a faithful ally for thirty years, had endeavoured to shake off the yoke, and others would doubtless do the same; such flagrant dishonesty in the administration of the funds would bring the confederacy to ruin.

In answer to such arguments, Pericles held to his opinion ; the city, he said, fulfilled its duty to the allies ; the contributions were the price of an undisturbed enjoyment of the Atgean, and this Athens had secured. If Athens saved money on her bargain, what was that to the allies? As for the expenditure, it was expedient for the allies, aye, and for all Hellas, that Athens should be beautiful; that her festivals should be splendid ; that she should be the home of art and literature ; the abode of freedom and culture; the Hellas of Hellas. In such reasoning there was nothing very cogent, at any rate to the minds of the contributing cities, and those who took their part. Athens, they might reply, was not the sole judge of the cost necessary for the maintenance of a free Aegean, but the board of the Delian league, and that board had been set aside. The arguments of Pericles veiled the absurd claim that of two contracting parties one only has a right to decide whether the bargain shall continue. And where was the evidence that the board and Athens had ever entered into such a contract as that behind which Pericles sheltered himself? The Delian league was an alliance between equal states in which Athens ranked with the rest; her present position was an outrage—a tyrannous outrage — on the rights of free Hellenic cities.

The oligarchs probably believed that a large party in the city held these views, and their new organisation gave them confidence. Moreover, the last year had been disastrous ; had Cimon been alive, the war with Sparta might have been averted, or peace obtained on different conditions. Was it not possible to throw the blame of this on the all-powerful Pericles ? On these grounds they proposed, in the winter of 445 B.C., that there should be an ostracism in the city. The people agreed, and the usual arrangements were made. But when the day came for decision, in the spring of 444. B.C., the sentence fell, not on Pericles, but on Thucydides.

The sentence left no doubt about the feeling of the Athenian people, and it was accepted as final. Thucydides disappeared from Athens, and for the next fifteen years Pericles was master of the city. In fact, the oligarchs had chosen a most' unpro-pitious moment. The disasters which marked the year 446-445 B.C. had without exception been the work of the oligarchical enemies of Athens ; she was now surrounded by hostile states, all of which were oligarchical. No wise citizen, even if he disapproved of the democracy, could at such a time have ventured to put the control of his city in the hands of the oligarchical party. Besides, the measures which had saved Athens—the reduction of Eubcea and the removal of Plistoanax from Attica—were due to the strategy and political skill of Pericles. The oligarchs had done nothing in this crisis of their country. Indeed it was their rashness in supporting the ill-advised expedition of Tolmides to Coronea which had brought the crisis on; had they listened to the advice of Pericles, that disastrous blow might have been averted. The plea in behalf of the allies was not likely to stir the people offered without any conditions, but no help was sent to Egypt. The corn was divided among the Athenians ; and in connexion with this distribution a story is told that Pericles revived, or passed, a law striking off the list of citizens every one who was not born of an Athenian father and an Athenian mother. No fewer than 4,760 persons, it is said, were struck off the list on the occasion, the total of the citizens being reduced to 14,240. There are strong reasons for believing that this story cannot be an accurate account of what took place. That Pericles, himself the descendant of an alien woman, should have been the author of such a law is unlikely, especially as he had by this time entered into relations with the Milesian Aspasia. Such a law was not likely to commend itself to the statesman who had sent out thousands of Athenians to dwell among aliens. Should any of these men, as would be almost inevitable, marry a Naxian or Eubcean woman, his children would be illegitimate and incapable of exercising the rights of Athenian citizens. Nor can he have revived any old law of the kind. From the seventh century onwards we can point to instances of Athenians marrying aliens without damage to the position of their children. Megacles, the Alcmmonid, married the daughter of Clisthenes of Sicyon, and his son was Clisthenes, the Athenian reformer. Cimon and Themistocles were the sons of alien mothers ; yet both were Athenian generals. Besides, it is impossible that the number of citizens should have been 14,000 in 445, if in 432 B.C. there were 26,000 Athenians capable of bearing arms, exclusive of the lowest class, as Thucydides tells us that there were. But though we cannot suppose that Pericles made any attempt to alter the status of the Athenian citizen, it is quite probable that he was very strict in the distribution of the corn. Five thousand men who attempted to gain a share may have been prevented from doing so ; and the number who received shares may not have been more than 14,000. We may even suggest that as Pericles was opposed to sending help to Egypt, he may have made the distribution of the present as unpopular as he could. He did not indeed dare to propose that the corn should be sent back, but the reception of it might be made a source of heart-burning and jealousy among the citizens, so as to prevent any enthusiasm in the cause of the giver. And we may see in his action on the occasion an indication of the change which came over his policy when he felt his power established. He was no longer, as before, the servant of the people, but their master, and dared to thwart their wishes.

While discouraging all attempts to enter into conflict with the Great King, Pericles was still intent on the extension of Athenian power. We have already seen how anxiously he had striven, in the years of Athens’s greatest power, to secure a strong position in the Corinthian gulf. The most important stations in this quarter, Pegae and Achaea, had been abandoned at the peace. The route to the West now lay over the alien Isthmus, or round the dreaded promontory of Malea. But in those distant regions there were openings which did not escape the eye of Pericles. In Southern Italy there was no Persian monarch, animated by hereditary hatred, and master of innumerable troops ; the rivalry of Athenian and Peloponnesian had not yet been carried there. Was it possible to found a city in Italy which should exhibit the spectacle of Greeks from all quarters living harmoniously together, undivided by the jealousies of race or city?

The passion for Italy had long haunted the Athenians. When Themistocles was brought to bay by the Peloponnesian commanders before the battle of Salamis, he declared that Siris had been assigned by an oracle to Athens, and if the Peloponnesian generals abandoned Salamis, he would carry away his two hundred ships and found a new city there. So strong was the attraction which the West exercised on him that he named his two daughters Italia and Sybaris. The feeling is by no means unintelligible. The West was pre-eminently the goal of the adventurer. The Greek cities of Sicily and Italy were prosperous beyond the dreams of hope. The Sicilian princes were the most prominent men in the Grecian world ; the luxury of Sybaris had not been surpassed in the East. The stories which came to the ears of the Greeks about Tartes-sus and Sardinia were greatly exaggerated, but there was daily evidence that valuable products and manufactures, carpets from Carthage and metal-work from Etruria, could be imported from the West. It is remarkable that Athens should never have attempted to secure for herself a footing in this coveted region. Perhaps her trade was not important—or her ships were few—till the Persian war; and for a generation after that event her attention was occupied with the Delian confederacy and the East. But though she had no depots in the West, we know that the pottery of Athens was exported into Etruria and Campania, into Sicily and Lombardy, early in the fifth century B.C. There is also reason to believe that the Athenians and the Segestaeans were brought into some kind of communication about the middle of the century.

To an excited nation nothing could be more welcome than the invitation which now came from the Sybarites, asking for assistance in refounding their ancient city. After the destruction of Sybaris by the Crotoniates in 510 B.C., the remnant of the Sybarites had found a home in Scidros and Laos, where they maintained their own against the attacks of their enemies. About the year 452 B.C., in conjunction with some Thessalians they founded a community which they called New Sybaris, after the old town. This was more than Croton could bear. A resolute attack was made on the city, and five years after its foundation the Sybarites were again driven out. They now resolved to ask the assistance of Greece in founding a state. Ambassadors were sent to Lacedaemon and to Athens, offering in return for assistance a share in the new colony. At Lacedaemon nothing was done, but at Athens the scheme was readily taken up. Not only were Athenians enrolled, but envoys were sent into the Peloponnesus to enlist all who were willing to join. The colony was not to be the colony of any single state, but a colony founded by all Hellas, and a proof of Hellenic unity. In 445 B.C., ten ships left Athens to carry the colonists to their homes ; at their head was Lampon, who, though not the founder of the colony, in the Greek sense, was of great authority as a seer, by whose power of divination the scheme had been greatly aided, and might be aided still more. In their choice of a site the colonists were guided by the Delphian oracle, which bade them seek a place “ where water was measured and bread was not.” They found, near the ancient site of Sybaris, a spring which poured its water through an iron pipe, to which the inhabitants gave the name of “ the bushel.” This seemed to indicate the measurement of water, and the richness of the soil promised unmeasured abundance of corn. Here, then, was the site indicated by the oracle : it was known as Thurii, from the name of the spring (“ fast-flowing ”), and lay in a plain by the Crathis.

On this land the colonists proceeded to build a town. Among the emigrants was Hippodamus, the architect, who had recently laid out the Peiraeus in a rectangular block with intersecting streets. The same regularity was observed in the new city. It was built in an oblong; four streets ran through the length, which were known as the streets of Heracles, Aphrodite, Olympia, and Dionysus. Three streets traversed the width—the Street of Heroes, the Thurian Street, and the Thurina. Such regularityof structure was new in the Grecian world ; in this respect also Thurii was a model city.

The colonists had not long been settled before dissensions broke out amongst them. The Sybarites claimed the first place in the colony ; they were not content to hold an equal position with the rest. The highest offices were to be reserved for them ; their wives were to have precedence at the sacrifices. They also retained possession of all the land immediately round the city, which was, of course, of the most value. Such claims could not be allowed without conceding that Thurii was not a Hellenic city, but merely the old Sybaris restored and protected by the new settlers. The quarrel led to a battle, in which the unfortunate Sybarites were once more defeated ; the greater part were slain, the rest expelled from the country.

This victory left the conquerors in possession of a large quantity of fertile land. They immediately sent to Greece inviting a number of colonists to come and occupy it on terms of equality, an invitation widely accepted. The state now rapidly increased in power; the Crotoniates, after the expulsion of the Sybarites, were, for a time at least, on friendly terms with the settlers, and a popular government was devised, in which all the inhabitants had a share. Ten tribes were established, as at Athens; in three of them were included the colonists of the Peloponnesus; three others comprised the settlers from Bceotia and Central Hellas. In the remaining four were collected the colonists from Athens, Eubcea, and other Ionian cities, and the islands. These events took place in 443 B.C.

The colony of Thurii is interesting from many points of view. It was an attempt to found a colony which could not be claimed by any Grecian town as its daughter city. It was intended to prove that there were circumstances under which the jealousies of race and city could be forgotten, and Ionian and Dorian, Athenian and Boeotian, could dwell together in unity. It was also, from the first, the home of distinguished men. We have spoken of Lampon and Hippodamus, both of them men from the Periclean circle, who had aided their leader in his work at Athens. Herodotus, the historian, was also one of those who joined the colony. The last fifteen or twenty years of the life of the great historian were passed, no doubt with intervals of travel, in his western home. Thither also went Lysias, the young son of that aged Cephalus, who is so well known to all readers of Plato’s “ Republic.” There too dwelt Tisias, the Sicilian teacher of rhetoric, from whom Lysias may have learnt his skill as a writer of speeches. And, as we have said, Thurii has yet another interest as a town built on the plan of an architect. It was not a mere collection of houses, like the Grecian cities, where old and new jostled each other in gay confusion, but a town constructed with a view to convenience, health, and protection. It is from these points of view that Thurii becomes the ideal colony of the Periclean era; other cities were of far more use to Athens by supporting her citizens, or holding places of strategical value ; but none reflects so much of the mind of Pericles as the Hellenic town by the waters of the Crathis—where Herodotus, the most Hellenic of Greek historians, was wont to talk and meditate.

Diodorus, in the account of Thurii from which we derive our knowledge of the city, takes the opportunity to give a sketch of the laws of Charondas. In so doing he makes the incredible blunder of asserting that Charondas, who lived in Sicily some two hundred years before this time, actually composed his code for the benefit of the citizens of Thurii. Such inaccuracy staggers us; we cannot feel that we are justified in supposing that the laws which he quotes were those observed in Thurii; still less that they represent the genuine code of Charondas. But as Diodorus probably copied his account of them from Ephorus, a historian of the fourth century B.C., who was in a position to know what laws passed as those of Charondas at that time, we may assume that the enactments are not pure imagination. They represent rules which were then obeyed in the cities of Magna Graecia. To this extent they are a genuine picture of society and manners among the colonies in Italy. And we may at least say that whatever their value, there is no doubt about their interest.

Under this code, a father who married a second wife to be a step-mother over his children, was not allowed to sit in the public council of his city. For how could one who ordered things so ill for his own family give good advice to the state ? Besides, those who had been happy in their marriage ought to be content with their lot; and those who had not, were foolish to try the experiment a second time. Men who were convicted of dishonest practices at law were compelled to walk the city in garlands of tamarisk ; all the world was to know that they had received the crown of villainy. By this wise law the city was freed from one of the worst pests of Greek society,—the man who made a dishonest use of his legal knowledge. Another law forbade all association with criminals or disreputable persons. Another established compulsory education ; every boy must learn to read and write, and the state paid the teachers. With regard to orphans, Charondas ordained that their property should be managed by the kindred of the father, but the children should be in the possession of the kindred of the mother. The kindred of the mother had no part in the inheritance, and therefore had no motive to make away with the heirs ; the kindred of the father could not come at them. Any citizen who had been guilty of cowardice was not, as in other cities, put to death, but compelled to sit for three days in the market-place in woman’s attire. In regard to the letter of the law, Charondas was precise ; bad or good, the law, while it was the law, must be strictly obeyed. If it worked ill it might be corrected, but obeyed it must be.

The method by which Charondas allowed his laws to be corrected is one which is elsewhere mentioned in connection with Zaleucus the law-giver of Locri. It was not likely to make law reform popular. Anyone who chose could plead against a law in the public assembly, but he did so with his neck in a noose. If he convinced his audience, the law was changed ; if he failed, the noose was drawn. Instances are recorded of corrections made even under such severe conditions. It was the law that bodily injuries should be requited by the lex talionis: “ An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” This continued in force till a ruffian threatened to knock out the eye of a man who had already lost one ; he knew that the law would only deprive him of one of his eyes in return, and yet his opponent would be totally blind. As this was obviously unjust, the one-eyed man obtained a modification of the rule, and henceforth anyone who destroyed the eye of a man who had but one lost the sight of both eyes. Another correction related to divorce. An aged man, who had been abandoned by his young wife, succeeded in persuading the citizens to correct the law which permitted second marriages to divorced persons, to the extent that no woman might marry a man, no man might marry a woman, younger than the husband or wife whom they had abandoned. These stories are ridiculous, but they are probably true. They exhibit the humorous common-sense which meets us in Greek legislation. We know for a fact that Pittacus doubled the penalties for all misdeeds committed in intoxication, and Solon protected heiresses from greed by regulations which appeal to the animal rather than the moral nature of man.

Within a very few years from the foundation of Thurii the attention of Pericles was called away to the extreme east of the Athenian empire, and a struggle began which taxed his resolution and his resources to the utmost. We have seen that in the year 450 B.C. troubles had broken out in Miletus, in which the Athenians had found it necessary to interfere; the constitution had been changed from an oligarchy to a democracy, and an Athenian garrison had been placed in the city. Such reforms naturally brought Miletus into very close connection with Athens. The democracy there might expect the support of the democracy of Athens in any contest with oligarchy. It was perhaps in this spirit that they entered into a contest with Samos for the possession of Priene, though it is difficult to understand how two cities belonging to the confederacy of Delos could contest the possession of a third which was also an independent .member of the same confederacy. It is possible that the Samians were the aggressors. They were never very scrupulous in their acquisitions, and they had been at war with Priene in old days for the possession of certain places on the mainland. Or it is possible that in Priene herself there were two factions, one of which wished to place the town under the protection of Samos, the other under the protection of Miletus. Whatever the cause of strife, the cities flew to arms, and Miletus was defeated. She at once appealed to Athens, where the appeal was received with favour; the more so, as it was supported by a party from Samos who wished to overthrow the government there. For Samos was in the hands of an oligarchy composed of the rich landowners of the island, the very class of men whose power at Athens had been finally broken by Pericles. Plutarch tells us that the Athenians called on the Samians to discontinue hostilities and submit the matter to arbitration, but in Thucydides we hear nothing of this, and the Samians are treated forthwith as guilty of rebellion. A force of forty triremes was despatched from Athens in the spring of 440 B.C. under the command of Pericles. He met with no resistance, and proceeded to reorganise affairs in Samos. Fifty men and fifty boys were taken as hostages from the leading families, and placed with Athenian colonists in Lemnos. The Samians were compelled to pay a fine of eighty talents, the oligarchs were deposed, the constitution was changed into a democracy, and a garrison was left in the city to preserve order. These measures were carried out with the greatest decision and rapidity; in a very few weeks Samos had been degraded from her position as one of the most powerful of the allies of Athens to the rank of a subject, held by a garrison and punished by a fine. Here, as in Eubcea, the policy of Pericles had triumphed ; the Delian confederacy was a thing of the past.

But Samos was not prepared to submit. The oligarchs could not forget that Samos had once been the ruler of the Eastern Aigean ; that her fleet was still a great power. The city was strongly fortified, and help might be expected from Persia. A number of the discontented citizens left the island and entered into communication with Pissuthnes, the satrap of Sardis. With his support they returned at the head of a body of men by whose aid, in concert with their friends, they succeeded in capturing or expelling the Athenian garrison and recovering possession of the city. The old constitution was at once restored ; and before the Athenians had time to stir the hostages were removed from Lemnos. The work of Pericles was undone in less time than he had taken to do it.

Athens found herself face to face with a powerful ally in revolt. The danger was great; greater even than at the revolt of Eubcea. There was imminent risk that the war with Persia might be opened again, and Athens might be alone in the contest. Sparta certainly would not join her, and who could tell whether the allies would remain faithful ? Samos was taking every step to strengthen her position, the leaders of the democracy were expelled from the city, the officers and garrison of the Athenians, who had been captured, were placed as hostages with Pissuthnes, the aid of the Spartan confederacy was invoked. In order, if possible, to cut off any assistance from Miletus, the Samians at once sent an expedition against the city. Could they capture it before the arrival of the Athenians, such a signal success might induce all the cities of Asia Minor to join in the revolt. Byzantium had joined already, and the cities of Caria were uncertain.

The whole policy of Pericles was at stake. Instantaneous action was necessary. A defeat at Samos would undo the work of years. Sixty ships were at once ordered to Samos, and apparently all the ten generals, with Pericles at their head, went over in charge of them. Part of the fleet was despatched to watch for the Phoenician ships, which were reported to be coming up from the south, part was sent to bring reinforcements from Chios and Lesbos. With the remaining vessels Pericles attempted to cut off the Samian force which was engaged on the mainland in attacking Miletus. A severe engagement took place in which both sides claimed the victory. The Samians were able to force their way through to Samos ; while Pericles was able to blockade the harbour. Further operations were deferred till reinforcements came up.

Twenty-five triremes now arrived from Chios and Lesbos, perhaps under the command of the poet Sophocles, whom we know to have been a general in this war, and hear of at Chios; forty, from Athens. Thus reinforced Pericles was able to land forces at Samos and draw lines round the city, which he also blockaded by sea. While he was thus engaged the news arrived that the Phoenician fleet was at hand. Pericles at once set out to intercept it with sixty ships. It was better to call off half his forces than to engage with the Phoenicians off the shore of Samos, where the Samians would be at hand to take part in the battle. The Phoenician fleet did not appear, but meantime the Samians were able to break through the sixty-five ships which Pericles had left behind. For fourteen days they were masters of the sea and could carry into the city whatever provisions they pleased. Then Pericles returned. The Samians attempted to cut him off from the island but in vain. They were defeated, and the city was once more blockaded by sea and land. It was now midsummer 440 B.C., and the generals for the year came into office at Athens. Pericles was re-elected and remained with the fleet, but the rest of the commanders at Samos were replaced by new officers, who brought large reinforcements. First forty and then twenty ships were brought from Athens ; Chios and Lesbos added thirty to the triremes previously sent, and the total amount of the fleet was more than two hundred sail. It was apparently an overwhelming force, yet the Samians defied it. Their walls were strong ; their city well stocked with provisions ; they could still hope that assistance would come from Persia or from Peloponnesus. So they held out, month after month, waiting for help which never came. The Persians failed to seize the opportunity ; the Peloponnesus decided, on the motion of the Corinthians, that they would not go to the aid of a city which had revolted from her leader. To do so might form a very inconvenient precedent; were the Megarians to revolt and Athens to aid them, Corinth would find herself in the same difficulties as before the peace of 445 B.c. By this time the prospects of the Samians were gloomy enough. At length when nine months had passed, and the supplies in Samos were exhausted, the city agreed to a capitulation. The terms were severe; all the triremes of Samos were to be given up to Athens ; the walls of the city were to be thrown down ; the cost of the war was to be defrayed by the Samians, and hostages placed with the Athenians as a surety for good behaviour. The oligarchs who had brought about the revolt were of course expelled from the city—we find them afterwards at Anaea on the mainland opposite,—and a democratical form of government was established. Duris of Samos, a late and untrustworthy historian, had horrible stories to tell of the cruelty of Pericles toward the Samian trierarchs and marines. They are doubtless fictions ; the Greeks were not merciful to the captives who fell into their power, but they were content with putting them to death. They did not add torture to bloodshed.

The cost of the war had been enormous; if we exclude all the previous operations, the siege of eight months with two hundred triremes would require 1,600 talents, if we allow a drachma a day as the entire cost in food and hire for each man on board a trireme. So far as we can judge from a mutilated inscription, 1,276 talents, in addition to the ordinary income from the league, were paid out of the treasury of Athens in the war, this implies a total expenditure of more than 2,000 talents; if the Samians paid even half this sum, it would be a severe tax on the island for many years.

Once more was Pericles victorious. When he returned to Athens, in the spring of 439 B.C., he might feel that his policy was now fairly established. In her dealings with Samos, Athens had acted from first to last as an imperial city. To her the complaints of the Milesians had been brought ; she had interfered as a sovereign in the domestic politics of Samos. She had employed the fleets of Chios and Lesbos, and the money of other cities, to reduce Samos to subjection. She had compelled the city to accept a form of government in harmony with her own. To those who had eyes to see, such conduct proved pnly too clearly that Athens claimed sovereign rights over the confederacy, and was resolved to use them for her own advantage.

The measures which Pericles took on the news of the revolt of Samos were not less clear-sighted than rapid. The attempts to cut off the Samians on the mainland from the island, and to meet the Phoenician fleet before it could reach Samos, were excellent pieces of strategy. Yet we notice that here, as elsewhere, the Greeks were helpless in the presence of a walled city. Thasos, TEgina, Samos, had bidden defiance to all the skill of the best Athenian engineers. Famine or treachery alone could bring a strongly fortified place into the possession of the enemy. In the case of Samos, we must allow that Pericles was highly favoured by fortune. Had the Persians taken up the cause of the Samians, as it was their interest to do ; had the Chians and Lesbians joined in the revolt, or even refused to send ships to subjugate an ally; had the Corinthians been less short-sighted in their advice, the event of the war would probably have been different. It is interesting to know that the defence of Samos was conducted by a man whose name is remembered in another sphere. Melissus, who defeated Pericles, and defied his forces so long, was a philosopher of the Eleatic school. As Pericles occupied his leisure with the speculations of Anaxagoras on the physical world, so did Melissus ponder the problem of the Many and the One, striving to find beyond and behind the change and decay of all visible things a reality which was always and everywhere the same.

With the fall of Samos, Byzantium also came in and resumed her place as a subject state of Athens, and though a number of Carian cities broke away from the confederacy at this time, and were never recovered—and troubles were not wanting in the Thracian quarter,—Pericles, on his return to Athens, was at the height of his reputation as a general. Twice in a moment of supreme danger he had saved Athens. The first success had been overshadowed by the peace which it had been necessary to make with Sparta, but the conquest of Samos was clear gain to the city. Yet his victories were won at the cost of those who had once been free and independent Greeks. When the last solemn rites were paid, after the custom of the Athenians, to the dead who had fallen in their country’s cause, Pericles was chosen to pronounce the funeral oration over them. He dwelt on the immortality of the glorious dead ; on the fair promise of the lives that were ended ; “ the loss of her youth was to the city what the loss of spring would be to the year.” But they had fallen in a noble cause, and achieved a famous victory. When he descended from the tribune, widows and orphans crowded round him with flowers and garlands, but Elpinice, the now aged sister of Cimon, turned away, with the bitter words : “ Why these flowers and crowns? Not in war against Medes and Phoenicians, as my brother, but in conflict against a friendly and allied state, has Pericles led our citizens to death.”

