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READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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GEORGE GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECECHAPTER XXV.EARLIEST HISTORICAL VIEW OF PELOPONNESUS.DORIANS IN ARGOS AND THE NEIGHBORING CITIES
WE now pass from the northern members to the heart and
head of Greece, — Peloponnesus and Attica, taking the former first in order,
and giving as much as can be ascertained respecting its early historical
phenomena.
The traveller who entered
Peloponnesus from Boeotia during the youthful days of Herodotus and Thucydides,
found an array of powerful Doric cities conterminous to each other, and
beginning at the isthmus of Corinth. First came Megara, stretching across the
isthmus from sea to sea, and occupying the high and rugged mountain-ridge
called Geraneia; next Corinth, with its strong and conspicuous acropolis, and
its territory including Mount Oneion as well as the
portion of the isthmus at once most level and narrowest, which divided its two
harbors called Lechaeum and Kenchreae.
Westward of Corinth, along the Corinthian gulf, stood Sicyon, with a plain of
uncommon fertility, between the two towns: southward of Sicyon and Corinth were Phlius and Kleonae, both
conterminous, as well as Corinth, with Argos and the Argolis peninsula. The
inmost bend of the Argolic gulf, including a
considerable space of flat and marshy ground adjoining to the sea, was
possessed by Argos; the Argolis peninsula was divided by Argos with the Doric
cities of Epidaurus and Troezen, and the Dryopian city of Hermione, the latter possessing the
south-western corner. Proceeding southward along the Western coast of the gulf,
and passing over the little river called Tanos, the traveller found himself in the dominion of Sparta, which comprised the entire southern
region of the peninsula from its eastern to its western sea, where the river
Neda flows into the latter. He first passed from Argos across the difficult
mountain range called Parnon (which bounds to the
west the southern portion of Argolis), until he found himself in the valley of
the river Oenus, which he followed until it joined the Eurotas.
In the larger valley of the Eurotas, far removed from
the sea, and accessible only through the most impracticable mountain roads, lay
the five unwalled, unadorned, adjoining villages, which bore collectively the
formidable name of Sparta. The whole valley of the Eurotas,
from Skiritis and Beleminatis at the border of Arcadia, to the Laconian gulf; — expanding in several parts
into fertile plain, especially near to its mouth, where the towns of Gythium and Helos were found,— belonged to Sparta; together
with the cold and high mountain range to the eastward, which projects into the
promontory of Malea,—and the still loftier chain of Taygetus to the westward, which ends in the promontory of Taenarus.
On the other side of Taygetus, on the banks of the
river Pamisus, which there flows into the Messenian
gulf, lay the plain of Messene, the richest land in the peninsula. This plain
had once yielded its ample produce to the free Messenians Dorians, resident in
the towns of Stenyklerus and Andania.
But in the time of which we speak, the name of Messenians was borne only by a
body of brave but homeless exiles, whose restoration to the land of their
forefathers over passed even the exile's proverbially sanguine hope. Their land
was confounded with the western portion of Laconia, which reached in a
south-westerly direction down to the extreme point of Cape Akritas,
and northward as far as the river Neda.
Throughout his whole journey to the point last
mentioned, from the borders of Boeotia and Megaris,
the traveller would only step from one Dorian state
into another. But on crossing from the south to the north bank of the river
Neda, at a point near to its mouth, he would find himself out of Doric land
altogether : first, in the territory called Triphylia,
—next, in that of Pisa, or the Pisatid,— thirdly, in
the more spacious and powerful state called Elis; these three comprising the
coast-land of Peloponnesus from the mouth of the Neda to that of the Larissus. The Triphylians,
distributed into a number of small townships, the largest of which was Lepreon,—and the Pisatans,
equally destitute of any centralizing city,—had both, at the period of which we
are now speaking, been conquered by their more powerful northern neighbors of
Elis, who enjoyed the advantage of a spacious territory united under one
government; the middle portion, called the Hollow Elis, being for the most part
fertile, though the tracts near the sea were more sandy and barren. The Eleians
were a section of Aetolian emigrants into Peloponnesus, but the Pisatans and Triphylians had both
been originally independent inhabitants of the peninsula,—the latter being
affirmed to belong to the same race as the Minyae who
had occupied the ante-Boeotian Orchomenus : both, too, bore the ascendency of
Elis with perpetual murmur and occasional resistance.
Crossing the river Larissus,
and pursuing the northern coast of Peloponnesus south of the Corinthian gulf,
the traveller would pass into Achaia,— a name which
designated the narrow strip of level land, and the projecting spurs and
declivities, between that gulf and the northernmost mountains of the
peninsula,—Skollis, Erymanthus, Aroania, Krathis, and the towering eminence called Kyllene. Achaean cities,—twelve in number at least, if not
more,—divided this long strip of land amongst them, from the mouth of the Larissus and the north-western Cape Araxus on one side, to the western boundary of the Sicyonian territory on the other. According to the accounts of the ancient legends and
the belief of Herodotus, this territory had once been occupied by Ionian
inhabitants whom the Achaeans had expelled.
