Mosaics of Grecian History
BY MARCIUS WILLSON
AND ROBERT PIERPONT WILLSON
PREFACE.
The leading object had in view in the preparation of the present volume has
been to produce, within a moderate compass, a History of Greece that shall not
only be trustworthy, but interesting to all classes of readers.
It must be acknowledged that our standard historical works, with all their
worth, do not command a perusal by the people at large; and it is equally plain
that our ordinary School Manuals—the abridgments and outlines of more
voluminous works—do not meet with any greater favor. The mere outline system of
historical study usually pursued in the schools is interesting to those only to
whom it is suggestive of the details on which it is based; and we have long
been satisfied that it is not the best for beginners and for popular use; that
it inverts the natural order of acquisition; that for the young to master it is
drudgery; that its statistical enumeration, if ever learned by them, is soon
forgotten; that it tends to create a prejudice against the study of history;
that it does not lay the proper foundation for future historical reading; and
that, outside of the enforced study of the school-room, it is seldom made use
of. The people in general—the masses—do not read such works, while they do read
with avidity historical legends, historical romances, historical poems and
dramas, and biographical sketches. And we do not hesitate to assert that from
Shakspeare’s historical plays the reading public have acquired (together with
much other valuable information) a hundred-fold more knowledge of certain
portions of English history than from all the ponderous tomes of formal history
that have ever been written. It may be said that people ought to read Hume, and
Lingard, and Mackintosh, and Hallam, and Froude, and Freeman, instead of
Shakspeare’s “King John,” and “Richard II.,” and “Henry IV.,” and “Henry
VIII.,” etc. It is a sufficient reply to say they do not.
Historical works, therefore, to be read by the masses, must be adapted to the
popular taste. It was an acknowledgment of this truth that led Macaulay, the
most brilliant of historians, to remark, “We are not certain that the best
histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious
narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy, but much is
gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected, but the great characteristic
features are imprinted on the mind forever.” If the result to which Macaulay
refers be once attained by an introductory work so interesting that it shall
come into general use, it will, we believe, naturally lead to the reading of
some of the best standard works in the same historical field. In our attempt to
make this a work of such a preparatory character, we have borne in mind the
demand that has arisen for poetic illustration in the reading and teaching of
history, and have given this delightful aid to historical study a prominent
place—ofttimes making it the sole means of imparting information. And yet we
have introduced nothing that is not strictly consistent with our ideal of what
history should be; for although some of the poetic selections are avowedly
wholly legendary, and others, still, in a greater or less degree fictitious in
their minor details—like the by-plays in Shakspeare’s historic dramas—we
believe they do no violence to historical verity, as they are faithful pictures
of the times, scenes, incidents, principles, and beliefs which they are
employed to illustrate. Aside, too, from their historic interest, they have a
literary value. Many prose selections from the best historians are also
introduced, giving to the narrative a pleasing variety of style that can be
found in no one writer, even if he be a Grote, a Gibbon, or a Macaulay.
THE PRINCIPAL HISTORIES OF GREECE.
Believing that it may be of some advantage to the general reader, we give
herewith a brief sketch of the principal histories of Greece now before the
public. We may mention, among those of a comprehensive character, the works of
Goldsmith, Gillies, Mitford, Thirlwall, Grote, and Curtius:
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, “the popular poet, the charming novelist, the successful
dramatist, and the witty essayist,” wrote a popular history of Greece, in two
volumes, 8vo, 1774, embracing a period from the earliest date down to the death
of Alexander the Great. It is an attractive work, elegantly written, but is
superficial and inaccurate.
In 1786 was published a history of ancient Greece, in several volumes, by DR.
JOHN GILLIES, who succeeded Dr. Robertson as historiographer of Scotland. This
is a work of considerable merit but it is written in a spirit of decidedly
monarchical tendencies, although the author evidently aimed at great fairness
in his political views.
He says: “The history of Greece exposes the dangerous turbulence of democracy,
and arraigns the despotism of tyrants. By describing the incurable evils
inherent in every republican policy, it evinces the inestimable benefits
resulting to liberty itself from the lawful dominion of hereditary kings, and
the steady operation of well-regulated monarchy.”
In the year 1784 appeared the first volume of WILLIAM MITFORD’S History of
Greece, subsequently extended to eight and ten volumes, 8vo. It is the
first history of Greece that combines extensive research and profound
philosophical reflection; but it is “a monarchical” history, by a writer of
very strong anti-republican principles. “It was composed,” says Alison, the
distinguished historian of modern Europe, “during, or shortly after, the French
Revolution; and it was mainly intended to counteract the visionary ideas in
regard to the blessings of Grecian democracy, which had spread so far in the
world, from the magic of Athenian genius.” Says Chancellor Kent: “Mitford does
not scruple to tell the truth, and the whole truth, and to paint the stormy
democracies of Greece in all their grandeur and in all their wretchedness.”
Lord Byron said of the author: “His great pleasure consists in praising
tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and—what is
strange, after all—his is the best modern history of Greece in any
language.” But this was penned before Thirlwall’s and Grote’s histories were
published. Lord Macaulay says of Mitford: “Whenever this historian mentions
Demosthenes he violates all the laws of candor and even of decency: he weighs
no authorities, he makes no allowances, he forgets the best authenticated facts
in the history of the times, and the most generally recognized principles of
human nature.” The North British Review, after calling Mitford “a bad
scholar, a bad historian, and a bad writer of English,” says, farther, that “he
was the first writer of any note who found out that Grecian history was a
living thing with a practical bearing.”
The next truly important and comprehensive Grecian history, published from 1835
to 1840, in eight volumes, 8vo, was written by CONNOP THIRLWALL, D. D., Bishop
of St. David’s. It is a scholarly, elaborate, and philosophical work evincing a
thorough knowledge of Greek literature and of the German commentators. The
historian Grote said that, if it had appeared a few years earlier, he should
probably never have undertaken his own history of Greece. “I should certainly,”
he says, “not have been prompted to the task by any deficiencies such as those
I felt and regretted in Mitford.”
In comparing Thirlwall’s history with Grote’s, the North British Review
has the following judicious remarks: “Many persons, probably, who have no
special devotion to Grecian history wish to study its main outlines in
something higher than a mere school-book. To such readers we should certainly
recommend Thirlwall rather than Grote. The comparative brevity, the greater
clearness and terseness of the narrative, the freedom from diversions and
digressions, all render it far better suited for such a purpose. But for the
political thinker, who regards Grecian history chiefly in its practical
bearing, Mr. Grote’s work is far better adapted. The one is the work of a
scholar, an enlarged and practical scholar indeed, but still one in whom the
character of the scholar is the primary one. The other is the work of a
politician and man of business, a London banker, a Radical M. P., whose
devotion to ancient history and literature forms the most illustrious
confutation of the charges brought against such studies as being useless and
impractical.”
“The style of Thirlwall,” says Dr. Samuel Warren of England, in his
Introduction to Law Studies, “is dry, terse, and exact—not fitted,
perhaps, for the historical tyro, but most acceptable to the advanced student
who is in quest of things.”
GEORGE GROTE, Member of Parliament, and a London banker, who wrote a history of
Greece in twelve volumes, published from 1846 to 1855, has been styled, by way
of eminence, the historian of Greece, because his work is universally
admitted by critics to be the best for the advanced student that has yet been
written. The London Athenæum styles his history “a great literary
undertaking, equally notable whether we regard it as an accession of standard
value in our language, or as an honorable monument of what English scholarship
can do.” The London Quarterly Review says: “Errors the most inveterate,
that have been handed down without misgiving from generation to generation,
have been for the first time corrected by Mr. Grote; facts the most familiar
have been presented in new aspects and relations; things dimly seen, and only
partially apprehended previously, have now assumed their true proportions and
real significance; while numerous traits of Grecian character; and new veins of
Grecian thought and feeling, have been revealed to the eyes of scholars by Mr.
Grote’s searching criticism, like new forms of animated nature by the
microscope.”
The general character of the work has been farther well summed up by Sir
Archibald Alison. He says: “A decided liberal, perhaps even a republican, in
politics, Mr. Grote has labored to counteract the influence of Mitford in
Grecian history, and construct a history of Greece from authentic materials,
which should illustrate the animating influence of democratic freedom upon the
exertions of the human mind. In the prosecution of this attempt he has
displayed an extent of learning, a variety of research, a power of combination,
which are worthy of the very highest praise, and have secured for him a lasting
place among the historians of modern Europe.”
We may also mention, in this connection, the valuable and scholarly work of the
German professor, Ernst Curtius (1857-’67), in five volumes, translated by A.
Ward (1871-’74). His sympathies are monarchical, and his views more nearly
accord with those of Mitford and Thirlwall than with those of Grote.
The work by William Smith, in one volume, 1865, is an excellent summary of
Grecian history, as is also that of George W. Cox, 1876. The former work, which
to a considerable extent is an abridgment of Grote, has been brought down, in a
Boston edition, from the Roman Conquest to the middle of the present century,
by Dr. Felton, late President of Harvard College. President Felton has also
published two volumes of scholarly lectures on Ancient and Modern Greece
(1867).
The works devoted to limited periods of Grecian history and special departments
of research are very numerous. Among the most valuable of the former is the
History of the Peloponnesian War, by the Greek historian Thucydides, of
which there are several English versions. He was born in Athens, about the year
471 B.C. His is one of the ablest histories ever written.
Herodotus, the earliest and best of the romantic historians, sometimes called
the “Father of History,” was contemporary with Thucydides. He wrote, in a
charming style, an elaborate work on the Persian and Grecian wars, most of the
scenes of which he visited in person; and in numerous episodes and digressions
he interweaves the most valuable history that we have of the early Asiatic
nations and the Egyptians; but he indulges too much in the marvelous to be
altogether reliable.”
Of the numerous works of Xenophon, an Athenian who is sometimes called the
“Attic Muse,” from the simplicity and beauty of his style, the best known and
the most pleasing are the Anab’asis, the Memorabil’ia of
Socrates, and the Cyropedi’a, a political romance. He was born about 443
B.C. The best English translation of his works is by Watson, in Harper’s “New
Classical Library.”
The work of the Greek historian, Polybius, originally in forty volumes, of
which only five remain entire covered a period from the downfall of the
Macedonian power to the subversion of Grecian liberty by the Romans, 146 B.C.
It is a work of great accuracy, but of little rhetorical polish, and embraces
much of Roman history from which Livy derived most of the materials for his
account of the wars with Carthage.
In the first century of our era, Plutarch, a Greek biographer, wrote the
“Parallel Lives” of forty-six distinguished Greeks and Romans—a charming and
instructive work, translated by John and William Langhorne in 1771, and by
Arthur Hugh Clough in 1858.
A history of Greece, in seven volumes, by George Finlay, a British historian,
long resident at Athens, is noted for a thorough knowledge of Greek topography,
art, and antiquity. The completed work embraces a period from the conquest of
Greece by the Romans to the middle of the present century.
A History of Greek Literature, by J. P. Mahaffy, is the most polished
descriptive work in the department which it embraces. It is happily
supplemented by J. Addington Symonds’ Studies of the Greek Poets. Mr.
Mahaffy, in common with many German scholars, is an unbeliever in the unity of
the Iliad.
CONTENTS.
[The names of authors from whom illustrative prose selections are taken in
SMALL CAPITALS; those from whom poetic selections are taken are
in italics.]
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE GRECIAN STATES AND ISLANDS.
Introductory.—Olympus.—Hemans.—Pi’e-rus.—Pope.
1. Thessaly.—Tem’pe.—Hemans.
2. Epi’rus.—Cocy’tus, Ach’eron, Dodo’na.—Milton: Haygarth:
Byron.
3. Acarna’nia.
4. Æto’lia.
5. Lo’cris.
6. Do’ris.
7. Pho’cis.—Parnassus.—Byron.—Delphi.—Hemans.
8. Bœo’tia.—Thebes.—Schiller.
9. Attica.—Byron.
10. Corinth.—Byron: Haygarth.
11. Acha’ia.
12. Arca’dia.
13. Ar’golis.—Myce’næ.—Hemans.
14. Laco’nia.
15. Messe’nia.
16. E’lis.
17. The Isles of Greece.—Byron.
Rising from the Sea.”—Woolner.
Stroph’a-des.—Virgil.—Paxos.—Zacyn’thus.—Cephalo’nia.—Ith’aca.—Leu’cas
or Leuca’dia.—Corcy’ra or Cor’fu.—”Gardens of Alcin’o-us.”
CHAPTER II.
THE FABULOUS AND LEGENDARY PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY.
- Grecian Mythology.
- Value of the Grecian Fables.— J. Stuart Blackie
The Battle of the Giants.— He’siod
Hymn to Jupiter.— Clean’thes
The god Apollo.— Ov’id.
Fancies of the Greek Mind.— Wordsworth: LIDDELL:
Blackie.
The Poet’s Lament.— Schiller.
The Creation.— Ovid.
The Origin of Evil.— Hesiod.
What Prome’theus Personified.— Blackie.
The Punishment of Prometheus.— Æs’chylus:
Shelley
Deluge of Deuca’lion.— Ovid.
Moral Characteristics of the Gods, etc.— MAHAFFY: GLADSTONE:
Homer: Æschylus: Hesiod.
Oaths.— Homer: Æschylus: Soph’ocles:
Virgil.
The Future State.— Homer.- Story of Tan’talus.— Blackie
- The Descent of Or’pheus.— Ovid:
Homer. - The Elys’ium.— Homer:
Pindar.
Hindu and Greek Skepticism.— (Cornhill
Magazine). - The Earliest Inhabitants of
Greece. - The Founding of Athens.—Blackie.
- The Heroic Age.
- Heroic Times foretold to
Adam.— Milton
Twelve Labors of Hercules.— Homer.
Fable of Hercules and Antæ’us.— Collins.
The Argonautic Expedition.— Pindar.
Legend of Hy’las.— Bayard Taylor.
The Trojan War.- The Greek Armament.— Eurip’ides.
- The name Helen.— Æschylus.
- Ulysses and Thersi’tes.— Homer.
(Pope). - Combat of Menela’us and Paris.— Homer.
(Pope). - Parting of Hector and Androm’a-che.— Homer.
(Pope). - Hector’s Exploits and Death of Patro’clus.—
Homer. (Pope). - The Shield of Achilles.— Homer.
(Sotheby). - Address of Achilles to his Horses.— Homer.
(Pope). - The Death of Hector.— Homer.
(Bryant). - Priam Begging for Hector’s Body.— Homer.
(Cowper). - Lamentations of Andromache and Helen.— Homer.
(Pope).
The Fate of Troy.— Virgil: Schiller.
Beacon Fires from Troy to Argos.— Æschlus.
Remarks on the Trojan War.— THIRLWALL: GROTE.
Fate of the Actors in the Conflict.— Ennius:
Landor: Lang. - Arts and Civilization in the Heroic
Age. - Political Life of the
Greeks.— MAHAFFY: HEEREN.
Domestic Life and Character.— MAHAFFY: Homer.
The Raft of Ulysses.— Homer. - The Conquest of Peloponnesus, and Colonies in Asia
Minor. - Return of the
Heracli’dæ.— Lucan.
EARLY GREEK LITERATURE, AND GREEK COMMUNITY OF
INTERESTS.
- Ionian Language and
Culture.—FELTON. - Homer and his Poems.— Antip’ater:
FELTON: TALFOURD: Pope: COLERIDGE. - Some Causes of Greek Unity.
- The Grecian Festivals.
- Chariot Race and Death of Ores’tes.—
Sophocles. - Apollo’s Conflict with the Python.—
Ovid. - The Apollo Belvedere.— Thomson.
National Councils.
- Chariot Race and Death of Ores’tes.—
SPARTA, AND THE LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS.
- Description of Sparta.—
Thomson. - The Constitution of Lycurgus.
- Spartan Patriotic Virtue.—
Tymnoe’us. - Spartan Poetry and Music.
- Spartan March.— CAMPBELL.:
Hemans.
Songs of the Spartans.— PLUTARCH: Terpan’der:
Pindar: Ion - Sparta’s Conquests.
- War-song.—
Tyrtoe’us.
FORMS OF GOVERNMENT, AND CHANGES IN GRECIAN
POLITICS.
- Introductory.—THIRLWALL:
LEG’ARÉ. - Changes from Aristocracies to
Oligarchies.—HEEREN. - Changes from Oligarchies to
Despotisms.—THIRLWALL: HEEREN: BULWER:
Theog’nis.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS.
- The Legislation of Dra’co.
- The Legislation of So’lon.—PLUTARCH:
A’kenside: Solon: Thomson: Solon. - The Usurpation of Pisis’tratus.
- The Usurper and his
Stratagem.—Akenside.
Solon’s Appeal to the Athenians.—Akenside.
Character of Pisistratus.—THIRLWALL.
Conspiracy of Harmodius and
Aristogi’ton.—Callis’tratus. - Birth of Democracy.—THIRLWALL.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREEK COLONIES.
Cumæ’an Sibyl.—Virgil: GROTE.
The’ron of Agrigen’tum.—Pindat.
Increase among the Sicilian Greeks.—GROTE.
PROGRESS OF LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.
- The Poems of Hesiod.—”Winter.”—FELTON: MURE:
THIRLWALL: MAHAFFY. - Lyric Poetry.
- Calli’nus of Ephesus.—”War
Elegy”.
Archil’ochus of Pa’ros—SYMONDS: MAHAFFY.
Alc’man.—”Sleep, or Night.”—MURE.
Ari’on.—Stesich’orus.—MAHAFFY. —”Spoils of
War.”—Akenside. —”Defence of.”—SYMONDS:
Antip’ater.
Anac’reon.—”The Grasshopper.”—Akenside. - Early Grecian Philosophy.
- The Seven
Sages.—(Maxims).—GROTE.
Tha’les, Anaxim’enes, Heracli’tus, Diog’enes, Anaximan’der, and
Xenoph’anes.
Pythag’oras and his Doctrines.—Blackie: Thomson: Coleridge:
Lowell.
The Eleusin’ian Mysteries.—Virgil. - Architecture.
- The Cyclo’pean
Walls.—Lord Houghton.
Dor’ic, Ion’ic, and Corinthian Orders.—Thomson.
Cher’siphron, and the Temple of Diana.—Story.
Temples at Pæs’tum.—Cranch. - Sculpture.
- Glaucus, Rhoe’cus,
Theodo’rus, Dipæ’nus, Scyllis.
Cause of the Progress of Sculpture.—THIRLWALL.
THE PERSIAN WARS.
- The Ionic Revolt.
- The First Persian War.
- The Battle of Marathon.
Legends of the Battle.—Hemans: Blackie.
The Death of Milti’ades: his Character.—GROTE: GILLIES.
Aristi’des and Themis’tocles:—Thomson: PLUTARCH:
THIRLWALL. - The Second Persian Invasion.
- Xerxes at
Aby’dos.—HEROD’OTUS.
Bridging of the Hellespont.—Juvenal: Milton.
The Battle of Thermop’ylæ.- Invincibility of the
Spartans.—Haygarth. - Description of the
Contest.—Haygarth. - Epitaphs on those who
fell.—Simon’ides. - The Tomb of Leon’idas.—Anon.
- Eulogy on the Fallen.—Byron
Naval Conflict at Artemis’ium.—PLUTARCH:
Pindar.
The Abandonment of Athens.
The Battle of Salamis.- Xerxes Views the Conflict.—Byron.
- Flight of Xerxes.—Juvenal:
Alamanni. - Celebrated Description of the Battle.—MITFORD:
Æschylus. - Another Account.—Blackie.
The Battle of Platæ’a.
- Description of the Battle.—BULWER.
- Importance of the Victory.—Southey:
BULWER. - Victory at Myc’a-le.—BULWER.
- “The Wasps.”—Aristophanes.
- Invincibility of the
THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.
- The Disgrace and Death of
Themistocles. - Tributes to his
Memory.—Plato: Geminus: THIRLWALL. - The Rise and Fall of Cimon.
- Character of
Cimon—Thomson.
Battle of Eurym’edon.—Simonides.
Earthquake at Sparta, and Revolt of the Helots.—BULWER:
ALISON. - The Accession of Pericles to
Power. - Changes in the Athenian
Constitution.—BULWER.
Tribute to Pericles.—Croly.
Picture of Athens in Peace.—Haygarth.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS, AND THE FALL OF
ATHENS.
- Speech of Pericles for
War.—THUCYD’IDES. - The First Peloponnesian War.
- Funeral Oration of
Pericles.—THUCYDIDES.
Comments on the Oration.—CURTIUS.
The Plague at Athens.—Lucretius.
Death of Pericles.—Croly: THIRLWALL: BULWER.
Character of Pericles.—MITFORD. - The Athenian Demagogues.
- Cleon, the
Demagogue.—GILLIES: ARISTOPH’ANES.
The Peace of Ni’cias. - The Sicilian Expedition.
- Treatment of the Athenian
Prisoners.—Byron. - The Second Peloponnesian War.
- Humiliation of Athens.
Barbarities of the Contest.—MAHAFFY.
GRECIAN LITERATURE AND ART, FROM THE BEGINNING
OF THE PERSIAN TO THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS (B.C.
500-403).
LITERATURE.
- Introductory.The Era of Athenian
Greatness.—SYMONDS. - Lyric Poetry.
- Simonides.—”Lamentation of
Dan’a-ë.”—MAHAFFY.
Pindar.—”Threnos.”—THIRLWALL: Prior: SYMONDS: Gray:
Pope: Horace. - The Drama.—BULWER.
- Tragedy.—Melpom’ene.—Akenside.Æschylus.—”Death of
Agamemnon.”—PLUMPTRE: LAWRENCE: VAN SCHLEGEL: Byron:
MAHAFFY.
Sophocles.—OEd’ipus Tyran’nus.”—TALFOURD: Phryn’ichus:
Sim’mias.
Euripides.—”Alcestis Preparing for Death.”—SYMONDS:
Milton: MAHAFFY.
The Transitions of Tragedy.—GROTE. - Comedy.
- Characterization of.
Aristophanes.—Extracts from “The Cloud.” “Choral Song from The
Birds.”—Plato: GROTE: SEWELL: Milton:
RUSKIN.
- Tragedy.—Melpom’ene.—Akenside.
- History.
- Hecatæ’ns.—MAHAFFY:
NIEBUHR.
Herodotus.—”Introduction to History.”—LAWRENCE.
Herodotus and his Writings.—MACAULAY.
Thucyd’i-des.—MAHAFFY.
Thucydides and Herodotus.—BROWNE. - Philosophy.
- Anaxag’oras: his
Death.—William Canton.
The Sophists.—MAHAFFY.
Socrates.—”Defence of Socrates.”—”Socrates’ Views of a Future
State.”—MAHAFFY: Thomson: SMITH: TYLER:
GROTE.
ART.
- Sculpture and Painting.
- Phid’ias.—LÜBKE:
GILLIES: LÜBKE.
Polygno’tus.—Apollodo’rus.—Zeux’is.—Parrha’sius.
—Timan’thes.
Parrhasius and his Captive.—SENECA:
Willis. - Architecture.
- Introductory.—Thomson.
The Adornment of Athens.—BULWER.- The Acrop’olis and its Splendors.
- The
Parthenon.—Hemans. - Other Architectural Monuments of
Athens. - The Temple of
The’seus.—Haygarth.
Athenian Enthusiasm for Art.—BULWER.
The Glory of Athens.—Talfourd.
THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES.
- The Expedition of Cyrus, and the Retreat of the Ten
Thousand.—Thomson: CURTIUS. - The Supremacy of Sparta.
- The Rise and Fall of Thebes.
- Pelop’idas and
Epaminon’das.—Thomson: CURTIUS.
THE SICILIAN GREEKS.
Ætna.—Pindar.
Hi’ero’s Victory at Cu’mæ.—Pindar.
Admonitions to Hiero.—Pindar.
Dionysius the Elder.—PLUTARCH.
Damon and Pythias.—The Hostage.—Schiller.
Archime’des.—Schiller
Visit of Cicero to the Grave of
Archimedes.—WINTHROP.
THE MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY.
- The Sacred War.—THIRLWALL.
- Sketch of Macedonia.
- Interference of Philip of Macedon.
- Demosthenes.—”The First
Philippic.”—GROTE.
Pho’cion.—His Influence at Athens.—GROTE. - War with Macedon.
- Accession of Alexander the Great.
- Alexander Invades Asia.
- The Battle of Arbe’la.—Flight and Death of
Dari’us.— GROTE: ÆS’CHINES. - Alexander’s Feast at
Persep’olis.—Dryden. - The Death of Alexander.
- His Career and his
Character.—Lu’can.
Reflections on his Life, etc.—Juvenal:
Byron.
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER TO THE CONQUEST OF
GREECE BY THE ROMANS.
- A Retrospective Glance at Greece.
- Oration of Æschines
against Ctes’iphon.
Oration of Demosthenes on the Crown. - The Wars that followed Alexander’s
Death. - Character of Ptolemy
Philadelphus—Theoc’ritus - The Celtic Invasion, and the War with
Pyrrhus. - Queen Archidami’a.—Anon.
- The Achæ’an League.—Philip V. of
Macedon. - Epigrams on Philip and the
Macedonians.—Alcoe’us. - Greece Conquered by Rome.
- “The Liberty of
Greece.”—Wordsworth.
Desolation of Corinth.—Antipater.
Last Struggles of Greece.—THIRLWALL:
Horace.
LITERATURE AND ART AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE
PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
LITERATURE
- The Drama.—MAHAFFY.
- Phile’mon.—”Faith in
God.”
Menander.—”Human Existence.”—SYMONDS: LAWRENCE. - Oratory.—Milton: CICERO.
- Æs’chines and
Demosthenes.—LEGARÉ: BROUGHAM: HUME. - Philosophy.
- Plato.—Haygarth:
BROUGHAM: KENDRICK: MITCHELL.
Aristotle.—Pope: BROWNE: LAWRENCE: SMITH: MAHAFFY.
Academe.—Arnold.
Epicu’rus and Ze’no.—Lucretius. - History.
- Xen’ophon.—MITCHELL.
Polyb’ius.
ART.
- Architecture and Sculpture.
- Changes in
Statuary.—WEYMAN.
The Dying Gladiator.—LÜBKE: Thomson.
The La-oc’o-on.—Thomson: Holland. - Painting.
- Venus Rising from the
Sea.—Antipater.
Apel’les and Protog’enes.—ANTHON.
Protogenes’ Picture at Rhodes.—Thomson.Concluding Reflections.
The Image of
Athens.—Shelley.
Immortal Influence of Athens.—MACAULAY:
Haygarth.
GREECE SUBSEQUENT TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST.
- Greece under the Romans.
- The Revolt.—FINLAY.
Christianity in Greece.—FELTON. - Changes down to the Fourteenth
Century. - Courts of the Crusading
Chieftains.—EDINBURGH REVIEW.
The Duchy of Athens.—FELTON.
The Turkish Invasion.—Hemans. - Contests between the Turks and
Venetians. - Past and Present of the
Acropolis of Athens.
The Siege and Fall of Corinth.—Byron. - Final Conquest of Greece by
Turkey. - Turkish
Oppressions.—TENNENT.
The Slavery of Greece.—Canning: Byron.
First Steps to Secure Liberty.—The Klephts.—FELTON.
Greek War-Songs.—Rhigas: Polyzois. - The Greek Revolution.
- A Prophetic Vision of the
Struggle.—Shelley’s “Hellas”.
Song of the Greeks.—Campbell.
American Sympathy with Greece.—TUCKERMAN: WEBSTER.
The Sortie at Missolon’ghi.—WARBURTON.
A Visit to Missolonghi.—STEPHENS.
Marco Bozzar’is.—Halleck.
Battle of Navari’no.—Campbell. - Greece under a Constitutional
Monarchy. - Revolution against King Otho.—BENJAMIN.
The Deposition of King Otho: Greece under his Rule. —TUCKERMAN:
BRITISH QUARTERLY.
Accession of King George.—His Government.—TUCKERMAN.
Progress in Modern Greece.—COOK.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE GRECIAN STATES AND ISLANDS.
The country called HELLAS by the Helle’nes, its native inhabitants, and
known to us by the name of Greece, forms the southern part of the most easterly
of the three great peninsulas of Southern Europe, extending into the
Mediterranean between the Æge’an Sea, or Grecian Archipelago, on the east, and
the Ionian Sea on the west. The whole area of this country, so renowned in
history, is only about twenty thousand square miles; which is considerably less
than that of Portugal, and less than half that of the State of Pennsylvania.
The mainland of ancient Greece was naturally divided into Northern Greece,
which embraced Thessaly and Epi’rus; Central Greece, comprising the divisions
of Acarna’nia, Æto’lia, Lo’cris, Do’ris, Pho’cis, Breo’tia, and At’tica (the
latter forming the eastern extremity of the whole peninsula); and Southern
Greece, which the ancients called Pel-o-pon-ne’sus, or the Island of
Pe’lops, which would be an island were it not for the narrow Isthmus of
Corinth, which connects it on the north with Central Greece. Its modern name,
the Mo-re’a, was bestowed upon it from its resemblance to the leaf of
the mulberry. The chief political divisions of Peloponnesus were Corinth and
Acha’ia on the north, Ar’golis on the east, Laco’nia and Messe’nia at the
southern extremity of the peninsula, E’lis on the west, and the central region
of Arca’dia.
Greece proper is separated from Macedonia on the north by the Ceraunian and
Cambunian chain of mountains, extending in irregular outline from the Ionian
Sea on the west to the Therma’ic Gulf on the east, terminating, on the eastern
coast, in the lofty summit of Mount Olympus, the fabled residence of the gods,
where, in the early dawn of history, Jupiter (called “the father of gods and
men”) was said to hold his court, and where he reigned supreme over heaven and
earth. Olympus rises abruptly, in colossal magnificence, to a height of more
than six thousand feet, lifting its snowy head far above the belt of clouds
that nearly always hangs upon the sides of the mountain.
Wild and august in consecrated pride,
There through the deep-blue heaven Olympus towers,
Girdled with mists, light-floating as to hide
The rock-built palace of immortal powers.
—HEMANS.
In the Olympian range, also, was Mount Pie’rus, where was the Pierian fountain,
one of the sacred resorts of the Muses, so often mentioned by the poets, and to
which POPE, with gentle sarcasm, refers when he says,
A little learning is a dangerous thing:
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
1. Thessaly.—From the northern chain of
mountains, the central Pindus range, running south, separates
Thessaly on the east from Epi’rus on the west. The former region,
enclosed by mountain ranges broken only on the east, and watered
by the Pene’us and its numerous tributaries, embraced the largest
and most fertile plain in all Greece. On the Thessalian coast,
south of Olympus, were the celebrated mounts Ossa and Pe’lion,
which the giants, in their wars against the gods, as the poets
fable, piled upon Olympus in their daring attempt to scale the
heavens and dethrone the gods. Between those mounts lay the
celebrated vale of Tem’pe, through which the Pene’us flowed to
the sea.
Romantic Tempe! thou art yet the same—
Wild as when sung by bards of elder time:
Years, that have changed thy river’s classic name,
[Footnote: The modern name of the Pene’us is Selembria or Salamvria.]
Have left thee still in savage pomp sublime.
—HEMANS.
Farther south, having the sea on one side and the
lofty cliffs of Mount OE’ta on the other, was the celebrated
narrow pass of Thermop’ylæ, leading from Thessaly into
Central Greece.
2. Epi’rus.—The country of Epirus, on
the west of Thessaly, was mostly a wild and mountainous region,
but with fertile intervening valleys. Among the localities of
Epirus celebrated in fable and in song was the river Cocy’tus,
which the poets, on account of its nauseous waters, described as
one of the rivers of the lower world—
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream.
The Ach’eron was another of the rivers—
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep—
—MILTON.
which was assigned by the poets to the lower
world, and over which the souls of the dead were said to be first
conveyed, before they were borne the Le’the, or “stream of
oblivion,” beyond. The true Acheron of Epirus has been thus
described:
Yonder rolls Acheron his dismal stream,
Sunk in a narrow bed: cypress and fir
Wave their dim foliage on his rugged banks;
And underneath their boughs the parched ground,
Strewed o’er with juniper and withered leaves,
Seems blasted by no mortal tread.
As the Acheron falls into the lake Acheru’sia,
and after rising from it flows underground for some distance,
this lake also has been connected by the poets with the gloomy
legend of its fountain stream.
This is the place
Sung by the ancient masters of the lyre,
Where disembodied spirits, ere they left
Their earthly mansions, lingered for a time
Upon the confines of eternal night,
Mourning their doom; and oft the astonished hind,
As home he journeyed at the fall of eve,
Viewed unknown forms flitting across his path,
And in the breeze that waved the sighing boughs
Heard shrieks of woe.
—HAYGARTH.
In Epirus was also situated the celebrated city
of Dodo’na, with the temple of that name, where was the most
ancient oracle in Greece, whose fame extended even to Asia. But
in the wide waste of centuries even the site of this once famous
oracle is forgotten.
Where, now, Dodona! is thine aged grove,
Prophetic fount, and oracle divine?
What valley echoes the response of Jove?
What trace remaineth of the Thunderer’s shrine?
All, all forgotten!
—BYRON.
3. Acarna’nia.—Coming now to Central
Greece, lying northward of the Corinthian Gulf, we find Acarnania
on the far west, for the most part a productive country with good
harbors: but the Acarnanians, a rude and warlike people, were
little inclined to Commercial pursuits; they remained far behind
the rest of the Greeks in culture, and scarcely one city of
importance was embraced within their territory.
4. Æto’lia, generally a rough and
mountainous country, separated, on the west, from Acarnania by
the river Ach-e-lo’us, the largest of the rivers of Greece, was
inhabited, like Acarnania, by a hardy and warlike race, who long
preserved the wild and uncivilized habits of a barbarous age. The
river Achelous was intimately connected with the religion and
mythology of the Greeks. The hero Hercules contended with the
river-god for the hand of De-i-a-ni’ra, the most beautiful woman
of his time; and so famous was the stream itself that the Oracle
of Dodona gave frequent directions “to sacrifice to the
Achelous,” whose very name was used, in the language of poetry,
as an appellation for the element of water and for rivers.
5. Lo’cris, lying along the Corinthian
Gulf east of Ætolia, was inhabited by a wild, uncivilized
race, scarcely Hellen’ic in character, and said to have been
addicted, from the earliest period, to theft and rapine. Their
two principal towns were Amphis’sa and Naupac’tus, the latter now
called Lepanto. There was another settlement of the Locri north
of Pho’cis and Bœo’tia.
6. Do’ris, a small territory in the
north-eastern angle of Ætolia proper—a rough but fertile
country—was the early seat of the Dorians, the most enterprising
and the most powerful of the Hellenic tribes, if we take into
account their numerous migrations, colonies and conquests. Their
colonies in Asia Minor founded six independent republics, which
were confined within the bounds of as many cities. From this
people the Doric order of architecture—a style typical of
majesty and imposing grandeur, and the one the most employed by
the Greeks in the construction of their temples—derived its
origin.
7. Pho’cis.—On the east of Locris,
Ætolia, and Doris was Phocis, a mountainous region,
bordered on the south by the Corinthian Gulf. In the northern
central part of its territory was the famed Mount Parnassus,
covered the greater part of the year with snow, with its sacred
cave, and its Castalian fount gushing forth between two of its
lofty rocks. The waters were said to inspire those who drank of
them with the gift of poetry. Hence both mountain and fount were
sacred to the Muses, and their names have come down to our own
times as synonymous with poetry and song. BYRON thus writes of
Parnassus, in lines almost of veneration, as he first viewed it
from Delphi, on the southern base of the mountain:
Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey,
Not in the frenzy of a dreamer’s eye,
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!
Oft have I dreamed of thee! whose glorious name
Who knows not, knows not man’s divinest lore:
And now I view thee, ’tis, alas! with shame
That I in feeblest accents must adore.
When I recount thy worshippers of yore
I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy
In silent joy to think at last I look on thee!
The city of Delphi was the seat of the celebrated
temple and oracle of that name. Here the Pythia, the priestess of
Apollo, pronounced the prophetic responses, in extempore
prose or verse; and here the Pythian Games were celebrated in
honor of Apollo.
Here, thought-entranced, we wander, where of old
From Delphi’s chasm the mystic vapor rose,
And trembling nations heard their doom foretold
By the dread spirit throned ‘midst rocks and snows.
Though its rich fanes be blended with the dust,
And silence now the hallowed haunt possess,
Still is the scene of ancient rites august,
Magnificent in mountain loneliness;
Still Inspiration hovers o’er the ground,
Where Greece her councils held, her Pythian victors crowned.
—MRS. HEMANS.
8. Bœo’tia.—Bœotia, lying to the east
of Phocis, bordering on the Euri’pus, or “Euboe’an Sea,” a narrow
strait which separates it from the Island of Euboe’a, and
touching the Corinthian Gulf on the south-west, is mostly one
large basin enclosed by mountain ranges, and having a soil
exceedingly fertile. It was the most thickly settled part of
Greece; it abounded in cities of historic interest, of which
Thebes, the capital, was the chief—whose walls were built,
according to the fable, to the sound of the Muses:
With their ninefold symphonies
There the chiming Muses throng;
Stone on stone the walls arise
To the choral Music-song.
—SCHILLER.
Bœotia was the scene of many of the legends celebrated by the poets, and
especially of those upon which were founded the plays of the Greek tragedians.
Near a fountain on Mount Cithæ’ron, on its southern border, the hunter Actæ’on,
having been changed into a stag by the goddess Diana, was hunted down and
killed by his own hounds. Pen’theus, an early king of Thebes, having ascended
Cithæron to witness the orgies of the Bacchanals, was torn in pieces by his own
mother and aunts, to whom Bacchus made him appear as a wild beast. On this same
mountain range also occurred the exposure of OEd’ipus, the hero of the most
famous tragedy of Sophocles. Near the Corinthian Gulf was Mount Hel’icon,
sacred to Apollo and the Muses. Its slopes and valleys were renowned for their
fertility; it had its sacred grove, and near it was the famous fountain of
Aganip’pe, which was believed to inspire with oracular powers those who drank
of its waters. Nearer the summit was the fountain Hippocre’ne, which is said to
have burst forth when the winged horse Peg’asus, the favorite of the Muses,
struck the ground with his hoofs, and which Venus, accompanied by her constant
attendants, the doves, delighted to visit. Here, we are told,
Her darling doves, light-hovering round their Queen,
Dipped their red beaks in rills from Hippocrene.
[Footnote: Always Hip-po-cre’ne in prose; but it is
allowable to contract it into three syllables in poetry, as in
the example above.]
It was here, also—
near this fresh fount,
On pleasant Helicon’s umbrageous mount—
that occurred the celebrated contest between the
nine daughters of Pie’rus, king of E-ma’thi-a (the ancient name
of Macedonia), and the nine Muses. It is said that “at the song
of the daughters of Pierus the sky became dark, and all nature
was put out of harmony; but at that of the Muses the heavens
themselves, the stars, the sea, and the rivers stood motionless,
and Helicon swelled up with delight, so that its summit reached
the sky.” The Muses then, having turned the presumptuous maidens
into chattering magpies, first took the name of
Pi-er’i-des, from Pieria, their natal region.
9. Attica.—Bordering Bœotia on the
south-east was the district of Attica, nearly in the form of a
triangle, having two of its sides washed by the sea, and the
other—the northern—shut off from the east of Central Greece by
the mountain range of Cithæron on the north-west, and
Par’nes on the east. Its other noted mountains were Pentel’icus
(sometimes called Mende’li), so celebrated for its quarries of
beautiful marble, and Hymet’tus, celebrated for its excellent
honey, and the broad belt of flowers at its base, which scented
the air with their delicious perfume. It could boast of its chief
city, the favored seat of the goddess Minerva—
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence—
as surpassing all other cities in beauty and
magnificence, and in the great number of its illustrious
citizens. Yet the soil of Attica was, on the whole, exceedingly
barren, with the exception of a few very fertile spots; but olive
groves abounded, and the olive was the most valuable product.
The general sterility of Attica was the great
safety of her people in their early history. “It drove them
abroad; it filled them with a spirit of activity, which loved to
grapple with danger and difficulty; it told them that, if they
would maintain themselves in the dignity which became them, they
must regard the resources of their own land as nothing, and those
of other countries as their own.” Added to this, the situation of
Attica marked it out in an eminent manner for a commercial
country; and it became distinguished beyond all the other states
of Greece for its extensive commercial relations, while its
climate was deemed the most favorable of all the regions of the
civilized world for the physical and intellectual development of
man. It was called “a sunny land,” and, notwithstanding the
infertility of its soil, it was full of picturesque beauty. The
poet BYRON, in his apostrophe to Greece, makes many striking and
beautiful allusions to the Attica of his own time:
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still its honeyed wealth Hymettus yields.
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli’s marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
10. Entering now upon the isthmus which leads
into Southern Greece, we find the little state of
Corinth, with its famous city of the same name, keeping
guard over the narrow pass, with one foot on the Corinthian Gulf
and the other on the Saron’ic, thereby commanding both the Ionian
and Æge’an seas, controlling the commerce that passed
between them, and holding the keys of Peloponnesus. It was a
mountainous and barren region, with the exception of a small
plain north-west of the city. Thus situated, Corinth early became
the seat of opulence and the arts, which rendered her the
ornament of Greece. On a lofty eminence overhanging the city,
forming a conspicuous object at a great distance, was her famous
citadel—so important as to be styled by Philip of Macedon “the
fetters of Greece.” Rising abruptly nearly two thousand feet
above the surrounding plain, the hill itself, in its natural
defences, is the strongest mountain fortress in Europe.
The whirlwind’s wrath, the earthquake’s shock,
Have left untouched her hoary rock,
The key-stone of a land which still,
Though fallen, looks proudly on that hill,
The landmark to the double tide
That purpling rolls on either side,
As if their waters chafed to meet,
Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet.
—BYRON.
The ascent to the citadel, in the days of
Corinthian glory, was lined on both sides with temples and
altars; but temples and altars are gone, and citadel and city
alike are now in ruins. Antip’ater of Sidon describes the city as
a scene of desolation after it had been conquered, plundered, and
its walls thrown down by the Romans, 146 B.C. Although the city
was partially rebuilt, the description is fully applicable to its
present condition. A modern traveller thus describes the site of
the ancient city:
The hoarse wind sighs around the mouldering walls
Of the vast theatre, like the deep roar
Of distant waves, or the tumultuous rush
Of multitudes: the lichen creeps along
Each yawning crevice, and the wild-flower hangs
Its long festoons around each crumbling stone.
The window’s arch and massive buttress glow
With time’s deep tints, whilst cypress shadows wave
On high, and spread a melancholy gloom.
Silent forever is the voice
Of Tragedy and Eloquence. In climes
Far distant, and beneath a cloudy sky,
The echo of their harps is heard; but all
The soul-subduing energy is fled.
—HAYGARTH.
11. Adjoining the Corinthian territory on the west, and extending about
sixty-five miles along the southern coast of the Corinthian Gulf, was
Acha’ia, mountainous in the interior; but its coast region for the
most part was level, exposed to inundations, and without a single harbor of any
size. Hence the Achæ’ans were never famous for maritime enterprise. Of the
eleven Achæan cities that formed the celebrated Achæan league, Pal’træ (now
Patras’) alone survives. Si’çy-on, on the eastern border of Achaia, was at
times an independent state.
12. South of Achaia was the central region of
Arcadia, surrounded by a ring of mountains, and
completely encompassed by the other states of the Peloponnesus.
Next to Laconia it was the largest of the ancient divisions of
Greece, and the most picturesque and beautiful portion (not
unlike Switzerland in its mountain character), and without either
seaports or navigable rivers. It was inhabited by a people simple
in their habits and manners, noted for their fondness for music
and dancing, their hospitality, and pastoral customs. With the
poets Arcadia was a land of peace, of simple pleasures, and
untroubled quiet; and it was natural that the pipe-playing Pan
should first appear here, where musical shepherds led their
flocks along the woody vales of impetuous streams.
13. Ar’golis, east of Arcadia, was
mostly a rocky peninsula lying between the Saron’ic and Argol’ic
gulfs. It was in great part a barren region, with the exception
of the plain adjoining its capital city, Argos, and in early
times was divided into a number of small but independent
kingdoms, that afterward became republics. The whole region is
rich in historic associations of the Heroic Age. Here was
Tir’yns, whose massive walls were built by the one-eyed Cy’clops,
and whence Hercules departed at the commencement of his twelve
labors. Here, also, was the Lernæ’an Lake, where the hero
slew the many-headed hydra; Ne’mea, the haunt of the lion slain
by Hercules, and the seat of the celebrated Ne’mean games; and
Myce’næ, the royal city of Agamemnon, who commanded the
Greeks in the Trojan War—now known, only by its ruins and its
legends of by-gone ages.
And still have legends marked the lonely spot
Where low the dust of Agamemnon lies;
And shades of kings and leaders unforgot,
Hovering around, to fancy’s vision rise.
—HEMANS.
14. At the south-eastern extremity of the
Peloponnesus was Laconia, the fertile portions of which
consisted mostly of a long, narrow valley, shut in on three sides
by the mountain ranges of Ta-yg’etus on the west and Parnon on
the north and east, and open only on the south to the sea.
Through this valley flows the river Euro’tas, on whose banks,
about twenty miles from the sea, stood the capital city,
Lacedæ’mon, or Sparta, which was unwalled and unfortified
during its most flourishing period, as the Spartans held that the
real defence of a town consists solely in the valor of its
citizens. The sea-coast of Laconia was lined with towns, and
furnished with numerous ports and commodious harbors. While
Sparta was equaled by few other Greek cities in the magnificence
of its temples and statues, the private houses, and even the
palace of the king, were always simple and unadorned.
15. West of Laconia was Messe’nia, the
south-western division of Greece, a mountainous country, but with
many fertile intervening valleys, the whole renowned for the
mildness and salubrity of its climate. Its principal river, the
Pami’sus, rising in the mountains of Arcadia, flows southward to
the Messenian Gulf through a beautiful plain, the lower portion
of which was so celebrated for its fertility that it was called
Maca’ria, or “the blessed;” and even to this day it is
covered with plantations of the vine, the fig, and the mulberry,
and is “as rich in cultivation as can be well imagined.”
16. One district more—that of E’lis, north of Messenia and west of
Arcadia, and embracing the western slopes of the Achaian and Arcadian
mountains—makes up the complement of the ancient Peloponnesian states. Though
hilly and mountainous, like Messenia, it had many valleys and hill-sides of
great fertility. The river Alphe’us, which the poets have made the most
celebrated of the rivers of Greece, flows westward through Elis to the Ionian
Sea, and on its banks was Olympia, the renowned seat of the Olympian games.
Here, also, was the sacred grove of olive and plane trees, within which were
temples, monuments, and statues, erected in honor of gods, heroes, and
conquerors. In the very midst stood the great temple of Jupiter, which
contained the colossal gold and ivory statue of the god, the masterpiece of the
sculptor Phidias. Hence, by the common law of Greece Elis was deemed a sacred
territory, and its cities were unwalled, as they were thought to be
sufficiently protected by the sanctity of the country; and it was only when the
ancient faith began to give way that the sacred character of Elis was
disregarded.
17. The Isles of Greece.—
The Isles of Greece! the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung—
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.
—BYRON.
The main-land of Greece was deeply indented by
gulfs and almost land-locked bays, and the shores were lined with
numerous islands, which were occupied by the Grecian race.
Beginning our survey of these in the northern Æge’an, we
find, off the coast of Thessaly, the Island of Lemnos, which is
fabled as the spot on which the fire-god Vulcan—the Lucifer of
heathen mythology—fell, after being hurled down from Olympus.
Under a volcano of the island be established his workshop, and
there forged the thunder-bolts of Jupiter and the arms of the
gods and of godlike heroes.
Of the Grecian islands proper, the largest is Euboe’a, a long and narrow island
lying east of Central Greece, from which it is separated by the narrow channel
of the Euri’pus, or Euboe’an Sea. South-east of Euboea are the Cyc’la-des,
[Footnote: From the Greek word kuklos, a circle.] a large
group that kept guard around the sacred Island of Delos, which is said to have
risen unexpectedly out of the sea. The Spor’a-des [Footnote: From the
Greek word speiro, to sow; scattered, like seed, so numerous were
they. Hence our word spores.] were another group, scattered over
the sea farther east, toward the coast of Asia Minor. The large islands of
Crete and Rhodes were south-east of these groups. In the Saron’ic Gulf, between
Attica and Ar’golis, were the islands of Sal’amis and Ægi’na, the former the
scene of the great naval conflict between the Greeks on the one side and the
Persians, under Xerxes, on the other, and the latter long the maritime rival of
Athens.
Cyth’era, now Cer’igo, an island of great
importance to the Spartans, was separated by a narrow channel
from the southern extremity of Laconia. It was on the coast of
this island that the goddess Venus is fabled to have first
appeared to mortals as she arose out of the foam of the sea,
having a beautifully enameled shell for her chariot, drawn by
dolphins, as some paintings represent; but others picture her as
borne on a shining seahorse. She was first called Cyth-er-e’a,
from the name of the island. The nymphs of ocean, of the land,
and the streams, the fishes and monsters of the deep, and the
birds of heaven, with rapturous delight greeted her coming, and
did homage to the beauty of the Queen of Love. The following fine
description of the scene, truly Grecian in spirit, is by a modern
poet:
Uprisen from the sea when Cytherea,
Shining in primal beauty, paled the day,
The wondering waters hushed, They yearned in sighs
That shook the world—tumultuously heaved
To a great throne of azure laced with light
And canopied in foam to grace their queen.
Shrieking for joy came O-ce-an’i-des,
And swift Ner-e’i-des rushed from afar,
Or clove the waters by. Came eager-eyed
Even shy Na-i’a-des from inland streams,
With wild cries headlong darting through the waves;
And Dryads from the shore stretched their long arms,
While, hoarsely sounding, heard was Triton’s shell;
Shoutings uncouth, bewildered sounds,
And innumerable splashing feet
Of monsters gambolling around their god,
Forth shining on a sea-horse, fierce and finned.
Some bestrode fishes glinting dusky gold,
Or angry crimson, or chill silver bright;
Others jerked fast on their own scanty tails;
And sea-birds, screaming upward either side,
Wove a vast arch above the Queen of Love,
Who, gazing on this multitudinous
Homaging to her beauty, laughed. She laughed
The soft, delicious laughter that makes mad;
Low warblings in the throat, that clinch man’s life
Tighter than prison bars.
—THOMAS WOOLNER.
Off the coast of Elis were the two small islands
called the Stroph’a-des, noted as the place of habitation of
those fabled winged monsters, the Harpies. Here Æne’as
landed in his flight from the ruins of Troy, but no pleasant
greetings met him there.
“At length I land upon the Strophades,
Safe from the dangers of the stormy seas.
Those isles are compassed by th’ Ionian main,
The dire abode where the foul Harpies reign:
Monsters more fierce offended Heaven ne’er sent
From hell’s abyss for human punishment.
We spread the tables on the greensward ground;
We feed with hunger, and the bowls go round;
When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry
And clattering wings, the hungry Harpies fly:
They snatch the meat, defiling all they find,
And, parting, leave a loathsome stench behind.”
—VIRGIL’S Æneid, B. III.
North of the Strophades, along the western coast
of Greece, were the six Ionian islands known in Grecian history
as Paxos, Zacyn’thus, Cephalo’nia, Ith’aca (the native island of
Ulysses), Leu’cas (or Leuca’dia), and Corcy’ra (now Corfu), which
latter island Homer calls Phæa’cia, and where he places the
fabled gardens of Alcin’o-us. It was King Alcinous who kindly
entertained Ulysses in his island home when the latter was
shipwrecked on his coast. He is highly praised in Grecian legends
for his love of agriculture; and his gardens, so beautifully
described by Homer, have afforded a favorite theme for poets of
succeeding ages. HOMER’S description is as follows:
Close to the gates a spacious garden lies,
From storms defended and inclement skies;
Four acres was the allotted space of ground,
Fenced with a green enclosure all around;
Tall thriving trees confessed the fruitful mould,
And reddening apples ripen here to gold.
Here the blue fig with luscious juice o’erflows;
With deeper red the full pomegranate glows;
The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear,
And verdant olives flourish round the year.
The balmy spirit of the western gale
Eternal breathes on fruits untaught to fail;
Each dropping pear a following pear supplies;
On apples apples, figs on figs arise:
The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden, and the fruits to grow.
Here ordered vines in equal ranks appear,
With all the united labors of the year;
Some to unload the fertile branches run,
Some dry the blackening clusters in the sun,
Others to tread the liquid harvest join,
The groaning presses foam with floods of wine.
Here are the vines in early flower descried,
Here grapes discolored on the sunny side,
And there in Autumn’s richest purple dyed.
Beds of all various herbs, forever green,
In beauteous order terminate the scene.
Two plenteous fountains the whole prospect crowned:
This through the garden leads its streams around,
Visits each plant, and waters all the ground;
While that in pipes beneath the palace flows,
And thence its current on the town bestows.
To various use their various streams they bring;
The people one, and one supplies the king.
—Odyssey, B. VII. POPE’S Trans.
CHAPTER II.
THE FABULOUS AND LEGENDARY PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY.
I. GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY.
As the Greeks, in common with the Egyptians and other Eastern nations, placed
the reign of the gods anterior to the race of mortals, Grecian
mythology—which is a system of myths, or fabulous opinions and doctrines
respecting the universe and the deities who were supposed to preside over
it—forms the most natural and appropriate introduction to Grecian history.
Our principal knowledge of this system is derived
from the works of Homer, He’si-od, and other ancient writers, who
have gathered the floating legends of which it consists into
tales and epic poems, many of them of great power and beauty.
Some of these legends are exceedingly natural and pleasing, while
others shock and disgust us by the gross impossibilities and
hideous deformities which they reveal. Yet these legends are the
spontaneous and the earliest growth of the Grecian mind, and were
long accepted by the people as serious realities. They are,
therefore, to be viewed as exponents of early Grecian
philosophy,—of all that the early Greeks believed, and felt, and
conjectured, respecting the universe and its government, and
respecting the social relations, duties, and destiny of
mankind,—and their influence upon national character was great.
As a Scotch poet and scholar of our own day well remarks,
Old fables these, and fancies old!
But not with hasty pride
Let logic cold and reason bold
Cast these old dreams aside.
Dreams are not false in all their scope:
Oft from the sleepy lair
Start giant shapes of fear and hope
That, aptly read, declare
Our deepest nature. God in dreams
Hath spoken to the wise;
And in a people’s mythic themes
A people’s wisdom lies.
—J. STUART BLACKIE.
According to Grecian philosophy, first in the
order of time came Cha’os, a heterogeneous mass, containing all
the seeds of nature. This was formed by the hand of an unknown
god, into “broad-breasted Earth” (the mother of the gods), who
produced U’ranus, or Heaven. Then Earth married Uranus, or
Heaven; and from this union came a numerous and powerful
brood—the Ti’tans, and the Cyclo’pes, and the gods of the wintry
season Kot’-tos, Bria’re-us, and Gy’ges, who had each a hundred
hands), supposed to be personifications of the hail, the rain,
and the snow.
The Titans made war upon their father, Uranus,
who was wounded by Chro’nos, or Saturn, the youngest and bravest
of his sons. From the drops of blood which flowed from the wound
and fell upon the earth sprung the Furies, the Giants, and the
Me’lian nymphs; and from those which fell into the sea sprang
Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. Uranus being dethroned,
Saturn was permitted by his brethren to reign, on condition that
he would destroy all his male children. But Rhe’a (his wife),
unwilling to see her children perish, concealed from him the
birth of Zeus’ (or Jupiter), Pos-ei’don (or Neptune), and
Pluto.
THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS.
The Titans, informed that Saturn had saved his children, made war upon him and
dethroned him; but he was soon restored by his son Jupiter. Yet Jupiter soon
afterward conspired against his father, and after a long war with him and his
giant progeny, that lasted full ten years, he drove Saturn from the kingdom,
which he held against the repeated assaults of all the gods, who were finally
destroyed or imprisoned by his overmastering power. This contest is termed “the
Battle of the Giants,” and is very celebrated in Grecian mythology. The
description of it which HESIOD has given in his Theogony is considered
“one of the most sublime passages in classical poetry, conceived with great
boldness, and executed with a power and force which show a masterly though
rugged genius. It will bear a favorable comparison with Milton’s ‘Battle of the
Angels,’ in Paradise Lost.” We subjoin the following extracts from it:
The immeasurable sea tremendous dashed
With roaring, earth resounded, the broad heaven
Groaned, shattering; huge Olympus reeled throughout,
Down to its rooted base, beneath the rush
Of those immortals. The dark chasm of hell
Was shaken with the trembling, with the tramp
Of hollow footsteps and strong battle-strokes,
And measureless uproar of wild pursuit.
So they against each other through the air
Hurled intermixed their weapons, scattering groans
Where’er they fell.
The voice of armies rose
With rallying shout through the starred firmament,
And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts
Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove
Curb down his force, but sudden in his soul
There grew dilated strength, and it was filled
With his omnipotence; his whole of might
Broke from him, and the godhead rushed abroad.
The vaulted sky, the Mount Olympus, flashed
With his continual presence, for he passed
Incessant forth, and lightened where he trod.
Thrown from his nervous grasp the lightnings flew,
Reiterated swift; the whirling flash,
Cast sacred splendor, and the thunder-bolt
Fell. Then on every side the foodful earth
Roared in the burning flame, and far and near
The trackless depth of forests crashed with fire;
Yea, the broad earth burned red, the floods of Nile
Glowed, and the desert waters of the sea.
Round and round the Titans’ earthy forms
Rolled the hot vapor, and on fiery surge
Streamed upward, swathing in one boundless blaze
The purer air of heaven. Keen rushed the light
In quivering splendor from the writhen flash;
Strong though they were, intolerable smote
Their orbs of sight, and with bedimming glare
Scorched up their blasted vision. Through the gulf
Of yawning chaos the supernal flame
Spread, mingling fire with darkness.
The whirlwinds were abroad, and hollow aroused
A shaking and a gathering dark of dust,
Crushing the thunders from the clouds of air,
Hot thunder-bolts and flames, the fiery darts
Of Jove; and in the midst of either host
They bore upon their blast the cry confused
Of battle, and the shouting. For the din
Tumultuous of that sight-appalling strife
Rose without bound. Stern strength of hardy proof
Wreaked there its deeds, till weary sank the war.
—Trans. by ELTON.
Thus Jupiter, or Jove, became the head of the
universe; and to him is ascribed the creation of the subsequent
gods, of man, and of all animal life, and the supreme control and
government of all. His supremacy is beautifully sung in the
following hymn by the Greek philosopher CLE-AN’THES, said to be
the only one of his numerous writings that has been preserved.
Like many others of the ancient hymns of adoration, it presents
us with high spiritual conceptions of the unity and attributes of
Deity; and had it been addressed to Jehovah it would have been
deemed a grand tribute to his majesty and a noble specimen of
deep devotional feeling.
Hymn to Jupiter.
Most glorious of th’ immortal powers above—
O thou of many names—mysterious Jove!
For evermore almighty! Nature’s source,
That govern’st all things in their ordered course,
All hail to thee! Since, innocent of blame,
E’en mortal creatures may address thy name—
For all that breathe and creep the lowly earth
Echo thy being with reflected birth—
Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound!
The universe that rolls this globe around
Moves wheresoe’er thy plastic influence guides,
And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.
The lightnings are thy ministers of ire,
The double-forked and ever-living fire;
In thy unconquerable hand they glow,
And at the flash all nature quakes below.
Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation draw
To one immense, inevitable law;
And with the various mass of breathing souls
Thy power is mingled and thy spirit rolls.
Dread genius of creation! all things bow
To thee! the universal monarch thou!
Nor aught is done without thy wise control
On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole,
Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind,
Act o’er the follies of a senseless mind.
Thou curb’st th’ excess; confusion to thy sight
Moves regular; th’ unlovely scene is bright.
Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings
To one apt harmony the strife of things.
One ever-during law still binds the whole,
Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner’s soul.
Wretches! while still they course the glittering prize,
The law of God eludes their ears and eyes.
Life then were virtue, did they this obey;
But wide from life’s chief good they headlong stray.
Now glory’s arduous toils the breast inflame;
Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;
Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease,
And the sweet pleasures of the body please.
With eager haste they rush the gulf within,
And their whole souls are centred in their sin.
But oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given—
Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven—
Save from their dreadful error lost mankind!
Father, disperse these shadows of the mind!
Give them thy pure and righteous law to know,
Wherewith thy justice governs all below.
Thus honored by the knowledge of thy way,
Shall men that honor to thyself repay,
And bid thy mighty works in praises ring,
As well befits a mortal’s lips to sing;
More blest nor men nor heavenly powers can be
Than when their songs are of thy law and thee.
—Trans. by ELTON.
Jupiter is said to have divided the dominion of the universe between himself
and his two brothers, Neptune and Pluto, taking heaven as his own portion, and
having his throne and holding his court on Mount Olympus, in Thessaly, while he
assigned the dominion of the sea to Neptune, and to Pluto the lower regions—the
abodes of the dead. Jupiter had several wives, both goddesses and mortals; but
last of all he married his sister Juno, who maintained permanently the dignity
of queen of the gods. The offspring of Jupiter were numerous, comprising both
celestial and terrestrial divinities. The most noted of the former were Mars,
the god of war; Vulcan, the god of fire (the Olympian artist who forged the
thunder-bolts of Jupiter and the arms of all the gods); and Apollo, the god of
archery, prophecy, music, and medicine.
“Mine is the invention of the charming lyre;
Sweet notes, and heavenly numbers I inspire.
Med’cine is mine: what herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their powers I know,
And am the great physician called below.”
—Apollo to Daphne, in OVID’S Metam. PRYDEN’S Trans.
Then come Mercury, the winged messenger, interpreter and ambassador of the
gods; Diana, queen of the woods and goddess of hunting, and hence the
counterpart of her brother Apollo; and finally, Minerva, the goddess of wisdom
and skill, who is said to have Sprung full-armed from the brain of Jupiter.
Besides these divinities there were many
others—as Ceres, the goddess of grain and harvests; and Vesta,
the goddess of home joys and comforts, who presided over the
sanctity of the domestic hearth. There were also inferior gods
and goddesses innumerable—such as deities of the woods and the
mountains, the meadows and the rivers—some terrestrial, others
celestial, according to the places over which they were supposed
to preside, and rising in importance in proportion to the powers
they manifested. Even the Muses, the Fates, and the Graces were
numbered among Grecian deities.
But while, undoubtedly, the great mass of the
Grecian people believed that their divinities were real persons,
who presided over the affairs of men, their philosophers, while
encouraging this belief as the best adapted to the understanding
of the people, took quite a different view of them, and explained
the mythological legends as allegorical representations of
general physical and moral truths. Thus, while Jupiter, to the
vulgar mind, was the god or the upper regions, “who dwelt on the
Summits of the highest mountains, gathered the clouds about him,
shook the air with his thunder, and wielded the lightning as the
instrument of his wrath,” yet in all this he was but the symbol
of the ether or atmosphere which surrounds the earth; and hence,
the numerous fables of this monarch of the gods may be considered
merely as “allegories which typify the great generative power of
the universe, displaying itself in a variety of ways, and under
the greatest diversity of forms.” So, also, Apollo was, in all
likelihood, originally the sun-god of the Asiatic nations;
displaying all the attributes of that luminary; and because fire
is “the great agent in reducing and working the metals, Vulcan,
the fire-god, naturally became an artist, and is represented as
working with hammer and tongs at his anvil. Thus the Greeks,
instead of worshipping Nature, worshipped the Powers of Nature,
as personified in the almost infinite number of their
deities.
The process by which the beings of Grecian
mythology came into existence, among an ardent and superstitious
people, is beautifully described by the poet WORDSWORTH as very
naturally arising out of the
Teeming Fancies of the Greek Mind.
The lively Grecian, in a land of hills,
Rivers, and fertile plains, and sounding shores,
Under a copse of variegated sky,
Could find commodious place for every god.
In that fair clime the lonely herdsman, stretched
On the soft grass through half a summer’s day,
With music lulled his indolent repose;
And in some fit of weariness, if he,
When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch’d
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun
A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute,
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
The night hunter, lifting a bright eye
Up toward the crescent moon, with grateful heart
Called on the lovely wanderer who bestow’d
That timely light to share his joyous sport.
And hence a beaming goddess, with her nymphs,
Across the lawn, and through the darksome grove
(Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes,
By echo multiplied from rock or cave),
Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars
Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven
When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slacked
His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thank’d
The Naiad. Sunbeams, upon distant hills
Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly.
The Zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings,
Lacked not for love fair objects, whom they wooed
With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,
Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,
From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth
In the low vale, or on steep mountain side—
And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns
Of the live deer, or goat’s depending beard—
These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood
Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself,
The simple shepherd’s awe-inspiring god.
Similar ideas are expressed in an article on the Nature of Early
History, by a celebrated English scholar, [Footnote: Henry George
Liddell, D. D., Dean of Christchurch College, Oxford.] who says: “The
legends, or mythic fables, of the Greeks are chiefly connected with religious
ideas, and may mostly be traced to that sort of awe or wonder with which simple
and uneducated minds regard the changes and movements of the natural world. The
direct and easy way in which the imagination of such persons accounts for
marvelous phenomena, is to refer them to the operation of Persons. When the
attention is excited by the regular movements of sun, and moon, and stars, by
the alternations of day and night, by the recurrence of the seasons, by the
rising and falling of the seas, by the ceaseless flow of rivers, by the
gathering of clouds, the rolling of thunder, and the flashing of lightning, by
the operations of life in the vegetable and animal worlds—in short, by any
exhibition of an active and motive power—it is natural for uninstructed minds
to consider such changes and movements as the work of divine Persons. In this
manner the early Greek legends associate themselves with personifications of
the powers of Nature. All attempts to account for the marvels which surround us
are foregone; everything is referred to the immediate operation of a god.
‘Cloud-compelling Zeus’ is the author of the phenomenon of the air;
‘Earth-shaking Pos-ei’don,’ of all that happens in the water under the earth;
Nymphs are attached to every spring or tree; De-me’ter, or Mother Earth, for
six months rejoices in the presence of Proserpine, [Footnote: In some
legends Proserpine is regarded as the daughter of Mother Earth, or Ceres, and a
personification of the growing corn.] the green herb, her daughter, and
for six months regrets her absence in dark abodes beneath the earth.
“This tendency to deify the powers of Nature is
due partly to a clear atmosphere and sunny climate, which incline
a people to live much in the open air in close communion with all
that Nature offers to charm the senses and excite the
imagination; partly to the character of the people, and partly to
the poets who in early times wrought these legendary tales into
works which are read with increased delight in ages when science
and method have banished the simple faith which procured
acceptance for these legends.
“Among the Greeks all these conditions were found
existing. They lived, so to say, out-of-doors; their powers of
observation were extremely quick, and their imagination
singularly vivid; and their ancient poems are the most noble
specimens of the old legendary tales that have been preserved in
any country.”
This tendency of the Grecian mind is also very
happily set forth in the following lines by PROFESSOR
BLACKIE:
The old Greek men, the old Greek men—
No blinking fools were they,
But with a free and broad-eyed ken
Looked forth on glorious day.
They looked on the sun in their cloudless sky,
And they saw that his light was fair;
And they said that the round, full-beaming eye
Of a blazing GOD was there!
They looked on the vast spread Earth, and saw
The various fashioned forms, with awe
Of green and creeping life,
And said, “In every moving form,
With buoyant breath and pulses warm,
In flowery crowns and veined leaves,
A GODDESS dwells, whose bosom heaves
With organizing strife.”
They looked and saw the billowy sea,
With its boundless rush of water’s free,
Belting the firm earth, far and wide,
With the flow of its deep, untainted tide;
And wondering viewed, in its clear blue flood,
A quick and scaly-glancing brood,
Sporting innumerous in the deep
With dart, and plunge, and airy leap;
And said, “Full sure a GOD doth reign
King of this watery, wide domain,
And rides in a car of cerulean hue
O’er bounding billows of green and blue;
And in one hand a three-pronged spear
He holds, the sceptre of his fear,
And with the other shakes the reins
Of his steeds, with foamy, flowing manes,
And coures o’er the brine;
And when he lifts his trident mace,
Broad Ocean crisps his darkling face,
And mutters wrath divine;
The big waves rush with hissing crest,
And beat the shore with ample breast,
And shake the toppling cliff:
A wrathful god has roused the wave—
Vain is all pilot’s skill to save,
And lo! a deep, black-throated grave
Ingulfs the reeling skiff.”
Anon the flood less fiercely flows,
The rifted cloud blue ether shows,
The windy buffets cease;
Poseidon chafes his heart no more,
His voice constrains the billows’ roar,
And men may sail in peace.
[Footnote: Pos-ei’don, another name for Neptune, the sea-god.]
In the old oak a Dryad dwelt;
The fingers of a nymph were felt
In the fine-rippled flood;
At drowsy noon, when all was still,
Faunus lay sleeping on the hill,
And strange and bright-eyed gamesome creatures,
With hairy limbs and goat-like features,
Peered from the prickly wood.
[Footnote: The Sa’tyrs.]
Thus every power that zones the sphere
With forms of beauty and of fear,
In starry sky, on grassy ground,
And in the fishy brine profound,
Were, to the hoar Pelasgic men
That peopled erst each Grecian glen,
GODS—or the actions of a god:
Gods were in every sight and sound
And every spot was hallowed ground
Where these far-wandering patriarchs trod.
But all this fairy world has passed away, to live
only as shadows in the realms of fancy and of song. SCHILLER
gives expression to the poet’s lament in the following lines:
Art thou, fair world, no more?
Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature’s face!
Ah, only on the minstrel’s magic shore
Can we the footsteps of sweet Fable trace!
The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;
Vainly we search the earth, of gods bereft;
Where once the warm and living shapes were rife
Shadows alone are left.
The Latin poet OV’ID, who lived at the time of
the Christian era, has collected from the fictions of the early
Greeks and Oriental nations, and woven into one continuous
history, the pagan accounts of the Creation, embracing a
description of the primeval world, and the early changes it
underwent, followed by a history of the four eras or ages of
primitive mankind, the deluge of Deuca’lion, and then onward down
to the time of Augustus Cæsar. This great work of the pagan
poet, called The Metamorphoses, is not only the most
curious and valuable record extant of ancient mythology, but some
have thought they discovered, in every story it contains, a moral
allegory; while others have attempted to trace in it the whole
history of the Old Testament, and types of the miracles and
sufferings of our Savior. But, however little of truth there may
be in the last of these suppositions, the beautiful and
impressive account of the Creation given by this poet, of the
Four Ages of man’s history which followed, and of the Deluge,
coincides in so many remarkable respects with the Bible
narrative, and with geological and other records, that we give it
here as a specimen of Grecian fable that contains some traces of
true history. The translation is by Dryden:
Account of the Creation.
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven’s high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature—if a face—
Rather, a rude and indigested mass;
A lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed,
Of jarring elements, and CHAOS named.
No sun was lighted up the world to view,
Nor moon did yet her blunted horns renew,
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky,
Nor, poised, did on her own foundations lie,
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water’s dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was impressed;
All were confused, and each disturbed the rest.
Thus disembroiled they take their proper place;
The next of kin contiguously embrace,
And foes are sundered by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky;
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire,
Whose atoms from inactive earth retire;
Earth sinks beneath and draws a numerous throng
Of ponderous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts unruly waters roar,
And, rising on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the god—whatever god was he—
Had formed the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round;
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,
And bade the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs and standing lakes,
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some parts in earth are swallowed up; the most,
In ample oceans disembogued, are lost.
He shades the woods, the valleys he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.
Then, every void of nature to supply,
With forms of gods Jove fills the vacant sky;
New herds of beasts sends the plains to share;
New colonies of birds to people air;
And to their cozy beds the finny fish repair.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man designed;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire formed and fit to rule the rest;
Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The God of nature did his soul inspire,
Or earth, but new divided from the sky,
And pliant, still retained the ethereal energy.
Thus while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
FOUR AGES OF MAN.
The poet now describes the Ages, or various epochs in the civilization of the
human race. The first is the Golden Age, a period of patriarchal simplicity,
when Earth yielded her fruits spontaneously, and spring was eternal.
The GOLDEN AGE was first, when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear.
His words were simple and his soul sincere;
Needless were written laws where none oppressed;
The law of man was written on his breast.
No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard,
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.
No walls were yet, nor fence, nor moat, nor mound;
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet’s angry sound;
Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow;
The flowers, unsown, in fields and meadows reigned,
And western winds immortal spring maintained.
The next; or the Silver Age, was marked by the
change of seasons, and the division and cultivation of lands.
Succeeding times a SILVER AGE behold,
Excelling brass, but more excelled by gold.
Then summer, autumn, winter did appear,
And spring was but a season of the year;
The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarged the bad.
Then air with sultry heats began to glow,
The wings of wind were clogged with ice and snow;
And shivering mortals, into houses driven,
Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven.
Those houses then were caves or homely sheds,
With twining osiers fenced, and moss their beds.
Then ploughs for seed the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labored first beneath the yoke.
Then followed the Brazen Age, which was an epoch
of war and violence.
To this came next in course the BRAZEN AGE;
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet.
According to He’siod, the next age is the Heroic,
in which the world began to aspire toward better things; but OVID
omits this altogether, and gives, as the fourth and last, the
Iron Age, also called the Plutonian Age, full of all sorts of
hardships and wickedness. His description of it is as
follows:
Hard steel succeeded then,
And stubborn as the metal were the men.
Truth, Modesty, and Shame the world forsook;
Fraud, Avarice, and Force their places took.
Then sails were spread to every wind that blew;
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:
Trees rudely hollowed did the waves sustain,
Ere ships in triumph plough’d the watery plain.
Then landmarks limited to each his right;
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone required to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share;
But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digged from her entrails first the precious ore;
(Which next to hell the prudent gods had laid),
And that alluring ill to sight displayed:
Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold;
And double death did wretched man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betrayed.
Now (brandished weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands:
No rights of hospitality remain;
The guest by him who harbored him is slain;
The son-in-law pursues the father’s life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife;
The step-dame poison for the son prepares,
The son inquires into his father’s years.
Faith flies, and Piety in exile mourns;
And Justice, here oppressed, to heaven returns.
The Scriptures assert that the wickedness of
mankind was the cause of the Noachian flood, or deluge. So, also,
we find that, in Grecian mythology, like causes led to the deluge
of Deuca’lion. Therefore, before giving Ovid’s account of this
latter event, we give, from Hesiod, a curious account of
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL, AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO THE WORLD.
It appears from the legend that, during a
controversy between the gods and men, Pro-me’theus,
[Footnote: In most Greek proper names ending in
eus, the eus is pronounced in one syllable; as
Or’pheus, pronounced Or’phuse.] who is said
to have surpassed all his fellow-men in intellectual vigor and
sagacity, stole fire from the skies, and, concealing it in a
hollow staff, brought it to man. Jupiter, angry at the theft of
that which had been reserved from mortals for wise purposes,
resolved to punish Prometheus, and through him all mankind, to
show that it was not given to man to elude the wisdom of the
gods. He therefore caused Vulcan to form an image of air and
water, to give it human voice and strength, and make it assume
the form of a beautiful woman, like the immortal goddesses
themselves. Minerva endowed this new creation with artistic
skill, Venus gave her the witchery of beauty, Mercury inspired
her with an artful disposition, and the Graces added all their
charms. But we append the following extracts from the beautifully
written account by Hesiod, beginning with the command which
Jupiter gave to Vulcan, the fire-god:
Thus spoke the sire, whom heaven and earth obey,
And bade the fire-god mould his plastic clay;
In-breathe the human voice within her breast;
With firm-strung nerves th’elastic limbs invest;
Her aspect fair as goddesses above—
A virgin’s likeness, with the brows of love.
He bade Minerva teach the skill that dyes
The wool with color’s as the shuttle flies:
He called the magic of Love’s charming queen
To breathe around a witchery of mien;
Then plant the rankling stings of keen desire
And cares that trick the limbs with pranked attire:
Bade Her’mes [Footnote: Mercury.] last impart the
Craft refined
Of thievish manners, and a shameless mind.
He gives command—the inferior powers obey—
The crippled artist [Footnote: Vulcan.] moulds the
tempered clay:
A maid’s coy image rose at Jove’s behest;
Minerva clasped the zone, diffused too vest;
Adored Persuasion and the Graces young
Her tapered limbs with golden jewels hung;
Round her smooth brow the beauteous-tressed Hours
A garland twined of Spring’s purpureal flowers.
The whole attire Minerva’s graceful art
Disposed, adjusted, formed to every part;
And last, the winged herald [Footnote: Mercury.] of the skies,
Slayers of Argus, gave the gift of lies—
Gave trickish manners, honeyed words instilled,
As he that rolls the deepening thunder willed:
Then by the feathered messenger of Heaven
The name PANDO’RA to the maid was given;
For all the gods conferred a gifted grace
To crown this mischief of the mortal race.
Thus furnished, Pandora was brought as a gift from Jupiter to the dwelling of
Ep-i-me’theus, the brother of Prometheus; and the former, dazzled by her
charms, received her in spite of the warnings of his sagacious brother, and
made her his wife.
The sire commands the winged herald bear
The finished nymph, th’ inextricable snare.
To Epimetheus was the present brought:
Prometheus’ warning vanished from his thought—
That he disdain each offering of the skies,
And straight restore, lest ill to man arise.
But he received, and, conscious, knew too late
Th’ insidious gift, and felt the curse of fate.
In the dwelling of Epimetheus stood a closed casket, which he had been
forbidden to open; but Pandora, disregarding the injunction, raised the lid;
when lo! to her consternation, all the evils hitherto unknown to mortals poured
out, and spread themselves over the earth. In terror at the sight of these
monsters, Pandora shut down the lid just in time to prevent the escape of
Hope, which thus remained to man, his chief support and consolation amid
the trials of his pilgrimage.
On earth, of yore, the sons of men abode
From evil free, and labor’s galling load;
Free from diseases that; with racking rage,
Precipitate the pale decline of age.
Now swift the days of manhood haste away,
And misery’s pressure turns the temples gray.
The Woman’s hands an ample casket bear;
She lifts the lid—she scatters ill in air.
Hope sole remained within, nor took her flight—
Beneath the vessel’s verge concealed from light;
Issued the rest, in quick dispersion buried,
And woes innumerous roamed the breathing world:
With ills the land is full, with ills the sea;
Diseases haunt our frail humanity;
Self-wandering through the noon, at night they glide
Voiceless—a voice the power all-wise denied:
Know, then, this awful truth: it is not given
To elude the wisdom of omniscient Heaven.
—Trans. by ELTON.
PROFESSOR BLACKIE has made this legend the
subject of a pleasing poem, from which we take the following
extracts, beginning with the acceptance by Epimetheus of the gift
from Jupiter. The deluded mortal exclaims—
“Bless thee, bless thee, gentle Hermes!
Once I sinned, and strove
Vainly with my haughty brother
‘Gainst Olympian Jove.
Now my doubts his love hath vanquished;
Evil knows not he,
Whose free-streaming grace prepared
Such gift of gods for me.
Henceforth I and fair Pandora,
Joined in holy love,
Only one in heaven will worship—
Cloud-compelling Jove.”
Thus he; and from the god received
The glorious gift of Jove,
And with fond embracement clasped her,
Thrilled by potent love;
And in loving dalliance with her
Lived from day to day,
While her bounteous smiles diffusive
Scared pale care away.
By the mountain, by the river,
‘Neath the shaggy pine,
By the cool and grassy fountain
Where clear waters shine,
He with her did lightly stray,
Or softly did recline,
Drinking sweet intoxication
From that form divine.
One day, when the moon had wheeled
Four honeyed weeks away,
From her chamber came Pandora
Decked with trappings gay,
And before fond Epimetheus
Fondly she did stand,
A box all bright with lucid opal
Holding in her hand.
“Dainty box!” cried Epimetheus.
“Dainty well may’t be,”
Quoth Pandora—”curious Vulcan
Framed it cunningly;
Jove bestowed it in my dowry:
Like bright Phoebus’ ray
It shines without; within, what wealth
I know not to this day.”
It will be observed in what follows that the poet does not strictly adhere to
the legend as given by Hesiod, in which it is stated that Pandora, probably
under the influence of curiosity, herself raised the lid of the mysterious
casket. The poet, instead, attributes the act to Epimetheus, and so relieves
Pandora of the odium and the guilt.
“Let me see,” quoth Epimetheus,
“What my touch can do!”
And swiftly to his finger’s call
The box wide open flew.
O heaven! O hell! What Pandemonium
In the pouncet dwells!
How it quakes, and how it quivers;
How it seethes and swells!
Misty steams from it upwreathing,
Wave on wave is spread!
Like a charnel-vault, ’tis breathing
Vapors of the dead!
Fumes on fumes as from a throat
Of sooty Vulcan rise,
Clouds of red and blue and yellow
Blotting the fair skies!
And the air, with noisome stenches,
As from things that rot,
Chokes the breather—exhalation
From the infernal pot.
And amid the thick-curled vapors
Ghastly shapes I see
Of dire diseases, Epimetheus,
Launched on earth by thee.
A horrid crew! Some lean and dwindled,
Some with boils and blains
Blistered, some with tumors swollen,
And water in the veins;
Some with purple blotches bloated,
Some with humors flowing
Putrid, some with creeping tetter
Like a lichen growing
O’er the dry skin scaly-crusted;
Some with twisted spine
Dwarfing low with torture slow
The human form divine;
Limping some, some limbless lying;
Fever, with frantic air,
And pale consumption veiling death
With looks serenely fair.
All the troop of cureless evils,
Rushing reinless forth
From thy damned box, Pandora,
Seize the tainted earth!
And to lay the marshalled legions
Of our fiendish pains,
Hope alone, a sorry charmer,
In the box remains.
Epimetheus knew the dolors,
But he knew too late;
Jealous Jove himself, now vainly,
Would revoke the fate.
And he cursed the fair Pandora,
But he cursed in vain;
Still, to fools, the fleeting pleasure
Buys the lasting pain!
WHAT PROMETHEUS PERSONIFIED.
PROFESSOR BLACKIE says, regarding Prometheus, that the common conception of him
is, that he was the representative of freedom in contest with despotism. He
thinks, however, that Goethe is nearer the depth of the myth when, in his
beautiful lyric, he represents Prometheus as the impersonation of that
indefatigable endurance in man which conquers the earth by skilful labor, in
opposition to and despite; those terrible influences of the wild, elemental
forces of Nature which the Greeks supposed were concentrated in the person of
Jove. Accordingly, PROFESSOR BLACKIE, in his Legend of Prometheus;
represents him as proclaiming, in the following language, his empire on the
earth, in opposition to the powers above:
“Jove rules above: Fate willed it so.
‘Tis well; Prometheus rules below.
Their gusty games let wild winds play,
And clouds on clouds in thick array
Muster dark armies in the sky:
Be mine a harsher trade to ply—
This solid Earth, this rocky frame
To mould, to conquer, and to tame—
And to achieve the toilsome plan
My workman shall be MAN.
“The Earth is young. Even with these eyes
I saw the molten mountains rise
From out the seething deep, while Earth
Shook at the portent of their birth.
I saw from out the primal mud
The reptiles crawl, of dull, cold blood,
While winged lizards, with broad stare,
Peered through the raw and misty air.
Where then was Cretan Jove? Where then
This king of gods and men?
“When, naked from his mother Earth,
Weak and defenceless, man crept forth,
And on mis-tempered solitude
Of unploughed field and unclipped wood
Gazed rudely; when; with brutes, he fed
On acorns, and his stony bed
In dark, unwholesome caverns found,
No skill was then to tame the ground,
No help came then from him above—
This tyrannous, blustering Jove.
“The Earth is young. Her latest birth,
This weakling man, my craft shall girth
With cunning strength. Him I will take,
And in stern arts my scholar make.
This smoking reed, in which hold
The empyrean spark, shall mould
Rock and hard steel to use of man:
He shall be as a god to plan
And forge all things to his desire
By alchemy of fire.
“These jagged cliffs that flout the air,
Harsh granite rocks, so rudely bare,
Wise Vulcan’s art and mine shall own
To piles of shapeliest beauty grown.
The steam that snorts vain strength away
Shall serve the workman’s curious sway,
Like a wise child; as clouds that sail
White-winged before the summer gale,
The smoking chariot o’er the land
Shall roll at his command.
“‘Blow, winds, and crack your checks!’ my home
Stands firm beneath Jove’s rattling dome,
This stable Earth. Here let me work!
The busy spirits that eager lurk
Within a thousand laboring breasts
Here let me rouse; and whoso rests
From labor, let him rest from life.
To ‘live’s to strive;’ and in the strife
To move the rock and stir the clod
Man makes himself a god!”
THE PUNISHMENT OF PROMETHEUS.
Regarding the punishment of Prometheus for his daring act, the legend states
that Jupiter bound him with chains to a rock or pillar, supposed to be in
Scythia, and sent an eagle to prey without ceasing on his liver, which grew
every night as much as it had lost during the day. After an interval of thirty
thousand years Hercules, a hero of great strength and courage, slew the eagle
and set the sufferer free. The Greek poet ÆS’CHYLUS, justly styled the father
of Grecian tragedy, has made the punishment of Prometheus the basis of a drama,
entitled Prometheus Bound, which many think is this poet’s masterpiece,
and of which it has been remarked:
“Nothing can be grander than the scenery in which
the poet has made his hero suffer. He is chained to a desolate
and stupendous rock at the extremity of earth’s remotest wilds,
frowning over old ocean. The daughters of O-ce’a-nus, who
constitute the chorus of the tragedy, come to comfort and calm
him; and even the aged Oceanus himself, and afterward Mercury, do
all they can to persuade him to submit to his oppressor, Jupiter.
But all to no purpose; he sternly and triumphantly refuses.
Meanwhile, the tempest rages, the lightnings flash upon the rock,
the sands are torn up by whirlwinds, the seas are dashed against
the sky, and all the artillery of heaven is leveled against his
bosom, while he proudly defies the vengeance of his tyrant, and
sinks into the earth to the lower regions, calling on the Powers
of Justice to avenge his wrongs.”
In trying to persuade the defiant Prometheus to
relent, Æschylus represents Mercury as thus addressing
him:
“I have indeed, methinks, said much in vain,
For still thy heart, beneath my showers of prayers,
Lies dry and hard! nay, leaps like a young horse
Who bites against the new bit in his teeth,
And tugs and struggles against the new-tried rein,
Still fiercest in the weakest thing of all,
Which sophism is—for absolute will alone,
When left to its motions in perverted minds,
Is worse than null for strength! Behold and see,
Unless my words persuade thee, what a blast
And whirlwind of inevitable woe
Must sweep persuasion through thee! For at first
The Father will split up this jut of rock
With the great thunder and the bolted flame,
And hide thy body where the hinge of stone
Shall catch it like an arm! and when thou hast passed
A long black time within, thou shalt come out
To front the sun; and Zeus’s winged hound,
The strong, carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down
To meet thee—self-called to a daily feast—
And set his fierce beak in thee, and tear off
The long rags of thy flesh, and batten deep
Upon thy dusky liver!
“Do not look
For any end, moreover, to this curse,
Or ere some god appear to bear thy pangs
On his own head vicarious, and descend
With unreluctant step the darks of hell,
And the deep glooms enringing Tartarus!
Then ponder this: the threat is not growth
Of vain invention—it is spoken and meant!
For Zeus’s mouth is impotent to lie,
And doth complete the utterance in the act.
So, look to it, thou! take heed! and nevermore
Forget good counsel to indulge self-will!
To which Prometheus answers as follows:
“Unto me, the foreknower, this mandate of power,
He cries, to reveal it!
And scarce strange is my fate, if I suffer from hate
At the hour that I feel it!
Let the rocks of the lightning, all bristling and whitening,
Flash, coiling me round!
While the ether goes surging ‘neath thunder and scourging
Of wild winds unbound!
Let the blast of the firmament whirl from its place
The earth rooted below—
And the brine of the ocean, in rapid emotion,
Be it driven in the face
Of the stars up in heaven, as they walk to and fro!
Let him hurl me anon into Tartarus—on—
To the blackest degree,
With necessity’s vortices strangling me down!
But he cannot join death to a fate meant for me!“
—Trans. by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
THE SUFFERINGS OF PROMETHEUS.
We close this subject with a brief extract from the Prometheus Bound of
the English poet SHELLEY, in which the sufferings of the defiant captive are
vividly portrayed:
“No change, no pause, no hope! yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven’s ever-changing shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!
The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains
Eat with their burning gold into my bones.
Heaven’s winged hound, polluting from thy lips
His beak in poison not his own, tears up
My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by—
The ghastly people of the realm of dream
Mocking me; and the Earthquake fiends are charged
To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
When the rocks split and close again behind;
While from their loud abysses howling throng
The genii of the storm.”
Returning now to the poet Ovid, we present the account which he gives of the
Deluge, or the destruction of mankind by a flood, called by the Greeks,
THE DELUGE OF DEUCALION.
Deucalion is represented as the son of
Prometheus, and is styled the father of the Greek nation of
post-diluvian times. When Jupiter determined to destroy the human
race on account of its impiety, it was his first design, OVID
tells us, to accomplish it with fire. But his own safety demanded
the employment of a less dangerous agency.
Already had Jove tossed the flaming brand,
And rolled the thunder in his spacious hand,
Preparing to discharge on seas and land;
But stopped, for fear, thus violently driven,
The sparks should catch his axle-tree of heaven—
Remembering, in the Fates, a time when fire
Should to the battlements of heaven aspire,
And all his blazing worlds above should burn,
And all the inferior globe to cinders turn.
His dire artillery thus dismissed, he bent
His thoughts to some securer punishment;
Concludes to pour a watery deluge down,
And what he durst not burn resolves to drown.
In all this myth, it will be seen, Jupiter may
very properly be considered as a personification of the elemental
strife that drowned a guilty world. Deucalion, warned, by his
father, of the coming deluge, thereupon made himself an ark or
skiff, and, putting provisions into it, entered it with his wife,
Pyrrha. The whole earth is then overspread with the flood of
waters, and all animal life perishes, except Deucalion and his
wife.
The northern breath that freezes floods, Jove binds,
With all the race of cloud-dispelling winds:
The south he loosed, who night and horror brings,
And fogs are shaken from his flaggy wings.
From his divided beard two streams he pours;
His head and rheumy eyes distil in showers.
The skies, from pole to pole, with peals resound;
And showers enlarged come pouring on the ground.
Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down:
Aid from his brother of the seas he craves,
To help him with auxiliary waves.
The watery tyrant calls his brooks and floods,
Who roll from mossy caves, their moist abodes,
And with perpetual urns his palace fill;
To whom, in brief, he thus imparts his will:
“Small exhortation needs; your powers employ,
And this bad world (so Jove requires) destroy.
Let loose the reins to all your watery store;
Bear down the dams and open every door.”
The floods, by nature enemies to land,
And proudly swelling with their new command,
Remove the living stones that stopped their way,
And, gushing from their source, augment the sea.
Then with his mace their monarch struck the ground:
With inward trembling Earth received the wound,
And rising stream a ready passage found.
The expanded waters gather on the plain,
They float the fields and overtop the grain;
Then, rushing onward, with a sweepy sway,
Bear flocks and folds and laboring hinds away.
Nor safe their dwellings were; for, sapped by floods,
Their houses fell upon their household gods.
The solid hills, too strongly built to fall,
High o’er their heads behold a watery wall.