 

CHAPTER XI.

AMPHIPOLIS—THE COMING WAR.

HE success of the Athenians at Samos did not enable them entirely to repair the breaches which the revolt had made in the confederacy. When we compare the lists of the tribute paid by the allies in the Delian confederacy in the years just preceding the outbreak of the revolt with that of 436-435 B.C., we find that no fewer than twenty-two of the Carian cities are wanting in the later list, and that these cities no longer form a separate district, but are united with the Ionian. In Thrace also there had been disturbances. The cities on Pallene had fallen into arrears with their tribute or refused to pay it. In this district Athens was able to restore order, and the defaulters were punished by the exaction of higher sums; Scione, for instance, pays fifteen talents in the list of 437 B.C. instead of six talents, and many towns that hitherto had been subordinate to neighbouring cities, were now detached and formed into independent members of the league. But the revolt of Byzantium, and the uncertain fidelity of the Chalcidic cities, seem to have convinced Pericles that something had still to be done to secure the interests of Athens in this quarter. How keenly he felt the necessity of providing for a close and unbroken connexion between Athens and the north, he had already shewn by his voyage into the Pontus and the colonies he had sent out. With the exception of Naxos, the cleruchies of Pericles were all planted in a line more or less direct between Athens and Byzantium. Chalcis secured the south of the Euripus, Histisea the north ; Brea was in the territory of the Bisaltians; the Chersonese commanded the Hellespont. At all these points Athenian colonies were established of such a nature that their loyalty to Athens could never for a moment be called in question.

Another site remained, more valuable from every point of view ; a site where the Athenians had already attempted to establish themselves, but only to meet with overwhelming disaster. At the point where the Strymon leaves Lake Cercinitis are the “ Nine ways,” —the centre to which all the roads from east and west, north and south converge in order to strike the bridge over the river. Here in 465 B.C. Leagros had led out an Athenian colony of 10,000 men, all of whom had perished at Drabescus, in conflict with the warlike tribes of the district. It was a severe loss, but a further attempt was worth making; the region was not only rich in all materials required for building ships, but it lay in the immediate neighbourhood of the mines of Pangseum, and above all it com-11 manded the principal route to the north. In 437 B.C. another band of colonists was led out by Hagnon the son of Nicias, who had been a general with Pericles in the Samian war. He landed at Eion at the mouth of the Strymon, which had long been in the occupation of the Athenians, and from thence forced his way up the river till he obtained possession of the coveted place. Just above the bridge, on an eminence skirted by the river, Hagnon placed his city, which from its site he called Amphipolis. Two sides of the town were swept by the stream and needed no defence ; on the third, a wall was built, reaching at each end to the river. The colony was strengthened by settlers from the neighbouring cities of Chalcidice, but so far as wO know the native tribes made no attempt to drive out the intruders. Hagnon was regarded as the founder of the city, and public honours were paid to him in this capacity.

Great changes had taken place in this region since Cimon had conquered Eion, and Leagros had perished at Drabescus—changes which perhaps explain the inefficient resistance of the natives to this new attempt of the Athenians. In 464 Alexander was still king of Macedon ; the prince who in his youth, by an act of great daring, had cleared his country of the Persians, when sent to demand submission from his father Amyntas. When he came to the throne he had pursued a policy which enabled him to preserve his kingdom from the Persian invaders, without incurring the open hostility of the Greeks. A series of conquests had extended his empire from Mount Bceum to the middle course of the Strymon; and from the mines near Lake Prasias, which were at his disposal, he received not less than a talent of silver a day. After his death in 454 B.C. his kingdom was divided between his two sons Perdiccas and Philip, the eastern portion, between the Axius and the Strymon, falling to Philip’s share. Such a division was in itself a source of weakness, and the weakness was increased by dissensions between the brothers. Perdiccas seems about this time to have entered into an alliance with the Athenians ; he was probably not displeased that they should plant themselves in force between Philip and the sea. They would at least be on the spot to render what aid was necessary. To the Athenians also the alliance was for the moment advantageous ; it prevented Philip from taking any decisive measures against Amphipolis, but in time they found it more to their interests to support Philip against Perdiccas.

In like manner on the death of Teres, in 440 B.C., the great kingdom of the Odrysians was divided between his sons Sitalces and Sparadocus. They too were soon at variance. The quarrel was a fortunate circumstance for Athens, while it lasted. Some years later, when Sitalces had overpowered and expelled his brother, the Athenians were alarmed at his forces and flattered him by every means in their power. Fortunately the Odrysians never attained consolidation, and the time was not yet come when the powers of the north could make or mar in Greece.

While Athens was thus active, organising her confederacy and securing her communication with the north, the Peloponnesians had allowed the years ter pass in apathy and inattention. At length they awoke to a sense of the situation. It was clear that Athens had abandoned all idea of war with Persia and that the confederacy of Delos was transformed into an Athenian empire, of whose forces the great city was absolutely mistress. And meanwhile in visible greatness Athens had become far the first city in Greece. Her walls were unrivalled, her harbours and docks ample for the largest fleet, and protected by the strongest fortifications. On the height of the Acropolis new temples were rising, surpassing in beauty all that had hitherto been achieved by architect or sculptor, and at the head of all was Pericles, under whose guidance Athens seemed to be forever falling into the greatest dangers only to rise again more splendid than before. An uneasy feeling began to prevail. What would the end be? Who could forecast the action of democracy or penetrate the designs of the silent, self-reliant statesman, who wielded such immense power? Pericles seems to have perceived the discontent. He knew what it foreboded. War with Sparta had perhaps never been wholly absent from his thoughts, even when he concluded the Thirty Years’ Peace. In such a struggle it was necessary for Athens to have as large a following as possible. By a wise policy he might at least prevent the growing suspicion that Athens was using her power for her own interest only, and that she was utterly careless of the great charge entrusted to her. He might shew the world that if Greece was once more willing to unite against Persia, Athens was ready to do her part. If they refused, it was no longer open to them to charge Athens with any want of patriotism ; but if by any means Hellas could be united round Athens, her position would be immensely improved. Such a union would at once put her in the first place in Greece, and Sparta in the second. We are told by Plutarch that at the time when the Lacedaemonians were beginning to feel great annoyance at the rise of Athens, Pericles encouraged the people to aim at a still higher position. With this object he brought forward a decree that all the Greeks, whether in Europe or Asia, should be invited to send envoys to a conference at Athens for the purpose of discussing a number of questions of national interest. The temples which the Persians had destroyed were still unrestored ; the offerings vowed at the time of the great struggle had not been fully paid; no definite arrangement had been made for the control of the sea and the preservation of peace. These were matters in which every Greek had an interest, and they could only be discussed in a Pan-Hellenic conference. Twenty Athenians—men of more than fifty years of age—were chosen, of whom five visited the Ionians and Dorians in Asia, and the islands as far as Lesbos and Rhodes ; a second five were sent to the Greeks in the Hellespont and in Thrace as far as Byzantium. Other five went to Bceotia, Phocis, and the Peloponnesus, from which they passed through Locri to Acarnania and Ambracia; the remainder visited the CEtaeans, the Malian Gulf, the Achaeans of Phthiotis, and the Thessalians. But the scheme fell dead to the ground ; nowhere was there any response to the invitations ; not a single envoy appeared at Athens. The attempt to make the city the centre of Hellas completely broke down.

Pericles was not discouraged by the failure of his plan. He was content that Athens should stand alone ; that the division which had been slowly widening since the Peloponnesians withdrew from Byzantium should continue till one or other of the great cities, which stood at the head of the opposite sections, was brought to submission.' And he resolved that Athens at any rate should not be first in shewing signs of weakness. Let the cost be what it might, she must still pursue the career of progress on which she had advanced for the last fifty years. If the rest of Greece failed to sympathise with a forward movement and preferred to cling to their old leader, so much the more reason was there for Athens to be resolute in her purpose and solid in her power. From this time forward Pericles sought to brace his citizens to the idea of war with Sparta. He endeavoured to instil into their minds the greatness of the objects for which they would fight. He pointed to the glorious city, the like of which could be seen nowhere else in Greece. He called to their minds all that the city had been to them ; the happy life they enjoyed in her, the numerous recreations she provided for them. He told them of the great empire the city controlled ; an empire which, he said, would certainly fall to pieces, if Athens became in any way subject to Sparta. He enumerated the wealth stored up in the treasuries of the city, and explained how indispensable money was for the successful prosecution of war. He frankly avowed that Athens was no match in the field for the forces which the Spartan confederacy could bring against her; but why need she meet them ? The fair possessions of the wealthy Athenians in Attica were pleasant and beautiful; but they were not the city; they were but the ornaments of wealth, the “garden of the house.” If the need came they must be abandoned, and he would cheerfully set the example. The walls and ports, money and ships :—these were the real safeguards of Athens. While these remained intact, the enemy might ride up to the city and she would suffer nothing. Such were the precepts enforced by an eloquence, which left a sting in the ears of those that listened. They were not enforced in vain. Whatever the wavering and uncertainty of the Athenian people, the democracy clung with a tenacity rarely equalled to the war with Sparta.

The policy of Pericles was not without opponents. There were many in Athens whom his eloquence failed to convince, and who spoke of him and his measures with a bitter and even personal hatred. The oligarchical party, though politically helpless since the ostracism of Thucydides, was still vigorous. If it could accomplish nothing in the assembly, much could be done by the organised co-operation of clubs, by clever satire, and well-conducted personal attacks upon Pericles and his friends. The position of Pericles was not less difficult because it was unique. Year after year he was elected one of the ten generals, and this permanence gave him a peculiar authority on the board. Whether he was so formally or not, he was in reality chairman of the generals, the first executive officer in Athens. It was thought that he superintended everything, and therefore everything could be charged upon him. If any scheme went wrong, it was Pericles who was to blame. More especially did the poets of the old comedy take up this line. Their sympathies were not with the people whom they sought to amuse, but with the people of the age of Cimon, “ the men of Marathon ; ” they praised the good old times and criticised all that was new. Those who listened were willing enough to be discontented. The years of peace left the Athenians with little to occupy their minds. A long peace is always a time of trial for a government, however able and efficient. Men grow captious in their criticisms when they have no severe burdens to bear, no definite aim before them. Besides the comedians, there were men who rightly or wrongly took great offence at the conduct of Pericles. Dracontides scented corruption in the public expenditure ; Dio-peithes was convinced that the doctrines of Anaxagoras must lead to the overthrow of all sound religion, and bring on the city the dire vengeance of the gods ; others saw in Aspasia, the Milesian friend of Pericles, the destruction of Athenian domestic life. These various sections were drawing together, and if they could not reach Pericles himself, they could, when the right moment came, attack him through his friends. For the present they contented themselves with abuse. Aspasia was spoken of as the new Omphale, as the Hera of the Olympian, the child of corruption, an impudent mistress. Pericles was the prince of satyrs, his house was an office for the corruption of female honour. Pheidias was a thief, Anaxagoras an atheist.

While the storm was gathering at home, Pericles was extending the influence of Athens in the West as well as in the north. We have seen how anxious he had been before the peace in 445 B.C. to secure a firm footing at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf, and the subsequent foundation of the colony at Thurii proves that he had not lost sight of his old policy. A favourable opportunity soon offered for renewing it. On the shore of the bay of Ambracia lay the city of Argos Amphilochicum, so called from the founder, Amphilochus of Argos, who, according to a tradition preserved by Thucydides, founded the city on his return from Troy. It was the greatest city in that region. At a date which we cannot fix, the Amphilochians, being in great distress, invited their neighbours, the Ambraciots, to join in the settlement. The Ambraciots came and after a time, finding themselves the stronger, drove out the Argives and took possession of the city for themselves. The Argives now sought the protection of the Acarnanians and both together appealed to Athens. A fleet of thirty ships was sent under the command of Phormio, who had recently served in the war with Samos. When Phormio arrived, Argos was taken by storm, and the Argives and Acarnanians dwelt together in the place. This was the beginning of the alliance between Athens and Acar-nania, which we find subsisting at the time of the Peloponnesian war.

The acquisition of a friendly port on the shore of the Ambracian Gulf was of great advantage to Athens in keeping up a communication with the west. We hear of an alliance between Athens and the Messapians and of the presence of an Athenian admiral, Diotimus, at Naples, and though we have no evidence on which to fix the date of either, it has been conjectured with some reason that they were connected with that advance of the Italian tribes to the west and south which about this time threatened the cities of Magna Gracia. In the Greek cities also of Italy and Sicily affairs had taken a turn which could not fail to attract the attention of Athens. From the first the new colony of Thurii had aroused the jealousy of Tarentum ; war had broken out, and though no decisive result had followed, the Tarentines had acquired an equal share in a new colony on the site of Siris, which the Athenians in the days of Themistocles claimed for themselves. This was a gain for the Dorian element in Italy; it was hardly less so that the Thurians had been led in their defence by Cleandridas, the Spartan exile, the father of the famous Gylippus. In Sicily also the Dorian cities of Syracuse an Agrigentum had recently made such progress that the Ionians had reason to be apprehensive. It may have occurred to Pericles, that if he could not place Athens at the head of Greece in a combination against Persia, she might at least come forward as the defender and supporter of the Ionians, and he could hardly fail to see that a war of Athens with Sparta meant also a war of Ionians with Dorians, in which the cities of the west would be called upon to furnish ships to their kinsmen in the east. So much the more important Was it that Athens should be in a position to control the passage from Syracuse to Corinth.

Thus we see Athens repairing the loss which the peace inflicted upon her by drawing more tightly the reins with which she governed the confederacy, and by strengthening her communications with the north and the west. It was from these quarters that the storm finally broke.

 

CHAPTER XV.

THE LAST YEAR OF PERICLES.

WITH the return of spring (430 B.C.) the Peloponnesians were again in Attica. After desolating the central plain they passed on towards Sunium, laying waste the coast land on either side of the promontory ; but before many days had passed they received the news that the plague had broken out at Athens, and it is said that their invasion was cut short on this account. However this may be, they remained not less than forty days, the longest stay they ever made, and ravaged the entire country. During the whole of the time the plague was raging in the ill-fated city.

This new and terrible disaster, the like of which is not recorded in Grecian history, came, as such disorders commonly do, from the East. It first appeared in the Peiraeus, from which it spread rapidly to the upper city. For a time it was supposed that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the water-tanks, but the disease was soon discovered to be of an infectious nature, utterly unknown to the Greek physicians, and beyond the reach of help, human or divine.

Athens was ill prepared for such a visitation. The city was crowded with the inhabitants who had been brought in from the country, and, as they had no houses of their own, the new-comers were closely packed together in stifling huts, among which the disease raged with terrible effect. The dead lay in heaps ; the dying wallowed in the streets or crawled round the fountains. The very temples were filled with corpses. There was no organised service for the removal of the dead ; each man buried his own as he could, and often the survivors, overcome by the number of the corpses, made use of burial-places not their own, or threw the dead on funeral pyres which were burning for others.

Great and terrible as were the physical evils of the plague, the moral evils which it wrought were greater still. There were men at Athens, as there are everywhere, who found it convenient to conform to the decencies of life, though without moral principle; there were still more who were only deterred from crime by the fear of punishment. Of both these classes of men the conduct was now entirely changed. Those who had concealed their pleasures threw the veil away, and the criminal was no longer terrified by any fear of God or man. The divine law was disregarded, when good and evil perished alike, and the human law was superseded by the terrible sentence which seemed to be passed on the whole city.

In the Peloponnesus the plague did little harm. That it appeared in the peninsula we know from the statement of Thucydides, but we do not hear of it in any of the great cities. Only in the remote town of Phigalea, in the south-west corner of Arcadia, have we any record of its presence. Here, in the glen of Bassae, surrounded by rocks and old knotted oaks, stands the temple of Apollo the Healer,—-the most perfect ruin in Greece next to the “ Theseum ” at Athens,—which was built as a thank-offering for the assistance rendered by the god when the plague raged at Phigalea.

The horrors with which he was surrounded did not turn Pericles from his purpose. Even in the early days of the invasion, before the Peloponnesians had left the central plain for the coast, he equipped a fleet of one hundred vessels, on which were placed no fewer than four thousand Athenian hoplites. A number of old ships were also converted into transports, for the conveyance of three hundred horses, a new feature in the naval equipment of Athens. The armament was then joined by fifty vessels from Chios and Lesbos. At the head of this imposing force, Pericles set sail for the Peloponnesus to make reprisals for the damage done to Attica. From the coast land, into which they had now moved, the Peloponnesians would see the enormous fleet standing out across the bay, a convincing proof that Athens was not yet crushed by her misfortunes.

Arriving off the coast of Argolis, the fleet attacked Epidaurus, but, though the country was laid waste, the town could not be taken. Similar descents were made at Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione, cities on the same coast, which were allies of Sparta, and with a similar result. At Prasiae, an insignificant place on the coast of Laconia, the expedition was so far successful that it took and destroyed the town, besides ravaging the country round, but no attempt at permanent occupation seems to have been made. The fleet then returned to Athens, whence it was immediately sent out again, under the officers who had served with Pericles, to take part in the siege of Potidaea. It had hardly arrived at its destination before the plague broke out among the troops, spreading from the new-comers to the soldiers previously engaged in the siege, and as every attempt to take the city failed, the fleet returned to Athens, after a stay of forty days, with a loss of more than a fourth of the four thousand hoplites.

No wonder that a change came over the spirit of the Athenians. In the city the plague was raging; and no one could deny that its effects were greatly increased by the policy which kept the Athenians confined within the walls. Had they been scattered over Attica, the danger of infection, at any rate, would have been greatly reduced. Outside the walls the whole of Attica from Athens to Sunium, from Sunium to Marathon, from Marathon to Eleusis, was utterly laid waste. Every proprietor and farmer was cut off from the income which his lands might have brought him. At the same time, the richer men, on whom the chief burdens of the navy and cavalry fell, had been called upon to furnish an enormous force, which cannot have been at sea for less than two months. And what had the force accomplished ? A few patches of coast-land had been ravaged in Argolis; a Laconian hamlet had been destroyed. At Potidaea the expedition had not only failed, but had carried the plague into a healthy army.

The first effect of the change of feeling was seen in the despatch of envoys to Sparta with proposals for peace. But the Spartans, who probably had received very exaggerated accounts of the plague, and looked on Athens as hopelessly ruined, would listen to no overtures. Or they may have distrusted proposals which did not come to them with the authority of Pericles. Whatever the reason, the envoys entirely failed in their mission. The greater was the exasperation against the author of the war. Pericles found himself the object of a furious outbreak of popular odium. He had hitherto done his utmost to prevent the people from meeting for the discussion of public affairs, but he now found it necessary to summon an assembly, and endeavour to bring them into a better mood. He had no confessions of error to make ; it was the people, not himself, who had changed; with the exception of the plague, which was beyond human foresight, nothing had happened of which they had not been forewarned. If they had been right in resolving upon the war, they were wrong in wishing now to discontinue it. The change was indeed unworthy of them, and more unworthy still was the determination to make one man responsible for a policy to which all were pledged. War was a great evil, which no city would bring upon herself, if it could be avoided, but loss of independence was a greater evil by far, and, when the choice lay between the two, there could be no room for hesitation.

Pericles then pointed out that the evils which had overtaken the Athenians, however disastrous to individual citizens, left the strength of the city unimpaired. Their chances of victory were as good as ever. Their navy was still the greatest in the world ; they were absolute masters of the sea; and not even the Great King could prevent their vessels from sailing wherever they chose. What was the loss of houses or lands to men who possessed such a power ? So long as they preserved their freedom, they could quickly recover what had been lost; but if they became the servants of others, they would lose not freedom only, but all that freedom brings with it. Their ancestors had won a great empire, were they unable even to maintain it? Far be such a disgrace from them !

It was the possession of this great empire which made the position so critical. “ Do not imagine,” Pericles said, “that you are fighting for a simple issue, freedom or slavery. You have an empire to lose ; you are exposed to the hatred into which your imperial policy has brought you. Your empire is a 'tyranny, which in the opinion of mankind has been unjustly acquired, and which you cannot safely surrender. It is too late to play the honest man ; and those who advise such a policy will bring the state to ruin.”

“ No ! we must hold on our way, and tread the path of glory. Our city has the greatest name in all the world because she has never yielded to misfortunes, but has sacrificed more lives and endured severer hardships in war than any other; wherefore also she has the greatest power of any state up to this day, and the memory of her glory will always survive. Even if we shall be compelled at last to abate somewhat of our greatness (for all things have their time of growth and decay) yet will the recollection live, that of all Hellenes, we ruled over the greatest number of Hellenic subjects, that we withstood our enemies whether single or united, in the most terrible wars, and that we were the inhabitants of a city endowed with every sort of wealth and greatness. The indolent may indeed find fault, but the man of action will seek to rival us, and he who is less fortunate will envy us. To be hateful and offensive has ever been at the time the fate of those who have aspired to empire. But he judges well who accepts unpopularity in a great cause. Hatred does not last long, and, besides the immediate splendour of great actions, the renown of them endures forever in men’s memories. Looking forward to such future glory and present avoidance of dishonour, make an effort now and secure both. Let no herald be sent to the Lacedaemonians, and do not let them know that you are depressed by your sufferings. For the greatest states and the greatest men, when misfortunes come, are the least depressed in spirit, and the most resolute in action.”⁹

We cannot but admire the undaunted spirit of the man who, in the teeth of a powerful opposition, amid the ruin and desolation of Attica, with the groans of the dying almost sounding in his ears, could present such a front to his enemies. Of such stuff the rulers of the world are made. And yet this last speech of Pericles is a terrible speech—breathing in every line a love of domination which threatened the freedom of Greece. Beyond the walls of Athens such words would be received with fierce denunciation; and within the city they nourished the most selfish passions of the Athenian people. The Athenians had long been taught to regard the money of the allies as their own, and the Delian confederacy had been reduced to submission by the contributions which were made to ensure its freedom. Now they were taught that Athens was a tyrant city, hated like a tyrant, and compelled like a tyrant to rely upon force for protection. “ Necessity, the tyrant’s plea,” was laid upon her ; and glory, the conqueror’s idol, was held out as the final goal of ambition. Not only were the interests of Hellas regarded as subordinate to the interests of Athens, but honesty was confessed to be a ruinous policy. Such was the dangerous eminence to which Athens had been raised by the policy of Pericles, a policy which he sought to defend by sophistry and exaggeration. It was an exaggeration to say that peace with Sparta involved the slavery of Athens, for even at the close of the war, Athens was not enslaved. It was sophistry to separate the misfortunes of Athens from the misfortunes of her citizens. What sort of spirit was likely to arise in men who were bidden to “ die like sheep ” behind the city walls, rather than face their enemy in the field ? What was the value of an invincible fleet, when it failed at Epidaurus and Potidaea?

The Athenians were so far moved by the advice of Pericles, that they sent no more embassies to Sparta, and resumed with eagerness the prosecution of the war. Yet the opposition was not only strong enough to secure the deposition of Pericles from his post of general, but also his condemnation in a court of law, on a charge of embezzlement. He was sentenced to a fine of fifty talents. As we find his old opponent Cleon among the leaders of the prosecution, we may assume that the extreme democrats, who were in favour of the war and yet opposed to Pericles, proved stronger than the oligarchical party, who would have combined his overthrow with negotiations for peace. The inhabitants of the country, who were the worst sufferers by the plague and the war, seem to have been unable to turn the scale. The condemnation was of course a party stroke, for embezzlement was of all offences the one which could not be proved against Pericles. But it was an offence readily believed of all public men at Athens, and that was enough.