In making this journey, the traveller would have finished the circuit of Peloponnesus; but he would still have left
untrodden the great central region, enclosed between the territories just
enumerated,—approaching nearest to the sea on the borders of Triphylia, but never touching it anywhere. This region was
Arcadia, possessed by inhabitants who are uniformly represented as all of one
race, and all aboriginal. It was high and bleak, full of wild mountain, rock,
and forest, and abounding, to a degree unusual even in Greece, with those
land-locked basins from whence the water finds only a subterraneous issue. It
was distributed among a large number of distinct villages and cities. Many of
the village tribes,—the Maenalii, Parrhasii, Azanes, etc., occupying the central and the western
regions, were numbered among the rudest of the Greeks : but along its eastern
frontier there were several Arcadian cities which ranked deservedly among the
more civilized Peloponnesians. Tegea, Mantineia, Orchomenus, Stymphalus, Pheneus, possessed
the whole eastern frontier of Arcadia from the borders of Laconia to those of
Sicyon and Pellene in Achaia: Phigaleia at the south western corner, near the borders of Triphylia,
and Heraea, on the north bank of the Alpheius, near
the place where that river quits Arcadia to enter the Pisatis,
were also towns deserving of notice. Towards the north of this cold and
thinly-peopled region, near Pheneos, was situated the
small town of Nonakris, adjoining to which rose the
hardly accessible crags where the rivulet of Styx flowed down : a point of
common feeling for all Arcadians, from the terrific sanction which this water
was understood to impart to their oaths.
The distribution of Peloponnesus here sketched,
suitable to the Persian invasion and the succeeding half century, may also be
said (with some allowances) to be adapted to the whole interval between about
BC 550-370; from the time of the conquest of Thyreatis by Sparta to the battle of Leuctra. But it is not the earliest distribution
which history presents to us. Not presuming to criticize the Homeric map of
Peloponnesus, and going back only to 776 BC, we find this material difference,
— that Sparta occupies only a very small fraction of the large territory above
described as belonging to her. Westward of the summit of Mount Taygetus are found another section of Dorians, independent
of Sparta: the Messenian Dorians, whose city is on the bill of Stenyklerus, near the south-western boundary of Arcadia,
and whose possessions cover the fertile plain of Messene along the river Pamisus to its mouth in the Messenian gulf: it is to be
noted that Messene was then the name of the plain generally, and that no town
so called existed until after the battle of Leuctra. Again, eastward of the
valley of the Eurotas, the mountainous region and the
western shores of the Argolic gulf down to Cape Malea
are also independent of Sparta; belonging to Argos, or rather to Dorian towns
in unison with Argos. All the great Dorian towns, from the borders of the
Megarid to the eastern frontier of Arcadia, as above enumerated, appear to have
existed in 776 BC; Achaia was in the same condition, so far as we are able to
judge, as well as Arcadia, except in regard to its southern frontier,
conterminous with Sparta, of which more will hereafter be said. In respect to
the western portion of Peloponnesus, Elis (properly so called) appears to have
embraced the same territory in 776 BC as in 550 BC : but the Pisatid had been recently conquered, and was yet
imperfectly subjected by the Eleians; while Triphylia seems to have been quite independent of them. Respecting the south-western
promontory of Peloponnesus down to Cape Akritas, we
are altogether without information : reasons will hereafter be given for
believing that it did not at that time form part of the territory of the
Messenian Dorians.
Of the different races or people whom Herodotus knew
in Peloponnesus, he believed three to be aboriginal,—the Arcadians, the
Achaeans, and the Kynurians. The Achaeans, though
belonging indigenously to the peninsula, had yet removed from the southern portion
of it to the northern, expelling the previous Ionian tenants : this is a part
of the legend respecting the Dorian conquest, or Return of the Herakleids, and we can neither verify nor contradict it.
But neither the Arcadians nor the Kynurians had ever
changed their abodes. Of the latter, I have not before spoken, because they
were never (so far as history knows them) an independent population. They
occupied the larger portion of the territory of Argolis, from Orneae, near the northern or Phliasian border, to Thyrea and the Thyreatis, on the Laconian
border : and though belonging originally (as Herodotus imagines rather than
asserts) to the Ionic race — they had been so long subjects of Argos in his
time, that almost all evidence of their ante-Dorian condition had vanished.