Now seas and earth were in confusion lost—
A world of waters, and without a coast.
One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is borne,
And ploughs above where late he sowed his corn.
Others o’er chimney-tops and turrets row,
And drop their anchors on the meads below;
Or, downward driven, they bruise the tender vine,
Or, tossed aloft, are hurled against a pine.
And where of late the kids had cropped the grass,
The monsters of the deep now take their place.
Insulting Ner’e-ids on the cities ride,
And wondering dolphins o’er the palace glide.
On leaves and masts of mighty oaks they browse,
And their broad fins entangle in the boughs.
The frighted wolf now swims among the sheep,
The yellow lion wanders in the deep;
His rapid force no longer helps the boar,
The stag swims faster than he ran before.
The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,
Despair of land, and drop into the main.
Now hills and vales no more distinction know,
And levelled nature lies oppressed below.
The most of mortals perished in the flood,
The small remainder dies for want of food.
Deucalion and Pyrrha were conveyed to the summit of Mount Parnassus, the
highest mountain in Central Greece. According to Ovid, Deucalion now consulted
the ancient oracle of Themis respecting the restoration of mankind, and
received the following response: “Depart from the temple, veil your heads,
loosen your girded vestments, and cast behind you the great bones of your
parent.” At length Deucalion discovered the meaning of the oracle—the bones
being, by a very natural figure, the stones, or rocky heights, of the earth.
The poet then gives the following account of the abatement of the waters, and
of the appearance of the earth:
“When Jupiter, surveying earth from high,
Beheld it in a lake of water lie—
That, where so many millions lately lived,
But two, the best of either sex, survived—
He loosed the northern wind: fierce Boreas flies
To puff away the clouds and purge the skies:
Serenely, while he blows, the vapors driven
Discover heaven to earth and earth to heaven;
The billows fall while Neptune lays his mace
On the rough sea, and smooths its furrowed face.
Already Triton [Footnote: Son of Neptune.] at his call appears
Above the waves: a Tyrian robe he wears,
And in his hands a crooked trumpet bears.
The sovereign bids him peaceful sounds inspire,
And give the waves the signal to retire.
The waters, listening to the trumpet’s roar,
Obey the summons, and forsake the shore.
A thin circumference of land appears,
And Earth, but not at once, her visage rears,
And peeps upon the seas from upper grounds:
The streams, but just contained within their bounds,
By slow degrees into their channels crawl,
And earth increases as the waters fall:
In longer time the tops of trees appear,
Which mud on their dishonored branches bear.
At length the world was all restored to view,
But desolate, and of a sickly hue:
Nature beheld herself, and stood aghast,
A dismal desert and a silent waste.
When the waters had abated Deucalion left the rocky heights behind him, in
obedience to the direction of the oracle, and went to dwell in the plains
below.
MORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GODS, AND OF THEIR RULE OVER
MANKIND.
It is a prominent feature of the polytheistic
system of the Greeks that the gods are represented as subject to
all the passions and frailties of human nature. There were,
indeed, among them personifications of good and of evil, as we
see in A’te, the goddess of revenge or punishment, and in the
Erin’nys (or Furies), who avenge violations of filial duty,
punish perjury, and are the maintainers of order both in the
moral and the natural world; yet while these moral ideas
restrained and checked men, the gods seem to have been almost
wholly free from such control. “The society of Olympus,
therefore,” says MAHAFFY, “is only an ideal Greek society in the
lowest sense—the ideal of the school-boy who thinks all control
irksome, and its absence the greatest good—the ideal of a
voluptuous man, who has strong passions, and longs for the power
to indulge them without unpleasant consequences. It appears,
therefore, that the Homeric picture of Olympus is very valuable,
as disclosing to us the poet’s notion of a society freed from the
restraints of religion; for the rhapsodists [Footnote:
Rhapsodist, a term applied to the reciters of Greek
verse.] were dealing a death-blow (perhaps unconsciously)
to the received religious belief by these very pictures of sin
and crime among the gods. Their idea is a sort of
semi-monarchical aristocracy, where a number of persons have the
power to help favorites, and thwart the general progress of
affairs; where love of faction overpowers every other
consideration, and justifies violence or deceit.
[Footnote: “Social Life in Greece,” by J. P.
Mahaffy.]
MR. GLADSTONE has given us, in the following
extract, his views of what he calls the “intense humanity” of the
Olympian system, drawn from what its great expounder has set
forth in the Iliad and the Odyssey. “That system,”
he says, “exhibits a kind of royal or palace life of man, but on
the one hand more splendid and powerful, on the other more
intense and free. It is a wonderful and a gorgeous creation. It
is eminently in accordance with the signification of the English
epithet—rather a favorite, apparently, with our old writers—the
epithet jovial, which is derived from the Latin name of
its head. It is a life of all the pleasures of mind and body, of
banquet and of revel, of music and of song; a life in which
solemn grandeur alternates with jest and gibe; a life of childish
willfulness and of fretfulness, combined with serious, manly, and
imperial cares; for the Olympus of Homer has at least this one
recommendation to esteem—that it is not peopled with the merely
lazy and selfish gods of Epicurus, but its inhabitants busily
deliberate on the government of man, and in their debates the
cause of justice wins.
“I do not now discuss the moral titles of the
Olympian scheme; what I dwell upon is its intense humanity, alike
in its greatness and its littleness, its glory and its shame. As
the cares and joys of human life, so the structure of society
below is reflected, by the wayward wit of man, on heaven above.
Though the names and fundamental traditions of the several
deities were wholly or in great part imported from abroad, their
characters, relations, and attributes passed under a Hellenizing
process, which gradually marked off for them special provinces
and functions, according to laws which appear to have been mainly
original and indigenous, and to have been taken by analogy from
the division of labor in political society. The Olympian society
has its complement of officers and servants, with their proper
functions. He-phæs’tus (or Vulcan) moulds the twenty golden
thrones which move automatically to form the circle of the
council of the gods, and builds for each of his brother deities a
separate palace in the deep-folded recesses of the mighty
mountain. Music and song are supplied by Apollo and the Muses;
Gan-y-me’de and He’be are the cup-bearers, Hermes and Iris are
the messengers; but Themis, in whom is impersonated the idea of
deliberation and of relative rights, is the summoner of the Great
Assembly of the gods in the Twentieth Iliad, when the great issue
of the Trojan war is to be determined.” [Footnote: Address
to the Edinburgh University, November 3, 1865.]
But, however prone the gods were to evil
passions, and subject to human frailties, they were not believed
to approve (in men) of the vices in which they themselves
indulged, but were, on the contrary, supposed to punish
violations of justice and humanity, and to reward the brave and
virtuous. We learn that they were to be appeased by libations and
sacrifice; and their aid, not only in great undertakings, but in
the common affairs of life, was to be obtained by prayer and
supplication. For instance, in the Ninth Book of HOMER’S
Iliad the aged Phoe’nix—warrior and sage—in a beautiful
allegory personifying “Offence” and “Prayers,” represents the
former as robust and fleet of limb, outstripping the latter, and
hence roaming over the earth and doing immense injury to mankind;
but the Prayers, following after, intercede with Jupiter, and, if
we avail ourselves of them, repair the evil; but if we neglect
them we are told that the vengeance of the wrong shall overtake
us. Thus, Phoenix says of the gods,
“If a mortal man
Offend them by transgression of their laws,
Libation, incense, sacrifice, and prayer,
In meekness offered, turn their wrath away.
Prayers are Jove’s daughters,
Which, though far distant, yet with constant pace
Follow Offence. Offence, robust of limb,
And treading firm the ground, outstrips them all,
And over all the earth before them runs,
Hurtful to man. They, following, heal the hurt.
Received respectfully when they approach,
They yield us aid and listen when we pray;
But if we slight, and with obdurate heart
Resist them, to Saturinian Jove they cry.
Against us, supplicating that Offence
May cleave to us for vengeance of the wrong.”
—COWPER’S Trans.
In the Seventeenth Book, Men-e-la’us is represented going into battle,
“supplicating, first, the sire of all”—that is, Jupiter, the king of the gods.
In the Twenty-third Book, Antil’ochus attributes the ill-success of Eu-me’lus
in the chariot-race to his neglect of prayer. He says,
“He should have offered prayer; then had be not
Arrived, as now, the hindmost of us all.”
Numerous other instances might be given, from the works of the Grecian poets,
of the supposed efficacy of prayer to the gods.
The views of the early Greeks respecting the
dispensations of an overruling Providence, as shown in their
belief in retributive justice, are especially prominent in some
of the sublime choruses of the Greek tragedians, and in the
Works and Days of Hesiod. For instance, Æschylus
says,
The ruthless and oppressive power
May triumph for its little hour;
But soon, with all their vengeful train,
The sullen Furies rise,
Break his full force, and whirl him down
Thro’ life’s dark paths, unpitied and unknown.
—POTTER’S Trans.
The following extracts from Hesiod illustrate the certainty with which Justice
was believed to overtake and punish those who pervert her ways, while the good
are followed by blessings. They also show that the crimes of one are often
“visited on all.”
Earth’s crooked judges—lo! the oath’s dread god
Avenging runs, and tracks them where they trod.
Rough are the ways of Justice as the sea,
Dragged to and fro by men’s corrupt decree;
Bribe-pampered men! whose hands, perverting, draw
The right aside, and warp the wrested law.
Though while Corruption on their sentence waits
They thrust pale Justice from their haughty gates,
Invisible their steps the Virgin treads,
And musters evil o’er their sinful heads.
She with the dark of air her form arrays,
And walks in awful grief the city ways:
Her wail is heard; her tear, upbraiding, falls
O’er their stained manners and devoted walls.
But they who never from the right have strayed—
Who as the citizen the stranger aid—
They and their cities flourish: genial peace
Dwells in their borders, and their youth increase;
Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar,
Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war;
Nor scath, nor famine; on the righteous prey—
Peace crowns the night, and plenty cheers the day.
Rich are their mountain oaks: the topmost tree
The acorns fill, its trunk the hiving bee;
Their sheep with fleeces pant; their women’s race
Reflect both parents in the infant face:
Still flourish they, nor tempt with ships the main;
The fruits of earth are poured from every plain.
But o’er the wicked race, to whom belong
The thought of evil and the deed of wrong,
Saturnian Jove, of wide-beholding eyes,
Bids the dark signs of retribution rise;
And oft the deeds of one destructive fall—
The crimes of one—are visited on all.
The god sends down his angry plagues from high—
Famine and pestilence—in heaps they die!
Again, in vengeance of his wrath, he falls
On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;
Scatters their ships of war; and where the sea
Heaves high its mountain billows, there is he!
Ponder, O Judges! in your inmost thought
The retribution by his vengeance wrought.
Invisible, the gods are ever nigh,
Pass through the midst, and bend th’ all-seeing eye.
The man who grinds the poor, who wrests the right,
Aweless of Heaven, stands naked to their sight:
For thrice ten thousand holy spirits rove
This breathing world, the delegates of Jove;
Guardians of man, their glance alike surveys
The upright judgments and the unrighteous ways.
A virgin pure is Justice, and her birth
August from him who rules the heavens and earth—
A creature glorious to the gods on high,
Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky.
Driven by despiteful wrong she takes her seat,
In lowly grief, at Jove’s eternal feet.
There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend:
So rue the nations when their kings offend—
When, uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill,
They bend the laws, and wrest them to their will.
Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges, hear!
Make straight your paths, your crooked judgments fear,
That the foul record may no more be seen—
Erased, forgot, as though it ne’er had been.
—Trans. by ELTON.
OATHS.
As in the beginning of the foregoing extract, so the poets frequently refer to
the oaths that were taken by those who entered into important compacts,
showing that then as now, and as in Old Testament times, some overruling deity
was invoked to witness the agreement or promise, and punish its violation.
Sometimes the person touched the altar of the god by whom he swore, or the
blood that was shed in the ceremonial sacrifice, while some walked through the
fire to sanctify their oaths. When Abraham swore unto the King of Sodom that he
would not enrich himself with any of the king’s goods, he lifted up his hand to
heaven, pointing to the supposed residence of the Deity, as if calling on him
to witness the oath. When he requires his servant to take an oath unto him he
says, “Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by
the Lord, the God of heaven and earth;” and Jacob requires the same ceremony
from Joseph when the latter promises to carry his father’s bones up out of
Egypt.
When the goddess Vesta swore an oath in the very
presence of Jupiter, as represented in Homer’s hymn, she touched
his head, as the most fitting ceremonial.
Touching the head of Ægis-bearing Jove,
A mighty oath she swore, and hath fulfilled,
That she among the goddesses of heaven
Would still a virgin be.
We find a military oath described by Æschylus in the drama of The Seven
Chiefs against Thebes:
O’er the hollow of a brazen shield
A bull they slew, and, touching with their hands
The sacrificial stream, they called aloud
On Mars, Eny’o, and blood-thirsty Fear,
And swore an oath or in the dust to lay
These walls, and give our people to the sword,
Or, perishing, to steep the land in blood!
That there was sometimes a fire ordeal to
sanctify the oath, we learn from the Antig’o-ne of
SOPHOCLES. The Messenger who brought tidings of the burial of
Polyni’ces says,
“Ready were we to grasp the burning steel,
To pass through fire, and by the gods to swear
The deed was none of ours, nor aught we knew
Of living man by whom ’twas planned or done.”
In the Twelfth Book of VIRGIL’S
Æne’id, when King Turnus enters into a treaty with
the Trojans, he touches the altars of his gods and the flames, as
part of the ceremony:
“I touch the sacred altars, touch the flames,
And all these powers attest, and all their names,
Whatever chance befall on either side,
No term of time this union shall divide;
No force nor fortune shall my vows unbind,
To shake the steadfast tenor of my mind.”
The ancient poets and orators denounce perjury in
the strongest terms, and speak of the offence as one of a most
odious character.
THE FUTURE STATE.
The future state in which the Greeks believed was to some extent one of rewards
and punishments. The souls of most of the dead, however, were supposed to
descend to the realms of Ha’des, where they remained, joyless phantoms, the
mere shadows of their former selves, destitute of mental vigor, and, like the
spectres of the North American Indians, pursuing, with dreamlike vacancy, the
empty images of their past occupations and enjoyments. So cheerless is the
twilight of the nether world that the ghost of Achilles informs Ulysses that it
would rather live the meanest hireling on earth than be doomed to continue in
the shades below, even though as sovereign ruler there. Thus Achilles asks him—
“How hast thou dared descend into the gloom
Of Hades, where the shadows of the dead,
Forms without intellect, alone reside?”
And when Ulysses tries to console him by
reminding him that he was even there supreme over all his
fellow-shades, he receives this reply:
“Renowned Ulysses! think not death a theme
Of consolation: I would rather live
The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread
Of some man scantily himself sustained,
Than sovereign empire hold o’er all the shades.”
—Odyssey, by COWPER, B. XI.
But even in Hades a distinction is made between
the good and the bad, for there Ulysses finds Mi’nos, the early
law-giver of Crete, advanced to the position of judge over the
assembled shades— absolving the just, and condemning the
guilty.
High on a throne, tremendous to behold,
Stern Minos waves a mace of burnished gold;
Around, ten thousand thousand spectres stand,
Through the wide dome of Dis, a trembling band;
Whilst, as they plead, the fatal lots he rolls,
Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.
—Odyssey, by POPE, B. XI.
The kinds of punishment inflicted here are, as might be expected, wholly
earthly in their nature, and may be regarded rather as the reflection of human
passions than as moral retributions by the gods. Thus, Tan’talus, placed up to
his chin in water, which ever flowed away from his lips, was tormented with
unquenchable thirst, while the fruits hanging around him constantly eluded his
grasp. The story of Tantalus is well told by PROFESSOR BLACKIE, as follows:
Tantalus.
O Tantalus! thou wert a man
More blest than all since earth began
Its weary round to travel;
But, placed in Paradise, like Eve,
Thine own damnation thou didst weave,
Without help from the devil.
Alas! I fear thy tale to tell;
Thou’rt in the deepest pool of hell,
And shalt be there forever.
For why? When thou on lofty seat
Didst sit, and eat immortal meat
With Jove, the bounteous Giver,
The gods before thee loosed their tongue,
And many a mirthful ballad sung,
And all their secrets open flung
Into thy mortal ear.
The poet then goes on to describe the gossip, and
pleasures, and jealousies, and scandals of Olympus which Tantalus
heard and witnessed, and then proceeds as follows:
But witless he such grace to prize;
And, with licentious babble,
He blazed the secrets of the skies
Through all the human rabble,
And fed the greed of tattlers vain
With high celestial scandal,
And lent to every eager brain
And wanton tongue a handle
Against the gods. For which great sin,
By righteous Jove’s command,
In hell’s black pool up to the chin
The thirsty king doth stand:
With-parched throat he longs to drink,
But when he bends to sip,
The envious waves receding sink,
And cheat his pining lip.
Like in character was the punishment inflicted
upon Sis’y-phus, “the most crafty of men,” as Homer calls him.
Being condemned to roll a huge stone up a hill, it proved to be a
never-ending, still-beginning toil, for as soon as the stone
reached the summit it rolled down again into the plain. So, also,
Ix-i’on, “the Cain of Greece,” as he is expressly called—the
first shedder of kindred blood—was doomed to be fastened, with
brazen bands, to an ever-revolving fiery wheel. But the very
refinement of torment, similar to that inflicted upon Prometheus,
was that suffered by the giant Tit’y-us, who was placed on his
back, while vultures constantly fed upon his liver, which grew
again as fast as it was eaten.
THE DESCENT OF OR’PHEUS.
Only once do we learn that these torments ceased, and that was when the
musician Orpheus, lyre in hand, descended to the lower world to reclaim his
beloved wife, the lost Eu-ryd’i-ce. At the music of his “golden shell” Tantalus
forgot his thirst, Sisyphus rested from his toil, the wheel of Ixion stood
still, and Tityus ceased his moaning. The poet OVID thus describes the
wonderful effects of the musician’s skill:
The very bloodless shades attention keep,
And, silent, seem compassionate to weep;
Even Tantalus his flood unthirsty views,
Nor flies the stream, nor he the stream pursues:
Ixion’s wondrous wheel its whirl suspends,
And the voracious vulture, charmed, attends;
No more the Bel’i-des their toil bemoan,
And Sisyphus, reclined, sits listening on the stone.
—Trans. by CONGREVE.
Pope’s translation of this scene from the
Iliad is peculiarly melodious:
But when, through all the infernal bounds
Which flaming Phleg’e-thon surrounds,
Love, strong as death, the poet led
To the pale nations of the dead,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appeared,
O’er all the dreary coasts!
Dreadful gleams,
Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe,
Sullen moans,
Hollow groans,
And cries of tortured ghost!!!
But hark! he strikes the golden lyre;
And see! the tortured ghosts respire!
See! shady forms advance!
Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still,
Ixion rests upon his wheel,
And the pale spectres dance;
The Furies sink upon their iron beds,
And snakes uncurled hang listening round their heads.
The Greeks also believed in an Elys’ium—some
distant island of the ocean, ever cooled by refreshing breezes,
and where spring perpetual reigned—to which, after death, the
blessed were conveyed, and where they were permitted to enjoy it
happy destiny. In the Fourth Book of the Odyssey the sea
god Pro’teus, in predicting for Menelaus a happier lot than that
of Hades, thus describes the Elysian plains:
But oh! beloved of Heaven! reserved for thee
A happier lot the smiling Fates decree:
Free from that law beneath whose mortal sway
Matter is changed and varying forms decay,
Elysium shall be thine—the blissful plains
Of utmost earth, where Rhadaman’thus reigns.
Joys ever young, unmixed with pain or fear,
Fill the wide circle of the eternal year.
Stern Winter smiles on that auspicious clime;
The fields are florid with unfading prime;
From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow,
Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow;
But from the breezy deep the blest inhale
The fragrant murmurs of the western gale.
—POPE’S Trans.
Similar views are expressed by the lyric poet PINDAR in the following lines:
All whose steadfast virtue thrice
Each side the grave unchanged hath stood,
Still unseduced, unstained with vice—
They, by Jove’s mysterious road,
Pass to Saturn’s realm of rest—
Happy isle, that holds the blest;
Where sea-born breezes gently blow
O’er blooms of gold that round them glow,
Which Nature, boon from stream or strand
Or goodly tree, profusely showers;
Whence pluck they many a fragrant band,
And braid their locks with never-fading flowers.
—Trans. by A. MOORE.
There is so much similarity between the mythology
of the early Greeks and that of many of the Asiatic nations, that
we give place here to the supposed meditations of a Hindu prince
and skeptic on the great subject of a future state of existence,
as a fitting close of our brief review of the religious beliefs
of the ancients. Among the Asiatic nations are to be found
accounts of the Creation, and of multitudes of gods, good and
evil, all quite as pronounced as those that are derived from the
Grecian myths; and while the wildest and grossest of
superstitious fancies have prevailed among the common people,
skepticism and atheistic doubt are known to have been nearly
universal among the learned. The poem which we give in this
connection, therefore, though professedly a Hindu creation, may
be accepted not only as portraying Hindu doubt and despondency,
but also as a faithful picture of the anxiety, doubt, and almost
utter despair, not only of the ancient Greeks; but of the entire
heathen world, concerning the destiny of mankind.
The Hindu skeptic tells us that ever since
mankind began their race on this earth they have been seeking for
the “signs and steps of a God;” and that in mystical India, where
the deities hover and swarm, and a million shrines stand open,
with their myriad idols and, legions of muttering priests,
mankind are still groping in darkness; still listening, and as
yet vainly hoping for a message that shall tell what the wonders
of creation mean, and whither they tend; ever vainly seeking for
a refuge from the ills of life, and a rest beyond for the weary
and heavy-laden, He turns to the deified heroes of his race, and
though long he watches and worships for a solution of the
mysteries of life, he waits in vain for an answer, for their
marble features never relax in response to his prayers and
entreaties; and he says, mournfully, “Alas! for the gods are
dumb.” The darts of death still fall as surely as ever, hurled by
a Power unseen and a hand unknown; and beyond the veil all is
obscurity and gloom.
I.
All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod,
Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God?
Westward across the ocean, and northward beyond the snow,
Do they all stand gazing, as ever? and what do the wisest know?
II.
Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm
Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a gathering storm;
In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen,
Yet we all say, “Whence is the message—and what may the
wonders mean?”
III.
A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings,
As they bow to a mystic symbol or the figures of ancient kings;
And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry
Of those who are heavy-laden, and of cowards loath to die.
IV.
For the destiny drives us together like deer in a pass of the hills:
Above is the sky, and around us the sound and the shot that kills.
Pushed by a Power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown,
We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.
V.
The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim,
And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight dim;
And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest—
Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and a rest?
VI.
The path—ah, who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide?
The haven—ah, who has known it? for steep is the mountain-side.
For ever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath
Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death!
VII.
Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the first of an ancient name—
Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in flame.
They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who guard our race:
Ever I watch and worship—they sit with a marble face.
VIII.
And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests—
The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable feasts—
What have they wrung from the silence? Hath even a Whisper come
Of the secret—whence and whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb.
Getting no light from the religious guides of his own country, he turns to the
land where the English—the present rulers of India—dwell, and asks,
IX.
Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the uttermost sea?
“The secret, hath it been told you? and what is your message to me?
It is naught but the wide-world story, how the earth and the heavens began—
How the gods are glad and angry, and a deity once was man.
And so he gathers around him the mantle of doubt and despondency; he asks if
life is, after all, but a dream and delusion, while ever and ever is forced
upon him that other question, “Where shall the dreamer awake?”
X.
I had thought, “Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell,
Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell,
They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main—”
Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.
XI.
Is life, then, a dream and delusion? and where shall the dreamer awake?
Is the world seen like shadows on water? and what if the mirror break?
Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone
From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone?
XII.
Is there naught in the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled,
But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world—
The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep,
With the dirge and the sounds of lamenting, and voices of women who weep?
—The Cornhill Magazine.
What a commentary on all this doubt and despondency are the meditations of the
Christian, who, “sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust,” approaches his
grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams!
—BRYANT.
II. THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF GREECE.
The earliest reliable information that we possess of the country called Greece
represents it in the possession of a number of rude tribes, of which the
Pelas’gians were the most numerous and powerful, and probably the most ancient.
Of the early character of the Pelasgians, and of the degree of civilization to
which they had attained before the reputed founding of Argos, we have
unsatisfactory and conflicting accounts. On the one hand, they are represented
as no better than the rudest barbarians, dwelling in caves, subsisting on
reptiles, herbs, and wild fruits, and strangers to the simplest arts of
civilized life. Other and more reliable traditions, however, attribute to them
a knowledge of agriculture, and some little acquaintance with navigation; while
there is a strong probability that they were the authors of those huge
structures commonly called Cyclopean, remains of which are still visible in
many parts of Greece and Italy, and on the western coast of Asia Minor.
Argos, the capital of Ar’golis, is generally
considered the most ancient city of Greece; and its reputed
founding by In’achus, a son of the god O-ce’anus, 1856 years
before the Christian era, is usually assigned as the period of
the commencement of Grecian history. But the massive Cyclopean
walls of Argos evidently show the Pelasgic origin of the place,
in opposition to the traditionary Phoenician origin of Inachus,
whose very existence is quite problematical. Indeed, although
many of the traditions of the Greeks point to a contrary
conclusion, the accounts usually given of early foreign settlers
in Greece, who planted colonies there, founded dynasties, built
cities, and introduced a knowledge of the arts unknown to the
ruder natives, must be taken with a great degree of abatement.
The civilization of the Greeks and the development of their
language bear all the marks of home growth, and probably were
little affected by foreign influence. Still, many of these
traditions are exceedingly interesting, and have attained great
celebrity. One of the most celebrated is that which describes the
founding of Athens, one of the renowned Grecian cities.
THE FOUNDING OF ATHENS.
Ce’crops, an Egyptian, is said to have led a
colony from the Delta to Greece, about the year 1556 B.C. Two
years later he proceeded to Attica, which had been desolated by a
deluge a century before, and there he is said to have founded, on
the Cecropian rock—the Acrop’olis—a city which, under the
following circumstances, he called Athens, in honor of the
Grecian goddess Athe’na, whom the Romans called Minerva.
It is an ancient Attic legend that about this
time the gods had begun to choose favorite spots among the
dwellings of man for their own residence; and whatever city a god
chose, he gave to that city protection, and there that particular
deity was worshipped with special homage. Now, it happened that
both Neptune and Minerva contended for the supremacy over this
new city founded by Cecrops; and Cecrops was greatly troubled by
the contest, as he knew not to which deity to render homage. So
Jove summoned a council of the gods, and they decided that the
supremacy should be given to the one who should confer the
greatest gift upon the favored city. The story of the contest is
told by PROFESSOR BLACKIE in the following verses.
Mercury, the messenger of the gods, being sent to
Cecrops, thus announces to him the decision of the Council:
“On the peaks of Olympus, the bright snowy-crested,
The gods are assembled in council to-day,
The wrath of Pos-ei’don, the mighty broad-breasted,
‘Gainst Pallas, the spear-shaking maid, to allay.
And thus they decree—that Poseidon offended
And Pallas shall bring forth a gift to the place:
On the hill of Erech’theus the strife shall be ended,
When she with her spear, and the god with his mace,
Shall strike the quick rock; and the gods shall deliver
The sentence as Justice shall order; and thou
Shalt see thy loved city established forever,
With Jove for a judge, and the Styx for a vow.”
So the gods assembled, in the presence of Cecrops himself, on the “hill of
Erechtheus”—afterward known as the Athenian Acropolis—to witness the trial
between the rival deities, as described in the following language. First;
Neptune strikes the rock with his trident:
Lo! at the touch of his trident a wonder!
Virtue to earth from his deity flows;
From the rift of the flinty rock, cloven asunder,
A dark-watered fountain ebullient rose.
Inly elastic, with airiest lightness
It leapt, till it cheated the eyesight; and, lo!
It showed in the sun, with a various brightness,
The fine-woven hues of the heavenly bow.
“WATER IS BEST!” cried the mighty, broad-breasted
Poseidon; “O Cecrops, I offer to thee
To ride on the back of the steeds foamy-crested
That toss their wild manes on the huge-heaving sea.
The globe thou shalt mete on the path of the waters,
To thy ships shall the ports of far ocean be free;
The isles of the sea shall be counted thy daughters,
The pearls of the East shall be gathered for thee!”
Thus Neptune offered, as his gift—symbolized in
the salt spring that he caused to issue from the rock—the
dominion of the sea, with all the wealth and renown that flow
from unrestricted commerce with foreign lands.
But Minerva was now to make her trial:
Then the gods, with a high-sounding pæan,
Applauded; but Jove hushed the many-voiced tide;
“For now with the lord of the briny Æge’an
Athe’na shall strive for the city,” he cried.
“See where she comes!” and she came, like Apollo,
Serene with the beauty ripe wisdom confers;
The clear-scanning eye, and the sure hand to follow
The mark of the far-sighted purpose, were hers.
Strong in the mail of her father she standeth,
And firmly she holds the strong spear in her hand;
But the wild hounds of war with calm power she commandeth,
And fights but to pledge surer peace to the land.
Chastely the blue-eyed approached, and, surveying
The council of wise-judging gods without fear,
The nod of her lofty-throned father obeying,
She struck the gray rock with her nice-tempered spear.
Lo! from the touch of the virgin a wonder!
Virtue to earth from her deity flows:
From the rift of the flinty rock, cloven asunder,
An olive-tree, greenly luxuriant, rose—
Green but yet pale, like an eye-drooping maiden,
Gentle, from full-blooded lustihood far;
No broad-staring hues for rude pride to parade in,
No crimson to blazon the banners of war.
Mutely the gods, with a calm consultation,
Pondered the fountain and pondered the tree;
And the heart of Poseidon, with high expectation,
Throbbed till great Jove thus pronounced the decree:
“Son of my father, thou mighty, broad-breasted
Poseidon, the doom that I utter is true;
Great is the might of thy waves foamy-crested
When they beat the white walls of the screaming sea-mew;
Great is the pride of the keel when it danceth,
Laden with wealth, o’er the light-heaving wave—
When the East to the West, gayly floated, advanceth,
With a word from the wise and a help from the brave.
But earth—solid earth—is the home of the mortal
That toileth to live, and that liveth to toil;
And the green olive-tree twines the wreath of his portal
Who peacefully wins his sure bread from the soil,”
Thus Jove: and to heaven the council celestial
Rose, and the sea-god rolled back to the sea;
But Athena gave Athens her name, and terrestrial
Joy from the oil of the green olive-tree.
Thus Jove decided in favor of the peaceful
pursuits of industry on the land, as against the more alluring
promises but uncertain results of commerce, thereby teaching this
lesson in political economy—that a people consisting of mere
merchants, and neglecting the cultivation of the soil, never can
become a great and powerful nation. So Minerva, the goddess of
wisdom, and patroness of all the liberal arts and sciences,
became the tutelary deity of Athens. The contest between her and
Neptune was represented on one of the pediments of the
Parthenon.
Of the history of Athens for many centuries
subsequent to its alleged founding by Cecrops we have no certain
information; but it is probable that down to about 683 B.C. it
was ruled by kings, like all the other Grecian states. Of these
kings the names of The’seus and Co’drus are the most noted. To
the former is ascribed the union of the twelve states of Attica
into one political body, with Athens as the capital, and other
important acts of government which won for him the love of the
Athenian people. Consulting the oracle of Delphi concerning his
new government, he is said to have received the following
answer:
From royal stems thy honor, Theseus, springs;
By Jove beloved, the sire supreme of kings.
See rising towns, see wide-extended states,
On thee dependent, ask their future fates!
Hence, hence with fear! Thy favored bark shall ride
Safe o’er the surges of the foamy tide.
About half a century after the time of Cecrops
another Egyptian, named Dan’a-us, is said to have fled to Greece,
with a family of fifty daughters, and to have established a
second Egyptian colony in the vicinity of Argos. He subsequently
became king of Argos, and the inhabitants were called Dan’a-i.
About the same time Cadmus, a Phoenician, is reported to have led
a colony into Bœo’tia, bringing with him the Phoenician
alphabet, the basis of the Grecian; and to have founded Cadme’a,
which afterward became the citadel of Thebes. Another colony is
said to have been led from Asia by Pe’lops, from whom the
southern peninsula of Greece derived its name of Peloponne’sus,
and of whom Agamemnon, King of Myce’næ, was a lineal
descendant. About this time a people called the
Helle’nes—but whether a Pelasgic tribe or otherwise is
uncertain—first appeared in the south of Thessaly, and,
gradually diffusing themselves over the whole country, became, by
their martial spirit and active, enterprising genius, the ruling
class, and impressed new features upon the Grecian character. The
Hellenes gave their name to the population of the whole
peninsula, although the term Grecians was subsequently
applied to them by the Romans.
In accordance with the Greek custom of
attributing the origin of their tribes or nations to some remote
mythical ancestor, Hel’len, a son of the fabulous Deuca’lion and
Pyrrha, is represented as the father of the Hellen’ic nation. His
three sons were Æ’o-lus, Do’rus, and Xu’thus, from the two
former of whom are represented to have descended the
Æo’lians and Do’rians; and from Achæ’us and I’on,
sons of Xuthus, the Achæ’ans and Io’nians. These four
Hellen’ic or Grecian tribes were distinguished from one another
by many peculiarities of language and institutions. Hellen is
said to have left his kingdom to Æolus, his eldest son; and
the Æolian tribe spread the most widely, and long exerted
the most influence in the affairs of the nation; but at a later
period it was surpassed by the fame and the power of the Dorians
and Ionians.
III. THE HEROIC AGE.
The period from the time of the first appearance of the Hellenes in Thessaly to
the return of the Greeks from the expedition against Troy—a period of about two
hundred years—is usually called the Heroic Age. It is a period abounding in
splendid fictions of heroes and demi-gods, embracing, among others, the twelve
wonderful labors of Hercules; the exploits of the Athenian king The’seus, and
of Mi’nos, King of Crete, the founder of Grecian law and civilization; the
events of the Argonautic expedition; the Theban and Argol’ic wars; the
adventures of Beller’ophon, Per’seus, and many others; and concluding with the
Trojan war and the supposed fall of Troy. These seem to have been the times
which the archangel Michael foretold to Adam when he said,
For in those days might only shall be admired,
And valor and heroic virtue called:
To overcome in battle, and subdue
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite
Manslaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human glory; and, for glory done,
Of triumph to be styled great conquerors,
Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of gods—
Destroyers rightly called, and plagues of men.
—Paradise Lost, B. XI.
THE LABORS OF HERCULES.
The twelve arduous labors of the celebrated hero Hercules, who was a son of
Jupiter by the daughter of an early king of Mycenæ, are said to have been
imposed upon him by an enemy—Eurys’theus—to whose will Jupiter, induced by a
fraud of Juno and the fury-goddess A’te, and unwittingly bound by an oath, had
made the hero subservient for twelve years. Jupiter grieved for his son, but,
unable to recall the oath which he had sworn, he punished Ate by hurling her
from Olympus down to the nether world.
Grief seized the Thunderer, by his oath engaged;
Stung to the soul, he sorrowed and he raged.
From his ambrosial head, where perched she sate,
He snatched the fury-goddess of debate:
The dread, the irrevocable oath he swore,
The immortal seats should ne’er behold her more;
And whirled her headlong down, forever driven
From bright Olympus and the starry heaven:
Thence on the nether world the fury fell,
Ordained with man’s contentious race to dwell.
Full oft the god his son’s hard toils bemoaned,
Cursed the dire folly, and in secret groaned.
—HOMER’S Iliad, B. XIX. POPE’S Trans.
The following, in brief, are the twelve labors attributed to Hercules: 1. He
strangled the Ne’mean lion, and ever after wore his skin. 2. He destroyed the
Lernæ’an hydra, which had nine heads, eight of them mortal and one immortal. 3.
He brought into the presence of Eurystheus a stag famous for its incredible
swiftness and golden horns. 4. He brought to Mycenæ the wild boar of
Eryman’thus, and slew two of the Centaurs, monsters who were half men and half
horses. 5. He cleansed the Auge’an stables in one day by changing the courses
of the rivers Alphe’us and Pene’us. 6. He destroyed the carnivorous birds of
the lake Stympha’lus, in Arcadia. 7. He brought into Peloponnesus the
prodigious wild bull which ravaged Crete. 8. He brought from Thrace the mares
of Diome’de, which fed on human flesh. 9. He obtained the famous girdle of
Hippol’y-te, queen of the Amazons. 10. He slew the monster Ge’ry-on, who had
the bodies of three men united. 11. He brought from the garden of the
Hesper’i-des the golden apples, and slew the dragon which guarded them. 12. He
went down to the lower regions and brought upon earth the three-headed dog
Cer’berus.
The favor of the gods had completely armed
Hercules for his undertakings, and his great strength enabled him
to perform them. This entire fable of Hercules is generally
believed to be merely a fanciful representation of the sun in its
passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac, in accordance
with Phoenician mythology, from which the legend is supposed to
be derived. Thus Hercules is the sun-god. In the first month of
the year the sun passes through the constellation Leo, the
lion; and in his first labor the hero slays the Nemean lion. In
the second month, when the sun enters the sign Virgo, the
long-extended constellation of the Hydra sets—the stars
of which, like so many heads, rise one after another; and,
therefore, in his second labor, Hercules destroys the
Lernæan hydra with its nine heads. In like manner the
legend is explained throughout. Besides these twelve labors,
however, Hercules is said to have achieved others on his own
account; and one of these is told in the fable of Hercules and
Antæ’us, in which the powers of art and nature are supposed
to be personified.
FABLE OF HERCULES AND ANTÆUS.
Antæ’us—a son of Neptune and Terra, who
reigned over Libya, or Africa, and dwelt in a forest cave—was so
famed for his Titanic strength and skill in wrestling that he was
emboldened to leave his woodland retreat and engage in a contest
with the renowned hero Hercules. So long as Antæus stood
upon the ground he could not be overcome, whereupon Hercules
lifted him up in the air, and, having apparently squeezed him to
death in his arms, threw him down; but when Antæus touched
his mother Earth and lay at rest upon her bosom, renewed life and
fresh power were given him.
In this fable Antæus, who personifies the
woodland solitude and the desert African waste, is easily
overcome by his adversary, who represents the river Nile, which,
divided into a thousand arms, or irrigating canals, prevents the
arid sand from being borne away and then back again by the winds
to desolate the fertile valley. Thus the legend is nothing more
than the triumph of art and labor, and their reclaiming power
over the woodland solitudes and the encroaching sands of the
desert. An English poet has very happily versified the spirit of
the legend, to which he has appended a fitting moral, doubtless
suggested by the warning of his own approaching sad
fate.[Footnote: This gifted poet, Mortimer Collins, died
in 1876, at the age of forty-nine, a victim to excessive literary
labor and anxiety.]
Deep were the meanings of that fable. Men
Looked upon earth with clearer eyesight then,
Beheld in solitude the immortal Powers,
And marked the traces of the swift-winged Hours.
Because it never varies, all can bear
The burden of the circumambient air;
Because it never ceases, none can hear
The music of the ever-rolling sphere—
None, save the poet, who, in moor and wood,
Holds converse with the spirit of Solitude.
And I remember how Antæus heard,
Deep in great oak-woods, the mysterious word
Which said, “Go forth across the unshaven leas
To meet unconquerable Hercules.”
Leaving his cavern by the cedar-glen,
This Titan of the primal race of men,
Whom the swart lions feared, and who could tear
Huge oaks asunder, to the combat bare
Courage undaunted. Full of giant grace,
Built up, as ’twere, from earth’s own granite base.
Colossal, iron-sinewed, firm he trod
The lawns. How vain against a demi-god!
Oh, sorrow of defeat! He plunges far
Into his forests, where deep shadows are,
And the wind’s murmur comes not, and the gloom
Of pine and cedar seems to make a tomb
For fallen ambition. Prone the mortal lies
Who dared mad warfare with the unpitying skies,
But lo! as buried in the waving ferns,
The baffled giant for oblivion yearns,
Cursing his human feebleness, he feels
A sudden impulse of new strength, which heals
His angry wounds; his vigor he regains—
His blood is dancing gayly through his veins.
Fresh power, fresh life is his who lay at rest
On bounteous Hertha’s kind creative breast.
[Footnote: Hertha, a goddess of the ancient Germans,
the same as Terra, or the Earth. Her favorite retreat
was a sacred grove in an island of the ocean.]
Even so, O poet, by the world subdued,
Regain thy health ‘mid perfect solitude.
In noisy cities, far from hills and trees,
The brawling demi-god, harsh Hercules,
Has power to hurt thy placid spirit—power
To crush thy joyous instincts every hour,
To weary thee with woes for mortals stored,
Red gold (coined hatred) and the tyrant’s sword.
Then—then, O sad Antæus, wilt thou yearn
For dense green woodlands and the fragrant fern;
Then stretch thy form upon the sward, and rest
From worldly toil on Hertha’s gracious breast;
Plunge in the foaming river, or divide
With happy arms gray ocean’s murmuring tide,
And drinking thence each solitary hour
Immortal beauty and immortal power,
Thou may’st the buffets of the world efface
And live a Titan of earth’s earliest race.
—MORTIMER COLLINS.
THE ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.
From what was probably a maritime adventure that
plundered some wealthy country at a period when navigation was in
its infancy among the Greeks, we get the fable of the Argonautic
Expedition. The generally accepted story of this expedition is as
follows: Pe’lias, a descendant of Æ’o-lus, the mystic
progenitor of the Great Æol’ic race, had deprived his
half-brother Æ’son of the kingdom of Iol’cus in Thessaly.
When Jason, son of Æson, had attained to manhood, he
appeared before his uncle and demanded the throne. Pelias
consented only on condition that Jason should first capture and
bring to him the golden fleece of the ram which had carried
Phrix’us and Hel’le when they fled from their stepmother I’no.
Helle dropped into the sea between Sigæ’um and the
Cher’sonese, which was named from her Hellespon’tus; but Phrixus
succeeded in reaching Col’chis, a country at the eastern
extremity of the Euxine, or Black Sea. Here he sacrificed the
ram, and nailed the fleece to an oak in the grove of Mars, where
it was guarded by a sleepless dragon.
Joined by the principal heroes of Greece,
Hercules among the number, Jason set sail from Iolcus in the ship
Argo, after first invoking the favor of Jupiter, the winds, and
the waves, for the success of the expedition. The ceremony on
this occasion, as descried by the poets, reads like an account of
the “christening of the ship” in modern times, but we seem to
have lost the full significance of the act.
And soon as by the vessel’s bow
The anchor was hung up,
Then took the leader on the prow
In hands a golden cup,
And on great father Jove did call;
And on the winds and waters all
Swept by the hurrying blast,
And on the nights, and ocean ways,
And on the fair auspicious days,
And sweet return at last.
From out the clouds, in answer kind,
A voice of thunder came,
And, shook in glistening beams around,
Burst out the lightning flame.
The chiefs breathed free, and, at the sign,
Trusted in the power divine.
Hinting sweet hopes, the seer cried
Forthwith their oars to ply,
And swift went backward from rough hands
The rowing ceaselessly.
—PINDAR. Trans. by Rev. H. F. CARY.
After many adventures Jason reached Col’chis,
where, by the aid of magic and supernatural arts, and through the
favor of Me-de’a, daughter of the King of Colchis, he succeeded
in capturing the fleece. After four months of continued danger
and innumerable hardships, Jason returned to Iolcus with the
prize, accompanied by Medea, whom he afterward deserted, and
whose subsequent history is told by the poet Euripides in his
celebrated tragedy entitled Medea.
Growing out of the Argonautic legend is one
concerning the youth Hy’las, a member of the expedition, and a
son of the King of Mys’ia, a country of Asia Minor. Hylas was
greatly beloved by Hercules. On the coast of Mysia the Argonauts
stopped to obtain a supply of water, and Hylas, having gone from
the vessel alone with an urn for the same purpose, takes the
opportunity to bathe in the river Scaman’der, under the shadows
of Mount Ida. He throws his purple chlamys, or cloak, over the
urn, and passes down into the water, where he is seized by the
nymphs of the stream, and, in spite of his struggles and
entreaties, he is borne by them “down from the noonday brightness
to their dark caves in the depths below.” Hercules went in search
of Hylas, and the ship sailed from its anchorage without him. We
have a faithful and beautiful reproduction of this Greek legend,
both in theme and spirit, in a poem by BAYARD TAYLOR, from which
the following extracts are taken:
Hylas.
Storm-wearied Argo slept upon the water.
No cloud was seen: on blue and craggy Ida
The hot noon lay, and on the plains enamel;
Cool in his bed, alone, the swift Scamander.
“Why should I haste?” said young and rosy Hylas;
The seas are rough, and long the way from Colchis.
Beneath the snow-white awning slumbers Jason,
Pillowed upon his tame Thessalian panther;
The shields are piled, the listless oars suspended
On the black thwarts, and all the hairy bondsmen
Doze on the benches. They may wait for water
Till I have bathed in mountain-born Scamander.”
He saw his glorious limbs reversely mirrored
In the still wave, and stretched his foot to press it
On the smooth sole that answered at the surface:
Alas! the shape dissolved in glittering fragments.
Then, timidly at first, he dipped, and catching
Quick breath, with tingling shudder, as the waters
Swirled round his limbs, and deeper, slowly deeper,
Till on his breast the river’s cheek was pillowed;
And deeper still, till every shoreward ripple
Talked in his ear, and like a cygnet’s bosom
His white, round shoulder shed the dripping crystal.
There, as he floated with a rapturous motion,
The lucid coolness folding close around him,
The lily-cradling ripples murmured, “Hylas!”
He shook from off his ears the hyacinthine
Curls that had lain unwet upon the water,
And still the ripples murmured, “Hylas! Hylas!”
He thought—”The voices are but ear-born music.
Pan dwells not here, and Echo still is calling
From some high cliff that tops a Thracian valley;
So long mine ears, on tumbling Hellespontus,
Have heard the sea-waves hammer Argo’s forehead,
That I misdeem the fluting of this current
For some lost nymph”—again the murmur, “Hylas!”
The sound that seemed to come from the lilies was the voice of the sea-nymphs,
calling to him to go with them where they wander—
“Down beneath the green translucent ceiling—
Where, on the sandy bed of old Scamander,
With cool white buds we braid our purple tresses,
Lulled by the bubbling waves around us stealing.”
To all their entreaties Hylas exclaims:
“Leave me, naiads!
Leave me!” he cried. “The day to me is dearer
Than all your caves deep-spread in ocean’s quiet.
I would not change this flexile, warm existence,
Though swept by storms, and shocked by Jove’s dread thunder,
To be a king beneath the dark-green waters.
Let me return! the wind comes down from Ida,
And soon the galley, stirring from her slumber,
Will fret to ride where Pelion’s twilight shadow
Falls o’er the towers of Jason’s sea-girt city.
I am not yours—I cannot braid the lilies
In your wet hair, nor on your argent bosoms
Close my drowsed eyes to hear your rippling voices.
Hateful to me your sweet, cold, crystal being—
Your world of watery quiet. Help, Apollo!”
But the remonstrances and struggles of Hylas unavailing:
The boy’s blue eyes, upturned, looked through the water
Pleading for help; but heaven’s immortal archer;
Was swathed in cloud. The ripples hid his forehead;
And last, the thick, bright curls a moment floated,
So warm and silky that the stream upbore them,
Closing reluctant as he sank forever.
The sunset died behind the crags of Imbros.
Argo was tugging at her chain; for freshly
Blew the swift breeze, and leaped the restless billows.
The voice of Jason roused the dozing sailors,
And up the mast was heaved the snowy canvas.
But mighty Hercules, the Jove-begotten,
Unmindful stood beside the cool Scamander,
Leaning upon his club. A purple chlamys
Tossed o’er an urn was all that lay before him;
And when he called, expectant, “Hylas! Hylas!”
The empty echoes made him answer—”Hylas!”
THE TROJAN WAR.
Of all the events of the Heroic period, however,
the Trojan war has been rendered the most celebrated, through the
genius of Homer. The alleged causes of the war, briefly stated,
are these: Helen, the most beautiful woman of the age, and the
daughter of Tyn’darus, King of Sparta, was sought in marriage by
all the Princes of Greece. Tyndarus, perplexed with the
difficulty of choosing one of the suitors without displeasing all
the rest, being advised by the sage Ulysses, bound all of them by
an oath that they would approve of the uninfluenced choice of
Helen, and would unite to restore her to her husband, and to
avenge the outrage, if ever she was carried off. Menela’us became
the choice of Helen, and soon after, on the death of Tyndarus,
succeeded to the vacant throne of Sparta.
Three years subsequently, Paris, son of Priam,
King of Ilium, or Troy, visited the court of Menelaus, where he
was hospitably received; but during the temporary absence of the
latter he corrupted the fidelity of Helen, and induced her to
flee with him to Troy. When Menelaus returned he assembled the
Grecian princes, and prepared to avenge the outrage. Combining
their forces under the command of Agamem’non, King of
Myce’næ, a brother of Menelaus, they sailed with a great
army for Troy. The imagination of the poet EURIPIDES describes
this armament as follows:
With eager haste
The sea-girt Aulis strand I paced,
Till to my view appeared the embattled train
Of Hellas, armed for mighty enterprise,
And galleys of majestic size,
To bear the heroes o’er the main;
A thousand ships for Ilion steer,
And round the two Atridæ’s spear
The warriors swear fair Helen to regain.
After a siege of ten years Troy was taken by
stratagem, and the fair Helen was recovered. On the fanciful
etymology of the word Helen, from a Greek verb signifying to take
or seize, the poet ÆCHYLUS indulges in the following
reflections descriptive of the character and the history of this
“spear-wooed maid of Greece:”
Who gave her a name
So true to her fame?
Does a Providence rule in the fate of a word?
Sways there in heaven a viewless power
O’er the chance of the tongue in the naming hour?
Who gave her a name,
This daughter of strife, this daughter of shame,
The spear-wooed maid of Greece!
Helen the taker! ’tis plain to see,
A taker of ships, a taker of men,
A taker of cities is she!
From the soft-curtained chamber of Hymen she fled,
By the breath of giant Zephyr sped,
And shield-bearing throngs in marshalled array
Hounded her flight o’er the printless way,
Where the swift-flashing oar
The fair booty bore
To swirling Sim’o-is’ leafy shore,
And stirred the crimson fray.
—Trans. by BLACKIE.
According to Homer, the principal Greek heroes
engaged in the siege of Troy, aside from Agamemnon, were
Menelaus, Achilles, Ulysses, Ajax (the son of Tel’amon), Di’omed,
Patro’clus, and Palame’des; while among the bravest of the
defenders of Troy were Hector, Sarpe’don, and Æne’as.
The poet’s story opens, in the tenth year of the
siege, with an account of a contentious scene between two of the
Grecian chiefs —Achilles and Agamemnon—which resulted in the
withdrawal of Achilles and his forces from the Grecian army. The
aid of the gods was invoked in behalf of Achilles, and Jupiter
sent a deceitful vision to Agamemnon, seeking to persuade him to
lead his forces to battle, in order that the Greeks might realize
their need of Achilles. Agamemnon first desired to ascertain the
feeling or disposition of the army regarding the expedition it
had undertaken, and so proposed a return to Greece, which was
unanimously and unexpectedly agreed to, and an advance was made
toward the ships. But through the efforts of the valiant and
sagacious Ulysses all discontent on the part of the troops was
suppressed, and they returned to the plains of Troy.
Among those in the Grecian camp who had
complained of their leaders, and of the folly of the expedition
itself, was a brawling, turbulent, and tumultuous character named
Thersi’tes, whose insolence Ulysses sternly and effectively
rebuked. The following sketch of Thersites reads like a picture
drawn from modern life; while the merited reproof administered by
Ulysses is in the happiest vein of just and patriotic
indignation:
Ulysses and Thersites.
Thersites only clamored in the throng,
Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue;
Awed by no shame, by no respect controlled,
In scandal busy, in reproaches bold;
With witty malice, studious to defame;
Scorn all his joy, and censure all his aim;
But chief he gloried, with licentious style,
To lash the great, and monarchs to revile.
His figure such as might his soul proclaim:
One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame;
His mountain shoulders half his breast o’erspread,
Thin hairs bestrew’d his long misshapen head;
Spleen to mankind his envious heart possessed,
And much he hated all—but most, the best.
Ulysses or Achilles still his theme;
But royal scandal his delight supreme.
Long had he lived the scorn of every Greek,
Vext when he spoke, yet still they heard him speak:
Sharp was his voice; which, in the shrillest tone,
Thus with injurious taunts attacked the throne.
Ulysses, in his tent, listens awhile to the
complaints, and censures, and scandals against the chiefs, with
which Thersites addresses the throng gathered around him, and at
length—
With indignation sparkling in his eyes,
He views the wretch, and sternly thus replies:
“Peace, factious monster, born to vex the state
With wrangling talents formed for foul debate,
Curb that impetuous tongue, nor, rashly vain,
And singly mad, asperse the sovereign reign.
“Have we not known thee, slave! of all our host
The man who acts the least, upbraids the most?
Think not the Greeks to shameful flight to bring;
Nor let those lips profane the name of King.
For our return we trust the heavenly powers;
Be that their care; to fight like men be ours.
“But grant the host, with wealth our chieftain load;
Except detraction, what hast thou bestowed?
Suppose some hero should his spoil resign,
Art thou that hero? Could those spoils be thine?
Gods! let me perish on this hateful shore,
And let these eyes behold my son no more,
If on thy next offence this hand forbear
To strip those arms thou ill deserv’st to wear,
Expel the council where our princes meet,
And send thee scourged and howling through the fleet.”
—B. II. POPE’S Trans.
COMBAT OF MENELAUS AND PARIS.
The opposing armies being ready to engage, a
single combat is agreed upon between Menelaus, and Paris son of
Priam, for the determination of the war. Paris is soon
vanquished, but is rescued from death by Venus; and, according to
the terms on which the combat took place, Agamemnon demands the
restoration of Helen. But the gods declare that the war shall go
on. So the conflict begins, and Diomed, assisted by the goddess
Pallas (or Minerva), performs wonders in this day’s battle,
wounding and putting to flight Pan’darus, Æneas, and the
goddess Venus, even wounding the war-god Mars, who had challenged
him to combat, and sending him groaning back to heaven.
Hector, the eldest son of Priam King of Troy, and
the chief hero of the Trojans, leaves the field for a brief
space, to request prayers to Minerva for assistance, and
especially for the removal of Diomed from the fight. This done,
he seeks a momentary interview with his wife, the fair and
virtuous Androm’a-che, whose touching appeal to him, and his
reply, are both, perhaps, without a parallel in tender, natural
solicitude.
Parting of Hector and Andromache.
“Too daring prince! ah, whither dost thou run?
Ah, too forgetful of thy wife and son!
And think’st thou not how wretched we shall be,
A widow I, a helpless orphan he?
For sure such courage length of life denies,
And thou must fall, thy virtue’s sacrifice.
Greece in her single heroes strove in vain;
Now hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain!
Oh grant me, gods! ere Hector meets his doom,
All I can ask of heaven, an early tomb!
So shall my days in one sad tenor run,
And end with sorrows as they first begun.
“No parent now remains my griefs to share,
No father’s aid, no mother’s tender care.
The fierce Achilles wrapp’d our walls in fire,
Laid The’be waste, and slew my warlike sire!
By the same arm my seven brave brothers fell;
In one sad day beheld the gates of hell.
My mother lived to bear the victor’s bands,
The queen of Hippopla’cia’s sylvan lands.
“Yet, while my Hector still survives, I see
My father, mother, brethren, all in thee:
Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all
Once more will perish, if my Hector fall.
Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share:
Oh, prove a husband’s and a father’s care!
That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy,
Where yon wild fig-trees join the walls of Troy;
Thou from this tower defend the important post;
There Agamemnon points his dreadful host,
That pass Tydi’des, Ajax, strive to gain,
And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train.
Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given,
Or led by hopes, or dictated from heaven.
Let others in the field their arms employ,
But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy.”
The chief replied: “That post shall be my care,
Nor that alone, but all the works of war.
How would the sons of Troy, in arms renown’d,
And Troy’s proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,
Attaint the lustre of my former name,
Should Hector basely quit the field of fame!
My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to the embattled plains:
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father’s glories and my own.
“Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates;
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)
The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,
Must see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother’s death, the ruin of my kind,
Not Priam’s hoary hairs defiled with gore,
Not all my brothel’s gasping on the shore,
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread.
“I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led!
In Argive looms our battles to design,
And woes, of which so large a part was thine!
To bear the victor’s hard commands, or bring
The weight of waters from Hype’ria’s spring.
There, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry: ‘Behold the mighty Hector’s wife!’
Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes by naming me.
The thoughts of glory past, and present shame,
A thousand griefs shall waken at the name!
May I lie cold before that dreadful day,
Pressed with a load of monumental clay!
Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep.”
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
Stretched his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse’s breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child;
The glittering terrors from his brows unbound,
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground.
Then kissed the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferred a father’s prayer:
“O thou! whose glory fills the ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers! protect my son!
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country’s foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
So when triumphant from successful toils,
Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may hail him with deserved acclaim,
And say, ‘This chief transcends his father’s fame;’
While pleased, amidst the general shouts of Troy,
His mother’s conscious heart o’erflows with joy.”
He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms,
Restored the pleasing burden to her arms;
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe he laid,
Hush’d to repose, and with a smile survey’d.
The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
The soften’d chief with kind compassion view’d,
And dried the falling drops, and thus pursued:
“Andromache, my soul’s far better part,
Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart?
No hostile hand can antedate my doom,
Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb.
Fix’d is the term to all the race of earth;
And such the hard condition of our birth,
No force can then resist, no flight can save—
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.
No more—but hasten to thy tasks at home,
There guide the spindle and direct the loom:
Me, glory summons to the martial scene—
The field of combat is the sphere of men;
Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim,
The first in danger, as the first in fame.”
Thus having said, the glorious chief resumes
His towery helmet black with shading plumes.
His princess parts with a prophetic sigh,
Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye,
That stream’d at every look; then, moving slow,
Sought her own palace and indulged her woe.
There, while her tears deplored the godlike man,
Through all her train the soft infection ran:
The pious maids their mingled sorrows shed,
And mourn the living Hector as the dead.
—B. VI. POPE’S. Trans.
HECTOR’S EXPLOITS, AND DEATH OF PATRO’CLUS.
Hector hastened to the field, and there his
exploits aroused the enthusiasm and courage of his countrymen;
who drove back the Grecian hosts. Disheartened, the Greeks sent
Ulysses and Ajax to Achilles to plead with that warrior for his
return with his forces to the Grecian camp. But Achilles
obstinately refused to take part in the conflict, which was
continued with varying success, until the Trojans succeeded in
breaking through the Grecian wall, and attempted to fire the
Greek ships, which were saved by the valor of Ajax. In compliance
with the request of the aged Nestor, however, of whom the poet
YOUNG tells us that—
When Nestor spoke, none asked if he prevailed;
That god of sweet persuasion never failed—
Achilles now placed his own armor on Patroclus,
and, giving him also his shield, sent him to the aid of the
Greeks. The Trojans, supposing Patroclus to be the famous
Achilles, became panic-stricken, and were pursued with great
slaughter to the walls of Troy.
Apollo now goes to the aid of the Trojans, smites
Patroclus, whose armor is strewn on the plain, and then the hero
is killed by Hector, who proudly places the plume of Achilles on
his own helmet.
His spear in shivers falls; his ample shield
Drops from his arm; his baldric strews the field;
The corslet his astonished breast forsakes;
Loose is each joint; each nerve with horror shakes;
Stupid he stares, and all assistless stands:
Such is the force of more than mortal hands.
Achilles’ plume is stained with dust and gore:
That plume which never stooped to earth before,
Long used, untouched, in fighting fields to shine,
And shade the temples of the mad divine.
Jove dooms it now on Hector’s helm to nod;
Not long—for fate pursues him, and the god.
—B. XVI.
Then ensued a most terrific conflict for the body
of the slain warrior, in which Ajax, Glaucus, Hector,
Æneas, and Menelaus participated, the latter finally
succeeding in bearing it off to the ships. The grief of Achilles
over the body of his friend, and at the loss of his wonderful
armor, is represented as being intense; and so great a blow to
the Greeks was the loss of the armor considered, that Vulcan
formed for Achilles a new one, and also a new shield. Homer’s
description of the latter piece of marvelous workmanship—which
is often referred to as a truthful picture of the times, and
especially of the advanced condition of some of the arts and
sciences in the Heroic, or post-Heroic, age—is too long for
insertion here entire; but we proceed to give sufficient extracts
from it to show at least the magnificent conception of the
poet.
How Vulcan Formed the Shield of Achilles.
He first a vast and massive buckler made;
There all the wonders of his work displayed,
With silver belt adorned, and triply wound,
Orb within orb, the border beaming round.
Five plates composed the shield; these Vulcan’s art
Charged with his skilful mind each varied part.
There earth, there heaven appeared; there ocean flowed;
There the orbed moon and sun unwearied glowed;
There every star that gems the brow of night—
Ple’iads and Hy’ads, and O-ri’on’s might;
The Bear, that, watchful in his ceaseless roll
Around the star whose light illumes the pole,
Still eyes Orion, nor e’er stoops to lave
His beams unconscious of the ocean wave.
There, by the god’s creative power revealed,
Two stately cities filled with life the shield.
Here nuptials—solemn rites—and throngs of gay
Assembled guests; forth issuing filled the way.
Bright blazed the torches as they swept along
Through streets that rung with hymeneal song;
And while gay youths, swift circling round and round,
Danced to the pipe and harp’s harmonious sound,
The women thronged, and wondering as they viewed,
Stood in each portal and the pomp pursued.
Next on the shield a forum met the view;
Two men, contending, there a concourse drew:
A citizen was slain; keen rose the strife—
‘Twas compensation claim’d for loss of life.
This swore, the mulct for blood was strictly paid:
This, that the fine long due was yet delayed.
Both claim’d th’ award and bade the laws decide;
And partial numbers, ranged on either side,
With eager clamors for decision call,
Till the feared heralds seat and silence all.
There the hoar elders, in their sacred place,
On seats of polished stone the circle grace;
Rise with a herald’s sceptre, weigh the cause,
And speak in turn the sentence of the laws;
While, in the midst, for him to bear away
Who rightliest spoke, two golden talents lay.
The other city on the shield displayed
Two hosts that girt it, in bright mail arrayed;
Diverse their counsel: these to burn decide,
And those to seize, and all its wealth divide.
The town their summons scorned, resistance dared,
And secretly for ambush arms prepared.
Wife, grandsire, child, one soul alike in all,
Stand on the battlements and guard the wall.
Mars, Pallas, led their host: gold either god,
A golden radiance from their armor flowed.
Next, described as displayed on the shield, is a
picture of spies at a distance, an ambuscade, and a battle; the
scene then changes to ploughing and sowing, and the incidents
connected with the gathering of a bountiful harvest; then are
introduced a vineyard, the gathering of the grapes, and a
merrymaking by the youths at the close of the day; then we have a
wild outlying scene of herdsmen with their cattle, the latter
attacked by two famished lions, and the tumult that followed. The
description closes as follows:
Now the god’s changeful artifice displayed
Fair flocks at pasture in a lovely glade;
And folds and sheltering stalls peeped up between,
And shepherd-huts diversified the scene.
Now on the shield a choir appear’d to move,
Whose flying feet the tuneful labyrinth wove;
Youths and fair girls there, hand in hand, advanced,
Timed to the song their steps, and gayly danced.
Round every maid light robes of linen flowed;
Round every youth a glossy tunic glowed;
Those wreathed with flowers, while from their partners hung
Swords that, all gold, from belts of silver swung.
Train’d by nice art each flexile limb to wind,
Their twinkling feet the measured maze entwined,
Fleet as the wheel whose use the potter tries,
When, twirl’d beneath his hand, its axle flies.
Now all at once their graceful ranks combine,
Each rang’d against the other, line with line.
The crowd flock’d round, and, wondering as they view’d,
Thro’ every change the varying dance pursued;
The while two tumblers, as they led the song,
Turned in the midst and rolled themselves along.
Then, last, the god the force of Ocean bound,
And poured its waves the buckler’s orb around.
—B. XVIII. SOTHEBY’S Trans.
Achilles Engages in the Fight.
Desire to avenge the death of Patroclus proves
more powerful in the breast of Achilles than anger against
Agamemnon, and, clad in his new armor, he is with difficulty
restrained from rushing alone into the fight while his comrades
are resting. Turning and addressing his horses, he reproaches
them with the death of Patroclus. One of them is represented as
being Miraculously endowed with voice, and, replying to Achilles,
prophesies his death in the near future; but, with unabated rage,
the intrepid chief replies:
“So let it be!
Portents and prodigies are lost on me.
I know my fate: to die, to see no more
My much-loved parents and my native shore.
Enough—when Heaven ordains I sink in night.
Now perish Troy!” he said, and rushed to fight.
Jupiter now assembles the gods in council, and
permits them to assist either party. The poet vividly describes
the terrors of the combat and the tumult that arose when “the
powers descending swelled the fight.” Achilles first encounters
Æne’as, who is preserved by Neptune; he then meets Hector,
whom he is on the point of killing, when Apollo rescues him and
carries him away in a cloud. The Trojans, defeated with terrible
slaughter, are driven into the river Scamander, where Achilles
receives the aid of Neptune and Pallas.
This Death of Hector.
Vulcan having dried up the Scamander in aid of
the Trojans, all those who survive, save Hector, seek refuge in
Troy. This hero alone remains without the walls to oppose
Achilles. At the latter’s advance, however, Hector’s resolution
and courage fail him, and he flees, pursued by Achilles three
times around the city; At length he turns upon his pursuer,
determined to meet his fate; and the account of the meeting and
contest with Achilles, as translated by BRYANT, is as
follows:
He spake, and drew the keen-edged sword that hung,
Massive and finely tempered, at his side,
And sprang—as when an eagle high in heaven
Through the thick cloud darts downward to the plain,
To clutch some tender lamb or timid hare.
So Hector, brandishing that keen-edged sword,
Sprang forward, while Achilles opposite
Leaped toward him, all on fire with savage hate,
And holding his bright buckler, nobly wrought,
Before him. As in the still hours of night
Hesper goes forth among the host of stars,
The fairest light of heaven, so brightly shone,
Brandished in the right hand of Pe’leus’ son,
The spear’s keen blade, as, confident to slay
The noble Hector, o’er his glorious form
His quick eye ran, exploring where to plant
The surest wound. The glittering mail of brass
Won from the slain Patroclus guarded well
Each part, save only where the collar-bones
Divide the shoulder from the neck, and there
Appeared the throat, the spot where life is most
In peril. Through that part the noble son
Of Peleus drave his spear; it went quite through
The tender neck, and yet the brazen blade
Cleft not the windpipe, and the power to speak
Remained.
And then the crested Hector faintly said:
“I pray thee, by thy life, and by thy knees,
And by thy parents, suffer not the dogs
To tear me at the galleys of the Greeks.
Accept abundant store of brass and gold,
Which gladly will my father and the queen,
My mother, give in ransom. Send to them
My body, that the warriors and the dames
Of Troy may light for me the funeral pile.”
The swift Achilles answered, with a frown:
“Nay, by my knees entreat me not, thou cur,
Nor by my parents. I could even wish
My fury prompted me to cut thy flesh
In fragments and devour it, such the wrong
That I have had from thee. There will be none
To drive away the dogs about thy head,
Not though thy Trojan friends should bring to me
Tenfold and twentyfold the offered gifts,
And promise others—not though Priam, sprung
From Dar’danus, should send thy weight in gold.
Thy mother shall not lay thee on thy bier,
To sorrow over thee whom she brought forth;
But dogs and birds of prey shall mangle thee.”
And then the crested Hector, dying, said:
“I know thee, and too clearly I foresaw
I should not move thee, for thou hast a heart
Of iron. Yet reflect that for my sake
The anger of the gods may fall on thee
When Paris and Apollo strike thee down,
Strong as thou art, before the Scæ’an gates.”
Thus Hector spake, and straightway o’er him closed
The light of death; the soul forsook his limbs,
And flew to Hades, grieving for its fate,
So soon divorced from youth and youthful might.
The great achievement of Achilles was followed by
funeral games in honor of Patroclus, and by the institution of
various other festivities. At their close Jupiter sends The’tis
to Achilles to influence him to restore the dead body of Hector
to his family, and sends Iris to Priam to encourage him to go in
person to treat for it. Priam thereupon sets out upon his
journey, and, having arrived at the camp of Achilles, thus
appeals to his compassion:
Priam Begging for the Body of Hector.
“Think, O Achilles, semblance of the gods,
On thine own father, full of days like me,
And trembling on the gloomy verge of life.
Some neighbor chief, it may be, even now
Oppresses him, and there is none at hand,
No friend, to succor him in his distress.
Yet, doubtless, hearing that Achilles lives,
He still rejoices, hoping day by day
That one day he shall see the face again
Of his own son, from distant Troy returned.
But me no comfort cheers, whose bravest sons,
So late the flowers of Ilium, are all slain.
“When, Greece came hither I had fifty sons;
But fiery Mars hath thinned them. One I had—
One, more than all my sons, the strength of Troy,
Whom, standing for his country, thou hast slain—
Hector. His body to redeem I come
Into Achaia’s fleet, bringing, myself,
Ransom inestimable to thy tent.
Rev’rence the gods, Achilles! recollect
Thy father; for his sake compassion show
To me, more pitiable still, who draw
Home to my lips (humiliation yet
Unseen on earth) his hand who slew my son!”
—COWPER’S Trans.
Achilles, moved with compassion, granted the
request of the grief-stricken father, and sent him home with the
body of his son. First to the corse the weeping Androm’ache flew,
and thus spoke:
Lamentation of Andromache.
“And oh, my Hector! Oh, my lord! (she cries)
Snatched in thy bloom from these desiring eyes!
Thou to the dismal realms forever gone!
And I abandoned, desolate, alone!
An only son, once comfort of our pains,
Sad product now of hapless love, remains!
Never to manly age that son shall rise,
Or with increasing graces glad my eyes;
For Ilion now (her great defender slain)
Shall sink a smoking ruin on the plain.
“Who now protects her wives with guardian care?
Who saves her infants from the rage of war?
Now hostile fleets must waft those infants o’er
(Those wives must wait them) to a foreign shore:
Thou too, my son, to barbarous climes shalt go,
The sad companion of thy mother’s woe;
Or else some Greek whose father pressed the plain,
Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain,
In Hector’s blood his vengeance shall enjoy,
And hurl thee headlong from the towers of Troy.”
[Footnote: Such was the fate of Astyanax, Hector’s
son, when Troy was taken:
“Here, from the tower by stem Ulysses thrown,
Andromache bewailed her infant son.”
—MERRICK’S Tryphiodo’rus.]
The death of Hector was also lamented by Helen,
and her lamentation is thus spoken of by COLERIDGE: “I have
always thought the following speech, in which Helen laments
Hector, and hints at her own invidious and unprotected situation
in Troy, as almost the sweetest passage in the poem. It is
another striking instance of that refinement of feeling and
softness of tone which so generally distinguish the last book of
the Iliad from the rest.”
Helen’s Lamentation.
“Ah, dearest friend! in whom the gods had joined
The mildest manners with the bravest mind,
Now twice ten years (unhappy years) are o’er
Since Paris brought me to the Trojan shore;
(Oh, had I perished ere that form divine
Seduced this soft, this easy heart of mine!)
Yet was it ne’er my fate from thee to find
A deed ungentle, or a word unkind:
When others cursed the authoress of their woe,
Thy pity checked my sorrows in their flow:
If some proud brother eyed me with disdain,
Or scornful sister, with her sweeping train,
Thy gentle accents softened all my pain.
For thee I mourn; and mourn myself in thee,
The wretched source of all this misery.
The fate I caused forever I bemoan;
Sad Helen has no friend, now thou art gone!
Through Troy’s wide streets abandoned shall I roam!
In Troy deserted, as abhorred at home!”
—POPE’S Trans.
THE FATE OF TROY.
Homer’s Iliad ends with the burial of
Hector, and gives no account of the result of the war and the
fate of the chief actors in the conflict. But in VIRGIL’S
Æne’id, which gives an account of the escape of
Æne’as, from the flames of Troy, and of his wanderings
until he reaches the shores of Italy, the way in which Troy is
taken, soon after the death of Hector, is told by Æneas to
Dido, the Queen of Carthage. By the advice of Ulysses a huge
wooden horse was constructed in the Greek camp, in which he and
other Grecian warriors concealed themselves, while the remainder
burned their tents and sailed away to the island of Ten’edos,
behind which they secreted their vessels. Æneas begins his
account as follows:
“By destiny compelled, and in despair,
The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,
And by Minerva’s aid a fabric reared
Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared.
The sides were planked with pine: they feigned it made
For their return, and this the vow they paid.
Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side
Selected numbers of their soldiers hide;
With inward arms the dire machine they load,
And iron bowels stuff the dark abode.
“In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle
(While Fortune did on Priam’s empire smile)
Renowned for wealth; but since, a faithless bay,
Where ships exposed to wind and weather lay.
There was their fleet concealed. We thought for Greece
Their sails were hoisted, and our fears release.
The Trojans, cooped within their walls so long,
Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng,
Like swarming bees, and with delight survey
The camp deserted where the Grecians lay.
The quarters of the sev’ral chiefs they showed—
Here Phoenix, here Achilles, made abode;
Here joined the battles; there the navy rode.
“Part on the pile their wond’ring eyes employ—
The pile by Pallas raised to ruin Troy.
Thymoe’tes first (’tis doubtful whether hired,
Or so the Trojan destiny required)
Moved that the ramparts might be broken down
To lodge the monster fabric in the town.
But Ca’pys, and the rest of sounder mind,
The fatal present to the flames designed,
Or to the wat’ry deep; at least to bore
The hollow sides, and hidden frauds explore.
“The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide,
With noise say nothing, and in parts divide.
La-oc’o-on, followed by a num’rous crowd,
Ran from the fort, and cried, from far, aloud:
‘O wretched countrymen! what fury reigns?
What more than madness has possessed your brains?
Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone?
And are Ulysses’ arts no better known?
This hollow fabric either must enclose,
Within its blind recess, our hidden foes;
Or ’tis an engine raised above the town
T’ o’erlook the walls, and then to batter down.
Somewhat is sure designed by fraud or force—
Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse.’
“Thus having said, against the steed he threw
His forceful spear, which, hissing as it flew,
Pierced through the yielding planks of jointed wood,
And trembling in the hollow belly stood.
The sides, transpierced, return a rattling sound,
And groans of Greeks enclosed came issuing through the wound;
And, had not Heaven the fall of Troy designed,
Or had not men been fated to be blind,
Enough was said and done t’ inspire a better mind.
Then had our lances pierced the treacherous wood,
And Ilion’s towers and Priam’s empire stood.”
Deceived by the treachery of Sinon, a captive Greek, who represents that the
wooden horse was built and dedicated to Minerva to secure the aid that the
goddess had hitherto refused the Greeks, and that, if it were admitted within
the walls of Troy, the Grecian hopes would be forever lost, the infatuated
Trojans break down a portion of the city’s wall, and, drawing in the horse,
give themselves up to festivity and rejoicing. Æneas continues the story as
follows:
“With such deceits he gained their easy hearts,
Too prone to credit his perfidious arts.
What Di’omed, nor Thetis’ greater son,
A thousand ships, nor ten years’ siege, had done—
False tears and fawning words the city won.
“A spacious breach is made; the town lies bare;
Some hoisting levers, some the wheels prepare,
And fasten to the horse’s feet; the rest
With cables haul along th’ unwieldy beast:
Each on his fellow for assistance calls.
At length the fatal fabric mounts the walls,
Big with destruction. Boys with chaplets crowned,
And choirs of virgins, sing and dance around.
Thus raised aloft, and then descending down,
It enters o’er our heads, and threats the town.
O sacred city, built by hands divine!
O valiant heroes of the Trojan line!
Four times he struck; as oft the clashing sound
Of arms was heard, and inward groans rebound.
Yet, mad with zeal, and blinded with our fate,
We haul along the horse in solemn state,
Then place the dire portent within the tower.
Cassandra cried and cursed th’ unhappy hour,
Foretold our fate; but, by the gods’ decree,
All heard, and none believed the prophecy.
With branches we the fane adorn, and waste
In jollity the day ordained to be the last.”
—The Æneid. Book II.—DRYDEN.
In the dead of night Sinon unlocked the horse, the Greeks rushed out, opened
the gates of the city, and raised torches as a signal to those at Tenedos, who
returned, and Troy was soon captured and given over to fire and the sword. Then
followed the rejoicings of the victors, and the weeping and wailing of the
Trojan women about to be carried away captive into distant lands, according to
the usages of war.
The stately walls of Troy had sunken,
Her towers and temples strewed the soil;
The sons of Hellas, victory-drunken,
Richly laden with the spoil,
Are on their lofty barks reclined
Along the Hellespontine strand;
A gleesome freight the favoring wind
Shall bear to Greece’s glorious land;
And gleesome chant the choral strain,
As toward the household altars now
Each bark inclines the painted prow—
For Home shall smile again!
And there the Trojan women, weeping,
Sit ranged in many a length’ning row;
Their heedless locks, dishevelled, sweeping
Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe.
No festive sounds that peal along,
Their mournful dirge can overwhelm;
Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song,
Commingled, wails the ruined realm.
“Farewell, beloved shores!” it said:
“From home afar behold us torn,
By foreign lords as captives borne—
Ah, happy are the dead!”
—SCHILLER.
For ten long years the Greeks at Argos had watched nightly for the beacon
fires, lighted from point to point, that should announce the doom of Troy.
When, in the Agamemnon of ÆSCHYLUS, Clytemnes’tra declares that Troy has
fallen, and the chorus, half incredulous, demands what messenger had brought
the intelligence, she replies:
“A gleam—a gleam—from Ida’s height
By the fire-god sent, it came;
From watch to watch it leaped, that light;
As a rider rode the flame!
It shot through the startled sky,
And the torch of that blazing glory
Old Lemnos caught on high
On its holy promontory,
And sent it on, the jocund sign,
To Athos, mount of Jove divine.
Wildly the while it rose from the isle,
So that the might of the journeying light
Skimmed over the back of the gleaming brine!
Farther and faster speeds it on,
Till the watch that keep Macis’tus steep
See it burst like a blazing sun!
Doth Macistus sleep
On his tower-clad steep?
No! rapid and red doth the wildfire sweep:
It flashes afar on the wayward stream
Of the wild Euri’pus, the rushing beam!
It rouses the light on Messa’pion’s height,
And they feed its breath with the withered heath.
But it may not stay!
And away—away—
It bounds in its fresh’ning might.
“Silent and soon
Like a broadened moon
It passes in sheen Aso’pus green,
And bursts in Cithæ’ron gray.
The warden wakes to the signal rays,
And it swoops from the hills with a broader blaze:
On—on the fiery glory rode—
Thy lonely lake, Gorgo’pis, glowed—
To Meg’ara’s mount it came;
They feed it again,
And it streams amain—
A giant beard of flame!
The headland cliffs that darkly down
O’er the Saron’ic waters frown,
Are passed with the swift one’s lurid stride,
And the huge rock glares on the glaring tide.
With mightier march and fiercer power
It gained Arach’ne’s neighboring tower—
Thence on our Ar’give roof its rest it won,
Of Ida’s fire the long-descended son!
Bright harbinger of glory and of joy!
So first and last with equal honor crowned,
In solemn feasts the race-torch circles round.
And these my heralds, this my sign of Peace!
Lo! while we breathe, the victor lords of Greece
Stalk, in stern tumult through the halls of Troy.”
—Trans. by BULWER.
Such, in brief, is the commonly received account
of the Trojan war, as we find it in Homer and other ancient
writers. Concerning it the historian THIRLWALL remarks: “We
consider it necessary to admit the reality of the Trojan war as a
general fact, but beyond this we scarcely venture to proceed a
single step. We find it impossible to adopt the poetical story of
Helen, partly on account of its inherent improbability, and
partly because we are convinced that Helen is a merely
mythological person.” GROTE says:[Footnote: “History of
Greece.” Chap. XV.] “In the eyes of modern inquiry the
Trojan war is essentially a legend and nothing more. If we are
asked if it be not a legend embodying portions of historical
matter, and raised upon a basis of truth—whether there may not
really have occurred at the foot of the hill of Ilium a war
purely human and political, without gods, without heroes, without
Helen, without Amazons, without Ethiopians under the beautiful
son of Eos, without the wooden horse, without the characteristic
and expressive features of the old epic war—if we are asked if
there was not really some such historical Trojan war as this, our
answer must be, that as the possibility of it cannot be denied,
so neither can the reality of it be affirmed.” In this connection
it is interesting to note that the discoveries of the German
explorer, Schliemann, upon the site of ancient Troy, indicate
that Homer “followed actual occurrences more closely than an
over-skeptical historical criticism was once willing to
allow.”
FATE OF THE CHIEF ACTORS IN THE CONFLICT.
Of the fate of some of the principal actors in
the Trojan war it may be stated that, of the prominent Trojans,
Æneas alone escaped. After many years of wanderings he
landed in Italy with a small company of Trojans; and the Roman
writers trace to him the origin of their nation. Priam was killed
by Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, during the burning of Troy;
while Achilles himself fell some time before, shot with an arrow
in the heel by Paris, as Hector had prophesied would be the
manner of his death. Ajax, after the death of Achilles, had a
contest with Ulysses for the armor of the dead hero, but was
unsuccessful, and died by his own hand. The poet EN’NIUS ascribes
the following declaration to Tel’amon, the father of Ajax, when
he heard of his son’s death:
I knew, when I begat him, he must die,
And trained him to no other destiny—
Knew, when I sent him to the Trojan shore,
‘Twas not to halls of feast, but fields of gore.
—Trans. by PETERS.
Agamemnon, on his return to Greece, was
barbarously murdered by his unfaithful queen, Clytemnestra.
Diomed was driven from Greece, and barely escaped with his life.
It is uncertain where or how he died. Ulysses, after almost
innumerable troubles and hardships by sea and land, at last
returned in safety to Ithaca. His wanderings are the subject of
Homer’s Odyssey.
But it may be asked, what became of Helen, the
primary cause of the Trojan war, disastrous alike to victors and
vanquished? According to Virgil, [Footnote:
Æneid, B. VI.] after the death of Paris she
married the Trojan hero, De-iph’o-bus, and on the night after the
city was taken betrayed him to Menela’us, to whom she became
reconciled, and whom she accompanied, as Homer relates,
[Footnote: Odyssey B. IV.] during the eight
years of his wandering, on his return to Greece. LANDOR, in one
of his Hellen’ics, represents Menelaus, after the fall of
Troy, as pursuing Helen up the steps of the palace, and
threatening her with death. He thus addresses her:
“Stand, traitress, on that stair—
Thou mountest not another, by the gods!
Now take the death thou meritest, the death,
Zeus, who presides over hospitality—
And every other god whom thou has left,
And every other who abandons thee
In this accursed city—sends at last.
Turn, vilest of vile slaves! turn, paramour
Of what all other women hate, of cowards;
Turn, lest this hand wrench back thy head, and toss
It and its odors to the dust and flames.”
Helen penitently receives his reproaches, and
welcomes the threatened death; and when he speaks of their
daughter, Hermi’o-ne, whom, an infant, she had so cruelly
deserted, she exclaims:
“O my child!
My only one! thou livest: ’tis enough;
Hate me, abhor me, curse me—these are duties—
Call me but mother in the shades of death!
She now is twelve years old, when the bud swells,
And the first colors of uncertain life
Begin to tinge it.”
Menelaus turns aside to say,
“Can she think of home?
Hers once, mine yet, and sweet Hermione’s!
Is there one spark that cheered my hearth, one left
For thee, my last of love?”
When she beseeches him to delay not her merited
fate, her words greatly move him, and he exclaims
(aside),
“Her voice is musical
As the young maids who sing to Artemis:
How glossy is that yellow braid my grasp
Seized and let loose! Ah, can ten years have passed
Since—but the children of the gods, like them,
Suffer not age.[Footnote: Jupiter was fabled to be
the father of Helen.]
(Then turning to Helen.) Helen! speak honestly,
And thus escape my vengeance—was it force
That bore thee off?”
Her words and grief move him to pity, if not to
love, and he again turns aside to say,
“The true alone and loving sob like her.
Come, Helen!” (He takes her hand.)
Helen. Oh, let never Greek see this!
Hide me from Argos, from Amy’clæ [Footnote: A
town
of Laconia, where was a temple of Apollo. It was a
short distance to the south-west of Sparta.] hide me,
Hide me from all.
Menelaus. Thy anguish is too strong
For me to strive with.
Helen. Leave it all to me.
Menelaus. Peace! peace! The wind, I hope, is fair for
Sparta.
The intimation, by Landor and others who have
sought to exculpate Helen, that she was unwillingly borne away by
Paris, has been amplified, with much poetic skill and beauty, by
a recent poet,[Footnote: A. Lang, in his “Helen of
Troy.”] into the story that the goddess Venus appeared to
her, and, while Helen was shrinking with apprehension and fear of
her power, told her that she should fall into a deep slumber, and
on awaking should be oblivious of her past life, “ignorant of
shame, and blameless of those evil deeds that the goddess should
thrust upon her.” Venus declares to her:
“Thou art the toy of gods, an instrument
Wherewith all mortals shall be plagued or blest,
Even at my pleasure; yea, thou shalt be bent
This way and that, howe’er it like me best:
And following thee, as tides the moon, the West
Shall flood the Eastern coasts with waves of war,
And thy vexed soul shall scarcely be at rest,
Even in the havens where the deathless are.
“The instruments of men are blind and dumb,
And this one gift I give thee, to be blind
And heedless of the thing that is to come,
And ignorant of that which is behind;
Bearing an innocent, forgetful mind
In each new fortune till I visit thee
And stir thy heart, as lightning and the wind
Bear fire and tumult through a sleeping sea.
“Thou shalt forget Hermione! forget,
Forget thy lord, thy lofty palace, and thy kin;
Thy hand within a stranger’s shalt thou set,
And follow him, nor deem it any sin;
And many a strange land wand’ring shalt thou win;
And thou shalt come to an unhappy town,
And twenty long years shalt thou dwell therein,
Before the Argives mar its towery crown.
“And of thine end I speak not, but thy name—
Thy name which thou lamentest—that shall be
A song in all men’s speech, a tongue of flame
Between the burning lips of Poesy;
And the nine daughters of Mnemos’y-ne,
With Prince Apollo, leader of the nine,
Shall make thee deathless in their minstrelsy!
Yea, for thou shalt outlive the race divine.”
As the goddess had declared, so it came to pass,
for when Helen awoke from her long slumber,
She had no memory of unhappy things,
She knew not of the evil days to come,
Forgotten were her ancient wanderings;
And as Lethæ’an waters wholly numb
The sense of spirits in Elysium,
That no remembrance may their bliss alloy,
Even so the rumor of her days was dumb,
And all her heart was ready for new joy.
The reconciliation of Menelaus with Helen is
easily effected by the same kind of artifice; for when, on the
taking of Troy, he meets her and draws his sword to slay her, the
goddess, again appearing, throws her witching spell over him
also:
Then fell the ruthless sword that never fell
When spear bit harness in the battle din,
For Aphrodi’te spake, and like a spell
Wrought her sweet voice persuasive, till within
His heart there lived no memory of sin;
No thirst for vengeance more, but all grew plain,
And wrath was molten in desire to win
The golden heart of Helen once again.
It is said that after the death of Menelaus Helen
was driven from the Peloponnesus by the indignant Spartans.
IV. ARTS AND CIVILIZATION IN THE HEROIC AGE.
Although but little confidence can be placed in
the reality of the persons and events mentioned in the poems of
Homer, yet there is one kind of truth from which the poet can
hardly have deviated, or his writings would not have been so
acceptable as they evidently were to his contemporaries—and that
is, a faithful portraiture of the government, usages,
institutions, manners, and general condition of the Greeks during
the age in which he lived, and which undoubtedly differed little
from the manners and customs of the Heroic Age. The pictures of
life and character that he had drawn must have had a reality of
existence, and they unquestionably give us, to a considerable
extent, a true insight into the condition of Grecian society at
that early period of the world’s history.
And yet we must bear in mind that epics
such as those of Homer, describing the manners and customs of a
half-barbarous age, and intended to honor chieftains by extolling
the deeds and lives of their ancestors, and to be recited in the
courts of kings and princes, would, very naturally, be
accommodated to the wishes, partialities, and prejudices of their
noble hearers. And this leads us to consider how far even the
great epic of Homer is to be relied on for a faithful picture of
the political life of the Greeks during the Heroic Age. We
quote the following suggestive remarks on this subject from a
recent writer and able Greek critic:
THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE GREEKS, AS REPRESENTED IN THEIR
GREAT EPICS.
“Although, in the Greek epics, the rank and file
of the army are to be marshaled by the kings, and to raise the
shout of battle, they actually disappear from the action, and
leave the field perfectly clear for the chiefs to perform their
deeds of valor. There is not, perhaps, an example in all the
Iliad of a chief falling, or even being wounded, by an
ignoble hand. Amid the cloud of missiles that were flying on the
plains of Troy, amid the crowd of chiefs and kings that were
marshaled on either side, we never hear how a ‘certain man drew a
bow at a venture, and smote a king between the joints of the
harness.’ Yet this must necessarily have occurred in any
prolonged combats such as those about the walls of Troy.
“Here, then, is a plain departure from truth, and
even from reasonable probability. It is indeed a mere omission
which does not offend the reader; but such inaccuracies suggest
serious reflections. If the epic poets ignore the importance of
the masses on the battlefield, is it not likely that they
underrate it in the public assemblies? Is it not possible that
here too, to please their patrons, they describe the glorious
ages of the past as the days when the assembled people would not
question the superior wisdom of their betters, but merely
assembled to be taught and to applaud? I cannot, therefore, as
Mr. Grote does, accept the political condition of things in the
Homeric poems, especially in the Iliad, as a safe guide to
the political life of Greece in the poet’s own day.
“The figure of Thersites seems drawn with special
spite and venom, as a satire upon the first critics that rose up
among the assembled people to question the divine right of kings
to do wrong. We may be sure the real Thersites, from whom the
poet drew his picture, was a very different and a far more
serious power in debate than the misshapen buffoon of the
Iliad. But the king who had been thwarted and exposed by
him in the day would, over his cups in the evening, enjoy the
poet’s travesty, and long for the good old times when he could
put down all impertinent criticism by the stroke of his knotty
sceptre. The Homeric Agora could hardly have existed had it been
so idle a form as the poets represent. But as the lower classes
were carefully marshaled on the battle-field, from a full sense
of the importance which the poet denies them, so they were
marshaled in the public assembly, where we may be sure their
weight told with equal effect, though the poet neglected it for
the greater glory of the counseling chiefs.” [Footnote:
“Social Life in Greece, from Homer to Menander,” by Rev. J. P.
Mahaffy.] Notwithstanding all this, as HEEREN says,
“Homer is the best source of information that we possess
respecting the Heroic Age.”
The form of government that prevailed among the
early Greeks, especially after the Pelasgic race had yielded to
the more warlike and adventurous Hellenes, was evidently that of
the kingly order, on a democratic basis, although it is difficult
to ascertain the precise extent of the royal prerogatives. In all
the Grecian states there appears to have been an hereditary class
of chiefs or nobles, distinguished from the common freemen or
people by titles of honor, superior wealth, dignity, valor, and
noble birth; which latter implied no less than a descent from the
gods themselves, to whom every princely house seems to have
traced its origin.