For the first time for fifteen years Pericles was without public office ; he was compelled to look idly on while the management of the state passed into the hands of others. The bitterness of his fall was rendered more acute by the private misfortunes which gathered thick upon him. In his youth he had married the wife of Hipponicus, who seems to have been transferred to him from her husband by some arrangement, which caused neither a scandal nor a feud. By her he had two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus. Xanthippus had long been on bad terms with his father owing to his own worthless character, and that he fell a victim to the plague was perhaps no reason for regret. So much the deeper was the affection lavished on Paralus, and when he also was carried off by the remorseless pestilence, Pericles was entirely crushed by the blow. As he placed the funeral crown on his son’s head, he broke into loud lamentations at the doom which had left him desolate. The Athenians were so greatly moved by his calamities that a decree was passed, under which his son by Aspasia, Pericles the younger, was made an Athenian citizen, and by this expedient his house was saved from extinction.

From July 430 to July 429 B.C., Athenian policy was not controlled by Pericles. The war went on as before. The operations were chiefly in Western Greece. The Lacedaemonians endeavoured to make reprisals for the Athenian expedition round the Peloponnesus, by sending a hundred ships against Zacynthus, the ally of the Athenians, but though the island was ravaged, the Zacynthians could not be brought to terms. Later on in the year the Ambraciots summoned a force of Chaonians and other barbarians to their aid for an attack on the city of Amphilochian Argos, with which they had been on bad terms for years, but in this case also the city could not be taken, and after ravaging the country the army dispersed.

These movements naturally attracted the notice of the Athenians, who were allies of the Argives and Acarnanians. An expedition of twenty ships was despatched to Naupactus under the command of Phormio, one of the generals of the year. The appointment was a most happy one. Some years before, Phormio had delivered Argos from the aggression of the Ambraciots ; he was well known in the West, and was soon to prove himself the ablest naval officer at Athens. In the North affairs were favourable to the Athenians. A number of envoys from the Peloponnesus with Aristeus of Corinth at their head—a man whom the Athenians considered to be the cause of all their troubles in Chalcidice— had been despatched to Asia in the hope of persuading the king of Persia to take part in the war. On their way they went to the court of the Odrysian king, Sitalces, thinking that he might be induced to throw the Athenians over, or at least to convey the envoys across the Hellespont. The visit proved a fatal mistake. Two Athenians who happened to be with Sitalces at the time persuaded his son Sadocus to seize the envoys as they were about to cross the straits and deliver them into their hands. The captives were at once carried to Athens, where they were put to death on the very day of their arrival, without any trial, and their bodies thrown down precipices. This _savage act —which might not have occurred had Pericles been in power—was justified as a retaliation on the Lacedaemonians, who, at the beginning of the war, slaughtered every one captured at sea, whether he was an ally of the Athenians or a neutral. A bad act cannot justify a worse, but it was certainly a gain to the Athenians to have got rid of Aristeus and to have put a stop to Spartan negotiations with Persia. The alliance with Sitalces was not without results.

More important was the surrender of Potidaea, which took place towards the end of the year 430 B.C. For more than two years the heroic defenders had held out against the utmost efforts of Athenian skill and energy. But the invasions of Attica, from which so much was expected, had brought no relief, and at last supplies ran short. Even then the city held out, and it was not until the extremity of famine, “ even to the eating of human flesh,” had been endured, that the final overtures were made. On the other hand, the besiegers had suffered much, and they had before them the prospect of a third winter in their exposed situation, while the expenses of the siege had run up to ,£400,000 of our money. On both sides, therefore, there was an eagerness to bring the long drama to an end, and the terms proposed were accepted by the Athenian generals. The Potidaeans with their wives and children, and even the foreign troops, came out of the city, the men with one garment, the women with two ; besides which they received a certain sum of money for their journey. They dispersed among the cities of Chalcidice or wherever they could find a home, and Potidaea was henceforth occupied by Athenian colonists.

In the spring of the following year (429 B.C.) the Peloponnesians did not invade Attica. They may have been afraid of the plague, or they may have left so little behind them in the previous year that invasion was useless. At the request of the Thebans, they marched upon Plataea, and endeavoured to detach the city from Athens, or at least to insure its neutrality. On applying to Athens for advice, the Plataeans were urged to hold out, the Athenians declaring that they never had forsaken them and never would, but would assist them to the utmost of their power. On this assurance they refused to enter into any negotiations with Archidamus, and prepared to resist his attack. All the resources of engineering skill were brought to bear upon the city, but in vain; when a huge mound was raised against the wall, the Plataeans rendered it useless, partly by raising the wall, partly by removing the earth through a mine, but most of all by building a second wall within that part against which the mound was raised, so that, if it were captured, the city would still be defensible. When battering-rams were brought up, they broke off the heads by dropping heavy beams upon them. The Peloponnesians then attempted to set the town on fire, but the plan failed of success, owing to the stillness of the weather and an opportune storm of rain. Finding his efforts useless, Archidamus was driven to invest the city; a double wall was built round it, and garrisoned partly with Peloponnesian, partly with Boeotian soldiers.

These operations occupied the Peloponnesians from May to October. During the whole of this time Athens took no steps whatever to deliver those who had allowed their country to be ravaged in reliance on promises of Athenian help. For these promises Pericles was not himself responsible, but those who gave them must have been aware that they could not assist the Plataeans without meeting the Boeotians, at least in the open field—a policy which had been renounced in the very beginning of the war. The abandonment of Plataea to her fate, for so we must call it, was the inevitable result of the line taken by Pericles since the peace of 445 ^B-C. Nothing but an effective Athenian army could have saved the town, and the Athenian army in the hands of Pericles became eminently ineffective. Some years after his death, the Athenians tried their strength against Boeotia in the battle of Delium (424 B.C.), but only to meet with a most disastrous overthrow.

While their faithful friends and allies were being shut up to destruction on the borders of Attica, an Athenian army, which had been sent out to Chalcidice, was severely defeated at Spartolus. The victory was chiefly due to the superiority of the Chalcidic horse and targeteers, or light-armed troops, who now appear for the first time as an efficient force against heavy-armed soldiers. About one-fifth of the Athenian force and all the three generals in command were slain.

The news of this defeat seems to have caused a reaction at Athens in favour of Pericles. At the next election of generals he was chosen into his old place, and “ all things were put into his hands.” But the reaction came too late. At the time when he returned to office he was already perhaps stricken with the disease which in two or three months brought him to the grave, and under such circumstances he can hardly have taken any very active part in public affairs. Nevertheless, his last days were cheered by reports of the most brilliant exploits ever achieved by the Athenian fleet.

Though the Ambraciots had failed to take Argos Amphilochicum in the preceding summer, they had not abandoned their designs on the city. On the contrary, they now came forward with a plan for subjugating the whole country of Acarnania, and detaching it from the Athenian alliance. A combined attack was to be made by land and sea, so that the Acarnanians might be unable to unite their whole forces for resistance. With this view, the Ambraciots called upon the Lacedaemonians to send them a fleet, with a thousand hoplites on board. On their own part, they would bring into the field their army, and also obtain the help of the barbarian tribes of Epirus. If the plot succeeded, Zacynthus and Cephallenia, and perhaps even Naupactus, would fall into the hands of Sparta, and it would no longer be easy for the Athenians to cruise round the Peloponnesus.

The scheme was eagerly taken up at Sparta. Cnemus, the admiral who had conducted the attack upon Zacynthus in the previous year, was at once despatched with a thousand hoplites in a few ships to Ambracia; a larger contingent of vessels from Sicyon and Corinth, which, as the mother-country of Ambracia, warmly espoused her cause, was to follow as soon as ready. When he reached Leucas, Cnemus was joined by the ships furnished from Leucas, Ambracia, and Anactorium, with which he at once crossed the sea, unperceived by Phormio, the Athenian officer at Naupactus. On landing, Cnemus found a large force of Chaonians and other barbarians ready to obey his orders, and as he felt himself sufficiently strong to open the game without waiting for the ships from Corinth, he at once began his march. His route lay along the eastern edge of the Ambracian gulf, through the territory of Argos, to Stratus, on the Achelous, which was the largest city in Acarnania.

The Acarnanians at once sent to Phormio for help ; but as Phormio was daily expecting to see the Corinthian fleet sail down the gulf, he could not leave Naupactus. Meanwhile the combined forces were approaching the town. They came on in three divisions, of which the barbarians formed the centre. The Hellenic soldiers marched in good order as they had been trained to do, but the barbarians rushed on at full speed, thinking they had only to be first on the scene to capture the town. The Stratians saw their opportunity ; if they could destroy the barbarians before the Greeks came up, the whole expedition would receive a very sensible check. They placed some of their soldiers in ambuscades outside the city, and when the barbarians were close to the walls, a combined onset was made from the city and from the ambuscades. The Chaonians were at once seized with a panic; many were slaughtered ; the rest, carrying the other barbarians with them, rushed back to the Greeks, who received their first news of the battle from the defeated fugitives. Here a stand was made for the remainder of the day, but when night came on Cnemus began his retreat to Oeniadae. The invasion was at an end before the Acarnanians could assemble all their forces, and the plan which promised so fair turned out an utter failure.

And this was not the worst. Almost on the very day of the battle of Stratus the fleet from Corinth, which should have co-operated with Cnemus and the land army, was utterly defeated by Phormio at the mouth of the gulf. From his station at Naupactus the Athenian commander saw the ships moving along the Peloponnesian shore; they had no intention of attacking him, for they were not equipped for a battle, but for the conveyance of troops, and that Phormio would attack their forty-seven vessels with his twenty never occurred to them. Suddenly they saw the Athenian ships moving along the opposite coast of Aetolia, and when in the dim light of morning they attempted to cross over from Patrae in Achaea towards Acarnania they were met by Phormio bearing down upon them from the mouth of the Evenus. It was impossible to avoid an engagement.

The Corinthian commanders knew that their seamen were not a match for the Athenians in point of skill. To be forced into an engagement was bad enough ; to be attacked in the open sea where there was room for every manoeuvre was still worse. They resolved to arrange their fleet in such a manner that the ordinary tactics of sailing through the lines of vessels and then charging from the rear would be impossible. With this object they drew up their ships in a circle, turning the prows outward, and keeping them sufficiently close to avoid any inlet. The smaller craft were gathered in the central space, where also were placed five of their swiftest triremes ready to run out at any point, which the enemy attacked.

On seeing this formation Phormio at once took his measures. Arranging his vessels in a single line, he bade the sailors row round the enemy’s fleet in ever narrowing circles. By this means he brought their ships into the smallest possible compass, and kept them in constant expectation of an attack. He continued this manoeuvre till the moment when the morning breeze came down from the Corinthian gulf —as he knew that it would—and made it impossible for the Peloponnesian vessels to remain steadily in their places. Ship began to dash against ship ; the attention of the sailors was occupied in keeping them clear of each other, the more so as the rough water made rowing difficult for the unpractised oarsmen. Then Phormio gave the signal for attack. The first vessel sunk was one of the admirals, but soon the havoc was universal; no resistance could be made ; in wild disorder the whole fleet ran for the Achaean coast, hotly pursued by Phormio, who captured twelve vessels with most of their crews. The rest escaped to Cyllene in Elis, where they were joined by Cnemusand the ships from Leucas.

At the news of this disaster the Lacedaemonians were highly indignant. They did not indeed recall their admiral and condemn him to death, as the Athenians would have done under similar circumstances, but while sending him orders to fight again, they also sent three commissioners, one of whom was Brasidas, to advise with him. They could not understand how a few ships could defeat so many, or recognise that their own fleet was so vastly inferior to the Athenian, as the battle had proved it to be. When the commissioners arrived at Cyllene, Cnemus sent round to the Peloponnesian allies for more vessels and refitted those which had been damaged in the engagement.

Intelligence of their movements was conveyed to Phormio. He at once sent to Athens for reinforcements ; a battle might take place any day, in which he would have to meet the whole Peloponnesian fleet with only twenty vessels. From Corcyra, whose fleet was to be of such advantage to Athens in operations in Western Greece, not one vessel had been sent, either to the aid of Argos or Acarnanian Phormio, who was left entirely to his own resources or help from Athens. The greater is our astonishment to find that the reinforcement decreed at Athens amounted only to twenty vessels, and that even these, though every day was of great importance, were bidden to sail to Crete before they went ^r to the west! Who was responsible for this extraordinary order we do not know ; the Athenians could have gained nothing by the most brilliant success in Crete—which, so far as we know, they never revisited in the course of the war ; while on the other hand the position of Athens in Western Greece was in peril, It was a grave blunder, and nothing but the wonderful skill of Phormio saved Athens from irretrievable disaster.

When all was ready the Peloponnesian fleet left Cyllene for Panormus in Achaea, where the land forces were assembled to support it. Phormio meanwhile, who was resolved not to fight in the narrow channel, if he was compelled to fight at all, sailed from Naupactus to the promontory of Antirrhium, where he anchored. The Peloponnesians, who were as anxious to fight in the gulf as Phormio was to fight out of it, met him by moving to a point exactly opposite, where the gulf was not more than a mile broad. The number of their vessels was seventy-seven, while Phormio had no more than his original twenty. For six or seven days the two fleets lay opposite each other. At length Cnemus and Brasidas, finding that Phormio would not return within the strait, determined to draw him into it. Forming their vessels four deep, they fronted north-east or east and sailed along the Achaean shore into the gulf, twenty of their fastest vessels leading the way. Phormio at once saw the danger; he had left Naupactus without any guard, for even the Messenians of the town had followed him on shore, to support his vessels, and if the Peloponnesian fleet got ahead, they would reach the place before he could save it. He at once embarked, and bidding the Messenians follow sailed in single file along the coast with all speed for Naupactus. This was exactly what Bras-idas wished ; the Athenian ships had now no room for any exhibition of their dreaded skill. Changing front, he suddenly brought his whole line, four deep, upon the flank of Phormio’s vessels. It was an excellent manoeuvre, and well carried out; but owing to the superiority of the Athenians in rowing, it was only partially successful. Eleven of Phormio’s vessels escaped the swiftest Peloponnesian ships; the remaining nine were forced aground, and one ship was already taken with its crew, when the Messenians dashed into the water and saved the rest.

So far, the victory was on the side of the Lacedaemonians, who might reasonably have thought that they had redeemed their previous failure. But half the Athenian fleet still remained. Of the eleven ships which escaped the attack, ten reached Naupactus and ranged themselves in a position of defence should the enemy attempt to force them to shore. One remained behind, unable to keep up in the race. In their wake came the twenty Peloponnesian vessels, of which one, far in advance of the rest, was chasing the Athenian laggard. It chanced that in the deep water off Naupactus a merchantman lay at anchor in the line of pursuit. The Athenians saw their opportunity. Quick as thought they sped round the anchored vessel, and bearing down on the ship by which they were themselves pursued, struck her amidships and sent her to the bottom. Such a splendid feat of audacity and skill filled the Peloponnesians with dismay. They had come on in loose order singing the paean of victory, but their temper changed in a moment, and checking their pursuit, they waited for the body of the fleet to come up. The delay was fatal ; the Athenians, cheered by the brilliant success of their ship, and seeing the disorder of the enemy, sailed out and fell upon the Peloponnesian fleet, which was without any settled plan of battle. Some of the sailors, ignorant of the locality, had run their vessels ashore ; all were expecting the fate of the Leucadians. After a short resistance the whole fleet fled to Panormus, whence they had started, with the Athenians after them, eleven ships in chase of more than seventy! On the following night the Peloponnesians stole away to Corinth.

This was perhaps the last event of which the news was brought to Pericles. It was a great and decisive victory won by an old comrade of his own—a victory which confirmed his policy and proved the incomparable superiority of the Athenians on the sea. But the eye which in days gone by would have brightened at such achievements was growing dim; the eloquent voice which would have bestowed on them their due reward of praise was silent. Though Pericles had escaped the first virulence of the plague, he was seized by the disease in an insidious form, and in the late summer of 429 B.C., two years and a half after the outbreak of the war, he lay on his deathbed. The misfortunes of the year had broken him, and when the final illness came, there was little strength of body or mind to resist it. The master spirit was laid low ; half conscious of his weakness, he would shew to the friends who visited him the amulets, which the women of the household had tied about his neck in the vain hope of checking the progress of his sickness. Yet something of the old Pericles remained ; a few days before his death, when friends were praising his deeds, thinking perhaps that he was unconscious of their words, he murmured that in all the past nothing gave him so much satisfaction as the thought that no Athenian had by any act of his put on the robe of mourning! The boast was true. Himself the constant object of calumny and attack, he had never abused his power to pursue an enemy to the death.

He died in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ATHENS OF PERICLES-THE GOVERNMENT, HOME AND FOREIGN.

 

FROM the days of Solon Athens had been a democracy, and from the days of Clisthenes the people had been conscious of their power. But the democracy of Pericles was widely different from that of Solon or Clisthenes ; and the change was partly in form and partly in spirit.

During the Persian wars, and for some time afterwards, the influence of the great families, or at any rate of the great men among them, was still dominant at Athens. However deeply attached to the blessings of freedom and “ equal speech,” the Athenian people had not yet cast aside the habit of deference 258 to those who for generations had been their leaders in all matters of public importance—a habit almost natural in the ignorant and inexperienced. So long as this habit existed, the sovereign people were more or less guided in the exercise of their sovereignty by the will of a few great men ; when it ceased to exist, the majority of the moment became supreme.

This spirit of deference may have been shaken to some extent by the quarrels between the great families, though we know from our own history that Whig and Tory may carry on an almost internecine strife without damaging in any serious degree the prestige of the aristocratic members of either party. Something was also effected, no doubt, by the constant attacks of Ephialtes on the aristocrats who abused their position in order to make a profit for themselves. But the change of feeling which created the Periclean democracy seems to have been principally due to the overthrow of the Areopagus and the development of the popular jury-courts. The successful attack upon an ancient and venerable institution taught the people that there was nothing, however sacred, which their power could not remove, and the constant combination of the citizens into juries not only gave them a new idea of their importance, but taught them to act together for their own ends.

The far-famed training of Sparta was not more characteristic of that city than these jury-courts were of the Athens of Pericles. Several thousands of the citizens—men over thirty years of age—spent their time in deciding the differences which arose between Athenians or between Athenians and foreigners. All offences except murder, arson, and one or two more, which were left to the cognisance of the Areopagus, were decided in these courts, which without any direct participation in politics exercised by this means a great influence on the policy of the Athenians. Did a general fail in an expedition, he was brought before a jury and fined or condemned to death. Was a public officer inaccurate in his account of the money which had passed through his hands, he was brought into a court. Did a citizen propose a decree which was contrary to an existing law, no matter how beneficial the object he had in view, he was brought before a court. If any allied city complained of the amount of tribute imposed upon her by the assessors, the question was referred to a jury; and most of the more serious offences, civil or criminal, throughout the Athenian empire were brought to Athens to be judged by Athenian citizens. It was through the law-courts that Athens, in the days of Pericles, maintained her authority over the executive of the government, an authority enforced by the severest penalties and extending to the most minute details. It was through them that she controlled the trade of her great empire. And from the decision of these courts there was no appeal. The public Assembly often referred matters to the decision of the court, but the converse process was unknown. Nor was any decision of a law-court ever cancelled or revised. The jurors were exempt from all responsibility—a privilege which they shared with the public Assembly and with that only.

They were also the only power capable of enacting new laws. We are very ill informed about the process by which new laws were passed at Athens in the time of Pericles, but we may certainly affirm that the power of making them rested with the jurors, and not with the Assembly. The utmost that the Assembly could do, except in rare and exceptional cases, was to pass a decree, which, if it was not contrary to any existing law, was valid for the current year. The Assembly was competent to change the whole constitution of Athens ; it could decide whether the laws of Solon should be maintained or superseded by a new code; it could close the law-courts; it could give permission for new laws to be passed, or withhold it, but it had not the power, by a mere resolution, to add to the statute-book.

Lastly, an Athenian juror was both judge and juryman. Though an archon presided in the courts, he merely introduced the case; he did not explain the law to the jury or check the contending parties in their statements. It was indeed forbidden under pain of death to quote the law falsely in a court, but the interpretation of the law, on which so much depends in the administration of justice, was within the competence of the juror. It was also for him to decide whether he would insist on the letter of the statute, or allow himself to be moved by pathetic appeals and extenuating circumstances.

The technical name for the whole body of jurors was the Heliaea. It is probable that a Heliaea existed in some form at Athens, from the time of Solon onwards, and that appeals could be made to it from the sentence of the archons, who in those days had a good deal of judicial power. But it was not till the time of Pericles that the Heliaea acquired the position which we have described. So long as the Areopagus retained its extensive powers, the Heliaea could hardly be more than a court of law in the stricter sense ; and until the jurors were paid, their functions could not be very engrossing. It was Pericles, as we have seen, who overthrew the Areopagus; it was he who caused the jurors to be paid. With him, therefore, the reign of the Heliaea must have begun. We cannot indeed trace the steps by which the system was built up, but we know from the plays of Aristophanes that it was in full working order before the death of Pericles. For good or for evil, the Heliaea, as we find it in the “Wasps,” is his contribution to the public institutions of Athens.

By the development of these courts at the expense of the Areopagus, he withdrew important functions from a section of the community and conferred them on all Athenians of full age, who could prove that they were fit to receive it. Above all, he established the majesty of law, and claimed for it the support of the whole nation. Every Athenian had now a direct reason for knowing what the law was, and for helping to maintain it. The reign of the Heliaea was the reign of law. The Athenians, as a body, had probably a better acquaintance with their laws than the citizens of any other state, equally large; and even in moments of the greatest political excitement, they were to an unusual degree a law-abiding nation. The laws were simple and clear, and lay within the comprehension of every citizen. There was no “bar” at Athens, nor indeed anything which could be called a legal profession, though a few men of a special aptitude wrote speeches for their clients to deliver, and others, owing to their special knowledge of law and custom, were able to advise men in difficult circumstances. Every man was his own lawyer. In none of the great cities of the world has the interpretation of the law occupied so small a space as at Athens; and in none has the administration of it occupied so large a space.

Other results which followed from the change were by no means so satisfactory. In the first place, Pericles destroyed a time-honoured institution, and erected in its place an arrangement which had nothing dignified or majestic about it. This was in itself a great evil. In all departments of government, customs and institutions are needed which arouse a sense of awe and reverence; and in the administration of law such customs and institutions are peculiarly necessary. The ermine robes, the black cap, the antique foppery of wigs and gowns, are not without a real value. They awake wonder, and shew that something unusual is going on. In the jury-courts of Athens these elements were wanting, and the respect for the administration of justice suffered in consequence. Of the same sort was another evil, inseparably connected with the institution. The jurors could not be the best and most influential citizens at Athens. No man living in the country could be a juror, for the duties demanded his constant presence at Athens; no one engaged in any occupation, even moderately remunerative, would care to spend his time in a court for a payment of about a day; no one serving in the army, no senator, no public officer, could spare time for the duties of a juror. There remained two classes of men: the old or infirm, who could sit in a court, when they could do nothing else; and the idle or nefarious person, for whom the court offered amusement or occupation.

The spirit of litigation, to which such courts gave rise, was in itself a great evil, but it became worse when the courts were composed of men who looked to them for a living. We are told that speakers sometimes warned the courts that if they were slow in the work of fining and confiscating, the funds out of which their payments came would fall off; and whether this be true or not, it is obvious that the rich offered the most tempting victims to courts largely composed of the very poor. The establishment of such courts was a step onwards in the development of class-hatred, ranging the rich and poor on opposite sides; for though the law was the same for all, the administration of it was now as entirely in the hands of the poor, as it had once been in the hands of the rich. And along with this inequality went the degradation of moral sentiment, which could not fail to arise in men who were engaged from morning to night not only in listening to legal quibbles, or falsehoods, but in deciding for hire on the lives and properties of others without the least responsibility or control.’"