But the great Dorian states in Peloponnesus—the
capital powers in the peninsula—were all originally emigrants, according to the
belief not only of Herodotus, but of all the Grecian world : so also were the
Aetolians of Elis, the Triphylians, and the Dryopes at Hermione and Asine. All these emigrations are so
described as to give them a root in the Grecian legendary world : the Triphylians are traced back to Lemnos, as the offspring of
the Argonautic heroes, and we are too uninformed about them to venture upon any
historical guesses. But respecting the Dorians, it may perhaps be possible, by
examining the first historical situation in which they are presented to us, to
offer some conjectures as to the probable circumstances under which they
arrived. The legendary narrative of it has already been given in the first
chapter of this volume, — that great mythical event called the Return of the
Children of Heracles, by which the first establishment of the Dorians in the
promised land of Peloponnesus was explained to the full satisfaction of Grecian
faith. One single armament and expedition, acting by the special direction of
the Delphian god, and conducted by three brothers, lineal descendants of the
principal Achaeo-Dorian heroes through Hyllus, (the
eponymous of the principal tribe) — the national heroes of the preexisting
population vanquished and expelled, and the greater part of the peninsula both
acquired and partitioned at a stroke,— the circumstances of the partition
adjusted to the historical relations of Laconia and Messenia, — the friendly
power of Aetolian Elis, with its Olympic games as the bond of union in
Peloponnesus, attached to this event as an appendage, in the person of Oxylus,—all these particulars compose a narrative well calculated
to impress the retrospective imagination of a Greek. They exhibit an epical
fitness and sufficiency which it would be unseasonable to impair by historical
criticism.
The Alexandrine chronology sets down a period of 328
years from the Return of the Herakleids to the first
Olympiad (1104 BC-776 BC), — a period measured by the lists of the kings of
Sparta, on the trustworthiness of which some remarks have already been offered.
Of these 328 years, the first 250, at the least, are altogether barren of facts;
and even if we admitted them to be historical, we should have nothing to
recount except a succession of royal names. Being unable either to guarantee
the entire list, or to discover any valid test for discriminating the
historical and the non-historical items, I here enumerate the Lacedaemonian
kings as they appear in Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici.
There were two joint kings at Sparta, throughout nearly all the historical time
of independent Greece, deducing their descent from Heracles through Eurysthenes
and Prokles, the twin sons of Aristodemus; the latter
being one of those three Herakleid brothers to whom
the conquest of the peninsula is ascribed : —
SPARTAN KINGS
Both Theopompus and Alkamenes reigned considerably longer, but the
chronologists affirm that the year 776 BC (or the first Olympiad) occurred in
the tenth year of each of their reigns. It is necessary to add, with regard to
this list, that there are some material discrepancies between different authors
even as to the names of individual kings, and still more as to the duration of
their reigns, as may be seen both in Mr. Clinton's chronology and in Müller's
Appendix to the History of the Dorians. The alleged sum total cannot be made to
agree with the items without great license of conjecture. O. Müller observes,
in reference to this Alexandrine chronology, "that our materials only
enable us to restore it to its original state, not to verify its correctness".
In point of fact they are insufficient even for the former purpose, as the
dissensions among learned critics attest.
We have a succession of names, still more barren of
facts, in the case of the Dorian sovereigns of Corinth. This city had its own
line of Herakleids, descended from Heracles, but not
through Hyllus. Hippotes, the progenitor of the
Corinthian Herakleids, was reported in the legend to
have originally joined the Dorian invaders of the Peloponnesus, but to have
quitted them in consequence of having slain the prophet Karnus.
The three brothers, when they became masters of the peninsula, sent for Aletes, the son of Hippotes, and
placed him in possession of Corinth, over which the chronologists make him
begin to reign thirty years after the Herakleid conquest. His successors are thus given -
Aletes ..... reigned 38 years
When we jump this vacant space, and place ourselves at
the first opening of history, we find that, although ultimately Sparta came to
hold the first place, not only in Peloponnesus, but in all Hellas, this was not
the case at the earliest moment of which we have historical cognizance. Argos,
and the neighboring towns connected with her by a bond of semi-religious,
semi-political union,—Sicyon, Phlius, Epidaurus, and Troezen,— were at first of greater power and consideration
than Sparta; a fact which the legend of the Herakleids seems to recognize by making Temenus the eldest brother of the three. And
Herodotus assures us that at one time all the eastern coast of Peloponnesus
down to Cape Melea, including the island of Cythera, all which came afterwards
to constitute a material part of Laconia, had belonged to Argos. Down to the
time of the first Messenian war, the comparative importance of the Dorian
establishments in Peloponnesus appears to have been in the order in which the
legend placed them, — Argos first, Sparta second, Messene third. It will be
seen hereafter that the Argeians never lost the
recollection of this early preeminence, from which the growth of Sparta had
extruded them; and the liberties of entire Hellas were more than once in danger
from their disastrous jealousy of a more fortunate competitor.