But the kings, although generally hereditary,
were not always so, nor were they absolute monarchs; they were
rather the most eminent of the nobility, having the command in
war, and the chief seat in the administration of justice; and
their authority was more or less extended in proportion to the
noble qualities they possessed, and particularly to their valor
in battle. Unless distinguished by courage and strength, kings
could not even command in time of war; and during peace they were
bound to consult the people in all important matters. Among their
pecuniary advantages were the profits of an extensive domain
which seems to have been attached to the royal office, and not to
have been the private property of the individual. Thus, Homer
represents Telem’achus as in danger not only of losing his throne
by the adverse choice of the people, but also, among the rights
of the crown, the domains of Ulysses, his father, should he not
be permitted to succeed him.[Footnote: See the
Odyssey (Cowper’s Trans.), xi., 207-223.]
During the Heroic Age the Greeks appear to have
had no fixed laws established by legislation. Public opinion and
usage, confirmed and expounded by judicial decisions, were the
only sources to which the weak and injured could look for
protection and redress. Private differences were most often
settled by private means, and in these cases the weak and
deserving were generally plundered and maltreated by the powerful
and guilty; but in quarrels that threatened to disturb the peace
of the community the public compelled the injured party to
accept, and the aggressor to pay, a stipulated compensation. As
among the savage tribes of America, and even among our early
Saxon ancestors, the murderer was often allowed to pay a
stipulated compensation, which stayed the spirit of revenge, and
was received as a full expiation of his guilt. The mutual
dealings of the several independent Grecian states with one
another were regulated by no established principles, and
international law had no existence at this early period.
DOMESTIC LIFE AND CHARACTER.
In the domestic relations of life there was much
in the conduct of the Greeks that was meritorious. Children were
treated with affection, and much care was bestowed on their
education; and, on the other hand, the respect which they showed
their parents, even after the period of youth and dependence,
approached almost to veneration. As evidence of a rude age,
however, the father disposed of his daughter’s hand in marriage
with absolute authority; and although we meet with many models of
conjugal affection, as in the noble characters of Andromache and
Penelope, yet the story of Helen, and other similar ones, suggest
too plainly that the faithlessness of the wife was not regarded
as a very great offence. The wife, however, occupied a station of
as much, if not more influence in the family than was the case in
the historical period; but she was not the equal of her husband,
and even Homer portrays none of those feelings of love which
result from a higher regard for the female sex.
We gather from Homer that there was a low sense
of truth among the Greeks of the Homeric Age, but that the
people were better than might be expected from the examples set
them by the gods in whom they professed to believe. Says MAHAFFY:
“At no period did the nation attain to that high standard which
is the great feature in Germanic civilization. Even the Romans,
with all their coarseness and vulgarity, stood higher in this
respect. But neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey
is there, except in phrases, any reprobation of deceit as such.
To deceive an enemy is meritorious; to deceive a stranger,
innocent; to deceive even a friend, perfectly unobjectionable, if
any object is to be gained. So it is remarked of Menelaus—as it
were, exceptionally—that he will tell the truth if you
press him, for he is very considerate. But the really leading
characters in the Odyssey and Iliad (except
Achilles) do not hesitate at all manner of lying. Ulysses is
perpetually inventing, and so is his patroness, Pallas Athe’ne;
and she actually mentions this quality of wily deceit as her
special ground of love and affection for him.” Thus, we read in
the Odyssey that when Ulysses, in response to what the
goddess—then disguised and unknown to him—had said,
With unembarrassed readiness returned
Not truth, but figments to truth opposite,
For guile, in him, stood never at a pause—
the goddess, seemingly well pleased with his
“tricks of speech delusive,” thus replied:
“Who passes thee in artifice well-framed;
And in impostures various, need shall find
Of all his policy, although a god.
Canst thou not cease, inventive as thou art
And subtle, from the wiles which thou hast loved
Since thou wast infant, and from tricks of speech
Delusive, even in thy native land?
But come; dismiss we these ingenious shifts
From our discourse, in which we both excel;
For thou of all men in expedients most
Abound’st and eloquence, and I throughout
All heaven have praise for wisdom and for art.”
—COWPER’S Trans.
To the foregoing it may be added that “Zeus
deceives both gods and men; the other gods deceive Zeus; in fact,
the whole Homeric society is full of guile and falsehood. There
is still, however, an expectation that if the gods are called to
witness a transaction by means of an oath, they will punish
deceit. The poets clearly held that the gods, if they were under
no restraint or fear of punishment from Zeus, were at liberty to
deceive as they liked. One safeguard yet remained—the oath by
the Styx, [Footnote: see the index at the end of the
volume.] the penalties of violating which are enumerated
in Hesiod’s Theogony, and consist of nine years’
transportation, with solitary confinement and hard labor. As for
oaths, the Hymn to Hermes shows that in succeeding generations
their solemnity was openly ridiculed. Among the Homeric gods, as
well as among the heroes, there were, indeed, old-fashioned
characters who adhered to probity. The character of Apollo is
unstained by deceit. So is that of Menelaus.”
The Greeks in the Heroic Age were divided into
the three classes—nobles, freemen, and slaves. Of the first we
have already spoken. The condition of the freemen it is difficult
to fully ascertain; but the majority possessed portions of land
which they cultivated. There was another class of freemen who
possessed no property, and who worked for hire on the property of
others. “Among the freemen,” says one writer, “we find certain
professional persons whose acquirements and knowledge raised them
above their class, and procured for them the respect and society
of the nobles. Such were the seer, the bard, the herald, and
likewise the smith and the carpenter.” The slaves were owned by
the nobles alone, and were treated with far more kindness and
consideration than were the slaves of republican Greece.
During this period the Greeks had but little
knowledge of geography beyond the confines of Greece and its
islands and the coasts of the Ægean Sea. The habitable
world was supposed to be surrounded by an ocean-like river, like
that which Homer describes as bordering the shield of Achilles,
beyond which were realms of darkness, dreams, and death.
Legitimate commerce appears to have been deemed of little
importance. The largest ships were slender, half-decked
row-boats, capable of carrying, at most, only about a hundred
men, and having a movable mast, which was hoisted, and a sail
attached, only to take advantage of a favorable wind. Most of the
navigation at this early period was undertaken for the purposes
of plunder, and piracy was not deemed dishonorable. When Mentor
and Telemachus came to the court of Nestor, that prince, after
entertaining them kindly, asked them, as a matter of curiosity,
whether they were travelers or robbers!
But the Heroic Age was not one essentially rude
and barbarous. Greece was then a populous and well-cultivated
country, with numerous and large cities surrounded by walls and
adorned with palaces and temples. Homer describes the different
branches of agriculture, and the various labors of farming, the
culture of the grape, and the duties of the herdsmen. The weaving
of woolen and of linen fabrics was the chief occupation of the
women, and was carried to a high degree of perfection. While
Homer may have drawn largely upon his imagination for his
brilliant pictures, still their main features were undoubtedly
taken from life, and many ancient remains of Grecian art attest
the general fidelity of his representations: In the wonderful
description of the shield of Achilles we get some insight into
the progress which the arts of metallurgy and engraving had made,
and in the following description, in the Fifth Book of the
Odyssey, of the raft of Ulysses, on which this wandering
hero floated after leaving Calypso’s isle, we learn to what
degree the art of ship-building had attained in the Heroic Age.
Calypso furnishes him the material for constructing his raft.
The Raft of Ulysses.
She gave him, fitted to the grasp, an axe
Of iron, ponderous, double-edged, with haft
Of olive-wood inserted firm, and wrought
With curious art. Then placing in his hand
A polished adze, she led herself the way
To her isle’s utmost verge, where loftiest stood
The alder, poplar, and cloud-piercing fir,
Though sapless, sound, and fittest for his use,
As buoyant most. To that most verdant grove
His steps the beauteous nymph Calypso led,
And sought her home again. Then slept not he,
But, swinging with both hands the axe, his task
Soon finished; trees full twenty to the ground
He cast; which, dexterous, with his adze he smoothed,
The knotted surface chipping by a line.
Meantime the lovely goddess to his aid
Sharp augers brought, with which he bored the beams,
Then placed them side by side, adapting each
To other, and the seams with wadding closed.
Broad as an artist, skilled in naval works,
The bottom of a ship of burden spreads,
Such breadth Ulysses to his raft assigned.
He decked her over with long planks, upborne
On massy beams; he made the mast, to which
He added suitable the yard; he framed
Rudder and helm to regulate her course;
With wicker-work he bordered all her length
For safety, and much ballast stowed within.
Meantime Calypso brought him for a sail
Fittest materials, which he also shaped,
And to his sail due furniture annexed
Of cordage strong, foot-ropes and ropes aloft,
Then heaved her down with levers to the deep.
—Odyssey, B. V. COWPER’S Trans.
We notice in this description the use of the
adze—of the double-edged axe; of augers for boring the beams;
the caulking of the hull; the decking made of planks; the single
mast; the yard from which the sail was spread; the use of the
rudder and the helm; “foot-ropes and ropes aloft;” while, for
safety, a wicker-work of cordage surrounds the deck, and much
“ballast” is stowed within.
To what extent the higher orders of art—those
which became in later times the highest glory of Greece, and in
which she will always stand unrivalled—were cultivated before
the time of Homer, is a subject of much uncertainty. It is clear,
however, that poetry and music, which were almost inseparably
united, were early made prominent instruments of the religious,
martial, and political education of the people. The aid of
poetical song was called in to enliven and adorn the banquets of
the great public assemblies, the Olympic and other games, and
scarcely a social or public gathering can be mentioned that would
not have appeared to the ardent Grecians cold and spiritless
without this accompaniment.
It is not equally clear, however, whether
architecture, in Homer’s time, had arrived at such a stage as to
deserve a place among the fine arts. But it is probable that
while the private dwellings which the poet describes were strong
and convenient rather than ornamental and elegant in design, the
public buildings—the temples, palaces, etc.—were elegant in
design and in architectural decoration. Statuary was cultivated
in this age, as appears from the remains of many of the Greek
cities; and, although no paintings are spoken of in Homer, yet
his descriptions prove that his contemporaries must have been
acquainted with the art of design. Whether the Greeks were
acquainted at this early period with the art of writing is,
perhaps, the most important of all the questions connected with
the progress of art and knowledge at this time, as it has
received the most attention. The prevalent opinion is that the
art of writing was then unknown, and that no written compositions
were extant until many years after the time of Homer.
V. THE CONQUEST OF THE PELOPONNESUS, AND COLONIES IN ASIA MINOR.
Although not yet fully out of the fabulous era of
Grecian history, we now enter upon a period when the crude
fictions of more than mortal heroes begin to give place to the
realities of human existence; but still the vague, disputed, and
often contradictory annals on which we are obliged to rely shed
only an uncertain light around us; and even what we can gather as
the most reliable cannot be taken wholly as undoubted historic
truth.
The immediate consequences of the Trojan war, as
represented by Greek historians, were scarcely less disastrous to
the victors than to the vanquished. The return of the Grecian
heroes to their homes is represented, as we have seen, to have
been full of tragic adventures, and their long absence encouraged
usurpers to seize many of their thrones. Hence arose fierce wars
and intestine commotions, which greatly retarded the progress of
Grecian civilization. Among these petty revolutions, however, no
events of general interest occurred until about sixty years after
the fall of Troy, when a people from Epi’rus, passing over the
mountain-chain of Pindus, descended into the rich plains which
lie along the banks of the Pene’us, and finally conquered the
country, to which they gave the name of Thessaly. The fugitives
from Thessaly, driven from their own country, passed over into
Bœo’tia, which they subdued after a long struggle, in their turn
driving out the ancient inhabitants of the land. This event is
supposed to have occurred in 1124 B.C.
The unsettled state of society caused by the
Thessalian and Bœotian conquests occasioned what is known as the
“Æo’lian Migration,” so-called from the race that took the
principal share in it. These people passed over into Asia Minor,
and established their settlements in the vicinity of the ruins of
Troy. This became known as the Æolian Confederacy.
RETURN OF THE HERACLI’DÆ
About twenty years after the Thessalian conquest,
the Dorians, who had frequently changed their homes, and had
finally settled in a mountainous region on the south of Thessaly,
commenced a migration to the Peloponnesus, accompanied by
portions of other tribes, and led, as was asserted, by
descendants of Hercules, who had been deprived of their dominions
in the latter country, and who had hitherto made several
unsuccessful attempts to recover them. This important event in
Grecian history is therefore called the “Return of the
Heraclidæ.” The Dorians could muster about twenty thousand
fighting men; and although they were greatly inferior in numbers
to the inhabitants of the country they invaded, the whole of
Peloponnesus, except a few districts, was subdued and apportioned
among the conquerors. Of the Heraclidæ, Tem’enus received
Argos, the sons of Aristode’mus obtained Sparta, and Cresphon’tes
was given Messe’nia. Some of the unconquered tribes of the
southern part of the peninsula seized upon the province of
Acha’ia, and expelled its Ionian inhabitants. The latter sought a
retreat on the western coast of Asia Minor, south of the
Æolian cities, and the settlements thus formed received the
name of Ionia. At a still later period, bands of the Dorians, not
content with their conquest of the Peloponnesus, thronged to Asia
Minor, where they peopled several cities south of Ionia; so that
the Ægean Sea was finally circled by Grecian settlements,
and its islands covered with them.
The Dorians did not become undisputed masters of
the Peloponnesus until they had conquered Corinth in the next
generation. The capture of Corinth was attended by another
expedition which drew the Dorians north of the Isthmus. They
invaded Attica, and encamped before the walls of Athens. Before
proceeding to attack the city they consulted the oracle at
Delphi—the most remarkable oracle of the ancient world, of which
the poet LU’CAN thus writes:
The listening god, still ready with replies,
To none his aid or oracle denies;
Yet wise, and righteous ever, scorns to hear
The fool’s fond wishes, or the guilty’s prayer;
Though vainly in repeated vows they trust,
None e’er find grace before him but the just.
Oft to a banished, wandering, houseless race
The sacred dictates have assigned a place:
Oft from the strong he saves the weak in war,
And heals the barren land, and pestilential air.
The Dorians were told by the oracle that they
would be successful as long as the Athenian king, Co’drus, was
uninjured. The latter, being informed of the answer of the
oracle, disguised himself as a peasant, and, going forth from the
city, was met and slain by a Dorian soldier, thus sacrificing
himself for his country’s good. The superstitious Dorians, now
deeming the war hopeless, withdrew from Attica; and the
Athenians, out of respect for Codrus, declared that no one was
worthy to succeed him, and abolished the form of royalty
altogether. Magistrates called Archons were first appointed for
life from the family of Codrus, and these were finally exchanged
for others appointed for ten years. These and other successive
encroachments on the royal prerogatives resulted in the
establishment of an aristocratic government of the nobility, and
are almost the only events that fill the meager annals of Athens
for several centuries.
The foundation of the Greek colonies in Asia
Minor may be said to form the conclusion of the Mythical Period
of Grecian history, and likewise to furnish the basis for the
earlier forms of authentic Greek literature. Before proceeding,
therefore, to the general events that distinguish the authentic
period of Greek history, we will give, first, a brief sketch of
this early literature as embodied chiefly in the poems of Homer;
and, second, will point out some of the causes that tended to
unite the Greeks as a people, notwithstanding their separation
into so many independent communities or states.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY GREEK LITERATURE, AND GREEK COMMUNITY OF INTERESTS.
The earliest written compositions of the Greeks,
of which tradition or history has preserved any record, were
poetical; a circumstance which, noticed in other nations also,
has led to the assertion that poetry is preeminently the language
of Nature. But the first poetical compositions of the Greeks were
not written. The earliest of them were undoubtedly the religious
teachings of the priests and seers; and these were soon followed
by others founded on the legends and genealogies of the Grecian
heroes, which were addressed, by their authors, to the ear and
feelings of a sympathizing audience, and were then taken up by
professional reciters, called Rhapsodists, who traveled from
place to place, rehearsing them before private companies or at
the public festivals.
Of the Greek colonists of Asia the Ionians
possessed the highest culture, and with them we find the first
development of Greek poetry. Drawing from the common language a
richer tone and a clearness and graphic power that their
neighbors never equaled, they early unfolded the ancient legends
and genealogies of the race into new and enlarged forms of
poetical beauty. Says DR. C. C. FELTON,[Footnote:
“Lectures on Ancient and Modern Greece,” vol. i., p. 78.]
“In Ionia the popular enthusiasm took a poetical turn, and the
genius of that richly gifted race responded nobly to the call.
The poets—singers as they were first called—found in the Orally
transmitted ballads the richest mines of legendary lore, which
they wrought into new forms of rhythmical beauty and splendor.
Instead of short ballads, pieces of great length, with more fully
developed characters and more of dramatic action, were required
by a beauty loving and pleasure seeking race; and the leisure of
peace and the demands of refined luxury furnished the occasion
and the impelling motive to this more extended species of epic
song.” From the highly esteemed work of Dr. Felton we transcribe
some observations on the beauties of the Ionian dialect, and on
the poetical taste and ingenuity that finally developed the
immortal epics of Homer:
Ionian Language and Culture.
“The Ionian dialect, remoulded from the Asiatic
forms and elements which had traveled through the North and
recrossed the Ægean Sea, under the happy influences of a
serene and beautiful heaven, amid the most varied and lovely
scenery in nature, by a people of manly vigor and exquisite
mental and physical organization—of the keenest susceptibility
to beauty of sound as well as of form, of the most vivid and
creative imagination, combined with a childlike impulsiveness and
simplicity—this Ionian language, so sprung and so nurtured,
attained a descriptive force, a copiousness and harmony, which
made it the most admirable instrument on which poet ever played.
For every mood of mind, every shade of passion, every affection
of the heart, every form and aspect of the outward world, it had
its graphic phrase, its clear, appropriate, and rich expression.
Its pictured words and sentences placed the things described, and
thoughts that breathe, in living form before the reader’s eye and
mind. It was vivid, rich, melodious; in its general character
strikingly concrete and objective; a charm to the ear, a delight
to the imagination; copious and infinitely flexible; free and
graceful in movement and structure, having at the beginning
passed over the chords of the lyre, and been modulated by the
living voice of the singer; obeying the impulse of thought and
feeling, rather than the formal principles of grammar.
“It expressed the passions of robust manhood with
artless and unconscious truth. Its freedom, its voluble
minuteness of delineation, its rapid changes of construction, its
breaks, pauses, significant and sudden transitions, its easy
irregularities, exhibit the intellectual play of national youth;
while in boldness and splendor it meets the demands of highest
invention and the most majestic sweep of the imagination, and
bears the impress of genius in the full strength of its maturity.
Frederic Jacobs says, fancifully yet truly, that ‘the language of
Ionia resembles the smooth mirror of a broad and silent lake,
from whose depth a serene sky, with its soft and sunny vault, and
the varied nature along its smiling shores are reflected in
transfigured beauty.’ In Ionia, to borrow the expressions of the
same eloquent writer, the mind of man ‘enjoyed a life exempt from
drudgery, among fair festivals and solemn assemblies, full of
sensibility and frolic joy, innocent curiosity and childlike
faith. Surrendered to the outer world, and inclined to all that
was attractive by novelty, beauty, and greatness, it was here
that the people listened, with greatest eagerness, to the history
of the men and heroes whose deeds, adventures, and wanderings
filled a former age with their renown, and, when they were echoed
in song, moved to ecstasy the breasts of the hearers.
“The Ionians had from the beginning a superior
natural endowment for literature and art; and when this most
gifted race came into contact with the antique culture and
boundless commercial wealth of Asia and Africa, the loveliest and
most fragrant flowers of the intellect shot forth in every
direction. Carrying with them the traditions of their race and
the war-songs of their bards to the very scenes where the famous
deeds of their forefathers had been performed, these local
circumstances awakened a fresh interest in the old legends, and
epic poetry took a new start, a bolder character, a loftier
sweep, a wider range. A general expansion of the intellectual
powers and the poetical spirit suddenly took place in the midst
of the new prosperity and the unaccustomed luxuries of the
East—in the midst of the gay and festive life which succeeded
the ages of wandering, toil, hardship, and conflict, like the
Sabbath repose following the weary warfare of the week. The
loveliness of nature on the Ionian shores, and in the isles that
crown the Ægean deep, was soon embellished by the genius of
art. Stately processions, hymns chanted in honor of the gods,
graceful dances before the altars, statues, and shrines,
assemblies for festal or solemn purposes in the open air under
the soft sky of Ionia, or within the halls of princes and
nobles—these fill up the moments of the new and dazzling
existence which the excitable Hellenic race are invited here and
now to enjoy.
“Their first and deepest want—that which, in the
foregoing periods of their existence, had been the first
supplied—was the longing of the heart, the demand of the
imagination, for poetry and song; and it would have been
surprising if the bright genius of Ionia, under all these
favoring circumstances, had not broken upon the world with a
splendor which outshone all its former achievements. Poets sprang
up, obedient to the call, and a new school of poetical
composition rapidly developed itself, embodying the Hellenic
traditions of the Trojan story, and the legends handed down by
the Trojans themselves. Troops or companies of these
poets—singers, as they were called—were formed, and their
pieces were the delight of the listening multitudes that thronged
around them. At last, among these minstrels who consecrated the
flower of their lives to the service of the Muses, appeared a man
whose genius was to eclipse them all. This man was Homer.”
I. HOMER AND HIS POEMS.
Not only was Homer the greatest of the poets of
antiquity, but he is generally admitted to be distinguished
before all competitors by a clear and even a vast superiority.
The circumstances of his life are but little known, except that
he was a wandering poet, and, in his later years at least, was
blind. He is supposed to have lived nearly one thousand years
before the Christian era; but, strange as it may seem, nothing is
known, with certainty, of his parentage or his birthplace.
Although he was probably a native of the island of Chi’os, yet
seven Grecian cities contended for the honor of his birth. In
view of this controversy, and of the real doubt that hung over
the subject, the poet ANTIP’ATER, of Sidon, who flourished just
before the Christian era, as if he could not give to his great
predecessor too high an exaltation, attributes his birthplace to
heaven, and he ascribes to the goddess Calli’o-pe, one of the
Muses, who presided over epic poetry and eloquence, the
distinction of being his mother.
From Col’ophon some deem thee sprung;
From Smyrna some, and some from Chios;
These noble Sal’amis have sung,
While those proclaim thee born in Ios;
And others cry up Thessaly,
The mother of the Lap’ithæ.
Thus each to Homer has assigned
The birthplace just which suits his mind.
But if I read the volume right,
By Phoebus to his followers given,
I’d say they’re all mistaken quite,
And that his real country’s heaven;
While, for his mother, she can be
No other than Calliope.
—Trans. by MERIVALE.
The principal works of Homer, and, in fact, the
only ones that have not been declared spurious, are the
Iliad and the Odyssey. The former, as we have seen,
relates some of the circumstances of the closing year of the
Trojan war; and the latter tells the story of the wanderings of
the Grecian prince Ulysses after the fall of Troy. The ancients,
to whom the writings of Homer were so familiar, fully believed
that he was the author of the two great epics attributed to him.
It was left to modern critics to maintain the contrary. In 1795
Professor F. A. Wolf, of Germany, published his
Prolegomena, or prefatory essay to the Iliad, in
which he advanced the hypothesis that both the Iliad and
the Odyssey were a collection of separate lays by
different authors, for the first time reduced to writing and
formed into the two great poems by the despot Pisis’tratus, of
Athens, and his friends. [Footnote: Nearly all the modern
German writers follow the views of Wolf against the Homeric
authorship of this poem, but among the English critics there is
more diversity of opinion. Colonel Mure, Mr. Gladstone, and
others oppose the German view, while Grote, Professor Geddes,
Professor Mahaffy and others of note adopt it, so far at least as
to believe that Homer was not the sole author of the
poems.] We cannot here enter into the details of the
controversy to which this theory has given rise, nor can we
undertake to say on which side the weight of authority is to be
found. The following extracts well express the views of those who
adhere to the common theory on the subject. PROFESSOR FELTON thus
remarks, in the preface to his edition of the Iliad: “For
my own part I prefer to consider it, as we have received it from
ancient editors, as one poem—the work of one author, and that
author Homer, the first and greatest of minstrels. As I
understand the Iliad, there is a unity of plan, a harmony
of parts, a consistency among the different situations of the
same character, which mark it as the production of one mind; but
of a mind as versatile as the forms of nature, the aspects of
life, and the combinations of powers, propensities, and passions
in man are various.”
On the same subject, the English author and
critic, THOMAS NOON TALFOURD, makes these interesting
observations: “The hypothesis to which the antagonists of Homer’s
personality must resort, implies something far more wonderful
than the theory which they impugn. They profess to cherish the
deepest veneration for the genius displayed in the poems. They
agree, also, in the antiquity usually assigned to them, and they
make this genius and this antiquity the arguments to prove that
one man could not have composed them. They suppose, then, that in
a barbarous age, instead of one being marvelously gifted, there
were many: a mighty race of bards, such as the world has never
since seen—a number of miracles instead of one. All experience
is against this opinion. In various periods of the world great
men have arisen, under very different circumstances, to astonish
and delight it; but that the intuitive power should be so
strangely diffused, at any one period, among a great number, who
should leave no successors behind them, is unworthy of credit.
And we are requested to believe this to have occurred in an age
which those who maintain the theory regard as unfavorable to
poetic art! The common theory, independent of other proofs, is
the most probable. Since the early existence of the works cannot
be doubted, it is easier to believe in one than in twenty
Homers.”
Very numerous and varied are the
characterizations of Homer and the writings ascribed to him.
POPE, in his Temple of Fame, pays this tribute to the
ancient bard:
High on the list the mighty Homer shone;
Eternal adamant composed his throne;
Father of verse! in holy fillets dressed,
His silver beard waved gently o’er his breast;
Though blind, a boldness in his look appears;
In years he seemed, but not impaired by years.
The wars of Troy were round the pillars seen:
Here fierce Tydi’des wounds the Cyprian queen;
Here Hector, glorious from Patro’clus’ fall;
Here, dragged in triumph round the Trojan wall.
Motion and life did every part inspire,
Bold was the work, and proud the master’s fire:
A strong expression most he seemed to affect,
And here and there disclosed a brave neglect.
It is admitted by all that the Homeric characters
are drawn, each in its way, by a master’s hand. “The most
pervading merit of the Iliad,” says one, “is its fidelity
and vividness as a mirror of man, and of the visible sphere in
which he lived, with its infinitely varied imagery, both actual
and ideal; and the task which the great poet set for himself was
perfectly accomplished.” “The mind of Homer,” says another, “is
like an Æolian harp, so finely strung that it answers to
the faintest movement of the air by a proportionate vibration.
With every stronger current its music rises along an almost
immeasurable scale, which begins with the lowest and softest
whisper, and ends in the full swell of the organ.”
The “lofty march” of the Iliad is also
often spoken of as characteristic of the style in which that
great epic is written. And yet, as has been said, “though its
versification is always appropriate, and therefore never mean, it
only rises into stateliness, or into a terrible sublimity, when
Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. Thus he
ushers in with true grandeur the marshalling of the Greek army,
in the Second Book, partly by the invocation of the Muses, and
partly by an assemblage of no less than six consecutive similes,
which describe, respectively—1st, the flash of the Greek arms
and the splendor of the Grecian hosts; 2d, the swarming numbers;
3d, the resounding tramp; 4th, the settling down of the ranks as
they form the line; 5th, the busy marshalling by the commanders;
6th, the majesty of the great chief Agamemnon, ‘like Mars or
Neptune, such as Jove ordained him, eminent above all his
fellow-chiefs.'”
These similes are brought in with great effect as
introductory to a catalogue of the ships and forces of the
Greeks; thus pouring, from a single point, a broad stream of
splendor over the whole; and although the enumeration which
follows is only a plain matter of business, it is not without its
poetical embellishment, and is occasionally relieved by short
legends of the countries and noted warriors of the different
tribes. We introduce these striking similes here as marked
characteristics of the art of Homer, from whom, it is little
exaggeration to say, a very large proportion of the similes of
all subsequent writers have been, more or less directly, either
copied or paraphrased.
When it has been decided to lead the army to
battle, the aged Nestor thus addresses Agamemnon:
“Now bid thy heralds sound the loud alarms,
And call the squadrons sheathed in brazen arms;
Now seize the occasion, now the troops survey,
And lead to war when heaven directs the way.”
He said: the monarch issued his commands;
Straight the loud heralds call the gathering bands:
The chiefs enclose their king; the hosts divide,
In tribes and nations ranked on either side.
The appearance of the gathering hosts is then described in the following
Similes.
(1.) As on some mountain, through the lofty grove,
The crackling flames ascend, and blaze above;
The fires expanding, as the winds arise,
Shoot their long beams, and kindle half the skies;
So from the polished arms and brazen shields
A gleamy splendor flashed along the fields.
(2.) Not less their number than the embodied cranes,
Or milk-white swans on A’sius’ watery plains,
That, o’er the windings of Ca-ys’ter’s springs,
Stretch their long necks, and clap their rustling wings;
Now tower aloft, and course in airy rounds,
Now light with noise; with noise the field resounds.
(3.) Thus numerous and confused, extending wide,
The legions crowd Scamander’s flowery side;
With rushing troops the plains are covered o’er,
And thundering footsteps shake the sounding shore.’
(4.) Along the river’s level meads they stand,
Thick as in spring the flowers adorn the land,
Or leaves the trees; or thick as insects play,
The wandering nation of a summer’s day,
That, drawn by milky streams, at evening hours,
In gathered swarms surround the rural bowers;
From pail to pail with busy murmur run
The gilded legions, glittering in the sun.
So thronged, so close the Grecian squadrons stood
In radiant arms, athirst for Trojan blood.
(5. Each leader now his scattered force conjoins
In close array, and forms the deepening lines.
Not with more ease the skilful shepherd swain
Collects his flocks from thousands on the plain.
(6.) The king of kings, majestically tall,
Towers o’er his armies, and outshines them all;
Like some proud bull, that round the pastures leads
His subject herds, the monarch of the meads,
Great as the gods, the exalted chief was seen,
His chest like Neptune, and like Mars his mien;
Jove o’er his eyes celestial glories spread,
And dawning conquest played around his head.
—POPE’S Trans.
Similes abound on nearly every page of the Iliad, and they are always
appropriate to the subject. We select from them the following additional
specimen, in which the brightness and number of the fires of the Trojans, in
their encampment, are likened to the moon and stars in their glory—when, as
Cowper translates the fourth line, “not a vapor streaks the boundless blue.”
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O’er heaven’s blue azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,
O’er the dark trees a yellow verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light;
So many fires before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays.
—Iliad, B. VIII. POPE’S Trans.
Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, is said to have
declared of the two great epics of Homer:
Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor;
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.
The following characterization, from the pen of
HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, is both true and pleasing:
“There are many hearts and minds to which one of
these matchless poems will be more delightful than the other;
there are many to which both will give equal pleasure, though of
different kinds; but there can hardly be a person, not utterly
averse to the Muses, who will be quite insensible to the manifold
charms of one or the other. The dramatic action of the
Iliad may command attention where the diffused narrative
of the Odyssey would fail to do so; but how can anyone,
who loves poetry under any shape, help yielding up his soul to
the virtuous siren-singing of Genius and Truth, which is forever
resounding from the pages of either of These marvelous and truly
immortal poems? In the Iliad will be found the sterner
lessons of public justice or public expedience, and the examples
are for statesmen and generals; in the Odyssey we are
taught the maxims of private prudence and individual virtue, and
the instances are applicable to all mankind: in both, Honesty,
Veracity, and Fortitude are commended, and set up for imitation;
in both, Treachery, Falsehood, and Cowardice are condemned, and
exposed for our scorn and avoidance.
“Born, like the river of Egypt, in secret light,
these poems yet roll on their great collateral streams, wherein a
thousand poets have bathed their sacred heads, and thence drunk
beauty and truth, and all sweet and noble harmonies. Known to no
man is the time or place of their gushing forth from the earth’s
bosom, but their course has been among the fields and by the
dwellings of men, and our children now sport on their banks and
quaff their salutary waters. Of all the Greek poetry, I, for one,
have no hesitation in saying that the Iliad and the
Odyssey are the most delightful, and have been the most
instructive works to me; there is a freshness about them both
which never fades, a truth and sweetness which charmed me as a
boy and a youth, and on which, if I attain to it, I count largely
for a soothing recreation in my old age.”
II. SOME CAUSES OF GREEK UNITY.
The natural causes which tended to unite the
Greeks as a people were a common descent, a common language, and
a common religion. Greek genius led the nation to trace its
origin, where historical memory failed, to fabulous persons
sprung from the earth or the gods; and under the legends of
primitive and heroic ancestors lie the actual migrations and
conquests of rude bands sprung from related or allied tribes.
These poetical tales, accepted throughout Hellas as historical,
convinced the people of a common origin. Thus the Greeks had a
common share in the renown of their ancient heroes, upon whose
achievements or lineage the claims of families to hereditary
authority, and of states to the leadership of confederacies, were
grounded. The pride or the ambition of political rivals led to
the gradual embellishment of these traditions, and ended in
ancestral worship. Thus Attica had a temple to Theseus, the
Ionian hero; the shrine of Æsculapius at Epidau’rus was
famous throughout the classic world; and the exploits of Hercules
were commemorated by the Dorians at the tomb of a Ne’mean king.
When the bard and the playwright clothed these tales in verse,
all Greece hearkened; and when the painter or the sculptor took
these subjects for his skill, all Greece applauded. Thus was
strengthened the national sense of fraternal blood.
The possession of a common speech is so great a
means of union, that the Romans imposed the Latin tongue on all
public business and official records, even where Greek was the
more familiar language; and the Mediæval Church displayed
her unity by the use of Latin in every bishopric on all occasions
of public worship. A language not only makes the literature
embodied in it the heritage of all who speak it, but it diffuses
among them the subtle genius which has shaped its growth. The
lofty regard in which the Greeks held their own musical and
flexible language is illustrated by an anecdote of Themis’tocles,
who put to death the interpreter of a Persian embassy to Athens
because he dared “to use the Greek tongue to utter the demands of
the barbarian king.” From Col’chis to Spain some Grecian dialect
attested the extent and the unity of the Hellenic race.
The Greek institutions of religion were still
more powerful instruments of unity. It was the genius of a race
destitute of an organized priesthood, and not the fancy of the
poet, which animated nature by personifying its forces. Zeus was
the all-embracing heavens, the father of gods and men; Neptune
presided over the seas; Deme’ter gave the harvest; Juno was the
goddess of reproduction, and Aphrodi’te the patroness of Jove;
while Apollo represented the joy-inspiring orb of day. The same
imagination raised the earth to sentient life by assigning Dryads
to the trees, Naiads to the fountains and brooks, O’re-ads to the
hills, Ner’e-ids to the seas, and Satyrs to the fields; and in
this many-sided and devout sympathy with nature the imagination
and reverence of all Greece found expression. But Greek religion
in its temples, its oracles, its games, and its councils,
provided more tangible bonds of union than those of sentiment.
Each city had its tutelary deity, whose temple was usually the
most beautiful building in it, and to which any Greek might have
access to make his offering or prayer. The sacred precincts were
not to be profaned by those who were polluted with unexpiated
crime, nor by blood, nor by the presence of the dead: Hence the
temples of Greece were places of refuge for those who would
escape from private or judicial vengeance. The more famous
oracles of Greece were at Dodo’na, at Delphi, at Lebade’a in
Bœotia, and at Epidaurus in Ar’golis. They were consulted by
those who wished to penetrate the future. To this superstition
the Greeks were greatly addicted, and they allowed the gravest
business to wait for the omens of the diviner. A people thus
disposed demanded and secured unmolested access to the oracle.
The city in whose custody it was must be inviolable, and the
roads thereto unobstructed. The oracle was a national possession,
and its keepers were national servants.
THE GRECIAN FESTIVALS.
The public games or festivals of the Greeks were
probably of greater efficacy in promoting a spirit of union than
any other outgrowth of the religions sentiment of Greece. The
Greeks exhibited a passionate fondness for festivals and games,
which were occasionally celebrated in every state for the
amusement of the people. These, however, were far less
interesting than the four great public games, sacred to the gods,
which were—the Pythian, at Delphos, sacred to Apollo; the
Isth’mian, at Corinth, to Neptune; the Nemean, at Nemea, to
Hercules; and the Olympic, at Olympia in E’lis, to Jupiter. To
these cities flocked the young and the aged, the private citizen
and the statesman, the trader and the artist, to witness or
engage in the spectacles. The games were open to all citizens who
could prove their Hellenic origin; and prizes were awarded for
the best exhibitions of skill in poetry—and in running,
wrestling, boxing, leaping, pitching the discus, or quoit,
throwing the javelin, and chariot-racing.
The most important of these games was the
Olympic, though it involved many principles common to the others.
Its origin is obscure; and, though it appears that during the
Heroic Age some Grecian chiefs celebrated their victories in
public games at Olympia, yet it was not until the time of
Lycurgus, in 776 B.C., that the games at Olympia were brought
under certain rules, and performed at certain periods. At that
time they were revived, so to speak, and were celebrated at the
close of every fourth year. From their quadrennial occurrence all
Hellas computed its chronology, the interval that elapsed between
one celebration and the next being called an Olympiad. During the
month that the games continued there was a complete suspension of
all hostilities, to enable every Greek to attend them without
hindrance or danger.
One of the most popular and celebrated of all the
matches held at these games was chariot-racing, with four horses.
The following description of one of these races is taken from a
tragedy of SOPHOCLES—the Electra—translated by Bulwer.
Orestes, son of Agamemnon, had gained five victories on the first
day of the trial; and on the second, of which the account is here
given, he starts with nine competitors—an Achæan, a
Spartan, two Libyans, an Ætolian, a Magnesian; an
Æ’ni-an, an Athenian, and a Bœotian —and meets his death
in the moment of triumph.
The Chariot-race, and the Death of Orestes.
They took their stand where the appointed judges
Had cast their lots and ranged the rival cars.
Rang out the brazen trump! Away they bound!
Cheer the hot steeds and shake the slackened reins;
As with a body the large space is filled
With the huge clangor of the rattling cars;
High whirl aloft the dust-clouds; blent together
Each presses each, and the lash rings, and loud
Snort the wild steeds, and from their fiery breath,
Along their manes, and down the circling wheels,
Scatter the flaking foam.
Orestes still,
Aye, as he swept around the perilous pillar
Last in the course, wheeled in the rushing axle,
The left rein curbed—that on the outer hand
Flung loose. So on erect the chariots rolled!
Sudden the Ænian’s fierce and headlong steeds
Broke from the bit, and, as the seventh time now
The course was circled, on the Libyan car
Dashed their wild fronts: then order changed to ruin;
Car dashed on car; the wide Crissæ’an plain
Was, sea-like, strewn with wrecks: the Athenian saw,
Slackened his speed, and, wheeling round the marge,
Unscathed and skilful, in the midmost space,
Left the wild tumult of that tossing storm.
Behind, Orestes, hitherto the last,
Had kept back his coursers for the close;
Now one sole rival left—on, on he flew,
And the sharp sound of the impelling scourge
Rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds.
He nears—he reaches—they are side by side;
Now one—now th’ other—by a length the victor.
The courses all are past, the wheels erect—
All safe—when, as the hurrying coursers round
The fatal pillar dashed, the wretched boy
Slackened the left rein. On the column’s edge
Crashed the frail axle—headlong from the car,
Caught and all mesh’d within the reins, he fell;
And! masterless, the mad steeds raged along!
Loud from that mighty multitude arose
A shriek—a shout! But yesterday such deeds—
To-day such doom! Now whirled upon the earth,
Now his limbs dashed aloft, they dragged him, those
Wild horses, till, all gory, from the wheels
Released—and no man, not his nearest friends,
Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes.
They laid the body on the funeral pyre,
And, while we speak, the Phocian strangers bear,
In a small, brazen, melancholy urn,
That handful of cold ashes to which all
The grandeur of the beautiful hath shrunk.
Within they bore him—in his father’s land
To find that heritage, a tomb.
The Pythian games are said to have been
established in honor of the victory that Apollo gained at Delphi
over the serpent Py’thon, on setting out to erect his temple.
This monster, said to have sprung from the stagnant waters of the
deluge of Deucalion, may have been none other than the
malaria which laid waste the surrounding country, and
which some early benefactor of the race overcame by draining the
marshes; or, perhaps, as the English writer, Dodwell, suggests,
the true explanation of the allegorical fiction is that the
serpent was the river Cephis’sus, which, after the deluge had
overflowed the plains, surrounded Parnassus with its serpentine
involutions, and was at length reduced, by the rays of the
sun-god, within its due limits. The poet OVID gives the following
relation of the fable:
Apollo’s Conflict with Python.
From hence the surface of the ground, with mud
And slime besmeared (the refuse of the flood),
Received the rays of heaven, and sucking in
The seeds of heat, new creatures did begin.
Some were of several sorts produced before;
But, of new monsters, earth created more.
Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light
Thee, Python, too, the wondering world to fright,
And the new nations, with so dire a sight,
So monstrous was his bulk; so large a space
Did his vast body and long train embrace;
Whom Phoebus, basking on a bank, espied.
Ere now the god his arrows had not tried
But on the trembling deer or mountain-goat:
At this new quarry he prepares to shoot.
Though every shaft took place, he spent the store
Of his full quiver; and ’twas long before
The expiring serpent wallowed in his gore.
Then, to preserve the fame of such a deed,
For Python slain he Pythian games decreed,
Where noble youths for mastership should strive—
To quoit, to run, and steeds and chariots drive.
The prize was fame; in witness of renown,
An oaken garland did the victor crown.
The laurel was not yet for triumphs born,
But every green, alike by Phoebus worn,
Did, with promiscuous grace, his flowing locks adorn.
—Metamorphoses. Trans. by DRYDEN.
The victory of Apollo over the Python is represented by a statue called Apollo
Belvedere, perhaps the greatest existing work of ancient art. It was found in
1503, among the ruins of ancient Antium, and it derives its name from its
position in the belvedere, or open gallery, of the Vatican at Rome, where it
was placed by Pope Julius II. It shows the conception which the ancients had of
this benign deity, and also the high degree of perfection to which they had
attained in sculpture. A modern writer gives the following account of it:
“The statue is of heroic size, and shows the very
perfection of manly beauty. The god stands with the left arm
extended, still holding the bow, while the right hand, which has
just left the string, is near his hip. This right hand and part
of the right arm, as well as the left hand, were wanting in the
statue when found, and were restored by Angelo da Montor’soli, a
pupil of Michael Angelo. The figure is nude; only a short cloak
hangs over the left shoulder. The breast is full and dilated; the
muscles are conspicuous, though not exaggerated; the body seems a
little thin about the hips, but is poised with such singular
grace as to impart to the whole a beauty hardly possessed by any
other statue. The sculptor is not known: many attribute the
statue to He-ge’si-as, the Ephesian, others to Praxit’e-les or
Cal’amis; but its origin and date must remain a matter of
conjecture.”
The following poetical description of this
wonderful statue is given us by THOMSON:
All conquest-flushed, from prostrate Python came
The quivered god. In graceful act he stands,
His arm extended with the slackened bow:
Light flows his easy robe, and fair displays
A manly, softened form. The bloom of gods
Seems youthful o’er the bearded cheek to wave;
His features yet heroic ardor warms;
And, sweet subsiding to a native smile,
Mixed with the joy elating conquest gives,
A scattered frown exalts his matchless air.
THE NATIONAL COUNCILS.
While the elements of union we have been
considering produced a decided effect in forming Greek national
character—serving to strengthen, in the mind of the Greek, the
feelings which bound him to his country by keeping alive his
national love and pride, and exerting an important influence over
his physical education and discipline—they possessed little or
no efficacy as a bond of political union—what Greece so much
needed. It was probably a recognition of this need that led, at
an early period, to the formation of national councils, the
primary object of which was the regulation of mutual intercourse
between the several states.
Of these early councils we have an example in the
several associations known as the Amphicty’o-nes, of which the
only one that approached a national senate received the
distinctive title of the “Amphictyon’ic Council.” This is said to
have been instituted by Amphic’tyon, a son of Deucalion, King of
Thessaly; but he was probably a fictitious personage, invented to
account for the origin of the institution attributed to him. The
council is said to have been composed, originally, of deputies
from twelve tribes or nations—two from each tribe. But, as
independent states or cities grew up, each of these also was
entitled to the same representation; and no state, however
powerful, was entitled to more. The council met twice every year;
in the spring at Delphi, and in the autumn at Anthe’la, a village
near Thermopylæ.
While the objects of this council, so far as they
can be learned, were praiseworthy, and its action tended to
produce the happiest political effects, it was, after all, more
especially a religious association. It had no right of
interference in ordinary wars between the communities represented
in it, and could not turn aside schemes of ambition and conquest,
or subdue the jealousies of rival states. The oath taken by its
members ran thus: “We will not destroy any Amphictyonic town, nor
cut it off from running water in war or peace; if anyone shall do
so, we will march against him and destroy his city. If anyone
shall plunder the property of the god, or shall take treacherous
counsel against the things in his temple at Delphi, we will
punish him with foot, and hand, and voice, and by every means in
our power.” Its chief functions, as we see, were to guard the
temple of Delphi and the interests of religion; and it was only
in cases of a violation of these, or under that pretence, that it
could call for the cooperation of all its members. Inefficient as
it had proved to be in many instances, yet Philip of Macedon, by
placing himself at its head, overturned the independence of
Greece; but its use ceased altogether when the Delphic oracle
lost its influence, a considerable time before the reign of
Constantine the Great.
Aside from the causes already assigned, the want
of political union among the Greeks may be ascribed to a natural
and mutual jealousy, which, in the language of Mr. Thirlwall,
“stifled even the thought of a confederacy” that might have
prevented internal wars and saved Greece from foreign dominion.
This jealousy the institutions to which we have referred could
not remove; and it was heightened by the great diversity of the
forms of government that existed in the Grecian states. As
another writer has well observed, “The independent sovereignty of
each city was a fundamental notion in the Greek mind. The
patriotism of a Greek was confined to his city, and rarely
kindled into any general love for the welfare of Hellas. So
complete was the political division between the Greek cities,
that the citizen of one was an alien and a stranger in the
territory of another. He was not merely debarred from all share
in the government, but he could not acquire property in land or
houses, nor contract a marriage with a native woman, nor sue in
the courts except through the medium of a friendly citizen. The
cities thus repelling each other, the sympathies and feelings of
a Greek became more central in his own.”
In view of these conditions it is not surprising
that Greece never enjoyed political unity; and just here was her
great and suicidal weakness. The Romans reduced various races, in
habitual war with one another and marked by variations of dialect
and customs, into a single government, and kept them there; but
the Greeks, though possessing a common inheritance, a common
language, a common religion, and a common type of character, of
manners, and of aspirations, allowed all these common interests,
that might have created an indissoluble political union, to be
subordinated to mutual jealousies—to an “exclusive patriotism”
that rendered it difficult for them to unite even under
circumstances of common and terrible danger. “It was this
political disunion that always led them to turn their arms
against one another, and eventually subjected them to the power
of Macedon and of Rome.”
CHAPTER IV.
SPARTA, AND THE LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS.
Spread on Eurotas’ bank,
Amid a circle of soft rising hills,
The patient Sparta stood; the sober, hard,
And man-subduing city; which no shape
Of pain could conquer, nor of pleasure charm.
Lycurgus there built, on the solid base
Of equal life, so well a tempered state,
That firm for ages, and unmoved, it stood
The fort of Greece!
—THOMSON.
Returning to the Dorians of Peloponnesus, we
find, in early historical times, that Sparta was gradually
acquiring an ascendancy over the other Dorian states, and
extending her dominions throughout the southern portion of the
peninsula. This result was greatly aided by her geographical
position. On a table-land environed by hills, and with arduous
descents to the sea, her natural state was one of great strength,
while her sterile soil promoted frugality, hardihood, and
simplicity among her citizens.
Some time in the ninth century Polydec’tes, one
of the Spartan kings, died without children, and the reins of
government fell into the hands of his brother Lycurgus, who
became celebrated as the “Spartan law-giver.” But Lycurgus soon
resigned the crown to the posthumous son of Polydectes, and went
into voluntary exile. He is said to have visited many foreign
lands, observing their institutions and manners, conversing with
their sages, and employing his time in maturing a plan for
remedying the many disorders which afflicted his native country.
On his return he applied himself to the work of framing a new
Constitution, having first consulted the Delphic oracle, which
assured him that “the Constitution he should establish would be
the most excellent in the world.”
I. THE CONSTITUTION OF LYCURGUS.
Having enlisted the aid of most of the prominent
citizens, who took up arms to support him, Lycurgus procured the
enactment of a code of laws founded on the institutions of the
Cretan Minos, by which the form of government, the military
discipline of the people, the distribution of property, the
education of the citizens, and the rules of domestic life were to
be established on a new and immutable basis. The account which
Plutarch gives of these regulations asserts that Lycurgus first
established a senate of thirty members, chosen for life, the two
kings being of the number, and that the former shared the power
of the latter. There were also to be assemblies of the people,
who were to have no right to propose any subject of debate, but
were only authorized to ratify or reject what might be proposed
to them by the senate and the kings. Lycurgus next made a
division of the lands, for here he found great inequality
existing, as there were many indigent persons who had no lands,
and the wealth was centered in the hands of a few.
In order farther to remove inequalities among the
citizens, Lycurgus next attempted to divide the movable property;
but as this measure met with great opposition, he had recourse to
another method for accomplishing the same object. He stopped the
currency of gold and silver coin, and permitted iron money only
to be used; and to a great quantity and weight of this he
assigned but a small value, so that to remove one or two hundred
dollars of this money would require a yoke of oxen. This
regulation is said to have put an end to many kinds of injustice;
for “who,” says Plutarch, “would steal or take a bribe; who would
defraud or rob when he could not conceal the booty—when he could
neither be dignified by the possession of it nor be served by its
use?” Unprofitable and superfluous arts were also excluded, trade
with foreign states was abandoned, and luxury, losing its sources
of support, died away of itself.
Through the efforts of Lycurgus, Sparta was
delivered from the evils of anarchy and misrule, and began a long
period of tranquillity and order. Its progress was mainly due,
however, to that part of the legislation of Lycurgus which
related to the military discipline and education of its citizens.
The position of Sparta, an unfortified city surrounded by
numerous enemies, compelled the Spartans to be a nation of
soldiers. From his birth every Spartan belonged to the state;
sickly and deformed children were destroyed, those only being
thought worthy to live who promised to become useful members of
society. The principal object of Spartan education, therefore,
was to render the Spartan youth expert in manly exercises, hardy,
and courageous; and at seven years of age he began a course of
physical training of great hardship and even torture. Manhood was
not reached until the thirtieth year, and thenceforth, until his
sixtieth year, the Spartan remained under public discipline and
in the service of the state. The women, also, were subjected to a
course of training almost as rigorous as that of the men, and
they took as great an interest in the welfare of their country
and in the success of its arms. “Return, either with your shield
or upon it,” was their exhortation to their sons when the latter
were going to battle. The following lines, supposed to be
addressed by a Spartan mother to the dead body of her son, whom
she had slain because he had ingloriously fled from the
battle-field, will illustrate the Spartan idea of patriotic
virtue which was so sedulously instilled into every Spartan:
Deme’trius, when he basely fled the field,
A Spartan born, his Spartan mother killed;
Then, stretching forth his bloody sword, she cried
(Her teeth fierce gnashing with disdainful pride),
“Fly, cursed offspring, to the shades below,
Where proud Euro’tas shall no longer flow
For timid hinds like thee! Fly, trembling slave,
Abandoned wretch, to Pluto’s darkest cave!
For I so vile a monster never bore:
Disowned by Sparta, thou’rt my son no more.”
—TYMNÆ’US.
There were three classes among the population of
Laconia—the Dorians, of Sparta; their serfs, the He’lots; and
the people of the provincial districts. The former, properly
called Spartans, were the ruling caste, who neither employed
themselves in agriculture nor practiced any mechanical art. The
Helots were slaves, who, as is generally believed, on account of
their obstinate resistance in some early wars, and subsequent
conquest, had been reduced to the most degrading servitude. The
people of the provincial districts were a mixed race, composed
partly of strangers who had accompanied the Dorians and aided
them in their conquest, and partly of the old inhabitants of the
country who had submitted to the conquerors. The provincials were
under the control of the Spartan government, in the
administration of which they had no share, and the lands which
they held were tributary to the state; they formed an important
part of the military force of the country, and had little to
complain of but the want of political independence.
II. SPARTAN POETRY AND MUSIC.
With all her devotion to the pursuit of arms, the
bard, the sculptor, and the architect found profitable employment
in Sparta. While the Spartans never exhibited many of those
qualities of mind and heart which were cultivated at Athens with
such wonderful success, they were not strangers to the influences
of poetry and music. Says the poet CAMPBELL, “The Spartans used
not the trumpet in their march into battle, because they wished
not to excite the rage of their warriors. Their charging step was
made to the ‘Dorian mood of flute and soft recorder.’ The valor
of a Spartan was too highly tempered to require a stunning or
rousing impulse. His spirit was like a steed too proud for the
spur.”
They marched not with the trumpet’s blast,
Nor bade the horn peal out,
And the laurel-groves, as on they passed,
Rung with no battle-shout!
They asked no clarion’s voice to fire
Their souls with an impulse high;
But the Dorian reed and the Spartan lyre
For the sons of liberty!
And still sweet flutes, their path around,
Sent forth Eolian breath;
They needed not a sterner sound
To marshal them for death!
—MRS. HEMANS.
“The songs of the Spartans,” says PLUTARCH, “had
a spirit which could rouse the soul, and impel it in an
enthusiastic manner to action. They consisted chiefly of the
praises of heroes that had died for Sparta, or else of
expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the
glorious opportunity. Nor did they forget to express an ambition
for glory suitable to their respective ages. Of this it may not
be amiss to give an instance. There were three choirs in their
festivals, corresponding with the three ages of man. The old men
began,
‘Once in battle bold we shone;’
the young men answered,
‘Try us; our vigor is not gone;’
and the boys concluded,
‘The palm remains for us alone.’
Indeed, if we consider with some attention such of the
Lacedæmonian poems as are still extant, and enter into the
spirit of those airs which were played upon the flute when
marching to battle, we must agree that Terpan’der and Pindar have
very fitly joined valor and music together. The former thus
speaks of Lacedæmon:
Then gleams the youth’s bright falchion; then the Muse
Lifts her sweet voice; then awful Justice opes
Her wide pavilion.
And Pindar sings,
Then in grave council sits the sage:
Then burns the youth’s resistless rage
To hurl the quiv’ring lance;
The Muse with glory crowns their arms,
And Melody exerts her charms,
And Pleasure leads the dance.
Thus we are informed not only of their warlike turn, but of
their skill in music.”
The poet ION, of Chios, gives us the following
elegant description of the power of Sparta:
The town of Sparta is not walled with words;
But when young A’res falls upon her men,
Then reason rules, and the hand does the deed.
III. SPARTA’S CONQUESTS.
Under the constitution of Lycurgus Sparta began
her career of conquest. Of the death of the great law-giver we
have no reliable account; but it is stated that, having bound the
Spartans to make no change in the laws until his return, he
voluntarily banished himself forever from his country and died in
a foreign land. During a century or more subsequent to the time
of Lycurgus, the Spartans remained at peace with their neighbors;
but jealousies arose between them and the Messe’nians, a people
west of Laconia, which, stimulated by insults and injuries on
both sides, gave rise to the FIRST MESSENIAN WAR, 743 years
before the Christian era. For the first four years the Spartans
made little progress; but in the fifth year of the war a great
battle was fought, and, although its result was indecisive, the
Messenians deemed it prudent to retire to the strongly fortified
mountain of Itho’me. In the eighteenth year of the conflict the
Spartans suffered a severe defeat, and were driven back into
their own territory; but at the close of the twentieth year the
Messenians were obliged to abandon their fortress of Ithome, and
leave their rich fields in the undisturbed possession of their
conquerors. Many of the inhabitants fled into Arcadia and other
friendly territories, while those who remained were treated with
great severity, and reduced to the condition of the Helots.
The war thus closed developed the warlike spirit
that the institutions of Lycurgus were so well calculated to
encourage; and the Spartans were so stern and unyielding in their
exactions, that they drove the Messenians to revolt thirty-nine
years later, 685 B.C. The Messenians found an able leader in
Aristom’enes, whose valor in the first battle struck fear into
his enemies, and inspired his countrymen with confidence. In this
struggle the Argives, Arcadians, Si-çy-o’nians, and
Pisa’tans aided Messenia, while the Corinthians assisted Sparta.
In alarm the Spartans sought the advice of the Delphic oracle,
and received the mortifying response that they must seek a leader
from the Athenians, between whose country and Laconia there had
been no intercourse for several centuries. Fearing to disobey the
oracle, but reluctant to further the cause of the Spartans, the
Athenians sent to the latter the poet TYRTÆ’US, who had no
distinction as a warrior. His patriotic and martial odes,
however, roused the spirit of the Spartans, and animated them to
new efforts against the foe. He appears as the great hero of
Sparta during the SECOND MESSENIAN WAR, and of his songs that
have come down to us we give the following as a specimen:
To the field, to the field, gallant Spartan band,
Worthy sons, like your sires, of our warlike land!
Let each arm be prepared for its part in the fight,
Fix the shield on the left, poise the spear with the right;
Let no care for your lives in your bosoms find place,
No such care knew the heroes of old Spartan race.
[Footnote: Mure’s “History of Greek Literature,”
vol. iii., p. 195.]
But the Spartans were not immediately successful.
In the first battle that ensued they were defeated with severe
loss; but in the third year of the war the Messenians suffered a
signal defeat, owing to the treachery of Aristoc’rates, the king
of their Arcadian allies, who deserted them in the heat of
battle, and Aristomenes retired to the mountain fortress of Ira.
The war continued, with varying success, seventeen years in all;
throughout the whole of which period Aristomenes distinguished
himself by many noble exploits; but all his efforts to save his
country were ineffectual. A second time Sparta conquered (668
B.C.), and the yoke appeared to be fixed on Messenia forever.
Thenceforward the growing power of Sparta seemed destined to
undisputed pre-eminence, not only in the Peloponnesus, but
throughout all Greece. Before 600 B.C. Sparta had conquered the
upper valley of the Eurotas from the Arcadians, and, forty years
later, compelled Te’gea, the capital of Arcadia, to acknowledge
her supremacy. Still later, in 524 B.C., a long struggle with the
Argives was terminated in favor of Sparta, and she was now the
most powerful of the Grecian states.
CHAPTER V.
FORMS OF GOVERNMENT, AND CHANGES IN GRECIAN POLITICS.
Although Greek political writers taught that there were, primarily, but three
forms of government—monarchy, or the rule of one; aristocracy, that of the few;
and democracy, that of the many—the latter always limited by the Greeks to the
freemen—yet it appears that when anyone of these degenerated from its
supposed legitimate object, the welfare of the state, it was marked by a
peculiar name. Thus a monarchy in which selfish aims predominated became a
tyranny; and in later Grecian history, such was the prevailing sentiment in
opposition to kingly rule that all kings were called tyrants: an
aristocracy which directed its measures chiefly to the preservation of its
power became an oligarchy; and a democracy that departed from the civil and
political equality which was its supposed basis, and gave ascendancy to a
faction, was sometimes designated by the term ochlocracy, or the
dominion of the rabble. “A democracy thus corrupted,” says THIRLWALL,
“exhibited many features of a tyranny. It was jealous of all who were eminently
distinguished by birth, fortune, or reputation; it encouraged flatterers and
sycophants; was insatiable in its demands on the property of the rich, and
readily listened to charges which exposed them to death or confiscation. The
class which suffered such oppression, commonly ill satisfied with the principle
of the Constitution itself, was inflamed with the most furious animosity by the
mode in which it was applied, and it regarded the great mass of its
fellow-citizens as its mortal enemies.”
As in all the Greek states there was a large
class of people not entitled to the full rights of citizenship,
including, among others, persons reduced to slavery as prisoners
of war, and foreign settlers and their descendants, so there was
no such form of government as that which the moderns understand
by a complete democracy. Of a republic also, in the modern
acceptation of the term—that is, a representative
democracy—the Greeks knew nothing. As an American statesman
remarks, “Certain it is that the greatest philosophers among them
would have regarded as something monstrous a republic
spreading over half a continent and embracing twenty-six states,
each of which would have itself been an empire, and not a
commonwealth, in their sense of the
word.”[Footnote: Hugh S. Legaré’s Writings, vol.
i., p.440.]
I. CHANGES FROM ARISTOCRACIES TO OLIGARCHIES.
During several centuries succeeding the period of
the supposed Trojan war, a gradual change occurred in the
political history of the Grecian states, the results of which
were an abandonment of much of the kingly authority that
prevailed through the Heroic Age. At a still later period this
change was followed by the introduction and establishment, at
first, of aristocracies, and, finally, of democratic forms of
government; which latter decided the whole future character of
the public life of the Grecians. The three causes, more prominent
than the rest, that are assigned by most writers for these
changes, and the final adoption of democratic forms, are, first,
the more enlarged views occasioned by the Trojan war, and the
dissensions which followed the return of those engaged in it;
second, the great convulsions that attended the Thessalian,
Bœotian, and Dorian migrations; and, third, the free principles
which intercourse and trade with the Grecian colonies naturally
engendered.
But of these causes the third tended, more than
any other one, to change the political condition of the Grecians.
Whether the migrations of the Greek colonists were occasioned, as
they generally were, by conquests that drove so many from their
homes to seek an asylum in foreign lands, or were undertaken, as
was the case in some instances, with the consent and
encouragement of the parent states, there was seldom any feeling
of dependence on the one side, and little or no claim of
authority on the other. This was especially the case with the
Ionians, who had scarcely established themselves in Asia Minor
when they shook off the authority of the princes who conducted
them to their new settlements, and established a form of
government more democratic than any which then existed in
Greece.
With the rapid progress of mercantile industry
and maritime discovery, on which the prosperity of the colonies
depended, a spirit of independence grew up, which erelong exerted
an influence on the parent states of Greece, and encouraged the
growth of free principles there. “Freedom,” says an eloquent
author,[Footnote: Heeren, “Polities of Ancient Greece,” p.
103.] “ripens in colonies. Ancient usage cannot be
preserved, cannot altogether be renewed, as at home. The former
bonds of attachment to the soil, and ancient customs, are broken
by the voyage; the spirit feels itself to be more free in the new
country; new strength is required for the necessary exertions;
and those exertions are animated by success. When every man lives
by the labor of his hands, equality arises, even if it did not
exist before. Each day is fraught with new experience; the
necessity of common defence is more felt in lands where the new
settlers find ancient inhabitants desirous of being free from
them. Need we wonder, then, if the authority of the founders of
the Grecian colonies, even where it had originally existed, soon
gave way to liberty?”
But the changes in the political principles of
the Grecian states were necessarily slow, and were usually
attended with domestic quarrels and convulsions. Monarchy, in
most instances, was abolished by first taking away its title, and
substituting that of archon, or chief magistrate, a term less
offensive than that of king; next, by making the office of chief
ruler elective, first in one family, then in more—first for
life, then for a term of years; and, finally, by dividing the
power among several of the nobility, thus forming an aristocracy
or oligarchy. At the time in Grecian history to which we have
come democracy was as yet unknown; but the principal Grecian
states, with the exception of Sparta, which always retained the
kingly form of government, had abolished royalty and substituted
oligarchy. This change did not better the condition of the
people, who, increasing in numbers and intelligence, while the
ruling class declined in numbers and wealth, became conscious of
their resources, and put forward their claims to a representation
in the government.
II. FROM OLIGARCHIES TO DESPOTISMS.
The fall of the oligarchies was not accomplished,
however, by the people. “The commonalty,” says THIRLWALL, “even
when really superior in strength, could not all at once shake off
the awe with which it was impressed by years of subjection. It
needed a leader to animate, unite, and direct it; and it was
seldom that one capable of inspiring it with confidence could be
found in its own ranks,” Hence this leader was generally found in
an ambitions citizen, perhaps a noble or a member of the
oligarchy, who, by artifice and violence, would make himself the
supreme ruler of the state. Under such circumstances the
overthrow of an oligarchy was not a triumph of the people, but
only the triumph of a then popular leader. To such a one was
given the name of tyrant, but not in the sense that we use
the term. HEEREN says, “The Grecians connected with this word the
idea of an illegitimate, but not necessarily of a cruel,
government.” As the word therefore signifies simply the
irresponsible rule of a single person, such person may be more
correctly designated by the term despot, or
usurper; although, in point of fact, the government was
frequently of the most cruel and tyrannical character.
“The merits of this race of rulers,” says BULWER,
“and the unconscious benefits they produced, have not been justly
appreciated, either by ancient or modern historians. Without her
tyrants Greece might never have established her democracies. The
wiser and more celebrated tyrants were characterized by an
extreme modesty of deportment: they assumed no extraordinary
pomp, no lofty titles—they left untouched, or rendered yet more
popular, the outward forms and institutions of the
government—they were not exacting in taxation—they affected to
link themselves with the lowest orders and their ascendancy was
usually productive of immediate benefit to the working-classes,
whom they employed in new fortifications or new public
buildings—dazzling the citizens by a splendor that seemed less
the ostentation of an individual than the prosperity of a state.
It was against the aristocracy, not against the people, that they
directed their acute sagacities and unsparing energies. Every
politic tyrant was a Louis the Eleventh, weakening the nobles,
creating a middle class. He effected his former object by violent
and unscrupulous means. He swept away by death or banishment all
who opposed his authority or excited his fears. He thus left
nothing between the state and a democracy but himself; and,
himself removed, democracy naturally and of course
ensued.”[Footnote: “Athens: Its Rise and Fall,” vol. i.,
pp. 148, 149.]
From the middle of the seventh century B.C., and
during a period of over one hundred and fifty years, there were
few Grecian cities that escaped a despotic government. While the
history of Athens affords, perhaps, the most striking example of
it, the longest tyranny in Greece was that in the city of
Si’çyon, which lasted a hundred years under Orthag’orus
and his sons. Their dynasty was founded about 676 B.C., and its
long duration is ascribed to its mildness and moderation. The
last of this dynasty was Clis’thenes, whose daughter became the
mother of the Athenian Clisthenes, the founder of democracy at
Athens on the expulsion of the Pisistrat’idæ. The despots
of Corinth were more celebrated. Their dynasty endured
seventy-four years, having been founded in the year 655. Under
Perian’der, who succeeded to power in 625, and whose government
was cruel and oppressive, Corinth reached her highest prosperity.
His reign lasted upward of forty years, and soon after his death
the dynasty ended, being overpowered by Sparta.
Across the isthmus from Corinth was the city of
Meg’ara, of which, in 630 B.C., Theag’enes, a bold and ambitious
man, made himself despot. Like many other usurpers of his time,
he adorned the city with splendid and useful buildings. But he
was overthrown after a rule of thirty years, and a violent
struggle then ensued between the oligarchy and the people. At
first the latter were successful; they banished many of the
nobles, and confiscated their property, but the exiles returned,
and by force of arms recovered their power. Still the struggle
continued, and it was not until after many years that an
oligarchical government was firmly established. Much interest is
added to these revolutions in Megara by the writings of
THEOG’NIS, a contemporary poet, and a member of the oligarchical
party. “His writings,” says THIRLWALL, “are interesting, not so
much for the historical facts contained in them as for the light
they throw on the character and feelings of the parties which
divided his native city and so many others.”
In the poems of THEOGNIS “his keen sense of his
personal sufferings is almost absorbed in the vehement grief and
indignation with which he contemplates the state of Megara, the
triumph of the bad [his usual term for the people], and
the degradation of the good [the members of the old
aristocracy].” Some of the social changes which the popular
revolution had effected are thus described:
Our commonwealth preserves its former fame:
Our common people are no more the same.
They that in skins and hides were rudely dressed,
Nor dreamed of law, nor sought to be redressed
By rules of right, but in the days of old
Lived on the land like cattle in the fold,
Are now the Brave and Good; and we, the rest,
Are now the Mean and Bad, though once the best.
It appears, also, that some of the aristocracy by
birth had so far forgotten their leading position as to
inter-marry with those who had become possessed of much wealth;
and of this condition of things the poet complains as
follows:
But in the daily matches that we make
The price is everything; for money’s sake
Men marry—women are in marriage given;
The Bad or Coward, that in wealth has thriven,
May match his offspring with the proudest race:
Thus everything is mixed, noble and base.
The usurpations in Sicyon, Corinth, and Megara
furnish illustrations of what occurred in nearly all of the
Grecian states during the seventh and sixth centuries before the
Christian era. Some of those of a later period will be noticed in
a subsequent chapter.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS.
I. THE LEGISLATION OF DRACO.
As we have already stated, the successive
encroachments on the royal prerogatives that followed the death
of Co’drus, and that finally resulted in the establishment of an
oligarchy, are almost the only events that fill the meager annals
of Athens for several centuries, or down to 683 B.C. “Here, as
elsewhere,” says a distinguished historian, “a wonderful
stillness suddenly follows the varied stir of enterprise and
adventure, and the throng of interesting characters that present
themselves to our view in the Heroic Age. Life seems no longer to
offer anything for poetry to celebrate, or for history to
record.” The history of Athens, therefore, may be said to begin
with the institution of the nine annual archons in 683 B.C. These
possessed all authority, religious, civil, and military. The
Athenian populace not only enjoyed no political rights, but were
reduced to a condition only a little above servitude; and it
appears to have been owing to the anarchy that arose from the
ruinous extortions of the nobles on the one hand, and the
resistance of the people on the other, that Dra’co, the most
eminent of the nobility, was chosen to prepare the first written
code of laws for the government of the state (624 B.C.).
Draco prepared his code in conformity to the
spirit and the interest of the ruling class, and the severity of
his laws has made his name proverbial. It has been said of them
that they were written, not in ink, but in blood. He attached the
same penalty to petty thefts as to sacrilege and murder, saying
that the former offences deserved death, and he had no greater
punishment for the latter. Of course, the legislation of Draco
failed to calm the prevailing discontent, and human nature soon
revolted against such legalized butchery. Says an English author,
“The first symptoms in Athens of the political crisis which, as
in other of the Grecian states, marked the transition of power
from the oligarchic to the popular party, now showed itself.”
Cy’lon, an Athenian of wealth and good, family, had married the
daughter of Theagenes, the despot of Megara. Encouraged by his
father-in-law’s success, he conceived the design of seizing the
Acropolis at the next Olympic festival and making himself master
of Athens. Accordingly, at that time he seized the Acropolis with
a considerable force; but not having the support of the mass of
the people the conspiracy failed, and most of those engaged in it
were put to death.
II. LEGISLATION OF SOLON.
The Commonwealth was finally reduced to complete
anarchy, without law, or order, or system in the administration
of justice, when Solon, who was descended from Codrus, was raised
to the office of first magistrate (594 B.C.). Solon was born in
Salamis, about 638 B.C., and his first appearance in public life
at Athens occurred in this wise: A few years prior to the year
600 the Island of Salamis had revolted from Athens to Megara. The
Athenians had repeatedly failed in their attempts to recover it,
and, finally, the odium of defeat was such that a law was passed
forbidding, upon pain of death, any proposition for the renewal
of the enterprise. Indignant at this pusillanimous policy, Solon
devised a plan for rousing his countrymen to action. Having some
poetical talent, he composed a poem on the loss of Salamis, and,
feigning madness in order to evade the penalty of the law, he
rushed into the market-place. PLUTARCH says, “A great number of
people flocking about him there, he got up on the herald’s stone,
and sang the elegy which begins thus:
‘Hear and attend; from Salamis I came
To show your error.'”
The stratagem was successful: the law was
repealed, an expedition against Salamis was intrusted to the
command of Solon, and in one campaign he drove the Megarians from
the island.
Solon the poet, orator, and soldier, became the
judicious law-giver, whose fame reached the remotest parts of the
then known world, and whose laws became the basis of those of the
Twelve Tables of Rome. Says an English poet,
Who knows not Solon, last, and wisest far,
Of those whom Greece, triumphant in the height
Of glory, styled her father? him whose voice
Through Athens hushed the storm of civil wrath;
Taught envious Want and cruel Wealth to join
In friendship, and with sweet compulsion tamed
Minerva’s eager people to his laws,
Which their own goddess in his breast inspired?
—AKENSIDE.
Having been raised, as stated, to the office of
first archon, Solon was chosen, by the consent or an parties, as
the arbiter of their differences, and invested with full
authority to frame a new Constitution and a new code of laws. He
might easily have perverted this almost unlimited power to
dangerous uses, and his friends urged him to make himself supreme
ruler of Athens. But he told them, “Tyranny is a fair field, but
it has no outlet;” and his stern integrity was proof against all
temptations to swerve from the path of honor and betray the trust
reposed in him.
The ridicule to which he was exposed for
rejecting a usurper’s power he has described as follows
Nor wisdom’s palm, nor deep-laid policy
Can Solon boast. For when its noblest blessings
Heaven poured into his lap, he spurned them from him;
Where was his sense and spirit when enclosed
He found the choicest prey, nor deigned to draw it?
Who, to command fair Athens but one day,
Would not himself, with all his race, have fallen
Contented on the morrow?
The grievous exactions of the ruling orders had
already reduced the laboring classes to poverty and abject
dependence; and all whom bad times or casual disasters had
compelled to borrow had been impoverished by the high rates of
interest; while thousands of insolvent debtors had been sold into
slavery, to satisfy the demands of relentless creditors. In this
situation of affairs the most violent or needy demanded a new
distribution of property; while the rich would have held on to
all the fruits of their extortion and tyranny. Pursuing a middle
course between these extremes, Solon relieved the debtor by
reducing the rate of interest and enhancing the value of the
currency: he also relieved the lands of the poor from all
encumbrances; he abolished imprisonment for debt; he restored to
liberty those whom poverty had placed in bondage; and he repealed
all the laws of Draco except those against murder. He next
arranged all the citizens in four classes, according to their
landed property; the first class alone being eligible to the
highest civil offices and the highest commands in the army, while
only a few of the lower offices were open to the second and third
classes. The latter classes, however, were partially relieved
from taxation; but in war they were required to do duty, the one
as cavalry, and the other as heavy-armed infantry.
Individuals of the fourth class were excluded
from all offices, but in return they were wholly exempt from
taxation; and yet they had a share in the government, for they
were permitted to take part in the popular assemblies, which had
the right of confirming or rejecting new laws, and of electing
the magistrates; and here their votes counted the same as those
of the wealthiest of the nobles. In war they served only as light
troops or manned the fleets. Thus the system of Solon, being
based primarily on property qualifications, provided for all the
freemen; and its aim was to bestow upon the commonalty such a
share in the government as would enable it to protect itself, and
to give to the wealthy what was necessary for retaining their
dignity—throwing the burdens of government on the latter, and
not excluding the former from its benefits.
Solon retained the magistracy of the nine
archons, but with abridged powers; and, as a guard against
democratical extravagance on the one hand, and a check to undue
assumptions of power on the other, he instituted a Senate of Four
Hundred, and founded or remodeled the court of the Areop’agus.
The Senate consisted of members selected by lot from the first
three classes; but none could be appointed to this honor until
they had undergone a strict examination into their past lives,
characters, and qualifications. The Senate was to be consulted by
the archons in all important matters, and was to prepare all new
laws and regulations, which were to be submitted to the votes of
the assembly of the people. The court of the Areopagus, which
held its sittings on an eminence on the western side of the
Athenian Acropolis, was composed of persons who had held the
office of archon, and was the supreme tribunal in all capital
cases. It exercised, also, a general superintendence over
education, morals, and religion; and it could suspend a
resolution of the public assembly, which it deemed foolish or
unjust, until it had undergone a reconsideration. It was this
court that condemned the philosopher Socrates to death; and
before this same venerable tribunal the apostle Paul, six hundred
years later, made his memorable defence of Christianity.
Such is a brief outline of the institutions of
Solon, which exhibit a mingling of aristocracy and democracy well
adapted to the character of the age and the circumstances of the
people. They evidently exercised much less control over the
pursuits and domestic habits of individuals than the Spartan
code, but at the same time they show a far greater regard for the
public morals. The success of Solon is well summed up in the
following brief tribute to his virtues and genius, by the poet
THOMSON:
He built his commonweal
On equity’s wide base: by tender laws
A lively people curbing, yet undamped;
Preserving still that quick, peculiar fire,
Whence in the laurelled field of finer arts
And of bold freedom they unequalled shone,
The pride of smiling Greece, and of mankind.
Solon is said to have declared that his laws were
not the best which he could devise, but were the best that the
Athenians could receive. In the following lines we have his own
estimate of the services he rendered in behalf of his distracted
state:
“The force of snow and furious hail is sent
From swelling clouds that load the firmament.
Thence the loud thunders roar, and lightnings glare
Along the darkness of the troubled air.
Unmoved by storms, old Ocean peaceful sleeps
Till the loud tempest swells the angry deeps.
And thus the State, in full distraction toss’d,
Oft by its noblest citizen is lost;
And oft a people once secure and free,
Their own imprudence dooms to tyranny.
My laws have armed the crowd with useful might,
Have banished honors and unequal right,
Have taught the proud in wealth, and high in place,
To reverence justice and abhor disgrace;
And given to both a shield, their guardian tower,
Against ambition’s aims and lawless power.”
III. THE USURPATION OF PISIS’TRATUS.
The legislation of Solon was not followed by the
total extinction of party-spirit, and, while he was absent from
Athens on a visit to Egypt and other Eastern countries, the three
prominent factions in the state renewed their ancient feuds.
Pisistratus, a wealthy kinsman of Solon, who had supported the
measures of the latter by his eloquence and military talents, had
the art to gain the favor of the mass of the people and
constitute himself their leader. AKENSIDE thus happily describes
him as—
The great Pisistratus! that chief renowned,
Whom Hermes and the Ida’lian queen had trained,
Even from his birth, to every powerful art
Of pleasing and persuading; from whose lips
Flowed eloquence which, like the vows of love,
Could steal away suspicion from the hearts
Of all who listened. Thus, from day to day
He won the general suffrage, and beheld
Each rival overshadowed and depressed
Beneath his ampler state; yet oft complained
As one less kindly treated, who had hoped
To merit favor, but submits perforce
To find another’s services preferred,
Nor yet relaxeth aught of faith or zeal.
Then tales were scattered of his envious foes,
Of snares that watched his fame, of daggers aimed
Against his life.
When his schemes were ripe for execution,
Pisistratus one day drove into the public square of Athens, his
mules and himself disfigured with recent wounds inflicted by his
own hands, but which he induced the multitude to believe had been
received from a band of assassins, whom his enemies, the
nobility, had hired to murder “the friend of the people.” Of this
scene the same poet says:
At last, with trembling limbs,
His hair diffused and wild, his garments loose,
And stained with blood from self-inflicted wounds,
He burst into the public place, as there,
There only were his refuge; and declared
In broken words, with sighs of deep regret,
The mortal danger he had scarce repelled.
The ruse was successful. An assembly was at once
convoked by his partisans, and the indignant crowd immediately
voted him a guard of fifty citizens to protect his person,
although Solon, who had returned to Athens and was present,
warned them of the pernicious consequences of such a measure.
Pisistratus soon took advantage of the favor he
had gained, and, arming a large body of his adherents, he threw
off the mask and seized the Acropolis. Solon alone, firm and
undaunted, publicly presented himself in the market-place, and
called upon the people to resist the usurpation.
Solon, with swift indignant strides
The assembled people seeks; proclaims aloud
It was no time for counsel; in their spears
Lay all their prudence now: the tyrant yet
Was not so firmly seated on his throne,
But that one shock of their united force
Would dash him from the summit of his pride
Headlong and grovelling in the dust.
But his appeal was in vain, and Pisistratus,
without opposition, made himself master of Athens. The usurper
made no change in the Constitution, and suffered the laws to take
their course. He left Solon undisturbed; and it is said that the
aged patriot, rejecting all offers of favor, went into voluntary
exile, and soon after died at Salamis. Twice was Pisistratus
driven from Athens by a coalition of the opposing factions, but
he regained the sovereignty and succeeded in holding it until his
death (527 B.C.). Although he tightened the reins of government,
he ruled with equity and mildness, and adorned Athens with many
magnificent and useful works, among them the Lyceum, that
subsequently became the famous resort of philosophers and poets.
He is also said to have been the first person in Greece who
collected a library, which he threw open to the public; and to
him posterity is indebted for the collection of Homer’s poems.
THIRLWALL says: “On the whole, though we cannot approve of the
steps by which Pisistratus mounted to power, we must own that he
made a princely use of it; and may believe that, though under his
dynasty Athens could never have risen to the greatness she
afterward attained, she was indebted to his rule for a season of
repose, during which she gained much of that strength which she
finally unfolded.”
THE TYRANNY AND THE DEATH OF HIP’PIAS.
On the death of Pisistratus his sons Hippias,
Hippar’chus, and Thes’salus succeeded to his power, and for some
years trod in his steps and carried out his plans, only taking
care to fill the most important offices with their friends, and
keeping a standing force of foreign mercenaries to secure
themselves from hostile factions and popular outbreaks. After a
joint reign of fourteen years, a conspiracy was formed to free
Attica from their rule, at the head of which were two young
Athenians, Harmo’dius and Aristogi’ton, whose personal resentment
had been provoked by an atrocious insult to the family of the
former. One of the brothers was killed, but the two young
Athenians also lost their lives in the struggle. Hippias, the
elder of the rulers, now became a cruel tyrant, and soon
alienated the affections of the people, who obtained the aid of
the Spartans, and the family of the Pisistratids was driven from
Athens, never to regain its former ascendancy (510 B.C.). Hippias
fled to the court of Artapher’nes, governor of Lydia, then a part
of the Persian dominion of Dari’us, where his intrigues largely
contributed to the opening of a war between Persia and
Greece.
The names of Harmodius and Aristogiton have been
immortalized by what some writers term “the ignorant or
prejudiced gratitude of the Athenians.” DR. ANTHON considers them
cowardly conspirators, entitled to no heroic honors. But, as he
says, statues were erected to them at the public expense; and
when an orator wished to suggest the idea of the highest merit
and of the noblest services to the cause of liberty, he never
failed to remind his hearers of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Their
names never ceased to be repeated with affectionate admiration in
the convivial songs of Athens, which assigned them a place in the
islands of the “blessed,” by the side of Achilles and Tydi’des.
From one of the most famous and popular of these songs, by
CALLIS’TRATUS, we give the following verses:
Harmodius, hail! Though ‘reft of breath,
Thou ne’er shalt feel the stroke of death;
The heroes’ happy isles shall be
The bright abode allotted thee.
While freedom’s name is understood
You shall delight the wise and good;
You dared to set your country free,
And gave her laws equality.
IV. THE BIRTH OF DEMOCRACY.
On the expulsion of Hippias, Clis’thenes, to whom
Athens was mainly indebted for its liberation from the
Pisistratids, aspired to the political leadership of the state.
But he was opposed by Isag’oras, who was supported by the
nobility. In order to make his cause popular, Clisthenes planned,
and succeeded in executing, a change in the Constitution of
Solon, which gave to the people a greater share in the
government. He divided the people into ten tribes, instead of the
old Ionic four tribes, and these in turn were subdivided into
districts or townships called de’mes. He increased the
powers and duties of the Senate, giving to it five hundred
members, with fifty from each tribe; and he placed the
administration of the military service in the hands of ten
generals, one being taken from each tribe. The reforms of
Clisthenes gave birth to the Athenian democracy. As THIRLWALL
observes, “They had the effect of transforming the commonalty
into a new body, furnished with new organs, and breathing a new
spirit, which was no longer subject to the slightest control from
any influence, save that of wealth and personal qualities, in the
old nobility. The whole frame of the state was reorganized to
correspond with the new division of the country.”
On the application of Isagoras and his party,
Sparta, jealous of the growing strength of Athens, made three
unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the Athenian democracy, and
reinstate Hippias in supreme command. She finally abandoned the
project, as she could find no allies to assist in the enterprise.
“Athens had now entered upon her glorious career. The
institutions of Clisthenes had given her citizens a personal
interest in the welfare and the grandeur of their country, and a
spirit of the warmest patriotism rapidly sprung up among them.
The Persian wars, which followed almost immediately, exhibit a
striking proof of the heroic sacrifices which they were prepared
to make for the liberty and the independence of their state.”
CHAPTER VII.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREEK COLONIES.
An important part of the history of Greece is that which embraces the age of
Grecian colonization, and the extension of the commerce of the Greeks to nearly
all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Of the various circumstances that led to
the planting of the Greek colonies, and especially of the Ionic, Æolian, and
Dorian colonies on the coast of Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean Sea, we
have already spoken. These latter were ever intimately connected with Greece
proper, in whose general history theirs is embraced; but the cities of Italy,
Sicily, and Cyrena’ica were too far removed from the drama that was enacted
around the shores of the Ægean to be more than occasionally and temporarily
affected by the changing fortunes of the parent states. A brief notice,
therefore, of some of those distant settlements, that eventually rivaled even
Athens and Sparta in power and resources, cannot be uninteresting, while it
will serve to give more accurate views of the extent and importance of the
field of Grecian history.
At an early period the shores of Southern Italy
and Sicily were peopled by Greeks; and so numerous and powerful
did the Grecian cities become that the whole were comprised by
Strabo and others under the appellation Magna
Græcia, or Great Greece. The earliest of these distant
settlements appear to have been made at Cu’mæ and
Neap’olis, on the western coast of Italy, about the middle of the
eleventh century. Cumæ was built on a rocky hill washed by
the sea; and the same name is still applied to the ruins that lie
scattered around its base. Some of the most splendid fictions of
Virgil’s Æneid relate to the Cumæan Sibyl,
whose supposed cave, hewn out of the solid rock, actually existed
under the city:
A spacious cave, within its farmost part,
Was hewed and fashioned by laborious art,
Through the hill’s hollow sides; before the place
A hundred doors a hundred entries grace;
As many voices issue, and the sound
Of Sibyl’s words as many times rebound.
—Æneid B. VI.
GROTE says: “The myth of the Sibyl passed from
the Cymæ’ans in Æ’olis, along with the other
circumstances of the tale of Æne’as, to their brethren, the
inhabitants of Cumæ in Italy. In the hollow rock under the
very walls of the town was situated the cavern of the Sibyl; and
in the immediate neighborhood stood the wild woods and dark lake
of Avernus, consecrated to the subterranean gods, and offering an
establishment of priests, with ceremonies evoking the dead, for
purposes of prophecy or for solving doubts and mysteries. It was
here that Grecian imagination localized the Cimme’rians and the
fable of O-dys’seus.”[Footnote: The voyage of Ulysses
(Odysseus) to the infernal regions. Odyssey, B.
XI.]
The extraordinary fertility of Sicily was a great
attraction to the Greek colonists. Naxos, on the eastern coast of
the island, was founded about the year 735 B.C.; and in the
following year some Corinthians laid the foundations of Syracuse.
Ge’la, on the western coast of the island, and Messa’na, now
Messï’na, on the strait between Italy and Sicily, were
founded soon after. Agrigen’tum, on the south-western coast, was
founded about a century later, and became celebrated for the
magnificence of its public buildings. Pindar called it “the
fairest of mortal cities,” and to The’ron, its ruler from 488 to
472, the poet thus refers in the second Olympic ode:
Come, now, my soul! now draw the string;
Bend at the mark the bow:
To whom shall now the glorious arrow wing
The praise of mild benignity?
To Agrigentum fly,
Arrow of song, and there thy praise bestow;
For I shall swear an oath: a hundred years are flown,
But the city ne’er has known
A hand more liberal, a more loving heart,
Than, Theron, thine! for such thou art.
Yet wrong hath risen to blast his praise;
Breath of injustice, breathed from men insane,
Who seek in brawling strain
The echo of his virtues mild to drown,
And with their violent deeds eclipse the days
Of his serene renown.
Unnumbered are the sands of th’ ocean shore;
And who shall number o’er
Those joys in others’ breasts which Theron’s hand hath sown?
—Trans. by ELTON.
In the mean time the Greek cities Syb’aris,
Croto’na, and Taren’tum had been planted on the south-eastern
coast of Italy, and had rapidly grown to power and opulence. The
territorial dominions of Sybaris and Crotona extended across the
peninsula from sea to sea. The former possessed twenty-five
dependent towns, and ruled over four distinct tribes or nations.
The territories of Crotona were still more extensive. These two
Grecian states were at the maximum of their power about the year
560 B.C.—the time of the accession of Pisistratus at Athens—but
they quarreled with each other, and the result of the contest was
the ruin of Sybaris, in 510 B.C. Tarentum was settled by a colony
of Spartans about the year 707 B.C., soon after the first
Messenian war. No details of its history during the first two
hundred and thirty years of its existence are known to us; but in
the fourth century B.C. the Tar’entines stood foremost among the
Italian Greeks, and they maintained their power down to the time
of Roman supremacy.
During the first two centuries after the founding
of Naxos, in Sicily, Grecian settlements were extended over the
eastern, southern, and western sides of the island, while Him’era
was the only Grecian town on the northern coast. These two
hundred years were a period of prosperity among the Sicilian
Greeks, who dwelt chiefly in fortified towns, and exercised
authority over the surrounding native population, which gradually
became assimilated in manners, language, and religion to the
higher civilization of the Greeks. “It cannot be doubted,” says
GROTE, “that these first two centuries were periods of steady
increase among the Sicilian Greeks, undisturbed by those
distractions and calamities which supervened afterward, and which
led indeed to the extraordinary aggrandizement of some of their
communities, but also to the ruin of several others; moreover, it
seems that the Carthaginians in Sicily gave them no trouble until
the time of Ge’lon. Their position will seem singularly
advantageous, if we consider the extraordinary fertility of the
soil in this fine island, especially near the sea; its capacity
for corn, wine, and oil, the species of cultivation to which the
Greek husbandman had been accustomed under less favorable
circumstances; its abundant fisheries on the coast, so important
in Grecian diet, and continuing undiminished even at the present
day—together with sheep, cattle, hides, wool, and timber from
the native population in the interior.”[Footnote: “History
of Greece,” vol. iii., p. 367.]
During the sixth century before the Christian era
the Greek cities in Sicily and Southern Italy were among the most
powerful and flourishing that bore the Hellenic name. Ge’la and
Agrigentum, on the south side of Sicily, had then become the most
prominent of the Sicilian governments; and at the beginning of
the fifth century we find Gelon, a despot of the former city,
subjecting other towns to his authority. Finally obtaining
possession of Syracuse, he made it the seat of his empire (485
B.C.), leaving Gela to be governed by his brother Hi’ero, the
first Sicilian ruler of that name.
Gelon strengthened the fortifications and greatly
enlarged the limits of Syracuse, while to occupy the enlarged
space he dismantled many of the surrounding towns and transported
their inhabitants to his new capital, which now became not only
the first city in Sicily, but, according to Herodotus, superior
to any other Hellenic power. When, in 480 B.C., a formidable
Carthaginian force under Hamil’-car invaded Sicily at the
instigation of Xerxes, King of Persia, who had overrun Greece
proper and captured Athens, Gelon, at the head of fifty-five
thousand men, engaged the Carthaginians in battle at Himera, and
defeated them with terrible slaughter, Hamilcar himself being
numbered among the slain. The victory at Himera procured for
Sicily immunity from foreign war, while the defeat of Xerxes at
Salamis, on the very same day, dispelled the terrific cloud that
overhung the Greeks in that quarter.