For a time these evils did not appear. Cimon lived for eleven years after the fall of the Areopagus, and his party survived his death; a party which preserved old traditions, and looked back on the past with reverence. Pericles, too, though he established the courts, stood aloof from them. He kept up the majesty of the state, partly by his own reserved and dignified habits, partly by the splendid buildings with which, following the policy of Cimon, he adorned the city. But when Pericles had passed away, the orators of the law-courts came to the front, and the tone of political life was changed. Unhappily for Athens, the change came at a time when a captious sophistry was destroying the intellectual no less than the moral fibre of the nation.

In all that concerned the administration of the state, home or foreign, the supreme authority was vested in the Assembly, or Ecclesia, as the Greeks called it. Every Athenian of full age—that is, every Athenian who had attained his eighteenth year, was a member of the Assembly, and could record his vote on any question brought before it. He had also the right of addressing the Assembly and proposing any measure he pleased on the subject under discussion ; but in practice the younger citizens were expected to wait till the elders had said their say, if indeed they spoke at all. Yet even a young man, if he possessed the gift of persuasive speech, quickly became a power in the Assembly; his friends and supporters would gather round him to applaud what he said, and cry down everything which came from the opposite side. In earlier times, and down to the death of Pericles, the general was, as a rule, the politician, and the Assembly trusted for information and guidance to those who were chiefly responsible for carrying its wishes into effect, but after his death the “ speaker ” became almost synonymous with the statesman. This was more especially the case when sophists and rhetoricians had established themselves in the city, teaching men how to “ make the worse the better cause,” and reducing the management of politics to general rules, to the great disparagement of experience and knowledge.

There were four stated meetings of the Assembly in each of the ten divisions into which the civic year of the Athenians was divided ; and, if occasion required it, extraordinary assemblies could also be summoned. Early in the morning a flag was raised at the place of meeting; the people gathered from all parts, and took their seats, without any order or division of tribe or demes. Here they remained in eager expectation till the Councillors appeared and opened the business of the day. Before they entered on their duties, the blood of sucking-pigs was carried round the assembled people as a purification; and a solemn curse was pronounced upon any one who should seek to mislead the Assembly for private ends. Then the Councillors brought forward their proposals on the subject of the day, and the people were invited to discuss them. After the motion of the Council, which was always brought in in writing, had been read, the herald first asked if any citizen over fifty years of age wished to speak ; and when these had given their opinions, the turn of the younger men came. The resolution of the Council might be rejected and replaced by a new one, or it might be amended, or simply accepted. The people gave their votes by holding up their hands, and the chairman pronounced on which side the majority lay. For this reason no sitting of the Assembly could be prolonged till an hour at which it was no longer possible to see the hands held up. And if any untoward sign occurred which seemed to indicate the displeasure of the gods, such as an earthquake, or thunder or lightning, or even rain, the sitting broke up at once.

In his play of the “ Acharnians,” Aristophanes has given us a picture of a meeting in the Ecclesia. Dicaeopolis, an honest farmer, who has been driven into Athens by the war, is discovered in his place in the Pnyx, where the meetings were held, in the early morning, waiting impatiently for the arrival of the Prytanes, or presidents.

Dicceopolis.                              Ah there !

The presidents at last ; see, there they come ! All scrambling for their seats—-I told you so ! Herald.

Move forward there ! Move forward all of ye !

Further! Within the consecrated ground.

Amphitheus.

Has anybody spoke ?

Her.  Is anybody

Prepared to speak ?

Amp.           Yes, I.

Her.             Who are you and what ?

Amp. Amphitheus the demigod.

The gods moreover have dispatched me here Commissioned specially to arrange a peace, Betwixt this city and Sparta—notwithstanding I find myself rather in want at present Of a little ready-money for my journey.

The magistrates won’t assist me.

Her.                          Constables I

Die. You presidents, I say ! you exceed your powers ;

You insult the assembly, dragging off a man That offered to make terms and give us peace.

Her. Keep silence there.

Die.               By Jove, but I won’t be silent.

Except I hear a motion about peace.

Her. Ho there ! the Ambassadors from the King of Persia. Die. What King of Persia ? What Ambassadors ?

I’m sick of foreigners and foreign animals. Peacocks and coxcombs and Ambassadors.

********

Amp. We’ve brought you here a nobleman, Shamartabas

By name, by rank and office the king’s eye.

Dic. God send a crow to peck it out, I say.

And yours the Ambassador’s into the bargain.

********

Her. Silence there ! Keep your seats !

The council have invited the King’s eye To feast with them in the Prytaneum.

Dic.                          There—

Ain’t it enough to drive one mad ? To drive one To hang himself? To be kept here in attendance, Whilst every door flies open to these fellows.

*******!*

The Thracians that came hither with Theorus Let them come forward !

Dic.  What the plague are these ?

Theorus. The Odomantian army.

Dic. The Odomantians !

Out, out upon it! I’m a plundered man,

I’m robbed and ruined here with the Odomantians.

They ’re seizing upon my garlic.

You magistrates, have you the face to see it

With your own eyes—your fellow-citizen Here, in the city itself, robb’d by barbarians?

—But I forbid the assembly. There’s a change

In the heaven ! I felt a drop of rain 1 I ’m witness ! 

Her. The Thracians must withdraw, to attend again

The first of next month. The assembly is closed.

Thus the sovereign power of Athens rested with a gathering which might be composed of the whole, or of but a small portion, of the citizens, and the votes were given under the immediate influence of the speeches made on the occasion. By the Assembly the whole of the executive officers of Athens were immediately and directly controlled. It is characteristic of democracies, at any rate of city democracies, to be exceedingly jealous of their servants: either they allow them to hold office for a very short time, as at Florence; or they retain the right of discharging them at a moment’s notice. At Athens the magistrates held office for a year, but once in every prytany—i.e., ten times in the year—the question was put in the Assembly whether they should be continued in office or superseded. If anyone among them was held guilty of any offence, he was at once superseded and delivered over to the mercies of a law-court. By the Assembly also war was declared, expeditions sent out, and conquered states reduced to slavery; and if a general was sometimes trusted so far as to carry out the details of a campaign, he often received minute and precise instructions to guide his conduct. Any change in the constitution of Athens, such as the restriction of the powers of the Areopagus and the admission of the fourth Solonian class to office, could only be made in the Assembly.

This sovereign power, so comprehensive and yet so minute in its operation, could not be left without checks upon its action. Of those which existed in the time of Pericles some dated from the days of Solon, while others must have been introduced, or at any rate increased in force, by Pericles himself. Solon established the law that the Assembly could only discuss and decide on business brought before it by the Council. It had not the power of simple initiation. No citizen could get up and propose a measure without regard to the action of the Council. The utmost latitude allowed, if indeed so much was allowed, permitted him to suggest a measure for the consideration of the Council, and the measure thus suggested was included by the Council in the programme of business at the next meeting. Or a clause might be inserted in a decree, compelling the Council to bring forward the business to which it referred, or to introduce envoys within a certain time. In the settlement with Chaicis (p. 131), the prytanes are pledged to bring any envoy from Chal-cis before the Council and people within ten days of his arrival. And in another decree, concerning the first-fruits at Eleusis, Lampon the seer is to report to the Council in the ninth prytany, and the Council nolens volens must bring the matter forward before the Assembly. The insertion of these clauses shews that it was in the power of the Council to delay, or even to quash, at least for their year of office, any measures to which they were opposed, and the only safeguards against an abuse of this power, except such peremptory orders, were the numbers of the Council, and the “ scrutiny ” at the close of the year of office.

Another check or limitation of the power of the Assembly was the separation of the judicial and legislative from the administrative functions. The Assembly was indeed a sovereign power, but, as we have said, it could not, except in peculiar circumstances, make a law, or pass a legal sentence. Nor could it revoke a sentence when passed by a lawcourt. In its own sphere it was absolute; it could bring forward for discussion a matter on which a vote had been taken; it could cancel a previous decree ; it refused, in fact, to be bound by its own acts; but over it was the law, and the administration of the law. This limitation—which is honourable to the Athenian democracy—was so strictly observed that on the few occasions when the Assembly became a court of law, it met, as a rule, under peculiar conditions. The place of meeting was the marketplace, and not the Pnyx; the citizens voted by their tribes, and not promiscuously ; the votes were given by ballot; and in order to be valid, the decision must be supported by no fewer than six thousand votes.

The supremacy of the law over the Assembly was probably maintained by the Areopagus, so long as that court was in possession of its ancient privileges. With the development of the paid juries a peculiar form of process replaced the supervision of the Court. It was open to any citizen in the Assembly to declare that the motion brought forward was contrary to the law of the land, and by pledging himself to indict the proposer for “ illegality,” he at once secured the suspension of the motion. The case was then tried in a court. If the proposal was found to be illegal, the mover was punished more or less severely; if the attack turned out frivolous, the accuser was fined one thousand drachmae (about £3 5). This process was the “graphe Paranomon,” the great engine by which the daily working of the constitution was kept in harmony with its established principles. So long as this was in force, the decrees of the Assembly could not over-ride the laws or institutions of the State.

Once more, it seems that the presiding officer in the Assembly had the power to refuse to put a motion to the vote, if he considered it to be plainly illegal. On the famous occasion, when it was proposed to condemn six Athenian generals to death by a single vote in the Assembly, instead of trying them separately, Socrates was the chairman for the day, and he refused to put the proposal to the vote. As it was carried in spite of him, the opposition must have been in some way overcome ; but unfortunately our meagre information does not allow us to explain how this was done.

It was also a limitation, not on the power of the Assembly, but on the use of it, that anyone who came forward with a proposal was regarded as responsible for what he proposed, even when he was strictly within the law. In all states, and under all forms of constitution, treachery and corruption are the just objects of severe punishment, but the Athenians went further than this. They brought to trial for “ misleading the people ” anyone whose advice had caused disaster to the state. The evil of the custom was as great as the good, and perhaps greater. For if on the one hand it checked any inclination to make reckless proposals in the Assembly, it tended on the other to make a single individual suffer for acts done with the approval of a majority. We find Pericles himself more than once speaking in severe condemnation of this unwillingness of the Assembly to accept the responsibility of its own acts; and after his death the mischief became worse. Successful orators knew how to turn the indignation of the people at the failure of measures, which they had proposed, on the heads of the unfortunate generals who had failed to execute them.

The Council, whose preliminary action was necessary to legalise any decree passed by the Assembly, was an institution founded by Solon, but altered and developed by Clisthenes. In the time of Pericles it consisted of five hundred members, fifty from each of the ten tribes. They were men of thirty years of age or more, chosen by lot to hold office for a year. Before admission each candidate had to undergo a public examination, touching his life and character, 18 at which every Athenian was at liberty to put what questions he pleased. If approved, the Councillors entered on their office with solemn ceremonies, binding themselves by an oath to discharge their functions honestly, and at the end of the year of service the whole Council and each member of it were held responsible for their conduct. During their year of office the Councillors were relieved from certain burdens, which fell upon the ordinary citizen; they could not, for instance, be called upon to serve in the army. They received a drachma (8T.) a day as payment for their services—a payment which, like the half-drachma of the jurors, was probably established by Pericles.

The Council met daily, with the exception of festivals and days of ill omen. In times of great distress or excitement it sat continuously, ready to act at a moment's notice. A special chamber in the market-place was known as the Council-chamber, but this did not prevent the Council from assembling at any convenient place. If, for instance, they had naval business in hand, -they assembled at the dock-yards ; if the subject concerned the Mysteries, at the Eleusinium. The meetings were so far open to all that the public were only separated from the Council by a cord drawn round the meeting, and could easily hear all that was said, though private persons could not communicate with the chamber unless permitted to do so by a decree of the Assembly or the Council. Nothing would have created greater alarm and suspicion than a sitting of the Council with closed doors.

Besides its duties as a preparatory assembly, the Council was the great agent in carrying out the decrees of the people. It formed the connecting link between the Athenians gathered in the Assembly and the individual officer or magistrate. The details of measures were often left to the Council, which was empowered to supplement what was wanting in the decree of the Assembly by decrees of its own, or it received authority to investigate any matter of public importance, such as the famous mutilation of the Hermae, which took place just before the Sicilian expedition. It was especially charged with the maintenance of the fleet;—a Council which during its year of office had not built a single trireme, would not venture at the close of it to ask for the crowd which it was usual to bestow as a mark of honour for a proper discharge of its duties. To it also were brought all matters concerning foreign policy and the league. Above all, the Council managed the finances of the state, receiving money, and confirming by its presence the acts of the financial officers.

It is obvious that so large a body as five hundred men could not be kept constantly at work. However important it might be to have the whole number at hand when wanted, it was necessary for practical ^purposes to subdivide it. For this object the fifties elected from each of the ten tribes were kept apart; and the Greek year of 354 days was also divided into ten periods of 35 or 36 days. Then one of the ten tribes was allotted to each of the ten periods, to be in office constantly during that time. The periods were called “prytanies” or presidencies ; the tribe in office was the “ presiding tribe”; and the members of it were the “ presidents.” Out of the fifty presidents, one was chosen by lot to be the chairman for each day and night in the term of office, and, as the same person could not be chosen twice, thirty-five or thirty-six out of the fifty would hold the office of chairman. During the day of office, the chairman “ took the chair,” as we should say, in the Council and the Assembly, if an Assembly were held ; he also kept the state seal and the key of the state archives. To the presidents all business of immediate importance was at once conveyed, and the generals and the officers chiefly responsible for the peace of the community were in constant communication with them. In the “ Knights ” of Aristophanes, Cleon, who is one of the generals of the year, attempts to forestall the attack of the Sausage-Seller by hastening to the Council :

“ I ’ll set off this instant to the Council,

To inform them of your conspiracies and treasons,

Your secret nightly assemblies and cabals, Your private treaty with the King of Persia, Your correspondence with Bceotia, And the business that you keep there in the cheese press, Close pack’d, you think, and ripening out of sight.”

 

Of the numerous officers at Athens the Generals were the most important. In the earliest times the third archon, or Polemarch, was the commander-in-chief of the Athenian army, but after the reforms of Clisthenes, ten Strategi, or generals, were elected, one for each tribe, with whom the polemarch was associated. This was the system in existence at the time of the battle of Marathon. On that famous ' occasion each of the ten tribes of Athens furnished a contingent to the army, and each contingent was commanded by a general, who in his turn became commander-in-chief of the whole army, the polemarch retaining a nominal control and commanding on the right wing, but with little real authority. Each general belonged to the tribe which he commanded, but he was not chosen by the tribe ; the election was the work of the whole Athenian people assembled for the purpose in the Pnyx, under the control of the archons. In the next ten years we find a great change taking place in the duties of the generals ; one of the body was chosen commander with full powers, and the rest were subordinated to him, while the polemarch disappears entirely. In this capacity Themistocles commanded at Salamis, Aristides at Plataea, and Xanthippus at Mycale. Under these circumstances the generals could not any longer be the commanders of their tribes, and we sometimes find two generals belonging to the same tribe. The tribes were now commanded by the Taxiarchs, the generals being set free for executive functions of a higher nature. They were, in fact, the chief executive officers at Athens. Not only the management of the army, whether on land or sea, but the management of public business generally, was in their hands. They were, as we have said, in constant communication with the Council, to which they conveyed information and made proposals for meeting any emergencies which arose.

As the office was one which required special knowledge and capacity, the generals were chosen by show of hands, not by lot. For the same reason an efficient officer was often re-elected ; Pericles, for instance, was a general for fifteen years after the peace of 445 B.C. Such constant re-election was of course the strongest proof of popular confidence; a man so favoured was not only the most influential member of the board of generals, but he was the foremost man in the city. In order to retain such a position it was necessary that he should be something more than a good captain and a clever administrator; he must also be a clear and eloquent speaker, able to explain his policy to the people, and convince them of its merits. Such a combination of qualities was rare, especially when rhetoric became a passion with the young Athenians who haunted the Assembly. The orator and the general then parted company ; one was supreme in the Assembly, the other in the field ; and nothing delighted the Athenians more than a passage of arms between the two.

It is not necessary here to go into the working of the board of ten generals. That they could not always act together is obvious. As a rule they were sent out in such numbers as the importance of the expedition required, and possibly one of the number was placed in some sort of authority over the rest. At the end of the year they, like all other officers at Athens, had to give an account of their office; more especially of the money which passed through their hands. Very often the Athenians, without waiting for the end-of the year, condemned their generals to death, or exile, for failing to carryout in a satisfactory manner the instructions given them. In fact the position of a general was by no means an easy one; his conduct was judged, not by a committee of experts, who could form a sound opinion of the extent to which there had been a want of honesty or of capacity, but by an irresponsible mob, led by an orator who was only too anxious to make good the position of his party, or to throw the blame of mistakes made by the people on those who had to carry them out.

As we have seen, the Athenians deposed Pericles from the office of general in the year 430 B.C. But in the years 431 and 429 B.C. he seems to have occupied a position of extraordinary authority. Thucydides informs us that he prevented the Athenians, when shut up in Athens, from meeting together to express their discontent at his plans, “ being still general ” ; and that after his re-election, “ all things were committed into his hands,” expressions which imply a far greater power than was commonly exercised by a general.

Among the civic magistrates of Athens, the archons held the first place. They were nine in number, elected annually, like the generals, but elected by lot. The office was one of the oldest in the city, the archons being in fact the successors to the power of the kings who had once ruled the people. But the creation of the board of generals detracted largely from their executive powers, and when the lawcourts were established—if not earlier—their judicial functions were confined to a preliminary examination of the cases brought before them. The first archon gave his name to the year; he was also in a sense the pater patrice, under whose care were all orphans requiring protection, and other matters connected with family rights and duties. The second was the King archon ; he was in charge of the religious observances of the city, and before him were brought, in the first instance, all charges of murder and homicide. The third archon was the polemarch, or general-in-chief, of whom we have already spoken. The remaining six were called the Thesmothetae, or “makers of ordinances” ; they were concerned with the administration of justice, and in old days, when there were no written laws in existence, they must have been to a large extent the administrators and repositories of law, in all those cases which did not come under the Areopagus. When the law-courts came into vogue, the thesmothetae were occupied in allotting the juries and bringing cases before them. Their functions in this respect were purely formal. They were not judges, and they gave no votes. They merely provided that the proceedings of the courts should be legal and orderly.

Before entering office the archons had to be approved as fit and proper persons for the duties which fell upon them, and at the end of the year they had to undergo the usual “ scrutiny.” When this was satisfactorily passed they took their seats in the Areopagus, where they continued for the rest of their lives. No citizen could be elected archon a second time.

Besides these officers there was a host of others, some charged with keeping order in the market-place, others with the care of the public buildings, others with the exportation of corn, etc. There were stewards and treasurers and collectors and clerks, all of whom were only elected after a formal approval, and only released from office after a formal scrutiny ; liable at any moment to be suspended by a decree of the Assembly and brought to trial before a law-court. Most of these officers were united in boards, usually of ten, for it was the exception to trust anything to the care of an individual. Never, we may say, was there a state more suspicious of her public servants than Athens; never was there a state which held them responsible for their actions with greater severity. Where other governments, perhaps too blindly, have trusted to personal honour and esprit de corps, the Athenians insisted on a public approval of character before entering office, and a formal discharge on leaving it, and the ever present fear of punishment for misconduct. And never, we are compelled to add, was there a state in which the belief in the corruption of public servants was more universal.

We turn now from Athens to the Athenian empire. The sovereign power was of course the same in both, but we have to examine the manner in which that power acted upon the allies and subjects throughout the wide dominion where it was the ruling force.

In the fourth chapter we have pointed out the causes which tended to transform the Delian league into the Athenian empire. The subjugation of Naxos, the first act of aggression which brought home to the confederates the true nature of their position, was followed by the splendid victories of the Eurymedon, whereby the limits of the league were widely extended, and the management of Athens was justified, so far as success could justify it. Not long afterwards, twelve years at the latest, the chest of the league was brought from Delos to Athens, and whatever the reasons for the change may have been, the result was inevitable. The last vestiges of the Delian synod disappeared ; Athena, and not Apollo, became the presiding deity of the league, and the management of the common fund, which had from the first been collected by Athenians, now fell wholly under Athenian control. It was no longer the representatives of the allies, of whom we never hear, but the Athenian Assembly, which decided on the outlay of the accumulated treasures.

From the year 454 B.C. onwards, the evidence of inscriptions enables us to speak with some certainty about the arrangements of the league, or of the empire, as we might more justly call it. We see that the payments made by the cities were frequently revised ; sometimes they were raised, sometimes they were lowered. The amount was generally fixed by the Council, after consultation with certain officers called “ Assessors ”—who were sent, when necessary, to visit the various cities, — but any city could appeal from the decision of the Council, if it appeared unjust. The case was then tried in a law-court, whose award was final. Other cities are registered in inscriptions as fixing their own tribute ; in others the amount seems to have been fixed by private persons on the part of the community. The assessment took place at the Panathenaea at the beginning of the Attic year, but the payments were brought to Athens at the time of the great Dionysia in the following spring. They were received by the Hellenotamiae in the presence of the Council, and, after one sixtieth had been deducted as the share of Athena, the residue was paid over to the public chest of the city.

The three great islands of Lesbos, Chios, and Samos never paid any tribute. Chios to the last, and Lesbos till the revolt of 427 B.C., continued to be independent allies, who furnished ships and crews to the service of Athens. After the great revolt of 440 B.C., Samos was deprived of her fleet, and compelled to pay an indemnity for the expenses of the war. She was reckoned among the subject and tributary allies, but her name never appears in the tribute lists.

Beyond this great distinction, that a few supplied ships as independent states and the majority paid tribute as subjects, we cannot lay down any general rules about the relations prevailing between Athens and the allies. They differed in each case. In some instances Athens fixed the constitutions of the subject cities, as at Erythrae and Chaicis ; in others they were left very much to themselves. But the system of laissez-faire extended only to their internal politics ; in the administration of law, Athens interfered to a considerable extent. Not only were the allies compelled to come to Athens to answer any charge touching their allegiance to the league, but any cases involving the life of a citizen were tried at Athens ; even civil suits, if the amount at issue exceeded a certain sum, were brought before Athenian courts. This was doubtless regarded as a great burden and expense ; men would much prefer to fight out their own quarrels, than to feel that their lives and properties were at the mercy of the Athenian jurors. But these regulations, which seem to us so extraordinary and even tyrannical, were not an invention of the Athenians. In very early times, when the island of zEgina was a dependency of Epidaurus, the inhabitants were compelled to take their suits to Epidaurus for settlement.

If we attempt to balance the good and evil, the justice and injustice, of the conduct of Athens in the Delian league, we must admit that the Athenians delivered the allies from the power of Persia, and that they kept the zEgean free of pirates ; the amounts which they exacted from the cities were not large, and, so far as we know, they imposed but few restrictions on their trade. We must also allow that Athens was elected to be president of the league by the voluntary choice of the allies, and that it is the duty of a president to keep a league in order and prevent it from falling to pieces through the inactivity or carelessness of the members. Nor can we justly blame the Athenians for the decay of the Delian synod, or for acceding to the wish of the allies to pay money instead of sending ships. These changes were indeed fatal to the equality of the league, but they were not fatal to its efficiency. Nevertheless, when the allies found themselves the helpless subjects of a tyrant, instead of equal allies led by a president, they could not fail to resent the change ; they felt that their contributions, though small, amounted in the aggregate to a sum which in Athenian hands maintained a fleet sufficient to overpower their utmost resistance. Their contributions were no longer voluntary, but exacted whether they would or no; the expenditure was beyond their control, and not less so the disposition of the forces which they were compelled to supply. The necessity of carrying their law-suits to Athens was a proof that their independence was gone, and in some cases the loss was made more evident by the presence of Athenian garrisons and overseers in their cities. The growth of Athens, the adornment of the city out of funds intended for other purposes, while it tended to make the city more and more the centre of the Grecian world, attracted thither an ever increasing amount of trade to the detriment of other ports in the Aegean. The allies could not but feel that the interests of Athens were distinct from their own, and often opposed to them; and Athens did nothing to soothe the irritation. As she felt her greatness depending on her empire, she resolved to maintain it at all costs; and for this purpose it was easier to employ force than policy. Indeed a Greek statesman would never have attempted to form an United State on the only basis on which it could last—by destroying the political isolation of the units and fusing them into a larger whole. Had Pericles proposed to make all the members of the alliance citizens of Athens, the Athenians would not have permitted it, and the allies themselves would have resisted to the death.