At a short distance of about three miles from Argos,
and at the exact point where that city approaches nearest to the sea, was
situated the isolated hillock called Temenion,
noticed both by Strabo and Pausanias. It was a small village, deriving both its
name and its celebrity from the chapel and tomb of the hero Temenus, who was
there worshipped by the Dorians; and the statement which Pausanias heard was,
that Temenus, with his invading Dorians, had seized and fortified the spot, and
employed it as an armed post to make war upon Tisamenus and the Achaeans. What renders this report deserving of the greater attention,
is, that the same thing is affirmed with regard to the eminence called Solygeius, near Corinth : this too was believed to be the
place which the Dorian assailants had occupied and fortified against the
preexisting Corinthians in the city. Situated close upon the Saronic gulf, it
was the spot which invaders landing from that gulf would naturally seize upon,
and which Nikias with his powerful Athenian fleet did actually seize and occupy
against Corinth in the Peloponnesian war. In early days, the only way of
overpowering the inhabitants of a fortified town, generally also planted in a
position itself very defensible, was, — that the invaders, entrenching
themselves in the neighborhood, harassed the inhabitants and ruined their
produce until they brought them to terms. Even during the Peloponnesian war,
when the art of besieging had made some progress, we read of several instances
in which this mode of aggressive warfare was adopted with efficient results. We
may readily believe that the Dorians obtained admittance both into Argos and
Corinth in this manner. And it is remarkable that, except Sicyon (which is
affirmed to have been surprised by night), these were the only towns in the Argolic region which are said to have resisted them; the
story being, that Phlius, Epidaurus, and Troezen had admitted the Dorian intruders without
opposition, although a certain portion of the previous inhabitants seceded. We
shall hereafter see that the non-Dorian population of Sicyon and Corinth still
remained considerable.
The separate statements which we thus find, and the
position of the Temenion and the Solygeius,
lead to two conjectures, first, that the acquisitions of the Dorians in
Peloponnesus were also isolated and gradual, not at all conformable to the
rapid strides of the old Herakleid legend; next, that
the Dorian invaders of Argos and Corinth made their attack from the Argolic and the Saronic gulfs, — by sea and not by land. It
is, indeed, difficult to see how they can have got to the Temenion in any other way than by sea; and a glance at the map will show that the
eminence Solygeius presents itself, with reference to
Corinth, as the nearest and most convenient holding-ground for a maritime
invader, conformably to the scheme of operations laid by Nikias. To illustrate
the supposition of a Dorian attack by sea on Corinth, we may refer to a story
quoted from Aristotle (which we find embodied in the explanation of an old
adage), representing Hippotes the father of Aletes as having crossed the Maliac gulf (the sea immediately bordering on the ancient Maleans, Dryopians, and Dorians) in ships, for the purpose of
colonizing. And if it be safe to trust the mention of Dorians in the Odyssey,
as a part of the population of the island of Crete, we there have an example of
Dorian settlements which must have been effected by sea, and that too at a very
early period. “We must suppose (observes O. Müller, in reference to these Kretan Dorians) that the Dorians, pressed by want or
restless from inactivity, constructed piratical canoes, manned these frail and
narrow barks with soldiers who themselves worked at the oar, and thus being
changed from mountaineers into seamen, — the Normans of Greece, — set sail for
the distant island of Crete”. In the same manner, we may conceive the
expeditions of the Dorians against Argos and Corinth to have been effected; and
whatever difficulties may attach to this hypothesis, certain it is that the
difficulties of a long land-march, along such a territory as Greece, are still
more serious.
The supposition of Dorian emigrations by sea, from the Maliac gulf to the north-eastern promontory of
Peloponnesus, is farther borne out by the analogy of the Dryopes,
or Dryopians. During the historical times, this
people occupied several detached settlements in various parts of Greece, all
maritime, and some insular;— they were found at Hermione, Asine, and Eion, in
the Argolic peninsula (very near to the important
Dorian towns constituting the Amphiktyony of
Argos)—at Styra and Karystus in the island of Euboea,—in the island of Kythnus,
and even at Cyprus. These dispersed colonies can only have been planted by
expeditions over the sea. Now we are told that the original Dryopis,
the native country of this people, comprehended both the territory near the
river Spercheius, and north of Oeta,
afterwards occupied by the Malians, as well as the neighboring district south
of Oeta, which was afterwards called Doris. From
hence the Dryopians were expelled, — according to one
story, by the Dorians,— according to another, by Heracles and the Malians :
however this may be, it was from the Maliac gulf that
they started on shipboard in quest of new homes, which some of them found on
the headlands of the Argolic peninsula. And it was
from this very country, according to Herodotus, that the Dorians also set
forth, in order to reach Peloponnesus. Nor does it seem unreasonable to
imagine, that the same means of conveyance, which bore the Dryopians from the Maliac gulf to Hermione and Asine, also
carried the Dorians from the same place to the Temenion,
and the hill Solygeius.
The legend represents Sikyon,
Epidaurus, Troezen, Phlius,
and Kleonae, as all occupied by Dorian colonists from
Argos, under the different sons of Temenus : the first three are on the sea,
and fit places for the occupation of maritime invaders. Argos and the Dorian
towns in and near the Argolic peninsula are to be
regarded as a cluster of settlements by themselves, completely distinct from
Sparta and the Messenian Stenyklerus, which appear to
have been formed under totally different conditions. First, both of them are
very far inland, — Stenyklerus not easy, Sparta very
difficult of access from the sea; next, we know that the conquests of Sparta
were gradually made down the valley of the Eurotas seaward. Both these acquisitions present the appearance of having been made
from the land-side, and perhaps in the direction which the Herakleid legend describes, by warriors entering Peloponnesus across the narrow mouth of
the Corinthian gulf, through the aid or invitation of those Aetolian settlers
who at the same time colonized Elis. The early and intimate connection (on
which I shall touch presently) between Sparta and the Olympic games as
administered by the Eleians, as well as the leading part ascribed to Lycurgus
in the constitution of the solemn Olympic truce, tend to strengthen such a
persuasion.