Syracuse continued a flourishing city for several
centuries later; but the subsequent events of interest in her
history will be related in a later chapter. Another Greek colony
of importance was that of Cyre’ne, on the northern coast of
Africa, between the territories of Egypt and Carthage. It was
founded about 630 B.C., and, having the advantages of a fertile
soil and fine climate, it rapidly grew in wealth and power. For
eight generations it was governed by kings; but about 460 B.C.
royalty was abolished and a democratic government was
established: Cyrene finally fell under the power of the
Carthaginians, and thus remained until Carthage was destroyed by
the Romans. We have mentioned only the most important of the
Grecian colonies, and even the history that we have of these, the
best known, is unconnected and fragmentary.
CHAPTER VIII.
PROGRESS OF LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.
I. THE POEMS OF HE’SIOD.
The rapid development of literature and the arts
is one of the most pleasing and striking features of Grecian
history. As one writer has well said, “There was an uninterrupted
progress in the development of the Grecian mind from the earliest
dawn of the history of the people to the downfall of their
political independence; and each succeeding age saw the
production of some of those master-works of genius which have
been the models and the admiration of all subsequent time.” The
first period of Grecian literature, ending about 776 B.C., may be
termed the period of epic poetry. Its chief monuments are the
epics of Homer and of Hesiod. The former are essentially heroic,
concerning the deeds of warriors and demi-gods; while the latter
present to us the different phases of domestic life, and are more
of an ethical and religious character. Homer represents the
poetry, or school of poetry, belonging chiefly to Ionia, in Asia
Minor. Of his poems we have already given some account, and,
passing over the minor intervening poets, called Cyclic,
of whose works we have scarcely any knowledge, we will here give
a brief sketch of the poems ascribed to Hesiod.
Hesiod is the representative of a school of bards
which first developed in Bœotia, and then spread over Phocis and
Euboea. The works purporting to be his, that have come down to
us, are three in number—the Works and Days, the
Theogony, and the Shield of Hercules. The latter,
however, is now generally considered the production of some other
poet. From DR. FELTON we have the following general
characterization of these poems: “Aside from their intrinsic
merit as poetical compositions, these poems are of high value for
the light they throw on the mythological conceptions of those
early times, and for the vivid pictures presented, by the
Works and Days, of the hardships and pleasures of daily
life, the superstitious observances, the homely wisdom of common
experience, and the proverbial philosophy into which that
experience had been wrought. For the truthfulness of the
delineation generally all antiquity vouched; and there is in the
style of expression and tone of thought a racy freshness redolent
of the native soil.” Of the poet himself we learn, from his
writings, that he was a native of As’cra, a village at the foot
of Mount Hel’icon, in Bœotia. Of the time of his birth we have
no account, but it is probable that he flourished from half a
century to a century later than Homer. But few incidents of his
life are related, and these he gives us in his works, from which
we learn that be was engaged in pastoral pursuits, and that he
was deprived of the greater part of his inheritance by the
decision of judges whom his brother Per’ses had bribed. This
brother subsequently became much reduced in circumstances, and
applied to Hesiod for relief. The poet assisted him, and then
addressed to him the Works and Days, in which he lays down
certain rules for the regulation and conduct of his life.
The design of Hesiod, as a prominent writer
observes, was “to communicate to his brother in emphatic
language, and in the order, or it might be the disorder, which
his excited feelings suggested, his opinions or counsels on a
variety of matters of deep interest to both, and to the social
circle in which they moved. The Works and Days may be more
appropriately entitled ‘A Letter of Remonstrance or Advice’ to a
brother; of remonstrance on the folly of his past conduct, of
advice as to the future. Upon these two fundamental data every
fact, doctrine, and illustration of the poem depends, as
essentially as the plot of the Iliad on the anger of
Achilles.” [Footnote: Mure’s “Language and Literature of
Ancient Greece,” vol. ii., p.384.] The whole work has
been well characterized by another writer as “the most ancient
specimen of didactic poetry, consisting of ethical, political,
and minute economical precepts. It is in a homely and
unimaginative style, but is impressed throughout with a lofty and
solemn feeling, founded on the idea that the gods have ordained
justice among men, have made labor the only road to prosperity,
and have so ordered the year that every work has its appointed
season, the sign of which may be discerned.”
There are three remarkable episodes in the
Works and Days. The first is the tale of Prome’theus,
which is continued in the Theogony; and the second is that
of the Four Ages of Man. Both of these are types of certain
stages or vicissitudes of human destiny. The third episode is a
description of Winter, a poem not so much in keeping with the
spirit of the work, but “one in which there is much fine and
vigorous painting.” The following extract from it furnishes a
specimen of the poet’s descriptive powers:
Winter.
Beware the January month, beware
Those hurtful days, that keenly-piercing air
Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast
O’er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast.
From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth
O’er the broad sea the whirlwind of the north,
And moves it with his breath: the ocean floods
Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods.
Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells,
And strews with thick-branch’d pines the mountain dells:
He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around;
The depth of forest rolls the roar of sound.
The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,
And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold;
Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,
But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.
Not his rough hide can then the ox avail;
The long-hair’d goat, defenceless, feels the gale:
Yet vain the north wind’s rushing strength to wound
The flock with sheltering fleeces fenced around.
He bows the old man crook’d beneath the storm,
But spares the soft-skinn’d virgin’s tender form.
Screened by her mother’s roof on wintry nights,
And strange to golden Venus’ mystic rites,
The suppling waters of the bath she swims,
With shiny ointment sleeks her dainty limbs;
Within her chamber laid on downy bed,
While winter howls in tempest o’er her head.
Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet,
Starved ‘midst bleak rocks, his desolate retreat;
For now no more the sun, with gleaming ray,
Through seas transparent lights him to his prey.
And now the hornéd and unhornéd kind,
Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famished, grind
Their sounding jaws, and, chilled and quaking, fly
Where oaks the mountain dells embranch on high:
They seek to conch in thickets of the glen,
Or lurk, deep sheltered, in some rocky den.
Like aged men, who, propp’d on crutches, tread
Tottering, with broken strength and stooping head,
So move the beasts of earth, and, creeping low,
Shun the white flakes and dread the drifting snow.
—Trans. by ELTON.
The Theogony embraces subjects of a higher
order than the Works and Days. “It ascends,” says
THIRLWALL, “to the birth of the gods and the origin of nature,
and unfolds the whole order of the world in a series of
genealogies, which personify the beings of every kind contained
in it.” A late writer of prominence says that “it was of greater
value to the Greeks than the Works and Days, as it
contained an authorized version of the genealogy of their gods
and heroes—an inspired dictionary of mythology—from which to
deviate was hazardous.” [Footnote: “The Greek Poets,” by
John Addington Symonds.] This work, however, has not the
poetical merit of the other, although there are some passages in
it of fascinating power and beauty. “The famous passage
describing the Styx,” says PROFESSOR MAHAFFY, “shows the poet to
have known and appreciated the wild scenery of the river Styx in
Arcadia; and the description of Sleep and Death, which
immediately precedes it, is likewise of great beauty. The
conflict of the gods and Titans has a splendid crash and thunder
about it, and is far superior in conception, though inferior in
execution, to the battle of the gods in the Iliad.”
[Footnote: Mahaffy’s “History of Classical Greek
Literature,” vol. i., p. 111.] The poems of Hesiod early
became popular with the country population of Greece; but in the
cities, and especially in Sparta, where war was considered the
only worthy pursuit, they were long cast aside for the more
heroic lines of Homer.
II. LYRIC POETRY.
From the time of Homer, down to about 560 B.C.,
many kinds of composition for which the Greeks were subsequently
distinguished were practically unknown. We are told that the
drama was in its infancy, and that prose writing, although more
or less practiced during this period for purposes of utility or
necessity, was not cultivated as a branch of popular literature.
There was another kind of composition, however, which was carried
to its highest perfection in the last stage of the epic period,
and that was lyric poetry. But of the masterpieces of lyric
poetry only a few fragments remain.
CALLI’NUS.
The first representative of this school that we
may mention was Callinus, an Ephesian of the latter part of the
eighth century B.C., to whom the invention of the elegiac
distich, the characteristic form of the Ionian poetry, is
attributed. Among the few fragments from this poet is the
following fine war elegy, occasioned, probably, by a Persian
invasion of Asia Minor:
How long will ye slumber! when will ye take heart,
And fear the reproach of your neighbors at hand?
Fie! comrades, to think ye have peace for your part,
While the sword and the arrow are wasting our land!
Shame! Grasp the shield close! cover well the bold breast!
Aloft raise the spear as ye march on the foe!
With no thought of retreat, with no terror confessed,
Hurl your last dart in dying, or strike your last blow.
Oh, ’tis noble and glorious to fight for our all—
For our country, our children, the wife of our love!
Death comes not the sooner; no soldier shall fall
Ere his thread is spun out by the sisters above.
Once to die is man’s doom: rush, rush to the fight!
He cannot escape though his blood were Jove’s own.
For a while let him cheat the shrill arrow by flight;
Fate will catch him at last in his chamber alone.
Unlamented he dies—unregretted? Not so
When, the tower of his country, in death falls the brave;
Thrice hallowed his name among all, high or low,
As with blessings alive, so with tears in the grave.
—Trans. by H. N. COLERIDGE.
[Footnote: The “sisters” here alluded to were the
Par’coe, or Fates—three goddesses who presided over
the destinies of mortals: 1st, Clo’tho, who held the
distaff; 2d, Lach’esis, who spun each one’s portion
of the thread of life; and, 3d, At’ropos, who cut off
the thread with her scissors.
Clotho and Lachesis, whose boundless sway,
With Atropos, both men and gods obey. —HESIOD.]
ARCHIL’OCHUS.
Next in point of time comes Archilochus of
Pa’ros, a satirist who flourished between 714 and 676 B.C. He is
generally considered to be the first Greek poet who wrote in the
Iambic measure; but there are evidences that this measure existed
before his time. This poet was betrothed to the daughter of a
noble of Paros; but the father, probably tempted by the alluring
offers of a richer suitor, forbade the nuptials. Archilochus
thereupon composed so bitter a lampoon upon the family that the
daughters of the nobleman are said to have hanged themselves.
Says SYMONDS, “He made Iambic metre his own, and sharpened it
into a terrible weapon of attack. Each verse he wrote was
polished, and pointed like an arrow-head. Each line was steeped
in the poison of hideous charges against his sweetheart, her
sisters, and her father.” [Footnote: “The Greek Poets;”
First Series, p. 108.]
Thenceforth Archilochus led a wandering life,
full of vicissitudes, but replete with evidences of his merit.
“While Hesiod was in the poor and backward parts of central
Greece, modifying with timid hand the tone and style of epic
poetry, without abandoning its form, Archilochus, storm-tossed
amid wealth and poverty, amid commerce and war, amid love and
hate, ever in exile and yet everywhere at home—Archilochus broke
altogether with the traditions of literature, and colonized new
territories with his genius.” [Footnote: “Classical Greek
Literature,” vol. i., p.157.] He is said to have returned
to Paros a short time before his death, where, on account of a
victory he had won at the Olympic festival, the resentment and
hatred formerly entertained against him were turned into
gratitude and admiration. His death, which occurred on the field
of battle, could not extinguish his fame, and his memory was
celebrated by a festival established by his countrymen, during
which his verses were sung alternately with the poems of Homer.
“Thus,” says an old historian, “by a fatality frequently
attending men of genius, he spent a life of misery, and acquired
honor after death. Reproach, ignominy, contempt, poverty, and
persecution were the ordinary companions of his person;
admiration, glory, respect, splendor, and magnificence were the
attendants of his shade.” With the exception of Homer, no poet of
classical antiquity acquired so high a celebrity. Among the
Greeks and Romans he was equally esteemed. Cicero classed him
with Sophocles, Pindar, and even Homer; Plato called him the
“wisest of poets;” and Longinus “speaks with rapture of the
torrent of his divine inspiration.”
ALC’MAN.
Passing over Simonides of Amorgos, who is chiefly
celebrated for a very ungallant but ingenious and smooth satire
on women, and over Tyrtæ’us, whose animating and patriotic
odes, as we have seen, proved the safety of Sparta in one of the
Messenian wars, we come to the first truly lyric poet of
Greece—Alcman— originally a Lydian slave in a Spartan family,
but emancipated by his master on account of his genius. He
flourished after the second Messenian war, and his poems partake
of the character of this period, which was one of pleasure and
peace. They are chiefly erotic, or amatory, or in celebration of
the enjoyments of social life. He successfully cultivated choral
poetry, and his Parthenia, made up of a variety of
subjects, was composed to be sung by the maidens of Tayge’tus.
“His excellence,” says MURE, “appears to have lain in his
descriptive powers. The best, and one of the longest extant
passages of his works is a description of sleep, or rather of
night; a description unsurpassed, perhaps unrivalled, by any
similar passage in the Greek or any other language, and which has
been imitated or paraphrased by many distinguished poets.”
[Footnote: “History of Greek Literature,” vol. iii., p.
205.] The following is this author’s translation of
it:
Now o’er the drowsy earth still night prevails.
Calm sleep the mountain tops and shady vales,
The rugged cliffs and hollow glens;
The wild beasts slumber in their dens,
The cattle on the hill. Deep in the sea
The countless finny race and monster brood
Tranquil repose. Even the busy bee
Forgets her daily toil. The silent wood
No more with noisy hum of insect rings;
And all the feathered tribes, by gentle sleep subdued,
Roost in the glade and hang their drooping wings.
ARI’ON AND STESICH’ORUS.
Arion, the greater part of whose life was spent
at the court of Periander, despot of Corinth, and Stesichorus, of
Himera, in Sicily, who flourished about 608 B.C., were two Greek
poets especially noted for the improvements they made in choral
poetry. The former invented the wild, irregular, and impetuous
dithyramb, [Footnote: From Dithyrambus, one of the
appellations of Bacchus.] originally a species of lyric
poetry in honor of Bacchus; but of his works there is not a
single fragment extant. The latter’s original name was Tis’ias,
and he was called Stesichorus, which signifies a “leader of
choruses.” A late historian characterizes him as “the first to
break the monotony of the choral song, which had consisted
previously of nothing more than one uniform stanza, by dividing
it into the Strophe, the Antistrophe, and the Epodus—the turn,
the return, and the rest.” PROFESSOR MAHAFFY observes of him as
follows: “Finding the taste for epic recitation decaying, he
undertook to reproduce epic stories in lyric dress, and present
the substance of the old epics in rich and varied metres, and
with the measured movements of a trained chorus. This was a
direct step to the drama, for when anyone member of the chorus
came to stand apart and address the rest of the choir, we have
already the essence of Greek tragedy before us.”
[Footnote: “Classical Greek Literature,” vol. i., p.
203.] The works of Stesichorus comprised hymns in honor
of the gods and in praise of heroes, love-songs, and songs of
revelry.
ALCÆ’US.
Among the lyric poets of Greece some writers
assign the very first place to Alcæus, a native of Lesbos,
who flourished about 610 B.C., and who has been styled the ardent
friend and defender of liberty, more because he talked so well of
patriotism than because of his deeds in its behalf. The poet
AKENSIDE, however, calls him “the Lesbian patriot,” and thus
contrasts his style with that of Anac’reon:
Broke from the fetters of his native land,
Devoting shame and vengeance to her lords,
With louder impulse and a threat’ning hand
The Lesbian patriot smites the sounding chords:
“Ye wretches, ye perfidious train!
Ye cursed of gods and free-born men!
Ye murderers of the laws!
Though now ye glory in your lust,
Though now ye tread the feeble neck in dust,
Yet Time and righteous Jove will judge your dreadful
cause.”
The poems of Alcæus were principally war
and drinking songs of great beauty, and it is said that they
furnished to the Latin poet Horace “not only a metrical model,
but also the subject-matter of some of his most beautiful odes.”
The poet fought in the war between Athens and Mityle’ne (606
B.C.), and enjoyed the reputation of being a brave and skilful
warrior, although on one occasion he is said to have fled from
the field of battle leaving his arms behind him. Of his warlike
odes we have a specimen in the following description of the
martial embellishment of his own house:
The Spoils of War.
Glitters with brass my mansion wide;
The roof is decked on every side,
In martial pride,
With helmets ranged in order bright,
And plumes of horse-hair nodding white,
A gallant sight!
Fit ornament for warrior’s brow—
And round the walls in goodly row
Refulgent glow
Stout greaves of brass, like burnished gold,
And corselets there in many a fold
Of linen foiled;
And shields that, in the battle fray,
The routed losers of the day
Have cast away.
Euboean falchions too are seen,
With rich-embroidered belts between
Of dazzling sheen:
And gaudy surcoats piled around,
The spoils of chiefs in war renowned,
May there be found:
These, and all else that here you see,
Are fruits of glorious victory
Achieved by me.
—Trans. by MERIVALE.
SAPPHO.
Contemporary with Alcæus was the poetess
Sappho, the only female of Greece who ever ranked with the
illustrious poets of the other sex, and whom Alcæus called
“the dark-haired, spotless, sweetly smiling Sappho.” Lesbos was
the center of Æolian culture, and Sappho was the center of
a society of Lesbian ladies who applied themselves successfully
to literature. Says SYMONDS: “They formed clubs for the
cultivation of poetry and music. They studied the arts of beauty,
and sought to refine metrical forms and diction. Nor did they
confine themselves to the scientific side of art. Unrestrained by
public opinion, and passionate for the beautiful, they cultivated
their senses and emotions, and indulged their wildest passions.”
Sappho devoted her whole genius to the subject of Love, and her
poems express her feelings with great freedom. Hence arose the
charges of a later age, that were made against her character. But
whatever difference of view may exist on this point, there is
only one opinion as to her poetic genius. She was undoubtedly the
greatest erotic poet of antiquity. Plato called her the tenth
Muse, and Solon, hearing one of her poems, prayed that he might
not die until he had committed it to memory. We cannot forbear
introducing the following eloquent characterization of her
writings:
“Nowhere is a hint whispered that the poetry of
Sappho is aught but perfect. Of all the poets of the world, of
all the illustrious artists of all literatures, Sappho is the one
whose every word has a peculiar and unmistakable perfume, a seal
of absolute perfection and inimitable grace. In her art she was
unerring. Even Archilochus seems commonplace when compared with
her exquisite rarity of phrase. Whether addressing the maidens
whom, even in Elysium, as Horace says, Sappho could not forget,
or embodying the profounder yearnings of an intense soul after
beauty which has never on earth existed, but which inflames the
hearts of noblest poets, robbing the eyes of sleep and giving
them the bitterness of tears to drink—these dazzling
fragments,
‘Which still, like sparkles of Greek fire,
Burn on through time and ne’er expire,’
are the ultimate and finished forms of passionate
utterance—diamonds, topazes, and blazing rubies—in which the
fire of the soul is crystallized forever.” [Footnote:
Symond’s “Greek Poets,” First Series, p. 189.]
It is related that an associate of Sappho once
derided her talents, or stigmatized her poetical labors as
unsuited to her sex and condition. The poetess, burning with
indignation, thus replied to her traducer:
Whenever Death shall seize thy mortal frame,
Oblivion’s pen shall blot thy worthless name;
For thy rude hand ne’er plucked the beauteous rose
That on Pie’ria’s sky-clad summit blows:
[Symond’s “Greek Poets,” First Series, p. 139.]
Thy paltry soul with vilest souls shall go
To Pluto’s kingdom—scenes of endless woe;
While I on golden wings ascend to fame,
And leave behind a muse-enamored, deathless name.
The memory of this poetess of Love rouses the
following strain of celebration in ANTIP’ATER of Sidon:
Does Sappho, then, beneath thy bosom rest,
Æolian earth? that mortal Muse confessed
Inferior only to the choir above,
That foster-child of Venus and of Love;
Warm from whose lips divine Persuasion came,
Greece to delight, and raise the Lesbian name?
O ye, who ever twine the threefold thread,
Ye Fates, why number with the silent dead
That mighty songstress, whose unrivalled powers
Weave for the Muse a crown of deathless flowers?
—Trans. by FRANCIS HODGSON.
ANAC’REON.
The last lyric poet of this period that we shall
notice was Anacreon, a native of Teos, in Ionia, who flourished
about 530 B.C. He was a voluptuary, who sang beautifully of love,
and wine, and nature, and who has been called the courtier and
laureate of tyrants, in whose society, and especially in that of
Polyc’rates and Hippar’chus, his days were spent. The poet
AKENSIDE thus characterizes him:
I see Anacreon smile and sing,
His silver tresses breathe perfume;
His cheeks display a second spring,
Of roses taught by wine to bloom.
Away, deceitful cares, away,
And let me listen to his lay;
Let me the wanton pomp enjoy,
While in smooth dance the light-winged hours
Lead round his lyre its patron powers,
Kind laughter and convivial joy.
The following is Cowper’s translation of a pretty
little poem by Anacreon on the grasshopper:
Happy songster, perched above,
On the summit of the grove,
Whom a dew-drop cheers to sing
With the freedom of a king,
From thy perch survey the fields,
Where prolific Nature yields
Naught that, willingly as she,
Man surrenders not to thee.
For hostility or hate,
None thy pleasures can create.
Thee it satisfies to sing
Sweetly the return of spring,
Herald of the genial hours,
Harming neither herbs nor flowers.
Therefore man thy voice attends,
Gladly; thou and he are friends.
Nor thy never-ceasing strains
Phoebus and the Muse disdains
As too simple or too long,
For themselves inspire the song.
Earth-born, bloodless; undecaying,
Ever singing, sporting, playing,
What has Nature else to show
Godlike in its kind as thou?
III. EARLY GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY.
We now enter upon a new phase of Greek literature. While the first use of prose
in writing may be assigned to a date earlier than 700 B.C., it was not until
the early part of the sixth century B.C. that use was made of prose for
literary purposes; and even then prose compositions were either mythological,
or collections of local legends, whether sacred or profane. The importance and
the practical uses of genuine history were neither known nor suspected until
after the Persian wars. But Grecian philosophy had an earlier dawn, and was
coeval with the poetical compositions of Hesiod, although it was in the sixth
century that it began to be separated from poetry and religion, and to be
cultivated by men who were neither bards, priests, nor seers. This is the era
when the practical maxims and precepts of the Seven Grecian sages began to be
collected by the chroniclers, and disseminated among the people.
THE SEVEN SAGES.
Concerning these sages, otherwise called the
“Seven Wise Men of Greece,” the accounts are confused and
contradictory, and their names are variously given; but those
most generally admitted to the honor are Solon (the Athenian
legislator); Bias, of Ionia; Chi’lo (Ephor of Sparta); Cleobu’lus
(despot of Lindos, in the Island of Rhodes); Perian’der (despot
of Corinth); Pit’tacus (ruler of Mityle’ne); and Tha’les, of
Mile’tus, in accordance with the following enumeration:
“First Solon, who made the Athenian laws;
While Chilo, in Sparta, was famed for his saws;
In Miletus did Thales astronomy teach;
Bias used in Prie’ne his morals to preach;
Cleobulus of Lindus was handsome and wise;
Mitylene ‘gainst thraldom saw Pittacus rise;
Periander is said to have gained, through his court,
The title that Myson, the Chenian, ought.”
[Footnote: It is Plato who says that Periander,
tyrant of Corinth; should give place to Myson.]
The seven wise men were distinguished for their
witty sayings, many of which have grown into maxims that are in
current use even at the present day. Out of the number the
following seven were inscribed as mottoes, in later days, in the
temple at Delphi: “Know thyself,” Solon; “Consider the
end,” Chilo; “Suretyship is the forerunner of ruin” (He
that hateth suretyship is sure; Prov. xi. 15),
Thales; “Most men are bad” (There is none that doeth good,
no, not one, Psalm xiv. 3), Bias; “Avoid extremes”
(the golden mean), Cleobulus; “Know thy opportunity”
(Seize time by the forelock), Pittacus; “Nothing is
impossible to industry” (Patience and perseverance overcome
mountains), Periander. GROTE says of the seven sages:
“Their appearance forms an epoch in Grecian history, inasmuch as
they are the first persons who ever acquired an Hellenic
reputation grounded on mental competency apart from poetical
genius or effect—a proof that political and social prudence was
beginning to be appreciated and admired on its own account.”
The eldest school of Greek philosophy, called the
Ionian, was founded by Thales of Miletus, about the middle of the
sixth century B.C. In the investigation of natural causes and
effects he taught, as a distinguishing tenet of his philosophy,
that water, or some other fluid, is the primary element of
all things—a theory which probably arose from observations on
the uses of moisture in the nourishment of animal and vegetable
life. A similar process of reasoning led Anaxim’enes, of Miletus,
half a century later, to substitute air for water; and by
analogous reasoning Heracli’tus, of Ephesus, surnamed “the
naturalist,” was led to regard the basis of fire or
flame as the fundamental principle of all things, both
spiritual and material. Diog’enes, the Cretan, was led to regard
the universe as issuing from an intelligent principle—a rational
as well as sensitive soul—but without recognizing any
distinction between mind and matter; while Anaximan’der conceived
the primitive state of the universe to have been a vast chaos or
infinity, containing the elements from which the world was
constructed by inherent or self-moving processes of separation
and combination. This doctrine was revived by Anaxag’oras, an
Ionian, a century later, who combined it with the philosophy of
Diogenes, and taught the existence of one supreme mind.
XENOPH’ANES AND PYTHAG’ORAS.
Two widely different schools of philosophy now
arose in the western Greek colonies of lower Italy. Xenophanes, a
native of Ionia, who had fled to E’lea, was the founder of one,
and Pythagoras, of Samos, of the other. The former, known as the
Eleat’ic philosophy, admitted a supreme intelligence, eternal and
incorporeal, pervading all things, and, like the universe itself,
spherical in form. This system was developed in the following
century by Parmen’ides and Zeno, who exercised a great influence
upon the Greek mind. Pythagoras was the first Grecian to assume
the title of philosopher, although he was more of a religious
teacher. Having traveled extensively in the East, he returned to
Samos about 540 B.C.; but, finding the condition of his country,
which was then ruled by the despot Polycrates, unfavorable to the
progress of his doctrines, he moved to Croto’na, in Italy, and
established his school of philosophy there.
Pythagoras,
Vexed with the Samian despot’s lawless sway
(For tyrants ne’er loved wisdom), crossed the seas,
And found a home on the Hesperian shore,
Time when the Tarquin arched the infant Rome
With vaults, the germ of Cæsar’s golden hall.
There, in Crotona’s state, he held a school
Of wisdom and of virtue, teaching men
The harmony of aptly portioned powers,
And of well-numbered days: whence, as a god,
Men honored him; and, from his wells refreshed,
The master-builder of pure intellect,
Imperial Plato, piled the palace where
All great, true thoughts have found a home forever.
—J. STUART BLACKIE.
Pythagoras made some important discoveries in
geometry, music, and astronomy. The demonstration of the
forty-seventh proposition of Euclid is attributed to him. He also
discovered the chords in music, which led him to conceive that
the planets, striking upon the ether through which they move in
their celestial orbits; produce harmonious sounds, varying
according to the differences of the magnitudes, velocities, and
relative distances of the planets, in a manner corresponding to
the proportion of the notes in a musical scale. Hence the “music
of the spheres.” From what can be gathered of the astronomical
doctrine of Pythagoras, it has been inferred that he was
possessed of the true idea of the solar system, which was revived
by Coper’nicus and fully established by Newton. With respect to
God, Pythagoras appears to have taught that he is the universal,
ever-existent mind, the first principle of the universe, the
source and cause of all animal life and motion, in substance
similar to light, in nature like truth, incapable of pain,
invisible, incorruptible, and only to be comprehended by the
mind. His philosophy and teachings are thus pictured by the poet
THOMSON:
Here dwelt the Samian sage; to him belongs
The brightest witness of recording fame.
He sought Crotona’s pure, salubrious air,
And through great Greece his gentle wisdom taught.
His mental eye first launched into the deeps
Of boundless ether; where unnumbered orbs,
Myriads on myriads, through the pathless sky
Unerring roll, and wind their steady way.
There he the full consenting choir beheld;
There first discerned the secret band of love,
The kind attraction, that to central suns
Binds circling earths, and world with world unites.
Instructed thence, he great ideas formed
Of the whole-moving, all-informing God,
The Sun of Beings! beaming unconfined—
Light, life, and love, and ever active power:
Whom naught can image, and who best approves
The silent worship of the moral heart,
That joys in bounteous Heaven and spreads the joy.
Pythagoras also taught the doctrine of the
transmigration of souls, which he probably derived from the
Egyptians; and he professed to preserve a distinct remembrance of
several states of existence through which his soul had passed. It
is related of him that on one occasion, seeing a dog beaten, he
interceded in its behalf, saying, “It is the soul of a friend of
mine, whom I recognize by its voice.” It would seem as if the
poet COLERIDGE had at times been dimly conscious of the reality
of this Pythagorean doctrine, for he says:
Oft o’er my brain does that strange fancy roll
Which makes the present (while the flash doth last)
Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,
Mixed with such feelings as perplex the soul
Self-questioned in her sleep: and some have said
We lived ere yet this robe of flesh we wore.
One of our favorite American poets; LOWELL,
indulges in a like fancy in the following lines from that dream,
like, exquisite fantasy, “In the Twilight,” found in the
Biglow Papers:
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dream-land sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere—
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music once heard by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it—
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show—
A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know,
As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!
And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs in my brain—
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once again—
Could I but speak and show it,
This pleasure, more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,
The world should not lack a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad
Long ago.
On the whole, the system of Pythagoras, with many
excellencies, contained some gross absurdities and superstitions,
which were dignified with the name of philosophy, and which
exerted a pernicious influence over the opinions of many
succeeding generations.
THE ELEUSIN’IAN MYSTERIES.
Closely connected with the public and private
instruction that the philosophers gave in their various systems,
were certain national institutions of a secret character, which
combined the mysteries of both philosophy and religion. The most
celebrated of these, the great festival of Eleusinia, sacred to
Ce’res and Pros’erpine, was observed every fourth year in
different parts of Greece, but more particularly by the people of
Athens every fifth year, at Eleu’sis, in Attica.
What is known of the rites performed at Eleusis
has been gathered from occasional incidental allusions found in
the pages of nearly all the classical authorities; and although
the penalty of a sudden and ignominious death impended over
anyone who divulged these symbolic ceremonies, yet enough is now
known to describe them with much minuteness of detail. We have
not the space to give that detailed description here, but the
ceremonies occupied nine days, from the 15th to the 23d of
September, inclusive. The first day was that on which the
worshippers merely assembled; the second, that on which they
purified themselves by bathing in the sea; the third, the day of
sacrifices; the fourth, the day of offerings to the goddess; the
fifth, the day of torches, when the multitude roamed over the
meadows at nightfall carrying flambeaus, in imitation of Ceres
searching for her daughter; the sixth, the day of Bacchus, the
god of Vintage; the seventh, the day of athletic pastimes; the
eighth, the day devoted to the lesser mysteries and celestial
revelations; and the ninth, the day of libations.
The language that Virgil puts into the mouth of
Anchi’ses, in the Sixth Book of the Æneid, is
regarded as a condensed definition of the secrets of Eleusis and
the creed of Pythagoras. The same book, moreover, is believed to
represent several of the scenes of the mysteries. In the
following words the shade of Anchises answers the inquiries of
“his godlike son:”
“Know, first, that heav’n, and earth’s contracted frame,
And flowing waters, and the starry flame,
And both the radiant lights, one common soul
Inspires and feeds—and animates the whole.
This active mind, infused through all the space,
Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.
Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain,
And birds of air, and monsters of the main.
Th’ ethereal vigor is in all the same;
And ev’ry soul is fill’d with equal flame—
As much as earthy limbs, and gross allay
Of mortal members subject to decay,
Blunt not the beams of heav’n and edge of day.
From this coarse mixture of terrestrial parts,
Desire and fear by turns possess their hearts,
And grief and joy: nor can the grovelling mind,
In the dark dungeon of the limbs confined,
Assert the native skies, or own its heav’nly kind:
Nor death itself can wholly wash their stains;
But long-contracted filth ev’n in the soul remains.
“The relics of invet’rate vice they wear
And spots of sin obscene in ev’ry face appear.
For this are various penances enjoin’d;
And some are hung to bleach upon the wind,
Some plunged in waters, others purged in fires,
Till all the dregs are drain’d, and all the rust expires.
All have their ma’nes, and those manes bear:
The few, so cleansed, to these abodes repair,
And breathe, in ample fields, the soft Elysian air.
Then are they happy, when by length of time
The scurf is worn away of each committed crime;
No speck is left of their habitual stains,
But the pure ether of the soul remains.
But, when a thousand rolling years are past
(So long their punishments and penance last),
Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god,
Compell’d to drink the deep Lethe’an flood,
In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares
Of their past labors and their irksome years,
That, unrememb’ring of its former pain,
The soul may suffer mortal flesh again.”
—Trans. by DRYDEN.
IV. ARCHITECTURE.
In architecture and sculpture Greece stands
pre-eminently above all other nations. The first evidences of the
former art that we discover are in the gigantic walls of Tiryns,
Mycenæ, and other Greek cities, constructed for purposes of
defence in the very earliest periods of Greek history, and
generally known by the name of Cyclo’pean, because supposed by
the early Greeks to have been built by those fabled giants, the
Cyclo’pes.
Ye cliffs of masonry, enormous piles,
Which no rude censure of familiar time
Nor record of our puny race defiles,
In dateless mystery ye stand sublime,
Memorials of an age of which we see
Only the types in things that once were ye.
Whether ye rest upon some bosky knoll,
Your feet by ancient myrtles beautified,
Or seem, like fabled dragons, to unroll
Your swarthy grandeurs down a bleak hill-side,
Still on your savage features is a spell
That makes ye half divine, ineffable.
With joy upon your height I stand alone,
As on a precipice, or lie within
Your shadow wide, or leap from stone to stone,
Pointing my steps with careful discipline,
And think of those grand limbs whose nerve could bear
These masses to their places in mid-air:
Of Anakim, and Titans, and of days
Saturnian, when the spirit of man was knit
So close to Nature that his best essays
At Art were but in all to follow it,
In all—dimension, dignity, degree;
And thus these mighty things were made to be.
—LORD HOUGHTON.
It was in the erection of the temples of the
gods, however, that Grecian architecture had its ornamental
origin, and also made its most rapid progress. The primeval
altar, differing but little from a common hearth, was supplanted
by the wooden habitation of the god, and the latter in turn gave
way to the temple of stone. Then rapidly rose the three famed
orders of architecture —the Doric, the Ionic, and the
Corinthian—the first solemn, massive, and imposing, while the
others exhibit, in their ornamental features, a gradual advance
to perfection.
First, unadorned,
And nobly plain, the manly Doric rose;
The Ionic then, with decent matron grace,
Her airy pillar heaved; luxuriant last,
The rich Corinthian spread her wanton wreath.
—THOMSON,
Passing over the earlier structures devoted to
purposes of worship, we find at the beginning of the sixth
century several magnificent temples in course of erection. Among
these the most celebrated were the Temple of He’ra (Juno), at
Samos, and the Temple of Ar’temis (Diana), at Ephesus. The order
of architecture adopted in the first was Doric, and in the second
Ionic. Both were built of white marble. The former was 346 feet
in length and 189 feet in breadth; while the latter was 425 feet
long and 220 feet broad. Its columns were 127 in number, and 60
feet in height; and the blocks of marble composing the
architrave, or chief beams resting immediately on the columns,
were 30 feet in length.
CHER’SIPHRON, AND THE TEMPLE OF DIANA.
The great Temple of Diana was commenced under the
supervision of Chersiphron, an architect of Crete, but it
occupied over two hundred years in building. It is related of
Chersiphron that, having erected the jambs of the great door to
the temple, he failed, after repeated efforts, continued for many
days, to bring the massive lintel to its place in line with the
jambs. He finally sank down in despair, and fell asleep. In his
dreams he saw the divine form of the goddess, who assured him
that those who labored for the gods should not go unrewarded. On
awaking he beheld the massive lintel in its proper place, laid
there by the hand of the goddess herself. An American sculptor
and poet relates the incident, and gives its moral in the
following poem:
When to the utmost we have tasked our powers,
And Nem’esis still frowns and shakes her head;
When, wearied out and baffled, we confess
Our utter weakness, and the tired hand drops,
And Hope flees from us, and in blank despair
We sink to earth, the face, so stern before,
August will smile—the hand before withdrawn
Reach out the help we vainly pleaded for,
Take up our task, and in a moment do
What all our strength was powerless to achieve.
Unless the gods smile, human toil is vain.
The crowning blessing of all work is drawn
Not from ourselves, but from the powers above.
And this none better knew than Chersiphron,
When on the plains of Ephesus he reared
The splendid temple built to Artemis.
With patient labor he had placed at last
The solid jambs on either side the door,
And now for many a weary day he strove
With many a plan and many a fresh device,
Still seeking and still failing, on the jambs
Level to lay the lintel’s massive weight:
Still it defied him; and, worn out at last,
Along the steps he laid him down at night.
Sleep would not come. With dull distracting pain
The problem hunted through his feverish thoughts,
Till in his dark despair he longed for death,
And threatened his own life with his own hand.
Peace came at last upon him, and he slept;
And in his sleep, before his dreaming eyes
He saw the form divine of Artemis:
O’er him she bent and smiled, and softly said,
“Live, Chersiphron! Who labor for the gods
The gods reward. Behold, your work is done!”
Then, like a mist that melts into the sky,
She vanished; and awaking, he beheld,
Laid by her hand above the entrance-door,
The ponderous lintel level on the jambs.
—W. W. STORY.
Another celebrated temple of this period was that
of Delphi, which was rebuilt, after its destruction by fire in
548 B.C., at a cost equivalent to more than half a million of
dollars. It was in the Doric style, and was faced with Parian
marble. About the same time the Temple of Olympian Jove was
commenced or restored at Athens by Pisistratus. All the temples
mentioned have nearly disappeared. That of Diana, at Ephesus, was
burned by Heros’tratus, in order to immortalize his name, on the
night that Alexander the Great was born (356 B.C.). It was
subsequently rebuilt with greater magnificence, and enriched by
the genius of Sco’pas, Praxit’eles, Parrha’sius, Apel’les, and
other celebrated sculptors and painters. A few of its columns
support the dome of the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople,
two of its pillars are in the great church at Pi’sa, and recent
excavations have brought to light portions of its foundation.
Other temples, however, erected as far back as the fourth and
fifth centuries, have more successfully resisted the ravages of
time. Among these are the six, of the Doric order, whose ruins
appear at Selinus, in Sicily; while at Pæstum, in Southern
Italy, are the celebrated ruins of two temples, which, with the
exception of the temple of Corinth, are the most massive examples
of Doric architecture extant. “It was in the larger of these two
temples,” says a visitor, “during the moonlight of a troubled
sky, that we experienced the emotions of the awful and sublime,
such as impress a testimony, never to be forgotten, of the power
of art over the affections.”
There, down Salerno’s bay,
In deserts far away,
Over whose solitudes
The dread malaria broods,
No labor tills the land—
Only the fierce brigand,
Or shepherd, wan and lean,
O’er the wide plains is seen.
Yet there, a lovely dream,
There Grecian temples gleam,
Whose form and mellowed tone
Rival the Parthenon.
The Sybarite no more
Comes hither to adore,
With perfumed offering,
The ocean god and king.
The deity is fled
Long-since, but, in his stead,
The smiling sea is seen,
The Doric shafts between;
And round the time-worn base
Climb vines of tender grace,
And Pæstum’s roses still
The air with fragrance fill.
—CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH.
V. SCULPTURE.
Like architecture, sculpture, or, more properly
speaking, statuary, owed its origin to religion, and was
introduced into Greece from Egypt. With the Egyptians the art
never advanced beyond the types established at its birth; but the
Greeks, led on, as a recent writer well says, “by an intuitive
sense of beauty which was with them almost a religious principle,
aimed at an ideal perfection, and, by making Nature in her most
perfect forms their model, acquired a facility and a power of
representing every class of form unattained by any other people,
and which have rendered the terms Greek and perfection, with
reference to art, almost synonymous.” The first specimens of
Greek sculpture were rough, unhewn wooden representations of the
gods. These were followed, a little later, by wooden images
having some resemblance to life, and clothed and decorated with
ornaments of various kinds. While this branch of the art long
remained in a rude state, sculptured figures on architectural
monuments were executed in a superior style as early as the age
of Homer.
Long before the period of authentic history,
other materials than wood were used in making statues; and as
early as 700 B.C. a statue was executed of Zeus, or Jupiter, in
bronze. The art of soldering metals is attributed to Glaucus of
Chios, about 690 B.C.; while to Rhoe’cus and his son Theodo’rus,
of Samos, is ascribed the invention of modeling and casting
figures of bronze in a mould. The use of marble, also, for
statues, was introduced in the early part of the sixth century by
Dipoe’nus and Scyl’lis of Crete, who are the first artists
celebrated for works in this material. But, while these
improvements were important, they did not necessarily involve any
change in style; and it was the removal of the restraints
imposed by religion and hereditary cultivation that laid the
foundation for the rapid progress of the art and its subsequent
perfection. These changes, and the results produced by them, are
well summed up in the following extract from THIRLWALL:
“The principal cause of the progress of sculpture
was the enlargement which it experienced in the range of its
subjects, and the consequent multiplicity of its productions. As
long as statues were confined to the interior of the temples, and
no more were seen in each sanctuary than the idol of its worship,
there was little room and motive for innovation; and, on the
other hand, there were strong inducements for adhering to the
practice of antiquity. But, insensibly, piety or ostentation
began to fill the temples with groups of gods and heroes,
strangers to the place, and guests of the power who was properly
invoked there. The deep recesses of their pediments were peopled
with colossal forms, exhibiting some legendary scene appropriate
to the place or the occasion of the building. The custom of
honoring the victors at the public games with a statue—an honor
afterward extended to other distinguished persons—contributed,
perhaps, still more to the same effect; for, whatever restraints
may have been imposed on the artists in the representation of
sacred subjects, either by usage or by a religious scruple, these
were removed when the artists were employed in exhibiting the
images of mere mortals. As the field of the art was widened to
embrace new objects, the number of masters increased; they were
no longer limited, where this had before been the case, to
families or guilds; their industry was sharpened by a more active
competition and by richer rewards. As the study of nature became
more earnest, the sense of beauty grew quicker and steadier; and
so rapid was the march of the art, that the last vestiges of the
arbitrary forms which had been hallowed by time or religion had
not yet everywhere disappeared when the final union of truth and
beauty, which we sometimes endeavor to express by the term
ideal, was accomplished in the school of Phid’ias.”
[Footnote: Thirlwall’s “History of Greece,” vol. i., p.
206.]
We cannot attempt to give here the names of the
masters of sculpture who flourished prior to 500 B.C., or trace
the still extant remains of their genius; but their works were
numerous, and the beauty and grandeur of many of them caused them
to be highly valued in all succeeding ages. In fact, before the
Persian wars had commenced, the branch of sculpture termed
statuary had attained nearly the summit of its perfection.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PERSIAN WARS.
Returning now to the political and military history of Greece, we find that,
about the year 550 B.C., the independence of the Grecian colonies on the coast
of Asia Minor was crushed by Croe’sus, King of Lydia, who conquered their
territories. Thus the Asiatic Greeks became subject to a barbarian power; but
Croesus ruled them with great mildness, leaving their political institutions
undisturbed, and requiring of them little more than the payment of a moderate
tribute. A few years later they experienced a change of masters, and, together
with Lydia, fell by conquest under the dominion of Persia, of which Cyrus the
elder was then king. Under Darius Hystas’pes, the second king after Cyrus, the
Persian empire attained its greatest extent— embracing, in Asia, all that at a
later period was contained in Persia proper and Turkey; in Africa taking in
Egypt as far as Nubia, and the coast of the Mediterranean as far as Barca; thus
stretching from the Ægean Sea to the Indus, and from the plains of Tartary to
the cataracts of the Nile. Such was the empire against whose united strength a
few Grecian communities were soon to contend for the preservation of their very
name and existence.
I. THE IONIC REVOLT.
Like the Lydians, the Persians ruled the Greek
colonies with a degree of moderation, and permitted them to
retain their own form of government by paying tribute; yet the
Greeks seized every opportunity to deliver themselves from this
species of thraldom, and in 502 B.C. an insurrection broke out in
one of the Ionian states, which soon assumed a formidable
character. Before the Persians could collect sufficient forces to
quell the revolt, the Ionians sought the aid of their Grecian
countrymen, making application first to Sparta, but in vain, and
then to Athens and the islands of the Ægean Sea. The
Athenians, regarding Darius as an avowed enemy, gladly took part
with the Ionians, and, in connection with Euboe’a, furnished them
a fleet of twenty-five vessels. The allied Grecians, though at
first successful, were defeated near Ephesus with great loss.
Their commanders then quarreled, and the Athenians sailed for
home, leaving the Asiatic Greeks (divided among themselves) to
contend alone against the whole power of Persia. Still, the
revolt attained to considerable proportions, and was protracted
during a period of six years. It was terminated by the capture of
Miletus, the capital of the Ionian Confederacy, in 495 B.C. The
inhabitants of this city who escaped the sword were carried into
captivity by the conquerors, and the subjugation of Ionia was
complete.
The principal achievement of the allied Grecians
during this war was the burning of Sardis, the capital of the old
Lydian monarchy. When Darius was informed of it he burst into a
paroxysm of rage, directing his wrath chiefly against the
Athenians and Euboeans who had dared to invade his dominions.
“The Athenians!” he exclaimed, “who are they?” Upon being
told, he took his bow and shot an arrow high into the air,
saying, “Grant me, Jove, to take vengeance upon the Athenians.”
He also charged one of his attendants to call aloud to him thrice
every day at dinner, “Sire, remember the Athenians!” As soon,
therefore, as Darius had satisfied his vengeance against the
Greek cities and islands of Asia, he turned his attention to the
Athenians and Euboeans, in pursuance of his vow. He meditated,
however, nothing less than the conquest of all Greece; but the
Persian fleet that was to aid in carrying out his plans was
checked in its progress, off Mount Athos, by a storm so violent
that it is said to have destroyed three hundred vessels and over
twenty thousand lives; and his son-in-law, Mardo’nius, who had
entered Thrace and Macedon at the head of a large army, abruptly
terminated his campaign and recrossed the Hellespont to Asia.
II. THE FIRST PERSIAN WAR.
Darius, having renewed his preparations for the
conquest of Greece, sent heralds through the Grecian cities,
demanding earth and water as tokens of submission. Some of the
smaller states, intimidated by his power, submitted; but Athens
and Sparta haughtily rejected the demands of the Eastern monarch,
and put his heralds to death with cruel mockery, throwing one
into a pit and another into a well, and bidding them take thence
their earth and water.
In the spring of 490 B.C. a Persian fleet of six
hundred ships, conveying an army of 120,000 men, and guided by
the aged tyrant Hippias, directed its course toward the shores of
Greece. Several islands of the Ægean submitted without a
struggle. Euboea was severely punished; and with but little
opposition the Persian host landed and advanced to the plains of
Marathon, within twenty miles of Athens. The Athenians called on
the Platæans and the Spartans for aid, and the former sent
their entire force of one thousand men; but the Spartans refused
to give the much-needed help, because it lacked a few days of the
full moon, and it was contrary to their religious customs to
begin a march during this interval. Meantime the Athenians had
marched to Marathon, and were encamped on the hills that
surrounded the plain. Their army numbered ten thousand men, and
was commanded by Callim’achus, the Pol’emarch or third Archon,
and ten generals, among whom were Milti’ades, Themis’tocles, and
Aristi’des, who subsequently acquired immortal fame. Five of the
ten generals were afraid to hazard a battle without the aid of
the Spartans; but the arguments of Miltiades finally prevailed
upon Callimachus to give his casting vote in favor of immediate
action. Although the ten generals were to command the whole army
successively, each for one day, it was agreed to invest Miltiades
with the command at once, and intrust to his military skill the
fortunes of Athens. He immediately drew up the little army in
order of battle.
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.
The Persians were extended in a line across the
middle of the plain, having their best troops in the center,
while their fleet was ranged behind them along the beach. The
Athenians were drawn up in a line opposite, but having their main
strength in the extreme wings of their army. Miltiades quickly
advanced his force across the mile of plain that separated it
from the foe, and fell upon the immense army of the Persians. As
he had foreseen, the center of his line was soon broken, while
the extremities of the enemy’s line, made up of motley and
undisciplined bands of all nations, were routed and driven toward
the shore, and into the adjoining morasses. Miltiades now hastily
concentrated his two wings and directed their united force
against the Persian center, which, deeming itself victorious, was
taken completely by surprise. The Persians, defeated, fled in
disorder to their ships, but many perished in the marshes; the
shore was strewn with their dead, and seven of their ships were
destroyed. Their loss was six thousand four hundred; that of the
Athenians, not including the Platæans, only one hundred and
ninety two. Such, in brief, was the famous battle of Marathon.
The Persians were strong in the terror of their name, and in the
renown of their conquests; and it required a most heroic
resolution in the Athenians to face a danger that they had not
yet learned to despise.
LEGENDS OF THE BATTLE.
The victory at Marathon was viewed by the people
as a deliverance by the gods themselves. It is fabled that before
the battle the voice of the god Pan was heard in the mountains,
uttering warnings and threatenings to the Persians, and inspiring
the Greeks with courage. Hence the wonderful legends of the
battle, in which Theseus, Hercules, and other local heroes are
represented as engaging in the combat, and dealing death among
the flying barbarians. In the following lines MRS. HEMANS has
embraced the description which the Greeks gave of the appearance
and deeds of Theseus on that occasion:
There was one, a leader crowned,
And armed for Greece that day;
But the falchions made no sound
On his gleaming war array.
In the battle’s front he stood,
With his tall and shadowy crest;
But the arrows drew no blood,
Though their path was through his vest.
His sword was seen to flash
Where the boldest deeds were done;
But it smote without a clash;
The stroke was heard by none!
His voice was not of those
Who swelled the rolling blast,
And his steps fell hushed like snows—
‘Twas the shade of Theseus passed!
Far sweeping through the foe
With a fiery charge he bore;
And the Mede left many a bow
On the sounding ocean-shore.
And the foaming waves grew red,
And the sails were crowded fast,
When the sons of Asia fled,
As the shade of Theseus passed!
When banners caught the breeze,
When helms in sunlight shone,
When masts were on the seas,
And spears on Marathon.
It is said that to this day the peasant believes
the field of Marathon to be haunted with spectral warriors, whose
shouts are heard at midnight, borne on the wind, and rising above
the din of battle. Viewed in the light of such legends, the
following poem on Marathon, by PROFESSOR BLACKIE, is full of
interest and poetic beauty:
From Pentel’icus’ pine-clad height
[Footnote: Pentelicus overhangs the south side of the plain of Marathon.]
A voice of warning came,
That shook the silent autumn night
With fear to Media’s name.
[Footnote: After the absorption of the Median kingdom into that of
Persia, the terms Mede and Persian were interchangeably used,
with little distinction.]
Pan, from his Marathonian cave,
[Footnote: Pan was said to have a famous cave near Marathon. For
the somewhat prominent part which Pan played in the great Persian war, see
Herodotus, vi. p.105.]
Sent screams of midnight terror.
And darkling horror curled the wave
On the broad sea’s moonlit mirror.
Woe, Persia, woe! thou liest low—low!
Let the golden palaces groan!
Ye mothers weep for sons that shall sleep
In gore on Marathon.
Where Indus and Hydaspes roll,
Where treeless deserts glow,
Where Scythians roam beneath the pole,
O’er hills of hardened snow,
The great Darius rules: and now,
Thou little Greece, to thee
He comes: thou thin-soiled Athens, how
Shalt thou dare to be free?
There is a God that wields the rod
Above: by him alone
The Greek shall be free, when the Mede shall flee
In shame from Marathon.
He comes; and o’er the bright Ægean,
Where his masted army came,
The subject isles uplift the pæan
Of glory to his name.
Strong Naxos, strong Ere’tria yield;
His captains near the shore
Of Marathon’s fair and fateful field,
Where a tyrant marched before.
And a traitor guide, the sea beside,
Now marks the land for his own,
Where the marshes red shall soon be the bed
Of the Mede in Marathon.
Who shall number the host of the Mede?
Their high-tiered galleys ride,
Like locust-bands with darkening speed,
Across the groaning tide.
Who shall tell the many hoofed tramp
That shakes the dusty plain?
Where the pride of his horse is the strength of his camp,
Shall the Mede forget to gain?
O fair is the pride of the cohorts that ride,
To the eye of the morning shown!
But a god in the sky hath doomed them to lie
In dust on Marathon.
Dauntless, beside the sounding sea,
The Athenian men reveal
Their steady strength. That they are free
They know; and inly feel
Their high election, on that day,
In foremost fight to stand,
And dash the enslaving yoke away
From all the Grecian land.
Their praise shall sound the world around,
Who shook the Persian throne,
When the shout of the free travelled over the sea
From famous Marathon.
From dark Cithæ’ron’s sacred slope
The small Platæan band
Bring hearts that swell with patriot hope,
To wield a common brand
With Theseus’ sons, at danger’s gates,
While spellbound Sparta stands,
And for the pale moon’s changes waits
With stiff and stolid hands;
And hath no share in the glory rare,
That Athens shall make her own,
When the long-haired Mede with fearful speed
Falls back from Marathon.
“On, sons of the Greeks!” the war-cry rolls;
“The land that gave you birth,
Your wives, and all the dearest souls
That circle round each hearth;
The shrines upon a thousand hills,
The memory of your sires,
Nerve now with brass your resolute wills,
And fan your valorous fires!”
And on like a wave came the rush of the brave—
“Ye sons of the Greeks, on, on!”
And the Mede stepped back from the eager attack
Of the Greek in Marathon.
Hear’st thou the rattling of spears on the right?
Seest thou the gleam in the sky?
The gods come to aid the Greeks in the fight,
And the favoring heroes are nigh.
The lion’s hide I see in the sky,
And the knotted club so fell,
And kingly Theseus’s conquering eye,
And Maca’ria, nymph of the well.
[Footnote: The nymph Macaria, daughter of Hercules, was said to
have a fountain on the field of Marathon. There is a well near the north end of
the plain, where the fountain is supposed to have been.]
Purely, purely, the fount did flow,
When the morn’s first radiance shone;
But eve shall know the crimson flow
Of its wave, by Marathon.
On, son of Cimon, bravely on!
[Footnote: Milti’ades, the general in command, whose father’s name was
Cimon.]
And Aristides the just!
Your names have made the field your own,
Your foes are in the dust!
The Lydian satrap spurs his steed,
The Persian’s bow is broken:
His purple pales; the vanquished Mede
Beholds the angry token
Of thundering Jove, who rules above;
And the bubbling marshes moan
[Footnote: There are two extensive marshes on the plain of Marathon, one
at each extremity. The Persians were driven back into the marsh at the north
end.]
With the trampled dead that have found their bed
In gore, at Marathon.
The ships have sailed from Marathon
On swift disaster’s wings;
And an evil dream hath fetched a groan
From the heart of the king of kings.
An eagle he saw, in the shades of night,
With a dove that bloodily strove;
And the weak hath vanquished the strong in fight,
The eagle hath fled from the dove.
[Footnote: Reference is here made to A-tos’sa’s dream, as given by
Æschylus in his tragedy of The Persians.]
Great Jove, that reigns in the starry plains,
To the heart of the king hath shown
That the boastful parade of his pride was laid
In dust at Marathon.
But through Pentelicus’ winding vales
The hymn triumphal runs,
And high-shrined Athens proudly hails
Her free-returning sons.
And Pallas, from her ancient rock,
[Footnote: Pallas, or Minerva.]
With her shield’s refulgent round,
Blazes; her frequent worshippers flock,
And high the pæans sound,
How in deathless glory the famous story
Shall on the winds be blown,
That the long-haired Mede was driven with speed
By the Greeks, from Marathon.
And Greece shall be a hallowed name,
While the sun shall climb the pole,
And Marathon fan strong freedom’s flame
In many a pilgrim soul.
And o’er that mound where heroes sleep,
[Footnote: This famous mound is still to be seen on the
battle-field.]
By the waste and reedy shore,
Full many a patriot eye shall weep,
Till Time shall be no more.
And the bard shall brim with a holier hymn,
When he stands by that mound alone,
And feel no shrine on earth more divine
Than the dust of Marathon.
THE DEATH OF MILTIADES.
Soon after the Persian defeat, Miltiades, who at
first received all the honors that a grateful people could
bestow, met a fate that casts a melancholy gloom over his
history, and that has often been cited in proof of the assertion
that “republics are fickle and ungrateful.” History shows,
however, that the Athenians were not greatly in the wrong in
their treatment of Miltiades. He obtained of them the command of
an expedition whose destination was known to himself alone;
assuring them of the honorableness and the success of the
enterprise. But much treasure was spent, many lives were lost,
and through the seeming treachery of Miltiades the expedition
terminated in disaster and disgrace. It was found, upon
investigation, that the motive of the expedition was private
resentment against a prominent citizen of Paros. Miltiades was
therefore condemned to death; but gratitude for his previous
valuable services mitigated the penalty to a fine of fifty
talents. His death occurred soon after, from a wound that he
received in a fall while at Paros, and the fine was paid by his
son Cimon.
As GROTE well observes, “The fate of Miltiades,
so far from illustrating either the fickleness or the ingratitude
of his countrymen, attests their just appreciation of deserts. It
also illustrates another moral of no small importance to the
right comprehension of Grecian affairs; it teaches us the painful
lesson how perfectly maddening were the effects of a copious
draught of glory on the temperament of an enterprising and
ambitious Greek. There can be no doubt that the rapid transition,
in the course of about one week, from Athenian terror before the
battle to Athenian exultation after it, must have produced
demonstrations toward Miltiades such as were never paid to any
other man in the whole history of the commonwealth. Such
unmeasured admiration unseated his rational judgment, so that his
mind became abandoned to the reckless impulses of insolence,
antipathy, and rapacity— that distempered state for which
(according to Grecian morality) the retributive Nemesis was ever
on the watch, and which, in his case, she visited with a judgment
startling in its rapidity, as well as terrible in its amount.”
[Footnote: “History of Greece,” Chap. xxxvi.]
But, as GILLIES remarks, “The glory of Miltiades
survived him. At the distance of half a century, when the battle
of Marathon was painted by order of the state, it was ordered
that the figure of Miltiades be placed in the foreground,
animating the troops to victory—a reward which, during the
virtuous simplicity of the ancient commonwealth, conferred more
real honor than all that magnificent profusion of crowns and
statues which, in the later times of the republic, were rather
extorted by general fees than bestowed by public admiration.”
[See Oration of Æsehines, pp. 424-426.]
ARISTI’DES AND THEMIS’TOCLES.
After the death of Miltiades, Themistocles and
Aristides became the most prominent men among the Athenians. The
former, a most able statesman, but influenced by ambitious
motives, aimed to make Athens great and powerful that he himself
might rise to greater eminence; while the later was a pure
patriot, wholly destitute of selfish ambition, and knew no cause
but that of justice and the public welfare. The poet THOMSON thus
characterizes him:
Then Aristides lifts his honest front;
Spotless of heart, to whom the unflattering voice
Of Freedom gave the name of Just.
In pure majestic poverty revered;
Who, e’en his glory to his country’s weal
Submitting, swelled a haughty rival’s fame.
But the very integrity of Aristides made for him
secret enemies, who, although they charged him with no crimes,
were yet able to procure his banishment by the process of
ostracism, in which his great rival, Themistocles, took a
leading part. This kind of condemnation was not inflicted as a
punishment, but as a precautionary measure against a degree of
personal popularity that might be deemed dangerous to the public
welfare. The process was as follows: In an assembly of the people
each man was at liberty to write on a shell the name of the
person whom he wished to have banished, and if six thousand votes
or more were recorded, that person against whom the greatest
number of votes had been given was banished for ten years, but
with leave to enjoy his estate, and return after that period.
PLUTARCH relates the following incident connected with the
banishment of Aristides: “An illiterate burgher coming to
Aristides, whom he took for some ordinary person, and giving him
his shell, desired him to write ‘Aristides’ upon it. The good
man, surprised at the adventure, asked him ‘Whether Aristides had
ever injured him?’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘nor do I even know him; but it
vexes me to hear him everywhere called the Just.’
Aristides made no answer, but took the shell, and, having written
his own name upon it, returned it to the man. When he quitted
Athens, he lifted up his hands toward heaven, and, agreeably to
his character, made a prayer, very different from that of
Achilles; namely, ‘that the people of Athens might never see the
day which should force them to remember Aristides.'”
But it was, perhaps, fortunate for the liberties
of Greece that Themistocles, instead of Aristides, was left in
full power at Athens. “The peculiar faculty of his mind,” says
THIRLWALL, “which Thucydides contemplated with admiration, was
the quickness with which it seized every object that came in its
way, perceived the course of action required by new situations
and sudden junctures, and penetrated into remote consequences.
Such were the abilities which were most needed at this period for
the service of Athens.” Soon after the battle of Marathon a war
had broken out between Athens and Ægina, which still
continued, and which gave Themistocles an opportunity to exercise
his powers of ready invention and prompt execution. Ægina
was one of the wealthiest of the Grecian islands, and possessed
the most powerful navy in all Greece. Themistocles soon saw that
to successfully cope with this formidable rival, as well as rise
to a higher rank among the Grecian states, Athens must become a
great maritime power. He therefore obtained the consent of the
Athenians to devote a large surplus then in the public treasury,
but which belonged to individual citizens, to the building of a
hundred galleys; and, by this sacrifice of individual emolument
to the general good, the Athenian navy was increased to two
hundred ships. But the foresight of Themistocles extended still
farther, and it was no less his design, in making Athens a
first-class maritime power, to protect her against Persia, which,
as he well knew, was preparing for another and still more
formidable attack on Greece.
III. THE SECOND PERSIAN INVASION.
For three years subsequent to the battle of
Marathon Darius made great preparations for a second invasion of
Greece, intending to lead his forces in person; but death put an
end to his plans. Xerxes, his son and successor, was urged by
many advisers to carry out his father’s intentions. His uncle
Artaba’nus alone endeavored to divert him from the enterprise;
but Xerxes, having spent four years in collecting a large fleet
and a vast body of troops from all quarters of his extensive
dominions, set out from Sardis with great ostentation, in the
spring of the year 480, to avenge the disgrace of Marathon.
HERODOTUS relates that, on reaching Aby’dos, on the Hellespont,
Xerxes reviewed his vast host, and wept when he thought of the
shortness of human life, and considered that of all his immense
host not one man would be alive when a hundred years had passed
away. The historian’s account is as follows:
Xerxes at Abydos.
“Arrived here, Xerxes wished to look upon his
host; so, as there was a throne of white marble upon a hill near
the city, which they of Abydos had prepared beforehand, by the
king’s bidding, for his especial use, Xerxes took his seat on it,
and, gazing thence upon the shore below, beheld at one view all
his land forces and all his ships. As he looked and saw the whole
Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the
shore and every plain about Abydos as full as could be of men,
Xerxes congratulated himself on his good-fortune; but, after a
little while, he wept. Then Artabanus, the king’s uncle (the same
who at the first so freely spake his mind to the king, and
advised him not to lead his army against Greece), when he heard
that Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said:
“‘How different, sire, is what thou art now doing
from what thou didst a little while ago! Then thou didst
congratulate thyself, and now, behold! thou weepest.’
“‘There came upon me,’ replied he, ‘a sudden pity
when I thought of the shortness of man’s life, and considered
that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be
alive when a hundred years are gone by.’
“‘And yet there are sadder things in life than
that,’ returned the other. ‘Short. as our time is, there is no
man, whether it be here among this multitude or elsewhere, who is
so happy as not to have felt the wish—I will not say once, but
full many a time—that he were dead rather than alive. Calamities
fall upon us, sicknesses vex and harass us, and make life, short
though it be, to appear long. So death, through the wretchedness
of our life, is a most sweet refuge to our race; and God, who
gives us the tastes we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in his
very gift, to be envious.'”
—Trans. by RAWLINSON.
Much that is told about Xerxes—how he cut off
Mount Athos from the main-land by a canal; how he made a bridge
of boats across the Hellespont, where it is three miles wide, and
ordered the waters to be scourged because they destroyed the
bridge; how he constructed new bridges, over which his vast army
crossed the Hellespont as along a royal road; and how his army
drank a whole river dry—all of which is gravely related by
Herodotus as fact, is discredited by the Latin poet JUVENAL, who
attributes these stories to the imaginations of “browsy
poets.”
Old Greece a tale of Athos would make out,
Cut from the continent and sailed about;
Seas bid with navies, chariots passing o’er
The channel on a bridge from shore to shore;
Rivers, whose depths no sharp beholder sees,
Drunk, at an army’s dinner, to the lees;
With a long legend of romantic things,
Which, in his cups, the browsy poet sings.
—Tenth Satire. Trans. by DRYDEN.
That Xerxes bridged the Hellespont, however, in
the manner related by Herodotus, is an accepted fact of history.
As MILTON says,
Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke,
From Susa, his Memnonian palace high,
Came to the sea, and over Hellespont
Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined.
—Paradise Regained.
He crossed to Ses’tus, a city of Thrace, and
entered Europe at the head of an army the greatest the world has
ever seen, and whose numbers have been estimated at over two
millions of fighting men. Having marched along the coast through
Thrace and Macedonia, this immense force passed through Thessaly,
and arrived, without opposition, at the Pass of
Thermop’ylæ, a narrow defile on the western shore of the
gulf that lies between Thessaly and Euboea, and almost the only
road by which Greece proper, or ancient Greece, could be entered
on the north-east by way of Thessaly. In the mean time the Greeks
had not been idle. The winter before Xerxes left Asia a general
congress of the Grecian states was held at the isthmus of
Corinth, at which the differences between Athens and Ægina
were first settled, and then a vigorous effort was made by Athens
and Sparta to unite the states and cities in one great league
against the power of Persia. But, notwithstanding the common
danger, only a few of the states responded to the call, and the
only people north and east of the isthmus who joined the league
were the Athenians, Phocians, Platæans, and Thespians. The
command of both the land and naval forces was relinquished by
Athens to the Spartans; and it was resolved to make the first
stand against Persia at the Pass of Thermopylæ.
THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLÆ.
When the Persian monarch reached
Thermopylæ, he found a body of but eight thousand men,
commanded by the Spartan king Leonidas, prepared to dispute his
passage. A herald was sent to the Greeks commanding them to lay
down their arms; but Leonidas replied, with true Spartan brevity,
“Come and take them!” When it was remarked that the Persians were
so numerous that their darts would darken the sun, “Then,”
replied Dien’eces, a Spartan, “we shall fight in the shade.”
Trained from youth to the endurance of all hardships, and
forbidden by their laws ever to flee from an enemy, the sons of
Sparta were indeed formidable antagonists for the Persians to
encounter.
Stern were her sons. Upon Euro’tas’ bank,
Where black Ta-yg’etus o’er cliff and peak
Waves his dark pines, and spreads his glistening snows,
On five low hills their city rose: no walls,
No ramparts closed it round; its battlements
And towers of strength were men—high-minded men,
Who heard the cry of danger with more joy
Than softer natures listen to the voice
Of pleasure; who, with unremitting toil
In chase, in battle, or athletic course,
To fierceness steeled their native hardihood;
Who sunk in death as tranquil as in sleep,
And, hemmed by hostile myriads, never turned
To flight, but closer drew before their breasts
The massy buckler, firmer fixed the foot,
Bit the writhed lip, and, where they struggled, fell.
—HAYGARTH.
Xerxes, astonished that the Greeks did not
disperse at the sight of his vast army, waited four days, and
then ordered a body of his troops to attack them, and lead them
captive before him; but the barbarians fell in heaps in the very
presence of the king, and blocked the narrow pass with their
dead. Xerxes now thought the contest worthy of the superior
prowess of his own guards, the ten thousand Immortals. These were
led up as to a certain victory; but the Greeks stood their ground
as before. The combat lasted a whole day, and the slaughter of
the enemy was terrible. Another day of combat followed, with like
results, and the confidence of the Persian monarch was changed
into despondence and perplexity.
While in the uncertainty caused by these repeated
failures to force a passage, Xerxes learned, from a Greek
traitor, of a secret path over the mountains, by which he was
able to throw a force of twenty thousand men into the rear of the
brave defenders of the pass. Leonidas, seeing that his post was
no longer tenable, now dismissed all his allies that desired to
retire, and retained only three hundred fellow-Spartans, with
some Thespians and Thebans—in all about one thousand men. He
would have saved two of his kinsmen, by sending them with
messages to Sparta; but the one said he had come to bear arms,
not to carry letters, and the other that his deeds would tell all
that Sparta desired to know. Leonidas did not wait for an attack,
but sallying forth from the pass, and falling suddenly upon the
Persians, he penetrated to the very center of their host, where
the battle raged furiously, and two of the brothers of Xerxes
were slain. Then the surviving Greeks, with the exception of the
Thebans, fell back within the pass and took their final stand
upon a hillock, where they fought with the valor of desperation
until every man was slain. The Thebans, however, who from the
first had been distrusted by Leonidas, threw down their arms
early in the fight, and begged for quarter.
The conflict itself, and the glory of the
struggle on the part of the Spartans, have been favorite themes
with the poets of succeeding ages. The following description is
by HAYGARTH:
Long and doubtful was the fight;
Day after day the hostile army poured
Its choicest warriors, but in vain; they fell,
Or fled inglorious. Foul treachery
At last prevailed; a steep and dangerous path,
Known only to the wandering mountaineers,
By difficult ascent led to the rear
Of the heroic Greeks. The morning dawned,
And the brave chieftain, when he raised his head
From the cold rock on which he rested, viewed
Banner and helmet, and the waving fire
From lance and buckler, glancing high amidst
Each pointed cliff and copse which stretch along
Yon mountain’s bosom. Then he saw his fate;
But saw it with an unaverted eye:
Around his spear he called his countrymen,
And with a smile that o’er his rugged cheek
Pass’d transient, like the momentary flash
Streaking a thunder-cloud—”But we will die”
(He cried) “like Grecians; we will leave our sons
A bright example. Let each warrior bind
Firmly his mail, and grasp his lance, and scowl
From underneath his helm a frown of death
Upon his shrinking foe; then let him fix
His firm, unbending knee, and where he fights
There fall.” They heard, and, on their shields
Clashing the war-song with a noble rage,
Rushed headlong in the conflict of the fight,
And died, as they had lived, triumphantly.
The Greek historian Diodorus, followed by the
biographer Plutarch and the Latin historian Justin, states that
Leonidas made the attack on the Persian camp during the night,
and in the darkness and in the confusion of the struggle nearly
penetrated to the royal tent of Xerxes. On this basis of supposed
facts the poet CROLY wrote his stirring poem descriptive of the
conflict; but the statement of Diodorus, which is irreconcilable
with Herodotus, is generally discredited by modern writers.
Monuments to the memory of the Greeks who fell
were erected on the battle-ground, and many were the epitaphs
written to commemorate the heroism of the famous three hundred;
but the oldest, best, and most celebrated of these is the
inscription that was placed on their altar-tomb, written by the
poet SIMON’IDES, of Ce’os. It consists of only two lines in the
Original Greek. [Footnote: The following is the original
Greek of the epitaph: “O xeiu hangeddeiy Dakedaimouiois hoti
taede keimetha, tois keiuoy hraemasi peithomeuoi.”] All
Greece for centuries had them by heart; but in the lapse of time
she forgot them, and then, in the language of “Christopher
North,” “Greece was living Greece no more.” There have been no
less than three Latin and eighteen English versions of this
epitaph; and herewith we give three of the latter:
Go, stranger, and to Laç-e-dæ’mon tell
That here, obedient to her laws, we fell.
Stranger, to Sparta say that here we rest
In death, obedient to her high behest.
Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
Another inscription, said to have been written by
Simonides for the tombs of the heroes of Thermopylæ, is as
follows:
Happy they, the chosen brave,
Whom Destiny, whom Valor led
To their consecrated grave
‘Mid Thessalia’s mountains dread.
Their sepulchre’s a holy shrine,
Their epitaph, the engraven line
Recording former deeds divine;
And Pity’s melancholy wail
Is changed to hymns of praise that load the evening gale.
Entombed in noble deed’s they’re laid—
Nor silent rust, nor Time’s inexorable hour,
Shall e’er have power
To rend that shroud which veils their hallowed shade.
Hellas mourns the dead
Sunk in their narrow grave;
But thou, dark Sparta’s chief, whose bosom bled
First in the battle’s wave,
Bear witness that they fell as best beseems the brave.
Leonidas himself fell in the plain, and his body
was carried into the defile by his followers. He was buried at
the north entrance to the pass, and over his grave was erected a
mound, on which was placed the figure of a lion sculptured in
stone. The sculptured lion marked the grave of the hero down to
the time Of Herodotus.
On Phocis’ shores the cavern’s gloom
Imbrowns yon solitary tomb:
There, in the sad and silent grave
Repose the ashes of the brave
Who, when the Persian from afar
On Hellas poured the stream of war,
At Freedom’s call, with martial pride,
For his loved country fought and died.
Seek’st thou the place where, ‘midst the dead
The hero of the battle bled?
Yon sculptured lion, frowning near,
Points out Leonidas’s bier.
—ANON.
The poet BYRON, who was peculiarly the friend of
Greece, and an earnest admirer of both the genius and the heroic
deeds of her sons, has written the following lines commemorating
the glory of those who fell at Thermopylæ:
They fell devoted, but undying;
The very gale their names seemed sighing:
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay:
Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o’er the fountain;
The meanest rill, the mightiest river
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.
THE ABANDONMENT OF ATHENS.
While fighting was in progress at
Thermopylæ, a Greek fleet, under the command of the Spartan
Eurybi’ades, that had been sent to guard the Euboean Sea,
encountered the Persian ships at Artemis’ium. In several
engagements that occurred, the Athenian vessels, commanded by
Themistocles, were especially distinguished; and although the
contests with the enemy were not decisive, yet, says PLUTARCH,
“they were of great advantage to the Greeks, who learned by
experience that neither the number of ships, nor the beauty and
splendor of their ornaments, nor the vaunting shouts and songs of
the Persians, were anything dreadful to men who know how to fight
hand-to-hand, and are determined to behave gallantly. These
things they were taught to despise when they came to close action
and grappled with the foe. Hence in this respect, and for this
reason, Pindar’s sentiments appear just, when he says of the
fight at Artemisium,
“‘Twas then that Athens the foundation laid
Of Liberty’s fair structure.'”
Although the Greeks were virtually the victors in
these engagements, at least one-half of their vessels were
disabled; and, hearing of the defeat of Leonidas at
Thermopylæ, they resolved to retreat. Having sailed through
the Euboean Sea, the fleet kept on its way until it reached the
Island of Salamis, in the Saron’ic Gulf. Here Themistocles
learned that no friendly force was guarding the frontier of
Attica, although the Peloponnesian states had promised to send an
army into Bœotia; and he saw that there was nothing to prevent
the Persians from marching on Athens. He therefore advised the
Athenians to abandon the city to the mercy of the Persians, and
commit their safety and their hopes of victory to the navy. The
advice was adopted, though not without a hard struggle; and those
of the inhabitants who were able to bear arms retired to the
Island of Salamis, while the old and infirm, the women and
children, found shelter in a city of Argolis.
THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS.
Xerxes pursued his march through Greece unopposed
except by Thespiæ and Platæa, which towns he reduced,
and spread desolation over Attica until he arrived at the foot of
the Cecropian hill, which he found guarded by a handful of
desperate citizens who refused to surrender. But the brave
defenders were soon put to the sword, and Athens was plundered
and then burned to the ground. About this time the Persian fleet
arrived in the Bay of Phale’rum, and Xerxes immediately
dispatched it to block up that of the Greeks in the narrow strait
of Salamis. Eurybiades, the Spartan, who still commanded the
Grecian fleet, was urged by Themistocles, and also by Aristides,
who had been recalled from exile, to hazard an engagement at once
in the narrow strait, where the superior numbers of the Persians
would be of little avail. The Peloponnesian commanders, however,
wished to move the fleet to the Isthmus of Corinth, where it
would have the aid of the land forces. At last the counsel of
Themistocles prevailed, and the Greeks made the attack. The
engagement was a courageous and persistent one on both sides, but
the Greeks came off victorious. Xerxes had caused a royal throne
to be erected on one of the neighboring heights, where,
surrounded by his army, he might witness the naval conflict in
which he was so confident of victory. But he had the misfortune
to see his magnificent navy almost utterly annihilated. Among the
slain was the brother of Xerxes, who commanded the navy, and many
other Persians of the highest rank.
A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set, where were they?
—BYRON.
Anxious now for his own personal safety, the
Persian monarch’s whole care centered on securing his retreat by
land. He passed rapidly into Thessaly, and, after a march of
forty-five days, reached the shores of the Hellespont to find his
bridges washed away.
But how returned he? Say; this soul of fire,
This proud barbarian, whose impatient ire
Chastised the winds that disobeyed his nod
With stripes ne’er suffered by the Æolian god—
But how returned he? say; his navy lost,
In a small bark he fled the hostile coast,
And, urged by terror, drove his laboring prore
Through floating carcasses and fields of gore.
So Xerxes sped; so sped the conquering race:
They catch at glory, and they clasp disgrace.
—JUVENAL, Satire X. Trans. by GIFFORD.
The ignominious retreat of Xerxes was in marked
contrast to the pomp and magnificence of his advance into Greece.
Death from famine and distress spread its ravages among his
troops, and the remnant that returned with him to Asia was but “a
wreck, or fragment, rather than a part of his huge host.”
O’er Hellespont and Athos’ marble head,
More than a god he came, less than a man he fled.
—LUIGI ALAMANNI. Trans. by AUBREY DE VERE.
A Celebrated Description of the Battle.
Among the Athenians who nobly fought at Marathon,
and who also took part in the battle of Salamis, was the
tragedian Æschylus; and so much did he distinguish himself
in the capacity of soldier, that, in the picture which the
Athenians caused to be painted representing the former battle,
the figure of Æschylus held so prominent a place as to be
at once recognized, even by a casual observer. Eight years after
the latter battle Æschylus composed his tragedy of The
Persians, which portrays, in vivid colors, the defeat of
Xerxes, and gives a fuller, and, indeed, better account of that
memorable sea-fight than is found even in the pages of
Herodotus.
Says MITFORD, “It is matter of regret, not indeed
that Æschylus was a poet; but that prose-writing was yet in
his age so little common that his poetical sketch of this great
transaction is the most authoritative, the clearest, and the most
consistent of any that has passed to posterity.” In the famous
tragedy of Æschylus the account of the destruction of the
Persian fleet is supposed to be given by a Persian messenger,
escaped from the fight, to Atos’sa, the mother of Xerxes. The
scene is laid at Susa, the Persian capital, near the tomb of
Darius. The whole drama may be considered as a proud triumphal
song in favor of Liberty.
Atossa, appearing with her attendants, and
anxious for news of her son, first inquires in what clime are the
towers of Athens— the conquest of which her son had willed—and
what mighty armies, what arms, and what treasures the Athenians
boast, and what mighty monarch rules over them; and is told, to
her surprise, that instead of the strong bow, like the Persians,
they have stout spears and massy bucklers; and although their
rich earth is a copious fount of silver, yet the people, “slaves
to no lord, own no kingly power.” Then enters the messenger, who
exclaims:
Woe to the towns of Asia’s peopled realms!
Woe to the land of Persia, once the port
Of boundless wealth! All, at a blow, has perished!
Ah me! How sad his task who brings ill tidings!
But, to my tale of woe—I needs must tell it.
Persians—the whole barbaric host has fallen!
At this astounding news the chorus breaks out in, concert:
Oh horror, horror, what a train of ills!
Alas! Is Hellas then unscathed? And has
Our arrowy tempest spent its force in vain?
Raise the funereal cry—with dismal notes
Wailing the wretched Persians. Oh, how ill
They planned their measures! All their army perished!
Then the messenger exclaims:
I speak not from report; but these mine eyes
Beheld the ruin which my tongue would utter.
In heaps the unhappy dead lie on the strand
Of Salamis, and all the neighboring shores.
Oh, Salamis—how hateful is thy name!
Oh, how my heart groans but to think of Athens!
Atossa at length finds words to say:
Astonished with these ills, my voice thus long
Hath wanted utterance: griefs like these exceed
The power of speech or question: yet e’en such,
Inflicted by the gods, must mortal man,
Constrained by loud necessity endure.
But tell me all: without distraction, tell me
All this calamity, though many a groan
Burst from thy laboring heart. Who is not fallen?
What leader must we wail? What sceptred chief,
Dying, hath left his troops without a lord?
The messenger tells her that Xerxes himself lives, and still beholds the light,
and then gives her a general summary of the disasters that befell the Persians,
the names of the chiefs that were slain, the numbers of the horsemen, and the
spearmen, and the seamen that lay “slaughtered on the rocks,” “buried in the
waters,” or “mouldering on the dreary shore.” At the request of Atossa he then
proceeds to give the following more detailed account, which, as we have said,
is the best history that we have of this memorable naval conflict:
Our evil genius, lady, or some god
Hostile to Persia, led to every ill.
Forth from the troops of Athens came a Greek,
And thus addressed thy son, the imperial Xerxes:
“Soon as the shades of night descend, the Grecians
Shall quit their station: rushing to their oars,
They mean to separate, and in secret flight
Seek safety.” At these words the royal chief,
Little dreaming of the wiles of Greece,
And gods averse, to all the naval leaders
Gave his high charge: “Soon as yon sun shall cease
To dart his radiant beams, and dark’ning night
Ascends the temple of the sky, arrange
In three divisions your well-ordered ships,
And guard each pass, each outlet of the seas:
Others enring around this rocky isle
Of Salamis. Should Greece escape her fate,
And work her way by secret flight, your heads
Shall answer the neglect.” This harsh command
He gave, exulting in his mind, nor knew
What Fate designed. With martial discipline
And prompt obedience, snatching a repast,
Each manner fixed well his ready oar.
Soon as the golden sun was set, and night
Advanced, each, trained to ply the dashing oar,
Assumed his seat; in arms each warrior stood,
Troop cheering troop through all the ships of war.
Each to the appointed station steers his course,
And through the night his naval force each chief
Fix’d to secure the passes. Night advanced,
But not by secret flight did Greece attempt
To escape. The morn, all beauteous to behold,
Drawn by white steeds, bounds o’er the enlighten’d earth:
At once from every Greek, with glad acclaim,
Burst forth the song of war, whose lofty notes
The echo of the island rocks returned,
Spreading dismay through Persia’s host, thus fallen
From their high hopes; no flight this solemn strain
Portended, but deliberate valor bent
On daring battle; while the trumpet’s sound
Kindled the flames of war. But when their oars
(The pæan ended) with impetuous force
Dash’d the surrounding surges, instant all
Rush’d on in view; in orderly array
The squadron of the right first led, behind
Rode their whole fleet; and now distinct was heard
From every part this voice of exhortation:
“Advance, ye sons of Greece, from thraldom save
Your country—save your wives, your children save,
The temples of your gods, the sacred tomb
Where rest your honor’d ancestors; this day
The common cause of all demands your valor.”
Meantime from Persia’s hosts the deep’ning shout
Answer’d their shout; no time for cold delay;
But ship ‘gainst ship its brazen beak impell’d.
First to the charge a Grecian galley rush’d;
Ill the Phoenician bore the rough attack—
Its sculptured prow all shatter’d. Each advanced,
Daring an opposite. The deep array
Of Persia at the first sustain’d the encounter;
But their throng’d numbers, in the narrow seas
Confined, want room for action; and deprived
Of mutual aid, beaks clash with beaks, and each
Breaks all the other’s oars: with skill disposed,
The Grecian navy circled them around
In fierce assault; and, rushing from its height,
The inverted vessel sinks.
The sea no more
Wears its accustomed aspect, with foul wrecks
And blood disfigured; floating carcasses
Roll on the rocky shores; the poor remains
Of the barbaric armament to flight
Ply every oar inglorious: onward rush
The Greeks amid the ruins of the fleet,
As through a shoal of fish caught in the net,
Spreading destruction; the wide ocean o’er
Wailings are heard, and loud laments, till night,
With darkness on her brow, brought grateful truce.
Should I recount each circumstance of woe,
Ten times on my unfinished tale the sun
Would set; for be assured that not one day
Could close the ruin of so vast a host.
After some farther account, by the messenger, of the magnitude of the ruin that
had overwhelmed the Persian host, the mother of Xerxes thus apostrophizes and
laments that “invidious fortune” which had pulled down this ruin on her son’s
devoted head:
Invidious fortune, how thy baleful power
Hath sunk the hopes of Persia! Bitter fruit
My son hath tasted from his purposed vengeance
On Athens, famed for arms; the fatal field
Of Marathon, red with barbaric blood,
Sufficed not: that defeat he thought to avenge,
And pulled this hideous ruin on his head!
Ah me! what sorrows for our ruined host
Oppress my soul! Ye visions of the night,
Haunting my dreams, how plainly did you show
These ills! You set them in too fair a light.
In the Epode, or closing portion of the
tragedy, the following “Lament” may be considered as expressing
the feelings with which the Persians bewailed this defeat, with
reference to its effects upon Persian authority over the Asiatic
nations:
With sacred awe
The Persian law
No more shall Asia’s realm revere:
To their lord’s hand,
At his command,
No more the exacted tribute bear.
Who now falls prostrate at the monarch’s throne?
His regal greatness is no more.
Now no restraint the wanton tongue shall own,
Free from the golden curb of power;
For on the rocks, washed by the beating flood,
His awe-commanding nobles lie in blood.
—POTTER’S trans.
Among the modern poems on Xerxes and the battle
of Salamis, is one by the Scotch poet and translator, JOHN STUART
BLACKIE, from which we take the following extracts:
Seest thou where, sublimely seated on a silver-footed throne,
With a high tiara crested, belted with a jewelled zone,
Sits the king of kings, and, looking from the rocky mountain-side,
Scans, with masted armies studded far, the fair Saronic tide?
Looks he not with high hope beaming? looks he not with pride elate?
Seems he not a god? The words he speaks are big with instant fate.
He hath come from far Euphrates, and from Tigris’ rushing tide,
To subdue the strength of Athens, to chastise the Spartan’s pride;
He hath come with countless armies, gathered slowly from afar,
From the plain, and from the mountain, marshalled ranks of motley war;
From the land and from the ocean, that the burdened billows groan,
That the air is black with banners, which great Xerxes calls his own.
Soothly he hath nobly ridden o’er the fair fields, o’er the waste,
As the earth might bear the burden, with a weighty-footed haste;
He hath cut in twain the mountain, he hath bridged the rolling main,
He hath lashed the flood of Hel’le, bound the billow with a chain;
And the rivers shrink before him, and the sheeted lakes are dry,
From his burden-bearing oxen, and his hordes of cavalry;
And the gates of Greece stand open; Ossa and Olympus fail;
And the mountain-girt Æmo’nia spreads the river and the gale.
Stood nor man nor god before him; he hath scoured the Attic land,
Chased the valiant sons of Athens to a barren island’s strand;
He hath hedged them round with triremes, lines on lines of bristling war;
He hath doomed the prey for capture; he hath spread his meshes far;
And he sits sublimely seated on a throne with pride elate,
To behold the victim fall beneath the sudden swooping Fate.
Then follows an account of the nations which
formed the Persian hosts, their arrangement to entrap the Greeks,
who were thought to be meditating flight, the patriotic
enthusiasm of the latter, the naval battle which followed, and
the disastrous defeat of the Persians, the poem closing with the
following satirical address to Xerxes:
Wake thee! wake thee! blinded Xerxes! God hath found thee out at last;
Snaps thy pride beneath his judgment, as the tree before the blast.
Haste thee! haste thee! speed thy couriers—Persian couriers travel lightly—
To declare thy stranded navy, that by cruel death unsightly
Dimmed thy glory. Hie thee! hie thee! hence, even by what way thou camest,
Dwarfed to whoso saw thee mightiest, and where thou wert fiercest, tamest!
Frost and fire shall league together, angry heaven to earth respond,
Strong Poseidon with his trident break thy impious-vaunted bond;
Where thou passed, with mouths uncounted, eating up the famished land,
With few men a boat shall ferry Xerxes to the Asian strand.
Haste thee! haste thee! they are waiting by the palace gates for thee;
By the golden gates of Susa eager mourners wait for thee.
Haste thee! where the guardian elders wait, a hoary-bearded train;
They shall see their king, but never see the sons they loved, again.
Where thy weeping mother waits thee, Queen Atossa waits to see
Dire fulfilment of her troublous, vision-haunted sleep in thee.
She hath dreamt, and she shall see it, how an eagle, cowed with awe,
Gave his kingly crest to pluck before a puny falcon’s claw.
Haste thee! where the mighty shade of great Darius through the gloom
Rises dread, to teach thee wisdom, couldst thou learn it, from the tomb.
There begin the sad rehearsal, and, while streaming tears are shed,
To the thousand tongues that ask thee, tell the myriads of thy dead!
THE BATTLE OF PLATÆ’A.
When Xerxes returned to his own dominions he left his general, Mardo’nius, with
three hundred thousand men, to complete, if possible, the conquest of Greece.
Mardonius passed the winter in Thessaly, but in the following summer his army
was totally defeated, and himself slain, in the battle of Platæa. Two hundred
thousand Persians fell here, and only a small remnant escaped across the
Hellespont. We extract from BULWER’S Athens the following eloquent
description of this battle, both for the sake of its beauty and to show the
effect of the religion of the Greeks upon the military character of the people.
Mardonius had advanced to the neighbor-hood of Platæa, when he encountered that
part of the Grecian army composed mostly of Spartans and Lacedæmonians,
commanded by Pausa’nias, and numbering about fifty thousand men. The Athenians
had previously fallen back to a more secure position, where the entire army had
been ordered to concentrate; and Pausanias had but just commenced the
retrograde movement when the Persians made their appearance.
BULWER says: “As the troops of Mardonius
advanced, the rest of the Persian armament, deeming the task was
now not to fight but to pursue, raised their standards and poured
forward tumultuously, without discipline or order. Pausanias,
pressed by the Persian line, lost no time in sending to the
Athenians for succor. But when the latter were on their march
with the required aid, they were suddenly intercepted by the
Greeks in the Persian service, and cut off from the rescue of the
Spartans.
“The Spartans beheld themselves thus unsupported
with considerable alarm. Committing himself to the gods,
Pausanias ordained a solemn sacrifice, his whole army awaiting
the result, while the shafts of the Persians poured on them near
and fast. But the entrails presented discouraging omens, and the
sacrifice was again renewed. Meanwhile the Spartans evinced their
characteristic fortitude and discipline—not one man stirring
from the ranks until the auguries should assume a more favoring
aspect; all harassed, and some wounded by the Persian arrows,
they yet, seeking protection only beneath their broad bucklers,
waited with a stern patience the time of their leader and of
Heaven. Then fell Callic’rates, the stateliest and strongest
soldier in the whole army, lamenting not death, but that his
sword was as yet undrawn against the invader.
“And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to
forbid the battle, when Pausanias, lifting his eyes, that
streamed with tears, to the Temple of Juno, that stood hard by,
supplicated the goddess that, if the fates forbade the Greeks to
conquer, they might at least fall like warriors; and, while
uttering this prayer, the tokens waited for became suddenly
visible in the victims, and the augurs announced the promise of
coming victory. Therewith the order of battle ran instantly
through the army, and, to use the poetical comparison of
Plutarch, the Spartan phalanx suddenly stood forth in its
strength like some fierce animal, erecting its bristles, and
preparing its vengeance for the foe. The ground, broken into many
steep and precipitous ridges, and intersected by the Aso’pus,
whose sluggish stream winds over a broad and rushy bed, was
unfavorable to the movements of cavalry, and the Persian foot
advanced therefore on the Greeks.