Besides the members of the confederation, the Athenian empire included all the various cleruchies, or colonies composed of Athenian citizens. These, as we have seen, were part and parcel of the Athenian state, and pledged to support her interests to the death. They were chiefly founded by Pericles, and were intended to support the power of Athens in Euboea and the Aegean, especially in the northern part of it. The Lemnian and Imbrian troops fought in the Athenian armies, and the colonists were in fact Athenians, members of Athenian tribes. But the gain was counterbalanced to some degree by the suspicion which these colonies excited in the rest of Greece ; they were evidence of an appropriation of territory, which was neither forgotten nor forgiven.

Lastly, Athens had a number of allies outside the circle of the league, through whom her influence was extended to the remoter parts of Hellas. She was on friendly terms with Thessaly in the North of Greece, though we must admit that on more than one occasion the Thessalians shewed themselves to be untrustworthy allies. The reigning monarch of Macedonia, Perdiccas, was so perfidious that it was difficult to say whether he was a friend or foe, for he became one or the other as it suited his immediate policy. The alliance with Sitalces, the king of the Odrysian Thracians (p. 227),was of more value, chiefly because it prevented any attacks by the natives on the Athenian possessions in the Chersonese. More important still, from a commercial point of view, were the relations which united Athens and the powerful princes in the Greek cities on the northern shore of the Euxine. These cities were the granaries of Athens, from which, even in the beginning of the fifth century, Greece was supplied with corn, and with the increase of the city Athens became more and more the centre of the corn trade.

With the remote east Athens had little connexion. Egypt was, of course, wholly in the hands of Persia. We have seen that Pericles refused to send aid to the rebellious king, though he accepted the cargo of corn which was given in the hope of securing Athenian assistance. Of Cyprus we hear little or nothing after the victory of 449 B.C. Relations were kept up with Crete, but they led to no result. The island was once visited by the Athenian fleet during the Peloponnesian war, and we hear of Cretan mercenaries in the Athenian army; but Crete was never connected, even remotely, with the Delian confederacy.

In the west, Athenian influence was widely felt. An Athenian general, Diotimus, is said to have instituted a torch race at Naples, and traces of Athenian pottery are abundant in Campania. Of the colony of Thurii we have already spoken (p. 146), and of the alliances with Rhegium and Leontini. It seems to have been a part of the Periclean policy to develop the connexion with the west, and by every possible means to raise the condition of the Ionic cities of Sicily and Italy as a counterpoise to the Dorian power in Tarentum and Syracuse. Of the relations of Athens to Carthage, we can say nothing but that she traded with the Etruscans, either directly or indirectly, is proved by the Athenian vases found in Etruria. The day of Rome was not yet come.

Nearer home Athens was on friendly terms with Acarnania, which looked to her for help against the aggression of the neighbouring city of Ambracia. Corcyra was received into alliance in 433 B.C., and Cephallenia was gained in the first year of the war. In the Peloponnesus she could count in the neutrality of Argos and Achaea.

Thus at the time of her greatest power, the influence of Athens extended from the Crimea to Crete, from Miletus to Sicily and Naples; and she could place upon the sea a fleet incomparably superior to any force which could be brought against her. It was a great empire, and it was the greater because it included within its circle the most active and civilised states in the world. But from the first it was doomed to failure. The Greeks could never be induced to accept the principle on which it was founded. At the moment when the Delian synod ceased to exist, the Athenian empire became a tyrannis, and the strongest sentiment which could animate a Grecian breast—the love of independence —was aroused against her,

 

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ATHENS OF PERICLES : ART AND LITERATURE.

HE early stages of civic freedom, the attempt to found an empire in the most civilised people of antiquity, the methods by which a democracy sought to govern itself and carry , on a vigorous foreign policy, will always have an interest for mankind, however small may be the scale on which these events took place, but no one will deny that it is the Art and Literature of the time of Pericles which have won for it the title of the “Golden Age of Athens.” In his treatise on the “Glory of the Athenians,” Plutarch endorses the criticism of the Laconian who declared that the Athenians spent on amusement the funds which ought to have gone to more serious objects. “ If we were to calculate,” he says, “the cost of the various plays, we shall find that the Athenians laid out more on “Bacchae” and “Phoenisae,” on “Oedipuses and Antigones,” on the woes of Medea and Electra, than was spent on the wars which they waged against the barbarians for empire and freedom.” Time has justified the Athenians in their expenditure ; the money which they lavished on amusements has turned out an imperishable investment, a source of instruction and delight throughout the civilised world.

When the Persians retired from Athens in 479B.C., they left behind them a ruined city. The walls and houses were destroyed ; the temples blackened and burnt. Fifty years later, at the death of Pericles, Athens was incomparably the most strongly fortified and the most beautiful city in Greece. It is indeed true that the houses even of the richest inhabitants were of a modest size and appearance, and the streets were narrow and irregular owing to the haste and disorder in which the city was rebuilt. This defect could not be remedied without a reconstruction of the city. But the walls were impregnable, those of the port were stronger still, and the two were connected by the Long Walls, or “ Legs,” and the Phaleric wall. The new town of Peiraeus was laid out with straight and spacious streets by Hippodamus; while the spoils of Persia and the contributions of the allies were lavished on the adornment of the ancient city.

The probable direction and extent of the city walls in the time of Themistocles are shewn in the accompanying map. From Thucydides we learn that the circuit of the city, excluding the space between the Phaleric wall and the outer of the two “ Legs,” was somewhat more than five miles. Of the walls subsequently built, the Phaleric wall was more than four miles long ; the Peiraeic, five, the total circuit of Peiraeus and Munychia was about seven miles and a half. Thus, without counting the inner of the two “Legs,” or the length of the city wall between the Phaleric and the outer “ Leg,” we have no less than twenty-one miles of fortification. Of part of these walls we are told that, though the height was only half that intended, the width was such that two wagons could pass each other, and the whole wall was made of large stones hewn square and clamped together on the outer faces with iron and lead.

In the most ancient times the city of Athens included the Acropolis and the land to the south as far as the Ilissus, and to the last, the shrines and sacred places, with the exception of the Areopagus and one or two others, lay in this district. In the citadel itself were the temples of Athena and Poseidon, who were said to have striven for the possession of the place. In the low lands by the banks of the stream was the temple of Dionysus, and farther to the east the temples of Zeus and Apollo. Here, too, was the fountain of Callirrhoe, the water of which was always used “ on great occasions, at marriage rites and other ceremonies.” But long before the fifth century, the city had spread to the west and north of the citadel, and by the time of Themistocles a part of the Ceramicus, or Potter’s Field, was included in the circuit of the wall. This was in fact the busiest part of the town, lying as it did between the great western gate of the city and the market-place ; and when Cimon began to adorn the city with the spoils of his great victories, it was still possible to make alterations in this quarter. Outside the large double gate (Dipylon) by which the city was entered, a road ran in a north-westerly direction, to the groves of the Academy, where amid shady recesses the waters of the Cephisus preserved a verdure even in the glare of an Attic summer. In this pleasant place a gymnasium was built, at which the Athenian youths ran and wrestled, or sat beneath the planetrees which Cimon had planted. To the west from the gate ran the “ Sacred Way,” along which processions passed to Eleusis at the time of the Mysteries, and towards the south a broad road carried the traffic between the city and Peiraeus. On either side of these roads were placed the monuments, which reminded the Athenians of the mighty dead who had fallen in the service of their country (p. 228); the district was in fact the public cemetery of the city, where even in the second century A.D., Pausanias the traveller could still see the tombs of Pericles and Phormio. Within the gate a broad road—the Dromos or Corso—led to the market-place, in which were grouped the public buildings of the city, the offices of the archons, the Council-Chamber, and the Dome or Rotunda, in which the Prytanes were to be found during their term of office. The eastern end was occupied by the Painted Porch, which was erected by Peisianax, a friend of Cimon, and adorned with pictures by Polygnotus and others; on the northern side, where the Dromos entered, were Hermae or pillar-statues, some of which were erected by Cimon, and inscribed with records of his victories in Thrace; the centre was made shady with trees, which also were due to the care and liberality of Cimon. In the neighbourhood was the Theseum, a shrine built to receive the bones of Theseus, and on a terrace to the west rose the beautiful temple—whether sacred to Heracles or Theseus is uncertain—which now remains the most perfect among the ruined temples of Greece.

The east of the city presented a strong contrast to the west. Here all was quiet and seclusion, for the overland traffic from Euboea was carried past Decelea and Acharnae to the northern gate of the city. Outside the walls, near the Ilissus, were two gymnasiums, one at the Lyceum, which was built by Pericles, the other at the Cynosarges (p. 24). Within the city, on a low terrace, rose the pillars of the temple of Olympian Zeus, a temple which was begun by Pisistratus on a scale far exceeding that of any other, but which was never finished, perhaps because the memory of the tyrant was too closely connected with it.

On the south-east slope of the Acropolis was the great theatre of Dionysus, at which dramas were acted twice a year, in the winter at the Lenaea, or festival of the wine-press ; in the spring at the Great Dionysia, the festival at which the allies came to Athens with their tribute. The theatre was not begun by Pericles, nor was it finished till long after his time, but we cannot doubt that he carried on the work, and did much to adorn it. Not far from the theatre Pericles built an Odeum, or Music Hall, which is said to have been a copy of the tent of Xerxes, and some writers add that the woodwork was made out of the masts of the ships which fought at Salamis.

But the adornment of the Acropolis was the highest object of Athenian ambition. The rugged rock, precipitous on all sides but the west, rises to a height of 156 metres from the sea level; in length it is about 300 metres; in breadth at the broadest, 140 metres. As the level of the orchestra in the theatre of Dionysus is 91 metres, and the level of the Ilissus about 40 metres above the sea, we get a rise from the river to the lowest part of the theatre of about 150 feet; and again from the theatre to the summit of the citadel, of about 200 feet. The surface of the rock is far from being level, rising considerably towards the eastern end, and being higher in the centre than at the sides, for which reason sub-structures of considerable extent were required before the temples could be erected. In the sixth century B.C. the Acropolis was the fortress of Athens ; the place which was always seized, as a first step, by anyone who wished to obtain control of the city. So far as we can ascertain, a wall ran round the summit, along the edge of the rock, and a second wall round the base, at some little distance from the foot of the precipitous rocks. This second wall was called the “ Pelasgic fortress,” because it was supposed to have been built by Pelasgians, and the name spread to the space between the precipices and the wall. Pisistratus, and his sons after him, had their palace on the citadel, and in the final struggle, when the Spartans came to expel him from Athens, Hippias prepared for a siege in the “ Pelasgicum.” The entrance to the Acropolis was then, as' always, at the western end, which was, no doubt, secured by fortifications. At this time there were two temples in the citadel—the ancient Erechtheum, at the northern edge, and a larger temple, apparently built by the tyrants, which occupied the centre.

In the Persian invasion of 480-479 B.C. all the buildings on the Acropolis were utterly swept away; the Pelasgic wall was entirely destroyed ; the temples were levelled to the ground. For a time the ruins were allowed to remain as mute evidence of the outrages of the impious foe, or perhaps because Themistocles urged the imperative duty of securing the city from attack; but when Cimon brought home the spoils of Persia from the Eurymedon he resolved to spend a part of them in rebuilding the shrine of the guardian goddess. As the whole city was now surrounded by an enormous wall, it was no longer necessary to treat the Acropolis as a fortress. No attempt was made to restore the Pelasgic wall. But in order to obtain a sufficient area for the new temple which he contemplated, Cimon not only rebuilt on a larger scale the southern wall of the citadel, but he carried substructures oyer the depressions in the native rock for the support of his heavy pillars and walls. But the work was never carried out as Cimon planned it. When Pericles became leader of the city, the matter passed into his hands, and it was under his authority that the great temple, which is the wonder of the world, was carried out by Ictinus the architect (aided by Callicrates) and Pheidias the sculptor.

The form and position of the Parthenon will be best understood from the plan of the Acropolis, which is taken from that of Dr. Kaupert.

The Doric pillars rose on a base of three receding steps; at each end there were eight, on each side seventeen, counting the corner pillars twice. The total length was 69.51 metres; the width, 30.86 m., a proportion of 9 to 4. Each pillar was 10.43 m in height, and 1.905 m. in diameter; the distance between them was 2.4 m. The pillars were channelled in the Dorian manner, each with twenty grooves.

The lines of the temple were not rigidly straight. The “ stylobates,” i.e., the courses of stones on which the pillars were placed, were higher in the middle than at the corners, and the pillars were slightly diminished as they rose; they also inclined inwards.

Within the rows of pillars was the temple in the stricter sense, consisting of four parts : the Pronaos, fronting east ; the Celia ; the Parthenon ; and the Opisthodomus. The Pronaos and Opisthodomus were porticoes. The Celia (also called the Heca-tompedos because it was just one hundred Attic feet in length) contained the great chryselephantine statue of Athena. It was divided by two rows of pillars into three “ naves,” of which the central nave was closed at the end opposite the entrance by pillars, and separated from the Parthenon chamber by a wall, without any door, so that the temple was really divided into two parts, one entered from the west, the other from the east. The Parthenon chamber was the treasure-house of Athena, in which a part of the furniture and sacred vessels belonging to the temple were kept.

Within and without the whole temple was adorned with sculptures and ornamentation and colour. The sculptures are of three kinds: those contained in the “ pediments,” or triangular spaces formed by the gables of the roof at either end of the temple ; those on the “ metopes,” i.e., on the flat slabs which, alternating with grooved slabs (or “ triglyphs ”), ran outside the temple between the architrave, which immediately rested on the pillars, and the roof; and the “ frieze,” which ran round the whole of the wall of the inner temple above the architrave.

In the pediments the sculptor had to deal with a triangular space in which the figures must be arranged according to their size. In the centre there was room for figures standing erect; towards the angles the figures must appear as sitting or recumbent. The subjects represented were the-birth of Athena, which was depicted in the eastern gable, and the strife of Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica, which occupied the western gable, looking towards the Propykca.

The figures of these sculptures were removed from their places and brought to England by Lord Elgin, but drawings have been preserved, which enable us to realise their position before removal, though even then the eastern gable had suffered severely, the central group being destroyed. At the left or southern corner of this pediment the horses of the sun were seen rising from underground ; at the right or north they sank down again into the darkness. In the centre was a group which represented Zeus, Athena, and Hephaestus ; between the two were the seated sisters or “ Fates,” and the reclining figure which is sometimes called Theseus and sometimes Olympus, statues which are the ne plus ultra of the sculptor’s art. The figures on the western gable are not so striking, and the identification of them is very doubtful.

All the figures in these pediments were of colossal size, but each, without exception, was finished with the most minute accuracy. Even those parts which were hidden from view by being turned to the surface of the pediment were worked out with the same finish as the parts turned to the spectator. Man has here striven with nature to produce perfect work regardless of the eye which sees it.

Of the metopes each contained two figures, which were represented in conflict; and they were so arranged that the figures on the four sides of the temple formed four separate groups. Originally there were ninety-two metopes in all, fourteen at each end and thirty-two on each side. A great number were destroyed in the explosion of 1687, but fifteen have been brought to London, one is at Paris, three in the Museum at Athens, and some fragments of others remain in their original position. The metopes at the eastern end represented the contest of Athena with the Giants; those at the western end, the contest of Theseus and Heracles with the Amazons; on the north was depicted the capture of Ilium; on the south, where the sculpture has been best preserved, the conflict of the Lapithae and Centaurs.

The frieze is not less than 159.42 metres in length. The whole of this splendid work, strange to say, received no direct light whatever ; it was only illuminated by the reflected light which, streaming through the pillars, struck the white marble floor beneath. The sculpture represents in all its details the great Panathenaic procession, which took place every fourth year in the month of July. The frieze at the western end, which exhibits the preparation for the procession, is still in its original place; of the remainder, fifty-three slabs are in the British Museum and one at Paris.

The Parthenon and all the sculptures upon it are throughout of Pentelic marble, obtained from quarries in the north of Attica, a stone distinguished by its fine grain and the yellowish tinge which, deepening with time, has contributed in no slight degree to the almost magical colouring of the glorious temple.

The crowning work of the genius of Pheidias at Athens was the statue of the goddess, of gold and ivory, which was placed in the Celia of the temple in 438-437 B.C. The oldest statues—and often the most sacred—in Greece were rude idols of wood. Then stone and bronze were adopted, and, finally, in the hands of the ’great artists of the fifth century, gold and ivory—ivory being used in the parts where the flesh was allowed to appear, while the robes and attributes were of gold. Of course no relics of these costly and perishable materials have come down to us, and our ideas of the statue of Athena must be derived from copies of the great original. In 1879 a marble statuette was found at Athens which is thought to be a copy of the Parthenos, more accurate than any hitherto known. The goddess, who is heavily draped in chiton and diplois, wears her helmet and aegis ; on her right hand, which is supported by a pedestal, rests a winged Victory; her left hand holds the upper rim of her shield, within which coils a serpent, the emblem of Erichthonius. From this copy we may gain some idea of the outward form of the work of Pheidias, but it will always be difficult to realise the difference between the marble and the more .delicate material. Moreover, the statue ’’ of Pheidias was coloured. It was a supreme work of art, the pride of the temple and the city, representing the goddess in all the majesty of complete victory. All strife is now ended ; peaceful and powerful she protects the nation which has built the glorious shrine for her use.

Besides the Parthenon, there was another temple on the Acropolis—the Erechtheum, which Athena shared with Poseidon. This was the older and more sacred temple of the two ; in it was preserved the wooden block, which in the minds of the Athenians was the most holy idol of their goddess. The central parts of the shrine seem to have been restored and enlarged not long after the Persian war, and before the building of the Parthenon (447-438 B.C.) it was perhaps the treasury of the Athenians; but the beautiful colonnades on the north and south, which form the chief attraction of the Erechtheum, were not finished till after Pericles’s death. The temple differs from the Parthenon in being very small; it is also built in the Ionic, not in the Doric style. Though it has suffered severely at the hand of time, it is sufficiently perfect to allow us to judge of its beauty. The slender Ionic pillars are in their places, though the gable and pediment are gone. The porch of the Caryatides, i.e., the porch looking to the south at the western end, and furnished with draped female figures instead of pillars, cannot fail to attract peculiar attention owing to the beauty of the statues and the boldness of the design.

As we have said, the Acropolis can only be entered at the western end. Here, therefore, were the great gates or Propylsea, which Pericles began to build after the completion of the Parthenon. The architect was Menecles. The entire plan was never carried out, owing perhaps to the enormous expense which it involved, but what was done was executed in a manner worthy of the site on which the gateway stood.

The entrance was formed by two porticoes, facing east and west, and separated by a wall. The western portico was, of course, that which first met the eye of the Athenian who was about to ascend the hill. He saw before him six massive Dorian pillars, three on ^r each side of a broad path, surmounted by a gable.

The pillars were approached by steps, but the path was perhaps merely smoothed, in order that horses and carriages might ascend by it. On either side of the approach, at right angles to left and right, were other porticoes, each with three Dorian pillars. The portico on the left (north) was large, and formed a kind of picture-gallery; the portico on the right (south) was contracted in order to leave room for the temple of Wingless Victory, which occupied the southwest corner of the Acropolis. On entering the portico, by the path, the traveller found three Ionic pillars on either hand, supporting a decorated marble roof, and before him was a wall pierced with five openings, one large central door which received the path, and two smaller on each side confronting the spaces between the great Dorian columns of the portico. Passing through the door he found himself in the inner portico, which was a repetition of the outer, but not so deep, and without the Ionic pillars on either side of the central path.

When he passed beyond the pillars he was on sacred ground. Before him was the Erechtheum, and a little to the right the Parthenon. Immediately in front, raised aloft on a high pedestal, was the colossal bronze statue of Athena Promachus, the work of Pheidias, which was said to have been furnished by the spoil of Marathon. On every side were offerings dedicated either by the state or by individual citizens: the Bull dedicated by the Areopagus; the Chariot and Four, which commemorated the victory over Chaicis ; the Perseus of Myron ; the Aphrodite of Calamis. On every side were inscriptions testifying to the wealth and power of Athens: lists of the tribute, catalogues and inventories of the temples, treaties with foreign states, records of her anger against traitors such as Arthmius of Zelea, who first brought Persian gold into Greece, and of her gratitude to patriots; portrait statues set up in honour of distinguished citizens, of Xanthippus, of Phormio the great sailor, and of Pericles himself.

The Acropolis was indeed the centre of the life of Athens. If the Erechtheum was the home of thel guardian deities of the city, the shrine which reminded the Athenians more than any other of their legendary past, the Parthenon was the symbol of the city and empire of Pericles. It was not intended in the least to replace the older temple; it was not regarded as a dwelling-house of the goddess, but rather as her treasury. There was no priesthood connected with the Athena of the Parthenon, as the Praxier-gidae, for instance, were connected with Athena Polias, and no organised provision for worship. The Parthenon was, if the expression may be used, the palace of the goddess, where she received her worshippers on the day of her great festival.

It would be tedious to continue the description of the works of art which adorned Athens at the time when Pericles fell a victim to the plague, and no description can give anything but a very inadequate idea of the splendour, strength, and beauty which met the eye of the Athenian, whether he walked round the fortifications or through the broad streets of the Peiraeus, or along the Long Walls, or in the shades of the Academy, or amidst the tombs of the Ceramicus; whether he chaffered in the market-place, or attended assemblies in the Pnyx, or loitered in one of the numerous porticoes, or watched the exercises in the gymnasia, or listened to music in the Odeum and plays in the theatre, or joined the throng of worshippers ascending to the great gateway which formed the front of the Acropolis. And this magnificence was not the result of centuries of toil; it was the work of fifty years. In 479 B.C. Athens was a heap of blackened ruins ; in 429 B.C. all the great works of the Periclean age had been accomplished except the Erechtheum. Athens indeed became a vast workshop, in which artisans of every kind found employment ; all in their various degrees contributing to the execution of the plans of the master-minds— Pheidias, Ictinus, Callicrates, Mnesicles, and others. Their productions aroused the wonder of the Grecian world hardly less on account of their excellence, than on account of the rapidity with which they were carried into execution.

When we reflect on this great achievement, we naturally ask: How did it become possible that, within the lifetime of one man, such a series of masterpieces could be created ? Attica could supply marble in plenty ; the surplus of the treasury of Athena could be spent in the purchase of gold and ivory, and in paying for the services of artists and workmen ; but genius cannot be so easily procured ; the wealth of a kingdom may be offered in vain for a Pheidias. We must allow that Pericles was in this respect peculiarly fortunate. His life fell at a time when artistic genius was abundant ; a wave of inspiration seemed to pass over the sculptors and architects of Greece, and through the liberality of Cimon and Pericles that inspiration reached its highest level at Athens. It is true that some of the artists employed were not Athenians at all, and that others were trained in foreign schools, but their best work was done at Athens, and by their efforts the city became the centre of the art of Hellas.

The greatest painter of the age, Polygnotus, was a native of Thasos, and may have come to Athens with Cimon after the reduction of his native city. We hear of his work at Delphi and Platsea; but he seems to have settled permanently at Athens. He founded a school, and in conjunction, with his contemporaries and pupils, he adorned the Painted Porch at the eastern end of the market-place, the Theseum, and the chamber in the northern wing of the Propylaea. Among the artists who came after him, there were perhaps some who were as great, or greater, masters of technique ; but no one ever attained the elevation of his style. He was the great painter of character or “ morals,” an artist who could depict men as “ they ought to be.” It was good for the young to look at his paintings, for, like the greatest of the Italian masters, he idealised human nature, and impressed on the spectator the combination of beauty, grace, and virtue.