In considering the early affairs of the Dorians in
Peloponnesus, we are apt to have our minds biased, first, by the Herakleid legend, which imparts to them an impressive, but
deceitful, epical unity; next, by the aspect of the later and better-known
history, which presents the Spartan power as unquestionably preponderant, and
Argos only as second by a long interval. But the first view (as I have already
remarked) which opens to us, of real Grecian history, a little before 776 BC,
exhibits Argos with its alliance or confederacy of neighboring cities colonized
from itself, as the great seat of Dorian power in the peninsula, and Sparta as
an outlying state of inferior consequence. The recollection of this state of
things lasted after it had ceased to be a reality, and kept alive pretensions
on the part of Argos to the headship of the Greeks as a matter of right, which
she became quite incapable of sustaining either by adequate power or by
statesmanlike sagacity. The growth of Spartan power was a succession of
encroachments upon Argos.
How Sparta came constantly to gain upon Argos will be
matter for future explanation : at present, it is sufficient to remark, that
the ascendency of Argos was derived not exclusively from her own territory, but
came in part from her position as metropolis of an alliance of autonomous
neighboring cities, all Dorian and all colonized from herself,—and this was an
element of power essentially fluctuating. What Thebes was to the cities of
Boeotia, of which she either was, or professed to have been, the founder, the
same was Argos in reference to Kleonae, Phlius, Sikyon, Epidaurus, Troezen, and Aegina. These towns formed, in mythical
language, “the lot of Temenus”,—in real matter of fact, the confederated allies
or subordinates of Argos the first four of them were said to have been Dorized
by the sons or immediate relatives of Temenus; and the kings of Argos, as
acknowledged descendants of the latter, claimed and exercised a sort of suzeraineté over them. Hermione, Asine, and Nauplia seem
also to have been under the supremacy of Argos, though not colonies. But this
supremacy was not claimed directly and nakedly : agreeably to the ideas of the
time, the ostensible purposes of the Argeian confederacy or Amphiktyony were religious, though its secondary and not less real effects, were political.
The great patron-god of the league was Apollo Pythaeus,
in whose name the obligations incumbent on the members of the league were
imposed. While in each of the confederated cities there was a temple to this
god, his most holy and central sanctuary was on the Larissa or acropolis of
Argos. At this central Argeian sanctuary, solemn sacrifices were offered by
Epidaurus as well as by other members of the confederacy, and, as it should
seem, accompanied by moneypayments,—which the Argeians, as chief administrators on behalf of the common
god, took upon them to enforce against defaulters, and actually tried to
enforce during the Peloponnesian war against Epidaurus. On another occasion,
during the 66th Olympiad (BC 514), they imposed the large fine of 500 talents
upon each of the two states Sikyon and Aegina, for
having lent ships to the Spartan king Kleomenes, wherewith he invaded the
Argeian territory. The Aeginetans set the claim at defiance, but the Sicyonians
acknowledged its justice, and only demurred to its amount, professing
themselves ready to pay 100 talents. There can be no doubt that, at this later
period, the ascendency of Argos over the members of her primitive confederacy
had become practically inoperative; but the tenor of the cases mentioned shows
that her claims were revivals of bygone privileges, which had once been
effective and valuable.
How valuable the privileges of Argos were, before the
great rise of the Spartan power, — how important an ascendency they conferred,
in the hands of an energetic man, and how easily they admitted of being used in
furtherance of ambitious views, is shown by the remarkable case of Pheidon, the Temenid. The few facts which we learn respecting this
prince exhibit to us, for the first time, something like a real position of
parties in the Peloponnesus, wherein the actual conflict of living historical
men and cities, comes out in tolerable distinctness.
Pheidon was designated by Ephorus as the tenth, and by Theopompus as the sixth, in lineal descent from
Temenus. Respecting the date of his existence, opinions the most discrepant and
irreconcilable have been delivered; but there seems good reason for referring
him to the period a little before and a little after the 8th Olympiad, —
between 770 BC. and 730 BC. Of the preceding kings of Argos we hear little: one
of them, Eratus, is said to have expelled the Dryopian inhabitants of Asine from their town on the Argolic peninsula, in consequence of their having
cooperated with the Spartan king, Nikander, when he invaded the Argeian
territory, seemingly during the generation preceding Pheidon; there is another, Damokratidas, whose date cannot be positively
determined, but he appears rather as subsequent than as anterior to Pheidon. We
are informed, however, that these anterior kings, even beginning with Medon,
the grandson of Temenus, had been forced to submit to great abridgment of their
power and privileges, and that a form of government substantially popular,
though nominally regal, had been established.3Pheidon, breaking through the
limits imposed, made himself despot of Argos. He then reestablished the power
of Argos over all the cities of her confederacy, which had before been so nearly
dissolved as to leave all the members practically independent. Next, he is said
to have acquired dominion over Corinth, and to have endeavored to assure it, by
treacherously entrapping a thousand of her warlike citizens; but his artifice
was divulged and frustrated by Abron, one of his confidential friends. He is
farther reported to have aimed at extending his sway over the greater part of
Peloponnesus, — laying claim, as the descendant of Heracles, through the eldest
son of Hyllus, to all the cities which that restless and irresistible hero had
ever taken. According to Grecian ideas, this legendary title was always
seriously construed, and often admitted as conclusive; though of course, where
there were strong opposing interests, reasons would be found to elude it.