“Drawn up in their massive phalanx, the
Lacedæmonians presented an almost impenetrable
body—sweeping slowly on, compact and serried—while the hot and
undisciplined valor of the Persians, more fortunate in the
skirmish than the battle, broke itself in a thousand waves upon
that moving rock. Pouring on in small numbers at a time, they
fell fast round the progress of the Greeks —their armor slight
against the strong pikes of Sparta—their courage without skill,
their numbers without discipline; still they fought gallantly,
even when on the ground seizing the pikes with their naked hands,
and, with the wonderful agility that still characterizes the
Oriental swordsmen, springing to their feet and regaining their
arms when seemingly overcome, wresting away their enemies’
shields, and grappling with them desperately hand to hand.
“Foremost of a band of a thousand chosen
Persians, conspicuous by his white charger, and still more by his
daring valor, rode Mardonius, directing the attack—fiercer
wherever his armor blazed. Inspired by his presence the Persians
fought worthily of their warlike fame, and, even in falling,
thinned the Spartan ranks. At length the rash but gallant leader
of the Asiatic armies received a mortal wound—his skull was
crushed in by a stone from the hand of a Spartan. His chosen
band, the boast of the army, fell fighting around him, but his
death was the general signal of defeat and flight. Encumbered by
their long robes, and pressed by the relentless conquerors, the
Persians fled in disorder toward their camp, which was secured by
wooden intrenchments, by gates, and towers, and walls. Here,
fortifying themselves as they best might, they contended
successfully, and with advantage, against the
Lacedæmonians, who were ill skilled in assault and
siege.
“Meanwhile the Athenians gained the victory on
the plains over the Greek allies of Mardonius, and now joined the
Spartans at the camp. The Athenians are said to have been better
skilled in the art of siege than the Spartans; yet at that time
their experience could scarcely have been greater. The Athenians
were at all times, however, of a more impetuous temper; and the
men who had ‘run to the charge’ at Marathon were not to be
baffled by the desperate remnant of their ancient foe. They
scaled the walls; they effected a breach through which the
Tege’ans were the first to rush; the Greeks poured fast and
fierce into the camp. Appalled, dismayed, stupefied by the
suddenness and greatness of their loss, the Persians no longer
sustained their fame; they dispersed in all directions, falling,
as they fled, with a prodigious slaughter, so that out of that
mighty armament scarce three thousand effected an escape.”
But the final overthrow of the Persian hosts on
the battle-field of Platæa has an importance far greater
than that of the deliverance of the Greeks from immediate danger.
Perhaps no other event in ancient history has been so momentous
in its consequences; for what would have been the condition of
Greece had she then become a province of the Persian empire? The
greatness which she subsequently attained, and the glory and
renown with which she has filled the earth, would never have had
an existence. Little Greece sat at the gates of a continent, and
denied an entrance to the gorgeous barbarism of Asia. She
determined that Europe should not be Asiatic; that civilization
should not sink into the abyss of unmitigated despotism. She
turned the tide of Persian encroachment back across the
Hellespont, and Alexander only followed the refluent wave to the
Indus.
“‘Twas then,” as SOUTHEY says,
“The fate
Of unborn ages hung upon the fray:
T’was at Platæa, in that awful hour
When Greece united smote the Persian’s power.
For, had the Persian triumphed, then the spring
Of knowledge from that living source had ceased;
All would have fallen before the barbarous king—
Art, Science, Freedom: the despotic East,
Setting her mark upon the race subdued,
Had stamped them in the mould of sensual servitude.”
Furthermore, on this subject we subjoin the
following reflections from the author previously quoted:
“When the deluge of the Persian arms rolled back
to its Eastern bed, and the world was once more comparatively at
rest, the continent of Greece rose visibly and majestically above
the rest of the civilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains the
infant state of Rome was silently and obscurely struggling into
strength against the neighboring and petty states in which the
old Etrurian civilization was rapidly passing into decay. The
genius of Gaul and Germany, yet unredeemed from barbarism, lay
scarce known, save where colonized by Greeks, in the gloom of its
woods and wastes.
“The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy
of the world, was permanently checked and crippled; the strength
of generations had been wasted, and the immense extent of the
empire only served yet more to sustain the general peace, from
the exhaustion of its forces. The defeat of Xerxes paralyzed the
East. Thus Greece was left secure, and at liberty to enjoy the
tranquillity it had acquired, and to direct to the arts of peace
the novel and amazing energies which had been prompted by the
dangers and exalted by the victories of war.”
On the very day of the battle of Platæa the
remains of the Persian fleet which had escaped at Salamis, and
which had been drawn up on shore at Myc’a-le, on the coast of
Ionia, were burned by the Grecians; and Tigra’nes, the Persian
commander of the land forces, and forty thousand of his men, were
slain. This was the first signal blow struck by the Greek at the
power of Persia on the continent. “Lingering at Sardis,” says
BULWER, “Xerxes beheld the scanty and exhausted remnants of his
mighty force, the fugitives of the fatal days of Mycale and
Platæa. The army over which he had wept in the zenith of
his power had fulfilled the prediction of his tears; and the
armed might of Media and Egypt, of Lydia and Assyria, was now no
more!”
In one of the comedies of the Greek poet
ARISTOPH’ANES, entitled The Wasps, which is designed
principally to satirize the passion of the Athenians for the
excitement of the law courts, there occurs the following episode,
that has for its basis the activity of the Athenians at the
battle of Platæa. We learn from this episode that the
appellation, the “Attic Wasp,” had its origin in the venomous
persistence with which the Athenians, swarming like wasps, stung
the Persians in their retreat, after the defeat of Mardonius.
Occurring in a popular satirical comedy, it also shows how
readily any allusion to the famous victories of Greece could be
made to do service on popular occasions—an allusion that the
dramatist knew would awaken in the popular heart great admiration
for him and his work:
With torch and brand the Persian horde swept on from east to west,
To storm the hives that we had stored, and smoke us from our nest;
Then we laid our hand to spear and targe, and met him on his path;
Shoulder to shoulder, close we stood, and bit our lips for wrath.
So fast and thick the arrows flew, that none might see the heaven,
But the gods were on our side that day, and we bore them back at even.
High o’er our heads, an omen good, we saw the owlet wheel,
And the Persian trousers in their backs felt the good Attic steel.
Still as they fled we followed close, a swarm of vengeful foes,
And stung them where we chanced to light, on cheek, and lip, and nose.
So to this day, barbarians say, when whispered far or near,
More than all else the ATTIC WASP is still a name of fear.
—Trans. by W. LUCAS COLLINS.
CHAPTER X.
THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.
I. THE DISGRACE AND DEATH OF THEMISTOCLES.
Six years after the battle of Platæa the
career of Xerxes was terminated by assassination, and his son,
Artaxerxes Longim’anus, succeeded to the throne. In the mean time
Athens had been rebuilt and fortified by Themistocles, and the
Piræus (the port of Athens) enclosed within a wall as large
in extent as that of Athens, but of greater height and thickness.
But Themistocles, by his selfish and arbitrary use of power,
provoked the enmity of a large body of his countrymen; and
although he was acquitted of the charge of treasonable
inclinations toward Persia, popular feeling soon after became so
strong against him that he was condemned to exile by the same
process of ostracism that he had directed against Aristides, and
he retired to Argos (471 B.C.) Some time before this a Grecian
force, composed of Athenians under Aristides, and Cimon the son
of Miltiades, and Spartans under Pausanias the victor of
Platæa, waged a successful war upon the Persian
dependencies of the Ægean, and the coasts of Asia Minor.
The Ionian cities were aided in a successful revolt, and Cyprus
and Byzantium—the latter now Constantinople—fell into the hands
of the Grecians. Pausanias, who was at the head of the whole
armament, now began to show signs of treasonable conduct, which
was more fully unfolded by a communication that he addressed to
the Persian court, seeking the daughter of Xerxes in marriage,
and promising to bring Sparta and the whole of Greece under
Persian dominion.
When news of the treason of Pausanias reached
Sparta, he was immediately recalled, and, though no definite
proof was at first furnished against him, his guilt was
subsequently established, and he perished from starvation in the
Temple of Minerva, whither he had fled for refuge, and where he
was immured by the eph’ors. The fate of Pausanias involved that
of Themistocles. In searching for farther traces of the former’s
plot some correspondence was discovered that furnished sufficient
evidence of the complicity of Themistocles in the crime, and he
was immediately accused by the Spartans, who insisted upon his
being punished. The Athenians sent ambassadors to arrest him and
bring him to Athens; but Themistocles fled from Argos, and
finally sought refuge at the court of Persia. He died at
Magne’sia, in Asia Minor, which had been appointed his place of
residence by Artaxerxes, and a splendid monument was raised to
his memory; but in the time of the Roman empire a tomb was
pointed out by the sea-side, within the port of Piræus,
which was generally believed to contain his remains, and of which
the comic poet PLATO thus wrote:
By the sea’s margin, on the watery strand,
Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand.
By this directed to thy native shore,
The merchant shall convey his freighted store;
And when our fleets are summoned to the fight
Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight.
—Trans. by CUMBERLAND.
Although “the genius of Themistocles did not
secure him from the seductions of avarice and pride, which led
him to sacrifice both his honor and his country for the tinsel of
Eastern pomp,” yet, as THIRLWALL says, “No Greek had then
rendered services such as those of Themistocles to the common
country; and no Athenian, except Solon, had conferred equal
benefits on Athens. He had first delivered her from the most
imminent danger, and then raised her to the pre-eminence on which
she now stood. He might claim her greatness; and even her being,
as his work.” The following tribute to his memory is from the pen
of TULLIUS GEM’INUS, a Latin poet:
Greece be thy monument; around her throw
The broken trophies of the Persian fleet;
Inscribe the gods that led the insulting foe,
And mighty Xerxes, at the tablet’s feet.
There lay Themistocles; to spread his fame
A lasting column Salamis shall be;
Raise not, weak man, to that immortal name
The little records of mortality.
—Trans. by MERIVALE.
II. THE RISE AND FALL OF CIMON.
Foremost among the rivals of Themistocles in
ability and influence, was Cimon, the son of Miltiades. In his
youth he was inordinately fond of pleasure, and revealed none of
those characteristics for which he subsequently became
distinguished. But his friends encouraged him to follow in his
father’s footsteps, and Aristides soon discovered in him a
capacity and disposition that he could use to advantage in his
own antagonism to Themistocles. To Aristides, therefore, Cimon
was largely indebted for his influence and success, as well as
for his mild temper and gentle manners.
Reared by his care, of softer ray appears
Cimon, sweet-souled; whose genius, rising strong,
Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad
The scourge of Persian pride, at home the friend
Of every worth and every splendid art;
Modest and simple in the pomp of wealth.
—THOMSON.
On the banishment of Themistocles Aristides
became the undisputed leader of the aristocratical party at
Athens, and on his death, four years subsequently, Cimon
succeeded him. The later was already distinguished for his
military successes, and was undoubtedly the greatest commander of
his time. He continued the successful war against Persia for many
years, and among his notable victories was one obtained on both
sea and land, in Pamphyl’ia, in Asia Minor, and called
THE BATTLE OF EURYM’EDON.
After dispersing a fleet of two hundred ships
Cimon landed his troops, flushed with victory, and completely
routed a large Persian army. The poet SIMONIDES praises this
double victory in the following verse:
Ne’er since that olden time, when Asia stood
First torn from Europe by the ocean flood,
Since horrid Mars first poured on either shore
The storm of battle and its wild uproar,
Hath man by land and sea such glory won
As by the mighty deed this day was done.
By land, the Medes in myriads press the ground;
By sea, a hundred Tyrian ships are drowned,
With all their martial host; while Asia stands
Deep groaning by, and wrings her helpless hands.
—Trans. by MERIVALE.
The same poet pays the following tribute to the Greeks who fell in this
conflict:
These, by the streams of famed Eurymedon,
There, envied youth’s short brilliant race have run:
In swift-winged ships, and on the embattled field,
Alike they forced the Median bows to yield,
Breaking their foremost ranks. Now here they lie,
Their names inscribed on rolls of victory.
—Trans. by MERIVALE.
On the recall of Pausanias from Asia Minor Sparta
lost, and Athens acquired, the command in the war against Persia.
Athens was now rapidly approaching the summit of her military
renown. The war with Persia did not prevent her from extending
her possessions in Greece by force of arms; and island after
island of the Ægean yielded to her sway, while her colonies
peopled the winding shores of Thrace and Macedon. The other
states and cities of Greece could not behold her rapid, and
apparently permanent, growth in power without great
dissatisfaction and anxiety. When the Persian war was at its
height, a sense of common danger had caused many of them to seek
an alliance with Athens, the result of what is known as the
Confederacy of Delos; but, now that the danger was virtually
passed, long existing jealousies broke out, which led to
political dissensions, and, finally, to the civil wars that
caused the ruin of the Grecian republics. Sparta, especially, had
long viewed with indignation the growing resources of Athens and
was preparing to check them by an invasion of Attica, when sudden
and complicated disasters forced her to abandon her designs, and
turn her attention to her own dominions. In 464 B.C. the city was
visited by an earthquake that laid it in ruins and buried not
less than twenty thousand of its chosen citizens; and this
calamity was immediately followed by a general revolt of the
Helots. BULWER’S description of this terrible earthquake, and of
the memorable conduct of the Laconian government in opposing,
under such trying circumstances, the dreadful revolt that
occurred, has been greatly admired for its eloquence and its
strict adherence to facts.
The Earthquake at Sparta and the Revolt of the Helots.
“An earthquake, unprecedented in its violence,
occurred in Sparta. In many places throughout Laconia the rocky
soil was rent asunder. From Mount Ta-yg’e-tus, which overhung the
city, and on which the women of Lacedæmon were wont to hold
their bacchanalian orgies, huge fragments rolled into the
suburbs. The greater portion of the city was absolutely
overthrown; and it is said, probably with exaggeration, that only
five houses wholly escaped disaster from the shock. This terrible
calamity did not cease suddenly as it came; its concussions were
repeated; it buried alike men and treasure: could we credit
Diodorus, no less than twenty thousand persons perished in the
shock. Thus depopulated, impoverished, and distressed, the
enemies whom the cruelty of Sparta nursed within her bosom
resolved to seize the moment to execute their vengeance and
consummate her destruction. Under Pausanias the Helots were ready
for revolt; and the death of that conspirator checked, but did
not crush, their designs of freedom. Now was the moment, when
Sparta lay in ruins—now was the moment to realize their dreams.
From field to field, from village to village, the news of the
earthquake became the watchword of revolt. Up rose the
Helots—they armed themselves, they poured on—a wild and
gathering and relentless multitude resolved to slay, by the wrath
of man, all whom that of nature had yet spared. The earthquake
that leveled Sparta rent their chains; nor did the shock create
one chasm so dark and wide as that between the master and the
slave.
“It is one of the sublimest and most awful
spectacles in history—that city in ruins—the earth still
trembling, the grim and dauntless soldiery collected amid piles
of death and ruin; and in such a time, and such a scene, the
multitude sensible not of danger, but of wrong, and rising not to
succor, but to revenge—all that should have disarmed a feebler
enmity giving fire to theirs; the dreadest calamity their
blessing—dismay their hope. It was as if the Great Mother
herself had summoned her children to vindicate the long-abused,
the all-inalienable heritage derived from her; and the stir of
the angry elements was but the announcement of an armed and
solemn union between nature and the oppressed.
“Fortunately for Sparta, the danger was not
altogether unforeseen. After the confusion and the horror of the
earthquake, and while the people, dispersed, were seeking to save
their effects, Archida’mus, who, four years before, had succeeded
to the throne of Lacedæmon, ordered the trumpets to sound
as to arms. That wonderful superiority of man over matter which
habit and discipline can effect, and which was ever so visible
among the Spartans, constituted their safety at that hour.
Forsaking the care of their property, the Spartans seized their
arms, flocked around their king, and drew up in disciplined
array. In her most imminent crisis Sparta was thus saved. The
Helots approached, wild, disorderly, and tumultuous; they came
intent only to plunder and to slay; they expected to find
scattered and affrighted foes —they found a formidable army;
their tyrants were still their lords. They saw, paused, and fled,
scattering themselves over the country, exciting all they met to
rebellion, and soon joined with the Messenians, kindred to them
by blood and ancient reminiscences of heroic struggles; they
seized that same Ithome which their hereditary Aristodemus had
before occupied with unforgotten valor. This they fortified, and,
occupying also the neighboring lands, declared open war upon
their lords.” [Footnote: “Athens: Its Rise and Fall,” pp.
176, 177.]
“The incident here related of the King of
Sparta,” says ALISON, “amid the yawning of the earthquake and the
ruin of his capital, sounding the trumpets to arms, and the
Lacedæmonians assembling in disciplined array around him,
is one of the sublimest recorded in history. We need not wonder
that a people capable of such conduct in such a moment, and
trained by discipline and habit to such docility in danger,
should subsequently acquire and maintain supreme dominion in
Greece.” The general insurrection of the Helots is known in
history as the THIRD MESSENIAN WAR. After two or three years had
passed in vain attempts to capture Ithome, the Spartans were
obliged to call for aid on the Athenians, with whom they were
still in avowed alliance. The friends of Pericles, the rival of
Cimon and the leader of the democratic party at Athens, opposed
granting the desired relief; but Cimon, after some difficulty,
persuaded his countrymen to assist the Lacedæmonians, and
he himself marched with four thousand men to Ithome. The aid of
the Athenians was solicited on account of their acknowledged
skill in capturing fortified places; but as Cimon did not succeed
in taking Ithome, the Spartans became suspicious of his designs,
and summarily sent him back to Athens.
III. THE ACCESSION OF PERICLES TO POWER.
The ill success of the expedition of Cimon gave
Pericles the opportunity to place himself and the popular party
in power at Athens; for the constitutional reforms that had been
gradually weakening the power of the aristocracy were now made
available to sweep it almost entirely away. The following extract
from BULWER’S Athens briefly yet fully tells what was
accomplished in this direction:
“The Constitution previous to Solon was an
oligarchy of birth. Solon rendered it an aristocracy of property.
Clisthenes widened its basis from property to population; and it
was also Clisthenes, in all probability, who weakened the more
illicit and oppressive influences of wealth by establishing the
ballot of secret suffrage, instead of the open voting which was
common in the time of Solon. The Areop’agus was designed by Solon
as the aristocratic balance to the popular assembly. This
constitutional bulwark of the aristocratic party of Athens became
more and more invidious to the people, and when Cimon resisted
every innovation on that assembly he only insured his own
destruction, while he expedited the policy he denounced.
Ephial’tes, the friend and spokesman of Pericles, directed all
the force of the popular opinion against this venerable senate;
and at length, though not openly assisted by Pericles, who took
no prominent part in the contention, that influential statesman
succeeded in crippling its functions and limiting its
authority.”
With regard to the nature of the constitutional
changes effected, the same writer adds: “It appears to me most
probable that the Areopagus retained the right of adjudging cases
of homicide, and little besides of its ancient constitutional
authority; that it lost altogether its most dangerous power in
the indefinite police it had formerly exercised over the
habits and morals of the people; that any control of the finances
was wisely transferred to the popular senate; that its
irresponsible character was abolished, and that it was henceforth
rendered accountable to the people.” The struggle between the
contending parties was long and bitter, and the fall of Cimon was
one of the necessary consequences of the political change.
Charged, among other things, with too great friendship for
Sparta, he was driven into exile. Pericles now persuaded the
Athenians to renounce the alliance with Sparta, and he increased
the power of Athens by alliances with Argos and other cities. He
also continued the construction of the long walls from Athens to
the Piræus and Phalerum—a project that Themistocles had
advised and that Cimon had commenced.
The long existing jealousy of Sparta at last
broke out in open hostilities. While the siege of Ithome was in
progress, Sparta, still powerful in her alliances, sent her
allied forces into Bœotia to counteract the growing influence of
the Athenians in that quarter. The indignant Athenians, led by
Pericles, marched out to meet them, but were worsted in the
battle of Tan’agra. Before this conflict began, Cimon, the
banished commander, appeared in the Athenian camp and begged
permission to enter the ranks against the enemy. His request
being refused, he left his armor with his friends, of whom there
were one hundred among the Athenians, with the charge to refute,
by their valor, the accusation that he and they were the friends
of Sparta. Everyone of the one hundred fell in the conflict.
About two months after, in the early part of the year 456 B.C.,
the Athenians wiped off the stain of their defeat at Tanagra by a
victory over the combined Theban and Bœotian forces, then in
alliance with Sparta; whereby the authority and influence of
Sparta were again confined to the Peloponnesus.
The Athenians were now masters of Greece, from
the Gulf of Corinth to the Pass of Thermopylæ, and in the
following year they sent an expedition round the Peloponnesus,
which captured, among other cities, Naupactus, on the Corinthian
Gulf. The third and last Messenian war had just been concluded by
the surrender of Ithome, on terms which permitted the Messenians
and their families to retire from the Peloponnesus, and they
joined the colony which Athens planted at Naupactus. But the
successes of Athens in Greece were counterbalanced, in the same
year, by reverses in Egypt, where the Athenians were fighting
Persia in aid of In’arus, a Libyan prince. These, with some other
minor disasters, and the state of bitter feeling that existed
between the two parties at Athens, induced Pericles to recall
Cimon from exile and put him in command of an expedition against
Cyprus and Egypt. In 449, however, Cimon was taken ill, and he
died in the harbor of Ci’tium, to which place he was laying
siege.
Before the death of Cimon, and through his
intervention, a five years’ truce had been concluded with Sparta,
and soon after his death peace was made with Persia. From this
time the empire of Athens began to decline. In the year 447 B.C.
a revolt in Bœotia resulted in the overthrow of Athenian
supremacy there, while the expulsion of the Athenians from
Pho’cis and Lo’cris, and the revolt of Euboea and Megara,
followed soon after. The revolt of Euboea was soon quelled, but
this was the only success that Athens achieved. Meanwhile a
Spartan army invaded Attica and marched to the neighborhood of
Eleusis. Having lost much of her empire, with a fair prospect of
losing all of it if hostilities continued, Athens concluded a
thirty years’ truce with Sparta and her allies, by the terms of
which she abandoned her conquests in the Peloponnesus, and Megara
became an ally of Sparta (445 B.C.)
THE “AGE OF PERICLES.”
With the close of the Persian contest, and the
beginning of the Thirty Years’ truce, properly begins what has
been termed the “Age of Pericles”—the inauguration of a new and
important era of Athenian greatness and renown. Having won the
highest military honors and political ascendancy, Athens now took
the lead in intellectual progress. Themistocles and Cimon had
restored to Athens all that of which Xerxes had despoiled it—the
former having rebuilt its ruins, and the latter having given to
its public buildings a degree of magnificence previously unknown.
But Pericles surpassed them both:
He was the ruler of the land
When Athens was the land of fame;
He was the light that led the band
When each was like a living flame;
The centre of earth’s noblest ring,
Of more than men the more than king.
Yet not by fetter nor by spear
His sovereignty was held or won:
Feared—but alone as freemen fear;
Loved—but as freemen love alone;
He waved the sceptre o’er his kind
By nature’s first great title—mind!
—CROLY.
Orator and philosopher, as well as statesman and
general, Pericles had the most lofty views. “Athens,” says a
modern writer, “was to become not only the capital of Greece, but
the center of art and refinement, and, at the same time, of those
democratical theories which formed the beau ideal of the
Athenian notions of government.” Athens became the center and
capital of the most polished communities of Greece; she drew into
a focus all the Grecian intellect, and she obtained from her
dependents the wealth to administer the arts, which universal
traffic and intercourse taught her to appreciate. The treasury of
the state being placed in the hands of Pericles, he knew no limit
to expenditure but the popular will, which, fortunately for the
glories of Grecian art, kept pace with the vast conceptions of
the master designer. Most of those famous structures that crowned
the Athenian Acropolis, or surrounded its base, were either built
or adorned by his direction, under the superintendence of the
great sculptor, Phidias. The Parthenon, the Ode’um, the gold and
ivory statue of the goddess Minerva, and the Olympian
Jupiter—the latter two the work of the great sculptor
himself—were alone sufficient to immortalize the “Age of
Pericles.” Of these miracles of sculpture and of architecture, as
well as of the literature of this period, we shall speak farther
in a subsequent place.
Of the general condition and appearance of Athens
during the fourteen years that the Thirty Years’ Truce was
observed, HAYGARTH gives us the following poetical
description:
All the din of war
Was hushed to rest. Within a city’s walls,
Beneath a marble portico, were seen
Statesmen and orators, in robes of peace,
Holding discourse. The assembled multitude
Sat in the crowded theatre, and bent
To hear the voice of gorgeous Tragedy
Breathing, in solemn verse, or ode sublime,
Her noble precepts. The broad city’s gates
Poured forth a mingled throng—impatient steeds
Champing their bits, and neighing for the course:
Merchants slow driving to the busy port
Their ponderous wains: Religion’s holy priests
Leading her red-robed votaries to the steps
Of some vast temple: young and old, with hands
Crossed on their breasts, hastening to walks and shades
Suburban, where some moralist explained
The laws of mind and virtue. On a rock
A varied group appeared: some dragged along
The rough-hewn block; some shaped it into form;
Some reared the column, or with chisel traced
Forms more than human; while Content sat near,
And cheered with songs the toil of Industry.
But, as the poet adds,
Soon passed this peaceful pageant: War again
Brandished his bloody lance—
and then began that dismal period between the
“Age of Pericles” and the interference of the Romans—embracing
the three Peloponnesian wars, the rising power of Macedonia under
Philip of Macedon, the wars of Alexander and the contentions that
followed—known as the period of the civil convulsions of
Greece.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS, AND THE FALL OF ATHENS.
CAUSES OF THE FIRST WAR.
The various successful schemes of Pericles for
enriching and extending the power of Athens were regarded with
fear and jealousy by Sparta and her allies, who were only waiting
for a reasonable excuse to renew hostilities. The opportunity
came in 435 B.C. Corinth, the ally of Sparta, had become involved
in a war with Corcy’ra, one of her colonies, when the latter
applied to Athens for assistance. Pericles persuaded the
Athenians to grant the assistance, and a small fleet was
dispatched to Corcyra. The engagement that ensued, in which the
Athenian ships bore a part —the greatest contest, Thucydides
observes, that had taken place between Greeks to that day—was
favorable to the Corinthians; but the sight of a larger Athenian
squadron advancing toward the scene of action caused the
Corinthians to retreat. This first breach of the truce was soon
followed by another. Potidæ’a, a Corinthian colony, but
tributary to Athens, revolted, on account of some unjust demands
that the Athenians had enforced against it, and claimed and
obtained the assistance of the Corinthians. Thus, in two
instances, were Athens and Corinth, though nominally at peace,
brought into conflict as open enemies.
THE CONGRESS AT SPARTA.—THE PERSECUTION OF PERICLES.
The Lacedæmonians meanwhile called a meeting of the Peloponnesian Confederacy
at Sparta, at which Ægina, Meg’ara, and other states made their complaints
against Athens. It was also attended by envoys from Athens, who seriously
warned it not to force Athens into a struggle that would be waged for its very
existence. But a majority of the Confederacy were of the opinion that Athens
had violated her treaties, and the result of the deliberations was a
declaration of war against her. Not with any real desire for peace, but in
order to gain time for her preparations before the declaration was made public,
Sparta opened negotiations with Athens; but her preliminary demands were of
course refused, while her ultimatum, that Athens should restore to the latter’s
allies their independence, was met with a like demand by the Athenians —that no
state in Peloponnesus should be forced to accommodate itself to the principles
in vogue at Sparta, “Let this be our answer,” said Pericles, in closing his
speech in the Athenian assembly: “We have no wish to begin war, but whosoever
attacks us, him we mean to repel; for our guiding principle ought to be no
other than this: that the power of that state which our fathers made great we
will hand down undiminished to our posterity.” The advice of Pericles was
adopted, all farther negotiations were thereupon concluded, and Athens prepared
for war.
Although the political authority of Pericles was
now at its height, and his services were receiving unwonted
public recognition, he had many enemies among all classes of
citizens, who made his position for a time extremely hazardous.
These at first attacked his friends—Phidias, Anaxagoras,
Aspasia, and others—who were prominent representatives of his
opinions and designs. The former was falsely accused of theft, in
having retained for himself a part of the gold furnished to him
for the golden robe of Athene Par’thenos, and of impiety for
having reproduced his own features in one of the numerous figures
on the shield of the goddess. He was cast into prison, where he
died before his trial was concluded. Anaxagoras, having exposed
himself to the penalties of a decree by which all who abjured the
current religious views were to be indicted and tried as state
criminals, barely escaped with his life; while Aspasia, the
mistress of Pericles, charged with impiety and base immorality,
was only saved by the eloquence and tears of the great statesman,
which flowed freely and successfully in her behalf before the
jury. Finally, Pericles was attacked in person. He was accused of
a waste of the public moneys, and was commanded to render an
exact account of his expenditures. Although he came forth
victorious from this and all other attacks, it is evident, as one
historian observes, that “the endeavors of his enemies did not
fail to exercise a certain influence upon the masses; and this
led Pericles, who believed that war was in any case inevitable,
to welcome its speedy commencement, as he hoped that the common
danger would divert public attention from home affairs, render
harmless the power of his adversaries, strengthen patriotic
feeling, and make manifest to the Athenians their need of his
services.”
1. THE FIRST PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
On the side of Sparta was arrayed the whole of
Peloponnesus, except Argos and Acha’ia, together with the
Megarians, Phocians, Locrians, Thebans, and some others; while
the allies of Athens were the Thessalians, Acarnanians,
Messenians, Platæans, Chi’ans, Lesbians, her tributary
towns in Thrace and Asia Minor, and all the islands north of
Crete with two exceptions—Me’los and The’ra. Hostilities were
precipitated by a treacherous attack of the Thebans upon
Platæa in 431 B.C.; and before the close of the same year a
Spartan army of sixty thousand ravaged Attica, and sat down
before the very gates of Athens, while the naval forces of the
Athenians desolated the coasts of the Peloponnesus. The Spartans
were soon called from Attica to protect their homes, and Pericles
himself, at the lead of a large force, spread desolation over the
little territory of Megaris. This expedition closed the
hostilities for the year, and, on his return to Athens, Pericles
was intrusted with the duty of pronouncing the oration at the
public funeral which, in accordance with the custom of the
country, was solemnized for those who had fallen in the war.
This occasion afforded Pericles an opportunity to
animate the courage and the hopes of his countrymen, by such a
description of the glories and the possibilities of Athens as he
alone could give. Commencing his address with a eulogy on the
ancestors and immediate forefathers of the Athenians, he proceeds
to show the latter “by what form of civil polity, what
dispositions and habits of life,” they have attained their
greatness; graphically contrasting their institutions with those
of other states, and especially with those of the Spartans, their
present enemies.
The Oration of Pericles.
[Footnote: From “History of Thucydides,” translated by
S. T. Bloomfield, D. D., vol. I., p. 366.]
“We enjoy a form of government not framed on an
imitation of the institutions of neighboring states, but, are
ourselves rather a model to, than imitative of, others; and
which, from the government being administered not for the few but
for the many, is denominated a democracy. According to its laws,
all participate in an equality of rights as to the determination
of private suits, and everyone is preferred to public offices
with a regard to the reputation he holds, and according as each
is in estimation for anything; not so much for being of a
particular class as for his personal merit. Nor is any person who
can, in whatever way, render service to the state kept back on
account of poverty or obscurity of station. Thus liberally are
our public affairs administered, and thus liberally, too, do we
conduct ourselves as to mutual suspicions in our private and
every-day intercourse; not bearing animosity toward our neighbor
for following his own humor, nor darkening our countenance with
the scowl of censure, which pains though it cannot punish. While,
too, we thus mix together in private intercourse without
irascibility or moroseness, we are, in our public and political
capacity, cautiously studious not to offend; yielding a prompt
obedience to the authorities for the time being, and to the
established laws; especially those which are enacted for the
benefit of the injured, and such as, though unwritten, reflect a
confessed disgrace on the transgressors.”
Having referred to the recreation provided for
the public mind by the exhibition of games and sacrifices
throughout the whole year, as well as to some points in military
matters in which the Athenians excel, Pericles proceeds as
follows: “In these respects, then, is our city worthy of
admiration, and in others also; for we study elegance combined
with frugality, and cultivate philosophy without effeminacy.
Riches we employ at opportunities for action, rather than as a
subject of wordy boast. To confess poverty with us brings no
disgrace; not to endeavor to escape it by exertion is disgrace
indeed. There exists, moreover, in the same persons an attention
both to their domestic concerns and to public affairs; and even
among such others as are engaged in agricultural occupations or
handicraft labor there is found a tolerable portion of political
knowledge. We are the only people who account him that takes no
share in politics, not as an intermeddler in nothing, but
one who is good for nothing. We are, too, persons who examine
aright, or, at least, fully revolve in mind our measures, not
thinking that words are any hindrance to deeds, but that the
hindrance rather consists in the not being informed by words
previously to setting about in deed what is to be done.
For we possess this point of superiority over others, that we
execute a bold promptitude in what we undertake, and yet a
cautious prudence in taking forethought; whereas with others it
is ignorance alone that makes them daring, while reflection makes
them dastardly.
“In short, I may affirm that the city at large is
the instructress of Greece, and that individually each person
among us seems to possess the most ready versatility in adapting
himself, and that not ungracefully, to the greatest variety of
circumstances and situations that diversify human life. That all
this is not a mere boast of words for the present purpose, but
rather the actual truth, this very power of the state, unto which
by these habits and dispositions we have attained, clearly
attests; for ours is the only one of the states now existing
which, on trial, approves itself greater than report; it alone
occasions neither to an invading enemy ground for chagrin at
being worsted by such, nor to a subject state aught of
self-reproach, as being under the power of those unworthy of
empire. A power do we display not unwitnessed, but attested by
signs illustrious, which will make us the theme of admiration
both to the present and future ages; nor need we either a Homer,
or any such panegyrist, who might, indeed, for the present
delight with his verses, but any idea of our actions
thence formed the actual truth of them might destroy: nay, every
sea and every land have we compelled to become accessible to our
adventurous courage; and everywhere have we planted eternal
monuments both of good and of evil. For such a state,
then, these our departed heroes (unwilling to be deprived of it)
magnanimously fought and fell; and in such a cause it is right
that everyone of us, the survivors, should readily encounter
toils and dangers.”
After paying a handsome tribute to the memory of the departed
warriors whose virtues, he says, helped to adorn Athens with all
that makes it the theme of his encomiums, Pericles exhorts his
hearers to emulate the spirit of those who contributed to their
country the noblest sacrifice. “They bestowed,” he adds, “their
persons and their lives upon the public; and therefore, as their
private recompense, they receive a deathless renown and the
noblest of sepulchres,
[Footnote:
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command—
The mountains of their native land!
These, points thy muse, to stranger’s eye—
The graves of those that cannot die!
—BYRON.]
not so much that wherein their bones are entombed as in which
their glory is preserved—to be had in everlasting remembrance on
all occasions, whether of speech or action. For to the
illustrious the whole earth is a sepulchre; nor do monumental
inscriptions in their own country alone point it out, but an
unwritten and mental memorial in foreign lands, which, more
durable than any monument, is deeply seated in the breast
of everyone. Imitating, then, these illustrious
models—accounting that happiness is liberty, and that liberty is
valor—be not backward to encounter the perils of war.
[Footnote: It was a kindred spirit that led our own great
statesman, Webster, in quoting from this oration, to ask: “Is it
Athens or America? Is Athens or America the theme of these
immortal strains? Was Pericles speaking of his own country as he
saw it or knew it? or was he gazing upon a bright vision, then
two thousand years before him, which we see in reality as he saw
it in prospect?”] For the unfortunate and hopeless are
not those who have most reason to be lavish of their lives, but
rather such as, while they live, have to hazard a chance to the
opposite, and who have most at stake; since great would be the
reverse should they fall into adversity. For to the high-minded,
at least, more grievous is misfortune overwhelming them amid the
blandishments of prosperity; than the stroke of death overtaking
them in the full pulse of vigor and common hope, and, moreover,
almost unfelt.”
Says the historian from whose work the speech of
Pericles is taken: “Such was the funeral solemnity which took
place this winter, with the expiration of which the first year of
the war was brought to a close.” DR. ERNST CURTIUS comments as
follows on the oration: “With lofty simplicity Pericles extols
the Athenian Constitution, popular in the fullest sense through
having for its object the welfare of the entire people, and
offering equal rights to all the citizens; but at the same time,
and in virtue of this its character, adapted for raising the best
among them to the first positions in the state. He lauds the high
spiritual advantages offered by the city, the liberal love of
virtue and wisdom on the part of her sons, their universal
sympathy in the common weal, their generous hospitality, their
temperance and vigor, which peace and the love of the beautiful
had not weakened, so that the city of the Athenians must, in any
event, be an object of well-deserved admiration both for the
present and for future ages. Such were the points of view from
which Pericles displayed to the citizens the character of their
state, and described to them the people of Athens, as it ought to
be. He showed them their better selves, in order to raise them
above themselves and arouse them to self-denial, to endurance,
and to calm resolution. Full of a new vital ardor they returned
home from the graves, and with perfect confidence confronted the
destinies awaiting them in the future.” [Footnote: “The
History of Greece,” vol. iii., p. 66; by Dr. Ernst
Curtius.]
THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS.
In the spring of 430 B.C. the Spartans again
invaded Attica, and the Athenians shut themselves up in Athens.
But here the plague, a calamity more dreadful than war, attacked
them and swept away multitudes. This plague, which not only
devastated Athens, but other Grecian cities also, is described at
considerable length, with a harrowing minuteness of detail, by
the Latin poet LUCRETIUS. His description is based upon the
account given by Thucydides. We give here only the beginning and
the close of it:
A plague like this, a tempest big with fate,
Once ravaged Athens and her sad domains;
Unpeopled all the city, and her paths
Swept with destruction. For amid the realms
Begot of Egypt, many a mighty tract
Of ether traversed, many a flood o’erpassed,
At length here fixed it; o’er the hapless realm
Of Cecrops hovering, and the astonished race
Dooming by thousands to disease and death.
Thus seized the dread, unmitigated pest
Man after man, and day succeeding day,
With taint voracious; like the herds they fell
Of bellowing beeves, or flocks of timorous sheep:
On funeral, funeral hence forever piled.
E’en he who fled the afflicted, urged by love
Of life too fond, and trembling for his fate,
Repented soon severely, and himself
Sunk in his guilty solitude, devoid
Of friends, of succor, hopeless and forlorn;
While those who nursed them, to the pious task
Roused by their prayers, with piteous moans commixt,
Fell irretrievable: the best by far,
The worthiest, thus most frequent met their doom.
—Trans. by J. MASON GOOD.
THE DEATH OF PERICLES.
Oppressed by both war and pestilence, the
Athenians were seized with rage and despair, and accused Pericles
of being the author of their misfortunes. But that determined man
still adhered to his plans, and endeavored to soothe the popular
mind by an expedition against Peloponnesus, which he commanded in
person. After committing devastations upon various parts of the
enemy’s coasts, Pericles returned to find the people still more
impatient of the war and clamorous for peace. An embassy was sent
to Sparta with proposals for a cessation of hostilities, but it
was dismissed without a hearing. This repulse increased the
popular exasperation, and, although at an assembly that he called
for the purpose Pericles succeeded, by his power of speech, in
quieting the people, and convincing them of the justice and
patriotism of his course, his political enemies charged him with
peculation, of which he was convicted, and his nomination as
general was cancelled. He retired to private life, but his
successors in office were incompetent and irresolute, and it was
not long before he was re-elected general. He appeared to recover
his ascendancy; but in the middle of the third year of the war he
died, a victim to the plague.
He perished, but his wreath was won;
He perished in his height of fame:
Then sunk the cloud on Athens’ sun,
Yet still she conquered in his name.
Filled with his soul, she could not die;
Her conquest was Posterity!
—CROLY.
Thucydides relates that when Pericles was near
his end, and apparently insensible, the friends who had gathered
round his bed relieved their sorrow by recalling the remembrance
of his military exploits, and of the trophies which he had
raised. He interrupted them, observing that they had omitted the
most glorious praise which he could claim: “Other generals have
been as fortunate, but I have never caused the Athenians to put
on mourning”— referring, doubtless, to his success in achieving
important advantages with but little loss of life; and which
THIRLWALL considers “a singular ground of satisfaction, if
Pericles had been conscious of having involved his country in the
bloodiest war it had ever waged.”
The success of Pericles in retaining, for so many
years, his great influence over the Athenian people, must be
attributed, in large part, to his wonderful powers of persuasion.
Cicero is said to have regarded him as the first example of an
almost perfect orator; and Bulwer says that “the diction of his
speeches, and that consecutive logic which preparation alone can
impart to language, became irresistible to a people that had
itself become a Pericles.” Whatever may be said of Pericles as a
politician, his intellectual superiority cannot be questioned. As
the accomplished man of genius, and the liberal patron of
literature and art, he is worthy of the highest admiration; for
“by these qualities he has justly given name to the most
brilliant intellectual epoch that the world has ever seen.” The
following extract from MITFORD’S History of Greece, may be
considered a correct sketch of the great democratic ruler:
The Character of Pericles.
“No other man seems to have been held in so high
estimation by most of the ablest writers of Greece and Rome, for
universal superiority of talents, as Pericles. The accounts
remaining of his actions hardly support his renown, which was
yet, perhaps, more fairly earned than that of many, the merit of
whose achievements has been, in a great degree, due to others
acting under them, whose very names have perished. The philosophy
of Pericles taught him not to be vain-glorious, but to rest his
fame upon essentially great and good rather than upon brilliant
actions. It is observed by Plutarch that, often as he commanded
the Athenian forces, he never was defeated; yet, though he won
many trophies, he never gained a splendid victory. A battle,
according to a great modern authority, is the resource of
ignorant generals; when they know not what to do they fight a
battle. It was almost universally the resource of the age of
Pericles; little conception was entertained of military
operations beyond ravage and a battle. His genius led him to a
superior system, which the wealth of his country enabled him to
carry into practice. His favorite maxim was to spare the lives of
his soldiers; and scarcely any general ever gained so many
important advantages with so little bloodshed.
“This splendid character, however, perhaps may
seem to receive some tarnish from the political conduct of
Pericles; the concurrence, at least, which is imputed to him, in
depraving the Athenian Constitution, to favor that popular power
by which he ruled, and the revival and confirmation of that
pernicious hostility between the democratical and aristocratical
interests, first in Athens and then by the Peloponnesian war
throughout the nation. But the high respect with which he is
always spoken of by three men in successive ages, Thucydides,
Xenophon, and Isoc’rates, all friendly to the aristocratical
interest, and all anxious for concord with Lacedæmon,
strongly indicates that what may appear exceptionable in his
conduct was, in their opinion, the result, not of choice, but of
necessity. By no other conduct, probably, could the independence
of Athens have been preserved; and yet that, as the event showed,
was indispensable for the liberty of Greece.”
II. THE ATHENIAN DEMAGOGUES.
Soon after the death of Pericles the results of
the political changes introduced by him, as well as of the moral
and social changes that had taken place in the people from
various causes, became apparent in the raising to power of men
from the lower walks of life, whose popularity was achieved and
maintained mainly by intrigue and flattery. Chief among these
rose Cle’on, a tanner, who has been characterized as “the violent
demagogue whose arrogant presumption so unworthily succeeded the
enlightened magnanimity of Pericles.” In the year 428 Mityle’ne,
the capital of the Island of Lesbos, revolted against the
supremacy of Athens, but was speedily reduced to subjection, and
one thousand or more Mityleneans were sent as prisoners to
Athens, to be disposed of as the Athenian assembly should direct.
Cleon first prominently appears in public in connection with the
disposal of these prisoners. With the capacity to transact
business in a popular manner, and possessing a stentorian voice
and unbounded audacity, he had become “by far the most persuasive
speaker in the eyes of the people;” and now, taking the lead in
the assembly debate, he succeeded in having the unfortunate
prisoners cruelly put to death. From this period his influence
steadily increased, and in the year 425 he was elected commander
of the Athenian forces. For several years circumstances favored
him. With the aid of his general, Demosthenes, he captured Py’lus
from the Spartans, and on his return to Athens he was received
with demonstrations of great favor; but his military incompetence
lost him both the victory and his life in the battle of
Amphip’olis, 422 B.C.
What we know of the political conduct of Cleon
comes from measurably unreliable sources. Aristoph’anes, the
chief of the comic poets, describes him as “a noisy brawler, loud
in his criminations, violent in his gestures, corrupt and venal
in his principles, a persecutor of rank and merit, and a base
flatterer and sycophant of the people.” Thucydides also calls him
“a dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the
most violent of all the citizens.” Both these writers, however,
had personal grievances. Of course Cleon very naturally became a
target for the invective of the poet. “The taking of Pylus,” says
GILLIES, “and the triumphant return of Cleon, a notorious coward
transformed by caprice and accident into a brave and successful
commander, were topics well suiting the comic vein of
Aristophanes; and in the comedy first represented in the seventh
year of the war—The Knights—he attacks him in the moment
of victory, when fortune had rendered him the idol of a
licentious multitude, when no comedian was so daring as to play
his character, and no painter so bold as to design his mask.” The
poet himself, therefore, appeared on the stage, “only disguising
his face, the better to represent the part of Cleon.” As another
writer has said, “Of all the productions of Aristophanes, so
replete with comic genius throughout, The Knights is the
most consummate and irresistible; and it presents a portrait of
Cleon drawn in colors broad and glaring, most impressive to the
imagination, and hardly effaceable from the memory.” The
following extract from the play will show the license indulged in
on the stage in democratic Athens, the boldness of the poet’s
attacks, and will serve, also, as a sample of his style:
Cleon the Demagogue.
The chorus come upon the stage; and thus commence
their attack upon Cleon:
Chorus. Close around him, and confound him, the confounder of us all;
Pelt him, pummel him, and maul him; rummage, ransack, overhaul him;
Overbear him and outbawl him; bear him down, and bring him under.
Bellow, like a burst of thunder, robber! harpy! sink of plunder!
Rogue and villain! rogue and cheat! rogue and villain, I repeat!
Oftener than I can repeat it has the rogue and villain cheated.
Close around him, left and right; spit upon him, spurn and smite:
Spit upon him as you see; spurn and spit at him like me.
But beware, or he’ll evade you! for he knows the private track
Where En’crates was seen escaping with his mill-dust on his back.
Cleon. Worthy veterans of the jury, you that, either right or wrong,
With my threepenny provision I’ve maintained and cherished long,
Come to my aid! I’m here waylaid—assassinated and betrayed”!
Chorus. Rightly served! we serve you rightly, for your hungry love of pelf;
For your gross and greedy rapine, gormandizing by yourself—
You that, ere the figs are gathered, pilfer with a privy twitch
Fat delinquents and defaulters, pulpy, luscious, plump, and rich;
Pinching, fingering, and pulling—tempering, selecting, culling;
With a nice survey discerning which are green and which are turning,
Which are ripe for accusation, forfeiture, and confiscation.
Him, besides, the wealthy man, retired upon an easy rent,
Hating and avoiding party, noble-minded, indolent,
Fearful of official snares; intrigues, and intricate affairs—
Him you mark; you fix and hook him, while he’s gaping unawares;
At a fling, at once you bring him hither from the Chersonese;
Down you cast him, roast and baste him, and devour him at your ease.
Cleon. Yes; assault, insult, abuse me! This is the return I find
For the noble testimony, the memorial I designed:
Meaning to propose proposals for a monument of stone,
On the which your late achievements should be carved and neatly done.
Chorus. Out, away with him! the slave! the pompous, empty, fawning knave!
Does he think with idle speeches to delude and cheat us all,
As he does the doting elders that attend his daily call?
Pelt him here, and bang him there; and here, and there, and
everywhere.
Cleon. Save me, neighbors! Oh, the monsters! Oh, my side, my back, my breast!
Chorus. What! you’re forced to call for help? you brutal, overpowering pest!
[Clean is pelted off the stage, pursued by the Chorus.]
THE PEACE OF NI’ÇI-AS.
The struggle between Sparta and Athens continued
ten years without intermission, and without any successes of a
decisive character on either side. In the eleventh year of the
struggle (421 B.C.) a treaty for a term of fifty years was
concluded—called the Peace of Nicias, in honor of the Athenian
general of that name —by which the towns captured during the war
were to be restored, and both Athens and Sparta placed in much
the same state as when hostilities commenced. But this proved to
be a hollow truce; for the war was a virtual triumph for
Athens—and interest, inclination, and the ambitious views of her
party leaders were not long in finding plausible pretexts for
renewing the struggle. Again, the Bœotian, Megarian, and
Corinthian allies of Sparta refused to carry out the terms of the
treaty by making the required surrenders, and Sparta had no power
to compel them, while Athens would accept no less than she had
bargained for.
The Athenian general Nicias, through whose
influence the Fifty Years’ Truce had been concluded, endeavored
to carry out its terms; but through the artifices of Alcibi’ades,
a nephew of Pericles, a wealthy Athenian, and an artful
demagogue, the treaty was soon dishonored on the part of Athens.
Alcibi’ades also managed to involve the Spartans in a war with
their recent allies, the Ar’gives, during which was fought the
battle of Mantine’a, 418 B.C., in which the Spartans were
victorious; and he induced the Athenians to send an armament
against the Dorian island of Me’los, which had provoked the
enmity of Athens by its attachment to Sparta, and which was
compelled, after a vigorous siege, to surrender at discretion.
Meanwhile the feeble resistance of Sparta, and her apparent
timidity, encouraged Athens to resume a project of aggrandizement
which she had once before undertaken, but had been obliged to
relinquish. This was no less than the virtual conquest of Sicily,
whose important cities, under the leadership of Syracuse, had
some years before joined the Peloponnesian confederacy.
III. THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION.
Although opposed by Nicias, Socrates, and a few
of the wiser heads at Athens, the counsels of Alcibiades
prevailed, and, after three months of great preparation, an
expedition sailed from Athens for Sicily, under the plea of
delivering the town of Eges’ta from the tyranny of Syracuse (415
B.C.). The armament fitted out on this occasion, the most
powerful that had ever left a Grecian port, was intrusted to the
joint command of Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lam’achus. The
expedition captured the city of Cat’ana, which was made the
headquarters of the armament; but here Alcibiades was summoned to
Athens on the absurd charge of impiety and sacrilege, connected
with the mutilation of the statues of the god Her’mes, that had
taken place just before he left Athens. He was also charged with
having profaned the Eleusinian mysteries by giving a
representation of them in his own house. Fearing to trust himself
to the giddy multitude in a trial for life, Alcibiades at once
threw himself upon the generosity of his open enemies, and sought
refuge at Sparta. When, soon after, he heard that the Athenians
had condemned him to death, he answered, “I will show them that I
am still alive.”
By the death of Lamachus, Nicias was soon after
left in sole command of the Athenians. He succeeded in landing
near Syracuse and defeating the Syracusans in a well-fought
engagement; but he wasted his time in fortifying his camp, and in
useless negotiations, until his enemies, having received aid from
Corinth and Sparta, under the Spartan general Gylip’pus, were
able to bid him defiance. Although new forces were sent from
Athens, under the Athenian general Demosthenes, the Athenians
were defeated in several engagements, and their entire force was
nearly destroyed (413 B.C.). “Never, in Grecian history,” says
THUCYDIDES, “had ruin so complete and sweeping, or victory so
glorious and unexpected, been witnessed.” Both Nicias and
Demosthenes were captured and put to death, and the Syracusans
also captured seven thousand prisoners and sold them as slaves.
Some of the latter, however, are said to have received milder
treatment than the others, owing, it is supposed, to their
familiarity with the works of the then popular poet, Eurip’ides,
which in Sicily, historians tell us, were more celebrated than
known. It is to this incident, probably, that reference is made
by BYRON in the following lines:
When Athens’ armies fell at Syracuse,
And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse—
Her voice their only ransom from afar.
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
Of the o’ermastered victor stops; the reins
Fall from his hands—his idle scimitar
Starts from its belt—he rends his captive’s chains,
And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.
—Childe Harold, IV., 16.
IV. THE SECOND PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
The aid which Gylippus had rendered the
Syracusans now brought Sparta and Athens in direct conflict. The
result of the Athenian expedition was the greatest calamity that
had befallen Athens, and the city was filled with affliction and
dismay. The Spartans made frequent forays into Attica, and Athens
was almost in a state of siege, while several of her allies,
instigated by Alcibiades, who was active in the Spartan councils,
revolted and joined the Spartans. It was not long, however,
before Athens regained her wonted determination and began to
repair her wasted energies. Samos still remained faithful to her
interests, and, with her help, a new flee was built, with which
Lesbos was recovered, and a victory was obtained over the
Peloponnesians at Miletus. Soon after this defeat Alcibiades, who
had forfeited the confidence of the Spartans by his conduct, was
denounced as a traitor and condemned to death. He escaped to the
court of Tissapher’nes, the most powerful Persian satrap in Asia
Minor. By his intrigues Alcibiades, who now sought a
reconciliation with his countrymen, partially detached
Tissaphernes from the interests of Sparta, and offered the
Athenians a Persian alliance as the price of his restoration to
his country. But, as he feared and hated the Athenian democracy,
he insisted that an oligarchy should be established in its
place.
The Athenian generals accepted the proposal as
the only means of salvation for Athens; and, although they
subsequently discovered that Alcibiades could not perform what he
had undertaken, a change of government was effected, after much
opposition from the people, from a democracy to an aristocracy of
four hundred of the nobility; but the new government, dreading
the ambition of Alcibiades, refused to recall him. Another change
soon followed. The defeat of the Athenian navy at Ere’tria, and
the revolt of Euboea, produced a new revolution at Athens, by
which the government of the four hundred was overthrown, and
democracy restored. Alcibiades was now recalled; but before his
return he aided in destroying the Peloponnesian fleet in the
battle of Cys’icus (411 B.C.). He was welcomed at Athens with
great enthusiasm, a golden crown was decreed him, and he was
appointed commander-in-chief of all the forces of the
commonwealth both by land and by sea.
THE HUMILIATION OF ATHENS.
Alcibiades was still destined to experience the
instability of fortune. He sailed from Athens in September, 407,
and proceeded to Samos. While he was absent from the main body of
his fleet on a predatory excursion, one of his subordinates,
contrary to instructions, attacked a Spartan fleet and was
defeated with a loss of fifteen ships. Although in command of a
splendid force, Alcibiades had accomplished really nothing, and
had now lost a part of his fleet. An unjust suspicion of
treachery fell upon him, the former charges against him were
revived, and he was deprived of his command and again banished.
In the year 406 the Athenians defeated a large Spartan fleet
under Callicrat’idas, but their victory secured them no permanent
advantages. Lysander, a general whose abilities the Athenians
could not match since they had deprived themselves of the
services of Alcibiades, was now in command of the Spartan forces.
He obtained the favor of Cyrus, the youngest son of the King of
Persia, who had been invested with authority over the whole
maritime region of Asia Minor, and, aided by Persian gold, he
manned a numerous fleet with which he met the Athenians at
Æ’gos-pot’ami, on the Hellespont, destroyed most of their
ships, and captured three thousand prisoners (405 B.C.). The
maritime allies of Athens immediately submitted to Lysander, who
directed the Athenians throughout Greece to repair at once to
Athens, with threats of death to all whom he found elsewhere; and
when famine began to prey upon the collected multitude in the
city, he appeared before the Piræus with his fleet, while a
large Spartan army blockaded Athens by land.
The Athenians had no hopes of effectual
resistance, and only delayed the surrender of their city to plead
for the best terms that could be obtained. Compelled at last to
submit to whatever terms were dictated to them, they agreed to
destroy their long walls and fortifications; to surrender all
their ships but twelve; to restore their exiles; to relinquish
their conquests; to become a member of the Peloponnesian
Confederacy; and to serve Sparta in all her expeditions, whether
by land or by sea. Thus fell imperial Athens (404 B.C. ), in the
seventy-third year after the formation of the Confederacy of
Delos, the origin of her subsequent empire. Soon after this
event, and in the same year, Alcibiades, who had been honored by
both Athens and Sparta, and was now the dread of both, met his
fate in a foreign land. While living in Phrygia he was murdered
by the Persian satrap at the instance of Sparta. It has been said
of him that, “with qualities which, if properly applied, might
have rendered him the greatest benefactor of Athens, he contrived
to attain the infamous distinction of being that citizen who had
inflicted upon her the most signal amount of damage.”
The war just closed was characterized by many
instances of cruelty and heartlessness, in marked contrast with
the boasted clemency and culture of the age, of which two
prominent illustrations may be given. The first occurred at
Platæa in the year 427, soon after the execution by the
Athenians of the Mitylene’an prisoners. After a long and heroic
defence against the Spartans under King Archida’mus himself, and
after a solemn promise had been given that no harm should be
illegally done to any person within its walls, Platæa
surrendered. But a Spartan court soon after decreed that the
Platæan alliance with Athens was a treasonable offence, and
punishable, of course, with death. Thereupon all those who had
surrendered (two hundred Platæans and twenty-five
Athenians) were barbarously murdered. The other instance occurred
at Lamp’sacus, where the three thousand prisoners taken by
Lysander at Ægospotami were tried by court-martial and put
to death.
Referring to these barbarities, MAHAFFY observes,
in his Social Life in Greece, that, “though seldom
paralleled in human history, they appear to have called forth no
cry of horror in Greece. Phil’ocles, the unfortunate Athenian
general at Ægospotami, according to Theophrastus, submitted
with dignified resignation to a fate which he confessed would
have attended the Lacedæmonians had they been vanquished.
[Footnote: Plutarch relates that when Lysander asked
Philocles what punishment he thought he deserved, undismayed by
his misfortunes, he answered, “Do not start a question where
there is no judge to decide it; but, now you are a conqueror,
proceed as you would have been proceeded with had you been
conquered.” After this he bathed, dressed himself in a rich robe,
and then led his countrymen to execution, being the first to
offer his neck to the axe.] The barbarity of the Greeks
is but one evidence out of a thousand that, hitherto in the
world’s history, no culture, no education, no political training,
has been able to rival the mature and ultimate effects of
Christianity in humanizing society.”
CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT AT ATHENS.
The change of government which followed the
Spartan occupation of Athens conformed to the aristocratic
character of the Spartan institutions. All authority was placed
by Lysander in the hands of thirty archons, who became known as
the Thirty Tyrants, and whose power was supported by a Spartan
garrison. Their cruelty and rapacity knew no bounds, and filled
Athens with universal dismay. The streets of Athens flowed with
blood, and while many of the best men of the city fell, others
more fortunate succeeded in escaping to the territory of the
friendly Thebans, who, groaning under Spartan supremacy,
sympathized with Athens, and regarded the Thirty as mere
instruments for maintaining the Spartan dominion. A large band of
exiles soon assembled, and choosing one Thrasybu’lus for their
leader, they resolved to strike a blow for the deliverance of
their country.
They first seized a small fortress on the
frontier of Attica, when, their numbers rapidly increasing, they
were able to seize the Piræus, where they entrenched
themselves and defeated the force that was brought against them,
killing, among others, Cri’ti-as, the chief of the tyrants. The
loss of Critias threw the majority into the hands of a party who
resolved to depose the Thirty and constitute a new oligarchy of
Ten. The rule of the Thirty was overthrown; but the change in
government was simply a reduction in the number of tyrants, as
the Ten emulated the wickedness of their predecessors, and when
the populace turned against them, applied to Sparta for
assistance. Lysander again entered Athens at the head of a large
force; but the Spartan councils became divided, Lysander was
deposed from command, and eventually, by the aid of Sparta
herself, the Ten were overthrown. The Spartans now withdrew their
forces from Attica, and Athens again became a democracy (403
B.C.). Freed from foreign domination, she soon obtained internal
peace; but her empire had vanished.
CHAPTER XII.
GRECIAN LITERATURE AND ART I FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE PERSIAN TO THE CLOSE
OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. (500-403 B.C.)
LITERATURE.
In a former chapter we briefly traced the growth of Grecian literature and art
from their beginnings down to the time of the Persian wars. Within this period,
as we noticed, their progress was the greatest in the Grecian colonies, while,
of the cities of central Greece, the one destined to become pre-eminent in
literature and the fine arts—Athens—contributed less than several others to
intellectual advancement. “She produced no artists to be compared with those of
Argos, Corinth, Si’cy-on, and of many other cities, while she could boast of no
poets as celebrated as those of the Ionian and Æolian schools.” But at the
opening of the Persian wars the artistic and literary talent of Greece began to
center in Athens, and with the close of that contest properly begins the era of
Athenian greatness. Athens, hitherto inferior in magnitude and political
importance, having borne the brunt and won the highest martial honor of the
conflict with Persia, now took the lead, as well in intellectual progress as in
political ascendancy. To this era PROFESSOR SYMONDS refers, as follows:
“It was the struggle with Xerxes which developed
all the latent energies of the Greeks, which intensified their
national existence, and which secured for Athens, as the central
power on which the scattered forces of the race converged, the
intellectual dictatorship of Hellas. It was a struggle of
spiritual energy against brute force, of liberty against
oppression, of intellectual freedom against superstitious
ignorance, of civilization against barbarism; and Athens, who had
fought and won this battle of the Spirit—by spirit we mean the
greatness of the soul, liberty, intelligence, and everything
which raises men above brutes and slaves, and makes them free
beneath the arch of heaven—became immediately the recognized
impersonation of the spirit itself. Whatever was superb in human
nature found its natural home and sphere in Athens. We hear no
more of the colonies. All great works of art and literature are
now produced in Athens, and it is to Athens that the sages come
to teach and to be taught.” [Footnote: “The Greek Poets.”
First Series, p. 19.]
I. LYRIC POETRY.
SIMON’IDES AND PINDAR.
The rapid progress made in the cultivation of
lyric poetry preceding the Persian wars found its culmination,
during those wars, in Simonides of Ceos, the most brilliant
period of whose life was spent at Athens; and in Pindar, a native
of Thebes, who is considered the greatest lyric poet of all ages.
The life of Simonides was a long one, reaching from 556 to 469
B.C. “Coming forward at a time,” says MAHAFFY, “when the tyrants
had made poetry a matter of culture, and dissociated it from
politics, we find him a professional artist, free from all party
struggles, alike welcome at the courts of tyrants and among the
citizens of free states; he was respected throughout all the
Greek world, and knew well how to suit himself, socially and
artistically, to his patrons. The great national struggle with
Persia gave him the opportunity of becoming the spokesman of the
nation in celebrating the glories of the victors and the heroism
of the fallen patriots; and this exceptional opportunity made him
quite the foremost poet of his day, and decidedly better known
and more admired than Pindar, who has so completely eclipsed him
in the attention of posterity.” [Footnote: “Classical
Greek Literature,” vol. i., p. 207.]
Simonides was the intimate friend of Miltiades
and Themistocles at Athens, of Pausanias at Sparta, and of the
tyrants of Sicily. In the first named city he composed his
epigrams on Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, and
Platæa—”poems not destined to be merely sung or consigned
to parchment, but to be carved in marble or engraved in letters
of imperishable bronze upon the works of the noblest architects
and statuaries.” In his elegy upon Marathon he carried away the
prize from Æschylus. He was a most prolific poet, and his
writings, comprising all the subjects that human life, with its
joys and sorrows, its hopes and disappointments, could furnish,
are noted for their sweetness and pure and exquisite polish. He
particularly excelled in the pathetic; and the most celebrated of
the existing fragments of his muse, the “Lamentation of
Dan’a-ë,” is a piece of this character. The poem is based
upon a tradition concerning Danaë, the daughter of
Acris’ius, King of Argos, and her infant son, the offspring of
Jove. Acrisius had been told by the oracle that his life would be
taken by a son that his daughter should bear, and, for his own
preservation, when the boy had reached the age of four years,
Acrisius threw both him and his mother into a chest and set them
adrift on the sea. But they were rescued by Dictys, a fisherman
of the Island of Seri’phus, whose brother Polydec’tes, king of
the country, received and protected them. The boy grew up to
manhood, and became the famous hero Per’seus, who accidentally
killed Acrisius at the funeral games of Polydectes. The following
is the
Lamentation of Dan’a-ë.
While, around her lone ark sweeping,
Wailed the winds and waters wild,
Her young cheeks all wan with weeping,
Danae clasped her sleeping child;
And “Alas!” cried she, “my dearest,
What deep wrongs, what woes are mine;
But nor wrongs nor woes thou fearest
In that sinless rest of thine.
Faint the moonbeams break above thee,
And within here all is gloom;
But, fast wrapped in arms that love thee,
Little reck’st thou of our doom.
Not the rude spray, round thee flying,
Has e’en damped thy clustering hair;
On thy purple mantlet lying,
O mine Innocent, my Fair!
Yet, to thee were sorrow sorrow,
Thou wouldst lend thy little ear;
And this heart of thine might borrow,
Haply, yet a moment’s cheer.
But no: slumber on, babe, slumber;
Slumber, ocean’s waves; and you,
My dark troubles, without number—
Oh, that ye would slumber too!
Though with wrongs they’ve brimmed my chalice,
Grant, Jove, that, in future years,
This boy may defeat their malice,
And avenge his mother’s tears!”
—Trans. by W. PETER.
Simonides was nearly eighty years old when he
gained his last poetical prize at Athens, making the fiftieth
that he had won. He then retired to Syracuse, at the invitation
of Hi’ero, where he spent the remaining ten years of his life. He
was a philosopher as well as poet, and his wise sayings made him
a special favorite with the accomplished Hiero. When inquired of
by that monarch concerning the nature of God, Simonides requested
one day for deliberating on the subject; and when Hiero repeated
the question the next day, the poet asked for two days more. As
he still went on doubling the number of days, the monarch, lost
in wonder, asked him why he did so. “Because,” replied Simonides,
“the longer I reflect on the subject, the more obscure does it
appear to me to be.”
Pindar, the most celebrated of all the lyric
poets of Greece, was born about 520 B.C. At an early age he was
sent to Athens to receive instruction in the art of poetry:
returning to Thebes at twenty, his youthful genius was quickened
and guided by the influence of Myr’tis and Corin’na, two
poetesses who then enjoyed great celebrity in Bœotia. At a later
period “he undoubtedly experienced,” says THIRLWALL, “the
animating influence of that joyful and stirring time which
followed the defeat of the barbarian invader, though, as a Theban
patriot, he could not heartily enjoy a triumph by which Thebes as
well as Persia was humbled.” But his enthusiasm for Athens, which
he calls “the buttress of Hellas,” is apparent in one of his
compositions; and the Athenians specially honored him with a
valuable present, and, after his death, erected a bronze statue
to his memory. It is probable, however, that while he was
sincerely anxious for the success of Greece in the great contest,
he avoided as much as possible offending his own people, whose
sympathies and hopes lay the other way.
The reputation of Pindar early became so great
that he was employed, by various states and princes, to compose
choral songs for special occasions. Like Simonides, he “loved to
bask in the sunshine of courts;” but he was frank, sincere, and
manly, assuming a lofty and dignified position toward princes and
others in authority with whom he came in contact. He was
especially courted by Hiero, despot of Syracuse, but remained
with him only a few years, his manly disposition creating a love
for an independent life that the courtly arts of his patron could
not furnish. As his poems show, he was a reserved man, learned in
the myths and ceremonies of the times, and specially devoted to
the worship of the gods. “The old myths,” says a Greek
biographer, “were for the most part realities to him, and he
accepted them with implicit credence, except when they exhibited
the gods in a point of view which was repugnant to his moral
feelings; and he accordingly rejects some tales, and changes
others, because they are inconsistent with his moral
conceptions.” As a poet correctly describes him, using one of the
names commonly applied to him,
Pindar, that eagle, mounts the skies,
While virtue leads the noble way.
—PRIOR.
The poems of Pindar were numerous, and comprised
triumphal odes, hymns to the gods, pæans, dirges, and songs
of various kinds. His triumphal odes alone have come down to us
entire; but of some of his other compositions there are a few
sublime and beautiful fragments. The poet and his writings cannot
be better described than in the following general
characterization by SYMONDS:
“By the force of his originality Pindar gave
lyrical poetry a wholly new direction, and, coming last of the
great Dorian lyrists, taught posterity what sort of thing an ode
should be. His grand pre-eminence as an artist was due, in great
measure, to his personality. Frigid, austere, and splendid; not
genial like that of Simonides, not passionate like that of
Sappho, not acrid like that of Archil’ochus; hard as adamant,
rigid in moral firmness, glittering with the strong, keen light
of snow; haughty, aristocratic, magnificent—the unique
personality of the man Pindar, so irresistible in its influence,
so hard to characterize, is felt in every strophe of his odes. In
his isolation and elevation Pindar stands like some fabled
heaven-aspiring peak, conspicuous from afar, girdled at the base
with ice and snow, beaten by winds, wreathed round with steam and
vapor, jutting a sharp and dazzling outline into cold blue ether.
Few things that have life dare to visit him at his grand
altitude. Glorious with sunlight and with stars, touched by rise
and set of day with splendor, he shines when other lesser lights
are dulled. Pindar among his peers is solitary. He had no
communion with the poets of his day. He is the eagle; Simonides
and Bacchyl’ides are jackdaws. He soars to the empyrean; they
haunt the valley mists. Noticing this rocky, barren, severe,
glittering solitude of Pindar’s soul, critics have not
infrequently complained that his poems are devoid of individual
interest. Possibly they have failed to comprehend and appreciate
the nature of this sublime and distant genius, whose character,
in truth, is just as marked as that of Dante or of Michael
Angelo.”
After giving some illustrations of the impression
produced upon the imagination by a study of Pindar’s odes, the
writer proceeds with his characterization, in the following
language: “He who has watched a sunset attended by the passing of
a thunder-storm in the outskirts of the Alps—who has seen the
distant ranges of the mountains alternately obscured by cloud and
blazing with the concentrated brightness of the sinking sun,
while drifting scuds of hail and rain, tawny with sunlight,
glistening with broken rainbows, clothe peak and precipice and
forest in the golden veil of flame-irradiated vapor—he who has
heard the thunder bellow in the thwarting folds of hills, and
watched the lightning, like a snakes tongue, flicker at intervals
amid gloom and glory —knows, in Nature’s language, what Pindar
teaches with the voice of Art. It is only by a metaphor like this
that any attempt to realize the Sturm and Drang of
Pindar’s style can be communicated. As an artist he combines the
strong flight of the eagle, the irresistible force of the
torrent, the richness of Greek wine, and the majestic pageantry
of Nature in one of her sublimer moods.” [Footnote: “The
Greek Poets.” First Series, pp. 171, 174.]
Pindar, as we have seen, was compared to an
eagle, because of the daring flights and lofty character of his
poetry—a simile which has been beautifully expressed in the
following lines by GRAY:
The pride and ample pinion
That the Theban eagle bare,
Sailing with supreme dominion,
Through the azure deeps of air.
Another image, also, has been employed to show
these features of his poetry. The poet POPE represents him riding
in a gorgeous chariot sustained by four swans:
Four swans sustain a car of silver bright,
With heads advanced and pinions stretched for flight;
Here, like some furious prophet, Pindar rode,
And seemed to labor with th’ inspiring god.
A third image, given to us by HORACE, represents
another characteristic of Pindar, which may be called “the stormy
violence of his song:”
As when a river, swollen by sudden showers,
O’er its known banks from some steep mountain pours;
So, in profound, unmeasurable song,
The deep-mouthed Pindar, foaming, pours along.
—Trans. by FRANCIS.
As a sample of the religious sentiment of Pindar
we give the following fragment of a threnos translated by MR.
SYMONDS, which, he says, “sounds like a trumpet blast for
immortality, and, trampling underfoot the glories of this world,
reveals the gladness of the souls that have attained
Elysium:”
For them, the night all
through,
In that broad realm below,
The splendor of the sun spreads endless light;
‘Mid rosy meadows bright,
Their city of the tombs, with incense-trees
And golden chalices
Of flowers, and fruitage fair,
Scenting the breezy air,
Is laden. There, with horses and with play,
With games and lyres, they while the hours away.
On every side around
Pure happiness is found,
With all the blooming beauty of the world;
There fragrant smoke, upcurled
From altars where the blazing fire is dense
With perfumed frankincense,
Burned unto gods in heaven,
Through all the land is driven,
Making its pleasant place odorous
With scented gales, and sweet airs amorous.
II. THE DRAMA.
One of the most striking proofs that we possess
of the rapid growth and expansion of the Greek mind, is found in
the rise of the Drama, a new kind of poetical composition, which
united the leading features of every species before cultivated,
in a new whole “breathing a rhetorical, dialectical, and ethical
spirit” —a branch of literature that peculiarly characterized
the era of Athenian greatness. Its elements were found in the
religious festivals celebrated in Greece from the earliest ages,
and especially in the feast of Bacchus, where sacred odes of a
grave and serious character, intermixed with episodes of
mythological story recited by an actor, were sung by a chorus
that danced around the altar. A goat was either the principal
sacrifice on these occasions, or the participants, disguised as
Satyrs, had a goat-like appearance; and from the two Greek words
representing “goat” and “song” we get our word tragedy,
[Footnote: From the Greek tragos, “a goat,” and
o’de, “a song.”] or goat-song. At some of the more
rustic festivals in honor of the same god the performance was of
a more jocose or satirical character; and hence arose the term
comedy, [Footnote: From the Greek ko’me, “a
village,” and o’de, “a song.”] from the two Greek
words signifying “village” and “song”—village-song. In the
teller of mythological legends we find the first germ of
dialogue, as the chorus soon came to assist him by occasional
question and remark. This feature was introduced by Thespis, a
native of Ica’ria, in 535 B.C., under whose direction, and that
of Phryn’icus, his pupil, the first feeble rudiments of the drama
were established. In this condition it was found by
Æschylus, in 500 B.C., who brought a second actor upon the
scene; whence arose the increased prominence of the dialogue, and
the limitation and subsidiary character of the chorus.
Æschylus also added more expressive masks, and various
machinery and scenes calculated to improve and enlarge dramatic
representation. Of the effect of this new creation upon all kinds
of poetical genius we have the following fine illustration from
the pen of BULWER:
“It was in the very nature of the Athenian drama
that, when once established, it should concentrate and absorb
almost every variety of poetical genius. The old lyrical poetry,
never much cultivated in Athens, ceased in a great measure when
tragedy arose; or, rather, tragedy was the complete development,
the new and perfected consummation, of the dithyrambic ode.
Lyrical poetry transmigrated into the choral song as the epic
merged into the dialogue and plot of the drama. Thus, when we
speak of Athenian poetry we speak of dramatic poetry—they were
one and the same. In Athens, where audiences were numerous and
readers few, every man who felt within himself the inspiration of
the poet would necessarily desire to see his poetry put into
action—assisted with all the pomp of spectacle and music,
hallowed by the solemnity of a religious festival, and breathed
by artists elaborately trained to heighten the eloquence of words
into the reverent ear of assembled Greece. Hence the multitude of
dramatic poets; hence the mighty fertility of each; hence the
life and activity of this—the comparative torpor and barrenness
of every other— species of poetry.”
1. TRAGEDY.
MELPOM’ENE, one of the nine Muses, whose name
signifies “To represent in song,” is said to have been the
inventress of tragedy, over which she presided, always veiled,
bearing in one hand the lyre, as the emblem of her vocation, and
in the other a tragic mask. As queen of the lyre, every poet was
supposed to proclaim the marvels of her song, and to invoke her
aid.
Queen of the lyre, in thy retreat
The fairest flowers of Pindus glow,
The vine aspires to crown thy seat,
And myrtles round thy laurel grow:
Thy strings adapt their varied strain
To every pleasure, every pain,
Which mortal tribes were born to prove;
And straight our passions rise or fall,
As, at the wind’s imperious call,
The ocean swells, the billows move.
When midnight listens o’er the slumbering earth,
Let me, O Muse, thy solemn whispers hear:
When morning sends her fragrant breezes forth,
With airy murmurs touch my opening ear,
—AKENSIDE.
ÆSCHYLUS.
Æschylus, the first poet who rendered the
drama illustrious, and into whose character and writings the
severe and ascetic doctrines of Pythagoras entered largely, was
born at Eleu’sis, in Attica, in 525 B.C. He fought, as will be
remembered, in the combats of Marathon and Salamis, and also in
the battle of Platæa. He therefore flourished at the time
when the freedom of Greece, rescued from foreign enemies, was
exulting in its first strength; and his writings are
characteristic of the boldness and vigor of the age. In his works
we find the fundamental idea of the Greek drama—retributive
justice. The sterner passions alone are appealed to, and the
language is replete with bold metaphor and gigantic hyperbole.
Venus and her inspirations are excluded; the charms of love are
unknown: but the gods—vast, majestic, in shadowy outline, and in
the awful sublimity of power-pass before and awe the beholder.
[Footnote: see Grote’s “History of Greece,” Chap.
lxvii.] Says a prominent reviewer: “The conceptions of
the imagination of Æschylus are remarkable for a sort of
colossal sublimity and power, resembling the poetry of the Book
of Job; and those poems of his which embody a connected story may
be said to resemble the stupendous avenues of the Temple of
Elora, [Footnote: See Index.] with the vast
scenes and vistas; its strange, daring, though rude sculptures;
its awful, shadowy, impending horrors. Like the architecture, the
poems, too, seem hewn out of some massy region of mountain rock.
Æschylus appears as an austere poet-soul, brooding among
the grand, awful, and terrible myths which have floated from a
primeval world, in which traditions of the Deluge, of the early,
rudimental struggle between barbaric power and nascent
civilization, were still vital.”
“The personal temperament of the man,” says DR.
PLUMPTRE, [Footnote: “The Tragedies of Æschylus,” by
E. H. Plumptre, D.D.] seems to have been in harmony with
the characteristics of his genius. Vehement, passionate,
irascible; writing his tragedies, as later critics judged, as if
half drunk; doing (as Sophocles said of him) what was right in
his art without knowing why; following the impulses that led him
to strange themes and dark problems, rather than aiming at the
perfection of a complete, all-sided culture; frowning with shaggy
brows, like a wild bull, glaring fiercely, and bursting into a
storm of wrath when annoyed by critics or rival poets; a Marlowe
rather than a Shakspeare: this is the portrait sketched by one
who must have painted a figure still fresh in the minds of the
Athenians. [Footnote: Aristophanes, in The
Frogs.] Such a man, both by birth and disposition,
was likely to attach himself to the aristocratic party, and to
look with scorn on the claims of the demos to a larger
share of power; and there is hardly a play in which some
political bias in that direction may not be traced.”
Æschylus wrote his plays in trilogies, or
three successive dramas connected. Of the eighty tragedies that
he wrote, only seven have been preserved. From three of these,
The Persians, Prome’theus, and Agamemnon, we have
given extracts descriptive of historical and mythological events.
The latter is the first of three plays on the fortunes of the
house of A’treus, of Myce’næ; and these three, of which the
Choëph’oroe and Eumenides are the other two,
are the only extant specimen of a trilogy. The Agamemnon
is the longest, and by some considered the grandest, play left us
by Æschylus. “In the Agamemnon,” says VON SCHLEGEL,
“it was the intention of Æschylus to exhibit to us a sudden
fall from the highest pinnacle of prosperity and renown into the
abyss of ruin. The prince, the hero, the general of the combined
forces of the Greeks, in the very moment of success and the
glorious achievement of the destruction of Troy, the fame of
which is to be re-echoed from the mouths of the greatest poets of
all ages, in the very act of crossing the threshold of his home,
after which he had so long sighed, and amidst the fearless
security of preparations for a festival, is butchered, according
to the expression of Homer, ‘like an ox in the stall,’ slain by
his faithless wife, his throne usurped by her worthless seducer,
and his children consigned to banishment or to hopeless
servitude.” [Footnote: “Lectures on Dramatic Art and
Literature,” by Augustus William on Schlegel. Black’s
translation.]
Among the fine passages of this play, the death
of Agamemnon, at the hand of Clytemnes’tra, is a scene that the
poet paints with terrible effect. Says MR. EUGENE LAWRENCE,
[Footnote: “A Primer of Greek Literature,” by Eugene
Lawrence, p.55.] “Mr. E. C. Stedman’s version of the
death of Agamemnon is an excellent one. A horror rests upon the
palace at Mycenæ; there is a scent of blood, the
exhalations of the tomb. The queen, Clytemnestra, enters the
inner room, terrible as Lady Macbeth. A cry is heard:
“‘Agam. Woe’s me! I’m stricken a deadly blow within!’
“‘Chor. Hark! who is’t cries “a blow?” Who meets his death?’
“‘Agam. Woe’s me! Again! again! a second time I’m stricken!’
“‘Chor. The deed, methinks, from the king’s cry, is done.’
At length the queen appears, standing at her full
height, terrible, holding her bloody weapon in her hand. She
seeks no concealment. She proclaims her guilt:
“‘I smote him! nor deny that thus I did it;
So that he could not flee or ward off doom.
A seamless net, as round a fish, I cast
About him, yea, a deadly wealth of robe,
Then smote him twice; and with a double cry
He loosed his limbs; and to him fallen I gave
Yet a third thrust, a grace to Hades, lord
Of the under-world and guardian of the dead.'”
But the most finished of the tragedies of
Æschylus is Choëphoroe, which is made the
subject of the revenge of Ores’tes, son of Agamemnon, who avenges
the murder of his father by putting his mother to death. For this
crime the Eumenides represents him as being driven insane
by the Furies; but his reason was subsequently restored. It is
the chief object of the poet, in this tragedy, to display the
distress of Orestes at the necessity he feels of avenging his
father’s death upon his mother. To this BYRON refers in Childe
Harold:
O thou! who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale—great Nem’esis!
Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
For that unnatural retribution—just,
Had it but been from hands less near—in this,
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
At the close of an interesting characterization
of Æschylus and his works—much too long for a full
quotation here—PROFESSOR MAHAFFY observes as follows:
“We always feel that Æschylus thought more
than he expressed, that his desperate compounds are never
affected or unnecessary. Although, therefore, he violated the
rules that bound weaker men, it is false to say that be was less
an artist than they. His art was of a different kind, despising
what they prized, and attempting what they did not dare, but not
the less a conscious and thorough art. Though the drawing of
character was not his main object, his characters are truer and
deeper than those of poets who attempted nothing else. Though
lyrical sweetness had little place in the gloom and terror of his
Titanic stage, yet here too, when he chooses, he equals the
masters of lyric song. So long as a single Homer was deemed the
author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, we might well
concede to him the first place, and say that Æschylus was
the second poet of the Greeks. But by the light of nearer
criticism, and with a closer insight into the structure of the
epic poems, we must retract this judgment, and assert that no
other poet among the Greeks, either in grandeur of conception or
splendor of execution, equals the untranslatable, unapproachable,
inimitable Æschylus.” [Footnote: “Classical Greek
Literature,” vol. i., p.275.]
SOPHOCLES.
Æschylus was succeeded, as master of the
drama, by Sophocles—the Raffaelle of the drama, as Bulwer calls
him—who was also one of the generals of the Athenian expedition
against Samos in the year 440 B.C. He brought the drama to the
greatest perfection of which it was susceptible. In him we find a
greater range of emotions than in Æschylus—figures more
distinctly seen, a more expanded dialogue, simplicity of speech
mixed with rhetorical declamation, and the highest degree of
poetic beauty. Says a late writer: “The artist and the man were
one in Sophocles. We cannot but think of him as specially created
to represent Greek art in its most refined and exquisitely
balanced perfection. It is impossible to imagine a more plastic
nature, a genius more adapted to its special function, more
fittingly provided with all things needful to its full
development, born at a happier moment in the history of the
world, and more nobly endowed with physical qualities suited to
its intellectual capacity.”
Sophocles composed one hundred and thirteen
plays, but only seven of them are extant. Of these the most
familiar is the tragedy of OEd’ipus Tyran’nus—”King
Œdipus.” It is not only considered his masterpiece, but also, as
regards the choice and disposition of the fable on which it is
founded, the finest tragedy of antiquity. A new interest has been
given to it in this country by its recent representation in the
original Greek. Of its many translations, it is conceded that
none have done, and none can do it justice; they can do little
more than give its plan and general character. The following, in
brief, is the story of this famous tragedy:
Œdipus Tyrannus.
La’i-us, King of Thebes, was told by the Delphic
oracle that if a son should be born to him, by the hand of that
son he should surely die. When, therefore, his queen, Jocasta,
bare him a son, the parents gave the child to a shepherd, with
orders to cast it out, bound, on the hill Cithæ’ron to
perish. But the shepherd, moved to compassion, deceived the
parents, and intrusted the babe to a herdsman of Pol’ybus, King
of Corinth; and the wife of Polybus, being childless, named the
foundling Œdipus, and reared it as her own.
Thirty years later, Œdipus, ignorant of his
birth, and being directed by the oracle to shun his native
country, fled from Corinth; and it happened at the same time that
his father (Laius) was on his way to consult the oracle at
Delphi, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the child that
had been exposed had perished or not. As father and son,
strangers to each other, met in a narrow path in the mountains, a
dispute arose for the right of way, and in the contest that
ensued the father was slain.
Immediately after this event the goddess Juno,
always hostile to Thebes, sent a monster, called the sphinx, to
propound a riddle to the Thebans, and to ravage their territory
until some one should solve the riddle—the purport of which was,
“What animal is that which goes on four feet in the morning, on
two at noon, and on three at evening?” Œdipus, the supposed son
of Polybus, of Corinth, coming to Thebes, solved the riddle, by
answering the sphinx that it was man, who, when an infant, creeps
on all fours, in manhood goes on two feet, and when old uses a
staff. The sphinx then threw herself down to the earth and
perished; whereupon the Thebans, in their joy, chose Œdipus as
king, and he married the widowed queen Jocasta, by whom he had
two sons and two daughters. Although everything prospered with
him—as he loved the Theban people, and was beloved by them in
turn for his many virtues—soon the wrath of the gods fell upon
the city, which was visited by a sore pestilence. Creon, brother
of the queen, is now sent to consult the oracle for the cause of
the evil; and it is at the point of his return that the drama
opens. He brings back the response
“That guilt of blood is blasting all the state;”
that this guilt is connected with the death of Laius, and that
“Now the god clearly bids us, he being dead,
To take revenge on those who shed his blood,”
Œdipus engages earnestly in the business of
unraveling the mystery connected with the death of Laius, the
cause of all the Theban woes. Ignorant that he himself bears the
load of guilt, he charges the Thebans to be vigilant and
unremitting in their efforts,—
“And for the man who did the guilty deed,
Whether alone he lurks, or leagued with more,
I pray that he may waste his life away,
For vile deeds vilely dying; and for me,
If in my house, I knowing it, he dwells,
May every curse I spake on my head fall.”
A blind and aged priest and prophet, Tire’sias,
is brought before Œdipus, and, being implored to lend the aid of
prophecy to “save the city from the curse” that had fallen on it,
he at first refuses to exert his prophetic power.
Tiresias. Ah! Reason fails you an, but ne’er will I
Say what thou bidd’st, lest I thy troubles show.
I will not pain myself nor thee. Why, then,
All vainly question? Thou shalt never know.
But, urged and threatened by the king, he at length exclaims:
Tier. And has it come to this? I charge thee, hold
To thy late edict, and from this day forth
Speak not to me, nor yet to these, for thou—
Thou art the accursed plague-spot of the land!
Œdipus at first believes that the aged prophet
is merely the tool of others, who are engaged in a conspiracy to
expel him from the throne; but when Jocasta, in her innocence,
informs him of the death of Laius, names the mountain pass in
which he fell, slain, as was supposed, by a robber band, and
describes his dress and person, Œdipus is startled at the
thought that he himself was the slayer, and he exclaims,
“Great Zeus! what fate hast thou decreed for me?
Woe! woe! ’tis all too clear.”
Yet there is one hope left. The man whom he slew
in that same mountain pass fell by no robber band, and,
therefore, could not have been Laius. Soon even this hope deserts
him, when the story is truly told. He learns, moreover, that he
is not the son of Polybus, the Corinthian king, but a foundling
adopted by his queen. Connecting this with the story now told him
by Jocasta, of her infant son, whom she supposed to have perished
on the mountain, the horrid truth begins to dawn upon all.
Jocasta rushes from the presence of Œdipus, exclaiming,
“Woe! woe! ill-fated one! my last word this,
This only, and no more for evermore.”
When the old shepherd, forced to declare the
truth, tells how he saved the life of the infant, and gave it
into the keeping of the herdsman of Polybus, the evil-starred
Œdipus exclaims, in agony of spirit:
“Woe! woe! woe! all cometh clear at last.
O light! may this my last glance be on thee,
Who now am seen owing my birth to those
To whom I ought not, and with whom I ought not
In wedlock living, whom I ought not slaying.”
Horrors still thicken in this terrible tragedy.
Word is brought to Œdipus that Jocasta is dead—dead by her own
hand! He rushes in:
Then came a sight
Most fearful. Tearing from her robe the clasps,
All chased with gold, with which she decked herself,
He with them struck the pupils of his eyes,
With words like these—”Because they had not seen
What ills he suffered and what ills he did,
They in the dark should look, in time to come,
On those whom they ought never to have seen,
Nor know the dear ones whom he fain had known.”
With such-like wails, not once or twice alone,
Raising his eyes, he smote them; and the balls,
All bleeding, stained his cheek, nor poured they forth
Gore drops slow trickling, but the purple shower
Fell fast and full, a pelting storm of blood.
The now blind and wretched Œdipus, bewailing his
fate and the evils he had so unwittingly brought upon Thebes,
begs to be cast forth with all speed from out the land.
Œdipus.
Lead me away, my friends, with utmost speed
Lead me away; the foul, polluted one,
Of all men most accursed,
Most hateful to the gods.
Chorus.
Ah, wretched one, alike in soul and doom,
I fain could wish that I had never known thee.
Œdipus.
Ill fate be his who from the fetters freed
The child upon the hills,
And rescued me from death,
And saved me—thankless boon!
Ah! had I died but then,
Nor to my friends nor me had been such woe.
A touching picture is presented in the farewell
of Œdipus, on departing from Thebes to wander an outcast upon
the earth. The tragedy concludes with the following moral by the
chorus:
Chorus. Ye men of Thebes, behold this Œdipus,
Who knew the famous riddle, and was noblest.
Whose fortune who saw not with envious glances?
And lo! in what a sea of direst trouble
He now is plunged! From hence the lesson learn ye,
To reckon no man happy till ye witness
The closing day; until he pass the border
Which Severs life from death unscathed by sorrow.
—Trans. by E. H. PLUMPTRE.
Character of the Works of Sophocles.
The character of the works of Sophocles is well
described in the following extract from an Essay on Greek
Poetry, by THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: “The great and
distinguishing excellence of Sophocles will be found in his
excellent sense of the beautiful, and the perfect harmony of all
his powers. His conceptions are not on so gigantic a scale as
those of Æschylus; but in the circle which he prescribes to
himself to fill, not a place is left unadorned; not a niche
without its appropriate figure; not the smallest ornament which
is incomplete in the minutest graces. His judgment seems
absolutely perfect, for he never fails; he is always fully master
of himself and his subject; he knows the precise measure of his
own capacities; and while he never attempts a flight beyond his
reach, he never debases himself nor his art by anything beneath
him.