Before the time of Polygnotus, the pictorial art of Greece was mainly employed on the decoration of vases, which, however delicate and beautiful, were productions for private use. It was otherwise with sculpture. This art was from the first employed in the service of religion or for the commemoration of great events and persons. Even in the sixth century B.C.—under the rule of the tyrants,—the sculptors of Athens had attained some eminence, as we know from the statues recently dug up in the Acropolis (pp. 16, 34). These statues are of marble, and as we might expect in early work in that stubborn material, they are massive and rigid, with a good deal of conventionality in the more difficult parts, such as the hair, eyes, and mouth. About the end of the century a new impulse was given to the art by the use of bronze, a material which admits of greater lightness and mobility than stone. It was in the Peloponnesus that the great artists in bronze arose : Canachus at Sicyon, Onatas at Aigina, and Ageladas at Argos. And not only were they famous for their success in metal, but the skill with which they were able to treat the human and animal forms in that material exercised a strong influence on work in marble. Following their example, artists sought to produce something more vigorous, life-like, and graceful, and pupils trained in their schools carried plastic art to its greatest height.

Among the pupils of Ageladas at Argos were the Athenians Myron and Pheidias. The works of Myron were to be seen throughout all Hellas. Like Polycleitus of Sicyon, he was a great master of the art of casting bronze: his Ladas expiring at the moment of victory in the Olympic race, and his  Discobolus, were perhaps his most signal triumphs with the human body; hardly less excellent, in another region, was the famous cow which Cicero saw in the market-place at Athens. Pheidias, on the other hand, from the time that he returned from Argos to his native city till his departure for Olympia after the completion of the Parthenon, was almost exclusively employed at Athens and in Attica. Among his earliest works were the statues which commemorated the battle of Marathon, and before the death of Cimon he had cast the great statue of Athena Promachus. When Pericles succeeded in acquiring the supreme direction of affairs, the decoration of the Acropolis became a part of his public policy. He did not dedicate a statue or build a temple as a private gift or thank-offering ; he determined to use the services of art in order to bring before the Athenians in visible form the position of their city, and unite the whole empire under the protection of the guardian goddess. The Acropolis was to be a fortress no more, but a sanctuary, and Pheidias was at hand to assist in carrying out the plan.

To Pheidias, therefore, these great achievements were mainly due. But he was well supported by his architects ; and even in the decoration and plastic work he must have been able to secure the services of a number of admirable artists. The sculpture in the Parthenon, amounting, it is said, to four thousand square feet of frieze and metopes, besides fifty colossal statues, cannot have been the work of Pheidias’s own hand, and yet it is all finished with the same perfect skill. We must assume that he was able to breathe his spirit into those around him, and inspire them with the devotion which alone can produce such masterpieces of art. When the great work was done and the temple with the statue of the goddess was presented to the eyes of the astonished Greeks, it was inevitable that Pheidias should be regarded as the foremost of the sculptors of his time. As such he was summoned to Olympia, in order that he might do for Hellas what he had done for Athens. On a larger scale and with still greater magnificence, he created an image of the supreme Hellenic deity, which, by its superhuman majesty, filled every beholder with wonder and awe.

From art we turn to letters. In two departments of literature, the drama and history, the achievements of the age of Pericles have never been surpassed, and in a third, the department of philosophy, the foundation was laid for triumphs not less splendid. The dialogues of Plato, which remain without a rival in their beauty of form and language, belong to the generation after Pericles; but they are due, both in manner and matter, to the influence of Socrates, whose strange figure and still stranger habits were known throughout Athens for some years before the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. Of course these were not the only forms of literature produced at this period. Epic poetry was indeed a thing of the past, but elegiacs were still used for inscriptions, and the lyric poetry of Pindar and Simonides, if less passionate and personal than the poems of the Aeolian school, was distinguished by a greater dignity and sweetness. The songs in which Pindar celebrated the Olympian victors of his day still remain to attest the almost superhuman glory achieved on the banks of the Alpheus; the “epigram” of Simonides on the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae is felt to be a tribute not unworthy even of their devotion; and the fragment of his “ Danae ” leaves in every reader the memory of a tender and delicate grace which can never be forgotten.

But neither Pindar nor Simonides stands in any close relation to Pericles and Athens. Neither poet was an Athenian ; their poetry is Hellenic rather than Attic; it has little or nothing in common with the spirit which created the new democracy, or the Athenian empire ; it would have been what it is if the theatre of Dionysus had never been built, or the Peloponnesian war had never been fought. In these respects it differs widely from the plays of Sophocles and of Aristophanes.

It is not worth while to trace the dramatic literature of Athens back to its earliest sources. It is sufficient to say that at the beginning of the fifth century B.C., Aeschylus was twenty-five years old. Now Aeschylus is the Homer of Greek tragedy, and though there is enough evidence to shew that the Athenians were devoted to the drama before his time, there is also enough to shew that the drama, as we know it, was his work. Of the ninety plays which he wrote, seven only have come down to us; the earliest in date being the “ Persae,” which was brought out in 472 B.C., eight years after the famous battle of Salamis, which it commemorates, and the last, the “ Orestea,” a group of three plays, acted in 458 B.C. These dates shew us that Aeschylus was a poet of the Cimonian rather than the Periclean Athens, and indeed we cannot read his plays without feeling that the spirit by which they are pervaded is the spirit of the Persian rather than the Peloponnesian war.

Like every dramatic poet the Greek tragedian attempted to please his audience, and in his case this feeling was the stronger because his plays were brought out as part of a contest, just as much as the tunes played, or the races run, at the Panathensea. Whatever his theme, this object must be kept in view. His plays were acted at the festival of Dionysus, but he was not compelled to make the acts and sufferings of the god his principal theme; it was enough that in addition to the three plays, which he brought out as tragedies, he provided a satyric drama, in which the chorus was composed of the attendants of Dionysus. For the rest, he might choose a historical subject as Aeschylus did in the “ Persae,” or he might take a plot from the myths of Theban and Trojan story.

On the other hand there were limitations. The tragedy of the Greeks, though arising out of the worship of the god of wine, became so severe and elevated in tone that there was no room in it for comic or humorous scenes. It was grave and solemn, dealing indeed with the passions of men, but dealing with them In reference to human destiny ; it was religious, in the sense that it carried the mind beyond the limits of visible life, and attempted to trace the working of a divine power in the great scenes which it depicted. The characters which it presented were intended to be typical and ideal, far removed from the life and individuality of the common world. Even in the “ Persae,” where events are described in which the audience had participated, the realism is softened, partly by the use of general terms—no Greek is ever mentioned by name in the play—partly, by placing the action in Persia, and partly by bringing on the stage the shade of the great Darius, a device which at once lifts the drama above the level of a merely human victory of Greeks over Persians.

In none of the Greek dramatists is this elevation more conspicuous than in Aeschylus. The spirit of the great scenes in which he took a part passed into his soul, and received from his lips an expression not unworthy of it. The experiences of the sixth century B.C., when the strongest thrones had crumbled to dust, and tyrants had been hurled from the height of power and luxurious enjoyment into the deepest abysses of ruin, had impressed on the Greeks a deep distrust of human prosperity. That the anger of the gods was provoked by the violent deeds of men was an old truth, but a feeling now began to spread abroad that mere prosperity, if it exceeded a certain limit, was regarded with jealousy by the gods and brought down their vengeance upon men. From the first—even from Homer’s time—the Greeks were wont to take a far from cheerful view of human existence, and as time went on the shadows deepened. Man’s capacity for happiness was never satisfied, and if at one moment he seemed to have triumphed over his evil fortune, and laid up goods for many days, in the next, he was an outcast in the world. This view of man’s condition, which is constantly dwelt on by Pindar and Herodotus, received an immense support from the failure of the great armament of Xerxes. The ruin of that mighty host was a signal instance of the humiliation of those who deemed themselves exalted above the lot of mankind. After the battle of Salamis the instability of human greatness and the punishment of “ insolence ” echoed as an undertone through all Greek thought.

But while other writers were content to speak of the gods as jealous beings, who cut down the mighty things of earth, simply because they were mighty, Aeschylus took another view : he insisted on the justice of the divine dealings with men ; on eliminating anything like caprice or favour. The evil which fell upon men never came without some provocation. The race of the just is at all times prosperous; their happiness is abiding, and passes from father to son; but if prosperity leads to evil and impious words and acts—as in Greece it often did—it is never so great that it can resist the vengeance which it provokes. Sooner or later, in this generation or the next, the sentence pronounced will come to pass, and if man will only consent to look at human nature, as it appears

“ in those pure eyes

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove,”

the sentence will be found in every case to agree with the highest conception of divine justice.

In the light of such thoughts Aeschylus composed his tragedies, reading anew the lessons of the old mythology for his purpose. Even when the material was most untoward, as in some of the legends of Zeus, he endeavours to harmonise it with his central thought of justice. In the “ Prometheus Vinctus,” which is the most commonly read of his plays, we see the friend of man, to whom he owes his rise from a condition lower than that of the animals, waging an unequal contest with the youthful god, who has built up his throne on the ruins of ancient dynasties. It is a strange allegory which the poet presents to us ; an allegory of which we hardly know the meaning, but expressing perhaps a consciousness of the ceaseless strife raging between human intellect and a superhuman power, whose ways are not as our ways. Whatever the interpretation may be, Aeschylus makes it clear that the conflict of human aspirations with divine ordinances will find a reconciliation in the decrees of a justice which reigns supreme over gods and men. It is only when Zeus becomes the highest minister of justice that his power is supreme.

In a similar spirit the poet muses over the stories of Thebes and Troy. What was the meaning of the curse, he asks, which rested on the sons of Oedipus and the house of Atreus? Was it a blind impulse driving the innocent on to ruin? He allows that it was an impulse, but it was not irresistible ; and only when reinforced by other passions, did it carry men on to the appointed end. The passages in which the poet describes the passions which drive Eteocles on to meet his brother Polynices at the gates of Thebes, and those which impel Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter, are masterpieces of subtle analysis. Personal ambition and inveterate hatred are blended with the sense of an inherited curse and divinely appointed purpose. Crimes must be punished, yet in the punishment a new crime is committed ; and so the tragedy goes on from generation to generation, bringing down the great and noble, whenever they allow their ambition or rage to lead them astray.

Thus the drama becomes with Aeschylus an attempt to interpret the conditions and limits of human life. As much as any prophet or philosopher, he strives to establish a firm basis upon which a man may act and think ; delivering him on the one hand from superstitious fears, and warning him on the other against self-assertion. It was a noble conception of poetry, and it was nobly carried out. The grandeur of his characters has never been surpassed : the proud defiance of Prometheus; the dauntless courage of Clytemnestra, who seems lifted by her very crime into an avenging spirit; and above all the prescient frenzy of Cassandra, in which every element of pathos is rendered more pathetic by a helpless fore-knowledge of death—are among the immortal productions of human genius. And the language of Aeschylus is unlike the language of any other poet, ancient and modern. The lines of Marlowe— the so-called “master of the mighty line,”—are faltering and feeble when compared with the large and ample utterance of the old Greek poet. Gods and heroes move before us in his scenes, and god-like are the tones in which their words are conveyed to our ears.

The long life of Sophocles nearly fills the whole of the fifth century. He was born about 495 B.C.; his first victory was won over Aeschylus in 469 B.C., and his last play was brought out just after his death in 405 B.C. In that long space of time the spirit of the Greek drama was entirely changed, for there can hardly be a greater contrast than the contrast between Aeschylus and Euripides, and, to a certain degree, Sophocles participated in the change. He made improvements in the scenery and added a third actor, for hitherto no more than two had been allowed to appear on the stage at the same time, thus attaining a greater degree of variety in his situations and a more vivid contrast of characters. He made each of the three plays which, in obedience to custom, he brought out at the same time a separate piece, unconnected with the rest; a change which enabled him to gain a separate interest and a more rapid movement in each of the dramas. No one who reads the “Orestea” of Aeschylus can resist the feeling that the “ Agamemnon ” is more than half of the whole. The plays which follow want variety and incident ; the movement grows ever weaker as it approaches the close. This error Sophocles sought to avoid. He perceived that concentration and unity were among the advantages which dramatic possessed over narrative representation, and that these advantages could not be fully realised if a single theme were spread over three plays.

There is also another change to be observed when we compare him with his great predecessor. Though his dramas are filled with a religious spirit, and rest to a large degree on the contrast of the divine and human will, they are not conceived in the high prophetic tone of Aeschylus. He is nearer the common thought of his time. He accepts the inevitable, and muses over the strange sad destiny of man. What a wonderful creature is man ! he exclaims in a chorus of the “ Antigone ”; how infinite in art and invention ! what victories has he not won ! victories over bird and beast; over earth and sea; over his own unsocial temper. Yet his wilfulness and pride bring him to nought. And when a race is once doomed to ruin, the evil passes on from generation to generation, and there is no release. With Aeschylus he agrees that insolence or rebellion is the worst of crimes; it is the root from which the tyrant springs, the destruction of the high laws which govern the host of heaven—yet he sees clearly that the passions of men are the chief agents in their undoing. The spirit of love holds an equal empire with the most solemn ordinances—that is, it is as powerful a motive in the actions of men. Love is invincible in battle, and none may win a match from Aphrodite. The same deep sympathy with the passions of life is seen in his abhorrence of old age—a truly Greek feeling —and in the part which he assigns to women in his dramas. In two of them the denouement is brought about by the love of youth and maid, of wife and husband ; a motive which never appears in the extant plays of Aeschylus. We observe the same tendency in the situations in which we can compare him with his rival. Aeschylus keeps the relations of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra steadily in the background ; Sophocles brings them vividly to the front. Aeschylus makes little of the sisterly devotion of Antigone for Polynices ; in Sophocles it is the first motive of the play. But we must not think of Sophocles as wanting in force, or dependent on love for a tragic situation. In the “Ajax” the love of Tecmessa merely adds a tender grace to the rugged hero, whose noble spirit cannot survive the death of his honour, and in the “ Philoctetes ” there is no female character at all. Nor is there any want of sterner stuff in his plays; he never shrinks, when necessary, from the terrible resources of his art. Ajax slays himself on the stage in the presence of the spectators ; Oedipus staggers into sight, with his bleeding eyes, crying for some one to support and guide him ; Philoctetes sinks down in a swoon of intolerable anguish; we are allowed to hear the appeal of Clytemnestra to Orestes: “ My son, have pity on the breast that nursed thee! ” and from the lips of Electra, standing watchful at the door, falls the crushing answer : “ Pity she had none, for thee or for thy father.”

Yet terrible as these scenes are, we never close a play of Sophocles with feelings shocked or distressed. A perfect master of his art, he knows how to give the pleasure which tragedy ought to give—the pleasure of elevated feeling passing beyond the limits of individual nature to be engaged on high and solemn themes, and so returning with renewed strength and patience to the everlasting puzzle of human existence.

In his language Sophocles is less simple and also less grandiloquent than Aeschylus. The majestic lines, which fall on our ears as “ thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea,” have disappeared, and in the place of the splendid wealth of metaphor in which the older poet clothes—and sometimes veils—his meaning, there is a striving after subtle combinations which often ends in obscurity—at least for us. Nevertheless there is a beauty in the songs and a pathos in the speeches of Sophocles which Aeschylus has not surpassed ; he has written lines in which we seem to come near to the utmost limits of human expression. Such are those with which Electra closes her lament over the urn of Orestes; such, too, are those in which the poet has chosen to paint the beauties of his own birthplace, Colonus.

There are scenes in Aeschylus more striking than any scene in Sophocles, but, on the other hand, almost any play of Sophocles, taken as a whole, is a more perfect work of art than the best play of Aeschylus. There is a better connexion of the scenes, a more even balance of the parts. This superiority, as we have said, was partly attained by the limitation of the subject to a single play, but it was also due to the consummate skill of the poet in arranging his plots. In this respect the “ Oedipus Rex ” has always been regarded as the model of a perfect play.

Euripides, who, by common consent, stood third in the list of Greek tragic poets, was a contemporary of Sophocles, both poets dying in the same year.

But he was a much younger man, and the difference of age coincided with a remarkable difference of nature and development. It is perhaps hardly too extreme to say that the difference between Shakespeare and Euripides is scarcely greater than the difference between Euripides and Sophocles. The conception of tragedy is changed ; and human nature is regarded from an entirely different point of view. The old submissive attitude, in which man is taught to think human thoughts, and walk in reverent humility towards higher powers, whose laws, however inscrutable, are nevertheless righteous and form the foundation of human society, is cast aside in favour of a criticism which shrinks from nothing, however sacred and sublime. The old myths, so simple and stately, are dragged down to the level of a case at law; the old heroes appear as stupid, brutal, or contemptible men ; the great dames of story scold like fish-wives. Every illusion of epic art is dispelled ; we are brought face to face with the absurd facts, or the gross passions which underlie them. The very worship of the gods is shewn to be an occasion of ruin to those who cherish it. In the excitement of the Dionysiac possession Agave tears her son to pieces, and Artemis cannot protect her votary from the implacable wrath of Aphrodite. Or the politics of the day are allowed to influence the characters of Trojan legend. Agamemnon and Menelaus are Spartans, as an Athenian thought of Spartans in the Peloponnesian war; Helen and Hermione are such women as Aristotle in a later generation declared that the Spartan women were —imperious, proud, and licentious. The strife of man with destiny, which gives such elevation to the earlier drama, has passed away; man is now shewn contending with the base passions of his own nature. Lying, treachery, malice, uncleanness, jealousy, rage, vengeance, envy,—these are the instruments with which Euripides works to bring about a tragic situation. He deals with no ideals; he is misled by no illusions ; he is softened by no pity; he will not spare us a line of the picture; in his merciless analysis of human motives, he tears away the tender coverings which contrition or hope or pity have spread over the weakness of human nature ; and proclaims aloud, often in the name of the gods, the triumph of what is evil and base.

Such is Euripides on his sterner side—the author of the “ Hippolytus,” “ Medea,” and “ Bacchae.” But there is also another Euripides—the author of the “ Alcestis,” the singer of sweet lyric songs, the magician at whose touch the common things of life become radiant with an eternal beauty,—the master of description, telling his tale at one time with matchless simplicity and grace, at another with a splendour of rhetoric, unsurpassed in any literature. The dignity and graciousness of the dying Alcestis; the glad, eager, stainless youth of Ion, who knows no home but the temple of Delphi, no parent but-Apollo ; the songs of the “ Hecuba ” and “ Electra,” the description of the Bacchants, the appeal of Iphigenia to her father—these will always exercise a charm even over those who turn from the darker scenes. And even in the darkest, it must be admitted that the expression is almost perfect. The fury of Hecuba crying to Agamemnon to avenge her murdered son is sublime, and not less so the wild declamation of Cassandra, when foretelling her own and Agamemnon’s death.

A poet so wide in his range and so daring in his departure from the antique solemnity of his art must needs have friends and enemies. Euripides was hated and worshipped in his own day, and the division of opinion exists to this hour. The comedian Aristophanes condemned him as immoral, holding up to scorn his Phaedras and Sthenoboeas, and caricaturing his sophistry and rhetoric. On the other hand, he was the favourite poet of Socrates, and not of Socrates only, but of the Athenians of his time, and even of those who lived far from Athens. A story was current in antiquity that, of the Athenian prisoners cast into the stone quarries at Syracuse, every one was allowed his liberty who could recite a verse of Euripides. The charm has not vanished with time. Milton and Goethe, Coleridge and Browning, have left a record of their admiration of this “most tragic of poets.’’ Of criticism, which takes a different view, there is enough and to spare ; and even the most devoted admirers of Euripides must admit that his work is very unequal. Fate, which has given us only seven plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, has given us nineteen of Euripides. Had the same severe selection been exercised in his case, and nothing left but his “ Alcestis,” “ Medea,” “Hippolytus,” his “Bacchae,” “Ion,” and “Iphigenia in Tauris,” the judgments of his readers would be more consistent.

The difference which divides Euripides from Sophocles must not be ascribed merely to his personal character or genius. The two men were indeed widely different; Sophocles was at once a poet and a man of the world, the charm of the society in which he moved, and now and then employed in the public business of the city ; Euripides was retired, solitary, studious, a reader of books, which in his day were still perhaps a suspicious novelty. Under any circumstances the two would have taken different views of life. But when Euripides was growing up to manhood, at the time at which the imagination is not yet controlled by experience and new ideas are most powerful to sway the mind, a great change came over Athenian thought. The “spirit that denies” made itself felt in every department of life, and questions which had never yet been raised—questions touching the foundation of society and morals —were matters of every-day discussion.

It was in the Ionian cities of Asia that the movement first began, and it began with enquiries into the phenomena of nature. What was the cause of existence and growth ? How did the sun and moon and stars and earth arise ? How were their motions regulated ? Numerous answers were given to these questions. The elements were distinguished from their composite forms, and sometimes one and sometimes another was thought to be the cause of the rest. Various processes of rarefaction and condensation, of attraction and repulsion, were supposed— one philosopher inventing a system which may fairly be called evolution. As thought became stronger the causes of existence became more abstract: one teacher would find the key to the puzzle of the universe in number ; another postulated constant change as the condition of existence ; a third demanded unity and self-existent Being as the basis of all things. But one and all agreed in denying truth and reality to the changing phenomena of the outward world. By degrees the same criticism was applied to politics and ethics. The various forms of government were discussed, and with them the object and purpose of all governments. In connexion with such enquiries it was natural to ask what was legal and what was illegal. A contrast was established between “ nature ” and “ ordinance,” between universal and particular laws. It was but a short step to pass on to ethical truths, and ask : What was the measure of right and wrong? What was the value of custom ? To -what degree was a man a law to himself ? Is truth the same for all, or does it vary according to the circumstances and temperament of each ?

Questions such as these cannot be raised under any circumstances without a considerable degree of danger, and the danger was unusually great in a civilisation like that of Greece, in which morality and religion were by no means in close harmony with each other. But so long as they are raised in an honest desire to get at the truth, and establish the laws of conduct and government upon a firmer basis, the good which attends the discussion is greater than the evil. Unfortunately, this was by no means the case in Greece. For a time, it is true, the “ sophists ” and the philosophers were the same, and both were thoroughly in earnest in their speculations. The great names of Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Pythagoras are never to be mentioned without respect. But when politics and ethics came within the sphere of criticism ; above all, when the Ionian spirit of enquiry was allied with Sicilian rhetoric, a different spirit prevailed. Sophistry and philosophy parted company ; and while the more disinterested seekers after truth pursued their researches into Change and Being, there were others who made discussion a profitable profession. They travelled through Greece as teachers, imparting for pay their secrets of logic and dialectics, and making “the worse appear the better reason.” Their wandering life emancipated them from the traditions of any state, and though we cannot deny to them the credit of great ability and great knowledge, we must allow that they made an ignoble use of both. It is true that they stimulated the intellects of those who came to them, but the stimulus was all in one direction—towards the removal of restraint and the development of personal ambition. Or they taught the art of making speeches, which, though they would not bear examination, were brilliant enough to carry away the feelings of a great audience.

It was in this atmosphere that the youth of the age of Pericles grew up, and Euripides among them. From the “ sophists " he learned to question every thing, bringing the deepest feelings of man to the touchstone of a formal and ill-developed logic. From them he learned to turn outwards the “ seamy side ” of Greek mythology and religion.

The same change was present everywhere, and to many it was a change wholly evil. We have seen how sensitive the Greeks became at this time to attacks upon religion, bringing charges of “ impiety ” against those of the Periclean circle who seemed in any way favourable to the new intellectual movement. More especially were the comedians filled with antipathy to the sophists and their followers. They looked on them as the corrupters of youth, whose pernicious doctrines were calculated to destroy moral conduct and civic patriotism. Cratinus, the first great comic poet at Athens, had a fling at the “ prying rascals ” in his play of the “ Panoptae ” ; and in one of his earliest plays, brought out immediately after the death of Pericles, Aristophanes contrasts the young man, as the sophists had taught him to be, with the youth of an earlier age. In the “ Clouds,” which appeared in 423 B.C., he selected Socrates, as the most prominent sophist of the time, for the chief object of his ridicule. In this he was partly right and partly wrong; he was right in pointing to the evil wrought in the minds of the young by a crude emancipation from old beliefs and customs ; he was wrong in confounding Socrates with those who sought to make the worse the better cause.