Pheidon would have the same ground of right as that which, two hundred and
fifty years afterwards, determined the Herakleid Dorieus, brother of Cleomenes king of Sparta, to acquire for himself the
territory near Mount Eryx in Sicily, because his progenitor, Heracles, had
conquered it before him. So numerous, however, were the legends respecting the
conquests of Heracles, that the claim of Pheidon must have covered the greater
part of Peloponnesus, except Sparta and the plain of Messene, which were
already in the hands of Herakleids.
Nor was the ambition of Pheidon satisfied even with
these large pretensions. He farther claimed the right of presiding at the
celebration of those religious games, or Agones,
which had been instituted by Herakles, —and among these was numbered the
Olympic Agon, then, however, enjoying but a slender fraction of the lustre which afterwards came to attach to it. The
presidency of any of the more celebrated festivals current throughout Greece,
was a privilege immensely prized. It was at once dignified and lucrative, and
the course of our history will present more than one example in which blood was
shed to determine what state should enjoy it. Phedon marched to Olympia, at the epoch of the 8th recorded Olympiad, or 747 BC; on
the occasion of which event we are made acquainted with the real state of
parties in the peninsula.
The plain of Olympia,—now ennobled only by immortal
recollections, but once crowded with all the decorations of religion and art,
and forming for many centuries the brightest centre of attraction known in the ancient world,—was situated on the river Alpheius, in the territory called the Pisatid,
hard by the borders of Arcadia. At what time its agonistic festival, recurring
every fifth year, at the first full moon after the summer solstice, first began
or first acquired its character of special sanctity, we have no means of
determining. As with so many of the native waters of Greece, — we follow the
stream upward to a certain point, but the fountain-head, and the earlier flow
of history, is buried under mountains of unsearchable legend. The first
celebration of the Olympic contests was ascribed by Grecian legendary faith to
Heracles,— and the site of the place, in the middle of the Pisatid,
with its eight small townships, is quite sufficient to prove that the
inhabitants of that little territory were warranted in describing themselves as
the original administrators of the ceremony. But this state of things seems to
have been altered by the Aetolian settlement in Elis, which is represented as
having been conducted by Oxylus and identified with
the Return of the Herakleids. The Aetolo-Eleians,
bordering upon the Pisatid to the north, employed
their superior power in subduing their weaker neighbors, who thus lost their
autonomy and became annexed to the territory of Elis. It was the general rule
throughout Greece, that a victorious state undertook to performs the current
services of the conquered people towards the gods, such services being
conceived as attaching to the soil : hence, the celebration of the Olympic
games became numbered among the incumbencies of Elis, just in the same way as
the worship of the Eleusinian Demeter, when Eleusis lost its autonomy, was
included among the religious obligations of Athens. The Pisatans,
however, never willingly acquiesced in this absorption of what had once been
their separate privilege; they long maintained their conviction, that the
celebration of the games was their right, and strove on several occasions to
regain it. On those occasions, the earliest, so far as we hear, was connected
with the intervention of Pheidon. It was at their invitation that the king of
Argos went to Olympia, and celebrated the games himself; in conjunction with
the Pisatans, as the lineal successor of Heracles;
while the Eleians, being thus forcibly dispossessed, refused to include the 8th
Olympiad in their register of the victorious runners. But their humiliation did
not last long, for the Spartans took their part, and the contest ended in the
defeat of Pheidon. In the next Olympiad, the Eleian management and the regular
enrolment appear as before, and the Spartans are even said to have confirmed
Elis in her possession both of Pisatis and Triphylia.
Unfortunately, these scanty particulars are all which
we learn respecting the armed conflict at the 8th Olympiad, in which the
religious and the political grounds of quarrel are so intimately blended, —as
we shall find to be often the case in Grecian history. But there is one act of
Pheidon yet more memorable, of which also nothing beyond a meagre notice has
come down to us. He first coined both copper and silver money in Aegina, and
first established a scale of weights and measures, which, through his
influence, became adopted throughout Peloponnesus, and acquired, ultimately,
footing both in all the Dorian states, and in Boeotia, Thessaly, northern
Hellas generally, and Macedonia, — under the name of the Aeginaean Scale. There
arose subsequently another rival scale in Greece, called the Euboic, differing considerably from the Aeginaean. We do
not know at what time it was introduced, but it was employed both at Athens and
in the Ionic cities generally, as well as in Euboea, — being modified at
Athens, so far as money was concerned, by Solon's debasement of the coinage.