“Sophocles was undoubtedly the first
philosophical poet of the ancient world. With his pure taste for
the graceful he perceived, amidst the sensible forms around him,
one universal spirit of Jove pervading all things. Virtue and
justice, to his mind, did not appear the mere creatures of
convenience, or the means of gratifying the refined selfishness
of man; he saw them, having deep root in eternity, unchanging and
imperishable as their divine author. In a single stanza he has
impressed this sentiment with a plenitude of inspiration before
which the philosophy of expediency vanishes—a passage that has
neither a parallel nor equal of its kind, that we recollect, in
the whole compass of heathen poetry, and which may be rendered
thus: ‘Oh for a spotless purity of action and of speech,
according to those sublime laws of right which have the heavens
for their birthplace, and God alone for their author—which the
decays of mortal nature cannot vary, nor time cover with
oblivion, for the divinity is mighty within them and waxes not
old!'”
Sophocles died in extreme old age, “without
disease and without suffering, and was mourned with such a
sincerity and depth of grief as were exhibited at the death of no
other citizen of Athens.”
Thrice happy Sophocles! in good old age,
Blessed as a man, and as a craftsman blessed,
He died: his many tragedies were fair,
And fair his end, nor knew be any sorrow.
—PHRYN’ICHUS.
Wind, gentle evergreen, to form a shade
Around the tomb where Sophocles is laid;
Sweet ivy wind thy boughs, and intertwine
With blushing roses and the clustering vine.
Thus will thy lasting leaves, with beauties hung,
Prove grateful emblems of the lays he sung,
Whose soul, exalted by the god of wit,
Among the Muses and the Graces writ.
—SIM’MIAS, the Theban.
EURIP’IDES.
Contemporary with Sophocles was Euripides, born
in 480 B.C., the last of the three great masters of the
drama—the three being embraced within the limits of a single
century. Under Sophocles the principal changes effected in the
outward form of the drama were the introduction of a third actor,
and a consequent limitation of the functions of the chorus.
Euripides, however, changed the mode of handling tragedy. Unlike
Sophocles, who only limited the activity of the chorus, he
disconnected it from the tragic interest of the drama by giving
but little attention to the character of its songs. He also made
some other changes; and, as one writer expresses it, his
innovations “disintegrated the drama by destroying its artistic
unity.” But although perhaps inferior, in all artistic point of
view, to his predecessors, the genius of Euripides supplied a
want that they did not meet. Although his plays are all connected
with the history and mythology of Greece, in them rhetoric is
more prominent than in the plays of either Æschylus or
Sophocles; the legendary characters assume more the garb of
humanity; the tender sentiments—love, pity, compassion—are
invoked to a greater degree, and an air of exquisite delicacy and
refinement embellishes the whole. These were the qualities in the
plays of Euripides that endeared him to the Greeks of succeeding
ages, and that gave to his works such an influence on the Roman
and modern drama.
Of Euripides MR. SYMONDS remarks: “His lasting
title to fame consists in his having dealt with the deeper
problems of life in a spirit which became permanent among the
Greeks, so that his poems never lost their value as expressions
of current philosophy. Nothing strikes the student of later Greek
literature more strongly than this prolongation of the Euripidean
tone of thought and feeling. In the decline of tragic poetry the
literary sceptre was transferred to comedy; and the comic
playwrights may be described as the true successors of Euripides.
The dialectic method, which he affected, was indeed dropped, and
a more harmonious form of art than the Euripidean was created for
comedy by Menan’der, when the Athenians, after passing through
their disputatious period, had settled down into a tranquil
acceptation of the facts of life. Yet this return to harmony of
form and purity of perception did not abate the influence of
Euripides. Here and there throughout his tragedies he had said,
and well said, what the Greeks were bound to think and feel upon
important matters; and his sensitive, susceptible temperament
repeated itself over and over again among his literary
successors. The exclamation of Phile’mon that, if he could
believe in immortality, he would hang himself to see Euripides,
is characteristic not only of Philemon, but also of the whole
Macedonian period of Greek literature.” [Footnote: “The
Greek Poets.” Second Series, p. 300.]
Euripides wrote about seventy-five plays, of
which eighteen have come down to us. The Me-de’a, which is
thought to be his best piece, is occupied with the circumstances
of the vengeance taken by Medea on the ungrateful Jason, the hero
of the Argonautic expedition, for whom she had sacrificed all,
and who, after his return, abandoned her for a royal Corinthian
bride. [Footnote: See Argonautic Expedition, p.
81.] But the most touching of the plays of Euripides is
the Alces’tis, founded on the fable of Alcestis dying for
her husband, Adme’tus. MILTON thus alludes to the story, in his
sonnet on his deceased wife:
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
The substance of the story is as follows:
Admetus, King of Phe’ræ, in Thessaly,
married Alcestis, who became noted for her conjugal virtues.
Apollo, when banished from heaven, received so kind treatment
from Admetus that he induced the Fates to prolong the latter’s
life beyond the ordinary limit, on condition that one of his own
family should die in his stead. Alcestis at once consented to die
for her husband, and when the appointed time came she heroically
and composedly gave herself to death. Soon after her departure,
however, the hero Hercules visited Admetus, and, pained with the
profound grief of the household, he rescued Alcestis from the
grim tyrant Death and restored her to her family. The whole play
abounds in touching scenes and descriptions; and the best modern
critics concede that there is no female character in either
Æschylus or Sophocles, not even excepting Antig’one, that
is so great and noble, and at the same time so purely tender and
womanly, as Alcestis. “Where has either Greek or modern
literature,” says MAHAFFY, “produced a nobler ideal than the
Alcestis of Euripides? Devoted to her husband and children,
beloved and happy in her palace, she sacrifices her life calmly
and resignedly—a life which is not encompassed with afflictions,
but of all the worth that life can be, and of all the usefulness
which makes it precious to noble natures.” [Footnote:
“Social Life in Greece, p. 189.] We give the following
short extract from the poet’s account of the preparations made by
Alcestis for her approaching end:
Alcestis Preparing for Death.
When she knew
The destined day was come, in fountain water
She bathed her lily-tinctured limbs, then took
From her rich chests, of odorous cedar formed,
A splendid robe, and her most radiant dress.
Thus gorgeously arrayed, she stood before
The hallowed flames, and thus addressed her prayer:
“O queen, I go to the infernal shades;
Yet, ere I go, with reverence let me breathe
My last request: protect my orphan children;
Make my son happy with the wife he loves,
And wed my daughter to a noble husband;
Nor let them, like their mother, to the tomb
Untimely sink, but in their native land
Be blessed through lengthened life to honored age.”
Then to each altar in the royal house
She went, and crowned it, and addressed her vows,
Plucking the myrtle bough: nor tear, nor sigh
Came from her; neither did the approaching ill
Change the fresh beauties of her vermeil cheek.
Her chamber then she visits, and her bed;
There her tears flowed, and thus she spoke: “O bed
To which my wedded lord, for whom I die,
Led me a virgin bride, farewell! to thee
No blame do I impute, for me alone
Hast thou destroyed: disdaining to betray
Thee, and my lord, I die: to thee shall come
Some other woman, not more chaste, perchance
More happy.” As she lay she kissed the couch,
And bathed it with a flood of tears: that passed,
She left her chamber, then returned, and oft
She left it, oft returned, and on the couch
Fondly, each time she entered, cast herself.
Her children, as they hung upon her robes,
Weeping, she raised, and clasped them to her breast
Each after each, as now about to die.
—Trans. by POTTER.
Euripides died in the year 406 B.C., in Macedon,
to which country he had been compelled to go on account of
domestic troubles; and the then king, Archela’us honored his
remains with a sumptuous funeral, and erected a monument over
them.
Divine Euripides, this tomb we see
So fair is not a monument for thee,
So much as thou for it; since all will own
That thy immortal fame adorns the stone.
We have now observed the transitions through
which Grecian tragedy passed in the hands of its three great
masters, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. As GROTE says,
“The differences between these three poets are doubtless
referable to the working of Athenian politics and Athenian
philosophy on the minds of the two latter. In Sophocles we may
trace the companion of Herodotus; in Euripides the hearer of
Anaxag’oras, Socrates, and Prod’icus; in both, the familiarity
with that wide-spread popularity of speech, and real, serious
debate of politicians and competitors before the dikastery, which
both had ever before their eyes, but which the genius of
Sophocles knew how to keep in subordination to his grand poetical
purpose.” To properly estimate the influence which the tragedies
exerted upon the Athenians, we must remember that a large number
of them was presented on the stage every year; that it was rare
to repeat anyone of them; that the theatre of Bacchus, in which
they were represented, accommodated thirty thousand persons;
that, as religious observances, they formed part of the civil
establishment; and that admission to them was virtually free to
every Athenian citizen. Taking these things into consideration,
GROTE adds: “If we conceive of the entire population of a large
city listening almost daily to those immortal compositions whose
beauty first stamped tragedy as a separate department of poetry,
we shall be satisfied that such powerful poetic influences were
never brought to act upon any other people; and that the tastes,
the sentiments, and the intellectual standard of the Athenians
must have been sensibly improved and exalted by such lessons.”
[Footnote: “History of Greece,” Chap, lxvii.]
2. COMEDY.
Another marked feature of Athenian life, and one
but little less influential than tragedy in its effects upon the
Athenian character, was comedy. It had its origin, as we have
seen, in the vintage festivals of Bacchus, where the wild songs
of the participants were frequently interspersed with coarse
witticisms against the spectators. Like tragedy, it was a Dorian
invention, and Sicily seems to have early become the seat of the
comic writers. Epichar’mus, a Dorian poet and philosopher, was
the first of these to put the Bacchic songs and dances into
dramatic form. The place of his nativity is uncertain, but he
passed the greater part of his life at Syracuse, in the society
of the greatest literary men of the age, and there he is supposed
to have written his comedies some years prior to the Persian war.
It seems, however, that comedy was introduced into Attica by
Susa’rion, a native of Meg’ara, long before the time of
Epichar’mus (578 B.C.). But the former’s plays were so largely
made up of rude and abusive personalities that they were not
tolerated by the Pisistrati’dæ, and for over a century we
bear nothing farther of comedy in Attica—not until it was
revived by Chion’ides, about 488 B.C., or, according to some
authorities, twenty years later.
Under the contemporaries or successors of
Chionides comedy became an important agent in the political
warfare of Athens, although it was frequently the subject of
prohibitory or restrictive legal enactments. “Only a nation,”
says a recent writer, “in the plenitude of self-contentment,
conscious of vigor, and satisfied with its own energy, could have
tolerated the kind of censorship the comic poets dared to
exercise.”
Characterization of the Old Comedy.
In the preliminary discourse to his translation
of the Comedies of Aristophanes, MR. THOMAS MITCHELL, an
English critic of note, makes these observations upon the
character of the Old Comedy: “The Old Comedy, as it is called, in
contradistinction to what was afterward named the Middle and the
New, stood in the extreme relation of contrariety and parody to
the tragedy of the Greeks —it was directed chiefly to the lower
orders of society at Athens; it served in some measure the
purposes of the modern journal, in which public measures and the
topics of the day might be fully discussed; and in consequence
the dramatis personæ were generally the poet’s own
contemporaries, speaking in their own names and acting in masks,
which, as they bore only a caricature resemblance of their own
faces, showed that the poet, in his observations, did not mean to
be taken literally. Like tragedy, comedy constituted part of a
religious ceremony; and the character of the deity to whom it was
more particularly dedicated was stamped at times pretty visibly
upon the work which was composed in his honor. The Dionysian
festivals were the great carnivals of antiquity—they celebrated
the returns of vernal festivity or the joyous vintage, and were
in consequence the great holidays of Athens—the seasons of
universal relaxation.
“The comic poet was the high-priest of the
festival; and if the orgies of his divinity (the god of wine)
sometimes demanded a style of poetry which a Father of our Church
probably had in his eye when he called all poetry the devil’s
wine, the organ of their utterance (however strange it may
seem to us) no doubt considered himself as perfectly absolved
from the censure which we should bestow on such productions: in
his compositions he was discharging the same pious office as the
painter, whose duty it was to fill the temples of the same deity
with pictures which our imaginations would consider equally
ill-suited to the habitations of divinity. What religion
therefore forbids among us, the religion of the Greeks did not
merely tolerate but enjoin. Nor was the extreme and even profane
gayety of the comedy without its excuse. To unite extravagant
mirth with a solemn seriousness was enjoined by law, even in the
sacred festival of Ceres.
“While the philosophers, therefore, querulously
maintained that man was the joke and plaything of the gods, the
comic poet reversed the picture, and made the gods the playthings
of men; in his hands, indeed, everything was upon the broad grin:
the gods laughed, men laughed, and animals laughed. Nature was
considered as a sort of fantastic being, with a turn for the
humorous; and the world was treated as a sort of extended
jest-book, where the poet pointed out the bon-mots
[Footnote: French; pronounced bong-mos.]
and acted in some degree as corrector of the Press. If he
discharged this office sometimes in the sarcastic spirit of a
Mephistopheles, this, too, was considered as part of his
functions. He was the Ter’roe Fil’ius [Footnote:
Terroe Filius, son of the earth; that is, a human being.]
of the day; and lenity would have been considered, not as an act
of discretion, but as a cowardly dereliction of duty.”
It was in the time of Pericles that the comedy
just described first dealt with men and subjects under their real
names; and in one of the plays of Crati’nus—under whom comedy
received its full development—Cimon is highly eulogized, and his
rival, Pericles, is bitterly derided. With unmeasured and
unsparing license comedy attacked, under the veil of satire, not
only all that was really ludicrous or base, but often cast scorn
and derision on that which was innocent, or even meritorious. For
the reason that the comic writers were so indiscriminate in their
attacks, frequently making transcendent genius and noble
personality, as well as demagogism and personal vice, the butt of
comic scorn; their writings have but little historical value
except in the few instances in which they are corroborated by
higher authority.
ARlSTOPH’ANES.
Among the contemporaries of Cratinus were
Eu’polis and Aristophanes, the latter of whom became the chief of
what is known as the Old Attic Comedy. Of his life little is
known; but he was a member of the conservative or aristocratic
party at Athens, directing his attacks chiefly against the
democratic or popular party of Pericles, and continuing to write
comedies until about 392 B.C. While his comedies are replete with
coarse wit, they are wonderfully brilliant, and contain much,
also, that is pure and beautiful. As a late writer has well said,
“Beauty and deformity came to him with equal abundance, and his
wonderful pieces are made up of all that is low and all that is
pure and lovely.”
The Muses, seeking for a shrine
Whose glories ne’er should cease,
Found, as they strayed, the soul divine
Of Aristophanes.
—PLATO, trans. by MERIVALE.
MR. GROTE characterizes the comedies of
Aristophanes as follows: “Never probably will the full and
unshackled force of comedy be so exhibited again. Without having
Aristophanes actually before us it would have been impossible to
imagine the unmeasured and unsparing license of attack assumed by
the old comedy upon the gods, the institutions, the politicians,
philosophers, poets, private citizens, specially named—and even
the women, whose life was entirely domestic—of Athens. With this
universal liberty in respect of subject there is combined a
poignancy of derision and satire, a fecundity of imagination and
variety of turns, and a richness of poetical expression such as
cannot be surpassed, and such as fully explains the admiration
expressed for him by the philosopher Plato, who in other respects
must have regarded him with unquestionable disapprobation. His
comedies are popular in the largest sense of the word, addressed
to the entire body of male citizens on a day consecrated to
festivity, and providing for their amusement or derision, with a
sort of drunken abundance, out of all persons or things standing
in any way prominent before the public eye.” [Footnote:
“History or Greece,” Chap. lxvii.]
In his introduction to the Dialogues of
Plato, REV. WILLIAM SEWELL, an English clergyman and author,
observes that “Men smile when they hear the anecdote of
Chrys’ostom, one of the most venerable fathers of the Church, who
never went to bed without something from Aristophanes under his
pillow.” He adds: “But the noble tone of morals, the elevated
taste, the sound political wisdom, the boldness and acuteness of
the satire, the grand object, which is seen throughout, of
correcting the follies of the day, and improving the condition of
his country—all these are features in Aristophanes which,
however disguised, as they intentionally are, by coarseness and
buffoonery, entitle him to the highest respect from every reader
of antiquity.” Yet, while the purposes of Aristophanes were in
the main praiseworthy, and the persons and things he attacked
generally deserving of censure, he spared the vices of his own
party and associates; and, like all satirists, for effect he
often traduced character, as in the case of the virtuous
Socrates. In an attack on the Sophists, in his play of the
Clouds, he gives to Socrates the character of a vulgar
Sophist, and holds him up to the derision of the Athenian people.
But, as another has said, “Time has set all even; and ‘poor
Socrates,’ as Aristophanes called him—as a far loftier bard has
sung—
‘Poor Socrates,
By what he taught, and suffered for so doing,
For truth’s sake suffering death unjust, lives now,
Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.'”
—MILTON.
The Comedy of the “Clouds.”
It is curious to observe in the Clouds of
Aristophanes that while the main object of the poet is to
ridicule Socrates, and through him to expose what he considers
the corrupt state of education in Athens, he does not disdain to
mingle with his low buffoonery the loftiest flights of the
imagination—reminding us of the not unlike anomaly of
Shakspeare’s sublime simile of the “cloud-capp’d towers,” in the
Tempest. In one part of the play, Strepsi’ades, who has
been nearly ruined in fortune by his spendthrift son, goes to
Socrates to learn from him the logic that will enable him “to
talk unjustly and—prevail,” so that he may shirk his debts! He
finds the master teacher suspended in air, in a basket, that he
may be above earthly influences, and there “contemplating the
sun,” and endeavoring to search out “celestial matters.” To the
appeal of Strepsiades, Socrates, interrupted in his reveries,
thus answers:
Socrates. Old man, sit you still, and attend to my will, and
hearken in peace to my prayer. (He then addresses the Air.)
O master and king, holding earth in your swing, O measureless infinite Air;
And thou, glowing Ether, and Clouds who enwreathe her with
thunder and lightning and storms,
Arise ye and shine, bright ladies divine, to your student, in bodily forms.
Then we have the farther prayer of Socrates to
the Clouds, in which is pictured a series of the most sublime
images, colored with all the rainbow hues of the poet’s fancy. We
are led, in imagination, to behold the dread Clouds, at first
sitting, in glorious majesty, upon the time-honored crest of
snowy Olympus —then in the soft dance beguiling the nymphs “‘mid
the stately advance of old Ocean”—then bearing away, in their
pitchers of sunlight and gold, “the mystical waves of the Nile,”
to refresh and fertilize other lands; at one time sporting on the
foam of Lake Mæo’tis, and at another playing around the
wintry summits of Mi’mas, a mountain range of Ionia, The farther
invocation of the Clouds is thus continued:
Socrates. Come forth, come forth, ye dread Clouds, and to earth your glorious majesty show;
Whether lightly ye rest on the time-honored crest of Olympus, environed in snow,
Or tread the soft dance ‘mid the stately advance of old Ocean, the nymphs to beguile,
Or stoop to enfold, with your pitchers of gold, the mystical waves of the Nile,
Or around the white foam of Mæotis ye roam, or Mimas all wintry and bare,
O hear while we pray, and turn not away from the rites which your servants prepare.
Then the chorus comes forward and answers, as if the Clouds were speaking:
Chorus. Clouds of all hue,
Now rise we aloft with our garments of dew,
We come from old Ocean’s unchangeable bed,
We come till the mountains’ green summits we tread,
We come to the peaks with their landscapes untold,
We gaze on the earth with her harvests of gold,
We gaze on the rivers in majesty streaming,
We gaze on the lordly, invisible sea;
We come, for the eye of the Ether is beaming,
We come, for all Nature is flashing and free.
Let us shake off this close-clinging dew
From our members eternally new,
And sail upward the wide world to view,
Come away! Come away!
Socr. O goddesses mine, great Clouds and divine, ye have heeded and answered my prayer.
Heard ye their sound, and the thunder around, as it thrilled through the petrified air?
Streps. Yes, by Zeus! and I shake, and I’m all of a quake, and I fear I must sound a reply,
Their thunders have made my soul so afraid, and those terrible voices so nigh—
Socr. Don’t act in our schools like those comedy-fools, with their scurrilous, scandalous ways.
Deep silence be thine, while these Clusters divine their soul-stirring melody raise.
To which the chorus again responds. But we have
not room for farther extracts. The description of the
floating-cloud character of the scene is acknowledged by critics
to be inimitable. There is one passage, in particular, in which
Socrates, pointing to the clouds that have taken a sudden
slanting downward motion, says:
“They are drifting, an infinite throng,
And their long shadows quake over valley and brake”—
which, MR. RUSKIN declares, “could have been
written by none but an ardent lover of the hill scenery—one who
had watched hour after hour the peculiar, oblique, sidelong
action of descending clouds, as they form along the hollows and
ravines of the hills. [Footnote: The line in Greek, which
is so vividly descriptive of this peculiar appearance and motion
of the clouds—
dia toy koiloy kai toy daseoy autai plagiai—
loses so much in the rendering, that the
beauty of the passage can be fully appreciated only by the Greek
scholar.] There are no lumpish solidities, no billowy
protuberances here. All is melting, drifting, evanescent, full of
air, and light as dew.”
Choral Song from “The Birds.”
In the following extract from the comedy of
The Birds, Aristophanes ridicules the popular belief of
the Greeks in signs and omens drawn from the birds of the air.
Though undoubtedly an exaggeration, it may nevertheless be taken
as a fair exposition of the superstitious notions of an age that
had its world-renowned “oracles,” and as a good example of the
poet’s comic style. The extract is from the Choral Song in the
comedy, and is a true poetic gem.
Ye children of man! whose life is a span,
Protracted with sorrow from day to day;
Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous,
Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay!
Attend to the words of the sovereign birds,
Immortal, illustrious lords of the air,
Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye,
Your struggles of misery, labor, and care.
Whence you may learn and clearly discern
Such truths as attract your inquisitive turn—
Which is busied of late with a mighty debate,
A profound speculation about the creation,
And organical life and chaotical strife—
With various notions of heavenly motions,
And rivers and oceans, and valleys and mountains,
And sources of fountains, and meteors on high,
And stars in the sky…. We propose by-and-by
(If you’ll listen and hear) to make it all clear.
All lessons of primary daily concern
You have learned from the birds (and continue to learn),
Your best benefactors and early instructors.
We give you the warnings of seasons returning:
When the cranes are arranged, and muster afloat
In the middle air, with a creaking note,
Steering away to the Libyan sand,
Then careful farmers sow their lands;
The craggy vessel is hauled ashore;
The sail, the ropes, the rudder, and oar
Are all unshipped and housed in store.
The shepherd is warned, by the kite re-appearing,
To muster his flock and be ready for shearing.
You quit your old cloak at the swallow’s behest,
In assurance of summer, and purchase a vest.
For Delphi, for Ammon, Dodo’na—in fine,
For every oracular temple and shrine—
The birds are a substitute, equal and fair;
For on us you depend, and to us you repair
For counsel and aid when a marriage is made—
A purchase, a bargain, or venture in trade:
Unlucky or lucky, whatever has struck ye—
A voice in the street, or a slave that you meet,
A name or a word by chance overheard—
If you deem it an omen you call it a bird;
And if birds are your omens, it clearly will follow
That birds are a proper prophetic Apollo.
—Trans. by FRERE.
III. HISTORY.
As we have stated in a former chapter, literary
compositions in prose first appeared among the Greeks in the
sixth century B.C., and were either mythological, or collections
of local legends, whether sacred or profane, of particular
districts. It was not until a still later period that the Grecian
prose writers, becoming more positive in their habits of thought,
broke away from speculative and mystical tendencies, and began to
record their observations of the events daily occurring about
them. In the writings of Hecatæ’us of Mile’tus, who
flourished about 500 B.C., we find the first elements of history;
and yet some modern writers think he can lay no claim whatever to
the title of historian, while others regard him as the first
historical writer of any importance. He visited Greece proper and
many of the surrounding countries, and recorded his observations
and experiences in a work of a geographical character, entitled
Periodus. He also wrote another work relating to the
mythical history of Greece, and died about 467 B.C.
HEROD’OTUS.
MAHAFFY considers Hecatæ’us “the forerunner
of Herodotus in his mode of life and his conception of setting
down his experiences;” while NIE’BUHR, the great German
historian, absolutely denies the existence of any Grecian
histories before Herodotus gave to the world the first of those
illustrious productions that form another bright link in the
literary chain of Grecian glory. Born in Halicarnas’sus about the
year 484, of an illustrious family, Herodotus was driven from his
native land at an early age by a revolution, after which he
traveled extensively over the then known world, collecting much
of the material that he subsequently used in his writings. After
a short residence at Samos he removed to Athens, leaving there,
however, about the year 440 to take up his abode at Thu’rii, a
new Athenian colony near the site of the former Syb’aris. Here he
lived the rest of his life, dying about the year 420. Lucian
relates that, on completing his work, Herodotus went to Olympia
during the celebration of the Olympic games, and there recited to
his countrymen the nine books of which his history was composed.
His hearers were delighted, and immediately honored the books
with the title of the Nine Muses. A later account of this
scene says that Thucydides, then a young man, stood at the side
of Herodotus, and was affected to tears by his recitations.
Herodotus modestly states the object of his
history in the following paragraph, which is all the introduction
that he makes to his great work: “These are the researches of
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes in the hope of
thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have
done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the
Greeks and the barbarians from losing their due meed of glory;
and, withal, to put on record what were their grounds of feud.”
[Footnote: Rawlinson’s translation.] But while he
portrays the military ambition of the Persian rulers, the
struggles of the Greeks for liberty, and their final triumph over
the Persian power, he also gives us a history of almost all the
then known world. “His work begins,” says MR. LAWRENCE, “with the
causes of the hostility between Persia and Greece, describes the
power of Croe’sus, the wonders of Egypt, the expedition of Darius
into Scythia, and closes with the immortal war between the allied
Greeks and the Persian hosts. To his countrymen the story must
have had the intense interest of a national ode or epic. Athens,
particularly, must have read with touching ardor the graceful
narrative of its early glory; for when Herodotus finished his
work the brief period had already passed away. What
Æschylus and the other dramatists painted in brief and
striking pictures on the stage, Herodotus described with
laborious but never tedious minuteness. His pure Ionic diction
never wearies, his easy and simple narrative has never lost its
interest, and all succeeding ages have united in calling him ‘the
Father of History.’ His fame has advanced with the progress of
letters, and has spread over mankind.”
The following admirable description of Herodotus
and of his writings is from an essay on “History,” by LORD
MACAULAY:
Herodotus and his Writings.
“Of the romantic historians, Herodotus is the
earliest and the best. His animation, his simple-hearted
tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue,
and the pure, sweet flow of his language, place him at the head
of narrators. He reminds us of a delightful child. There is a
grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a
malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, and an
insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no other writer who
makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of the
reader. He has written an incomparable book. He has written
something better, perhaps, than the best history; but he has not
written a really good history; for he is, from the first to the
last chapter, an inventor. We do not here refer merely to those
gross fictions with which he has been reproached by the critics
of later times, but we speak of that coloring which is equally
diffused over his whole narrative, and which perpetually leaves
the most sagacious reader in doubt what to reject and what to
receive. The great events are, no doubt, faithfully related; so,
probably, are many of the slighter circumstances, but which of
them it is impossible to ascertain. We know there is truth, but
we cannot exactly decide where it lies.
“If we may trust to a report not sanctioned,
indeed, by writers of high authority, but in itself not
improbable, the work of Herodotus was composed not to be read,
but to be heard. It was not to the slow circulation of a few
copies, which the rich only could possess, that the aspiring
author looked for his reward. The great Olympian festival was to
witness his triumph. The interest of the narrative and the beauty
of the style were aided by the imposing effect of recitation—by
the splendor of the spectacle, by the powerful influence of
sympathy. A critic who could have asked for authorities in the
midst of such a scene must have been of a cold and skeptical
nature, and few such critics were there. As was the historian,
such were the auditors—inquisitive, credulous, easily moved by
the religious awe of patriotic enthusiasm. They were the very men
to hear with delight of strange beasts, and birds, and trees; of
dwarfs, and giants, and cannibals; of gods whose very names it
was impiety to utter; of ancient dynasties which had left behind
them monuments surpassing all the works of later times; of towns
like provinces; of rivers like seas; of stupendous walls, and
temples, and pyramids; of the rites which the Magi performed at
daybreak on the tops of the mountains; of the secrets inscribed
on the eternal obelisks of Memphis. With equal delight they would
have listened to the graceful romances of their own country. They
now heard of the exact accomplishment of obscure predictions; of
the punishment of climes over which the justice of Heaven had
seemed to slumber; of dreams, omens, warnings from the dead; of
princesses for whom noble suitors contended in every generous
exercise of strength and skill; and of infants strangely
preserved from the dagger of the assassin to fulfil high
destinies.
“As the narrative approached their own times the
interest became still more absorbing. The chronicler had now to
tell the story of that great conflict from which Europe dates its
intellectual and political supremacy—a story which, even at this
distance of time, is the most marvelous and the most touching in
the annals of the human race—a story abounding with all that is
wild and wonderful; with all that is pathetic and animating; with
the gigantic caprices of infinite wealth and despotic power; with
the mightier miracles of wisdom, of virtue, and of courage. He
told them of rivers dried up in a day, of provinces famished for
a meal; of a passage for ships hewn through the mountains; of a
road for armies spread upon the waves; of monarchies and
commonwealths swept away; of anxiety, of terror, of confusion, of
despair! and then of proud and stubborn hearts tried in that
extremity of evil and not found wanting; of resistance long
maintained against desperate odds; of lives dearly sold when
resistance could be maintained no more; of signal deliverance,
and of unsparing revenge. Whatever gave a stronger air of reality
to a narrative so well calculated to inflame the passions and to
flatter national pride, was certain to be favorably
received.”
THUCYDIDES.
Greater even than Herodotus, in some respects,
but entirely different in his style of composition, was the
historian Thucydides, who was born in Athens about 471 B.C. In
early life he studied in the rhetorical and sophistical schools
of his native city; and he seems to have taken some part in the
political agitations of the period. In his forty-seventh year he
commanded an Athenian fleet that was sent to the relief of
Amphip’olis, then besieged by Bras’idas the Spartan. But
Thucydides was too late; on his arrival the city had surrendered.
His failure to reach there sooner appears to have been caused by
circumstances entirely beyond his control, although some English
scholars, including GROTE, declare that he was remiss and
dilatory, and therefore Deserving of the punishment he
received—banishment from Athens. He retired to Scaptes’y-le, a
small town in Thrace; and in this secluded spot, removed from the
shifting scenes of Grecian life, he devoted himself to the
composition of his great work. Tradition asserts that he was
assassinated when about eighty years of age, either at Athens or
in Thrace.
The history of Thucydides, unfinished at his
death, gives an account of nearly twenty-one years of the
Peloponnesian war. The author’s style is polished, vigorous,
philosophical, and sometimes so concise as to be obscure. We are
told that even Cicero found some of his sentences almost
unintelligible. But, as MAHAFFY says: “Whatever faults of style,
whatever transient fashion of involving his thoughts, may be due
to a Sophistic education and to the desire of exhibiting depth
and acuteness, there cannot be the smallest doubt that in the
hands of Thucydides the art of writing history made an
extraordinary stride, and attained a degree of perfection which
no subsequent Hellenic (and few modern) writers have equaled. If
the subject which he selected was really a narrow one, and many
of the details trivial, it was nevertheless compassed with
extreme difficulty, for it is at all times a hard task to write
contemporary history, and more especially so in an age when
published documents were scarce, and the art of printing unknown.
Moreover, however trivial may be the details of petty military
raids, of which an account was yet necessary to the completeness
of his record, we cannot but wonder at the lofty dignity with
which he has handled every part of the subject. There is not a
touch of comedy, not a point of satire, not a word of familiarity
throughout the whole book, and we stand face to face with a man
who strikes us as strangely un-Attic in his solemn and severe
temper.” [Footnote: “History of Greek Literature,” vol.
ii., p. 117.]
The following comparison, evidently a just one,
has been made between Thucydides and Herodotus:
Thucydides and Herodotus.
“In comparing the two great historians, it is
plain that the mind and talents of each were admirably suited to
the work which he took in hand. The extensive field in which
Herodotus labored afforded an opportunity for embellishing and
illustrating his history with the marvels of foreign lands; while
the glorious exploits of a great and free people stemming a tide
of barbarian invaders and finally triumphing over them, and the
customs and histories of the barbarians with whom they had been
at war, and of all other nations whose names were connected with
Persia, either by lineage or conquest, were subjects which
required the talents of a simple narrator who had such love of
truth as not willfully to exaggerate, and such judgment as to
select what was best worthy of attention. But Thucydides had a
narrower field. The mind of Greece was the subject of his study,
as displayed in a single war which was, in its rise, progress,
and consequences, the most important which Greece had ever seen.
It did not in itself possess that heart-stirring interest which
characterizes the Persian war. In it united Greece was not
struggling for her liberties against a foreign foe, animated by
one common patriotism, inspired by an enthusiastic Jove of
liberty; but it presented the sad spectacle of Greece divided
against herself, torn by the jealousies of race, and distracted
by the animosities of faction.
“The task of Thucydides, therefore, was that of
studying the warring passions and antagonistic workings of one
mind; and it was one which, in order to become interesting and
profitable, demanded that there should be brought to bear upon it
the powers of a keen, analytical intellect. To separate history
from the traditions and falsehoods with which it had been
overlaid, and to give the early history of Greece in its most
truthful form; to trace Athenian supremacy from its rise to its
ruin, and the growing jealousy of other states, whether inferiors
or rivals, to which that supremacy gave rise; to show its
connection with the enmities of race and the opposition of
politics; to point out what causes led to such wide results; how
the insatiable ambitions of Athens, gratifying itself in direct
disobedience to the advice of her wise statesman, Pericles, led
step by step to her ultimate ruin,—required not a mere narrator
of events, however brilliant, but a moral philosopher and a
statesman. Such was Thucydides. Although his work shows an
advance, in the science of historical composition, over that of
Herodotus, and his mind is of a higher, because of a more
thoughtful order, yet his fame by no means obscures the glory
which belongs to the Father of History. Their walks are
different; they can never be considered as rivals, and therefore
neither can claim superiority.” [Footnote: “Greek and
Roman Classical Literature,” by Professor R. W. Browne, King’s
College, London.]
IV. PHILOSOPHY.
ANAXAG’ORAS.
The most illustrious of the Ionic philosophers,
and the first distinguished philosopher of this period of Grecian
history, was Anaxagoras, who was born at Clazom’enæ in the
year 499 B.C. At the age of twenty he went to Athens, where he
remained thirty years, teaching philosophy, and having for his
hearers Pericles, Socrates, Euripides, and other celebrated
characters. While the pantheistic systems of Tha’les,
Heracli’tus, and other early philosophers admitted, in accordance
with the fictions of the received mythology, that the universe is
full of gods, the doctrine of Anaxagoras led to the belief of but
one supreme mind or intelligence, distinct from the chaos to
which it imparts motion, form, and order. Hence he also taught
that the sun is an inanimate, fiery mass, and therefore not a
proper object of worship. He asserted that the moon shines by
reflected light, and he rightly explained solar and lunar
eclipses. He gave allegorical explanations of the names of the
Grecian gods, and struck a blow at the popular religion by
attributing the miraculous appearances at sacrifices to natural
causes. For these innovations he was stoned by the populace, and,
as a penalty for what was considered his impiety, he was
condemned to death; but through the influence of Pericles his
sentence was commuted to banishment. He retired to Lamp’sacus, on
the Hellespont, where he died at the age of seventy-two.
A short time before his death the senate of
Lampsacus sent to Anaxagoras to ask what commemoration of his
life and character would be most acceptable to him. He answered,
“Let all the boys and girls have a play-day on the anniversary of
my death.” The suggestion was observed, and his memory was
honored by the people of Lampsacus for many centuries with a
yearly festival. The amiable disposition of Anaxagoras, and the
general character of his teachings, are pleasantly and very
correctly set forth in the following poem, which is a supposed
letter from the poet Cleon, of Lampsacus, to Pericles, giving an
account of the philosopher’s death:
The Death of Anaxagoras.
Cleon of Lampsacus, to Pericles:
Of him she banished now let Athens boast;
Let now th’ Athenian raise to him they stoned
A statue. Anaxagoras is dead!
To you who mourn the master, called him friend,
Beat back th’ Athenian wolves who fanged his throat,
And risked your own to save him—Pericles—
I now unfold the manner of his end:
The aged man, who found in sixty years
Scant cause for laughter, laughed before he died,
And died still smiling: Athens vexed him not!
Not he, but your Athenians, he would say,
Were banished in his exile!
When the dawn
First glimmers white o’er Lesser Asia,
And little birds are twittering in the grass,
And all the sea lies hollow and gray with mist,
And in the streets the ancient watchmen doze,
The master woke with cold. His feet were chill,
And reft of sense; and we who watched him knew
The fever had not wholly left his brain,
For he was wandering, seeking nests of birds,
An urchin from the green Ionian town
Where he was born. We chafed his clay-cold limbs;
And so he dozed, nor dreamed, until the sun
Laughed out—broad day—and flushed the garden gods
Who bless our fruits and vines in Lampsacus.
Feeble, but sane and cheerful, he awoke,
And took our hands and asked to feel the sun;
And where the ilex spreads a gracious shade
We placed him, wrapped and pillowed; and he heard
The charm of birds, the whisper of the vines,
The ripple of the blue Propontic sea.
Placid and pleased he lay; but we were sad
To see the snowy hair and silver beard
Like withering mosses on a fallen oak,
And feel that he, whose vast philosophy
Had cast such sacred branches o’er the fields
Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen,
And never more should know the spring! Confess
You too had grieved to see it, Pericles!
But Anaxagoras owned no sense of wrong;
And when we called the plagues of all your gods
On your ungrateful city, he but smiled:
“Be patient, children! Where would be the gain
Of wisdom and divine astronomy,
Could we not school our fretful minds to bear
The ills all life inherits? I can smile
To think of Athens! Were they much to blame?
Had I not slain Apollo? plucked the beard
Of Jove himself? Poor rabble, who have yet
Outgrown so little the green grasshoppers
From whom they boast descent, are they to blame?
[Footnote: The Athenians claimed to be of indigenous origin—
Autoch’tho-nes, that is, Aborigines, sprung from the earth
itself. As emblematic of this origin they wore in their hair
the golden forms of the cicada, or locust, often improperly
called grasshopper, which was believed to spring from the
earth. So it was said that the Athenians boasted descent
from grasshoppers.]
“How could they dream—or how believe when taught—
The sun a red-hot iron ball, in bulk
Not less than Peloponnesus? How believe
The moon no silver goddess girt for chase,
But earth and stones, with caverns, hills, and vales?
Poor grasshoppers! who deem the gods absorbed
In all their babble, shrilling in the grass!
What wonder if they rage, should one but hint
That thunder and lightning, born of clashing clouds,
Might happen even with Jove in pleasant mood,
Not thinking of Athenians at all!”
He paused; and, blowing softly from the sea,
The fresh wind stirred the ilex, shaking down
Through chinks of sunny leaves blue gems of sky;
And lying in the shadow, all his mind
O’ershadowed by our grief, once more he spoke:
“Let not your hearts be troubled! All my days
Hath all my care been fixed on this vast blue,
So still above us; now my days are done,
Let it have care of me! Be patient, meek,
Not puffed with doctrine! Nothing can be known;
Naught grasped for certain: sense is circumscribed;
The intellect is weak, and life is short!”
He ceased, and mused a little while we wept.
“And yet be nowise downcast; seek, pursue!
The lover’s rapture and the sage’s gain
Less in attainment lie than in approach.
Look forward to the time which is to come!
All things are mutable, and change alone
Unchangeable. But knowledge grows! The gods
Are drifting from the earth like morning mist;
The days are surely at the doors when men
Shall see but human actions in the world!
Yea, even these hills of Lampsacus shall be
The isles of some new sea, if time fail not!”
And now the reverend fathers of our town
Had heard the master’s end was very near,
And come to do him homage at the close,
And ask what wish of his they might fulfil.
But he, divining that they thought his heart
Might yearn to Athens for a resting-place,
Said gently, “Nay; from everywhere the way
To that dark land you wot of is the same.
I feel no care; I have no wish. The Greeks
Will never quite forget my Pericles,
And when they think of him will say of me,
‘Twas Anaxagoras taught him!”
Loath to go,
No kindly office done, yet once again
The reverend fathers pressed him for a wish.
Then laughed the master: “Nay, if still you urge,
And since ’twere churlish to reject good-will,
I pray you, every year, when time brings back
The day on which I left you, let the boys—
All boys and girls in this your happy town—
Be free of task and school for that one day.”
He lay back smiling, and the reverend men
Departed, heavy at heart. He spoke no more,
But, haply musing on his truant days,
Passed from us, and was smiling when he died.
—WILLIAM CANTON, in The Contemporary Review.
The teachings of Anaxagoras were destined to
attain to wide-spread power over the Grecian mind. As auguries,
omens, and prodigies exercised a great influence on the public
affairs of Greece, a philosophical explanation of natural
phenomena had a tendency to diminish respect for the popular
religion in the eyes of the multitude, and to leave the minds of
rulers and statesmen open to the influences of reason, and to the
rejection of the follies of superstition. The doctrines taught by
Anaxagoras were the commencement of the contest between the old
philosophy and the new; and the varying phases of the struggle
appear throughout all subsequent Grecian history.
THE SOPHISTS.
In the fifth century there sprang up in Greece a
set of teachers who traveled about from city to city, giving
instruction (for money) in philosophy and rhetoric; under which
heads were included political and moral education. These men were
called “Sophists” (a term early applied to wise men, such
as the seven sages), and though they did not form a sect or
school, they resembled one another in many respects, exerting an
important, and, barring their skeptical tendencies, a healthful
influence in the formation of character. Among the most eminent
of these teachers were Protag’oras of Abde’ra, Gor’gias of
Leontini, and Prod’icus of Ce’os. That great philosopher of a
later age, Plato, while condemning the superficiality of their
philosophy, characterized these men as important and respectable
thinkers; but their successors, by their ignorance, brought
reproach upon their calling, and, in the time of Socrates, the
Sophists—so-called—had lost their influence and had fallen into
contempt. “Before Plato had composed his later Dialogues,” says
MAHAFFY, “they had become too insignificant to merit refutation;
and in the following generation they completely disappear as a
class.” This author thus proceeds to give the causes of their
fall:
“It is, of course, to be attributed not only to
the opposition of Socrates at Athens, but to the subdivision of
the profession of education. Its most popular and prominent
branch—that of Rhetoric—was taken up by special men, like the
orator An’tiphon, and developed into a strictly defined science.
The Philosophy which they had touched without sounding its depths
was taken up by the Socratic schools, and made the rule and
practice of a life. The Politics which they had taught were found
too general; nor were these wandering men, without fixed home, or
familiarity with the intricacies of special constitutions, likely
to give practical lessons to Greece citizens in the art of
state-craft. Thus they disappear almost as rapidly as they
rose—a sudden phase of spiritual awakening in Greece, like the
Encyclopædists of the French.” [Footnote: “History
of Classical Greek literature,” vol. ii., p. 63.]
SOCRATES.
The greatest teacher of this age was Socrates,
who was born near Athens in 469 B.C. His father was a sculptor,
and the son for some time practiced the same profession at
Athens, meanwhile aspiring toward higher things, and pursuing the
study of philosophy under Anaxagoras and others. He served his
country in the field in the severe struggle between Sparta and
Athens, where he was distinguished for his bravery and endurance;
and when upward of sixty years of age he was chosen to represent
his district in the Senate of Five Hundred. Here, and under the
subsequent tyranny, his integrity remained unshaken; and his
boldness in denouncing the cruelties of the Thirty Tyrants nearly
cost him his life. As a teacher, Socrates assumed the character
of a moral philosopher, and he seized every occasion to
communicate moral wisdom to his fellow-citizens. Although often
classed with the Sophists, and unjustly selected by Aristophanes
as their representative, the whole spirit of his teachings was
directly opposed to that class. Says MAHAFFY, “The Sophists were
brilliant and superficial, he was homely and thorough; they
rested in skepticism, he advanced through it to deeper and
sounder faith; they were wandering and irresponsible, he was
fixed at Athens, and showed forth by his life the doctrines he
preached.” GROTE, however, while denying that the Sophists were
intellectual and moral corrupters, as generally charged, also
denies that the reputation of Socrates properly rests upon his
having rescued the Athenian mind from their influences. He
admires Socrates for “combining with the qualities of a good man
a force of character and an originality of speculation as well as
of method, and a power of intellectually working on others,
generically different from that of any professional teacher,
without parallel either among contemporaries or successors.”
[Footnote: “History of Greece,” Chap. lxviii.]
Socrates taught without fee or reward, and
communicated his instructions freely to high and low, rich and
poor. His chief method of instruction was derived from the style
of Zeno, of the Eleatic school, and consisted of attacking the
opinions of his opponents and pulling them to pieces by a series
of questions and answers. [Footnote: A fine example of the
Socratic mode of disputation may be seen In “Alciphron; or, the
Minute Philosopher,” by George Berkeley, D.D., Bishop of Cloyne,
Ireland. It is a defence of the Christian religion, and an
exposé of the weakness of infidelity and skepticism, and
is considered one of the most ingenious and excellent
performances of the kind in the English tongue.] He made
this system “the most powerful instrument of philosophic teaching
ever known in the history of the human intellect.” The
philosopher was an enthusiastic lover of Athens, and he looked
upon the whole city as his school. There alone he found
instruction and occupation, and through its streets he would
wander, standing motionless for hours in deep meditation, or
charming all classes and ages by his conversation. Alcibiades
declared of him that, “as he talks, the hearts of all who hear
leap up, and their tears are poured out.” The poet THOMSON,
musing over the sages of ancient time, thus describes him:
O’er all shone out the great Athenian sage,
And father of Philosophy!
Tutor of Athens! he, in every street,
Dealt priceless treasure; goodness his delight,
Wisdom his wealth, and glory his reward.
Deep through the human heart, with playful art,
His simple question stole, as into truth
And serious deeds he led the laughing race;
Taught moral life; and what he taught he was.
Of the unjust attack made upon Socrates by the
poet Aristophanes we have already spoken. That occurred in 423
B.C., and, as a writer has well said, “evaporated with the
laugh”—having nothing to do with the sad fate of the guiltless
philosopher twenty-four years after. Soon after the restoration
of the democracy in Athens (403 B.C.) Socrates was tried for his
life on the absurd charges of impiety and of corrupting the
morals of the young. His accusers appear to have been instigated
by personal resentment, which he had innocently provoked, and by
envy of his many virtues; and the result shows not only the
instability but the moral obliquity of the Athenian character. He
approached his trial with no special preparation for defence, as
he had no expectation of an acquittal; but he maintained a calm,
brave, and haughty bearing, and addressed the court in a bold and
uncompromising tone, demanding rewards instead of punishment. It
was the strong religious persuasion (or belief) of Socrates that
he was acting under a divine mission. This consciousness had been
the controlling principle of his life; and in the following
extracts which we have taken from his Apology, or Defence, in
which he explains his conduct, we see plain evidences of this
striking characteristic of the great philosopher:
The Defence of Socrates.
[Footnote: From the translation by Professor Jowett, of Oxford University.]
“Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of
Athens, if now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to
fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and
other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any
other fear: that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be
arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I
disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death: then I should
be fancying I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of
death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom,
being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows
whether death, which he in his fear apprehends to be the greatest
evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of
knowledge which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is
the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general,
and in which I might, perhaps, fancy myself wiser than other
men—that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not
suppose that I know; but I do know that injustice and
disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and
dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good
rather than a certain evil. And therefore should you say to me,
‘Socrates, this time we will not mind An’ytus, and will let you
off, but upon one condition, that you are not to inquire and
speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing
this again you shall die’—if this were the condition on which
you let me go, I should reply, ‘Men of Athens, I honor and love
you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life
and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching
of philosophy, and exhorting, after my manner, any one whom I
meet.’ I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and
young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your
properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest
improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by
money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of
man, public as well as private. This is my teaching; and if this
is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous
indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is
speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do
as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or
not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways,
not even if I have to die many times.”
Socrates next refers to the indignation that he
may have occasioned because he has not wept, begged, and
entreated for his life, and has not brought forward his children
and relatives to plead for him, as others would have done on so
serious an occasion. He says that he has relatives, and three
children; but he declares that not one of them shall appear in
court for any such purpose —not from any insolent disposition on
his part, but because he believes that such a course would be
degrading to the reputation which he enjoys, as well as a
disgrace to the state. He then closes his defence as follows:
“But, setting aside the question of dishonor,
there seems to be something wrong in petitioning a judge, and
thus procuring an acquittal, instead of informing and convincing
him. For his duty is not to make a present of justice, but to
give judgment; and he has Sworn that he will adjudge according to
the law, and not according to his own good pleasure; and neither
he nor we should get into the habit of perjuring ourselves—there
can be no piety in that. Do not, then, require me to do what I
consider dishonorable, and impious, and wrong, especially now,
when I am being tried for impiety. For if, O men of Athens, by
force of persuasion and entreaty, I could overpower your oaths,
then I should be teaching you to believe that there are no gods,
and convict myself, in my own defence, of not believing in them.
But that is not the case; for I do believe that there are gods,
and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers
believe in them. And to you and to God I commit my cause, to be
determined by you as is best for you and me.”
As he had expected, and as the tenor of his
speech had assured his friends would be the case, Socrates was
found guilty—but by a majority of only five or six in a body of
over five hundred. He would make no proposition, as was his
right, for a mitigation of punishment; and after sentence of
death had been passed upon him he spent the remaining thirty days
of his life in impressing on the minds of his friends the most
sublime lessons in philosophy and virtue. Many of these lessons
have been preserved to us in the works of Plato, in whose
Phoe’do, which pictures the last hours of the prison life
of Socrates, we find a sublime conversation on the immortality of
the soul. The following is an extract from this work:
Socrates’ Views of a Future State.
“When the dead arrive at the place to which their
demon leads them severally, first of all they are judged, as well
those who have lived well and piously as those who have not. And
those who appear to have passed a middle kind of life, proceeding
to Ach’eron, and embarking in the vessels they have, on these
arrive at the lake, and there dwell; and when they are purified,
and have suffered punishment for the iniquities they may have
committed, they are set free, and each receives the reward of his
good deeds according to his deserts; but those who appear to be
incurable, through the magnitude of their offences, either from
having committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and
lawless murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable
destiny hurls into Tartarus, whence they never come forth. But
those who appear to have been guilty of curable yet great
offences, such as those who through anger have committed any
violence against father or mother, and have lived the remainder
of their life in a state of penitence, or they who have become
homicides in a similar manner—these must, of necessity, fall
into Tartarus; but after they have fallen, and have been there a
year, the wave casts them forth, the homicide into Cocy’tus,
[Footnote: Co-cy’tus] but the parricides
and matricides into Pyriphleg’ethon; [Footnote:
Pyr-i-phlege-thon, “fire-blazing;” one of the rivers of
hell] but when, being borne along, they arrive at the
Acheru’sian lake, [Footnote: Ach’e-ron. Cocytus
signifies the river of wailing; Pyriphlegethon, the river that
burns with fire; Acheron, the river of woe; and the Styx, another
river of the lower world, the river of hatred. Thus Homer, in
describing “Pluto’s murky abode,” says:
There, into Acheron runs not alone
Dread Pyriphlegethon, but Cocytus loud,
From Styx derived; there also stands a rock,
At whose broad base the roaring rivers meet.
Odyssey. B. X.]
there they cry out to and invoke, some, those whom they slew,
others, those whom they injured; and, invoking them, they entreat
and implore them to suffer them to go out into the lake and to
receive them; and if they persuade them, they go out, and are
freed from their sufferings; but if not, they are borne back to
Tartarus, and thence again to the rivers, and they do not cease
from suffering this until they have persuaded those whom they
have injured—for this sentence was imposed on them by the
judges. But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy
life—these are they who, being freed and set at large from these
regions in the earth as from a prison—arrive at the pure abode
above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among
these, those who have sufficiently purified themselves by
philosophy shall live without bodies throughout all future time,
and shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these,
which it is neither easy to describe, nor at present is there
sufficient time for the purpose.
“For the sake of these things which we have
described we should use every endeavor to acquire virtue and
wisdom in this life, for the reward is noble and the hope great.
To affirm positively, however, that these things are exactly as I
have described them, does not become a man of sense; but that
either this, or something of the kind, takes place with respect
to our souls and their habitations—since our soul is certainly
immortal—appears to me most fitting to be believed, and worthy
the hazard for one who trusts in its reality; for the hazard is
noble, and it is right to allure ourselves with such things, as
with enchantments; for which reason I have prolonged my story to
such length. On account of these things, then, a man ought to be
confident about his soul, who during this life has disregarded
all the pleasures and ornaments of the body as foreign from his
nature, and who, having thought that they do more harm than good,
has zealously applied himself to the acquirement of knowledge,
and who, having adorned his soul not with a foreign but with its
own proper ornaments—temperance, justice, fortitude, freedom,
and truth— thus waits for his passage to Hades as one who is
ready to depart whenever destiny shall summon him.”
After some farther conversation with his friends
respecting the disposition to be made of his body, and having
said farewell to his family, Socrates drank the fatal hemlock
with as much composure as if it had been the last draught at a
cheerful banquet, and quietly laid himself down and died. “Thus
perished,” says DR. SMITH, “the greatest and most original of
Grecian philosophers, whose uninspired wisdom made the nearest
approach to the divine morality of the Gospel.” As observed by
PROFESSOR TYLER of Amherst College, “The consciousness of a
divine mission was the leading trait in his character and the
main secret of his power. This directed his conversations, shaped
his philosophy, imbued his very person, and controlled his life.
This was the power that sustained him in view of approaching
death, inspired him with more that human fortitude in his last
days, and invested his dying words with a moral grandeur that
‘has less of earth in it than heaven.'” [Footnote: Preface
to “Plato’s Apology and Crito.”] There was a more special
and personal influence, however, to which Socrates deemed himself
subject through life, and which probably moved him to view death
with such calmness.
With all his practical wisdom, the great
philosopher was not free from the control of superstitious
fancies. He not only always gave careful heed to divinations,
dreams, and oracular intimations, but he believed that he was
warned and restrained, from childhood, by a familiar spirit, or
demon, which he was accustomed to speak of familiarly and
to obey implicitly. A writer, in alluding to this subject, says:
“There is no more curious chapter in Grecian biography than the
story of Socrates and his familiar demon, which, sometimes
unseen, and at other times, as he asserted, assuming human shape,
acted as his mentor; which preserved his life after the
disastrous battle of De’lium, by pointing out to him the only
secure line of retreat, while the lives of his friends, who
disregarded his entreaties to accompany him, were sacrificed; and
which, again, when the crisis of his fate approached, twice
dissuaded him from defending himself before his accusers, and in
the end encouraged him to quaff the poisoned cup presented to his
lips by an ungrateful people.”
ART.
Having briefly traced the history of Grecian
literature in its best period, it remains to notice some of the
monuments of art, “with which,” as ALISON says, “the Athenians
have overspread the world, and which still form the standard of
taste in every civilized nation on earth.”
I. SCULPTURE AND PAINTING.
Grecian sculpture, as we have seen, had attained
nearly the summit of its perfection at the commencement of the
Persian wars. Among those who now gave to it a wider range may be
mentioned Pythagoras, of Rhegium, and Myron, a native of
Eleu’theræ. The former executed works in bronze
representing contests of heroes and athletes; but he was excelled
in this field by Myron, who was also distinguished for his
representations of animals. The energies of sculpture, however,
were to be still more directly concentrated and perfected in a
new school. That school was at Athens, and its master was
Phid’ias, an Athenian painter, sculptor, and architect, who
flourished about 460 B.C. “At this point,” observes LÜBKE,
[Footnote: “Outlines of the History of Art,” by Wilhelm
Lübke; Clarence Cook’s edition.] “begins the period
of that wonderful elevation of Hellenic life which was ushered in
by the glorious victory over the Persians. Now, for the first
time, the national Hellenic mind rose to the highest
consciousness of noble independence and dignity. Athens
concentrated within herself, as in a focus, the whole exuberance
and many-sidedness of Greek life, and glorified it into beautiful
unity. Now, for the first time, the deepest thoughts of the
Hellenic mind were embodied in sculpture, and the figures of the
gods rose to that solemn sublimity in which art embodied the idea
of divinity in purely human form. This victory of the new time
over the old was effected by the power of Phidias, one of the
most wonderful artist-minds of all time.”
Phidias was intrusted by Pericles with the
superintendence of the public works erected or adorned by that
lavish ruler, and his own hands added to them their most valuable
ornaments. But before he was called to this employment his
statues had adorned the most celebrated temples of Greece. “These
inimitable works,” says GILLIES, [Footnote: Gillies’s
“History of Ancient Greece,” p. 178.] “silenced the voice
of envy; and the most distinguished artists of Greece—sculptors,
painters, and architects—were ambitious to receive the
directions, and to second the labors of Phidias, which were
uninterruptedly employed, during fifteen years, in the
embellishment of his native city.” The chief characteristic of
Phidias was ideal beauty of the sublimest order in the
representation of divinities and their worship; and he
substituted ivory for marble in those parts of statues that were
uncovered, such as the face, hands, and feet, while for the
covered portion he substituted solid gold in place of wood
concealed with real drapery. The style and character of his work
are well described by LÜBKE, as follows:
“That Phidias especially excelled in creating
images of the gods, and that he preferred, as subjects for his
art, those among the divinities the essence of whose nature was
spiritual majesty, marks the fundamental characteristic of his
art, and explains its superiority, not only to all that had been
produced before his time, but to all that was contemporary with
him, and to all that came after him. Possessed of that
unsurpassable masterly power in the representation of the
physical form to which Greek art, shortly before his time, had
attained by unceasing endeavor, his lofty genius was called upon
to apply these results to the embodiment of the highest ideas,
and thus to invest art with the character of sublimity, as well
as with the attributes of perfect beauty. Hence it is said of
him, that he alone had seen images of the gods, and he alone had
made them visible to others. Even in the story that, in emulation
with other masters, he made an Amazon, and was defeated in the
contest by his great contemporary Polycle’tus, we see a
confirmation of the ideal tendency of his art. But that his works
realized the highest conceptions of the people, and embodied the
ideal of the Hellenic conception of the divinity, is proved by
the universal admiration of the ancient world. This sublimity of
conception was combined in him with an inexhaustible exuberance
of creative fancy, an incomparable care in the completion of his
work, and a masterly power in overcoming every difficulty, both
in the technical execution and in the material.”
Probably the first important work executed by
Phidias at Athens was the colossal bronze image of Minerva, which
stood on the Acropolis. It was nearly seventy feet in height, and
was visible twenty miles out at sea. It was erected by the
Athenians, in memory of their victory over the Persians, with the
spoils of Marathon. A smaller bronze statue, on the same model,
was also erected on the Acropolis. But the greatest of the works
of Phidias at Athens was the ivory and gold statue of Minerva in
the Parthenon, erected with the booty taken at Salamis. It was
forty feet high, representing the goddess, “not with her shield
raised as the vigorous champion of her people, but as a peaceful,
protecting, and victory-giving divinity.” Phidias was now called
to Elis, and there he executed his crowning work, the gold and
ivory statue of Jupiter at Olympia. “The father of the gods and
of men was seated on a splendid throne in the cella of his
Olympic temple, his head encircled with a golden olive-wreath; in
his right hand he held Nikè, who bore a fillet of victory
in her hands and a golden wreath on her head; in his left hand
rested the richly-decorated sceptre.” The throne was adorned with
gold and precious stones, and on it were represented many
celebrated scenes. “From this immeasurable exuberance of
figures,” says LÜBKE, “rose the form of the highest Hellenic
divinity, grand and solemn and wonderful in majesty. Phidias had
represented him as the kindly father of gods and men, and also as
the mighty ruler in Olympus. As he conceived his subject he must
have had in his mind those lines of Homer, in which Jupiter
graciously grants the request of Thetis:
‘As thus he spake, the son of Saturn gave
The nod with his dark brows. The ambrosial curls
Upon the sovereign one’s immortal head
Were shaken, and with them the mighty Mount
Olympus trembled.'” [Footnote: Iliad, I., 528-580. Bryant’s
translation.]
While the art of painting was early developed in
Greece, certainly as far back as 718 B.C., the first painter of
renown was Polygno’tus, of Tha’sos, who went to Athens about 463
B.C., and established there what was called “the Athenian school”
of painting. Aristotle called him “the painter of character,” as
he was the first to give variety to the expression of the
countenance, and ease and grace to the outlines of figures or the
flow of drapery. He painted many battle scenes, and with his
contemporaries, Diony’sius of Col’oplon, Mi’con, and others, he
embellished many of the public buildings in Athens, and notably
the Temple of Theseus, with representations of figures similar to
those of the sculptor. About 404 B.C. painting reached a farther
degree of excellence in the hands of Apollodo’rus, a native of
Athens, who developed the principles of light and shade and gave
to the art a more dramatic range. Of this school Zeux’is,
Parrha’sius, and Timan’thes became the chief masters.
PARRHASIUS.
Of the artists of this period it has been
asserted by some authorities that Parrhasius was the most
celebrated, as he is said to have “raised the art of painting to
perfection in all that is exalted and essential;” uniting in his
works “the classic invention of Polygnotus, the magic tone of
Apollodorus, and the exquisite design of Zeuxis.” He was a native
of Ephesus, but became a citizen of Athens, where he won many
victories over his contemporaries. One of these is recorded by
Pliny as having been achieved in a public contest with Zeuxis.
The latter displayed a painting of some grapes, which were so
natural as to deceive the birds, that came and pecked at them.
Zeuxis then requested that the curtain which was supposed to
screen the picture of Parrhasius be withdrawn, when it was found
that the painting of Parrhasius was merely the representation of
a curtain thrown over a picture-frame. The award of merit was
therefore given to Parrhasius, on the ground that while Zeuxis
had deceived the birds, Parrhasius had deceived Zeuxis
himself.
The Roman philosopher Seneca also tells a story
of Parrhasius as follows: While engaged in making a painting of
“Prometheus Bound,” he took an old Olynthian captive and put him
to the torture, that he might catch, and transfer to canvas, the
natural expression of the most terrible of mortal sufferings.
This story, we may hope, is a fiction; but the incident is often
alluded to by the poets, and the American poet WILLIS has painted
the alleged scene in lines scarcely less terrible in their
coloring than those pallid hues of death-like agony which we may
suppose the painter-artist to have employed.
Parrhasius and his Captive.
Parrhasius stood gazing forgetfully
Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,
Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Cau’casus—
The vulture at his vitals, and the links
Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh;
[Footnote: Vulcan; the Olympian artist, who,
when hurled from heaven, fell upon the Island
of Lemnos, in the Ægean. He forged the chain
with which Prometheus was bound.]
And, as the painter’s mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye
Flashed with a passionate fire; and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip,
Were like the wing’d god’s, breathing from his flight.
[Footnote: The winged god Mercury.]
“Bring me the captive now!
My bands feel skilful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow.
Upon the bended heavens, around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.
“Ha! bind him on his back!
Look! as Prometheus in my picture here!
Quick, or he faints! stand with the cordial near!
Now—bend him to the rack!
Press down the poisoned links into his flesh,
And tear agape that healing wound afresh!
“So, let him writhe! How long
Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!
What a fine agony works upon his brow!
Ha! gray-haired, and so strong!
How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!
“‘Pity’ thee! So I do.
I pity the dumb victim at the altar;
But does the robed priest for his pity falter?
I’d rack thee though I knew
A thousand lives were perishing in thine!
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?
“Yet there’s a deathless name!
A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn;
And, though its crown of flame
Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars I’d bind it on!
“Ay, though it bid me rifle
My heart’s last fount for its insatiate thirst;
Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first;
Though it should bid me stifle
The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,
And taunt its mother till my brain went wild—
“All—I would do it all
Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot—
Thrust foully into earth to be forgot!
O heavens! but I appall
Your heart, old man! Forgive—ha! on your lives
Let him not faint!—rack him till he revives!
“Vain—vain—give o’er. His eye
Glazes apace. He does not feel you now;
Stand back! I’ll paint the death-dew on his brow.
Gods I if he do not die
But for one moment—one—till I eclipse
Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!
“Shivering! Hark! he mutters
Brokenly now: that was a difficult breath—
Another? Wilt thou never come, O Death?
Look how his temple flutters!
Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head!
He shudders—gasps—Jove help him! So—he’s dead!”
How like a mounting devil in the heart
Rules the unreined ambition! Let it once
But play the monarch, and its haughty brow
Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought,
And unthrones peace forever. Putting on
The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns
The heart to ashes, and with not a spring
Left in the bosom for the spirit’s lip,
We look upon our splendor and forget
The thirst of which we perish!
II. ARCHITECTURE.
In Architecture, too, thy rank supreme!
That art where most magnificent appears
The little builder, man; by thee refined,
And smiling high, to full perfection brought.
—THOMSON.
We have already referred, in general terms, to the monuments of art for which
the era of Athenian greatness was distinguished, and have stated that it was
more particularly in the “Age of Pericles” that Athenian genius and enthusiasm
found their full development, in the erection or adornment of those miracles of
architecture that crowned the Athenian Acropolis or surrounded its base. The
following eloquent description, from the pen of BULWER, will convey a vivid
idea of the magnitude and the brilliancy of the labors performed for
The Adornment of Athens.
“Then rapidly progressed those glorious fabrics
which seemed, as Plutarch gracefully express it, endowed with the
bloom of a perennial youth. Still the houses of private citizens
remained simple and unadorned; still were the streets narrow and
irregular; and, even centuries afterward, a stranger entering
Athens would not at first have recognized the claims of the
mistress of Grecian art. But to the homeliness of her common
thoroughfares and private mansions the magnificence of her public
edifices now made a dazzling contrast. The Acropolis, that
towered above the homes and thoroughfares of men—a spot too
sacred for human habitation— became, to use a proverbial phrase,
‘a city of the gods.’ The citizen was everywhere to be reminded
of the majesty of the state —his patriotism was to be increased
by the pride in her beauty— his taste to be elevated by the
spectacle of her splendor.
“Thus flocked to Athens all who throughout Greece
were eminent in art. Sculptors and architects vied with one
another in adorning the young empress of the seas: then rose the
masterpieces of Phidias, of Callic’rates, of Mnesicles, which,
either in their broken remains, or in the feeble copies of
imitators less inspired, still command so intense a wonder, and
furnish models so immortal. And if, so to speak, their bones and
relics excite our awe and envy, as testifying of a lovelier and
grander race, which the deluge of time has swept away, what, in
that day, must have been their brilliant effect, unmutilated in
their fair proportions— fresh in all their lineaments and hues?
For their beauty was not limited to the symmetry of arch and
column, nor their materials confined to the marbles of
Pentel’icus and Pa’ros. Even the exterior of the temples glowed
with the richest harmony of colors, and was decorated with the
purest gold: an atmosphere peculiarly favorable to the display
and the preservation of art, permitted to external pediments and
friezes all the minuteness of ornament —the brilliancy of
colors, such as in the interior of Italian churches may yet be
seen—vitiated, in the last, by a gaudy and barbarous taste. Nor
did the Athenians spare any cost upon the works that were, like
the tombs and tripods of their heroes, to be the monuments of a
nation to distant ages, and to transmit the most irrefragable
proof ‘that the power of ancient Greece was not an idle legend.'”
[Footnote: “Athens: Its Rise and Fall,” pp. 256,
257.]
1. THE ACROPOLIS AND ITS SPLENDORS.
The Acropolis, the fortress of Athens, was the
center of its architectural splendor. It is a rocky height rising
abruptly out of the Attic plain, and was accessible only on the
western side, where stood the Propylæ’a, a magnificent
structure of the Doric order, constructed under the direction of
Pericles by the architect Mnesicles, and which served as the gate
as well as the defence of the Acropolis. But the latter’s chief
glory was the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, built in the time
of Pericles by Icti’nus and Callic’rates, and which stood on the
highest point, near the center. It was constructed entirely of
the most beautiful white marble from Mount Pentelicus, and its
dimensions were two hundred and twenty-eight feet by one hundred
and two —having eight Doric columns in each of the two fronts,
and seventeen in each of the sides, and also an interior range of
six columns in each end. The ceiling of the western part of the
main building was supported by four interior columns, and of the
eastern end by sixteen. The entire height of the building above
its platform was sixty-five feet. The whole was enriched within
and without with matchless works of art by various artists under
the direction of Phidias—its chief wonder, however, being the
gold and ivory statue of the Virgin Goddess, the work of Phidias
himself, elsewhere described.
This magnificent structure remained entire until
the year 1687, when, during a siege of Athens by the Venetians, a
bomb fell on the devoted Parthenon, and, setting fire to the
powder that the Turks had stored there, entirely destroyed the
roof and reduced the whole building almost to ruins. The eight
columns of the eastern front, however, and several of the lateral
colonnades, are still standing; and the whole, dilapidated as it
is, retains an air of inexpressible grandeur and sublimity.
The Parthenon.
Fair Parthenon! yet still must fancy weep
For thee, thou work of nobler spirits flown.
Bright as of old the sunbeams o’er thee sleep
In all their beauty still—and thine is gone!
Empires have sunk since thou wast first revered,
And varying rites have sanctified thy shrine.
The dust is round thee of the race that reared
Thy walls, and thou—their fate must still be thine!
But when shall earth again exult to see
Visions divine like theirs renewed in aught like thee?
Lone are thy pillars now—each passing gale
Sighs o’er them as a spirit’s voice, which moaned
That loneliness, and told the plaintive tale
Of the bright synod once above them throned.
Mourn, graceful ruin! on thy sacred hill
Thy gods, thy rites, a kindred fate have shared:
Yet art thou honored in each fragment still
That wasting years and barbarous hands have spared;
Each hallowed stone, from rapine’s fury borne,
Shall wake bright dreams of thee in ages yet unborn.
Yes; in those fragments, though by time defaced,
And rude, insensate conquerors, yet remains
All that may charm th’ enlightened eye of taste,
On shores where still inspiring freedom reigns.
As vital fragrance breathes from every part
Of the crushed myrtle, or the bruised rose,
E’en thus th’ essential energy of art
There in each wreck imperishably glows!
The soul of Athens lives in every line,
Pervading brightly still the ruins of her shrine.
—MRS. HEMANS.
North of the Parthenon stood the Erechthe’um, an
irregular but beautiful structure of the Ionic order, dedicated
to the worship of Neptune and Minerva. Considerable remains of it
are still standing. In addition to the great edifices of the
Acropolis referred to, which were adorned with the most finished
paintings and sculptures, the entire platform of the hill appears
to have been covered with a vast composition of architecture and
sculpture, consisting of temples, monuments, and statues of gods
and heroes. The whole Acropolis was at once the fortress, the
sacred enclosure, and the treasury of the Athenian
people—forming the noblest museum of sculpture, the richest
gallery of painting, and the best school of architecture in the
world.
2. OTHER ARCHITECTURAL MONUMENTS OF ATHENS.
Beneath the southern wall of the Acropolis was
the Theatre of Bacchus, capable of seating thirty thousand
persons, and the seats of which, rising one above another, were
cut out of the sloping rock. Adjoining this on the east was the
Ode’um, a smaller covered theatre, built by Pericles, and so
constructed as to imitate the form of Xerxes’s tent. On the
north-east side was the Prytane’um, where were many statues, and
where citizens who had rendered service to the state were
maintained at the public expense. A short distance to the
north-west of the Acropolis, and separated from it only by some
hollow ground, was the small eminence called Areop’agus, or Hill
of Mars, at the eastern extremity of which was situated the
celebrated court of Areopagus. About a quarter of a mile
south-west stood the Pnyx, the place where the public assemblies
of Athens were held in its palmy days, and a spot that will ever
be associated with the renown of Demosthenes and other famed
orators. The steps by which the speaker mounted the rostrum, and
a tier of three seats for the audience, hewn in the solid rock,
are still visible.
The only other monument of art to which we shall
refer in this connection is the celebrated Temple of Theseus,
built of marble by Cimon as a resting-place for the bones of the
distinguished hero. [Footnote: Cimon conquered the island
of Scy’ros, the haunt of pirates, and brought thence to Athens
what were supposed to be the bones of Theseus.] It is of
the Doric order, one hundred and four feet by forty-five, and
surrounded by columns, of which there are six at each front and
thirteen at the sides. The roof, friezes, and cornices of this
temple have been but little impaired by time, and the whole is
one of the most noble remains of the ancient magnificence of
Athens, and the most nearly perfect, if not the most beautiful,
existing specimen of Grecian architecture.
The Temple of Theseus.
Here let us pause, e’en at the vestibule
Of Theseus’ fame. With what stern majesty
It rears its ponderous and eternal strength,
Still perfect, still unchanged, as on the day
When the assembled throng of multitudes
With shouts proclaimed the accomplished work, and fell
Prostrate upon their faces to adore
Its marble splendor!
How the golden gleam
Of noonday floats upon its graceful form,
Tinging each grooved shaft, and storied frieze,
And Doric triglyph! How the rays amid
The opening columns, glanced from point to point,
Stream down the gloom of the long portico!
How the long pediment,
Embrowned with shadows, frowns above, and spreads
Solemnity and reverential awe!
Proud monument of old magnificence!
Still thou survivest; nor has envious Time
Impaired thy beauty, save that it has spread
A deeper tint, and dimmed the polished glare
Of thy refulgent whiteness.
—HAYGARTH.
So much for some of the architectural wonders of
Athens. As BULWER says, “It was the great characteristic of these
works that they were entirely the creation of the people. Without
the people Pericles could not have built a temple nor engaged a
sculptor. The miracles of that day resulted from the enthusiasm
of a population yet young—full of the first ardor for the
beautiful— dedicating to the state, as to a mistress, the
trophies honorably won, or the treasures injuriously extorted,
and uniting the resources of a nation with the energy of an
individual, because the toil, the cost, were borne by those who
succeeded to the enjoyment and arrogated the glory.” TALFOURD, in
his Athenian Captive, calls all that went to make up
Athens in the days of her glory
An opening world,
Diviner than the soul of man hath yet
Been gifted to imagine—truths serene
Made visible in beauty, that shall glow
In everlasting freshness, unapproached
By mortal passion, pure amid the blood
And dust of conquests, never waxing old,
But on the stream of time, from age to age,
Casting bright images of heavenly youth
To make the world less mournful.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES.
I. THE EXPEDITION OF CYRUS, AND THE RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND.
The aid given by Cyrus the Persian to Sparta in
her contest with Athens, as related in a preceding chapter, was
bestowed with the understanding that Sparta should give him her
assistance against his elder brother, Artaxerxes Mne’mon, should
he ever require it. Accordingly, when the latter succeeded to the
Persian throne, on the death of his father, Cyrus, still governor
of the maritime region of Asia Minor, prepared to usurp his
brother’s regal power. For this purpose he raised an army of one
hundred thousand Persians, which he strengthened with an
auxiliary force of thirteen thousand Greeks, drawn principally
from the cities of Asia under the dominion of Sparta. On the
Grecian force, commanded by Cle-ar’chus, a Spartan, Cyrus placed
his main reliance for success.
With these forces Cyrus marched from Sardis, in
the spring of 401, to within seventy miles of Babylon without the
least opposition. Here, however, he was met by Artaxerxes, it the
head of nine hundred thousand men. This immense force was at
first driven back; but in the conflict that ensued Cyrus rashly
charged the guards that surrounded his brother, and was slain.
His Persian troops immediately fled, leaving the Greeks almost
alone, in the presence of an immense hostile force, and more than
a thousand miles from any friendly territory. The victorious
enemy proposed to the Grecians terms of accommodation, but,
having invited Clearchus and other leaders to a conference, they
treacherously put them to death. No alternative now remained to
the Greeks but to submit to the Persians or fight their way back
to their own land. They bravely chose the latter course—and,
selecting Xenophon, a young Athenian, for their leader, after a
four months’ march, attended with great suffering and almost
constant battling with brave and warlike tribes, ten thousand of
their number succeeded in reaching the Grecian settlements on the
Black Sea. Proclaiming their joy by loud shouts of “The sea! the
sea!” The Greek heroes gave vent to their exultation in tears and
mutual embraces.
Hence, through the continent, ten thousand Greeks
Urged a retreat, whose glory not the prime
Of victories can reach. Deserts in vain
Opposed their course; and hostile lands, unknown;
And deep, rapacious floods, dire banked with death;
And mountains, in whose jaws destruction grinned;
Hunger and toil; Armenian snows and storms;
And circling myriads still of barbarous foes.
Greece in their view, and glory yet untouched,
Their steady column pierced the scattering herds
Which a whole empire poured; and held its way
Triumphant, by the sage, exalted chief
Fired and sustained.
O light, and force of mind,
Almost mighty in severe extremes!
The sea at last from Colchian mountains seen,
Kind-hearted transport round their captains threw
The soldiers’ fond embrace; o’erflowed their eyes
With tender floods, and loosed the general voice
To cries resounding loud—”The sea! the sea!”
—THOMSON.
Xenophon, who afterward became an historian of
his country, has left an admirable narrative of this expedition,
and “The Retreat of the Ten Thousand,” in his Anab’asis,
written with great clearness and singular modesty. Referring to
the expedition, and to the historian’s account of it, DR. CURTIUS
makes the following interesting observations:
“Although this military expedition possesses no
immediate significance for political history, yet it is of high
importance, not only for our knowledge of the East, but also for
that of the Greek character; and the accurate description which
we owe to Xenophon is, therefore, one of the most valuable
documents of antiquity. We see a band of Greeks of the most
various origin, torn out of all their ordinary spheres of life,
in a strange quarter of the globe, in a long complication of
incessant movements, and of situations ever-varying and full of
peril, in which the real nature of these men could not but
display itself with the most perfect truthfulness. This army is a
typical chart, in many colors, of the Greek population—a
picture, on a small scale, of the whole people, with all its
virtues and faults, its qualities of strength and of weakness—a
wandering political community, which, according to home usage,
holds its assemblies and passes its resolutions, and at the same
time a wild and not easily manageable band of free-lances. They
are men in full measure agitated by the unquiet spirit of the
times, which had destroyed in them their affection for their
native land; and yet how closely they cling to its most ancient
traditions! Visions in dream and omens, sent by the gods, decide
the most important resolutions, just as in the Homeric camp
before Troy: most assiduously the sacrifices are lit, the
pæans sung, altars erected, and games celebrated, in honor
of the savior gods, when at last the aspect of the longed-for sea
animates afresh their vigor and their courage.
“This multitude has been brought together by love
of lucre and quest of adventure; and yet in the critical moment
there manifest themselves a lively sense of honor and duty, a
lofty heroic spirit, and a sure tact in perceiving what counsels
are the best. Here, too, is visible the mutual jealousy existing
among the several tribes of the nation; but the feeling of their
belonging together, the consciousness of national unity, prevail
over all; and the great mass is capable of sufficient good-sense
and self-denial to subordinate itself to those who, by
experience, intelligence, and moral courage, attest themselves as
fitted for command. And how very remarkable it is that in this
mixed multitude of Greeks it is an Athenian who by his qualities
towers above all the rest, and becomes the real preserver of the
entire army! Xenophon had only accompanied the army as a
volunteer; yet it was he who, obeying an inner call, re-awakened
a higher, a Hellenic consciousness, courage, and prudence among
his comrades, and who brought about the first salutary
resolutions. Possessing the Athenian superiority of culture which
enabled him to serve these warriors as spokesman, negotiator, and
general, to him it was essentially due that, in spite of
unspeakable trials, they finally reached the coast.”
[Footnote: “History of Greece,” vol. iv., pp. 191,
192.]
II. THE SUPREMACY OF SPARTA.
On the fall of Athens, Sparta became the mistress
of Greece. Her power and his own wealth induced Lysander to
appear again in public life. He first attempted to overthrow the
two regal families of Sparta, and, by making the crown an
elective office, secure his own accession to it. But he failed in
this, although, on the death of A’gis, King of Sparta, he
succeeded in setting aside Leo-tych’i-des, the son and rightful
successor of Agis, and giving the office to Agesila’us, the late
king’s brother. The government of Sparta now became far more
oppressive than that of Athens had been, and it was not long
before some of the Grecian states under her sway united in a
league against her.
The part which the Greek cities of Asia took in
the expedition of Cyrus involved them in a war with Persia, in
which they were aided by the Spartans. Agesila’us entered Asia
with a considerable force (396 B.C.), and in the following year
he defeated the Persians in a great battle on the plains of
Sardis, in Lydia. But in 394 the Spartan king was called home to
avert the dangers which threatened his country in a war that had
been fomented by the Persian king in order to save his dominions
from the ravages of the Spartans. The King of Persia had supplied
Athens with a fleet which defeated the Spartan navy at Cni’dus,
and Persian gold rebuilt the walls of Athens. A battle soon
followed between the Spartans on one side and the Thebans and
Athenians on the other, in which the former were defeated and
Lysander was slain. On the other hand, Athens and her allies were
defeated, in the same year, in the vicinity of Corinth, and on
the plains of Corone’a. Finally, after the war had continued
eight years, and Sparta had virtually lost her maritime power,
the peace of Antal’cidas, as it is called, was concluded with
Persia, at the instance of Sparta, and was ratified by all the
states engaged in the contest (387 B.C.).
By the treaty with Persia, Athens regained three
of the islands she had been obliged to relinquish to Sparta under
Lysander; but the Greek cities in Asia were given up to Persia,
and both Athens and Sparta lost their former allies. It was the
unworthy jealousy of the Grecians, which the Persian king knew
how to stimulate, that prompted them to give up to a barbarian
the free cities of Asia; and this is the darkest shade in the
picture. Though Sparta was the most strongly in favor of the
terms of the treaty, yet Athens was the greatest gainer, for she
once more became an independent and powerful state.
It was not long before ambition, and the
resentment of past injuries, involved Sparta in new wars. When
her thirty years’ truce with Mantine’a had expired, she compelled
that city, which had formerly been an unwilling ally, to throw
down her walls, and dismember her territory into the four or five
villages out of which it had been formed. Each of these divisions
was now left unfortified, and placed under a separate
oligarchical government. Sparta did this under the pretext that
the Mantine’ans had supplied one of her enemies with provisions
during the preceding war, and had evaded their share of service
in the Spartan army. The jealousy of Sparta was next aroused
against the rising power of Olynthus, a powerful confederacy in
the south-eastern part of Macedonia, which had become engaged in
hostilities with some rival cities; and the Spartans readily
accepted an invitation of one of the latter to send an army to
its aid.
The expedition against Olynthus led to an affair
of much importance. As one of the divisions of the Spartan army
was marching through the Theban territories it turned aside, and
the Spartan general treacherously seized upon the Cadme’a, or
Theban citadel, although a state of peace existed between Thebes
and Sparta (382 B.C.). The political morality of Sparta is
clearly exhibited in the arguments by which the Spartan king
justified this palpable and treacherous breach of the treaty of
Antal’cidas. He declared that the only question for the Spartan
people to consider was, whether they were gainers or losers by
the transaction. The assertion made by the Athenians on a prior
occasion was confirmed—that, “of all states, Sparta had most
glaringly shown by her conduct that in her political transactions
she measured honor by inclination, and justice by
expediency.”
On the seizure of the Theban citadel the most
patriotic of the citizens fled to Athens, while a faction upheld
by a Spartan garrison ruled the place. Thebes now became a member
of the Spartan alliance, and furnished a force for the war
against Olynthus. After a struggle of four years Olynthus
capitulated, the Olynthian Confederacy was thereby dissolved, and
the cities belonging to it were compelled to join the Spartan
alliance. As a modern historian observes, “Sparta thus inflicted
a great blow upon Hellas; for the Olynthian Confederacy might
have served as a counterpoise to the growing power of Macedon,
destined soon to overwhelm the rest of Greece.” The power of
Sparta had now attained its greatest height, but, as she was
leagued on all sides with the enemies of Grecian freedom, her
unpopularity was great, and her supremacy was doomed to a rapid
decline.
III. THE RISE AND FALL OF THEBES.
Thebes had been nearly four years in the hands of
the Spartans when a few determined residents of the city rose
against their tyrants, and, aided by the exiles who had taken
refuge at Athens, and by some Athenian volunteers, they compelled
the Spartan garrison to capitulate (379 B.C.). At the head of the
revolution were two Theban citizens, Pelop’idas and Epaminon’das,
young men of noble birth and fortune, already distinguished for
their patriotism and private virtues. They are characterized by
the poet THOMSON, as
Equal to the best; the Theban Pair
Whose virtues, in heroic concord joined,
Their country raised to freedom, empire, fame.
By their abilities they raised Thebes, hitherto
of but little political importance, to the first rank in power
among the Grecian states. They have been thus described by the
historian CURTIUS: “Pelopidas was the heroic champion and pioneer
who, like Miltiades and Cimon, with full energy accomplished the
tasks immediately at hand; while Epaminondas was a statesman
whose glance took a wider range, who organized the state at home,
and established its foreign relations upon a thoroughly
thought-out plan. He created the bases of the power of Thebes, as
Themistocles and Aristides had those of the power of Athens; and
he maintained them, so long as he lived, by the vigor of his
mind, like another Pericles. And, indeed, it would be difficult
to find in the entire course of Greek history any other two great
statesmen who, in spite of differences of character and of
outward conditions of life, resembled each other so greatly, and
were, as men, so truly the peers of each other, as Pericles and
Epaminondas.”
The successes of Thebes revived the jealousy and
distrust of Athens, which concluded a peace with Sparta, and
subsequently formed an alliance with her. But the Thebans
continued to be successful, and at Teg’yra Pelopidas defeated a
greatly superior force and killed the two Spartan generals; while
at Leuc’tra Epaminondas, with a force of six thousand Thebans,
defeated the Lacedæmonian army of more than double that
number (371 B.C.). Leuctra has been called “the Marathon of the
Thebans,” as their defensive war was turned by it into a war of
conquest. Aided now by the Arca’dians, Ar’gives, and E’leans,
Epaminondas invaded Laconia, appearing before the gates of
Sparta, where a hostile force had not been seen in five hundred
years; but he made no attempt upon the city, and, after laying
waste with fire and sword the valley of the Euro’tas, he retraced
his steps to the frontiers of Arcadia. Another expedition was
undertaken against the Peloponnesus in 367 B.C., and the cities
of Achaia immediately submitted, becoming the allies of Thebes.
In 362 the Peloponnesus was invaded for the last time, and at
Mantinea Epaminondas defeated the Spartans in the most sanguinary
contest ever fought among Grecians; but he fell in the moment of
victory, and the glory of Thebes departed with him. Before his
death, having been told that those whom he intended to be his
successors in command had been slain, he directed the Thebans to
make peace. His advice was followed, and a general peace was soon
after established, on the condition that each state should retain
its respective possessions.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SICILIAN GREEKS.
Before proceeding to the history of the downfall
of Greece, and her subjugation by a foreign power—a result that
soon followed the events just narrated—we turn aside to notice
the affairs of the Sicilian Greeks, as more especially presented
in the history of Syracuse, in all respects the strongest and
most prominent of the Sicilian cities.
HIERO.
On the death of Ge’lon, despot of Syracuse, a
year after the battle of Him’era, the government fell into the
hands of his brother Hi’ero, a man of great energy and
determination. He founded the city of Ætna, of which PINDAR
says:
That city, founded strong
In liberty divine,
Measured by the Spartan line,
Has Hiero ‘stablish’d for his heritage;
To whose firm-planted colony belong
Their mother-country’s laws,
From many a distant age.
He also added many cities to his government, and
his power was not inferior to that of Gelon. The city of
Cu’mæ, on the Italian coast, being harassed by the
Carthaginians, the aid of Hiero was solicited by its citizens,
and he sent a fleet which severely defeated and almost destroyed
the squadron of their enemies. Says PINDAR of this event:
That leader of the Syracusan host,
With gallies swiftly-rushing, them pursued;
And they his onset rued,
When on the Cuman coast
He dashed their youth in gulfy waves below,
And rescued Greece from heavy servitude.
Hiero was likewise a liberal patron of literature
and the arts, inviting to his court many of the eminent poets and
philosophers of his time, including Pindar, Simon’ides,
Epichar’mus, Æs’chylus, and others; but his many great and
noble qualities were alloyed by insatiable cupidity and ambition,
and he became noted for “his cruel and rapacious government, and
as the organizer of that systematic espionage which broke up all
freedom of speech among his subjects.” Although the eminent men
who visited his court have much to say in praise of Hiero,
Pindar, especially, was too honest and independent to ignore his
faults. As GROTE says, “Pindar’s indirect admonitions and hints
sufficiently attest the real character of Hiero.” Of these, the
following lines from the Pythian ode may be taken as a
sample:
The lightest word that falls from thee, O King!
Becomes a mighty and momentous thing:
O’er many placed as arbiter on high,
Many thy goings watchful see.
Thy ways on every side
A host of faithful witnesses descry;
Then let thy liberal temper be thy guide.
If ever to thine ear
Fame’s softest whisper yet was dear,
Stint not thy bounty’s flowing tide:
Stand at the helm of state; full to the gale
Spread thy wind-gathering sail.
Friend! let not plausive avarice spread
Its lures, to tempt thee from the path of fame:
For know, the glory of a name
Follows the mighty dead.
—Trans. by ELTON.
Hiero was succeeded on his death, in 467 B.C., by
his brother Thrasybu’lus; but the latter’s tyranny caused a
popular revolt, and after being defeated in a battle with his
subjects he was expelled from the country. His expulsion was
followed by the extinction of the Gelonian dynasty at Syracuse,
and the institution of a popular government there and in other
Sicilian cities. These free governments, however, gave rise to
internal revolts and wars that continued many months; and finally
a general congress of the different cities was held, which
succeeded in adjusting the difficulties that had disturbed the
peace of all Sicily. The various cities now became
independent—though it is probable that the governments of all of
them continued to be more or less disturbed—and were soon
distinguished for their material and intellectual prosperity.
Syracuse maintained herself as the first city in power; and in
this condition of prosperity the Sicilian cities were found at
the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war.
DIONYESIUS THE ELDER.
Of the Athenian league and expedition against
Syracuse we have already given some account. Soon after the
termination of this contest the Constitution of Syracuse was
rendered still more democratic by the adoption of a new code of
laws, prepared by Di’ocles, an eminent citizen, who became the
director of the government. But the Carthaginians now again
invaded Sicily, and established themselves over its entire
western half. Taking advantage of the popular alarm at these
aggressions, and of the ill success of Diocles and the Syracusan
generals in opposing them, Diony’sius the Elder, then a young
man, of low birth, but brave, determined, and talented, having
been raised by popular favor to the generalship of the Syracusan
army, subsequently made himself despot of the city (405 B.C.).
Dionysius ruled vigorously, but with extreme tyranny, for
thirty-eight years. By the year 384 he had extended his power
over nearly all Sicily and a part of Magna Grecia, and
under his sway Syracuse became one of the most powerful empires
on earth. PLUTARCH relates that Dionysius boasted that he
bequeathed to his son an empire “fastened by chains of adamant.”
Like Hiero, Dionysius was a lover of literature, and sought to
gain distinction by his poetical compositions, some of which won
prizes at Athens. He also invited Plato to his court; but the
philosopher’s moral conversations were distasteful to the tyrant,
who finally sold him into slavery, from which he was redeemed by
a friend.
It was during the reign of Dionysius the Elder
that occurred that memorable incident in the lives of Damon and
Pythias by which Dionysius himself is best remembered, and which
has passed into history as illustrative of the truest and noblest
friendship. Damon and Pythias were distinguished Syracusans, and
both were Pythagore’ans. Pythias, a strong republican, having
been seized for calling Dionysius a tyrant, and being condemned
to death for attempting to stab him, requested a brief respite in
order to arrange his affairs, promising to procure a friend to
take his place and suffer death if he should not return. Damon
gave himself up as surety, and Pythias was allowed to depart.