Socrates availed himself of the instruments which the sophists put into his hands to destroy sophistry. From morning to night his strange figure might be seen in the market-place, or at some other centre of public resort; there he stood, regardless of poverty, incapable of fatigue, asking questions of all around him in the endeavour to find some general principles of action, and awaken others to an interest in such questions. What was the relation of virtue to knowledge ? Could a man know what was right and do what was wrong? Could virtue be taught, and, if so, who were the teachers and where could they be found ? Was political government an art like medicine, and what was the aim of the art, as health is the aim of medicine? It often happened that his questions led to no result beyond the negative result, that the common practice and customs of men were irrational; often they were raised on absurd analogies, in which vital distinctions were overlooked, as the analogy of men and animals, but they never carried him astray from the position of a good man and an honest citizen. While the professional sophists wandered far and wide in search of profitable employment, he remained within the walls of Athens, or only left them to fight in the service of his country. And though many of his numberless disciples by no means followed in his steps—on the contrary, it was owing to the conduct of such men as Alcibiades, Critias, and Charmides that he was finally brought to trial for corrupting the youth of Athens,—there was one among them on whom his spirit descended in a double measure. Through the dialogues of Plato the name of Socrates has become a symbol for a life passed in the service of truth and wisdom.

Aristophanes did not see this side of the life of Socrates ; and even if he had seen it, his business as a comedian was not to say what was true, but what was amusing. The “ Old Comedy ” of Athens, that is, roughly speaking, the comedy of the fifth century, presents us with a picture of Athenian life and manners; but the picture is far from being true, and it was not meant to be true. We cannot judge of Athenian politics and society, of Athenian statesmen and philosophers, of Athenian men and women, from the descriptions given by the comedians, without being unjust both to the poets and the people.

Attic comedy was essentially a creation of the age of Pericles; it was about the middle of the century when the earliest comedians of any note came forward. It had its root in the merry-makings at the vintage, when the hamlets of Attica worshipped the wine god with indecent rites and riotous glee. The Greeks had a passion for dramatic representation, and their religious worship, like their poetry and even their history, tended to take a dramatic form. Hardly any deity was worshipped without some sort of miracle-play, or at least a procession. The village wits took the opportunity of the festival to form themselves into a band and amuse the audience, who gathered round, with tales of village scandal, or by imitating the dress, style, and language of anyone who had earned the aversion of his neighbours. With the growth of democracy these amusements, which were essentially amusements of the people, attracted more attention, until at length they too, in a more developed form, found a place among the dramas brought out in the great theatre at the foot of the Acropolis. The old village stories and scandal were of course dropped, in order to make room for scurrilous attacks on the conduct and character of men well known in the city, but the old buffoonery and extravagance, by which the attention of the village had been caught, the old indecency, which symbolised the worship of the productive power of nature, were still permitted.

Of the comedies acted in the lifetime of Pericles, we have nothing but fragments ; but there is no reason to suppose that they differed from the comedies of Aristophanes, which began to appear in 427 B.C. The fragments which have been preserved, and the little that we know of their history, allow us to assert that from the time that comedies were acted as part of the great festival of Dionysus, they were distinguished by three characteristics: the direct attacks on public characters; the extravagant forms assumed by the choruses; and the nakedness of their indecency.

We have already spoken of the attacks made by the comic poets on Pericles and Aspasia. Even as early as 444 B.C., Cratinus, in the “ Thracian Women,” spoke of Pericles as going about with the Odeum on his head,—a sarcasm on his habit of wearing a helmet to conceal the shape of his head, and on the recent erection of the music-hall. In another play of the same author, Pericles is “ the new Zeus born of Faction and of Cronos,” enthroned, like Zeus himself, on the destruction of ancient order; and in yet another fragment, Hera-Aspasia is spoken of in language of untempered vigour. Even after the death of Pericles, Aristophanes had no hesitation in repeating the scandal which declared that Aspasia and her runaways and the embezzlements of Pheidias were the real cause of the Peloponnesian war. The same measure was dealt out to others: to Cleon, the ferocious opponent of Pericles, to Hyperbolus, and Cleophon, leaders of the extreme democracy, who insisted on war to the death with Sparta; and, in a less degree, to Nicias and Theramenes, who were in favour of a more moderate constitution and peace. Only one of the great Athenians of the Peloponnesian war is allowed to escape : Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias, about whom, in spite of much that must have been very tempting in his position and character, Aristophanes is remarkably silent. And not the leading men only, but the institutions of the people, and even the people—the all-powerful sovereign Demos, —are brought forward for satire and ridicule. The absurdities of the law-courts form the subject of the “Wasps” of Aristophanes; the absurdities of the Demos form the subject of the “ Knights.” When there was nothing to be made of the men, the poets turned upon the women. Two of the plays of Aristophanes shew us Athens under the “ regiment ” of women; a third presents a picture of the women as they were, when left to themselves, and celebrating their sacred Thesmophoria.

On this side Attic comedy is not to be compared with the comedy of our own stage, but with the pamphlets of the age of Swift, or the Rolliad, the caricatures of Gillray and Rowlandson, and Punch. But the comparison is only partially true. Much greater licence was allowed at Athens than with us, owing partly to the state of society at the time, and partly to the fact that gross and licentious ribaldry was an accepted part of some religious rites in Greece. And doubtless a great part of the attacks were made and taken in no very serious spirit. So long as the persons assailed were in a strong position, they cared little for the extravagances of comic satire. Unmeasured abuse often brings its own antidote. We know that when Fox was hurling his denunciations upon North in the House of Commons, the recipient was generally asleep ! So, too, with the city. So long as Athens felt her greatness secure, she was willing to let the comedians do their worst upon men and institutions. She was pleased with her own follies, as Justice Shallow was pleased with the wildness of his youth, and not the less pleased because “ every third word was a lie.” In times of distress and danger her temper changed. She became fretful and suspicious. Twice in the fifth century—in 440 B.C., when Samos was in revolt, and in 415 B.C., at the time when the great Sicilian expedition was being sent out, and the public mind was disturbed by the mutilation of the Hermae—it was forbidden to satirise anyone by name. The result in the second case may be seen in the comedies of Aristophanes. In all the plays brought out before this date he is political and personal; in the “Birds,” which appeared in 414 B.C., he never alludes directly to the events which were occupying the minds of all. After the fall of Athens, in 404 B.C., the character of comedy entirely changed : it became a comedy of manners ; the allusions to politics either disappeared or were carefully veiled.

The plays of Aristophanes are sometimes named after the choruses which appear in them ; and among these we find such fantastic titles as “ Wasps,” “ Clouds,” “ Birds,” and “ Frogs.” The practice did not begin with him ; he tells us that his predecessor, Magnes, availed himself of the same artifice to attract an audience, and from the fragments we can see that the practice was universal in the older comedy. The names were not without meaning; in appearance and dress, so far as possible, the choruses in these plays were what they were called. A painting on a vase has preserved to us a picture of men dressed to represent birds, and though we have no right to connect it with Aristophanes, the picture probably represents some scene from a comedy.

But why, we ask, does the poet have recourse to these strange disguises ? We may answer the question by saying that comedy never forgot her origin. In the village festivals all kinds of fantastic dresses had been worn to attract attention and excite curiosity, as well as for the sake of concealment, and the practice thus begun was continued when comedy became a part of the state festivals. There was also another reason. By bringing in a chorus of Birds or Clouds, the poets were able to look at human nature and society from an external and abnormal point of view, as they might appear to beings who did not share the delusions of mankind. Like the Fairies in “ Midsummer Night’s Dream,” they could watch the stir and stress of life, and declare : “ Lord! what fools these mortals be ! ” It is the same feeling which has prompted the introduction of animals into fables. The “ great and sane and simple race of beasts,” whose instincts never swerve from the appointed end, have always formed an excellent vehicle for the delivery of moral precepts and criticism. The comic poets claimed an even greater licence than the fabulists, for their fancy was not bounded by the animate world ; but amid all their extravagance there ran a vein of common-sense and sound criticism, often of vigorous personal remonstrance—especially in the form of chorus called a Parabasis, which could only be introduced under some sort of disguise.

Of the gross indecency of the old Attic comedy it is impossible to speak without reserve, and yet a few words of explanation, if not of palliation, must be said. However strange the statement may appear to us, it is nevertheless true, that this grossness is largely due to the nature of Greek religion. In its essence that religion was a worship of the powers which are at work in the universe, whatever they might be, without distinction of higher or lower, or the exclusion of animal forces in favour of moral. Not only were there rites of a grossly obscene nature in Greek temples, but there were festivals in which the worshippers claimed the privilege, in language and in symbolism, of being naked and not ashamed. This strange departure from the ordinary manners and customs of life was found among women no less than men; what the worship of Dionysus was to the one, the worship of Demeter was to the other. In our eyes it forms a repellent feature in Greek civilisation, and it was repellent to the Greeks themselves at a later age. Aristotle and Plutarch condemn it ; in their time the open and outrageous indecency of Cratinus and Aristophanes had been exchanged for veiled suggestions and innuendoes. The change may have been in the interest of good manners ; but whether it was in the interest of pure morals is more doubtful, and at any rate we must not be misled into harsh judgments on the morality of the age of Pericles. These are matters in which one age cannot understand another. In spite of the drunkenness which prevailed at the Dionysia, the Greeks were a sober nation ; and though we have no evidence on which to found a good opinion of the private life of the Athenians, we are at least in possession of two facts which prove the high value placed, in theory, at any rate, on good conduct: No nation was ever more careful than they of the moral and physical education of youth ; none watched more strictly to prevent the slightest insult to women of the household.

Philosophy was not the only gift of the Asiatic Greeks to their kinsmen on the peninsula. The same spirit of enquiry which led them to investigate the causes of natural phenomena induced them also to examine and record the past history of Greek cities and the customs of neighbouring barbarians. By the beginning of the fifth century Hecataeus of Miletus had written a description of the earth; maps had been drawn ; lists had been made of priestesses and officers; genealogies had been compiled and worked into a foundation for chronology ; legends had been compared and assimilated ; traditions of the founding of cities had been committed to writing. A prose literature made its appearance beside the various forms of poetry, which had hitherto been the only literature of Greece, and, as was natural in an age of such mental activity, it spread rapidly. The sense of style was awakened—a sense which could not fail to be stimulated by the importance of rhetoric in civic life and the attention paid by the sophists to expression. By the middle of the century Herodotus had begun the composition of the immortal work, which forms the foundation of our knowledge of the history of antiquity ; and at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war Thucydides was preparing to record the struggle which he thought the greatest of all wars ; though his history, which he did not live to complete, was not published till after the end of it.

We have already seen that Sophocles and Euripides, though contemporaries in age, were widely separated in thought and feeling. The same distinction may be observed between Herodotus and Thucydides, though it is shown in a different way. Herodotus is essentially the historian of Hellas; Thucydides is the historian of Athens : the first is penetrated with the feeling of the Persian war ; the second, with the feeling of the Peloponnesian war. Both were great admirers of Athens and of Pericles; but one looks at them from without, the other, as it were, from within. The spirit of criticism, which is all in all to Thucydides, is faintly felt by Herodotus. He repeats what he has heard, even when he does not believe it; he asserts what he believes, even when it is against all evidence. He is wrong when he is at the greatest pains to be scientific, as in his account of the Nile; and right when he is merely guessing, as in his account of the Caspian/ which he asserts to be a “ sea by itself,” i.e., closed at the northern end. His measurements are wrong, for he makes the Euxine twice as long as it really is ; his numbers are wrong, for he calculates the length of life on a year of 375 days ! He describes the pyramids of Memphis, but says nothing of the Sphinx; he travelled to Thebes, but passed by the splendid buildings of the Ramessids without a word. His interest in history was not the interest which a modern historian would have. Of the countries which he knew best he tells us least, and what he does tell is often of very little historical value. He might have said a great deal about the Greek cities in Asia, as they existed in his own day, when they were claimed as subjects by Athens and Persia, or about the constitution of Sparta; among the “episodes which his work affects,” these would have found a fitting place. Instead of these we have accounts of remote and unknown nations, foreign criticisms on Greek myths, or popular stories about the domestic complications of the Spartan kings, or legends of the burning of Croesus and the invasion of Scythia ; and it is not till he settles down to the invasion of Greece by the Persians that he pursues his theme in a settled order, and with some attempt at chronology. The history of Thucydides is the reverse of all this. He opens his work with a preface in which he establishes his view that the Peloponnesian war was the greatest ever known in Greece, and dwells on the importance of wealth in warfare, knowing that Athens entered on the struggle incomparably richer than her opponents. Then he traces the causes of the war, and, after a digression, in which he relates the origin and growth of the Athenian power, he enters on his subject, never to leave it again. His narrative is annalistic in form, each year being divided into two parts, a summer and a winter; he took the greatest personal trouble not only to find out what men said, for Herodotus did that, but to find out the precise truth of what they said, having the greatest mistrust of poets whose business it was to exaggerate, and of “ logographers,” who composed less with a view to the lasting value of their work than to the immediate impression made by it. But, with all this devotion to accuracy, he does not approach the task in the spirit of a modern historian. He tells us little of the internal politics of Athens during the earlier part of the tremendous struggle. Of some of the popular leaders who played a considerable part in the drama, such as Lysicles and Hyperbolus, he hardly says a word ; the comedians and the sophists, Sophocles and Socrates, are never so much as mentioned. It is the war, and nothing but the war, on which he has fixed his attention. Attica was laid waste, but we hear nothing of the revolution in property which this must have caused ; the education of the Athenian youth was influenced by sophists and philosophers, but Thucydides never condescends to say whether the issue of the war was or was not in any degree due to the decay of the fibre of the Athenian nation.

The work of Herodotus is epic in its plan and highly religious in feeling. The episodes which carry him almost over the whole known world may be compared with the episodes which carry Odysseus to Calypso’s isle and to Scheria ; the strong, swift stream of narrative, which runs through the later books of the “ Odyssey,” may have furnished a hint to the historian in the management of the closing part of his story. Throughout the whole he is tracing the doom which overtakes human pride and insolence; Croesus, Polycrates, and Xerxes are all examples of the favourite theme, that the paths of pride lead to destruction. It is in vain that men are warned of the danger. Croesus is warned by Solon ; Xerxes by Artabanus; Polycrates by Amasis, but without effect. There is no way of saving a man from the anger which is in store for him.

Thucydides, as we have said, is annalistic,—attempting by this means to secure strictness in chronology even at the expense of the connexion of events,—and he is anything rather than religious.

He speaks in contempt of signs and wonders and prophets, for any crisis will bring its crop of such; he never alludes to any theories of divine envy or human pride; he wishes to record things merely as they are, believing that human life moves in cycles, and that the past may form a guide to the future. Yet we may notice that even he cannot wholly free himself from the idea that the plague was the work of Apollo, the god who was pledged to aid the Spartans.

In spite of all their differences, Herodotus and Thucydides are alike in one point : they are both more dramatic than any modern historian would venture to be. Not only do they introduce speeches into their works on occasions, when perhaps no speeches were made, and relate conversations which could not have been preserved,—this is especially the case with Herodotus, who can tell us what Atossa said to Darius in the silence of the royal bedchamber—but the speeches are obviously in some cases composed with a view to the situation ; they are not a record of what was actually said at any time. This is going further than a modern writer would venture to do, but this is not all. In some cases it seems very probable that Herodotus did not hesitate to ascribe to others opinions which were really his own—at any rate it is very difficult to understand what interest the Egyptian priests could have taken in the story of Helen,—and Thucydides has been accused, not without some shew of reason, of making rhetorical comments on the Corcyrean sedition. Whatever the truth of this criticism, we shall, in any case, find it difficult to deny that the nature and use of historical evidence was imperfectly understood by Greek historians. Yet the two great works will never be displaced from the position which they hold at the head of descriptive and philosophical history, for Herodotus has never been surpassed in the art of telling a story, nor Thucydides in his insight into the motives of human action.

Pericles was not content that Athens should be the centre of the highest art and literature of Greece ; he resolved that, so far as possible, the people should share in all the pleasure which art and literature could give. In regard to the great artistic triumphs of Pheidias and his fellow-workers, the end was easily attained ; the beautiful Parthenon was there for all who chose to see; and once in every four years, at the festival of the great Panathenaea, all Athens went in procession through the gateway to the temple. The plays at the Dionysia could not be so easily thrown open. The theatre in which they were acted was leased to a manager, who charged a certain sum for entrance to cover his expenses. The sum was not high—about threepence a day during the festival,—but even this trifle was more than many of the Athenians could afford to spend. Pericles met the difficulty by distributing to each of the poorest class, out of the public funds, the amount which would enable him to pay the fee charged for entrance. This was the celebrated “ Theoricon,” or sum given for attendance on amusements. In the time of Pericles it was given to the very poor and only at the Dionysia, but afterwards the word was used to cover the division of the surplus funds of the state among the citizens.

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE ATHENS OF PERICLES : MANNERS AND SOCIETY—CONCLUSION.

 

THE monuments of Athens remain, though in ruins, to attest the splendour of the art which adorned the city in the days of Pericles; the noble works of literature, which delighted the Athenian of his day, can be read by us in a form not very different from that in which they first appeared. But when we turn to matters of a more ephemeral nature, and attempt to realise the manners and society of the time, our evidence is far more precarious. It is always difficult to judge of an age by the literature which it produces; ideals mislead us in one direction, and caricatures in another; or we mistake the part for the whole in our ignorance of the extent to which literature penetrated; or, to take another point of view, in our ignorance of the area from which ideas and characters are drawn. We know, for instance, that all Athens congregated in the theatre of Dionysus to hear the new tragedies at the Spring Festival, but we cannot tell how many of the audience entered into the spirit of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The eager interest in knowledge, which we find among the young men who figure in the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, must have been confined to a few; and when we ask what was the general level of intelligence and culture at Athens in the best days of the city, it is very difficult to give an answer.

The most obvious point of difference in Greek civilisation, when we compare it with our own, is the existence of slavery. There were slaves everywhere; in every workshop and every household ; on the farms and in the mines ; the police were slaves, the clerks in public offices were slaves. This feature at once places a wide distinction between the democracy of Athens and the democracies of modern times. The questions which are now among the most prominent, such as the relations of labour and capital, the growth of population, or the extension of the franchise, were hardly raised at Athens; their place was taken by others, not less important to the welfare of the society, but widely different: the defence of the masters against their slaves ; the admission of the evidence of slaves in courts of law; the rules and sanctions of manumission. On these subjects much might be said which would not be to the credit of Greek civilisation. If we remember that twenty thousand slaves deserted to the Peloponnesians at a time when the Public Assembly at Athens never numbered five thousand citizens, we can understand that there was reason to dread the combination of slaves against masters ; and under such circumstances the measures taken for repression were not likely to err on the side of mercy. We also know that the evidence of slaves was never taken except under torture, more or less severe. On the other hand, it would not be difficult to collect instances of kind and humane treatment of slaves by their masters, or of devotion on the part of slaves. It is also obvious that the existence of female slaves placed a number of questions, which are among the most difficult of our day, in quite a different light; and without attempting to decide whether the evil was greater or less, it is at least certain that a slave, who was always an article of value, in one way or another, was never so utterly abandoned to her fate as the outcast of modern society. Her death, at any rate, could be traced and avenged. But these are wide and intricate results of slavery, on which we cannot enter here. Looking at the matter from a more special point of view, we may ask: What was the effect of slavery on the Athenian democracy ?

As a first and obvious effect it allowed the citizen an amount of leisure which without it would have been impossible. While the slave was at work, the master was in the Ecclesia, or in the law-courts, or in the market-place, or in one of the numerous porticoes. Without the opportunities thus afforded, the Periclean constitution could not have existed. Had the poorer part of the population been compelled to spend their days in laborious occupations, the rich must have remained the governing body of the city, but the existence of slavery, united with payment for service in the Council and the lawcourts, placed a majority of the citizens in the position of men who had both the means and the leisure to devote their time to the state.

Such an arrangement not only led to the development of an extreme democracy, but it also gave a new turn to the old conflict between rich and poor. In countries where the franchise depends on wealth, or the poor live on wages paid them by the rich, democracy may degenerate into socialism. But this is less likely to be the case in a state where all the citizens are equal, and few, if any, are employed in the service of others. In Athens, at any rate democracy never took a socialistic form. A man who possessed a large fortune was expected to contribute largely to the state ; he was burdened with heavy contributions to the maintenance of the fleet; out of his pocket came the money necessary for the choruses, which took part in the Dionysia and other festivals of the city. So long as he paid these sums —and many citizens not only paid them, but seized the opportunity to make a display of their liberality, —he was permitted to enjoy his fortune, however large. Pettifoggers might attack him, it is true, but they could be beaten off by their own weapons—as Socrates advised his rich friend Crito to keep a tame sycophant who would defend him from others of his kind ! The jurors might bear hardly upon him in their administration of the law, for that evil, as we have said, was inseparable from the institution of the law-courts, but the democracy never attempted anything like a confiscation of property, even under the severest pressure. Such measures appear for the first time in the acts of the “Thirty Tyrants.” The same protection was extended even to those who, though not citizens of Athens, were residents in the city, the “resident aliens,” or metoeci. These men paid certain taxes, and liberal gifts were expected from them, but no attempt was made to interfere with their just gains, so long as these were made in a manner which did not impair the wellbeing of the city. Most of the metoeci were traders, and, in fact, the trade of Athens was largely in their hands; as a class they were probably richer than a large number of the citizens ; their property, and even their lives, were at the mercy of the Athenian jurors ; yet we never hear that they were oppressed. The fact that they were politically in a subordinate position satisfied the ambition of the citizens, whose vanity was much in excess of their cupidity. That an alien or even a slave was better clad and better fed than the citizen provoked no jealousy. The citizen was the only free man in the city. He lived as he pleased, master of his time and of his actions, and, what was more delightful still, master of the time and actions of others. The poorest citizen, in theory, at least, was the equal of the richest, and when he held up his hand in the Assembly, or dropped his pebble in the juror’s box, he felt not only that he was the ruler of a mighty empire, but that the rich who came forward as officers of the state were in a manner his servants. This consciousness of a superiority went far to balance the bitterness of feeling between classes. If the poor man felt that the rich received more than his share of the good things of the city, he could at least say his say without reserve. He was not the servant of another, dependent on his will and purse. It is in this spirit that Dicaeopolis expresses himself towards one of the Athenian generals:

Lamachus.

Is this the sort of language for a beggar

To use to a commander such as me?

Dicaopolis.

k. beggar am I ?

Lam.                Why what else are you ?

Die. I ’ll tell ye ! An honest man : that’s what I am,

A citizen that has served his time in the army,

As a footsoldier, fairly, not like you,

Pilfering and drawing pay, with a pack of foreigners. —Frere.

Slavery had also another effect. Like every government the government of Athens had to contend with extremes of intelligence and ignorance. On the one hand was the citizen, who, belonging, let us say, to the circle of Pericles, was not only trained in the best education of the time, but knew the relations which prevailed between Athens and foreign states, and the past history of his city ; on the other was the dull peasant whose talk was wholly of oxen. But owing to the presence of slaves these extremes were probably less marked at Athens than in modern states. Every citizen could, if he chose, attend the meetings of the Assembly, where he would hear a good deal of discussion and acquire at least an outline of the facts; he could sit as a juror in a lawcourt and have his wits sharpened by distinguishing between the lies and counterlies which were prevalent there. Twice in the year he could listen to comedies ; once, at least to the masterpieces of the great tragedians, and though books were scarce, every citizen had been to some kind of school, and could at least read and write. It is probable that the average intelligence of an Athenian audience was not less than the average intelligence of artisans in a modern city, and their knowledge of affairs was certainly greater. It is true that they had no newspapers, but on the other hand they had few books and no religious dogma, so that the affairs of the city, and no doubt the affairs of the citizens also, occupied a far larger share of attention with them than with us, and as few hours of the day were spent in labour, they had a great deal more leisure to bestow upon their city and their neighbours than the modern artisan.