The copious and valuable information contained in M. Boeckh’s recent publication on Metrology, has thrown new
light upon these monetary and statical scales. He has shown that both the
Aeginaean and the Euboic scales — the former standing
to the latter in the proportion of 6 : 5 —had contemporaneous currency in
different parts of the Persian empire; the divisions and denominations of the
scale being the same in both, 100 drachma: to a mina, and 60 mime to a talent.
The Babylonian talent, mina, and drachma are identical with the Aeginaean : the
word mina is of Asiatic origin; and it has now been rendered highly probable,
that the scale circulated by Pheidon was borrowed immediately from the
Phoenicians, and by them originally from the Babylonians. The Babylonian,
Hebraic, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Grecian scales of weight (which were
subsequently followed wherever coined money was introduced) are found to be so
nearly conformable, as to warrant a belief that they are all deduced from one
common origin; and that origin the Chaldean priesthood of Babylon. It is to
Pheidon, and to his position as chief of the Argeian confederacy, that the
Greeks owe the first introduction of the Babylonian scale of weight, and the
first employment of coined and stamped money.
If we maturely weigh the few, but striking acts of
Pheidon which have been preserved to us, and which there is no reason to
discredit, we shall find ourselves introduced to an early historical state of
Peloponnesus very different from that to which another century will bring us.
That Argos, with the federative cities attached to her, was at this early time
decidedly the commanding power in that peninsula, is sufficiently shown by the
establishment and reception of the Pheidonian weights,
measures, and monetary system,—while the other incidents mentioned completely
harmonize with the same idea. Against the oppressions of Elis, the Pisatans invoked Pheidon, —partly as exercising a primacy
in Peloponnesus, just as the inhabitants of Lepreum in Triphylia, three centuries afterwards, called in
the aid of Sparta for the same object, at a time when Sparta possessed the
headship,—and partly as the lineal representative of Heracles, who had founded
those games from the management of which they had been unjustly extruded. On
the other hand, Sparta appears as a second-rate power. The Aeginaean scale of
weight and measure was adopted there as elsewhere—the Messenian Dorians were
still equal and independent, — and we find Sparta interfering to assist Elis by
virtue of an obligation growing (so the legend represents it) out of the common Aetolo-Dorian emigration; not at all from any
acknowledged primacy, such as we shall see her enjoying hereafter. The first
coinage of copper and silver money is a capital event in Grecian history, and
must be held to imply considerable commerce as well as those extensive views
which belong only to a conspicuous and leading position. The ambition of
Pheidon to resume all the acquisitions made by his ancestor Heracles, suggests
the same large estimate of his actual power. He is characterized as a despot,
and even as the most insolent of all despots : how far he deserved such a
reputation, we have no means of judging. We may remark, however, that he lived
before the age of despots or tyrants, properly so called, and before the Herakleid lineage had yet lost its primary, half-political,
half-religious character. Moreover, the later historians have invested his
actions with a color of exorbitant aggression, by applying them to a state of
things which belonged to their time and not to his. Thus Ephorus represents him
as having deprived the Lacedaemonians of the headship of Peloponnesus, which
they never possessed until long after him, — and also as setting at naught the
sworn inviolability of the territory of the Eleians, enjoyed by the latter as
celebrators of the Olympic games; whereas the Agonothesia,
or right of superintendence claimed by Elis, had not at that time acquired the
sanction of prescription, —while the conquest of Pisa by the Eleians themselves
had proved that this sacred function did not protect the territory of a weaker
people.
How Pheidon fell, and how the Argeians lost that supremacy which they once evidently possessed, we have no positive
details to inform us : with respect to the latter point, however, we can
discern a sufficient explanation. The Argeians stood
predominant as an entire and unanimous confederacy, which required a vigorous
and able hand to render its internal organization effective or its ascendency
respected without. No such leader afterwards appeared at Argos, the whole
history of which city is destitute of eminent individuals : her line of kings
continued at least down to the Persian war, but seemingly with only titular
functions, for the government had long been decidedly popular. The statements,
which represent the government as popular anterior to the time of Pheidon,
appear unworthy of trust. That prince is rather to be taken as wielding the
old, undiminished prerogatives of the Herakleid kings,
but wielding them with unusual effect,—enforcing relaxed privileges, and
appealing to the old heroic sentiment in reference to Heracles, rather than
revolutionizing the existing relations either of Argos or of Peloponnesus. It
was in fact the great and steady growth of Sparta, for three centuries after
the Lycurgean institutions, which operated as a cause
of subversion to the previous order of command and obedience in Greece.
DORIANS IN ASIA AND IN THE ISLANDS.