Just as Damon was about to be led to execution, Pythias, who had
been detained by unforeseen circumstances, returned to accept his
fate and save his friend. Dionysius was so struck by these proofs
of virtue and magnanimity on the part of the two friends that he
set both of them free, and requested to be admitted into their
friendship. The subject has been repeatedly dramatized, and has
formed the theme of numerous separate poems. Schiller has a
ballad on the subject; but he amplifies the incidents of the
original story, and substitutes other names in place of Damon and
Pythias. The following are the first three and the last three
verses from SCHILLER:
The Hostage.
The tyrant Di’onys to seek,
Stern Moe’rus with his poniard crept;
The watchful guards upon him swept;
The grim King marked his changeless cheek:
“What wouldst thou with thy poniard? Speak!”
“The city from the tyrant free!”
“The death-cross shall thy guerdon be.”
“I am prepared for death, nor pray,”
Replied that haughty man, “to live;
Enough if thou one grace wilt give:
For three brief suns the death delay,
To wed my sister—leagues away;
I boast one friend whose life for mine,
If I should fail the cross, is thine.”
The tyrant mused, and smiled, and said,
With gloomy craft, “So let it be;
Three days I will vouchsafe to thee.
But mark—if, when the time be sped,
Thou fail’st, thy surety dies instead.
His life shall buy thine own release;
Thy guilt atoned, my wrath shall cease.”
The sun sinks down—the gate’s in view,
The cross looms dismal on the ground—
The eager crowd gape murmuring round.
His friend is bound the cross unto.
Crowd—guards—all—bursts he through;
“Me! Doomsman, me,” he shouts, “alone!
His life is rescued—lo, mine own!”
Amazement seized the circling ring!
Linked in each other’s arms the pair—
Weeping for joy, yet anguish there!
Moist every eye that gazed: they bring
The wondrous tidings to the King—
His breast man’s heart at last hath known,
And the Friends stand before his throne.
Long silent he, and wondering long,
Gazed on the pair. “In peace depart,
Victors, ye have subdued my heart!
Truth is no dream! its power is strong.
Give grace to him who owns his wrong!
‘Tis mine your suppliant now to be:
Ah, let the band of Love—be THREE!”
—Trans. by BULWER.
Dionysius the Younger succeeded to the government
of Syracuse in 367, but he was incompetent to the task; and his
tyranny and debauchery brought about his temporary overthrow, ten
years later, by Dion, his father’s brother-in-law. Dion had
enjoyed unusual favors under Dionysius the Elder, and was now a
man of wealth and high position, as well as of great energy and
marked mental capacities. For his talents he was largely indebted
to Plato, under whose teachings he became imbued “with that sense
of regulated polity, and submission of individual will to fixed
laws, which floated in the atmosphere of Grecian talk and
literature, and stood so high in Grecian morality.” In one of his
letters Plato says, “When I explained the principles of
philosophy and humanity to Dion, I little thought that I was
insensibly opening a way to the subversion of tyranny!”
Long before the death of Dionysius the Elder,
Dion had conceived the idea of liberating Syracuse from despotism
and establishing an improved constitutional policy, originated by
himself; and, on becoming the chief adviser of the young
Dionysius, he tried to convince the latter of the necessity of
reforming himself and his government. Although at first favorably
impressed with the plans of Dion, the young monarch subsequently
became jealous of his adviser and expelled him from the country.
Gathering a few troops from various quarters, Dion returned to
Sicily ten years after, and, aided by a revolt in Syracuse, he
soon made himself master of the city. Dionysius had meanwhile
retired to Ortyg’ia, and soon left Sicily for Italy. But the
success of Dion was short-lived. “Too good for a despot, and yet
unfit for a popular leader, he could not remain long in the
precarious position he occupied.” Both his dictatorship and his
life came to an end in 354. He became the victim of a conspiracy
originating with his most intimate friend, and was assassinated
in his own dwelling.
Dionysius soon after returned to Syracuse, from
the government of which he was finally expelled by Timo’leon, a
Corinthian, who had been sent from Corinth, at the request of
some exiled Syracusans, to the relief of their native city (343
B.C.). Timoleon made himself master of the almost deserted
Syracuse, restored it to some degree of its former glory, checked
the aspiring power of Carthage by defeating one of its largest
armies, crushed the petty despots of Sicily, and restored nearly
the whole island to a state of liberty and order. The restoration
of liberty to Syracuse by Timoleon was followed by many years of
unexampled prosperity. Having achieved the purpose with which he
left Corinth, Timoleon at once resigned his command and became a
private citizen of Syracuse. But he became the adviser of the
Syracusans in their government, and the arbitrator of their
differences, enjoying to a good age “what Xenophon calls ‘that
good, not human, but divine command over willing men, given
manifestly to persons of genuine and highly-trained temperance of
character.'”
HIERO II.
In 317, Agath’ocles, a bold adventurer of
Syracuse, usurped its authority by the murder of several thousand
citizens, and for twenty-eight years maintained his power,
extending his dominion over a large portion of Sicily, and even
gaining successes in Africa. After his death, in 289, successive
tyrants ruled, until, in 270, Hiero II., a descendant of Gelon,
and commander of the Syracusan army, obtained the supreme power.
Meantime the Carthaginians had gained a decided ascendancy in
Sicily, and in 265 the Romans, alarmed by the movements of so
powerful a neighbor, and being invited to Sicily to assist a
portion of the people of Messa’na, commenced what is known in
history as the first Punic war. Hiero allied himself with the
Carthaginians, and the combined armies proceeded to lay siege to
Messana; but they were attacked and defeated by Ap’pius
Clau’dius, the Roman consul, and Hiero, panic-stricken, fled to
Syracuse. Seeing his territory laid waste by the Romans, he
prudently made a treaty with them, in 263. He remained their
steadfast ally; and when the Romans became sole masters of Sicily
they gave him the government of a large part of the island. His
administration was mild, yet firm and judicious, lasting in all
fifty-four years. With him ended the prosperity and independence
of Syracuse.
ARCHIME’DES.
It was during the reign of Hiero II. that
Archimedes, a native of Syracuse, and a supposed distant relation
of the king, made the scientific discoveries and inventions that
have secured for him the honor of being the most celebrated
mathematician of antiquity. He was equally skilled in astronomy,
geometry, mechanics, hydrostatics, and optics. His discovery of
the principle of specific gravity is related in the following
well-known story: Hiero, suspecting that his golden crown had
been fraudulently alloyed with silver, put it into the hands of
Archimedes for examination. The latter, entering a bath-tub one
day, and noticing that he displaced a quantity of water equal in
bulk to that of his body, saw that this discovery would give him
a mode of determining the bulk and specific gravity of King
Hiero’s crown. Leaping out of the tub in his delight, he ran
home, crying, “Eure’ka! eureka!” I have found it! I have
found it!
To show Hiero the wonderful effects of mechanical
power, Archimedes is said to have drawn some distance toward him,
by the use of ropes and pulleys, a large galley that lay on the
shore; and during the siege of his native city by the Romans, his
great mechanical skill was displayed in the invention and
manufacture of stupendous engines of defence. Later historians
than Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch say that on this occasion,
also, he burnt many Roman ships by concentrating upon them the
sun’s rays from numerous mirrors. SCHILLER gives the following
poetic account of a visit, to Archimedes, by a young scholar who
asked to be taught the art that had won the great master’s
fame:
To Archimedes once a scholar came:
“Teach me;” he said, “the Art that won thy fame;
The godlike Art which gives such boons to toil,
And showers such fruit upon thy native soil;
The godlike Art that girt the town when all
Rome’s vengeance burst in thunder on the wall!”
“Thou call’st Art godlike—it is so, in truth,
And was,” replied the master to the youth,
“Ere yet its secrets were applied to use—
Ere yet it served beleaguered Syracuse.
Ask’st thou from Art but what the Art is worth?
The fruit? For fruit go cultivate the Earth.
He who the goddess would aspire unto
Must not the goddess as the woman woo!”
—Trans. by BULWER.
Among the discoveries of Archimedes was that of
the ratio between the cylinder and the inscribed sphere, and he
requested his friends to place the figures of a sphere and
cylinder on his tomb. This was done, and, one hundred and
thirty-six years after, it enabled Cicero, the Roman orator, to
find the resting-place of the illustrious inventor. The story of
his visit to Syracuse, and his search for the tomb of Archimedes,
is told by the HON. R C. WINTHROP in a lecture entitled
Archimedes and Franklin, from which we quote as
follows:
Visit of Cicero to the Grave of Archimedes.
“While Cicero was quæstor in Sicily—the
first public office which he ever held, and the only one to which
he was then eligible, being but just thirty years old—he paid a
visit to Syracuse, then among the greatest cities of the world.
The magistrates of the city of course waited on him at once, to
offer their services in showing him the lions of the place, and
requested him to specify anything which he would like
particularly to see. Doubtless they supposed that he would ask
immediately to be conducted to some one of their magnificent
temples, that he might behold and admire those splendid works of
art with which —notwithstanding that Marcellus had made it his
glory to carry not a few of them away with him for the decoration
of the Imperial City—Syracuse still abounded, and which soon
after tempted the cupidity, and fell a prey to the rapacity, of
the infamous Verres.
“Or, haply, they may have thought that he would
be curious to see and examine the Ear of Dionysius, as it was
called—a huge cavern, cut out of the solid rock in the shape of
a human ear, two hundred and fifty feet long and eighty feet
high, in which that execrable tyrant confined all persons who
came within the range of his suspicion, and which was so
ingeniously contrived and constructed that Dionysius, by applying
his ear to a small hole, where the sounds were collected as upon
a tympanum, could catch every syllable that was uttered in the
cavern below, and could deal out his proscription and his
vengeance accordingly upon all who might dare to dispute his
authority or to complain of his cruelty. Or they may have
imagined, perhaps, that he would be impatient to visit at once
the sacred fountain of Arethusa; and the seat of those Sicilian
Muses whom Virgil so soon after invoked in commencing that most
inspired of all uninspired compositions, which Pope has so nobly
paraphrased in his glowing and glorious Eclogue—the
‘Messiah.’
“To their great astonishment, however, Cicero’s
first request was that they would take him to see the tomb of
Archimedes. To his own still greater astonishment, as we
may well believe, they told him in reply that they knew nothing
about the tomb of Archimedes, and had no idea where it was to be
found, and they even denied that any such tomb was still
remaining among them. But Cicero understood perfectly well what
he was talking about. He remembered the exact description of the
tomb. He remembered the very verses which had been inscribed on
it. He remembered the sphere and the cylinder which Archimedes
had himself requested to have wrought upon it, as the chosen
emblems of his eventful life. And the great orator forthwith
resolved to make search for it himself. Accordingly, he rambled
out into the place of their ancient sepulchres, and, after a
careful investigation, he came at last to a spot overgrown with
shrubs and bushes, where presently he descried the top of a small
column just rising above the branches. Upon this little column
the sphere and the cylinder were at length found carved, the
inscription was painfully deciphered, and the tomb of Archimedes
stood revealed to the reverent homage of the illustrious Roman
quæstor.
“This was in the year 76 before the birth of our
Savior. Archimedes died about the year 212 before Christ. One
hundred and thirty six years only had thus elapsed since the
death of this celebrated person, before his tombstone was buried
beneath briers and brambles; and before the place and even the
existence of it were forgotten by the magistrates of the very
city of which he was so long the proudest ornament in peace, and
the most effective defender in war. What a lesson to human pride,
what a commentary on human gratitude was here! It is an incident
almost precisely like that which the admirable and venerable DR.
WATTS imagined or imitated, as the topic of one of his most
striking and familiar Lyrics:
“‘Theron, among his travels, found
A broken statue on the ground;
And searching onward as he went,
He traced a ruined monument.
Mould, moss, and shades had overgrown
The sculpture of the crumbling stone;
Yet ere he passed, with much ado,
He guessed and spelled out, Sci-pi-o.
“Enough,” he cried; “I’ll drudge no more
In turning the dull Stoics o’er;
For when I feel my virtue fail,
And my ambitious thoughts prevail,
I’ll take a turn among the tombs,
And see whereto all glory comes.”
I do not learn, however, that Cicero was cured of his eager vanity and his
insatiate love of fame by this “turn” among the Syracusan tombs. He was then
only just at the threshold of his proud career, and he went back to pursue it
to its bloody end with unabated zeal, and with an ambition only extinguishable
with his life.'”
CHAPTER XV.
THE MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY.
I. THE SACRED WAR.
Four years after the battle of Mantine’a the
Grecian states again became involved in domestic hostilities,
known as the Sacred War, the second in Grecian history to which
that title was applied, the first having been carried on against
the inhabitants of Crissa, on the northern shore of the
Corinthian Gulf, in the time of Solon. The causes of this second
Sacred War were briefly these: The Pho’cians, allies of Sparta
against Thebes, had taken into cultivation a portion of the plain
of Delphos, sacred to Apollo; and the Thebans caused them to be
accused of sacrilege before the Amphictyonic Council, which
condemned them to pay a heavy fine. The Phocians refused
obedience, and, encouraged by the Spartans, on whom a similar
penalty had been imposed for their wrongful occupation of the
Theban capital, they took up arms to resist the decree, and
plundered the sacred Temple of Delphos to obtain means for
carrying on the war.
The Thebans, Thessa’lians, and nearly all the
states of northern Greece leagued against the Phocians, while
Athens and Sparta declared in their favor. After the war had
continued five years a new power was brought forward on the
theatre of Grecian history, in the person of Philip, who had
recently established himself on the throne of Maç’edon,
and to whom some of the Thessalians applied for aid against the
Phocians. The interference of Philip forms an important epoch in
Grecian affairs. “The most desirable of all conditions for Greece
would have been,” says THIRLWALL, “to be united in a confederacy
strong enough to prevent intestine warfare among its members, and
so constituted as to guard against all unnecessary encroachment
on their independence. But the time had passed by when the
supremacy of any state could either have been willingly
acknowledged by the rest, or imposed upon them by force; and the
hope of any favorable change in the general condition of Greece
was now become fainter than ever.” Wasted by her internal
dissensions, Greece was now about to suffer their natural
results, and we interrupt our narrative to briefly trace the
growth of that foreign power which, unexpectedly to Greece,
became its master.
II. SKETCH OF MACEDONIA.
Maçedon—or Macedo’nia—whose boundaries
varied greatly at different times, had its south-eastern borders
on the Ægean Sea, while farther north it was bounded by the
river Strymon, which separated it from Thrace, and on the south
by Thessaly and Epirus. On the west Macedonia embraced, at times,
many of the Illyrian tribes which bordered on the Adriatic. On
the north the natural boundary was the mountain chain of
Hæ’mus. The principal river of Macedonia was the Ax’ius
(now the Vardar), which fell into the Thermaic Gulf, now called
the Gulf of Salonica.
The history of Macedonia down to the time of
Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, is involved in much
obscurity. The early Macedonians appear to have been an Illyrian
tribe, different in race and language from the Hellenes or
Greeks; but Herodotus states that the Macedonian monarchy was
founded by Greeks from Argos; and, according to Greek writers,
twelve or fifteen Grecian princes reigned there before the
accession of Philip, who took charge of the government about the
year 360 B.C., not as monarch, but as guardian of the infant son
of his elder brother.
Philip had previously passed several years at
Thebes as a hostage, where he eagerly availed himself of the
excellent opportunities which that city afforded for the
acquisition of various kinds of knowledge. He successfully
cultivated the study of the Greek language; and in the society of
such generals and statesmen as Epaminondas, Pelopidas, and their
friends, became acquainted with the details of the military
tactics of the Greeks, and learned the nature and working of
their democratical institutions. Thus, with the superior mental
and physical endowments which nature had given him, he became
eminently fitted for the part which he afterward bore in the
intricate game of Grecian politics.
After Philip had successfully defended the throne
of Maçedon during several years, in behalf of his nephew,
his military successes enabled him to assume the kingly title,
probably with the unanimous consent of both the army and the
nation. He annexed several Thracian towns to his dominions,
reduced the Illyrians and other nations on his northern and
western borders, and was at times an ally, and at others an
enemy, of Athens. At length, during the Sacred War against the
Phocians, the invitation which he received from the Thessalian
allies of Thebes, as already noticed, afforded him a pretext,
which he had long coveted, for a more active interference in the
affairs of his southern neighbors.
III. INTERFERENCE OF PHILIP OF MACEDON.
Of all the Grecian states, Athens alone had
succeeded in regaining some of her former power, and she now
became the leader in the struggle with Macedonia. In response to
the invitation extended to him, Philip entered Thessaly on his
southern march, but was at first repulsed by the Phocians and
their allies, and obliged to retire to his own territory. He soon
returned, however, at the head of a more numerous army, defeated
the enemy in a decisive engagement near the Gulf of
Pag’asæ, and would have marched upon Phocis at once to
terminate the war, but he found the Pass of Thermopylæ
strongly guarded by the Athenians, and thought it prudent to
withdraw his forces.
The Sacred War still lingered, although the
Phocians desired peace; but the revengeful spirit of the Thebans
was not allayed, and Philip was again urged to crush the
profaners of the national religion. It was at this period that
the great Athenian orator, Demosthenes, came forward with the
first of those orations against Philip and his supposed policy,
which, from their subject, received the name of “the
Philippics”—a title since commonly given to any discourse or
declamation abounding in acrimonious invective. The penetration
of Demosthenes enabled him easily to divine the ambitious plans
of Philip, and as he considered him the enemy of the liberties of
Athens and of Greece, he sought to rouse his countrymen against
him. His discourse was essentially practical. As a writer has
said, “He alarms, but encourages his countrymen; Points out both
their weakness and their strength; rouses them to a sense of
danger, and shows the way to meet it; recommends not any
extraordinary efforts, for which at this moment there was no
urgent necessity, but unfolds a scheme, simple and feasible,
suiting the occasion, and calculated to lay the foundation of
better things.”
In the following language he censures the indolence and supineness of the
Athenians:
The First Philippic of Demosthenes.
“When, O my countrymen I will you exert your
vigor? When roused by some event? When forced by some necessity?
What, then, are we to think of our present condition? To freemen,
the disgrace attending our misconduct is, in my opinion, the most
urgent necessity. Or, say, is it your sole ambition to wander
through the public places, each inquiring of the other, ‘What new
advices?’ Can anything be more new than that a man of
Maçedon should conquer the Athenians and give law to
Greece? ‘Is Philip dead? No, but he is sick.’ [Footnote:
Philip had received a severe wound, which was followed by a fit
of sickness; hence these rumors and inquiries of the Athenians.
“Longinus quotes this whole passage as a beautiful instance of
those pathetic figures which give life and force and energy to an
oration.”] How are you concerned in these rumors? Suppose
he should meet some fatal stroke; you would soon raise up another
Philip, if your interests are thus regarded. For it is not to his
own strength that he so much owes his elevation as to our
supineness. And should some accident affect him—should Fortune,
who hath ever been more careful of the state than we ourselves,
now repeat her favors (and may she thus crown them!) —be assured
of this, that by being on the spot, ready to take advantage of
the confusion, you will everywhere be absolute masters; but in
your present disposition, even if a favorable juncture should
present you with Amphip’olis, [Footnote: Amphipolis, a
city of Thrace founded by the Athenians, had fallen into the
hands of Philip after a siege, and the Athenians had nothing more
at heart than its recovery.] you could not take
possession of it while this suspense prevails in your
councils.
“Some of you wander about crying, ‘Philip hath
joined with the Lacedæmonians, and they are concerting the
destruction of Thebes, and the dissolution of some free states.’
Others assure us that he has sent an embassy to the king;
[Footnote: The King of Persia, generally called the
king by the Greeks.] others, that he is fortifying
places in Illyria. Thus we all go about framing our several
stories. I do believe, indeed, Athenians, that he is intoxicated
with his greatness, and does entertain his imagination with many
such visionary prospects, as he sees no power rising to oppose
him, and is elated with his success. But I cannot be persuaded
that he hath so taken his measures that the weakest among us know
what he is next to do—for the silliest are those who spread
these rumors. Let us dismiss such talk, and remember only that
Philip is our enemy—that he has spoiled us of our dominions,
that we have long been subject to his insolence, that whatever we
expected to be done for us by others has proved against us, that
all the resource left us is in ourselves, and that, if we are not
inclined to carry our arms abroad, we may be forced to engage at
home. Let us be persuaded of this, and then we shall come to a
proper determination; then we shall be freed from idle
conjectures. We need not be solicitous to know what particular
events will happen; we need but be convinced that nothing good
can happen unless you attend to your duty, and are willing to act
as becomes you.
“As for me, never have I courted favor by
speaking what I am not convinced is for your good; and now I have
spoken my whole mind frankly and unreservedly. I could have
wished, knowing the advantage of good counsel to you, that I were
equally certain of its advantage to the counselor; so should I
have spoken with more satisfaction. Now, with an uncertainty of
the consequence to myself, but with a conviction that you will
benefit by following my advice, I freely proffer it. And, of all
those opinions which are offered for your acceptance, may that be
chosen which will best advance the general weal.” —LELAND’S
trans.
The most prominent of the particular acts
specified by Demosthenes as indispensable to the Athenian
welfare, were the fitting out of a fleet of fifty vessels, to be
kept ready to sail, at a moment’s notice, to any exposed portion
of the Athenian sea-coast; and the establishment of a permanent
land force of twenty-two hundred men, one-fourth to be citizens
of Athens. The expense was to be met by taxation, a system of
which he also presented for adoption. MR. GROTE says of the first
Philippic of Demosthenes:
“It is not merely a splendid piece of oratory,
emphatic and forcible in its appeal to the emotions; bringing the
audience, by many different roads, to the main conviction which
the orator seeks to impress; profoundly animated with genuine
Pan-hellenic patriotism, and with the dignity of that pre-Grecian
world now threatened by a monarch from without. It has other
merits besides, not less important in themselves, and lying more
immediately within the scope of the historian. We find
Demosthenes, yet only thirty years old—young in political
life—and thirteen years before the battle of Chærone’a,
taking accurate measure of the political relations between Athens
and Philip; examining those relations during the past, pointing
out how they had become every year more unfavorable, and
foretelling the dangerous contingencies of the future, unless
better precautions were taken; exposing with courageous frankness
not only the past mismanagement of public men, but also those
defective dispositions of the people themselves wherein such
mismanagement had its root; lastly, after fault found,
adventuring on his own responsibility to propose specific
measures of correction, and urging upon reluctant citizens a
painful imposition of personal hardship as well as of
taxation.”
Of course Demosthenes and his policy were opposed
by a strong party, and his warnings and exhortations produced but
little effect. The latter result was largely due to the position
of the Athenian general and statesman Pho’cion—the last Athenian
in whom these two functions were united—who generally acted with
the peace-party. Unlike many prominent members of that party,
however, Phocion was pure and patriotic in his motives, and a man
of the strictest integrity. It was his unquestioned probity and
his peculiar disinterestedness that gave him such influence with
the people. As an orator, too, he commanded attention by his
striking and pithy brevity. “He knew so well,” says GROTE, “on
what points to strike, that his telling brevity, strengthened by
the weight of character and position, cut through the fine
oratory of Demosthenes more effectively than any counter oratory
from men like Æsehines.” Demosthenes was once heard to
remark, on seeing Phocion rise to speak, “Here comes the pruner
of my periods.”
As MR. GROTE elsewhere adds: “The influence of
Phocion as a public adviser was eminently mischievous to Athens.
All depended upon her will; upon the question whether her
citizens were prepared in their own minds to incur the expense
and fatigue of a vigorous foreign policy—whether they would
handle their pikes, open their purses, and forego the comforts of
home, for the maintenance of Grecian and Athenian liberty against
a growing but not as yet irresistible destroyer. Now, it was
precisely at such a moment, and when such a question was pending,
that the influence of the peace-loving Phocion was most ruinous.
His anxiety that the citizens should be buried at home in their
own sepulchres—his despair, mingled with contempt, of his
countrymen and their refined habits—his hatred of the orators
who might profit by an increased war expenditure—all contributed
to make him discourage public effort, and await passively the
preponderance of the Macedonian arms; thus playing the game of
Philip, and siding, though himself incorruptible, with the
orators in Philip’s pay.” [Footnote: “History of Greece,”
vol. xi., p. 278.]
As no measures of importance were taken to check
the growing power of Philip, in the year 349 he attacked the
Olynthians, who were in alliance with Athens. They sent embassies
to Athens, seeking aid, and Demosthenes supported their cause in
the three “Olynthiac Orations,” which roused the Athenians to
more vigorous efforts. But the latter were divided in their
counsels, and the aid they gave the Olynthians was inefficient.
In 347 Olynthus fell into the hands of Philip, who, having
somewhat lulled the suspicions of the Athenians by proposals of
an advantageous peace, marched into Phocis in 346, and compelled
the enemy to surrender at discretion. The Amphictyonic Council,
with the power of Philip to enforce its decrees, doomed Phocis to
lose her independence forever, to have her cities leveled with
the ground, her population to be distributed in villages of not
more than fifty dwellings, and to pay a yearly tribute of sixty
talents to the temple until the full amount of the plundered
treasure should be restored. Finally, the two votes that the
Phocians had possessed in the council were transferred to the
King of Maçedon and his successors.
IV. WAR WITH MAÇEDON.
From an early period of his career Philip had
aspired to the sovereignty of all Greece, as a secondary object
that should prepare the way for the conquest of Persia, the great
aim and end of all his ambitious projects. The accession of power
he had just acquired now induced him to exert himself, by
negotiation and conquest, to extend his influence on every side
of his dominions. Demosthenes had been sent by the Athenians into
the Peloponnesus to counteract the intrigues of Philip there, and
had openly accused him of perfidy. To repel this charge, as well
as to secure farther influence, if possible, Philip sent an
embassy to Athens, headed by the orator Py’thon. It was on this
occasion that Demosthenes delivered his second “Philippic” (344
B.C.), addressing himself principally to the Athenian
sympathizers with Philip, of whom the orator Æsehines was
the leader.
In his military operations Philip ravaged
Illyria, reduced Thessaly more nearly to a Macedonian province,
conquered a part of the Thracian territory, extended his power
into Epi’rus and Acarna’nia, and would have gained a footing in
E’lis and Acha’ia, on the western coast of Peloponnesus, had it
not been for the watchful jealousy of Athens which Demosthenes
finally succeeded in arousing. The first open rupture with the
Athenians occurred while Philip was subduing the Grecian cities
on the Thracian coast of the Hellespont, in what was called the
Thracian Chersone’sus. As yet Macedon and Athens were nominally
at peace, and Philip complained that the Athenians were
attempting to precipitate a conflict. He sent an embassy to
Athens, which gave occasion to the speech of Demosthenes, “On the
Chersonese” (341 B.C.). The rupture in the Chersonesus was
followed by Athenian successes in Euboe’a, whither Demosthenes
had succeeded in having an expedition sent, and, finally, by the
expulsion of Philip’s forces from the Chersonesus. Soon after
this (339 B.C.) the Amphictyonic Council, through the influence
of the orator Æsehines, appointed Phillip to conduct a war
against Amphis’sa, a Lo’crian town, that had been convicted of a
sacrilege similar to that of the Phocians.
THE SUCCESSES AND DEATH OF PHILIP.
It was now that Philip first threw off the mask,
and revealed his designs against the liberties of Greece. Hastily
passing through Thrace at the head of a powerful army, he
suddenly seized and commenced fortifying Elate’a, the capital of
Phocis, which was conveniently situated for commanding the
entrance into Bœotia. Intelligence of this event reached Athens
at night, and caused great alarm. At daybreak on the following
morning the Senate of Five Hundred met, and the people assembled
in the Pnyx. Suddenly waking, at last, from their dream of
security, from which all the eloquent appeals of Demosthenes had
hitherto been unable fully to arouse them, the Athenians began to
realize their danger. At the instance of the great orator they
formed a treaty with the Thebans, and the two states prepared to
defend themselves from invasion; but most of the Peloponnesian
states kept aloof through indifference, rather than through
fear.
When the Athenian and Theban forces marched forth
to give Philip battle, dissensions pervaded their ranks; for the
spirit of Grecian liberty had already been extinguished. They
gained a minor advantage, however, in two engagements that
followed; but the decisive battle was fought in August of the
year 338, in the plain of Chærone’a, in Bœotia. The
hostile armies were nearly equal in numbers; but there was no
Pericles, or Epaminondas, to match the warlike abilities of
Philip and the young prince Alexander, the latter of whom
commanded a wing of the Macedonian army. The Grecian army was
completely routed, and the event broke up the feeble combination
against Philip, leaving each of the allied states at his mercy.
He treated the Thebans with much severity, but he exercised a
degree of leniency toward the Athenians which excited general
surprise—offering them terms of peace which they would scarcely
have ventured to propose to him. Now virtually master of Greece,
he assembled a Congress of the Grecian states at Corinth, at
which all his proposals were adopted; war was declared against
Persia, and Philip was appointed commander-in-chief of the
Grecian and Macedonian forces. But while he was preparing for his
great enterprise he was assassinated, during the festivities
attending the marriage of his daughter, by a young Macedonian of
noble birth, in revenge for some private wrong.
V. ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
Alexander, the son of Philip, then at the age of
twenty years, succeeded his father on the throne of Macedon. At
once the Illyrians, Thracians, and other northern tribes took up
arms to recover their independence; but Alexander quelled the
revolt in a single campaign. On the death of Philip, Demosthenes,
who had been informed of the event by a special messenger,
immediately took steps to incite Athens to shake off the
Macedonian yoke. In the words of a modern historian, “He resolved
to avail himself of the superstition of his fellow-citizens, by a
pious fraud. He went to the senate-house and declared to the Five
Hundred that Jove and Athe’na had forewarned him in a dream of
some great blessing that was in store for the Commonwealth.
Shortly afterward public couriers arrived with the news of
Philip’s death. Demosthenes, although in mourning for the recent
loss of an only daughter, now came abroad dressed in white, and
crowned with a chaplet, in which attire he was seen sacrificing
at one of the public altars.” He made vigorous preparations for
action, and sent envoys to the principal Grecian states to excite
them against Macedon. Several of the states, headed by the
Athenians and the Thebans, rose against the dominant oligarchy;
but Alexander, whose marches were unparalleled for their
rapidity, suddenly appeared in their midst. Thebes was taken by
assault; six thousand of her warriors were slain; the city was
leveled with the ground, and thirty thousand prisoners were
condemned to slavery. The other Grecian states hastily renewed
their submission; and Athens, with servile homage, sent an
embassy to congratulate the young king on his recent successes.
Alexander accepted the excuses of all, and having intrusted the
government of Greece and Macedon to Antip’ater, one of his
generals, he set out on his career of Eastern conquest with only
thirty-five thousand men, and a treasury of only seventy talents
of silver. He had distributed nearly all the remaining property
of his crown among his friends; and when he was asked what he had
reserved for himself, he answered, “My hopes.”
VI. ALEXANDER INVADES ASIA.
Early in the spring of 334 Alexander crossed the
Hellespont, and a few days later defeated a large Persian army on
the eastern bank of the Grani’cus, with the loss on his part of
only eighty-five horsemen and thirty light infantry. The gates of
Sardis and Ephesus were next thrown open to him, and he was soon
undisputed master of all Asia Minor. Early in the following year
he directed his march farther eastward, and on the coast of
Cili’cia, near Issus, again met the Persian or barbarian army,
numbering over seven hundred thousand men, and commanded by
Dari’us, the Persian king. Alexander, as usual, led his army in
person, and achieved a splendid victory. The wife, daughters, and
an infant son of Darius fell into the hands of the conqueror, and
were treated by him with the greatest kindness and respect, Some
time after, and just before his death, when Darius heard of the
generous treatment of his wife, who was accounted the most
beautiful woman in Asia —of her death from sudden illness, and
of the magnificent burial she had received from the conqueror—he
lifted up his hands to heaven and prayed that if his kingdom were
to pass from himself, it might be transferred to Alexander.
The conqueror now directed his march southward
through northern Syria and Palestine, conquering Tyre after a
vigorous siege of seven months. This was perhaps the greatest of
Alexander’s military achievements; but it was tarnished by his
cruelty toward the conquered. Exasperated by the long and
desperate resistance of the besieged, he gave them no quarter.
Eight thousand of the inhabitants are said to have been
massacred, and thirty thousand were sold into slavery. After the
fall of Tyre Alexander proceeded into Egypt, which he easily
brought under subjection. After having founded the present city
of Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile, he returned to
Palestine, crossed the Euphrates, and marched into the very heart
of the Persian empire, declaring, “The world can no more admit
two masters than two suns.”
VII. BATTLE OF ARBE’LA.—FLIGHT AND DEATH OF DARIUS.
On a beautiful plain, twenty miles distant from
the town of Arbela, the Persian monarch, surrounded by all the
pomp and luxury of Eastern magnificence, had collected the
remaining strength of his empire, consisting of an army of more
than a million of infantry and forty thousand cavalry, besides
two hundred scythed chariots, and fifteen elephants brought from
the west of India. To oppose this immense force Alexander had
only forty thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry. But his
forces were well armed and disciplined, and were led by an able
general who had never known defeat. Darius sustained the conflict
with better judgment and more courage than at Issus; but the cool
intrepidity of the Macedonians was irresistible, and the field of
battle soon became a scene of slaughter, in which some say forty
thousand, and others three hundred thousand, of the barbarians
were slain, while the loss of Alexander did not exceed five
hundred men. Although Darius escaped with a portion of his
body-guard, the whole of the royal baggage and treasure was
captured at Arbela.
Now simply a fugitive, “with merely the title of
king,” Darius crossed the mountains into Media, where he remained
six or seven months, and until the advance of Alexander in
pursuit compelled him to pass through the Caspian Gates into
Parthia. Here, on the near approach of the enemy, he was murdered
by Bessus, satrap of Bactria, because he refused to fly farther.
“Within four years and three months from the time Alexander
crossed the Hellespont,” says GROTE, “by one stupendous defeat
after another Darius had lost all his Western empire, and had
become a fugitive eastward of the Caspian Gates, escaping
captivity at the hand of Alexander only to perish by that of the
satrap Bessus. All antecedent historical parallels—the ruin and
captivity of the Lydian Croe’sus, the expulsion and mean life of
the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the
mutability of human condition—sink into trifles compared with
the overthrow of this towering Persian colossus. The orator
Æschines expressed the genuine sentiment of a Grecian
spectator when he exclaimed (in a speech delivered at Athens
shortly before the death of Darius):
“‘What is there among the list of strange and
unexpected events which has not occurred in our time? Our lives
have transcended the limits of humanity; we are born to serve as
a theme for incredible tales to posterity. Is not the Persian
king—who dug through Athos and bridged the Hellespont, who
demanded earth and water from the Greeks, who dared to proclaim
himself, in public epistles, master of all mankind from the
rising to the setting sun—is not he now struggling to the
last, not for dominion over others, but for the safety of his own
person?’ [Footnote: He speaks of both Xerxes and Darius as
the Persian king.] Such were the sentiments
excited by Alexander’s career even in the middle of 330 B.C.,
more than seven years before his death.”
Babylon and Susa, where the riches of the East
lay accumulated, had meanwhile opened their gates to Alexander,
and thence he directed his march to Persepolis, the capital of
Persia, which he entered in triumph. Here he celebrated his
victories by a magnificent feast, at which the great musician
Timo’theus, of Thebes, performed on the flute and the lyre,
accompanied by a chorus of singers. Such was the wonderful power
of his music that the whole company are said to have been swayed
by it to feelings of love, or hate, or revenge, as if by the wand
of a magician. The poet DRYDEN has given us a description of this
feast in a poem that has been called by some “the lyric
masterpiece of English poetry,” and by others “an inspired ode.”
Though designed especially to illustrate the power of music, it
is based on historic facts. Only partial extracts from it can
here be given.
Alexander’s Feast.
‘Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won
By Philip’s warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne:
His valiant peers were placed around,
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned).
The lovely Thais, by his side
Sat, like a blooming Eastern bride,
In flower of youth and beauty’s pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserve the fair.
In the second division of the poem Timo’theus is
represented as singing the praises of Jupiter, when the crowd,
carried away by the enthusiasm with which the music had inspired
them, proclaim Alexander a deity! The monarch accepts the
adoration of his subjects, and “assumes the god.”
The list’ning crowd admire the
lofty sound:
“A present deity!” they shout around:
“A present deity!” the vaulted roofs rebound.
With ravished ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.
The praises of Bacchus and the joys of wine being
next sung, the effects upon the king are described; and when the
strains had fired his soul almost to madness, Timotheus adroitly
changes the spirit and measure of his song, and as successfully
allays the tempest of passion that his skill had raised. The
effects of this change are thus described:
Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o’er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes; and thrice he slew the slain.
The master saw the madness rise;
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And, while he Heaven and Earth defied,
Changed his hand, and checked his pride.
He chose a mournful Muse,
Soft pity to infuse;
He sung Darius, great and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downcast looks the joyless victor sat,
Revolving in his altered soul
The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then a sigh he stole,
And tear’s began to flow.
Under the soothing influence of the next theme,
which is Love, Alexander sinks into a slumber, from which,
however, a change in the music to discordant strains arouses him
to feelings of revenge, as the singer draws a picture of the
Furies, and of the Greeks “that in battle were slain.” Then it
was that Alexander, instigated by Thais, a celebrated Athenian
beauty who accompanied him on his expedition, set fire to the
palace of Persepolis, intending to burn the whole city—”the
wonder of the world.” The poet compares Thais to Helen, whose
fatal beauty caused the downfall of Troy, 852 years before.
Now strike the golden lyre again;
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark! hark! the horrid sound
Has raised up his head,
As awaked from the dead,
And, amazed, he stares around.
Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries,
See the Furies arise!
See the snakes that they rear!
How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
These are the Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain,
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew,
Behold how they toss their torches on high!
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostile gods!
The princes applaud with a furious joy;
And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And, like another Helen, fired another Troy!
During four years Alexander remained in the heart
of Persia, reducing to subjection the chiefs who still struggled
for independence, and regulating the government of the conquered
provinces. Ambitious of farther conquests, he passed the Indus,
and invaded the country of the Indian king Po’rus, whom he
defeated in a sanguinary engagement, and took prisoner. Alexander
continued his march eastward until he reached the Hyph’asis, the
most eastern tributary of the Indus, when his troops, seeing no
end of their toils, refused to follow him farther, and he was
reluctantly forced to abandon the career of conquest, which he
had marked out for himself, to the Eastern ocean. He descended
the Indus to the sea, whence, after sending a fleet with a
portion of his forces around through the Persian Gulf to the
Euphrates, he marched with the remainder of his army through the
barren wastes of Gedro’sia, and after much suffering and loss
once more reached the fertile provinces of Persia.
VIII. THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER.
For some time after his return Alexander’s
attention was engrossed with plans for organizing, on a permanent
basis, the government of the mighty empire that he had won.
Aiming to unite the conquerors and the conquered, so as to form
out of both a nation independent alike of Macedonian and Persian
prejudices, he married Stati’ra, the oldest daughter of Darius,
and united his principal officers with Persian and Median women
of the noblest families, while ten thousand of his soldiers were
induced to follow the example of their superiors. But while he
was occupied with these cares, and with dreams of future
conquests, his career was suddenly terminated by death. On
setting out to visit Babylon, in the spring of 324, soon after
the decease of an intimate friend —Hephæs’tion—whose loss
caused a great depression of his spirits, he was warned by the
magicians that Babylon would be fatal to him; but he proceeded to
the city to conclude his preparations for his next ambitious
scheme—the subjugation of Arabia. Babylon was now to witness the
consummation of his triumphs and of his life. “As in the last
scene of some well-ordered drama,” says a modern historian, “all
the results and tokens of his great achievements seemed to be
collected there to do honor to his final exit.” Although his mind
was actively occupied in plans of conquest, he was haunted by
gloomy forebodings and superstitious fancies, and endeavored to
dispel his melancholy by indulging freely in the pleasures of the
table. Excessive drinking at last brought to a crisis a fever
which he had probably contracted in the marshes of Assyria, and
which suddenly terminated his life in the thirty-third year of
his age, and the thirteenth of his reign (323 B.C.). He was
buried in Babylon. From the Latin poet LUCAN we take the
following estimate of
His Career and His Character.
Here the vain youth, who made the world his prize,
That prosperous robber, Alexander, lies:
When pitying Death at length had freed mankind,
To sacred rest his bones were here consigned:
His bones, that better had been tossed and hurled,
With just contempt, around the injured world.
But fortune spared the dead; and partial fate,
For ages fixed his Pha’rian empire’s date.
[Footnote: Pharian. An allusion to the famous light-house, the
Pharos of Alexandria, built by Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Soter, who
succeeded Alexander in Egypt.]
If e’er our long-lost liberty return,
That carcass is reserved for public scorn;
Now it remains a monument confessed,
How one proud man could lord it o’er the rest.
To Maçedon, a corner of the earth,
The vast ambitious spoiler owed his birth:
There, soon, he scorned his father’s humbler reign,
And viewed his vanquished Athens with disdain.
Driven headlong on, by fate’s resistless force,
Through Asia’s realms he took his dreadful course;
His ruthless sword laid human nature waste,
And desolation followed where he passed.
Red Ganges blushed, and famed Euphrates’ flood,
With Persian this, and that with Indian blood.
Such is the bolt which angry Jove employs,
When, undistinguishing, his wrath destroys:
Such to mankind, portentous meteors rise,
Trouble the gazing earth, and blast the skies.
Nor flame nor flood his restless rage withstand,
Nor Syrts unfaithful, nor the Libyan sand:
[Footnote: Syrts. Two gulfs—Syrtis Minor and Syrtis Major—on the
northern coast of Africa, abounding in quicksands, and dangerous to
navigation.]
O’er waves unknown he meditates his way,
And seeks the boundless empire of the sea.
E’en to the utmost west he would have gone,
Where Te’thys’ lap receives the setting sun;
[Footnote: Tethys, the fabled wife of Ocean, and daughter of
Heaven and Earth.]
Around each pole his circuit would have made,
And drunk from secret Nile’s remotest head,
When Nature’s hand his wild ambition stayed;
With him, that power his pride had loved so well,
His monstrous universal empire, fell;
No heir, no just successor left behind,
Eternal wars he to his friends assigned,
To tear the world, and scramble for mankind.
—LUCAN. Trans. by ROWE.
The poet JUVENAL, moralizing on the death of
Alexander, tells us that, notwithstanding his illimitable
ambition, the narrow tomb that be found in Babylon was
sufficiently ample for the small body that had contained his
mighty soul.
One world sufficed not Alexander’s mind;
Cooped up, he seemed in earth and seas confined,
And, struggling, stretched his restless limbs about
The narrow globe, to find a passage out!
Yet, entered in the brick-built town, he tried
The tomb, and found the straight dimensions wide.
Death only this mysterious truth unfolds:
The mighty soul, how small a body holds!
—Tenth Satire. Trans. by DRYDEN.
The body of Alexander was removed from Babylon to
Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter, one of his generals, subsequently
King of Egypt, and was interred in a golden coffin. The
sarcophagus in which the coffin was enclosed has been in the
British Museum since 1802—a circumstance to which BYRON makes a
happy allusion in the closing lines of the following verse:
How vain, how worse than vain, at length appear
The madman’s wish, the Macedonian’s tear!
He wept for worlds to conquer; half the earth
Knows not his name, or but his death and birth,
And desolation; while his native Greece
Hath all of desolation, save its peace.
He “wept for worlds to conquer!” he who ne’er
Conceived the globe he panted not to spare!
With even the busy Northern Isle unknown,
Which holds his urn, and never knew his throne.
CHAPTER XVI.
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER TO THE CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS.
I. A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE AT GREECE.
PROSECUTION OF DEMOSTHENES.
Turning now to the affairs of Greece, we find that, three years after Alexander
entered Asia, the Spartans made a determined effort to throw off the Macedonian
yoke. They were joined by most of the Peloponnesian states, but Athens took no
part in the revolt. Although meeting with some successes at first, the Spartans
were finally defeated with great slaughter by Antip’ater (331 B.C.), who had
been left by Alexander in command of Greece and Macedonia. This victory, and
Alexander’s successes in the East, gave rise to active measures by the
Macedonian party in Athens against Demosthenes, who was holding two public
offices, and, by his ability and patriotism, was still doing great service to
the state. The occasion of this prosecution was as follows:
Soon after the disastrous battle of
Chærone’a, Ctes’iphon, an Athenian citizen, proposed that a
golden crown [Footnote: It was customary with the
Athenians, and some other Greeks also, to honor their most
meritorious citizens with a chaplet of olive interwoven with
gold, and this was called a “golden crown.”] should be
bestowed upon Demosthenes, in the public theatre, on the occasion
of the Dionysiac festival, as a reward for his patriotism and
public services. The special service for which the reward was
proposed was the rebuilding of the walls of Athens by
Demosthenes, partially at his own expense. After the Athenian
Senate had acquiesced in the measure, Æschines, the rival
of Demosthenes, brought an accusation against Ctesiphon for a
violation of the law, in that, among other things charged, it was
illegal to crown an official intrusted with the public moneys
before he had rendered an account of his office—a proceeding
which prevented the carrying of Ctesiphon’s proposal to the
people for a final decision. Thus the matter slumbered during a
period of six years, when it was revived by Æschines, who
thought he saw, in the success of the Macedonian arms—on which
all his personal and political hopes were staked—a grand
opportunity to crush his great rival. He now, therefore, brought
the charges against Ctesiphon to trial. Although the latter was
the nominal defendant in the case, and Demosthenes was only his
counsel, it was well understood that the real object of attack
was Demosthenes himself, his whole policy and administration; and
a vast concourse of people flocked to Athens to hear the two most
celebrated orators in the world. A jury of not less than five
hundred, chosen from the citizens at large, was impaneled by the
archon; and before a dense and breathless audience the pleadings
began.
The Oration of Æschines against Ctesiphon.
Æschines introduces his oration with the
following brief exordium: “You see, Athenians, what forces are
prepared, what numbers gathered and arrayed, what soliciting
through the assembly, by a certain party—and all this to oppose
the fair and ordinary course of justice in the state. As to me, I
stand here in firm reliance, first on the immortal gods, next on
the laws and you, convinced that faction never can have greater
weight with you than law and justice.”
After Æschines had dwelt at length, and
with great ability, upon the nature of the offence with which
Ctesiphon is charged, the laws applicable to it, and the supposed
evasions of Demosthenes in his reply, he reads the decree of the
senate in favor of the bestowment of the crown, in the following
words:
“And the herald shall make proclamation in the
theatre, in presence of the Greeks, that the community of Athens
hath crowned him, on account of his virtue and magnanimity, and
for his constant and inviolable attachment to the interests of
the state, through the course of all his counsels and
administration.”
This gives the orator the opportunity to enter
upon an extended review of the public life and character of
Demosthenes, in which he boldly charges him with cowardice in the
battle of Chæronea, with bribery and fraud in his public
administration, and declares him to have been the prime cause of
innumerable calamities that had befallen his country. He
says:
“It is my part, as the prosecutor, to satisfy you
on this point, that the praises bestowed on Demosthenes are
false; that there never was a time in which he even began as a
faithful counselor, far from persevering in any course of conduct
advantageous to the state.
“It remains that I produce some instances of his
abandoned flattery. For one whole year did Demosthenes enjoy the
honor of a senator; and yet in all that time it never appears
that he moved to grant precedency to any ministers; for the first
time—the only time—he conferred this distinction on the
ministers of Philip; he servilely attended, to accommodate them
with his cushions and his carpets; by the dawn of day he
conducted them to the theatre, and, by his indecent and abandoned
adulation, raised a universal uproar of derision. When they were
on their departure toward Thebes, he hired three teams of mules,
and conducted them in state into that city. Thus did he expose
his country to ridicule.
“And yet this abject, this enormous flatterer,
when he had been the first that received advice of Philip’s death
from the emissaries of Charide’mus, pretended a divine vision,
and, with a shameless lie, declared that this intelligence had
been conveyed to him, not by Charidemus, but by Jupiter and
Minerva. Thus he dared to boast that these divinities, by whom he
had sworn falsely in the day, had descended to hold communication
with him in the night, and to inform him of futurity. Seven days
had now scarcely elapsed since the death of his daughter when
this wretch, before he had performed the usual rites of
mourning—before he had duly paid her funeral honors—crowned his
head with a chaplet, put on his white robe, made a solemn
sacrifice in despite of law and decency; and this when he had
lost his child, the first, the only child that had ever called
him by the tender name of father. I say not this to insult his
misfortunes; I mean but to display his real character. For he who
hates his children, he who is a bad parent, cannot possibly prove
a good minister. He who is insensible to that natural affection
which should engage his heart to those who are most intimate and
near to him, can never feel a greater regard to your
welfare than to that of strangers. He who acts wickedly in
private life cannot prove excellent in his public conduct; he who
is base at home, can never acquit himself with honor when sent to
a strange country in a public character. For it is not the man,
but the scene that changes.
“Is not this, our state, the common refuge of the
Greeks, once the great resort of all the ambassadors from the
several cities sent to implore our protection as their sure
resource, now obliged to contend, not for sovereign authority,
but for our native land? And to these circumstances have we been
gradually reduced, from that time when Demosthenes first assumed
the administration. Well doth the poet Hesiod refer to such men,
in one part of his works, where he points out the duty of
citizens, and warns all societies to guard effectually against
evil ministers. I shall repeat his words; for I presume we
treasured up the sayings of poets in our memory when young, that
in our riper years we might apply them to advantage.
“‘When one man’s crimes the wrath of Heaven provoke,
Oft hath a nation felt the fatal stroke.
Contagion’s blast destroys at Jove’s command,
And wasteful famine desolates the land.
Or, in the field of war, her boasted powers
Are lost, and earth receives her prostrate towers.
In vain in gorgeous state her navies ride,
Dashed, wrecked, and buried in the boist’rous tide.’
“Take away the measure of these verses, consider
only the sentiment, and you will fancy that you hear, not some
part of Hesiod, but a prophecy of the administration of
Demosthenes; for true it is, that both fleets and armies, and
whole cities, have been completely destroyed by his
administration.
“Which, think ye, was the more worthy
citizen—Themistocles, who commanded your fleet when you defeated
the Persian in the sea-fight at Salamis, or this Demosthenes, who
deserted from his post? Miltiades, who conquered the barbarians
at Marathon, or this man? The chiefs who led back the people from
Phy’le; Aristides, surnamed the Just, or Demosthenes? No; by the
powers of heaven, I deem the names of these heroes too noble to
be mentioned in the same day with that of this savage! And let
Demosthenes show, when he comes to his reply, if ever decree was
made for granting a golden crown to them. Was then the state
ungrateful? No; but she thought highly of her own dignity. And
these citizens, who were not thus honored, appear to have been
truly worthy of such a state; for they imagined that they were
not to be honored by public records, but by the memories of those
they had obliged; and their honors have there remained, from that
time down to this day, in characters indelible and immortal.
There were citizens in those days who, being stationed at the
river Strymon, there patiently endured a long series of toils and
dangers, and at length gained a victory over the Medes. At their
return they petitioned the people for a reward; and a reward was
conferred upon them (then deemed of great importance) by erecting
three memorials of stone in the usual portico, on which, however,
their names were not inscribed, lest this might seem a monument
erected to the honor of the commanders, not to that of the
people. For the truth of this I appeal to the inscriptions. That
on the first statue was expressed thus:
“‘Great souls! who fought near Strymon’s rapid tide,
And braved the invader’s arm, and quelled his pride,
Ei’on’s high towers confess’d the glorious deed,
And saw dire famine waste the vanquished Mede.
Such was our vengeance on the barb’rous host,
And such the generous toils our heroes boast.’
“This was the inscription on the second:
“‘This the reward which grateful Athens gives!
Here still the patriot and the hero lives!
Here let the rising age with rapture gaze,
And emulate the glorious deeds they praise.’
“On the third was the inscription:
“‘Mnes’the-us hence led forth his chosen train,
And poured the war o’er hapless Ilion’s plain.
‘Twas his (so speaks the bard’s immortal lay)
To form the embodied host in firm array.
Such were our sons! Nor yet shall Athens yield
The first bright honors of the sanguine field.
Still, nurse of heroes! still the praise is thine,
Of every glorious toil, of every art divine.’
“In these do we find the name of the general? No;
but that of the people. Fancy yourselves transported to the grand
portico; for, in this your place of assembling, the monuments of
all great actions are erected in full view. There we find a
picture of the battle of Marathon. Who was the general in this
battle? To this question you will all answer—Miltiades. And yet
his name is not inscribed. How? Did he not petition for such an
honor? He did petition; but the people refused to grant it.
Instead of inscribing his name, they consented that he should be
drawn in the foreground, encouraging his soldiers. In like
manner, in the temple of the great Mother adjoining the
senate-house, you may see the honors paid to those who brought
our exiles back from Phyle; nor were even these granted
precipitately, but after an exact previous examination by the
senate into the numbers of those who maintained their post there,
when the Lacedæmonians and the Thirty marched to attack
them—not of those who fled from their post at Chæronea on
the first appearance of an enemy.” Æschines closes his very
able and brilliant oration with the following words:
“And now bear witness for me, thou Earth, thou Sun, O Virtue and Intelligence,
and thou, O Erudition, which teachest us the just distinction between vice and
goodness, that I have stood up, that I have spoken in the cause of justice. If
I have supported my prosecution with a dignity befitting its importance, I have
spoken as my wishes dictated; if too deficiently, as my abilities admitted. Let
what hath now been offered, and what your own thoughts must supply, be duly
weighed, and pronounce such a sentence as justice and the interests of the
state demand.”
—Trans. by THOMAS LELAND, D.D.
Æschines was immediately followed by Demosthenes in a reply which has been
considered “the greatest speech of the greatest orator in the world.” The
historian GROTE speaks of “the encomiums which have been pronounced upon it
with one voice, both in ancient and modern times, as the unapproachable
masterpiece of Grecian oratory.” It has been styled, from the occasion on which
it was delivered,
The Oration of Demosthenes on the Crown.
The orator opens his defence against the charges
brought forward by his adversary with the following exordium,
which Quintil’ian commends for its modesty:
“I begin, men of Athens, by praying to every god
and goddess that the same good-will which I have ever cherished
toward the Commonwealth, and all of you, may be requited to me on
the present trial. I pray likewise—and this specially concerns
yourselves, your religion, and your honor—that the gods may put
it in your minds, not to take counsel of my opponent touching the
manner in which I am to be heard [Footnote: Æschines
had requested that Demosthenes should be “confined to the same
method in his defence” which he, Æschines, had pursued in
his charges against him.]—that would indeed be
cruel!—but of the laws and of your oath; wherein (besides the
other obligations) it is prescribed that you shall hear both
sides alike. This means, not only that you must pass no
pre-condemnation, not only that you must extend your good-will
equally to both, but also that you must allow the parties to
adopt such order and course of defence as they severally choose
and prefer.
“Many advantages hath Æschines over me on
this trial; and two especially, men of Athens. First, our risk in
the contest is not the same. It is assuredly not the same for me
to forfeit your regard as for my adversary not to succeed in his
indictment. To me—but I will say nothing untoward at the outset
of my address. The prosecution, however, is play to him. My
second disadvantage is the natural disposition of mankind to take
pleasure in hearing invective and accusation, and to be annoyed
by them who praise themselves. To Æschines is assigned the
part which gives pleasure; that which is (I may fairly say)
offensive to all, is left for me. And if, to escape from this, I
make no mention of what I have done, I shall appear to be without
defence against his charges, without proof of my claims to honor;
whereas, if I proceed to give an account of my conduct and
measures, I shall be forced to speak frequently of myself. I will
endeavor, then, to do so with becoming modesty. What I am driven
to by the necessity of the case will be fairly chargeable to my
opponent, who has instituted such a prosecution.
“I think, men of the jury, you will all agree
that I, as well as Ctesiphon, am a party to this proceeding, and
that it is a matter of no less concern to me than to him. It is
painful and grievous to be deprived of anything, especially by
the act of one’s enemy; but your good-will and affection are the
heaviest loss precisely as they are the greatest prize to
gain.
“Had Æschines confined his charge to the
subject of the prosecution, I too would have proceeded at once to
my justification of the decree. [Footnote: The decree of
the senate procured by Ctesiphon in favor of
Demosthenes.] But since he has wasted no fewer words in
the discussion, in most of them calumniating me, I deem it both
necessary and just, men of Athens, to begin by shortly adverting
to these points, that none of you may be induced by extraneous
arguments to shut your ears against my defence to the
indictment.
“To all his scandalous abuse about my private
life observe my plain and obvious answer. If you know me to be
such as he alleged—for I have lived nowhere else but among
you—let not my voice be heard, however transcendent my
statesmanship. Rise up this instant and condemn me. But if, in
your opinion and judgment, I am far better and of better descent
than my adversary; if (to speak without offence) I am not
inferior, I or mine, to any respectable citizens, then give no
credit to him for his other statements; it is plain they were all
equally fictions; but to me let the same good-will which you have
uniformly exhibited upon many former trials be manifested now.
With all your malice, Æschines, it was very simple to
suppose that I should turn from the discussion of measures and
policy to notice your scandal. I will do no such thing. I am not
so crazed. Your lies and calumnies about my political life I will
examine forthwith. For that loose ribaldry I shall have a word
hereafter, if the jury desire to hear it.
“If the crimes which Æschines saw me
committing against the state were as heinous as he so tragically
gave out, he ought to have enforced the penalties of the law
against them at the time; if he saw me guilty of an impeachable
offence, by impeaching and so bringing me to trial before you; if
moving illegal decrees, by indicting me for them. For surely, if
he can indict Ctesiphon on my account, he would not have forborne
to indict me myself had he thought he could convict me. In short,
whatever else he saw me doing to your prejudice, whether
mentioned or not mentioned in his catalogue of slander, there are
laws for such things, and trials, and judgments, with sharp and
severe penalties, all of which he might have enforced against me;
and, had he done so—had he thus pursued the proper method with
me—his charges would have been consistent with his conduct. But
now he has declined the straightforward and just course, avoided
all proofs of guilt at the time, and after this long interval
gets up to play his part withal—a heap of accusation, ribaldry,
and scandal. Then he arraigns me, but prosecutes the defendant.
His hatred of me he makes the prominent part of the whole
contest; yet, without having ever met me upon that ground, he
openly seeks to deprive a third party of his privileges. Now, men
of Athens, besides all the other arguments that may be urged in
Ctesiphon’s behalf, this, methinks, may very fairly be
alleged—that we should try our quarrel by ourselves; not leave
our private dispute and look what third party we can damage.
That, surely, were the height of injustice.”
Demosthenes now enters upon an elaborate review
of the history of Athens from the beginning of the Phocian war,
his own relations thereto, and the charges of Æschines in
connection therewith, fortifying his defence with numerous
citations from public documents, and boldly arraigning the
political principles and policy of his opponent, whom he accuses
of being in frequent communication with the emissaries of
Philip—”a spy by nature, and an enemy to his country.” In the
following terms he speaks of his own public services, and reminds
Æschines that the people do not forget them:
“Many great and glorious enterprises has the
Commonwealth, Æschines, undertaken and succeeded in through
me; and she did not forget them. Here is the proof. On the
election of a person to speak the funeral oration immediately
after the event, you were proposed; but the people would not have
you, notwithstanding your fine voice; nor Dema’des, though he had
just made the peace; nor He-ge’mon, nor any other of your
party—but me. And when you and Pyth’ocles came forward in a
brutal and shameful manner (oh, merciful Heaven!) and urged the
same accusations against me which you now do, and abused me, they
elected me all the more. The reason—you are not ignorant of it,
yet I will tell you. The Athenians knew as well the loyalty and
zeal with which I conducted their affairs as the dishonesty of
you and your party; for what you denied upon oath in our
prosperity you confessed in the misfortunes of the republic. They
considered, therefore, that men who got security for their
politics by the public disasters had been their enemies long
before, and were then avowedly such. They thought it right, also,
that the person who was to speak in honor of the fallen, and
celebrate their valor, should not have sat under the same roof or
at the same table with their antagonists; that he should not
revel there and sing a pæan over the calamities of Greece
in company with their murderers, and then come here and receive
distinction; that he should not with his voice act the mourner of
their fate, but that he should lament over them with his heart.
And such sincerity they found in themselves and me, but not in
any of you: therefore they elected me, and not you. Nor, while
the people felt thus, did the fathers and brothers of the
deceased, who were chosen by the people to perform their
obsequies, feel differently. For having to order the funeral
(according to custom) at the house of the nearest relative of the
deceased, they ordered it at mine —and with reason: because,
though each to his own was nearer of kin than I was, no one was
so near to them all collectively. He that had the deepest
interest in their safety and success must surely feel the deepest
sorrow at their unhappy and unmerited misfortune. Read the
epitaph inscribed upon their monument by public authority. In
this, Æschines, you will find a proof of your absurdity,
your malice, your abandoned baseness. Read!
The Epitaph.
“‘These are the patriot brave who, side by side,
Stood to their arms and dashed the foeman’s pride:
Firm in their valor, prodigal of life,
Hades they chose the arbiter of strife;
That Greeks might ne’er to haughty victors bow,
Nor thraldom’s yoke, nor dire oppression know,
They, fought, they bled, and on their country’s breast
(Such was the doom of Heaven) these warriors rest:
Gods never lack success, nor strive in vain,
But man must suffer what the Fates ordain.’
“Do you hear, Æschines, in this very
inscription, that ‘the gods never lack success, nor strive in
vain?’ Not to the statesman does it ascribe the power of giving
victory in battle, but to the gods. But one thing, O Athenians,
surprised me more than all—that, when Æschines mentioned
the late misfortunes of the country, he felt not as became a
well-disposed and upright citizen; he shed no tear, experienced
no such emotion: with a loud voice, exulting and straining his
throat, he imagined apparently that he was accusing me, while he
was giving proof against himself that our distresses touched him
not.
“Two things, men of Athens, are characteristic of
a well-disposed citizen; so may I speak of myself and give the
least offence. In authority his constant aim should be the
dignity and pre-eminence of the Commonwealth; in all times and
circumstances his spirit should be loyal. This depends upon
nature; power and might upon other things. Such a spirit, you
will find, I have ever sincerely cherished. Only see! When my
person was demanded—when they brought Amphictyonic suits against
me—when they menaced—when they promised—when they set these
miscreants like wild beasts upon me—never in any way have I
abandoned my affection for you. From the very beginning I chose
an honest and straightforward course in politics, to support the
honor, the power, the glory of my fatherland; these to exalt, in
these to have my being. I do not walk about the market-place gay
and cheerful because the stranger has prospered, holding out my
right hand and congratulating those who I think will report it
yonder, and on any news of our own success shudder and groan and
stoop to the earth like these impious men who rail at Athens, as
if in so doing they did not rail at themselves; who look abroad,
and if the foreigner thrives by the distresses of Greece, are
thankful for it, and say we should keep him so thriving to all
time.
“Never, O ye gods, may those wishes be confirmed
by you! If possible, inspire even in these men a better sense and
feeling! But if they are indeed incurable, destroy them by
themselves; exterminate them on land and sea; and for the rest of
us, grant that we may speedily be released from our present
fears, and enjoy a lasting deliverance.” [Footnote: Lord
Brougham says that “the music of this closing passage (in the
original) is almost as fine as the sense is impressive and grand,
and the manner dignified and calm,” and he admits the difficulty
of preserving this in a translation. His own translation of the
passage is as follows: “Let not, O gracious God, let not such
conduct receive any measure of sanction from thee! Rather plant
even in these men a better spirit and better feelings! But if
they are wholly incurable, then pursue them, yea, themselves by
themselves, to utter and untimely perdition, by land and by sea;
and to us who are spared, vouchsafe to grant the speediest rescue
from our impending alarms, and an unshaken
security.”]
—Trans. by CHARLES RANN KENNEDY.
Æschines lost his case, and, not having
obtained a fifth part of the votes, became himself liable to a
penalty, and soon left the country in disgrace.
II. THE WARS THAT FOLLOWED ALEXANDER’S DEATH.
When the intelligence of Alexander’s death
reached Greece the country was already on the eve of a revolution
against Antip’ater. Athens found little difficulty in uniting
several of the states with herself in a confederacy against him,
and met with some successes in what is known as the La’mian war.
But the movement was short-lived, as Antipater completely
annihilated the confederate army in the battle of Cran’non (322
B.C.). Athens was directed to abolish her democratic form of
government, pay the expenses of the war, and surrender a number
of her most famous men, including Demosthenes. The latter,
however, escaped from Athens, and sought refuge in the Temple of
Poseidon, in the island of Calaure’a. Here he took poison, and
expired as he was being led from the temple by a satellite of
Antipater.
The sudden death of Alexander left the government
in a very unsettled condition. As he had appointed no successor,
immediately following his death a council of his generals was
held, and the following division of his conquests was agreed
upon: Ptolemy Soter was to have Egypt and the adjacent countries;
Macedonia and Greece were divided between Antipater and
Crat’erus; Antig’onus was given Phrygia, Lycia, and Pamphyl’ia;
Lysim’achus was granted Thrace; and Eume’nes was given Cappadocia
and Paphlagonia. Soon after this division Perdic’cas, then the
most powerful of the generals who retained control in the East,
and had the custody of the infant Alexander, proclaimed himself
regent, and at once set out on a career of conquest. Antigonus,
Antipater, Craterus, and Ptolemy leagued against him, however,
and in 321, after an unsuccessful campaign in Egypt, Perdiccas
was murdered by his own officers.
Antipater died in 318, and shortly after his
death his son Cassander made himself master of Greece and
Macedon, and caused the surviving members of Alexander’s family
to be put to death. Antigonus had, before this time, conquered
Eumenes, and overrun Syria and Asia Minor; but his increasing
power led Ptolemy, Seleu’cus, Lysimachus, and Cassander to unite
against him; and they fought with him the famous battle of Ipsus,
in Phrygia, that ended in the death of Antigonus and the
dissolution of his empire (301 B.C.). A new partition of the
country was now made into four independent kingdoms: Ptolemy was
given Egypt and Libya; Seleucus received the countries embraced
in the eastern conquests of Alexander, and the whole region
between the coast of Syria and the river Euphrates; Lysimachus
received the northern and western portions of Asia Minor, and
Cassander retained the sovereignty of Greece and Macedon.
Of these kingdoms the most powerful were Syria
and Egypt; the former of which continued under the dynasty of the
Seleucidæ, and the latter under that of the Ptolemies,
until both were absorbed by the Roman empire. Of all the
Ptolemies, Ptolemy Philadelphus was the most eminent. He was not
only a sovereign of ability, but was also distinguished for his
amiable qualities of mind, for his encouragement of the arts and
commerce, and he was called the richest and most powerful monarch
of his age. He was born in 309 B.C. and died in 247. The Greek
poet THEOCRITUS, who lived much at his court, thus characterizes
him:
What is his character? A royal spirit
To point out genius and encourage merit;
The poet’s friend, humane and good and kind;
Of manners gentle, and of generous mind.
He marks his friend, but more he marks his foe;
His hand is ever ready to bestow:
Request with reason, and he’ll grant the thing,
And what be gives, he gives it like a king.
The poet then sings the praises of the king, and
describes the strength, the wealth, and the magnificence of his
kingdom, in the following striking lines:
Here, too, O Ptolemy, beneath thy sway
What cities glitter to the beams of day!
Lo! with thy statelier pomp no kingdom vies,
While round thee thrice ten thousand cities rise.
Struck by the terror of thy flashing sword,
Syria bowed down, Arabia called thee Lord;
Phoenicia trembled, and the Libyan plain,
With the black Ethiop, owned thy wide domain:
E’en Lesser Asia and her isles grew pale
As o’er the billows passed thy crowd of sail.
Earth feels thy nod, and all the subject sea;
And each resounding river rolls for thee.
And while, around, thy thick battalions flash,
Thy proud steeds neighing for the warlike clash—
Through all thy marts the tide of commerce flows,
And wealth beyond a monarch’s grandeur glows.
Such gold-haired Ptolemy! whose easy port
Speaks the soft polish of the mannered court;
And whose severer aspect, as he wields
The spear, dire-blazing, frowns in tented fields.
And though he guards, while other kingdoms own
His conquering arms, the hereditary throne,
Yet in vast heaps no useless treasure stored
Lies, like the riches of an emmet’s hoard;
To mighty kings his bounty he extends,
To states confederate and illustrious friends.
No bard at Bacchus’ festival appears,
Whose lyre has power to charm the ravished ears,
But he bright honors and rewards imparts,
Due to his merits, equal to his arts;
And poets hence, for deathless song renowned,
The generous fame of Ptolemy resound.
At what more glorious can the wealthy aim
Than thus to purchase fair and lasting fame?
—Trans. by FAWKES.
Cassander survived the establishment of his power
in Greece only four years, and as his sons quarreled over the
succession; Demetrius, son of Antigonus, seized the opportunity
to interfere in their disputes, cut off the brother who had
invited his aid, and made himself master of the throne of
Macedon, which was held by him and his posterity, except during a
brief interruption after his death, down to the time of the Roman
Conquest. For a number of years succeeding the death of
Demetrius, Macedon, Greece, and western Asia were harassed with
the wars excited by the various aspirants to power; and in this
situation of affairs a storm, unseen in the distance, but that
had long been gathering, suddenly burst upon Macedon, threatening
to convert, by its ravages, the whole Grecian peninsula into a
scene of desolation.
III. THE CELTIC INVASION, AND THE WAR WITH PYRRHUS.
A vast horde of Celtic barbarians had for some
time been collecting around the head-waters of the Adriatic.
Influenced by hopes of plunder they now overran Macedon to the
borders of Thessaly, defeating Ptolemy Ceraunus, then King of
Macedonia, in a great battle. The walled towns alone held out
until the storm had spent its fury, when the Celts gradually
withdrew from a country in which there was but little left to
tempt their cupidity. But in the following year (279 B.C.)
another band of them, estimated at over two hundred thousand men,
overran Macedonia, passed through Thessaly, defeated the allied
Grecians at Thermopylæ, and then marched into Phocis, for
the purpose of plundering the treasures of Delphi. But their
atrocities aroused against them the whole population, and only a
remnant of them gained their original seats on the Adriatic.
The throne of Macedon now found an enemy in
Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, a connection of the royal family of
Macedon, and of whose exploits Roman history furnishes a full
account. A desultory contest was maintained for several years
between Pyrrhus and Antigonus II., the son of Demetrius, and then
King of Macedon. While Pyrrhus was engaged in this war,
Cleon’ymus, of the blood royal of Sparta, who had been excluded
from the throne by the Spartan people, to give place to A’reus,
invited Pyrrhus to his aid. Pyrrhus marched to Sparta, and,
supposing that he should not meet with any resistance, ordered
his tents to be pitched, and sat quietly down before the city.
Night coming on, the Spartans in consternation met in council,
and resolved to send their women to Crete for safety. Thereupon
the women assembled and remonstrated against it; and the queen,
Archidami’a, being appointed to speak for the rest, went into the
council-hall with a sword in her hand, and boldly upbraiding the
men, told them they did their wives great wrong if they thought
them so faint-hearted as to live after Sparta was destroyed. The
women then rushed to the defences of the city, and spent the
night aiding the men in digging trenches; and when Pyrrhus
attacked on the morrow, he was so severely repulsed that he soon
abandoned the siege and retired from Laconia. The patriotic
spirit and heroism of the Spartan women on this occasion are well
characterized in the following lines:
Queen Archidami’a.
The chiefs were met in the council-hall;
Their words were sad and few,
They were ready to fight, and ready to fall,
As the sons of heroes do.
And moored in the harbor of Gyth’e-um lay
The last of the Spartan fleet,
That should bear the Spartan women away
To the sunny shores of Crete.
Their hearts went back to the days of old;
They thought of the world-wide shock,
When the Persian hosts like an ocean rolled
To the foot of the Grecian rock;
And they turned their faces, eager and pale,
To the rising roar in the street,
As if the clank of the Spartan mail
Were the tramp of the conqueror’s feet.
It was Archidamia, the Spartan queen,
Brave as her father’s steel;
She stood like the silence that comes between
The flash and the thunder-peal.
She looked in the eyes of the startled crowd;
Calmly she gazed around;
Her voice was neither low nor loud,
But it rang like her sword on the ground.
“Spartans!” she said—and her woman’s face
Flushed out both pride and shame—
“I ask, by the memory of your race,
Are ye worthy of the name?
“Ye have bidden us seek new hearths and graves,
Beyond the reach of the foe;
And now, by the dash of the blue sea-waves,
We swear that we will not go!
“Is the name of Pyrrhus to blanch your cheeks?
Shall he burn, and kill, and destroy?
Are ye not sons of the deathless Greeks
Who fired the gates of Troy?
“What though his feet have scathless stood
In the rush of the Punic foam?
Though his sword be red to its hilt with the blood
That has beat at the heart of Rome?
“Brothers and sons! we have reared you men:
Our walls are the ocean swell;
Our winds blew keen down the rocky glen
Where the staunch Three Hundred fell.
“Our hearts are drenched in the wild sea-flow,
In the light of the hills and the sky;
And the Spartan women, if need be so,
Will teach the men to die.
“We are brave men’s mothers, and brave men’s wives:
We are ready to do and dare;
We are ready to man your walls with our lives,
And string your bows with our hair.
“Let the young and brave lie down to-night,
And dream of the brave old dead,
Their broad shields bright for to-morrow’s fight,
Their swords beneath their head.
“Our breasts are better than bolts and bars;
We neither wail nor weep;
We will light our torches at the stars,
And work while our warriors sleep.
“We hold not the iron in our blood
Viler than strangers’ gold;
The memory of our motherhood
Is not to be bought and sold.
“Shame to the traitor heart that springs
To the faint soft arms of Peace,
If the Roman eagle shook his wings
At the very gates of Greece!
“Ask not the mothers who gave you birth
To bid you turn and flee;
When Sparta is trampled from the earth
Her women can die, and be free.”
Soon after the repulse at Sparta, Pyrrhus again
marched against Antig’onus; but having attacked Argos on the way,
and after having entered within the walls, he was killed by a
tile thrown by a poor woman from a house-top. The death of
Pyrrhus forms an important epoch in Grecian history, as it put an
end to the struggle for power among Alexander’s successors in the
West, and left the field clear for the final contest between the
liberties of Greece and the power of Macedon. Antigonus now made
himself master of the greater part of Peloponnesus, and then
sought to reduce Athens, the defence of which was aided by an
Egyptian fleet and a Spartan army. Athens was at length taken
(262 B.C.), and all Greece, with the exception of Sparta, seemed
to lie helpless at the feet of Antigonus, who little dreamed that
the league of a few Achæan cities was to become a
formidable adversary to him and his house.
IV. THE ACHÆ’AN LEAGUE.—PHILIP V. OF MACEDON.
The Achæan League at first comprised twelve
towns of Acha’ia, which were associated together for mutual
safety, forming a little federal republic. But about twenty years
after the death of Pyrrhus other cities gave in their adherence,
until the confederacy embraced nearly the whole of the
Peloponnesus. Athens had been reduced to great misery by
Antigonus, and was in no condition to aid the League, while
Sparta vigorously opposed it, and finally succeeded in inducing
Corinth and Argos to withdraw from it. Sparta subsequently made
war against the Achæans, and by her successes compelled
them to call in the aid of the Macedonians, their former enemies.
Antigonus readily embraced this opportunity to restore the
influence of his family in southern Greece, and, marching against
the Lacedæmonians, he obtained a decisive victory which
placed Sparta at his mercy; but he used his victory moderately,
and granted the Spartans peace on liberal terms (221 B.C.).
Antigonus died soon after this success, and was succeeded by his
nephew and adopted son, Philip V., a youth of only seventeen. The
Æto’lians, a confederacy of rude Grecian tribes, aided by
the Spartans, now began a series of unprovoked aggressions on
some of the Peloponnesian states. The Messenians, whose territory
they had invaded by way of the western coast of Peloponnesus,
called upon the Achæans for assistance; and the youthful
Philip having been placed at the head of the Achæan League,
a general war began between the Macedonians and Achæans on
the one side, and the Ætolians and their allies on the
other, that continued with great severity and obstinacy for four
years. Philip was on the whole successful, but new and more
ambitious designs led him to put an end to the unprofitable
contest. The great struggle going on between Rome and Carthage
attracted his attention, and he thought that an alliance with the
latter would open to himself prospects of future conquest and
glory. So a treaty was concluded with the Ætolians, which
left all the parties to the war in the enjoyment of their
respective possessions (217 B.C.), and Philip prepared to enter
the field against Rome.
After the battle between Carthage and Rome at
Can’næ (216 B.C.), which seemed to have extinguished the
last hopes of Rome, Philip sent envoys to Hannibal, the
Carthaginian general, and concluded with him a treaty of strict
alliance. He next sailed with a fleet up the Adriatic, to assist
Deme’trius of Pharos, who had been driven from his Illyrian
dominions by the Romans; but while besieging Apollo’nia, a small
town in Illyria, he was met and defeated by the Roman
prætor M. Vale’rius Lævi’nus, and was forced to burn
his ships and retreat overland to Macedon. Such was the issue of
his first encounter with the Romans. The latter now turned their
attention to Greece (211 B.C.), and contrived to keep Philip busy
at home by inciting a violation of the recent treaty with the
Ætolians, and by inducing Sparta and Elis to unite in a war
against Macedon. Philip was for a time supported by the
Achæans, under their renowned leader Philopoe’men; but
Athens, which Philip had besieged, called in the aid of a Roman
fleet (199 B.C.), and finally the Achæans themselves, being
divided into factions, accepted terms of peace with the Romans.
Philip continued to struggle against his increasing enemies until
his defeat in the great battle of Cynoceph’alæ (197 B.C.),
by the Roman consul Titus Flamin’ius, when he purchased peace by
the sacrifice of his navy, the payment of a tribute, and the
resignation of his supremacy over the Grecian states.
At this time there was a Grecian epigrammatic
poet, ALCÆ’US, of Messe’ne, who was an ardent partisan of
the Roman consul Flaminius, and who celebrated the defeat of
Philip in some of his epigrams. He wrote the following on the
expedition of Flaminius:
Xerxes from Persia led his mighty host,
And Titus his from fair Italia’s coast.
Both warred with Greece; but here the difference see:
That brought a yoke—this gives us liberty.
He also wrote the following sarcastic epigram on
the Macedonians of Philip’s army who were slain at
Cynocephalæ:
Unmourned, unburied, passenger, we lie,
Three myriad sons of fruitful Thessaly,
In this wide field of monumental clay.
Ætolian Mars had marked us for his prey;
Or he who, bursting from the Ausonian fold,
In Titus’ form the waves of battle rolled;
And taught Æma’thia’s boastful lord to run
So swift that swiftest stags were by his speed outdone.
Philip is said to have retorted this insult by
the following inscription on a tree, in which he pretty plainly
states the chastisement Alcæus would receive were he to
fall into the hands of his enemy:
Unbarked, and leafless, passenger, you see,
Fixed in this mound Alcæus’ gallows-tree.
—Trans. by J. H. MERIVALE.
V. GREECE CONQUERED BY ROME.
At the Isthmian games, held at Corinth the year
after the downfall of Philip, the Roman consul Flaminius, a true
friend of Greece, under the authority of the Roman Senate caused
proclamation to be made, that Rome “took off all impositions and
withdrew all garrisons from Greece, and restored liberty, and
their own laws and privileges, to the several states” (196 B.C.).
The deluded Greeks received this announcement with exultation,
and the highest honors which a grateful people could bestow were
showered upon Flaminius. [Footnote: See a more full
account of the events connected with this proclamation, in
Mosaics of Roman History.]
A Roman master stands on Grecian ground,
And to the concourse of the Isthmian games
He, by his herald’s voice, aloud proclaims
“The liberty of Greece!” The words rebound
Until all voices in one voice are drowned;
Glad acclamation by which the air was rent!
And birds, high flying in the element,
Dropped to the earth, astonished at the sound!
A melancholy echo of that noise
Doth sometimes hang on musing Fancy’s ear.
Ah! that a conqueror’s words should be so dear;
Ah! that a boon should shed such rapturous joys!
A gift of that which is not to be given
By all the blended powers of earth and heaven.
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
The Greeks soon realized that the freedom which
Rome affected to bestow was tendered by a power that could
withdraw it at pleasure. First, the Ætolians were reduced
to poverty and deprived of their independence, for having
espoused the cause of Anti’ochus of Syria, the enemy of Rome. At
a later period Perseus, the successor of Philip on the throne of
Macedon, being driven into a war by Roman ambition, finally lost
his kingdom in the battle of Pydna (168 B.C.); and then the
Achæans were charged with having aided Macedon in her war
with Rome, and, without a shadow of proof against them, one
thousand of their worthiest citizens were seized and sent to Rome
for trial (167 B.C.). Here they were kept seventeen years without
a hearing, when three hundred of their number, all who survived,
were restored to their country. These and other acts of cruelty
aroused a spirit of vengeance against the Romans, that soon
culminated in war. But the Achæans and their allies were
defeated by the consul Mum’mius, near Corinth (146 B.C.), and
that city, then the richest in Greece, was plundered of its
treasures and consigned to the flames. Corinth was specially
distinguished for its perfection in the arts of painting and
sculpture, and the poet ANTIP’ATER, of Sidon, thus describes the
desolation of the city after its destruction by the Romans:
Where, Corinth, are thy glories now—
Thy ancient wealth, thy castled brow,
Thy solemn fanes, thy halls of state,
Thy high-born dames, thy crowded gate?
There’s not a ruin left to tell
Where Corinth stood, how Corinth fell.
The Nereids of thy double sea
Alone remain to wail for thee.
—Trans. by GOLDWIN SMITH.
The last blow to the liberties of the Hellenic
race had now been struck, and all Greece, as far as Epi’rus and
Macedonia, became a Roman province under the name of Achaia. Says
THIRLWALL, “The end of the Achæan war was the last stage of
the lingering process by which Rome enclosed her victim in the
coils of her insidious diplomacy, covered it with the slime of
her sycophants and hirelings, crushed it when it began to
struggle, and then calmly preyed upon its vitals.” But although
Greece had lost her independence, and many of her cities were
desolate, or had sunk into insignificance, she still retained her
renown for philosophy and the arts, and became the instructor of
her conquerors. In the well-known words of HORACE,
When conquered Greece brought in her captive arts,
She triumphed o’er her savage conquerors’ hearts.
-Bk. II. Epistle 1.
As another has said, “She still retained a sovereignty which the Romans could
not take from her, and to which they were obliged to pay homage.” In whatever
quarter Rome turned her victorious arms she encountered Greek colonies speaking
the Greek language, and enjoying the arts of civilization. All these were
absorbed by her, but they were not lost. They diffused Greek customs, thought,
speech, and art over the Latin world, and Hellas survived in the intellectual
life of a new empire.
CHAPTER XVII.
LITERATURE AND ART AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
LITERATURE.
I. THE DRAMA.
As we have seen in a former chapter, Greek tragedy attained its zenith with the
three great masters—Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. As MAHAFFY well says,
“Its later annals are but a history of decay; and of the vast herd of latter
tragedians two only, and two of the earliest—Ion of Chi’os, and Ag’athon—can be
called living figures in a history of Greek literature.” Even these, it seems,
wrote before Sophocles and Euripides had closed their careers. But few
fragments of their genius have come down to us. Longi’nus said of Ion, that he
was fluent and polished, rather than bold or sublime; while Agathon has been
characterized as “the creator of a new tragic style, combining the verbal
elegancies and ethical niceties of the Sophists with artistic claims of a
luxurious kind.”
While tragedy declined, with comedy the case was
different, for its changes were progressive. Most writers divide
Greek comedy into the Old, the Middle, and the New; and although
the boundary lines between the three orders are very indistinct,
each has certain well-defined characteristics. It is asserted, as
we have elsewhere noted, that the chief subjects of the first
were the politics of the day and the characters and deeds of
leading persons; that the chief peculiarity of the second, in
which the action of the chorus was much curtailed, was the
exclusion of personal and political criticism, and the adoption
of parodies of the gods and ridicule of certain types of
character; and that the New Comedy, in which the chorus
disappeared, aimed to paint scenes and characters of domestic
life. The Middle Comedy, however, still continued to be in some
degree personal and political, and even in the New Comedy these
features of the Old are frequently apparent.
Aristoph’anes, the leader of the Old Comedy,
toward the close of his life produced The Frogs—a work
that signalized the transition from the Old to the Middle Comedy.
The latter school, however, took its rise in Sicily, and its most
distinguished authors were Antiph’anes, probably of Athens, born
in 404, and Alex’is of Thu’rii, born about 394. The New Comedy
arose after Athens had fallen under Macedonian supremacy, and as
many as sixty-four poets belong to this period, the later of whom
composed their plays in Alexandria, in the time of Alexander’s
successors. The founder of this school was Phile’mon of Soli, in
Cilicia, born about 360 B.C. Of his ninety plays fragments of
fifty-six remain. The majority of these have been described as
“elegant but not profound reflections on the ‘changes and chances
of this mortal life.'” A late critic chooses the following
fragment as illustrative of Philemon, and at the same time
favorable to his reputation:
Have faith in God, and fear; seek not to know him;
For thou wilt gain naught else beyond thy search;
Whether he is or is not, shun to ask:
As one who is, and sees thee, always fear him.
—Trans. by J. A. SYMONDS.
MENANDER.
The acknowledged master and representative of
this period, however, and the last of the classical poets of
Greece, was Menan’der, an Athenian, son of Diopi’thes, the
general whom Demosthenes defended in his speech “On the
Chersonese,” and a nephew of the poet Alexis. Menander was born
in 342 B.C.; and although only fragments of his writings exist,
he was so closely copied or imitated by the Roman comic poets
that his style and character can be very clearly traced. MR.
SYMONDS thus describes him: “His personal beauty, the love of
refined pleasure that distinguished him in life, the serene and
genial temper of his wisdom, the polish of his verse, and the
harmony of parts he observed in composition, justify us in
calling Menander the Sophocles of comedy. If we were to judge by
the fragments transmitted to us, we should have to say that
Menander’s comedy was ethical philosophy in verse; so mature is
its wisdom, so weighty its language, so grave its tone. The
brightness of the beautiful Greek spirit is sobered down in him
almost to sadness. Yet the fact that Stobæ’us found him a
fruitful source of sententious quotations, and that alphabetical
anthologies were made of his proverbial sayings, ought not to
obscure his fame for drollery and humor. If old men appreciated
his genial or pungent worldly wisdom, boys and girls read him, we
are told, for his love-stories.”
Menander was an intimate friend of Epicu’rus, the
philosopher, and is supposed to have adopted his teachings. On
this point, however, MR. SYMONDS thus remarks: “Speaking broadly,
the philosophy in vogue at Athens during the period of the New
Comedy was what in modern days is known as Epicureanism. Yet it
would be unjust to confound the grave and genial wisdom of
Menander with so trivial a philosophy as that which may be summed
up in the sentence ‘eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’ A
fragment from an unknown play of his expresses the pathos of
human existence with a depth of feeling that is inconsistent with
mere pleasure-seeking:
“‘When thou would’st know thyself, what man thou art,
Look at the tombstones as thou passest by:
Within those monuments lie bones and dust
Of monarchs, tyrants, sages, men whose pride
Rose high because of wealth, or noble blood,
Or haughty soul, or loveliness of limb;
Yet none of these things strove for them ‘gainst time;
One common death hath ta’en all mortal men.
See thou to this, and know thee who thou art.'”
As EUGENE LAWRENCE says: “Most modern comedies are founded on those of
Menander. They revive their characters, repeat their jokes, transplant their
humor; and the wit of Molière, Shakspeare, or Sheridan is often the same that
once awoke shouts of laughter on the Attic stage.”
II. ORATORY.
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democracy,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne.
—MILTON.
Eloquence, or oratory, which Cicero calls “the
friend of peace and the companion of tranquillity, requiring for
her cradle a commonwealth already well-established and
flourishing,” was fostered and developed in Greece by the
democratic character of her institutions. It was scarcely known
there until the time of Themistocles, the first orator of note;
and in the time of Pericles it suddenly rose, in Athens, to a
great height of perfection. Pericles himself, whose great aim was
to sway the assemblies of the people to his will, cultivated
oratory with such application and success, that the poets of his
day said of him that on some occasions the goddess of persuasion,
with all her charms, seemed to dwell on his lips; and that, at
other times, his discourse had all the vehemence of thunder to
move the souls of his hearers. The golden age of Grecian
eloquence is embraced in a period of one hundred and thirty years
from the time of Pericles, and during this period Athens bore the
palm alone.
Of the many Athenian orators the most
distinguished were Lys’ias, Isoc’rates, Æschines, and
Demosthenes. The first was born about 435 B.C., and was admired
for the perspicuity, purity, sweetness, and delicacy of his
style. Having become a resident of Thurii in early life, on his
return to Athens he was not allowed to speak in the assemblies,
or courts of justice, and therefore wrote orations for others to
deliver. Many of these are characterized by great energy and
power. Dionysius, the Roman historian and critic, praises Lysias
for his grace; Cicero commends him for his subtlety; and
Quintilian esteems him for his truthfulness. Isocrates was born
at Athens in 436. Having received the instructions of some of the
most celebrated Sophists of his time, he opened a school of
rhetoric, and was equally esteemed for the excellence of his
compositions—mostly political orations—and for his success in
teaching. His style was more philosophic, smooth, and elegant
than that of Lysias. “Cicero,” says a modern critic, “whose style
is exceedingly like that of Isocrates, appears to have especially
used him as a model—as indeed did Demosthenes; and through these
two orators he has moulded all the prose of modern Europe.”
Isocrates lived to the advanced age of ninety-eight, and then
died, it is said, by voluntary starvation, in grief for the fatal
battle of Chæronea.
“That dishonest victory.
At Chæronea, fatal to liberty,
Killed with report that old man eloquent.”
ÆSCHINES AND DEMOSTHENES.
The orator Æschines was born in 398 B.C. He is regarded as the father of
extemporaneous speaking among the Greeks, but is chiefly distinguished as the
rival of Demosthenes, rather than for his few orations (but three in number)
that have come down to us, although he was endowed by nature with extraordinary
rhetorical powers, and his orations are characterized by ease, order,
clearness, and precision. “The eloquence of Æschines,” says an American scholar
and statesman, [Footnote: Hugh S. Legaré, of Charleston, South Carolina,
in an article on “Demosthenes” in the New York Review.] “is of a
brilliant and showy character, running occasionally, though very rarely, into a
Ciceronean declamation. In general his taste is unexceptionable; he is clear in
statement, close and cogent in argument, lucid in arrangement, remarkably
graphic and animated in style, and full of spirit and pleasantry, without the
least appearance of emphasis or effort. He is particularly successful in
description and the portraiture of character. That his powers were appreciated
by his great rival is evident from the latter’s frequent admonitions to the
assembly to remember that their debates are no theatrical exhibitions of voice
and oratory, but deliberations involving the safety of their country.”
On leaving Athens, after his defeat in the
celebrated contest with Demosthenes, Æschines went to
Rhodes, where he established a school of rhetoric. It is stated
that on one occasion he began his instruction by reading the two
orations that had been the cause of his banishment. His hearers
loudly applauded his own speech, but when he read that of
Demosthenes they were wild with delight. “If you thus praise it
from my reading it,” exclaimed Æschines, “what would you
have said if you had heard Demosthenes himself deliver it?”