From Aristophanes we can borrow pictures of Athenian life which in spite of exaggeration bring before us some leading traits of character. His sympathies are largely with the farming class, on whom the war brought such suffering. We have already made the acquaintance of Dicaeopolis, the hero of the “ Acharnians.” While the authorities are busy forming alliances with Persia and Thrace, Dicaeopolis—in the play—ventures on a private peace with Sparta, and the reign of peace begins, at least in his household. He revisits his country home, where he celebrates the rural festival of Dionysus with the abundance and freedom of old days.

Die. Oh blessed Bacchus, what a joy it is

To go thus unmolested, undisturbed,

My wife, my children, and my family,

With our accustom’d, joyful ceremony,

To celebrate thy festival in my farm.

—Well, here’s success to the truce of thirty year«!

Wife. Mind your behaviour, child ; carry the basket

In a modest, proper manner ; look demure

And grave— * * * Come, move on.

Mind your gold trinkets, they ’ll be stolen else.

Die. Follow behind there, Xanthias, with the pole,

And I ’ll strike up the bacchanalian chant.

—Wife, you must be spectator ; go within

And mount the housetop to behold us pass.

—Frere.

Then he proceeds to establish a market, in which the products of Megara and Boeotia, both contraband during the war, are brought to him. Fish and fowl are cooked for his table, while the miserable soldier has nothing but an onion and salt fish. The enjoyments of Dicaeopolis are gross and material enough, but there is an air of honesty and straightforwardness about him which contrasts—or at least is represented as contrasting—very strongly with the meanness and greed of politicians and informers. Another character of the same kind is Trygaeus in the “ Peace,” who triumphantly brings down Peace from the gods to Attica, and in his own person illustrates very vividly the blessings of her return.

How sweet it is to see the new-sown corn-field fresh and even,

With blades just springing from the soil that only ask a shower from Heaven.

There, while kindly rains are falling, indolently to rejoice,

Till some worthy neighbour, calling, cheers you with his hearty voice: “ Well, with weather such as this, let us hear Trygseus tell us What should you and I be doing? You ’re the king of all good fellows.

Since it pleases Heaven to prosper your endeavours, friend, and mine,

Let us have a merry meeting, with some friendly talk and wine. In the vineyard there’s your lout, hoeing in the slop and mud ; Send the wench to call him out, this weather he can do no good. Dame, take down two pints of meal, and do some fritters in your way ;

Boil some grain to stir it in, and let us have those figs, I say. Send a servant to my house—any one that you can spare— [There he ’ll find a brace of linnets, and beside them] pies of hare.

There should be four of them in all, if the cat has left them right; We heard her racketing and tearing round the larder all last night. Boy, bring three of them to us :—take the other to my father : Cut some myrtle for our garlands, sprigs in flower, or blossom rather, Give a shout upon the way to Charinades our neighbour

To join our drinking bout to-day, since Heaven is pleased to bless our labour.”

—Frere.

In the “ Clouds ” we have a man of a similar stamp married to a lady of the highest rank. On his side there is nothing but coarseness and thrift; on hers, finery and extravagance. The son born to this ill-assorted pair takes after his mother, involving his father deeply in debt by his extravagance in horseflesh and carriages. To be rid of his creditors Strepsiades is anxious that his son should learn the new doctrine by which the “worse is made the better cause.” The son will not hear of it. He associate with Socrates and the god-forsaken Chaerephon! he would lose his complexion, become pale instead of sunburnt, and what would his companions say to him then? Strepsiades then offers himself as a pupil, but he is so old and stupid that nothing can be made of him. To save the house from ruin the son is at length induced to give way and study the new learning, which he does with such effect that he beats his father out of the door!

Other pictures bring before us the informers, who made it their business to detect any goods introduced into Athens contrary to law; and the hardly less miserable hierophants, who quickly appeared on the scene whenever any sacrifice was going on, for a sacrifice meant a dinner to all concerned. Another feature of Athenian life constantly occurring in the comedies is the faith in omens and oracles. Oracles are quoted on every occasion, and for any purpose. Here is a scene from the “ Knights ” of Aristophanes :

Demos. But what are these ?—all ?

Cleon.                              Oracles.

Demos.                       What all ?

Cleon. Ah, you ’re surprised, it seems, at the quantity J That’s nothing : I ’ve a trunk full of ’em at home— Sausage-Seller.

And I ’ve a garret, and out-house both brimful. Demos. Let’s give them a look—Whose oracles are these? Cleon. Bakis’s mine are.

Demos, to S.-S.            Well 1 and whose are yours ?

5.-5. Mine are from Glanis, Bakis’s elder brother.

Demos. And what are they all about ?

Cleon.                             About the Athenians,

About the island of Pylos, about myself— About yourself—about all kinds of things.

Demos. And what are yours about ?

5.-5.                            About the Athenians,

About pease-pudding and porridge, about the Spartans, About the war, about the pilchard fishery, About the state of things in general, About short weights and measures in the market, About all things and persons whatsoever, About yourself and me. Bid him go whistle.

 

The wrath of Aristophanes is more especially bitter against the men who have come forward as political leaders : Cleon the tanner, Lysicles the cattle-dealer, and Hyperbolus the lamp-maker. As a type of the degradation to which the city was sinking, he introduces the Sausage-Seller, who in ignorance and impudence outstrips the rest. The fellow can barely read or write, but his future eminence was predicted even in his boyhood, from the readiness with which he could steal and lie.

Cleon.                     Answer me truly !

What was your early school ? Where did you learn The rudiments of letters and of music ?

5.-5. Where hogs are singed and scalded in the shambles, There was I pummelled to a proper tune.

Cleon. Hah ! say‘st thou so ? thy prophecy begins To bite me to the soul with deep foreboding. Yet tell me again—What was your course of practice In feats of strength and skill at the Palaestra ?

5.-5. Stealing and starving, perjuring and swearing. ‘

Cleon. O mighty Apollo, your decree condemns me ! Say what was your employment afterwards ?

5.-5. I practised as a Sausage-Seller chiefly, Occasionally as pimp, and errand boy.

Cleon. Oh misery. I am lost and gone.

 

These pictures are, of course, exaggerations, yet the contrast of country and city, the degeneration of education and politics, were facts. In the better days, before the war broke out, Athens was a beautiful and well cultivated territory. There were excellent houses and homesteads in the villages, and round them settled a contented and thriving population. In the city, on the other hand, there was a considerable number of persons who, while existing in a very low degree of comfort, claimed for themselves almost the foremost place in the state. They were restless and dissatisfied, full of suspicions of every one who undertook public office, and anxious to make the most out of the advantages which the empire offered. The richer citizens were helpless against them, and when Pericles died the power passed into the hands of their nominees. For with the war came the ruin of Attica, the confinement of the people in the city, the impoverishment and final destruction of all whose income depended on land. The change was an inevitable accompaniment of the war as planned by Pericles, and it was fatal to the state. Athens rose again after her fall; Attica was once more cultivated and prosperous, but the old spirit never revived. The great names of the fourth century are quite different from those of the fifth, a change which implies that the old families had disappeared ; and the feeling which animated public men was different too.

We have already spoken of the presence of sophists at Athens. Under any circumstances they would have made their appearance in a great city, which was the centre of Greek thought and intellect, but the growing importance of public speaking for those who took a part in the affairs of the city made them especially welcome. Among the younger men of the richer classes, who wished to be somebody in the city, their influence was very great, and it seems to have penetrated into the common education of the time. In the “ Clouds,” Aristophanes pits the new education, with its immorality, its ruthless logic and impudence, against the old quiet, seemly, reverent training of the Attic youth ; in the “ Acharnians ” he contrasts the young man who could speak with the old warriors who had done great things in the past. The influence, though intellectually stimulating, was not a good influence ; it put private interests above public, and taught the disciples to look at everything in reference to themselves. The action of Pericles towards the Areopagus had long ago destroyed the spirit of reverence for the ancient institutions of public life; sophistry went farther and destroyed it in private life. If the people were becoming more and more impatient of restraint, until at length they insisted on doing “ what they pleased,” regardless of the checks provided by the constitution, the young Athenians became impatient of the general decorum which the old education imposed upon them. Such freedom was especially dangerous in Greece. The old sanctions which religion and moral law had supplied were poor at the best, and it was useless to quote them when the young retorted by appeals to the grosser side of Greek mythology, or even denied the existence of the gods altogether.

Along with this evil went another. In a very striking passage Thucydides has shown us how, under the crushing influence of the war, political considerations began to outweigh all others. “ The seal of good faith was not divine law, but fellowship in crime. If an enemy, when he was in the ascendant, offered fair words, the opposite party received 23 them not in a generous spirit, but by a jealous watchfulness of his actions. Revenge was dearer than self-preservation. Any agreements sworn by either party, when they could do nothing else, were binding so long as both were powerless. But he who, on a favourable opportunity, first took courage and struck at his enemy when he saw him off his guard, had greater pleasure in a perfidious than he would have had in an open act of revenge; he congratulated himself that he had taken the safer course, and also that he had overreached his enemy and gained the prize of superior ability.” ¹³ Such feelings would co-operate with the new views of life in bringing about an extirpation of the old patriotism which united an honest love of country with the best traditions of domestic life and personal conduct. The spirit of the best men was corrupted, and the spirit of the worst was not good for much at any time. The sons of the men who had fought with Cimon and Aristides became intriguers with Antiphon and Theramenes, and when the game fell into their hands they came forward as the Thirty Tyrants. Their opponents — the democratical party—were first led by Pericles, then by Cleon, then by Hyperbolus, and the like, until at length they found themselves the prey of the Spartan commander, without empire, without revenues, and without ships.

The tone of society at Athens was peculiarly masculine. Men lived little at home, and much in the market-place or the porticoes, or the barbers’ shops, or wherever they found it convenient to congregate. Yet there, as elsewhere, the women were one half of the whole, and, in spite of the seclusion in which they lived, a very important half. Plutarch tells us how Themistocles spoke of his little son as the most influential person in Athens ; “ for,” he said, “ the child rules his mother, his mother rules me, I rule the Athenians, and the Athenians the Greeks.” The greater is our disappointment at the few records which have survived of the women of Athens during the fifth century. The ribaldry of Aristophanes is of course no evidence of the domestic life of the time. Nearer the truth is the pretty picture which Xenophon has given in the “ CEconomicus” of the married life of an Athenian gentleman, but such a picture, even if it is not ideal, only gives us the idyllic side of life; it tells us nothing of the sterner aspect; and there were times when the aspect must have been stern indeed. In the darkest periods of the century, after the overthrow of the great Egyptian expedition, at the time of the plague, and after the Sicilian expedition, there can have been few houses at Athens in which there was not one dead. What was the effect of this constant bereavement on the minds and feelings of the women ? Were they hardened into a stupor, or were they rendered hysterical and wild, or were they merely indifferent ?

We cannot tell. The only occasions on which we get a glimpse of the Athenian women are the festivals and the funerals. From her early childhood a pretty girl might share in the rites and ceremonies of the city ; when she grew older she took part in the Panathenaic procession ; older still, she worshipped with other Athenian matrons at the Thes-mophoria, and to her lot it fell to discharge the last duties to the dead. Through these ceremonies she was allowed to feel that she had a part in civic life. “ It is right,” says the chorus in the “ Lysistrata ” of Aristophanes, “ that we women should give good advice to the city which has nursed us in splendour and softness. At seven years of age I carried the sacred chest of Athena ; at ten I was mill-woman to our Lady; then, clad in saffron dress, I was a bear at the Brauronia, and once again, with a string of figs round my neck, I bore a basket in a procession.”

There were other occasions on which a larger scope was given to personal feelings. At the worship of Adonis, which became common at Athens during the Peloponnesian war, emotions long repressed found relief in wild lamentations; and in the orgiastic festival of Dionysus—though this was Theban rather than Athenian—the outpourings of hysterical passion were carried to an extreme which seems almost incredible.

It is common to speak of society at Athens in the time of Pericles as highly intellectual and grossly immoral. We can point to great names, and we can point to great vices. But on closer examination we shall find that it is easy to exaggerate. There were great names in France before the Revolution— greater than any since,—yet the mass of the people were sunk far below their present level of intelligence ; the vices of the court of Charles II. are notorious, but we can draw no conclusions from them about the state of the people. So far as can be ascertained, the Athenians were extremely careful of their children and their women, and this care cannot have failed to exercise a great influence on the men, for most Athenians had a wife and children. There, as everywhere, there were men who refused to live the life of the ordinary citizen, and gave themselves up to dissolute habits. Their excesses may have been more uncontrolled than with us, for there were no adequate arrangements at Athens for keeping order in the streets; they were certainly more known, owing to the greater publicity of life. Yet if we remember that the streets in Athens were narrow and crooked, that there were deserted houses where bad characters could congregate, and that there were no lamps of any kind, we shall not deny that the Athens of Pericles contrasts favourably with what we know of the state of London a hundred years ago. And if the satire of Aristophanes is more open in its attacks on vice, it does not exhibit a deeper acquaintance with iniquity than the satire of Swift or Mandeville.

Such was Athens in the age of Pericles. Let us try, in conclusion, to estimate the work which he did for his city and for the world.

The democracy of Athens was carried by Pericles to its highest stage of development; when he substituted the law-courts for the Areopagus, and allowed pay to the jurors, he removed the last traces of the aristocratic constitution. By the new arrangement he enlisted an immense body of citizens on the side of law, with the result that there was perhaps no city where the law was more strictly maintained than at Athens. Whatever the law was, it was supreme ; even the omnipotent Demos could not touch it without a formal repeal, a process which could only take place at a particular time and with elaborate formalities. This supremacy of the law was chiefly maintained by the distinction drawn between decrees or acts of the sovereign assembly, and laws or ordinances, and though this distinction is not due to Pericles, the “ indictment for illegality,” which kept it alive, was probably his work. The aim of Pericles was to create a sovereign people, but to regulate their sovereignty by fixed laws. This result he could only attain by instituting a body of jurors, or possible jurors, so large that they were sure to command a majority in the Assembly, if any question touching the sovereignty of law arose. And here the evil of the system came in. The arrangements of the courts were so cumbersome and imperfect that they did as much harm in administering the law as they did good in upholding it. They brought together a number of men who, without being themselves responsible to any one, were constantly pronouncing upon the lives and fortunes of their fellow citizens. And from the very circumstances of the case, these men were drawn from the class of needy and useless citizens, who could least of all be expected to forget themselves and their own interests.

To Pericles is also due the final development of the Athenian empire. With the suppression of the revolts of Euboea and Samos the equality which prevailed among the original members of the Delian confederacy became a mere fiction. The league was now an empire, existing for Athens only, and controlled entirely by her. She was the centre of the circle ; the guardian goddess of the city was the guardian goddess of the league. It may be said in defence of this high-handed proceeding that Pericles merely sought to put unity in the place of isolation, and build up a great national power out of a number of cities, which would otherwise have been perpetually at war with each other. He saw clearly that the want of  lenity was the great defect of Hellas and he determined, if possible, to remedy the defect. Such aims were in themselves more than legitimate. No statesman could have rendered a greater service to his country than the formation of a league, which should combine the scattered forces into one focus. But here again . Pericles adopted means which failed to bring about the desired result. His hostility to Sparta was fatal to any attempt to unite Greece, while his constant efforts to win the control of the Corinthian Gulf brought on him the bitter hatred of Corinth, by far the most enterprising member of the Peloponnesian confederacy.

The truth is that he regarded the matter far too exclusively from an Athenian point of view. If Greece could be united under the headship of Athens, he would accept the position ; if not, Greece must be subject to Athens. Whether any means could have been found in the existing state of Greek feeling, by which the various cities, Dorian and Ionian, within Peloponnesus and without, could have been brought into a single confederation, is very doubtful; the love of “autonomy” was too inveterate to admit of the smallest infraction of civic rights. But, in any case, the methods adopted by Pericles were not likely to find favour. The cities naturally resented the tyrannical force which compelled them to furnish troops for wars declared without their consent, and to carry their disputes for settlement before a jury which looked on them as subjects of Athens. It is true that they brought their tribute to Athens at the Dionysia, when they could admire the splendour of the city and enjoy the plays in the theatre, but these delights were a poor compensation for the degradation which the enforced payment of tribute seemed to entail. When Pericles spoke of Athens as the “ School of Hellas,” he confounded the theories of the lecture-room with the common-sense of politics. A few of the allies were attracted by the splendours of the dominant city, but if these were intended to create a feeling of attachment in the subjects, they were pretty certain to fail of their object.

It was otherwise with the Athenian people. They doubtless were proud of their city and proud of her position as head of the empire. The “ great name of Athens ” was a spell wherewith to charm them. The older party, who would gladly have seen Athens less imperial, if only she could have kept on terms with Sparta, were silenced after 444 B.C., and for twelve or fourteen years Pericles was supreme. In this period he succeeded in instilling the imperial policy so deeply into the hearts of the people, that when the struggle came, they were willing to fight to the death rather than relinquish it. In this, the crude, material side of the matter, the Athenians were willing disciples. But the higher motives, which guided the policy of Pericles, were little appreciated by the masses. The sights presented to the populace at the Panathenaea and Dionysia were indeed magnificent, and at such times the whole city might seem to be united in great acts of worship. But dearer far to the inhabitants of Attica, than these great displays, were the little local festivals in the country; the jovial hospitality of neighbours, the delights of spring-time and harvest; the “ rest on the violet-bed by the well.” The enjoyments of the average Athenian were those of the average man ; he did not take that delight in higher art and literature, which caused Pericles to give them so large a share in his theory of politics. In this matter the leader mistook his followers; he had too little sympathy with what was commonplace in them, and failed to apprehend how closely what was soundest in civic life at Athens was connected with the rather limited—not to say mean —desires and aims of the Athenian people. In seeking to carry them away from their old views by the spectacle of something higher and more intellectual, he aggravated some of their failings. What the Athenians needed above all things was balance and weight. Even at the best their institutions and beliefs were supported by sanctions which would not bear logical examination. It was a great mistake to weaken the force of such sanctions as were established, for it was very unlikely that anything more intellectual would have greater force. The beauty of the city, the great name of Athens, might flatter the selfishness of the Athenians, but they could never become the source of a national morality.

Still more disastrous for the future of his country was the personal government which Pericles established. In his determination to be the foremost man in the city, he left no room for a second. He repressed the growth of those who in the course of nature would be required to take his place. Under his shadow no fresh shoots sprang. He taught the people to follow a leader, and left no one behind to lead them; he destroyed their independence—or at least the mutual play of opposite forces,—and when he died came “the deluge.” There was no one who could succeed him. A democracy without great men is a dangerous form of democracy, unless it be steadied by a very strict constitution. It is at the mercy of every wave of feeling—of every unprincipled orator. When Pericles rose to power it would have been possible to frame a Pan-Hellenic union, in which Sparta and Athens would have been the leading states; and such a dualism would have been the best guarantee for the rights of the smaller cities. When he died there was no policy left but war with Sparta, and conquest in the West. And not only so, but there was no politician who could adjust the relations of domestic war and foreign conquest. The Athenians passed from one to the other, as they were addressed by Cleon or Alcibiades. We cannot wonder that the men, who lived in those days of trouble spoke bitterly of Pericles, holding him accountable for the miseries which fell upon Athens. Other statesmen had bequeathed good laws, as Solon and Clisthenes, or the memory of great achievements, as Themistocles or Cimon, but the only changes which Pericles had introduced were thought, not without reason, to be changes for the worse; and he left his country involved in a ruinous war.

But though Greece hated him, and Athens spoke of him with mingled feelings, the debt which the world owes to Pericles is immense. Without him and his personal government; without the money which he lavished on shows and spectacles, on temples and statues ; without the sophists and philosophers whom he sheltered, we should have been the poorer by the loss of half our intellectual life. And in his political aims, however unfortunate the results, we can trace the outlines of a purpose which must always be the guiding light of the greatest statesmen: the wish to give to every citizen in and through the state, not only the blessings of peace and prosperity, but the still greater blessing of unimpeded action in all noble aspirations; to awaken in him such a devotion to his state as shall prove an unerring guide in conduct; to train his intellectual and moral powers, not with the lessons of a school, but by the experience of life; to develop an equal balance between the individual and the citizen ; to make duty a delight, and service an honour; to remove the sting from poverty and the charm from wealth; and to recognise benefits to the community as the only ground of civic distinction. Such a purpose was perhaps a distant ideal, even at Athens, and it is far more distant now; but near or far away, it is from such ideals that the spark is sent which kindles the flame of our highest efforts.

A few details have come down to us of the personal appearance and manners of Pericles. In his looks, and still more in his voice, he so closely resembled Pisistratus that for some time he was afraid to come forward in political life, lest he should be suspected of cherishing the designs which made the name of the tyrant hateful to every Athenian. His head, which was of unusual size and shape, was a common theme of merriment with the comedians ; they compared it to a kind of bean, called schinus, and exercised their wits in all kinds of allusions to the heavy head of the new Olympian. To conceal the defect, Pericles was accustomed, when in public, to wear a helmet, a practice which, as we have said, provoked Cratinus into declaring that he went “about with the Odeum on his head.” The suspicions which his appearance excited were not diminished by his education and manners. His tutor in “ music,” which at Athens included most of the intellectual part of education, as opposed to the physical, was Damon, the “ friend of tyrants ” and a “ consummate sophist,” who, under cover of his art, was thought to cherish designs against the democracy. Whether this view was correct or not, Damon was ostracised from Athens. Another teacher was Zeno, from whom Pericles learned the art of disputation as it was practised in the Eleatic school.

More important still was his connexion with Anaxagoras. In the society of this eminent man he not only acquired a knowledge and an elevation of thought which raised him above the superstitions of his time, but the influence extended to his language and demeanour. As an orator, Pericles was stately and dignified, carefully avoiding anything familiar or common in his language; calm and quiet in his delivery, and by these very qualities producing a deep impression on his audience. His movements were at all times sedate ; his dress was careful and becoming; he was rarely seen to smile, and nothing could provoke him to anger. When an impudent scoundrel, who had pursued him all day long with abuse and threats, followed him even to his door, he merely gave orders to his servants to see the fellow home through the dusk of the evening. He never moved in society, and was rarely seen in any street in the city but that which led from the public offices to his own home. He lived apart, dividing his time between the friendships of his intimate circle and the cares of state. Such reserve was a novel feature in an Athenian statesman, and different interpretations were placed upon it. To some it was mere arrogance and pride; he was the Olympian who governed Athens with his nod ; others regarded it as a cloak for private vices, and told the worst stories of the Periclean household. For himself he held that familiarity bred contempt; a man so greatly occupied in public business must beware of making himself too cheap. Like the state galley, he must only appear when his presence was required.

His power was far greater than that of any other man of his time. Yet he never abused it for mean or malicious purposes. In his last utterance, as we have said, he declared that no Athenian had ever put on mourning owing to any act of his. With these words before him, Plutarch, no mean judge of Greek and Roman character, pronounces sentence on the great Athenian. The Roman selected for comparison with Pericles in Plutarch’s series is Fabius Maximus, the opponent of Hannibal—

Unus qui nobis cunctando restituit rem.

In graciousness and clemency, in the forbearance and patience with which they endured the attacks of foolish and ignorant enemies, the Roman and the Grecian were fairly matched. “ But not less admirable than his clemency was the loftiness of spirit which prompted Pericles to utter that last noble speech, giving the foremost place among his triumphs to the self-restraint which had governed his exercise of supreme authority. Such a saying changes the epithet Olympian—attached to his name by a rash and thoughtless crowd—into a worthy and becoming title. For if indeed Olympus be a place of radiant calm,

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

Nor ever wind blows loudly, a life so unruffled by the storms of state, so spotless amid the temptations of unbounded power, may be called in the truest sense Olympian and divine.”