The assertion made by Herodotus,— that, in earlier
times, the whole eastern coast of Laconia as far as Cape Malea, including the
island of Cythera and several other islands, had belonged to Argos,— is
referred by O. Müller to about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 BC. Perhaps it had
ceased to be true at that period; but that it was true in the age of Pheidon,
there seem good grounds for believing. What is probably meant is, that the
Dorian towns on this coast, Prasiae, Zarex, Epidaurus Limera, and Boeae, were once autonomous, and members of the Argeian
confederacy,—a fact highly probable, on independent evidence, with respect to
Epidaurus Limera, inasmuch as that town was a
settlement from Epidaurus in the Argolic peninsula:
and Boeae too had its own oekist and eponymous, the Herakleid Boeus, noway connected with Sparta,— perhaps derived from
the same source as the name of the town Boeon in
Doris. The Argeian confederated towns would thus comprehend the whole coast of
the Argolic and Saronic gulfs, from Cythera as far as
Aegina, besides other islands which we do not know : Aegina had received a
colony of Dorians from Argos and Epidaurus, upon which latter town it continued
for some time in a state of dependence. It will at once be seen that this
extent of coast implies a considerable degree of commerce and maritime
activity. We have besides to consider the range of Doric colonies in the
southern islands of the Aegean and in the south-western corner of Asia
Minor,—Crete, Kos, Rhodes (with its three distinct cities), Halicarnassus, Knidus, Myndus, Nisyrus, Syme,
Karpathos, Kalydna, etc. Of the Doric establishments
here named, several are connected (as has been before stated) with the great
emigration of the Temenid Althaemenes from Argos :
but what we particularly observe is, that they are often referred as colonies
promiscuously to Argos, Troezen, Epidauras — more frequently however, as it seems, to Argos. All these settlements are
doubtless older than Pheidon, and we may conceive them as proceeding conjointly
from the allied Dorian towns in the Argolic peninsula,
at a time when they were more in the habit of united action than they
afterwards became : a captain of emigrants selected from the line of Heracles
and Temenus was suitable to the feelings of all of them. We may thus look back
to a period, at the very beginning of the Olympiads, when the maritime Dorians
on the east of Peloponnesus maintained a considerable intercourse and commerce,
not only among themselves, but also with their settlements on the Asiatic coast
and islands. That the Argolic peninsula formed an
early centre for maritime rendezvous, we may farther
infer from the very ancient Amphiktyony of the seven
cities (Hermione, Epidaurus, Aegina, Athens, Prasiae,
Nauplia, and the Minyeian Orchomenus), on the holy
island of Kalauria, off the harbor of Troezen.
The view here given of the early ascendency of Argos,
as the head of the Peloponnesian Dorians and the metropolis of the Asiatic
Dorians, enables us to understand the capital innovation of Pheidon, —the first
coinage, and the first determinate scale of weight and measure, known in
Greece. Of the value of such improvements, in the history of Grecian
civilization, it is superfluous to speak, especially when we recollect that the
Hellenic states, having no political unity, were only held together by the
aggregate of spontaneous uniformities, in language, religion, sympathies,
recreations, and general habits. We see both how Pheidon came to contract the
wish, and how he acquired the power, to introduce throughout so much of the
Grecian world an uniform scale; we also see that the Asiatic Dorians form the
link between him and Phoenicia, from whence the scale was derived, just as the Euboic scale came, in all probability, through the Ionic
cities in Asia, from Lydia. It is asserted by Ephorus, and admitted even by the
ablest modern critics, that Pheidon first coined money "in Aegina";
other authors (erroneously believing that his scale was the Euboic scale) alleged that his coinage had been carried on “in a place of Argos called
Euboea”. Now both these statements appear highly improbable, and both are
traceable to the same mistake,—of supposing that the title, by which the scale
had come to be commonly known, must necessarily be derived from the place in
which the coinage had been struck. There is every reason to conclude, that what
Pheidon did was done in Argos, and nowhere else : his coinage and scale were
the earliest known in Greece, and seem to have been known by his own name, “the Pheidonian measures”, under which designation they
were described by Aristotle, in his account of the constitution of Argos. They
probably did not come to bear the specific epithet of Aeginaean until there was
another scale in vogue, the Euboic, from which to
distinguish the ; and both the epithets were probably derived, not from the
place where the scale first originated, but from the people whose commercial
activity tended to make them most generally known, — in the one case, the Aginetans; in the other case, the inhabitants of Chalcis
and Eretria. I think, therefore, that we are to look upon the Pheidonian measures as emanating from Argos, and as having
no greater connection, originally, with Aegina, than with any other city
dependent upon Argos.
There is, moreover, another point which deserves
notice. What was known by the name of the Aegimean scale, as contrasted with and standing in a definite ratio (6 : 5) with the Euboic scale, related only to weight and money, so far as
our knowledge extends : we have no evidence to show that the same ratio
extended either to measures of length or measures of capacity. But there seems
ground for believing that the Pheidonian regulations,
taken in their full comprehension, embraced measures of capacity as well as
weights : Pheidon, at the same time when he determined the talent, mina, and
drachm, seems also to have fixed the dry and liquid measures,—the medimnus and metretes, with their parts and multiples : and
there existed Pheidonian measures of capacity, though
not of length, so far as we know. The Aeginaean scale may thus have comprised
only a portion of what was established by Pheidon, namely, that which related
to weight and money.
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