By the common consent of ancient and modern
times, Demosthenes stands pre-eminent for his eloquence, his
patriotism, and his influence over the Athenian people. He was
born about 383 B.C. On attaining his majority, his first speech
was directed against a cousin to whom his inheritance had been
intrusted, and who refused to surrender to him what was left of
it. Demosthenes won his case, and his victory brought him into
such prominent notice that he was soon engaged to write pleadings
for litigants in the courts. He devoted himself to incessant
study and practice in oratory, and, overcoming by various means a
weakly body and an impediment in his speech, he became the chief
of orators. Of his public life we have already seen something in
the history of Athens. With all his moral and intellectual force,
the closing years of his life were shaded with misery and
disgrace. Fifty years after his death the Athenians erected a
bronze statue to his memory, and upon the pedestal placed this
inscription:
Divine in speech, in judgment, too, divine,
Had valor’s wreath, Demosthenes, been thine,
Fair Greece had still her freedom’s ensign borne,
And held the scourge of Macedon in scorn!
With regard to the character of the orations of
Demosthenes, it must be confessed that somewhat conflicting views
have been entertained by the moderns. LORD BROUGHAM, while
admitting that Demosthenes “never wanders from the subject, that
each remark tells upon the matter in hand, that all his
illustrations are brought to bear upon the point, and that he is
never found making a step in any direction which does not advance
his main object, and lead toward the conclusion to which he is
striving to bring his hearers,” still denies that he is
distinguished for those “chains of reasoning,” and that “fine
argumentation” which are the chief merit of our greatest modern
orators. While he admits that Demosthenes abounds in the most
“appropriate topics, and such happy hits—to use a homely but
expressive phrase—as have a magical effect upon a popular
assembly, and that he clothes them in the choicest language,
arranges them in the most perfect order, and captivates the ear
with a music that is fitted, at his will, to provoke or to
soothe, and even to charm the sense,” he regards all this as
better suited to great popular assemblies than to a more refined,
and a more select audience—such as one composed of learned
senators and judges. But this is admitting that he adapted
himself, with admirable tact and judgment, to the subject and the
occasion. But while the character thus attributed to the orations
of the great Athenian orator may be the true one, as regards the
Philippics, the speech against Æschines, and the one on the
Crown, it is not thought to be applicable to the many pleas which
he made on occasions more strictly judicial.
“That which distinguishes the eloquence of
Demosthenes above all others, ancient or modern,” says the
American writer already quoted, “is earnestness, conviction, and
the power to persuade that belongs to a strong and deep
persuasion felt by the speaker. It is what Milton defines true
eloquence to be, ‘none but the serious and hearty love of
truth’—or, more properly, what the speaker believes to be truth.
This advantage Demosthenes had over Æschines. He had faith
in his country, faith in her people (if they could be roused up),
faith in her institutions. He is mad at the bare thought that a
man of Macedon, a barbarian, should be beating Athenians in the
field, and giving laws to Greece. The Roman historian and critic,
Dionysius, said of his oratory, that its highest attribute was
the spirit of life that pervades it. Other remarkable features
were its amazing flexibility and variety, its condensation and
perfect logical unity, its elaborate and exquisite finish of
details, to which must be added that polished harmony and rhythm
which cannot be attained, to a like degree, in any modern
language. Moreover, however elaborately composed these speeches
were, they were still speeches, and had the appearance of being
the spontaneous effusions of the moment. No extemporaneous
harangues were ever more free and natural.”
The historian HUME says of the style of
Demosthenes: “It was rapid harmony adjusted to the sense;
vehement reasoning without any appearance of art; disdain, anger,
boldness, and freedom, involved in a continued strain of
argument.” Another writer says: “It was his undeviating firmness,
his disdain of all compromise, that made him the first of
statesmen and orators; in this lay the substance of his power,
the primary foundation of his superiority; the rest was merely
secondary. The mystery of his mighty influence, then, lay in his
honesty; and it is this that gave warmth and tone to his
feelings, an energy to his language, and an impression to his
manner before which every imputation of insincerity must have
immediately vanished.”
III. PHILOSOPHY.
PLATO.
While oratory was thus attaining perfection in
Greece, philosophy was making equal progress in the direction
marked out by Socrates. Among the philosophers of the brighter
period of Grecian history are the names of Plato and Aristotle,
names that will ever be cherished and venerated while genius and
worth continue to be held in admiration. Of the pupils of
Socrates, Plato, born in Athens in 429 B.C., was by far the most
distinguished, and the only one who fully appreciated the
intellectual greatness and seized the profound conceptions of his
master. In fact, he came to surpass Socrates in the profoundness
of his views, and in the correctness and eloquence with which he
expressed them. On the death of his teacher, Plato left Athens
and passed twelve years in visiting different countries, engaged
in philosophic investigation. Returning to Athens, he founded his
school of philosophy in the Acade’mia, a beautiful spot in the
suburbs of the city, adorned with groves, walks, and fountains,
and which his name has immortalized.
Here Philosophy
With Plato dwelt, and burst the chains of mind;
Here, with his stole across his shoulders flung,
His homely garments with a leathern zone
Confined, his snowy beard low clust’ring down
Upon his ample chest, his keen dark eye
Glancing from underneath the arched brow,
He fixed his sandaled foot, and on his staff
Leaned, while to his disciples he declared
How all creation’s mighty fabric rose
From the abyss of chaos: next he traced
The bounds of virtue and of vice; the source
Of good and evil; sketched the ideal form
Of beauty, and unfolded all the powers
Of mind by which it ranges uncontrolled,
And soars from earth to immortality.
—HAYGARTH.
To Plato, as the poet intimates in his closing
lines, we owe the first formal development of the Socratic
doctrine of the spirituality of the soul, and the first attempt
toward demonstrating its immortality. As a late writer has well
said, “It is the genius of Socrates that fills all Plato’s
philosophy, and their two minds have flowed out over the world
together.” Of his doctrine on this subject, as expressed in the
Phoe’do, LORD BROUGHAM thus wrote: “The whole tenor of it
refers to a renewal or continuation of the soul as a separate and
individual existence after the dissolution of the body, and with
a complete consciousness of personal identity: in short, to a
continuance of the same rational being’s existence after death.
The liberation from the body is treated as the beginning of a new
and more perfect life.” Plato’s only work on physical science is
the Timoe’us. His works are all called “Dialogues,” which
the critics divide into two classes—those of search, and those
of exposition. Among the latter, the Republic and the
Laws give us the author’s political views; and, on the
former, More’s Uto’pia and other works of like character
in modern times are founded.
“Plato, of all authors,” says DR. A. C. KENDRICK,
[Footnote: Article “Plato,” in Appleton’s American
Cyclipoedia.] “is the one to whom the least justice
can be done by any formal analysis. In the spirit which pervades
his writings, in their untiring freshness, in their purity, love
of truth and of virtue, their perpetual aspiring to the loftiest
height of knowledge and of excellence, much more than in their
positive doctrines, lies the secret of their charm and of their
unfailing power. Plato is often styled an idealist. But this is
true of the spirit rather than of the form of his doctrine; for
strictly he is an intense realist, and differs from his great
pupil, Aristotle, far less in his mere philosophical method than
in his lofty moral and religious aspirations, which were
perpetually winging his spirit toward the beautiful and the good.
His formal errors are abundant; but even in his errors the truth
is often deeper than the error; and when that has been
discredited, the language adjusts itself to the deeper truth of
which it was rather an inadequate expression than a direct
contradiction.” Concerning the style of Plato’s writings,
a distinguished English scholar and translator observes as
follows: “Nor is the language in which his thoughts are conveyed
less remarkable than the thoughts themselves. In his more
elevated passages he rises, like his own Prometheus, to heaven,
and brings down from thence the noblest of all thefts,
[Footnote: See the story of Prometheus.] Wisdom
with Fire; but, in general, calm, pure, and unaffected, his style
flows like a stream which gurgles its own music as it runs; and
his works rise, like the great fabric of Grecian literature, of
which they are the best model, in calm and noiseless majesty.”
[Footnote: Thomas Mitchell.]
Plato died at the advanced age of eighty-one, his
mental powers unimpaired, and he was buried in the Academe. On
his tomb was placed the following inscription:
Here, first of all men for pure justice famed,
Aris’tocles, the moral teacher, lies:
[Footnote: The proper name of Plato was Aristocles:
but in his youth he was surnamed Plato by his companions
in the gymnasium, on account of his broad shoulders.
(From the Greek word platus, “broad.”)]
And if there ere has lived one truly wise,
This man was wiser still: too great for envy.
ARISTOTLE.
Aristotle was born in 384 B.C., at Stagi’ra, in
Macedonia. Hence he is frequently called the “Stag’i-rite;” as
POPE calls him in the following tribute found in his Temple of
Fame:
Here, in a shrine that cast a dazzing light,
Sat, fixed in thought, the mighty Stagirite;
His sacred head a radiant zodiac crowned,
And various animals his sides surround;
His piercing eyes, erect, appear to view
Superior worlds, and look all nature through.
He repaired to Athens at the age of seventeen, and soon after became a pupil of
Plato. His uncommon acuteness of apprehension, and his indefatigable industry,
early won the notice and applause of his master, who called him the “mind” of
the school, and said, when he was absent, “Intellect is not here.” On the death
of Plato, Aristotle left Athens, and in 343 he repaired to Macedonia, on the
invitation of Philip, and became the instructor of the young prince Alexander.
In after years Alexander aided him in his scientific pursuits by sending to him
many objects of natural history, and giving him large sums of money, estimated
in all at two millions of dollars.
In the year 335 Aristotle returned to Athens, and
opened his school in the Lyce’um. He walked with his scholars up
and down the shady avenues, conversing on philosophy, and hence
his school was called the peripatetic. Aristotle nowhere
exhibits the merits of Plato in the service of metaphysics, yet
he was the most learned and most productive of the writers of
Greece. He had neither the poetical imagination nor the genius of
his teacher, but he mastered the whole philosophical and
historical science of his age, and, more than Plato, his
intellect has influenced the course of modern civilization. He
was eminently a practical philosopher—a cold inquirer, whose
mind did not reach the high and lofty teaching of Plato,
concerning Deity and the destiny of mankind. We find the
following just estimate of him in BROWNE’S Greek Classical
Literature: “One cannot set too high a value on the practical
nature of Aristotle’s mind. He never forgot the bearing of all
philosophy upon the happiness of man, and he never lost sight of
man’s wants and requirements. He saw the inadequacy of all
knowledge, unless he could trace in it a visible practical
tendency. But, beyond this one single point, he falls grievously
short of his great master, Plato. All his ideas of man’s good are
limited to the consideration of this life alone. It is impossible
to trace in his writings any belief in a future state or
immortality.”
For many centuries succeeding the Middle Ages,
especially from the eleventh to the fifteenth, the metaphysical
teachings of Aristotle held a tyrannic sway over the public mind;
but they have been gradually yielding to the more lofty and
sublime teachings of Plato. His investigations in natural
science, however, and his work as a logician and political
philosopher, constitute his greatness, and create the enormous
influence that he has wielded in the world. “Science owes to him
its earliest impulse,” says MR. LAWRENCE. “He perfected and
brought into form,” says DR. WILLIAM SMITH, “those elements of
the dialectic art which had been struck out by Socrates and
Plato, and wrought them by his additions into so complete a
system that he may be regarded as at once the founder and
perfecter of logic as an art.” Says MAHAFFY, “He has built his
politics upon so sound a philosophic basis, and upon the
evidence of so large and varied a political experience, that his
lessons on the rise and fall of governments will never grow old,
and will be perpetually receiving fresh corroborations, so long
as human nature remains the same.” Aristotle was a friend of the
Macedonians, and, on the death of Alexander, he fled, from Athens
to Chal’cis, in Euboea, to escape a trial for impiety. There he
died in 322 B.C. In the lives of the three great philosophers of
Greece—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—is embraced what is
commonly called “The Philosophical Era of Athens.” To this era
MILTON has beautifully alluded in his well-known description of
the famous city; and for the Academe, or Academia, the beautiful
garden that was the resort of the philosophers, EDWIN ARNOLD
expresses these sentiments of veneration:
Pleasanter than the hills of Thessaly,
Nearer and dearer to the poet’s heart
Than the blue ripple belting Salamis,
Or long grass waving over Marathon,
Fair Academe, most holy Academe,
Thou art, and hast been, and shalt ever be.
I would be numbered now with things that were,
Changing the wasting fever of to-day
For the dear quietness of yesterday:
I would be ashes, underneath the grass,
So I had wandered in thy platane walks
One happy summer twilight—even one.
Was it not grand, and beautiful, and rare,
The music and the wisdom and the shade,
The music of the pebble-paven rills,
And olive boughs, and bowered nightingales,
Chorusing joyously the joyous things
Told by the gray Silenus of the grove,
Low-fronted and large-hearted Socrates!
Oh, to have seen under the olive blossoms
But once—only once in a mortal life,
The marble majesties of ancient gods!
And to have watched the ring of listeners—
The Grecian boys gone mad for love of truth,
The Grecian girls gone pale for love of him
Who taught the truth, who battled for the truth;
And girls and boys, women and bearded men,
Crowding to hear and treasure in their hearts
Matter to make their lives a happiness,
And death a happy ending.
EPICU’RUS AND ZE’NO.
What is known as the Epicure’an school of
philosophy was founded by Epicurus, a native of Samos, born in
342, who went to Athens in early youth, and, at the age of
thirty, established himself as a philosophical teacher. He met
with great success. He did not believe in the soul’s immortality,
and taught the pursuit of mental pleasure and happiness as the
highest good. While his learning was not great, he was a man of
unsullied morality, respected and loved by his followers to a
wonderful degree. Although he wrote books in advocacy of piety,
and the reverence due to the gods on account of the excellence of
their nature, he maintained that they had no concern in human
affairs. Hence the Roman poet LUCRETIUS, who lived when the old
belief in the gods and goddesses of the heathen world had nearly
faded away, attributes to the teachings of Epicurus the triumph
of philosophy over superstition.
On earth in bondage base existence lay,
Bent down by Superstition’s iron sway.
She from the heavens disclosed her monstrous head,
And dark with grisly aspect, scowling dread,
Hung o’er the sons of men; but toward the skies
A man of Greece dared lift his mortal eyes,
And first resisting stood. Not him the fame
Of deities, the lightning’s forky flame,
Or muttering murmurs of the threat’ning sky
Repressed; but roused his soul’s great energy
To break the bars that interposing lay,
And through the gates of nature burst his way.
That vivid force of soul a passage found;
The flaming walls that close the world around
He far o’erleaped; his spirit soared on high
Through the vast whole, the one infinity.
Victor, he brought the tidings from the skies
What things in nature may, or may not, rise;
What stated laws a power finite assign,
And still with bounds impassable confine.
Thus trod beneath our feet the phantom lies;
We mount o’er Superstition to the skies.
—Trans. By ELTON.
The school of the Stoics was founded by Zeno, a
native of Cyprus, who went to Athens about 299 B.C., and opened a
school in the Poi’ki-le Sto’a, or painted porch, whence
the name of his sect arose. As is well known, the chief tenets of
the Stoics were temperance and self-denial, which Zeno himself
practiced by living on uncooked food, wearing very thin garments
in winter, and refusing the comforts of life generally. To the
Stoics pleasure was irrational, and pain a visitation to be borne
with ease. Both Stoicism and Epicureanism flourished among the
Romans. The teachings of Epictetus, the Roman Stoic philosopher,
are summed up in the formula, “Bear and forbear;” and he is said
to have observed that “Man is but a pilot; observe the star, hold
the rudder, and be not distracted on thy way.” Both these schools
of philosophy, however, passed into skepticism. Epicureanism
became a material fatalism and a search for pleasure; while
Stoicism ended in spiritual fatalism. But when the Gospel
awakened the human heart to life, it was the Greek mind which
gave mankind a Christian theology.
IV. HISTORY
XENOPHON.
The most distinguished Greek historian of this
period was Xenophon, of whom we have already seen something as
the leader of the famous “Retreat of the Ten Thousand,” and as
the author of a delightful and instructive account of that
achievement. He was born in Athens about 443 B.C., and at an
early age became the pupil of Socrates, to whose principles he
strictly adhered through life, in practice as well as in theory.
Seemingly on account of his philosophical views he was banished
by the Athenians, before his return from the expedition into
Asia; but the Spartans, with whom he fought against Athens at
Coronea, gave him an estate at Scil’lus, in Elis, and here he
lived, engaging in literary pursuits, that were diversified by
domestic enjoyments and active field-sports. He died either at
Scillus or at Corinth—to which latter place some authorities
think he removed in the later years of his life—in the ninetieth
year of his age.
Among the works of Xenophon is the
Anab’asis, considered his best, descriptive of the advance
into Persia and the masterly retreat; the Hellen’ica, a
history of Greece, in seven books, from the time of Thucydides to
the battle of Mantine’a, in 362 B.C.; the Cyropoedi’a, a
political romance, based on the history of Cyrus the Great; a
treatise on the horse, and the duties of a cavalry commander; a
treatise on hunting; a picture of an Athenian banquet, and of the
amusement and conversation with which it was diversified; and,
the most pleasing of all, the Memorabil’ia, devoted to the
defence of the life and principles of Socrates. Concerning the
remarkable miscellany of Xenophon, MR. MITCHELL says: “The writer
who has thrown equal interest into an account of a retreating
army and the description of a scene of coursing; who has
described with the same fidelity a common groom and a perfect
pattern of conjugal faithfulness—such a man had seen life under
aspects which taught him to know that there were things of
infinitely more importance than the turn of a phrase, the music
of a cadence, and the other niceties which are wanted by a
luxurious and opulent metropolis. The virtuous feelings that were
necessary in a mind constituted as his was, took into their
comprehensive bosom the welfare of the world.”
Although the genius of Xenophon was not of the
highest order, his writings have afforded, to all succeeding
ages, one of the best models of purity, simplicity, and harmony
of language: By some of his contemporaries he has been styled
“The Attic Muse;” by others, “The Athenian Bee;” while his
manners and personal appearance have been described by Diog’enes
Laer’tius, in his Lives of the Philosophers, in the
following brief but comprehensive sentence: “Modest in
deportment, and beautiful in person to a remarkable degree.”
POLYB’IUS.
Of the prominent Greek historians, Polybius was
the last. Born about 204 B.C., he lived and wrote in the closing
period of Grecian history. Having been carried a prisoner to Rome
with the one thousand prominent citizens of Achaia, his
accomplishments secured for him the friendship of Scip’io
Africa’nus Mi’nor, and of his father, Æmil’ius Pau’lus, at
whose house he resided. He spent his time in collecting materials
for his works, and in giving instruction to Scipio. In the year
150 B.C. he returned to his native country with the surviving
exiles, and actively exerted himself to induce the Greeks to keep
peace with the Romans, but, as we know, without success. After
the Roman conquest the Greeks seem to have awakened to the wisdom
of his advice, for on a statue erected to his memory was the
inscription, “Hellas would have been saved had the advice of
Polybius been followed.” Polybius wrote a history in forty books,
embracing the time between the commencement of the Second Punic
War, in 218 B.C., and the destruction of Carthage and Corinth by
the Romans, in 146 B.C. It is the most trustworthy history we
possess of this period, and has been closely copied by subsequent
writers. A correct estimate of its character and worth will be
found in the following summary:
“The greater part of the valuable and laborious
work of Polybius has perished. We have only the first five books
entire, and fragments and extracts of the rest. As it is,
however, it is one of the most valuable historical works that has
come down to us. His style, indeed, will not bear a comparison
with the great masters of Greek literature: he is not eloquent,
like Thucydides; nor practical, like Herodotus; nor perspicuous
and elegant, like Xenophon. He lived at a time when the Greek
language had lost much of its purity by an intermixture of
foreign elements, and he did not attempt to imitate the language
of the Attic writers. He wrote as he spoke: he gives us the first
rough draft of his thoughts, and seldom imposes on himself the
trouble to arrange or methodize them; hence, they are often
meager and desultory, and not infrequently deviate entirely from
the subject.
“But in the highest quality of an historian—the
love of truth—Polybius has no superior. This always predominates
in his writings. He has judgment to trace effects to their
causes, a full knowledge of his subjects, and an impartiality
that forbids him to conceal it to favor any party or cause. In
his geographical descriptions he is not always clear, but his
descriptions of battles have never been surpassed. ‘His writings
have been admired by the warrior, copied by the politician, and
imitated by the historian. Brutus had him ever in his hands,
Tully transcribed him, and many of the finest passages of Livy
are the property of the Greek historian.'”
ART.
I. ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.
After the close of the Peloponnesian war the
perfection and application of the several orders of Grecian
architecture were displayed in the laying out of cities on a
grander scale, and by an increase of splendor in private
residences, rather than by any marked change in the style of
public buildings and temples. Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in
Syria, were the finest examples of Grecian genius in this
direction, both in the regularity and size of their public and
private buildings, and in their external and internal adornment.
This period was also distinguished for its splendid sepulchral
and other monuments. Of these, probably the most exquisite gem of
architectural taste is the circular building at Athens, the
Cho-rag’ic Monument, or “Lantern of Demosthenes,” erected in
honor of a victory gained by the chorus of Lysic’rates in 334
B.C. “It is the purest specimen of the Corinthian order,” says a
writer on architecture, “that has reached our time, whose
minuteness and unobtrusive beauty have preserved it almost entire
among the ruins of the mightiest piles of Athenian art.” Other
celebrated monuments of this period were the one erected at
Halicarnas’sus by the Ca’rian queen Artemi’sia to the memory of
her husband Mauso’lus, adorned with sculptural decorations by
Sco’pas and others, and considered one of the seven wonders of
the world; and the octagonal edifice, the Horolo’gium of
Androni’cus Cyrrhes’tes, at Athens.
In sculpture, Athens still asserted its
pre-eminence, but the style and character of its later school
were materially different from those of the preceding one of
Phid’ias. “Toward the close of the Peloponnesian war,” says a
recent writer, “a change took place in the habits and feelings of
the Athenian people, under the influence of which a new school of
statuary was developed. The people, spoiled by luxury, and
craving the pleasures and excitements which the prosperity of the
age of Pericles had opened to them, regarded the severe forms of
the older masters with even less patience than the austere
virtues of the generation which had driven the Persians out of
Greece. The sculptors, giving a reflex of the times in their
productions, instead of the grand and sublime cultivated the
soft, the graceful, and the flowing, and aimed at an expression
of stronger passion and more dramatic action. Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva, the favorite subjects of the Phidian era, gave place to
such deities as Venus, Bacchus, and Amor; and with the departure
of the older gods departed also the serene and composed majesty
which had marked the representations of them.” [Footnote:
C. S. Weyman.]
The first great artist of this school was Scopas,
born at Paros, and who flourished in the first half of the fourth
century B.C. Although famous in architectural sculpture, he
excelled in single figures and groups, “combining strength of
expression with grace.” The celebrated group of Ni’o-be and her
children slain by Ar’temis and Apollo, a copy of which is
preserved in the museum of Florence, and the statue of the
victorious Venus in the Louvre at Paris, are attributed to
Scopas. The most esteemed of his works, according to Pliny, was a
group representing Achilles conducted to the Island of Leu’ce by
sea deities. The only other artist of this school that we will
refer to is Praxit’eles, a contemporary of Scopas. He excelled in
representing the female figure, his masterpiece being the
Cnid’ian Aphrodi’te, a naked statue, in Parian marble, modeled
from life, representing Venus just leaving the bath. This statue
was afterward taken to Constantinople, where it was burned during
the reign of Justinian.
This Athenian school of sculpture was followed,
in the time of Alexander the Great, by what was called the
Si-çy-o’ni-an school, of which Euphra’nor, of Corinth, and
Lysip’pus, of Si’çy-on, were the leading representatives.
The former was a painter as well as sculptor. His statues were
executed in bronze and marble, and were admired for their
dignity. Lysippus worked only in bronze, and was the only
sculptor that Alexander the Great permitted to represent him in
statues. His works were very numerous, including the colossal
statue of Jupiter at Tarentum, sixty feet high, several of
Hercules, and many others. The succeeding and later Greek
sculptors made no attempt to open a new path of design, but they
steadily maintained the reputation of the art. Many works of
great excellence were produced in Rhodes, Alexandria, Ephesus,
and elsewhere in the East. Among these was the famous Colossus, a
statue of the sun, designed and executed by Cha’res of Rhodes,
that reared its huge form one hundred and five feet in height at
the entrance to Rhodes harbor; the Farnese Bull, at Naples, found
in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, also the work of a Rhodian
artist; and the Apollo Belvedere, in the Vatican.
Two works of this late age deserve special
mention. One is the statue of the Dying Gladiator, in the
Capitoline Museum at Rome, supposed to have come from Pergamus.
Says LÜBKE, “It undoubtedly represents a Gaul who, in
battle, seeing the foe approach in overwhelming force, has fallen
upon his own sword to escape a shameful slavery. Overcome by the
faintness of approaching death, he has fallen upon his shield;
his right arm with difficulty prevents his sinking to the ground;
his life ebbs rapidly away with the blood streaming from the deep
wound beneath his breast; his broad head droops heavily forward;
the mists of death already cloud his eyes; his brows are knit
with pain; and his lips are parted in a last sigh. There is,
perhaps, no other statue in which the bitter necessity of death
is expressed with such terrible truth—all the more terrible
because the hardy body is so full of strength.”
Supported on his shortened arm he leans,
Prone agonizing; with incumbent fate
Heavy declines his head, yet dark beneath
The suffering feature sullen vengeance lowers,
Shame, indignation, unaccomplished rage;
And still the cheated eye expects his fall.
—THOMSON.
The other statue is that masterpiece of art, the
group of the La-oc’o-on, now in the Vatican at Rome, the work of
the three Rhodian sculptors, Agesan’dros, Polydo’rus, and
Athenodo’rus. It represents a scene, in connection with the fall
of Troy, that Virgil describes in the Second Book of the
Æneid. A Trojan priest, named Laocoon, endeavored to
propitiate Neptune by sacrifice, and to dissuade the Trojans from
admitting within the walls the fatal wooden horse, whereupon the
goddess Minerva, ever favorable to the Greeks, punished him by
sending two enormous serpents from the sea to destroy him and his
two sons. The poet THOMSON well describes the agony and despair
that the statue portrays:
Such passion here!
Such agonies! such bitterness of pain
Seem so to tremble through the tortured stone
That the touched heart engrosses all the view.
Almost unmarked the best proportions pass
That ever Greece beheld; and, seen alone,
On the rapt eye the imperious passions seize:
The father’s double pangs, both for himself
And sons, convulsed; to Heaven his rueful look,
Imploring aid, and half-accusing, cast;
His fell despair with indignation mixed
As the strong-curling monsters from his side
His full-extended fury cannot tear.
More tender touched, with varied art, his sons
All the soft rage of younger passions show:
In a boy’s helpless fate one sinks oppressed,
While, yet unpierced, the frighted other tries
His foot to steal out of the horrid twine.
An American writer thus apostrophizes this grand
representation:
Laocoon! thou great embodiment
Of human life and human history!
Thou record of the past, thou prophecy
Of the sad future! thou majestic voice,
Pealing along the ages from old time!
Thou wail of agonized humanity!
There lives no thought in marble like to thee!
Thou hast no kindred in the Vatican,
But standest separate among the dreams
Of old mythologies-alone-alone!
—J. G. HOLLAND.
II. PAINTING.
In painting, the Asiatic school of Zeuxis and
Parrhasius was also followed by a “Si-çy-o’ni-an
school”—the third and last phase of Greek painting, founded by
Eupom’pus, of Si’çy-on. The characteristics of this school
were great ease, accuracy, and refinement. Among its chief
masters were Pam’philus, Apel’les, Protog’enes, Ni’cias, and
Aristides. Of these the most famous was Apelles, a native of
Col’ophon, in Ionia, who flourished in the time of Alexander the
Great, with whom he was a great favorite. Of his many fine
productions the finest was his painting of Venus rising from the
Sea, and concerning which ANTIPATER, the poet of Sidon, wrote the
following epigram:
Graceful as from her native sea she springs,
Venus, the labor of Apelles, view:
With pressing hands her humid locks she wrings,
While from her tresses drips the frothy dew:
Ev’n Juno and Minerva now declare,
No longer we contend whose form’s most fair.
APELLES AND PROTOGENES.
A very pleasing story is told, by Pliny, of
Apelles and his brother-artist, Protogenes, which DR. ANTHON
relates as follows:
“Apelles, having come to Rhodes, where Protogenes
was then residing, paid a visit to the artist, but, not finding
him at home, obtained permission from a domestic in waiting to
enter his studio. Finding here a piece of canvas ready on the
frame for the artist’s pencil, Apelles drew upon it a line
(according to some, a figure in outline) with wonderful
precision, and then retired without disclosing his name.
Protogenes, on returning home, and discovering what had been
done, exclaimed that Apelles alone could have executed such a
sketch. However, he drew another himself—a line more nearly
perfect than that of Apelles—and left directions with his
domestic that, when the stranger should call again, he should be
shown what had been done by him. Apelles came, accordingly, and,
perceiving that his line had been excelled by Protogenes, drew a
third one, much better than the other two, and cutting both.
Protogenes now confessed himself vanquished; he ran to the
harbor, sought for Apelles, and the two artists became the
warmest friends. The canvas containing this famous trial of skill
became highly prized, and at a later day was placed in the palace
of the Cæsars at Rome. Here it was burned in a
conflagration that destroyed the palace itself.”
Protogenes was noted for his minute and
scrupulous care in the preparation of his works. He carried this
peculiarity to such excess that Apelles was moved to make the
following comparison: “Protogenes equals or surpasses me in all
things but one—the knowing when to remove his hand from a
painting.” Protogenes survived Apelles, and became a very eminent
painter. It is stated that when Demetrius besieged Rhodes, and
could have reduced it by setting fire to a quarter of the city
that contained one of the finest productions of Protogenes, he
refused to do so lest he should destroy the masterpiece of art.
It is to this incident that the poet THOMSON undoubtedly refers
when he says,
E’en such enchantment then thy pencil poured,
That cruel-thoughted War the impatient torch
Dashed to the ground; and, rather than destroy
The patriot picture, let the city ‘scape.
From the time of Alexander the art of painting
rapidly deteriorated, and at the period of the Roman conquest it
had scarcely an existence. Grecian art, like Grecian liberty, had
lost its spirit and vitality, and the spoliation of public
buildings and galleries, to adorn the porticos and temples of
Rome, hastened its extinction.
We have now reached the close of the history of ancient Greece. But Hellas
still lives in her thousand hallowed associations of historic interest, and in
the numerous ruins of ancient art and splendor which cover her soil—recalling a
glorious Past, upon which we love to dwell as upon the memory of departed
friends or the scenes of a happy childhood—”sweet, but mournful to the soul.”
And although the ashes of her generals, her poets, her scholars, and her
artists are scattered from their urns, and her statuary and her temples are
mutilated and discolored ruins, ancient Greece lives also in the song, the art,
and the research of modern times. In contemplating the influence of her genius,
the mind is naturally fixed upon the chief repository of her taste and
talent—Athens, “the eye of Greece”—from which have sprung “all the strength,
the wisdom, the freedom, and the glory of the western world.”
Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay,
Immovably unquiet, and forever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder
With an earth-awaking blast
Through the caverns of the past;
Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast;
A wingèd sound of joy, and love, and wonder,
Which soars where Expectation never flew,
Rending the veil of space and time asunder!
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;
One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new,
As Athens doth the world with her delight renew.
—SHELLEY.
Of the splendid literature of Athens LORD
MACAULAY says, “It is a subject in which I love to forget the
accuracy of a judge in the veneration of a worshipper and the
gratitude of a child.” To Hellenic thought, as embodied and
exemplified in the great works of Athenian genius, he rightly
ascribes the establishment of an intellectual empire that is
imperishable; and from one of his valuable historical “Essays” we
quote the following graphic delineation of what may be termed
The Immortal Influence of Athens.
“If we consider merely the subtlety of
disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and
elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of
Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most
valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence
have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of
the human intellect? That from hence were the vast
accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero, the withering
fire of Juvenal, the plastic imagination of Dante, the humor of
Cervantes, the comprehension of Bacon, the wit of Butler, the
supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs
of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country
and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Whatever a
few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in
the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the
midst of them, inspiring, encouraging, consoling—the lonely lamp
of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of
Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo, and on the scaffold of Sidney.
But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who
shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and
better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to
engage? to how many the studies which took their rise from her
have been wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in
sickness, society in solitude? Her power is indeed manifested at
the bar, in the senate, on the field of battle, in the schools of
philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature
consoles sorrow or assuages pain—wherever it brings gladness to
eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark
house and the long sleep—there is exhibited, in its noblest
form, the immortal influence of Athens.
“The dervis, in the Arabian tale, did not
hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their load of
jewels and gold, while he retained the casket of that mysterious
juice which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden
riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say that
no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of
the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite
wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the
primeval dynasties, and all the shapeless ore of its yet
unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom
and her power have been annihilated for more than twenty
centuries; her people have degenerated into timid slaves;
[Footnote: But this is not the character of the Athenians
of the present day.] her language into a barbarous
jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive
depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her
intellectual empire is imperishable. And, when those who have
rivaled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when
civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in
distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from
England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in
vain labor to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of
our proudest chief—shall hear savage hymns chanted to some
misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and
shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of
the ten thousand masts—the influence and glory of Athens will
still survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and
decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they
derived their origin, and over which they exercise their
control.”
Genius of Greece! thou livest; though thy domes
Are fallen; here, in this thy loved abode,
Thine Athens, as I breathe the clear pure air
Which thou hast breathed, climb the dark mountain’s side
Which thou hast trod, or in the temple’s porch
Pause on the sculptured beauties which thine eye
Has often viewed delighted, I confess
Thy nearer influence; I feel thy power
Exalting every wish to virtuous hope;
I hear thy solemn voice amid the crash
Of fanes hurled prostrate by barbarian hands,
Calling me forth to tread with thee the paths
Of wisdom, or to listen to thy harp
Hymning immortal strains.
Greece! though deserted are thy ports, and all
Thy pomp and thy magnificence are shrunk
Into a narrow circuit; though thy gates
Pour forth no more thy crested sons to war;
Though thy capacious theatres resound
No longer with the replicated shouts
Of multitudes; although Philosophy
Is silent ‘mid thy porticos and groves;
Though Commerce heaves no more the pond’rous load,
Or, thund’ring with her thousand cars, imprints
Her footsteps on thy rocks; though near thy fanes
And marble monuments the peasant’s hut
Rears its low roof in bitter mockery
Of faded splendor—yet shalt thou survive,
Nor yield till time yields to eternity.
—HAYGARTH.
CHAPTER XVIII.
GREECE SUBSEQUENT TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST.
I. GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.
The Romans conducted their administration of
Greece with much wisdom and moderation, treating both its
religion and municipal institutions with great respect. As MR.
FINLAY says, “Under these circumstances prudence and local
interests would everywhere favor submission to Rome; national
vanity alone would whisper incitements to venture on a struggle
for independence.” [Footnote: “History of Greece from 146
B.C. to A.D. 1864;” by George Finlay, LL.D.] But the
latter induced the Greeks to attempt to regain their liberties at
the time of the first Mithridatic war, about 87 B.C. Sylla, the
Roman general, marched into Greece at the head of a powerful
army, and laid siege to Athens, which made a desperate defence.
At last, their resources exhausted, the Athenians sent a
deputation of orators to negotiate with the old Roman; and it is
stated that “their spokesman began to remind him of their past
glory, and was proceeding to touch upon Marathon, when the surly
soldier fiercely replied, ‘I was sent here to punish rebels, not
to study history.’ And he did punish them. Breaking down the
wall, his soldiers poured into the city, and with drawn swords
they swept through the streets.” The severe losses sustained by
Greece in this rebellion were never repaired. The same historian
adds that both parties—Greeks and Romans— “inflicted severe
injuries on Greece, plundered the country, and destroyed property
most wantonly. The foundations of national prosperity were
undermined; and it henceforward became impossible to save from
the annual consumption of the inhabitants, the sums necessary to
replace the accumulated capital of ages which this short war had
annihilated. In some cases the wealth of the communities became
insufficient to keep the existing public works in repair.”
Cilician pirates soon after commenced their
depredations, and ravaged both the main-land and the islands
until expelled by Pompey the Great. The civil wars that overthrew
the Roman republic next added to the desolation of Greece; but on
the establishment of the Roman empire the country entered upon a
career of peace and comparative prosperity. Says a late compiler,
[Footnote: Edward L. Burlingame, Ph.D.] “Augustus
and his successors generally treated Greece with respect, and
some of them distinguished her by splendid imperial favors.
Trajan greatly improved her condition by his wise and liberal
administration. Hadrian and the Antonines venerated her for her
past achievements, and showed their good-will by the care they
extended to her works of art, and their patronage of the
schools.” It was at this time, also, that the Christian religion
was gaining great victories ‘over the indifference of the people
to their ancient rites,’ and was thus essentially changing the
moral and intellectual condition of Greece. Aside from its power
to fill the void in the heart that philosophy, though
strengthening the intellect, could not reach, Christianity bore
certain relations to the ancient principles of government, that
commended it to the acceptance of the Greeks. These relations,
and their effects, are thus explained by DR. FELTON and a writer
that he quotes: [Footnote: “Lecture on “Greece under the
Romans.”]
“Besides the peculiar consolations afforded by
Christianity to the afflicted of all ranks and classes, there
were popular elements in its early forms which could not fail to
commend it to the regards of common men. It borrowed the
designation ecclesia from the old popular assembly, and
liturgy from the services required by law of the richer
citizens in the popular festivities. It taught the equality of
all men in the sight of God; and this doctrine could not fail to
be affectionately welcomed by a conquered people. The Christian
congregations were organized upon democratic principles, at least
in Greece, and presented a semblance of the free assemblies of
former times; and the daily business of communities was, equally
with their spiritual affairs, transacted under these popular
forms. ‘From the moment a people,’ says a recent writer, ‘in the
state of intellectual civilization in which the Greeks were,
could listen to the preachers, it was certain they would adopt
the religion. They might alter, modify, or corrupt it, but it was
impossible they should reject it. The existence of an assembly in
which the dearest interests of all human beings were expounded
and discussed in the language of truth, and with the most earnest
expressions of persuasion, must have lent an irresistible charm
to the investigation of the new doctrine among a people
possessing the institutions and the feelings of the Greeks.
Sincerity, truth, and a desire to persuade others, will soon
create eloquence where numbers are gathered together.
Christianity revived oratory, and with oratory it awakened many
of the characteristics which had slept for ages. The discussions
of Christianity gave also new vigor to the commercial and
municipal institutions, as they improved the intellectual
qualities of the people.'”
Among the imperial friends of Greece, whose reign
has been characterized by some writers as “the last fortunate
period in the sad annals of that country,” was the Emperor
Julian, known as “The Apostate.” He ascended the throne in 361
A.D.; and, although he sought to overthrow Christianity and
re-establish the pagan religion, “he founded charities, aimed at
the suppression of vice and profligacy, and was distinguished for
his devotion to the happiness of the people.” Well educated in
early life, he became an accomplished and cultured sovereign,
“and in many ways manifested his passionate attachment to Greece,
her literature, her institutions, and her arts.”
II. CHANGES DOWN TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
On the establishment of the Eastern empire of the
Romans, with Byzantium for its capital, the Greeks began to exert
a greater influence in the affairs of government, and, outside of
the metropolis itself, the Roman spirit of the administration was
gradually destroyed. In the third and fourth centuries Greece
suffered from invasions by the Goths and Huns, and all apparent
progress was stopped; but during the long reign of Justinian,
from 527 to 565, many of its cities were embellished and
fortified, and the pagan schools of Athens were closed. No
farther events of importance affecting the condition of Greece
occurred until the immigrations of the Slavonians and other
barbarous races, in the sixth and eighth centuries. The
population of Greece had dwindled rapidly, and its revenues were
so small that the Eastern emperors cared little to defend it.
Hence these northern migratory hordes rapidly acquired possession
of its soil. Finally this great body of settlers broke up into a
number of tribes and disappeared as a people, leaving behind
them, however, still existing evidences of their influence upon
the country and its inhabitants.
THE COURTS OF CRUSADING CHIEFTAINS.
The next important changes in the affairs of
Greece were wrought by warriors from the West. In 1081 the
Norman, Robert Guiscard, and in 1146 Roger, King of Sicily,
conquered portions of the country, including Corinth, Thebes, and
Athens; and in the time of the fourth Crusade to the Holy Land
(1203), when Constantinople was captured by Latin princes (1204),
Greece became a prize for some of the most powerful crusading
chieftains, under whose rule the courts of Thessaloni’ca, Athens,
and the Peloponnesus attained to considerable celebrity even
throughout Europe. “But their magnificence,” says a writer in the
Edinburgh Review, “was entirely modern. It centered wholly
round their own persons and interests; and although the condition
of the people was in no respects worse, in some respects palpably
better, still they did but minister to the glory of the houses of
Neri or Acciajuoli, or De la Roche or Brienne. The beautiful
structures of Athens and the Acropolis were prized, not as
heirlooms of departed greatness, but as the ornaments of a feudal
court, and the rewards of successful valor.”
The Duchy of Athens was the most interesting and
renowned of these Frankish kingdoms; and in one of his lectures
PRESIDENT FELTON [Footnote: Lecture on “Turkish Conquest
of Constantinople.”] points out the traces which this
duchy has left here and there in modern literature. “The fame of
the brilliant court of Athens,” he says, “resounded through the
west of Europe, and many a chapter of old romance is filled with
gorgeous pictures of its splendors. One of the heroines of
Boccacio’s Decameron, in the course of her adventurous
life, is found at Athens, inspiring the duke by her charms.
Dan’te was a contemporary of Guy II. and Walter de Brienne; and
in his Divina Commedia he applies to Theseus, King of
ancient Athens, the title so familiar to him, borne by the
princely rulers in his own day. Chaucer, too—the bright herald
of English poetry—had often heard of the dukes of Athens; and he
too, like Dante, gives the title to Theseus. Finally, in the age
of Elizabeth, when Italian poetry was much studied by scholars
and courtiers, Shakspeare, in the delightful scenes of the
Midsummer Night’s Dream, introduces Theseus, Duke of
Athens, as the conqueror and the lover of Hippol’yta, the
warrior-queen of the Amazons.”
Theseus. Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.
—Act I. Scene I.
THE TURKISH INVASION.
Some of these Latin principalities and dukedoms
existed until they were swept away by the Turks, who, after the
fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in 1453, by
degrees obtained possession of Greece.
Then, Greece, the tempest rose that burst on thee,
Land of the bard, the warrior, and the sage!
Oh, where were then thy sons, the great, the free,
Whose deeds are guiding stars from age to age?
Though firm thy battlements of crags and snows,
And bright the memory of thy days of pride,
In mountain might though Corinth’s fortress rose,
On, unresisted, rolled th’ invading tide!
Oh! vain the rock, the rampart, and the tower,
If Freedom guard them not with Mind’s unconquered power.
Where were th’ avengers then, whose viewless might
Preserved inviolate their awful fane,
When through the steep defiles to Delphi’s height
In martial splendor poured the Persian’s train?
Then did those mighty and mysterious Powers,
Armed with the elements, to vengeance wake,
Call the dread storms to darken round their towers,
Hurl down the rocks, and bid the thunders break;
Till far around, with deep and fearful clang,
Sounds of unearthly war through wild Parnassus rang.
Where was the spirit of the victor-throng,
Whose tombs are glorious by Scamander’s tide,
Whose names are bright in everlasting song,
The lords of war, the praised, the deified?
Where he, the hero of a thousand lays,
Who from the dead at Marathon arose
All armed, and, beaming on th’ Athenian’s gaze,
A battle-meteor, guided to their foes?
Or they whose forms, to Alaric’s awe-struck eye,
[Footnote: GIBBON says: “From Thermopylæ to Sparta the leader of the
Goths (Alaric) pursued his victorious march without encountering any mortal
antagonist; but one of the advocates of expiring paganism has confidently
asserted that the walls of Athens were guarded by the goddess Minerva with her
formidable ægis, and by the angry phantom of Achilles; and that the conqueror
was dismayed by the presence of the hostile deities of Greece.” But Gibbon
characteristically adds, “The Christian faith which Alaric had devotedly
embraced taught him to despise the imaginary deities of Rome and
Athens.”—Milman’s “Gibbon’s Rome,” vol. ii., p. 215.]
Hovering o’er Athens, blazed in airy panoply?
Ye slept, oh heroes! chief ones of the earth—
High demi-gods of ancient day—ye slept.
There lived no spark of your ascendant worth,
When o’er your land the victor Moslem swept;
No patriot then the sons of freedom led,
In mountain-pass devotedly to die;
The martyr-spirit of resolve was fled,
And the high soul’s unconquered buoyancy;
And by your graves, and on your battle-plains,
Warriors, your children knelt, to wear the stranger’s chains.
—MRS. HEMANS.
III. CONTESTS BETWEEN THE TURKS AND VENETIANS.
Greece was long the scene of severe contests
between the Turks and the Venetians. Athens was first captured by
the Turks in 1456, but they were driven from it in 1467 by the
Venetians, who were in turn expelled from the city by the Turks
in 1470. But Venice, as a French historian—COMTE DE
LABOURDE—has observed, “Alone of the states of Europe could
feel, from a merely material point of view, the force of the blow
struck at Europe and her own commerce by the submission of almost
the whole of Greece to Turkish rule;” and this feeling survived
many centuries. In 1670 the Turks conquered Crete from the
Venetians, and in 1684 the latter retaliated by offensive
operations against the Peloponnesus, which was soon reconquered
by the Venetian admiral Morosini. In 1687 Morosini crowned his
successes by the capture of Athens. The Turkish garrison had
retired to the Acropolis, and the victory is principally of
interest on account of the irreparable injury done to the works
of art on that “rock-shrine of Athens.” Although he subsequently
sought to evade all responsibility for the desolation that
ensued, it was Morosini who directed his batteries to hurl their
fatal burdens against the Acropolis, and it was he who afterward
robbed it of many of its treasures. Hitherto the alterations made
for military purposes, and the slight injuries inflicted at
various times, had not marred the general beauty and effect of
its buildings; but when the troops of Venice entered Athens, the
Parthenon and others of that gorgeous assemblage of structures
were in ruins, and the glory of the Athenian Acropolis survived
only in the past. Contrasting its past glory and its present
decay, a writer in a recent Review makes these interesting
observations:
“No other fortress has embraced so much beauty
and splendor within its walls, and none has witnessed a series of
more startling and momentous changes in the fortunes of its
possessors. Wave after wave of war and conquest has beaten
against it. The city which lies at its feet has fallen beneath
the assaults of the Persian, the Spartan, the Macedonian, the
Roman, the Goth, the Crusader, and the Turk. Through all these
and other vicissitudes the Acropolis passed, changing only in the
character of its occupants, unchanged in its loveliness and
splendor. With a few blemishes and losses, whether from the
decaying taste of later times or the occasional robberies of a
foreign conqueror, but unaffected in its general aspect, it
presented to the eyes of the victorious Ottoman the same front of
unparalleled beauty which it had displayed in the days of
Pericles. To him who looks upon it now, however, the scene is
changed indeed—changed not only in the loss of its treasures of
decorative art (for of many of these it had been robbed before),
but with its loveliest fabrics shattered, many reduced to
hopeless ruin, and not a few utterly obliterated. Less than two
centuries sufficed to bring about all this dilapidation: less
than three months sufficed to complete the ruin. If the Venetian,
by his abortive conquest, inflicted not more injury on the fair
heritage of Athenian art than it had undergone from all preceding
spoliations, he left it, not merely from the havoc of war, but by
wanton subsequent mutilation, in that state which rendered the
recovery of its ancient grace and majesty impossible.”
The Venetians evacuated Athens in 1688, and a few
years subsequently the Peloponnesus was their only possession in
Greece. In 1715 a Turkish army of one hundred thousand men under
Al’i Coumour’gi, the Grand Vizier of Ach’met III., invaded the
Peloponnesus, and first attacked Corinth. Historians tell us that
the garrison, weakened by several unsuccessful attacks, opened
negotiations for a surrender; but, while these were in progress,
the accidental firing of a magazine in the Turkish camp so
enraged the infidels that they at once broke off the
negotiations, stormed and captured the city, and put most of the
garrison, with Signor Minotti, the commander, to the sword. Those
taken prisoners were reserved for execution under the walls of
Nauplia, within sight of the Venetians.
In BYRON’S Siege of Corinth, founded on
the historical narrative; a poetical license is taken, and the
death of Minotti and the remnant of his followers is attributed
to the explosion of a powder-magazine fired by Minotti himself.
From the fine descriptions which this poem contains we extract
the following verses:
The Siege and Fall of Corinth.
On dim Cithæron’s ridge appears
The gleam of twice ten thousand spears;
And downward to the Isthmian plain,
From shore to shore of either main,
The tent is pitched, the crescent shines
Along the Moslem’s leaguering lines;
And the dusk Spä’hi’s bands advance
Beneath each bearded pä’sha’s glance;
And far and wide as eye can reach
The turbaned cohorts throng the beach;
And there the Arab’s camel kneels,
And there his steed the Tartar wheels;
The Turcoman has left his herd,
The sabre round his loins to gird;
And there the volleying thunders pour,
Till waves grow smoother to the roar.
The trench is dug, the cannon’s breath
Wings the far hissing globe of death;
Fast whirl the fragments from the wall,
Which crumbles with the ponderous ball;
And from that wall the foe replies,
O’er dusty plain and smoky skies,
With fires that answer fast and well.
The summons of the Infidel.
The walls grew weak; and fast and hot
Against them poured the ceaseless shot,
With unabating fury sent
From battery to battlement;
And thunder-like the pealing din
Rose from each heated culverin;
And here and there some crackling dome
Was fired before the exploding bomb;
And as the fabric sank beneath
The shattering shell’s volcanic breath,
In red and wreathing columns flashed
The flame, as loud the ruin crashed,
Or into countless meteors driven,
Its earth-stars melted into heaven—
Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun,
Impervious to the hidden sun,
With volumed smoke that slowly grew
To one wide sky of sulphurous hue.
Having made a breach in the walls, as morning
dawns the Turks form in line, and wait for the word to storm the
intrenchments. Coumourgi addresses them—the command is given,
and with the irresistible force of an avalanche the infidels pour
into Corinth.
Tartar, and Spähi, and Turcoman,
Strike your tents and throng to the van;
Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain,
That the fugitive may flee in vain
When he breaks from the town; and none escape,
Aged or young, in the Christian shape;
While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,
Bloodstain the breach through which they pass.
The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein;
Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane;
White is the foam of their champ on the bit:
The spears are uplifted, the matches are lit,
The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar,
And crush the wall they have crumbled before:
The khan and the päshas are all at their post;
The vizier himself at the head of the host.
When the culverin’s signal is fired, then on;
Leave not in Corinth a living one—
A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls,
A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls.
God and the prophet-Ala Hu!
Up to the skies with that wild halloo!
“There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale;
And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail?
He who first downs with the red cross may crave
His heart’s dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!”
Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless vizier;
The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear,
And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire;
Silence—hark to the signal—fire!
As the spring-tides, with heavy plash,
From the cliffs invading, dash
Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow,
Till white and thundering down they go,
Like the avalanche’s snow,
On the Alpine vales below;
Thus at length, outbreathed and worn,
Corinth’s sons were downward borne
By the long and oft renewed
Charge of the Moslem multitude.
In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell,
Heaped, by the host of the infidel,
Hand to hand, and foot to foot:
Nothing there, save death, was mute;
Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry
For quarter, or for victory,
Mingle there with the volleying thunder,
Which makes the distant cities wonder
How the sounding battle goes,
If with them or for their foes.
From the point of encountering blades to the hilt
Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,
And all but the after-carnage done.
Shriller shrieks now mingling come
From within the plundered dome:
Hark to the haste of flying feet,
That splash in the blood of the slippery street;
But here and there, where ‘vantage ground
Against the foe may still be found,
Desperate groups of twelve or ten
Make a pause, and turn again—
With banded backs against the wall
Fiercely stand, or fighting fall.
Minotti, though an old man, has an “arm full of
might,” and he disputes, foot by foot, the successful and deadly
onslaughts of the Turks. He finally retires, with the remnant of
his gallant band, to the fortified church, where lie the last and
richest spoils sought by the infidels, and in the vaults beneath
which, lined with the dead of ages gone, was also “the
Christians’ chiefest magazine.” To the latter a train had been
laid, and, seizing a blazing torch, his “last and stern
resource,”
Darkly, sternly, and all alone,
Minotti stands o’er the altar-stone,
and awaits the last attack of his foes. It soon
comes.
So near they came, the nearest stretched
To grasp the spoil he almost reached,
When old Minotti’s hand
Touched with the torch the train—
‘Tis fired!
Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,
The turbaned victors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,
Hurled on high with the shivered fane,
In one wild roar expired!
The shattered town, the walls thrown down,
The waves a moment backward bent—
The hills that shake, although unrent,
As if an earthquake passed—
The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast—
Proclaimed the desperate conflict o’er
On that too long afflicted shore:
Up to the sky like rockets go
All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorched and shrivelled to a span,
When he fell to earth again
Like a cinder strewed the plain:
Down the ashes shower like rain;
Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles
With a thousand circling wrinkles;
Some fell on the shore, but, far away,
Scattered o’er the isthmus lay.
All the living things that heard
That deadly earth-shock disappeared;
The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,
And howling left the unburied dead;
The camels from their keepers broke,
The distant steer forsook the yoke—
The nearer steed plunged o’er the plain,
And burst his girth, and tore his rein;
The bull-frog’s note, from out the marsh,
Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh
The wolves yelled on the caverned hill,
Where echo rolled in thunder still;
The jackal’s troop, in gathered cry,
Bayed from afar complainingly,
With a mixed and mournful sound,
Like crying babe, and beaten hound:
With sudden wing and ruffled breast
The eagle left his rocky nest,
And mounted nearer to the sun,
The clouds beneath him seemed so dun;
Their smoke assailed his startled beak,
And made him higher soar and shriek.
Thus was Corinth lost and won!
IV. FINAL CONQUEST OF GREECE BY TURKEY.
The fall of Corinth opened the way to a
successful advance of the Turkish forces through the
Peloponnesus, and the Venetians were soon compelled to abandon
it. By the peace of Passä’rowitz, in 1718, the whole of
Greece was again surrendered to Turkey, and under her rule the
country, divided into military districts called Pasha’lics, sunk
into a deplorable condition which the progress of time did
nothing to ameliorate. The Greeks, being virtually reduced to
bondage, suffered untold miseries from the rapacity and barbarism
of their masters. Says the historian, SIR EMERSON TENNENT, “So
undefined was the system of extortion, and so uncontrolled the
power of those to whose execution it was intrusted, that the evil
spread over the whole system of administration, and insinuated
itself with a polypous fertility into every relation and
ordinance of society, till there were few actions or occupations
of the Greeks that were not burdened with the scrutiny and
interference of their masters, and none that did not suffer, in a
greater or less degree, from their heartless rapine.” For four
centuries and over the Greeks suffered under this despotism,
which stamped out industry and education, and tended to the
extinction of every manly trait in the people, while it also
developed the native vices of the Hellenic character.
In a poem written in 1786 by the afterward
celebrated British statesman, GEORGE CANNING, the writer, after
paying a handsome tribute to the greatness and glory of the
Greece of olden time, draws the following truthful picture of her
degeneracy in his own day:
The Slavery of Greece.
Oh, how changed thy fame,
And all thy glories fading into shame!
What! that thy bold, thy freedom-breathing land
Should crouch beneath a tyrant’s stern command!
That servitude should bind in galling chain
Whom Asia’s millions once opposed in vain,
Who could have thought? Who sees without a groan
Thy cities mouldering and thy walls o’erthrown;
That where once towered the stately, solemn fane,
Now moss-grown ruins strew the ravaged plain;
And, unobserved but by the traveller’s eye,
Proud, vaulted domes in fretted fragments lie;
And the fallen column, on the dusty ground,
Pale ivy throws its sluggish arms around?
Thy sons (sad change!) in abject bondage sigh;
Unpitied toil, and unlamented die;
Groan at the labors of the galling oar,
Or the dark caverns of the mine explore.
The glittering tyranny of Othman’s sons,
The pomp of horror which surrounds their thrones,
Have awed their servile spirits into fear;
Spurned by the foot, they tremble and revere.
The day of labor, night’s sad, sleepless hour,
The inflictive scourge of arbitrary power,
The bloody terror of the pointed steel,
The murderous stake, the agonizing wheel,
And (dreadful choice!) the bowstring or the bowl,
Damps their faint vigor and unmans the soul.
Disastrous fate! Still tears will fill the eye,
Still recollection prompt the mournful sigh,
When to the mind recurs thy former fame,
And all the horrors of thy present shame.
In 1810-’11 the poet BYRON spent considerable
time in Greece, visiting its many scenes of historic interest,
and noting the condition of its people. Here he wrote the second
canto of Childe Harold, in which the following fine
apostrophe and appeal to Greece, still under Moslem rule, are
found:
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustomed bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilom did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopylæ’s sepulchral strait—
Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Euro’ta’s banks, and call thee from the tomb?
Spirit of Freedom! when on Phy’le’s brow
Thou sat’st with Thrasybu’lus and his train,
Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
But every carle can lord it o’er thy land;
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.
In all, save form alone, how changed! and who
That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye,
Who but would deem their bosoms burned anew
With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty!
And many dream withal the hour is nigh
That gives them back their father’s heritage:
For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh,
Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage,
Or tear their name defiled from Slavery’s mournful page.
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress thee? No!
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,
But not for you will Freedom’s altars flame.
Shades of the Helots! triumph o’er your foe!
Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
Thy glorious day is o’er, but not thy years of shame.
When riseth Lacedæmon’s hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens’ children are with hearts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then may’st thou be restored; but not till then.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can man, in shattered splendor renovate,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?
FIRST STEPS TO SECURE LIBERTY.
Although the oppressive domination of the Turks
was tamely submitted to for so many centuries, the Greeks did not
entirely lose their national spirit, nor their devotion to their
religion and their domestic institutions; and long before Byron
wrote, Greece began preparations to break the Turkish yoke. The
preservation of the national spirit was largely due to the
warlike inhabitants of the mountainous regions of the north, who
maintained their independence against the bloody tyranny of the
Turks, and continually harassed their camps and villages. These
mountaineers were known as Klephts; and though they were
literally robbers, ofttimes plundering the Greeks as well as the
Turks, yet, on the decline of the Armato’li—the Christian local
militia which the Turks attempted to crush out—the Klephts
acquired political and social importance as a permanent class in
the Greek nation; and, as DR. FELTON says, “When the Revolution
broke out, the courage, temperance, and hardihood of these bands
were among the most effective agencies in rescuing Greece from
the blighting tyranny of the Turks.” This writer characterizes
the ballads of the Klephts as “full of fire, and redolent of the
mountain life, which had an irresistible charm for young and
adventurous spirits chafing under the domination of the Turks in
the lowlands;” and to him we are indebted for a literal version
of one of these ballads, representing the feelings of a young man
who had resolved to leave his mother’s home and betake himself to
the mountains, and “illustrating at once the impatient spirit of
rebellion against the Turks, and the sweet flow of natural poetry
which was ever welling up in the hearts of the people.”
[Footnote: This ballad is taken from “a collection
published by Zampelios, a Greek gentleman, and a native of
Leucadia.”]
“Mother, I can no longer be a slave to the Turks;
I cannot—my heart fights against it. I will take my gun and go
and become a Klepht; to dwell on the mountains, among the lofty
ridges; to have the woods for my companions, and my converse with
the beasts; to have the snow for my covering, the rocks for my
bed; with sons of the Klephts to have my daily habitation. I will
go, mother, and do not weep, but give me thy prayer. And we will
pray, my dear mother, that I may slaughter many a Turk. Plant the
rose, and plant the dark carnation, and give them sugar and musk
to drink; and as long, O mother mine, as the flowers blossom and
put forth, thy son is not dead, but is warring with the Turks.
But if a day of sorrow come, a day of woe, and the plants fade
away, and the flowers fall, then I too shall have been slain, and
thou must clothe thyself in black.’
“Twelve years passed, and five months, while the
roses blossomed and the buds bloomed; and one spring morning, the
first of May, when the birds were singing and heaven was smiling,
at once it thundered and lightened, and grew dark. The carnation
sighed, the rose wept, both withered away together, and the
flowers fell; and with them the hapless mother became a lifeless
heap of earth.”
The last half of the eighteenth century witnessed, in Greece, the first general
desire for liberty. Secret societies were formed to aid in the emancipation of
the country, and “eminent writers, at home and abroad, appealed to the glorious
recollections of Greece in order to excite a universal enthusiasm for freedom.”
Among the latter may be mentioned CONSTANTINOS RHIGAS, a native of Thessaly,
born in 1753, a man of fine accomplishments and an ardent patriot, whose lyric
ballads are said to have “rung through Greece like a trumpet,” and who has been
styled “the Tyrtæ’us of modern Greece.” One of his war-songs has been thus
translated:
Sons of the Greeks, arise!
The glorious hour’s gone forth,
And, worthy of such ties,
Display who gave us birth.
Then manfully despising
The Turkish tyrant’s yoke,
Let your country see you rising,
And all her chains are broke.
Brave shades of chiefs and sages,
Behold the coming strife!
Hellenes of past ages,
Oh start again to life!
At the sound of my trumpet, breaking
Your sleep, oh join with me!
And the seven-hilled city [Footnote:
Constantinople] seeking,
Fight, conquer, till we’re free.
Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers
Lethargic dost thou lie?
Awake, and join thy numbers
With Athens, old ally!
Leonidas recalling,
That chief of ancient song,
Who saved ye once from falling—
The terrible! the strong!
Who made that bold diversion
In old Thermopylæ,
And warring with the Persian
To keep his country free;
With his three hundred waging
The battle, long he stood,
And, like a lion raging,
Expired in seas of blood.
—Trans. by BYRON.
Another poet, POLYZOIS, writes in a similar
vein:
Friends and countrymen, shall we
Slaves of Moslems ever be,
Of the old barbaric band,
Tyrants o’er Hellenic land?
Draws the hour of vengeance nigh—
Vengeance! be our battle-cry.
It may be stated that Rhigas, having visited
Vienna with the hope of rousing the wealthy Greek residents of
that city to immediate action, was barbarously surrendered to the
Turks by the Austrian government. On the way to execution he
broke from his guards and killed two of them, but was overpowered
and immediately beheaded.
V. THE GREEK REVOLUTION.
The various efforts made by the Greeks in behalf
of freedom, or, as more comprehensively stated by a recent
writer, “The constancy with which they clung to the Christian
Church during four centuries of misery and political
annihilation; their immovable faithfulness to their nationality
under intolerable oppression; the intellectual superiority they
never failed to exhibit over their tyrants; the love of humane
letters which they never, in all their sorrows, lost; and the
wise preparation they made for the struggle by means of schools,
and by the circulation of editions of their own ancient authors,
and translations of the most instructive works in modern
literature” —these were the influences which finally impelled
the Greeks to seek their restoration in armed insurrection, that
first broke out in the spring of 1821, and that ushered in the
great Greek Revolution. On the 7th of March Alexander Ypsilanti,
a Greek, who had been a major-general in the Russian army,
proclaimed from Moldavia the independence of Greece, and assured
his countrymen of the aid of Russia in the approaching contest.
But the Russian emperor declined intervention; and the Porte took
the most vigorous measures against the Greeks, calling upon all
Mussulmen to arm against the rebels for the protection of
Islamism. The wildest fanaticism raged in Constantinople, where
thousands of resident Greeks were remorselessly murdered; and in
Moldavia the bloody struggle was terminated by the annihilation
of the patriot army, and the flight of Ypsilanti to Trieste,
where the Austrian government seized and imprisoned him.
In southern Greece, however, no cruelties could
quench the fire of liberty; and sixteen days after the
proclamation of Ypsilanti the revolution of the Morea began at
Suda, a large village in the northern part of Acha’ia, and spread
over Achaia and the islands of the Æge’an. The ancient
names were revived; and on the 6th of April the Messenian senate,
assembled at Kalamä’ta, proclaimed that Greece had shaken
off the Turkish yoke to preserve the Christian faith and restore
the ancient character of the country. A formal address was made
by that body to the people of the United States, and was
forwarded to this country. It declared that, “having deliberately
resolved to live or die for freedom, the Greeks were drawn by an
irresistible impulse to the people of the United States.” In that
early stage of the struggle, however, the address failed to
excite that sympathy which, as we shall see farther on, the
progress of events and a better understanding of the situation
finally awakened.
During the summer months the Turks committed
great depredations among the Greek towns on the coast of Asia
Minor; the inhabitants of the Island of Candia, who had taken no
part in the insurrection, were disarmed, and their archbishop and
other prelates were murdered. The most barbarous atrocities were
also committed at Rhodes and other islands of the Grecian
Archipelago, where the villages were burned and the country
desolated. But in August the Greeks captured the strong Turkish
fortresses of Monembasi’a and Navarï’no, and in October that
of Tripolit’za, and took a terrible revenge upon their enemies.
In Tripolitza alone eight thousand Turks were put to death. The
excesses of the Turks showed to the Greeks that their struggle
was one of life and death; and it is not surprising, therefore,
that they often retaliated when the power was in their hands. In
September of the same year the Greek general Ulysses defeated a
large Turkish army near the Pass of Thermopylæ; but, on the
other hand, the peninsula of Cassandra, the ancient Pelle’ne, was
taken by the Turks, and over three thousand Greeks were put to
the sword. The Athenian Acropolis was seized and garrisoned by
the Turks, and the people of Athens, as in olden time, fled to
Sal’amis for safety; but in general, throughout all southern
Greece, the close of the year saw the Turks driven from the
country districts and shut up in the principal cities.
A PROPHETIC VISION OF THE STRUGGLE.
When the revolution of the Greeks broke out the
English poet SHELLEY was residing in Italy. It was during the
first year of the war that Shelley, filled with enthusiasm for
the Greek cause, wrote, from the scanty materials that were then
accessible, his beautiful dramatic poem of Hellas; and
although he could at that time narrate but few events of the
struggle, yet his prophecies of the final result came true in
their general import. Forming his poem on the basis of the
Persians of Æschylus, the scene opens with a chorus
of Greek captive women, who thus sing of the course of Freedom,
from the earliest ages until the light of her glory returns to
rest upon and renovate their benighted land:
In the great morning of the world
The Spirit of God with might unfurled
The flag of Freedom over Chaos,
And all its banded anarchs fled,
Like vultures frightened from Ima’us,
[Footnote: A Scythian mountain-range.]
Before an earthquake’s tread,
So from Time’s tempestuous dawn
Freedom’s splendor burst and shone:
Thermopylæ and Marathon
Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted,
The springing fire, The winged glory
On Philippi half alighted
[Footnote: The republican Romans, under Brutus and Cassius, were
defeated here by Octavius and Mark Antony, 42 B.C.]
Like an eagle on a promontory.
Its unwearied wings could fan
The quenchless ashes of Milan.
[Footnote: Milan was the center of the resistance of the Lombard
league against the Austrian tyrant Frederic Barbarossa. The latter, in 1162,
burned the city to the ground; but liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose,
like an exhalation, from its ruins.]
From age to age, from man to man
It lived; and lit, from land to land,
Florence, Albion, Switzerland.
[Footnote: Florence freed itself from the power of the Ghibelline
nobles, and became a free republic in 1250. Albion—England: Magna Charta
wrested from King John: the Commonwealth. Switzerland: the great victory
of Mogarten, in 1315, led to the compact of the three cantons, thus forming the
nucleus of the Swiss Confederation.]
Then night fell; and, as from night,
Re-assuring fiery flight
From the West swift Freedom came,
[Footnote: The American Revolution.]
Against the course of heaven and doom,
A second sun, arrayed in flame,
To burn, to kindle, to illume.
From far Atlantis its young beams
[Footnote: The fabled Atlantis of Plato; here used for
America.]
Chased the shadows and the dreams.
France, with all her sanguine streams,
Hid, but quenched it not; again,
[Footnote: Referring to the French Revolution.]
Through clouds, its shafts of glory rain
From utmost Germany to Spain.
[Footnote: Referring to the revolutions that broke out about the year
1820.]
As an eagle, fed with morning,
Scorns the embattled tempest’s warning,
When she seeks her aerie hanging
In the mountain cedar’s hair,
And her brood expect the clanging
Of her wings through the wild air,
Sick with famine; Freedom, so,
To what of Greece remaineth, now
Returns; her hoary ruins glow
Like orient mountains lost in day;
Beneath the safety of her wings
Her renovated nurslings play,
And in the naked lightnings
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.
Let Freedom leave, where’er she flies,
A desert, or a paradise;
Let the beautiful and the brave
Share her glory or a grave.
In the farther prosecution of his narrative, the poet represents the Turkish
Sultan, Mahmoud, as being strongly moved by dreams of the threatened overthrow
of his power; and he accordingly sends for Ahasuerus, an aged Jew, to interpret
them. In the mean time the chorus of women sings the final triumph of the Cross
over the crescent, and the fleeing away of the dark “powers of earth and air”
before the advancing light of the “Star of Bethlehem:”
A power from the unknown God,
A Promethean conqueror came;
Like a triumphal path he trod
The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapor dim
Which the orient planet animates with light;
Hell, sin, and slavery came,
Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight.
The moon of Ma’homet
Arose, and it shall set;
While, blazoned as on heaven’s immortal noon,
The Cross leads generations on.
Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep,
From one whose dreams are paradise,
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
And day peers forth with her black eyes;
So fleet, so faint, so fair,
The powers of earth and air
Fled from the rising Star of Bethlehem.
Apollo, Pan, and Love,
And even Olympian Jove
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them.
Our hills, and seas, and streams,
Dispeopled of their dreams—
Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears—
Wailed for the golden years.
In the language of Hassan, an attendant of
Mahmoud, the poet then summarizes the events attending the
opening of the struggle, giving a picture of the course of
European politics—Egypt sending her armies and fleets to aid the
Sultan against the rebel world; England, Queen of Ocean, upon her
island throne, holding herself aloof from the contest; Russia,
indifferent whether Greece or Turkey conquers, but watching to
stoop upon the victor; and Austria, while hating freedom, yet
fearing the success of freedom’s enemies. The poet could not
foresee that change in English politics which subsequently
permitted England, aided by France and Russia, to interfere in
behalf of Greece. Hassan says:
“The anarchies of Africa unleash
Their tempest-winged cities of the sea,
To speak in thunder to the rebel world.
Like sulphurous clouds, half shattered by the storm,
They sweep the pale Ægean, while the Queen
Of Ocean, bound upon her island throne,
Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons,
Who frown on Freedom, spare a smile for thee:
Russia still hovers, as an eagle might
Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane
Hang tangled in inextricable fight,
To stoop upon the victor; for she fears
The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine;
But recreant Austria loves thee as the grave
Loves pestilence; and her slow dogs of war,
Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,
And howl upon their limits; for they see
The panther Freedom fled to her old cover
Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood
Crouch around.”
Although Hassan recounts the numbers of the
Sultan’s armies, and the strength of his forts and arsenals, yet
the desponding Mahmoud, watching the declining moon, thus
symbolizes it as the wan emblem of his fading power:
“Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned
Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud
Which leads the rear of the departing day,
Wan emblem of an empire fading now!
See how it trembles in the blood-red air,
And, like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent,
Shrinks on the horizon’s edge—while, from above,
One star, with insolent and victorious light
Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams,
Like arrows through a fainting antelope,
Strikes its weak form to death.”
As messenger after messenger approaches, and
informs the Sultan of the revolutionary risings in different
parts of his empire, he refuses to hear more, and takes refuge in
that fatalistic philosophy which is an unfailing resource of the
followers of the Prophet in all their reverses:
“I’ll hear no more! too long
We gaze on danger through the mist of fear,
And multiply upon our shattered hopes
The images of ruin. Come what will!
To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps
Set in our path to light us to the edge,
Through rough and smooth; nor can we suffer aught
Which He inflicts not, in whose hands we are.”
When the Jew, Ahasuerus, at length arrives, he
speaks in oracular terms, and calls up visions which increase the
Sultan’s fears; and when the latter hears shouts of transient
victory over the Greeks, he regards it but as the expiring gleam
which serves to make the coming darkness the more terrible. He
thus soliloquizes:
“Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile
Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response
Of hollow weakness! Do I wake, and live,
Were there such things? or may the unquiet brain,
Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew,
Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear?
It matters not! for naught we see, or dream,
Possess or lose, or grasp at, can be worth
More than it gives or teaches. Come what may,
The future must become the past, and I
As they were, to whom once the present hour,
This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,
Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy
Never to be attained.”
Although the poet predicts series of disasters
and periods of gloom for struggling Greece, yet, at the close of
the poem, a brighter age than any she has known is represented as
gleaming upon her “through the sunset of hope.”
The year 1822 opened with the assembling of the
first Greek congress at Epidau’rus, the proclaiming of a
provisional constitution on the 13th of January, and the issuing,
on the 27th, of a declaration that announced the union of all
Greece, with an independent federative government under the
presidency of Alexander Mavrocordä’to. But the Greeks,
unaccustomed to exercise the rights of freemen, were unable at
once to establish a wise and firm government: they often
quarreled among themselves; and those who had exercised an
independent authority under the government of the Turks were with
difficulty induced to submit to the control of the central
government. The few men of intelligence and liberal views among
them had a difficult task to perform; but the wretchedly
undisciplined state of the Turkish armies aided its successful
accomplishment. The principal military events of the year were
the terrible massacre of the inhabitants of the Island of Scio by
the Turks in April; the defeat of the latter in the Morea, where
more than twenty thousand of them were slain; the successes of
the Greek fire-ships, by which many Turkish vessels were
destroyed; and the surrender to the Greeks of Nap’oli di
Roma’nia, the ancient Nauplia, the port of Argos. By the
destruction of the Island of Scio a paradise was changed into a
scene of desolation, and more than forty thousand persons were
killed or sold into slavery. Soon after, one hundred and fifty
villages in southern Macedonia experienced the fate of Scio; and
the pasha of Saloni’ca boasted that he had destroyed, in one day,
fifteen hundred women and children.
Goaded to desperation, rather than disheartened
by their reverses and the remorseless cruelties of the Turks, the
Greeks struggled bravely on, and during the year 1823 the results
of the contest were generally in their favor. They often proved
themselves worthy sons of those who fell
“In bleak Thermopylæ’s strait,”
or on the plains of Marathon. Their patriotic
determination to be free, or die in the attempt, is happily
reflected in the following lines by the poet CAMPBELL, whose
heart beat in sympathy with their efforts for liberty.
Song of the Greeks.
Again to the battle, Achaians!
Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance!
Our land—the first garden of Liberty’s tree—
It hath been, and shall yet be, the land of the free;
For the Cross of our faith is replanted,
The pale, dying crescent is daunted,
And we march that the footprints of Mahomet’s slaves
May be washed out in blood from our forefathers’ graves.
Their spirits are hovering o’er us,
And the sword shall to glory restore us.
Ah! what though no succor advances,
Nor Christendom’s chivalrous lances
Are stretched in our aid? Be the combat our own!
And we’ll perish or conquer more proudly alone!
For we’ve sworn by our country’s assaulters,
By the virgins they’ve dragged from our altars,
By our massacred patriots, our children in chains,
By our heroes of old, and their blood in our veins,
That, living, we shall be victorious,
Or that, dying, our deaths shall be glorious!
A breath of submission we breathe not:
The sword that we’ve drawn we will sheathe not;
Its scabbard is left where our martyrs are laid,
And the vengeance of ages has whetted its blade.
Earth may hide, waves ingulf, fire consume us;
But they shall not to slavery doom us.
If they rule, it shall be o’er our ashes and graves:
But we’ve smote them already with fire on the waves,
And new triumphs on land are before us—
To the charge!—Heaven’s banner is o’er us.
This day shall ye blush for its story,
Or brighten your lives with its glory.
Our women—oh say, shall they shriek in despair,
Or embrace us from conquest, with wreaths in their hair?
Accursed may his memory blacken,
If a coward there be who would slacken
Till we’ve trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth
Being sprung from, and named for, the godlike of earth.
Strike home! and the world shall revere us
As heroes descended from heroes.
Old Greece lightens up with emotion!
Her inlands, her isles of the ocean,
Fanes rebuilt, and fair towns, shall with jubilee ring,
And the Nine shall new hallow their Helicon’s spring.
Our hearths shall be kindled in gladness,
That were cold and extinguished in sadness;
While our maidens shall dance, with their white waving arms,
Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms,
When the blood of yon Mussulman cravens
Shall have crimsoned the beaks of our ravens!
AMERICAN SYMPATHY WITH GREECE.
The progress of events in 1822 and 1823 made
friends for the Greeks wherever free principles were cherished;
and from England and America large contributions of money,
clothing, and provisions, were forwarded to relieve the
sufferings inflicted by the wanton cruelties of the Turks. It was
the United States, however, as the first American Minister to
Greece, MR. TUCKERMAN, says, that first responded, “in the words
of President Monroe, Webster, Clay, Everett, Dwight, and hosts of
other lights,” to the appeal of the Greek senate at
Kalamäta, made in 1821. When Congress assembled in December,
1823, President Monroe made the revolution in Greece the subject
of a paragraph in his annual message, in which he expressed the
hope of success to the Greeks and disaster to the Turks; and Mr.
Webster subsequently introduced a resolution in the House of
Representatives providing for the appointment of an agent or
commissioner to Greece. These were the first official expressions
favorable to the struggling country uttered by any government;
and in speaking to his resolution in January, 1824, Mr. Webster
began his remarks as follows:
“An occasion which calls the attention to a spot
so distinguished, so connected with interesting recollections, as
Greece, may naturally create something of warmth and enthusiasm.
In a grave political discussion, however, it is necessary that
those feelings should be chastened. I shall endeavor properly to
repress them, although it is impossible that they should be
altogether extinguished. We must, indeed, fly beyond the
civilized world; we must pass the dominion of law and the
boundaries of knowledge; we must, more especially, withdraw
ourselves from this place, and the scenes and objects which here
surround us, if we would separate ourselves entirely from the
influence of all those memorials of herself which ancient Greece
has transmitted for the admiration and the benefit of mankind.
This free form of government, this popular assembly—the common
council for the common good—where have we contemplated its
earliest models? This practice of free debate and public
discussion, the contest of mind with mind, and that popular
eloquence which, if it were now here, on a subject like this,
would move the stones of the Capitol—whose was the language in
which all these were first exhibited? Even the edifice in which
we assemble, these proportioned columns, this ornamented
architecture, all remind us that Greece has existed, and that we,
like the rest of mankind, are greatly her debtors.
“But I have not introduced this motion in the
vain hope of discharging anything of this accumulated debt of
centuries. I have not acted upon the expectation that we who have
inherited this obligation from our ancestors should now attempt
to pay it to those who may seem to have inherited from their
ancestors a right to receive payment. My object is nearer and
more immediate. I wish to take occasion of the struggle of an
interesting and gallant people in the cause of liberty and
Christianity, to draw the attention of the House to the
circumstances which have accompanied that struggle, and to the
principles which appear to have governed the conduct of the great
states of Europe in regard to it, and to the effects and
consequences of these principles upon the independence of
nations, and especially upon the institutions of free
governments. What I have to say of Greece, therefore, concerns
the modern, not the ancient—the living, and not the dead. It
regards her, not as she exists in history, triumphant over time,
and tyranny, and ignorance, but as she now is, contending against
fearful odds for being, and for the common privileges of human
nature.”
In an argument of some length Mr. Webster
forcibly condemns the then existing policy of the European
Powers, who, holding that all changes in legislation and
administration “ought to proceed from kings alone,” were
therefore “wholly inexorable to the sufferings of the Greeks, and
entirely hostile to their success.” He demands that the protest
of this government shall be made against this policy, both as it
is laid down in principle and as it is applied in practice; and
he closes his address with the following references to the
determination of the Greeks and the sympathy their struggle
should receive:
“Constantinople and the northern provinces have
sent forth thousands of troops; they have been defeated. Tripoli,
and Algiers, and Egypt have contributed their marine contingents;
they have not kept the ocean. Hordes of Tartars have crossed the
Bosphorus; they have died where the Persians died. The powerful
monarchies in the neighborhood have denounced the Greek cause,
and admonished the Greeks to abandon it and submit to their fate.
They have answered that, although two hundred thousand of their
countrymen have offered up their lives, there yet remain lives to
offer; and that it is the determination of all—’yes, of
ALL’—to persevere until they shall have established their
liberty, or until the power of their oppressors shall have
relieved them from the burden of existence. It may now be asked,
perhaps, whether the expression of our own sympathy, and that of
the country, may do them good? I hope it may. It may give them
courage and spirit; it may assure them of public regard, teach
them that they are not wholly forgotten by the civilized world,
and inspire them with constancy in the pursuit of their great
end. At any rate, it appears to me that the measure which I have
proposed is due to our own character, and called for by our own
duty. When we have discharged that duty we may leave the rest to
the disposition of Providence. I am not of those who would, in
the hour of utmost peril, withhold such encouragement as might be
properly and lawfully given, and, when the crisis should be past,
overwhelm the rescued sufferer with kindness and caresses. The
Greeks address the civilized world with a pathos not easy to be
resisted. They invoke our favor by more moving considerations
than can well belong to the condition of any other people. They
stretch out their arms to the Christian communities of the earth,
beseeching them, by a generous recollection of their ancestors,
by the consideration of their desolated and ruined cities and
villages, by their wives and children sold into an accursed
slavery, by their blood, which they seem willing to pour out like
water, by the common faith and in the name which unites all
Christians, that they would extend to them at least some token of
compassionate regard.”
THE SORTIE AT MISSOLONGHI.
One of the noted exploits of the Greeks in 1823,
and one that has been commemorated in many ways, occurred at
Missolon’ghi, the capital of Acarnania and Ætolia, while
that town was besieged by a Turkish army; and the name of Marco
Boz-zar’is, the commander of the garrison, has ever since been
classed with that of Leonidas and other heroes of ancient Greece
who fell in the moment of victory. In his Crescent and the
Cross; or, Romance and Realities of Eastern Travel, the
English author WARBURTON thus tells the story of the well-known
deed that saved Missolonghi to the Greeks and hastened the
delivery of their country:
“When Missolonghi was beleaguered by the Turkish
forces, Marco Bozzaris commanded a garrison of about twelve
hundred men, who had barely fortifications enough to form
breastworks. Intelligence reached him that an Egyptian army was
about to form a junction with the formidable besieging host. A
parade was ordered of the garrison, ‘faint and few, but fearless
still.’ Bozzaris told them of the destruction that impended over
Missolonghi, proposed a sortie, and announced that it should
consist only of volunteers. Volunteers! The whole garrison
stepped forward as one man, and demanded the post of honor and of
death. ‘I will only take the Thermopylæ number,’ said their
leader; and he selected the three hundred from his true and
trusty Suliotes. In the dead of night this devoted band marched
out in six divisions, which were placed, in profound silence,
around the Turkish camp. Their orders were simply, ‘When you hear
my bugle blow seek me in the pasha’s tent.’
“Marco Bozzaris, disguised as an Albanian bearing
dispatches to the pasha from the Egyptian army, passed
unquestioned through the Turkish camp, and was only arrested by
the sentinels around the pasha’s tent, who informed him that he
must wait till morning. Then wildly through the stillness of the
night that bugle blew; faithfully it was echoed from without; and
the war-cry of the avenging Greek broke upon the Moslem’s ear.
From every side that terrible storm seemed to break at once;
shrieks of agony and terror swelled the tumult. The Turks fled in
all directions, and the Grecian leader was soon surrounded by his
comrades. Struck to the ground by a musket-ball, he had himself
raised on the shoulders of two Greeks; and, thus supported, he
pressed on the flying enemy. Another bullet pierced his brain in
the hour of his triumph, and he was borne dead from the field of
his glory.” But Missolonghi was saved, and under Constantine and
Noto Bozzaris, brothers of the dead hero, it withstood repeated
assaults of the Turks, until, in 1826, after having been besieged
for over a year by a very large naval and military force, it was
finally taken. Those left of the small garrison who were able to
fight, placing the women in the center, sallied forth at midnight
of the 22d of April, and cut their way through the Turkish camp;
while those who were too feeble to attempt an escape assembled in
a large mill that was used as a powder-magazine, and blew
themselves and many of the incoming Turks to atoms.
Some fifteen years after the death of Marco
Bozzaris, the American traveller and author, Mr. John L.
Stephens, visited Greece, and, at Missolonghi, was presented to
Constantine Bozzaris and the widow and children of his deceased
brother. In the account which the author gives of this interview,
in his Incidents of Travel in Greece, he describes
Constantine Bozzaris, then a colonel in the service of King Otho,
as a man of about fifty years of age, of middle height and spare
build, who, immediately after the formal introduction, expressed
his gratitude as a Greek for the services rendered his country by
America; and added, “with sparkling eye and flushed cheek, that
when the Greek revolutionary flag sailed into the port of Napoli
di Romania, among hundreds of vessels of all nations, an American
captain was the first to recognize and salute it.” Mr. Stephens
thus describes the widow of the Greek hero: “She was under forty,
tall and stately in person, and habited in deep black. She looked
the widow of a hero; as one worthy of those Grecian mothers who
gave their hair for bow-strings and their girdles for
sword-belts, and, while their heartstrings were cracking, sent
their husbands to fight and perish for their country. Perhaps it
was she who led Marco Bozzaris from the wild guerilla warfare in
which he had passed his early life, and fired him with the high
and holy ambition of freeing his country. I am certain that no
man could look her in the face without finding his wavering
purposes fixed, and without treading more firmly in the path of
high and honorable ambition.”
Mr. Stephens closes the account of his interview
with the widow and family as follows: “At parting I told them
that the name of Marco Bozzaris was as familiar in America as
that of a hero of our own Revolution, and that it had been
hallowed by the inspiration of an American poet. I added that, if
it would not be unacceptable, on my return to my native country I
would send the tribute referred to, as an evidence of the feeling
existing in America toward the memory of Marco Bozzaris.” The
promised tribute was the following Beautiful and stirring poem by
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK:
Marco Bozzaris.
At midnight, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power:
In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch’s signet-ring;
Then pressed that monarch’s throne—a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden’s garden-bird.
At midnight, in the forest shades,
Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.
There had the Persian’s thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood
On old Platæa’s day;
And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far as they.
An hour passed on—the Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentries shriek
“To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!”
He woke, to die ‘mid flame and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain-cloud,
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:
“Strike! till the last armed foe expires;
Strike! for your altars and your fires;
Strike! for the green graves of your sires,
God, and your native land!”
They fought like brave men, long and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered; but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won,
Then saw in death his eyelids close,
Calmly as to a night’s repose—
Like flowers at set of sun.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother, when she feels,
For the first time, her first-born’s breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption’s ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm
With banquet song, and dance, and wine;
And thou art terrible: the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word,
And in its hollow tones are heard
Thanks of millions yet to be.
Come, when his task of fame is wrought;
Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought;
Come, in her crowning hour—and then
Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight
Of sky and stars to prisoned men;
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind, from woods of palm,
And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o’er the Haytien seas.
Bozzaris! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory’s time,
Rest thee—there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral weeds for thee,
Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume,
Like torn branch from death’s leafless tree,
In sorrow’s pomp and pageantry,
The heartless luxury of the tomb;
But she remembers thee as one
Long loved, and for a season gone:
For thee her poet’s lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday bells;
Of thee her babes’ first lisping tells;
For thine her evening prayer is said
At palace couch and cottage bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears.
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys,
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh:
For thou art Freedom’s now, and Fame’s—
One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die!
About the time of the exploit of Bozzaris, Lord
Byron arrived in Greece, to take an active part in aid of Greek
independence, and proceeded to Missolonghi in January, 1824. No
warmer friend of the Greeks than Byron ever lived; but while he
sympathized with, and was anxious to aid in every way possible,
those who, in his own words, “suffered all the moral and physical
ills that could afflict humanity,” it was evidently his honest
belief that the only salvation for Greece lay in her becoming a
British dependency. In his notes to Childe Harold, penned
before the revolution broke out, but while all Greece was ablaze
with the desire for liberty, he wrote as follows: “The Greeks
will never be independent; they will never be sovereigns, as
heretofore, and God forbid they ever should! but they may be
subjects without being slaves. Our colonies are not independent,
but they are free and industrious, and such may Greece be
hereafter.” These words show that he considered Greece incapable
of self-government, should she ever regain her liberty; and he
therefore deprecated a return to her ancient sovereignty. That
this was his view, and that he subsequently designed to give it
effect in his own person, we are assured from the well-founded
belief, derived from his own declarations, that when he joined
the Greek cause he had a mind to place himself at its head,
hoping and perhaps believing that he might become King of Hellas,
under the protection of Great Britain. But whatever his plans may
have been, they were cut short by his death, at Missolonghi, on
the 19th of April following his arrival there.
INTERFERENCE OF THE GREAT POWERS.
In the campaign of 1824, while the Greeks lost Candia and the strongly
fortified rocky isle of Ip’sara, a Turkish fleet was repulsed off Samos, and a
large Egyptian fleet, sent to attack the Morea, was frustrated in all its
designs. The campaign of 1825, however, was opened by the landing, in the
Morea, of a large Egyptian army, under Ibrahim Päsha, son of the Viceroy of
Egypt. Navarï’no soon fell into his power; and at the time of the fall of
Missolonghi, in the following year, be was in possession of most of southern
Greece, and many of the islands of the Archipelago. The foundation of an
Egyptian military and slave-holding state now seemed to be laid in Europe; and
this danger, combined with the noble defence and sufferings at Missolonghi and
elsewhere, attracted the serious attention of the European governments and
people; numerous philanthropic societies were formed to aid the Greeks, and
finally three of the great European powers were moved to interfere in their
behalf. On the 6th of July, 1827, a treaty was concluded at London between
England, Russia, and France, stipulating that the Greeks should govern
themselves, but that they should pay tribute to the Porte.
To enforce this treaty a combined English,
French, and Russian squadron sailed to the Grecian Archipelago;
but the Turkish Sultan haughtily rejected the intervention of the
three powers, and the troops of Ibrahim Pasha continued their
devastations in the Morea. On the 20th of October the allied
squadron, under the command of the English admiral, Edward
Codrington, entered the harbor of Navarino, where the
Turkish-Egyptian fleet lay at anchor; and a sanguinary naval
battle followed, in which the allies nearly destroyed the fleet
of the enemy. Although this action was spoken of by the British
government as an “untoward event,” Admiral Codrington was
rewarded both by England and Russia; and the poet CAMPBELL, in
the following lines on the battle, naturally praises him for
planning and striking this decisive blow for Grecian liberty:
The Battle of Nava’rino.
Hearts of Oak, that have bravely delivered the brave,
And uplifted old Greece from the brink of the grave!
‘Twas the helpless to help, and the hopeless to save,
That your thunderbolts swept o’er the brine;
And as long as yon sun shall look down on the wave
The light of your glory shall shine.
For the guerdon ye sought with your bloodshed and toil,
Was it slaves, or dominion, or rapine, or spoil?
No! your lofty emprise was to fetter and foil
The uprooter of Greece’s domain,
When he tore the last remnant of food from her soil,
Till her famished sank pale as the slain!
Yet, Navarï’no’s heroes! does Christendom breed
The base hearts that will question the fame of your deed?
Are they men?—let ineffable scorn be their meed,
And oblivion shadow their graves!
Are they women?—to Turkish sérails let them speed,
And be mothers of Mussulmen slaves!
Abettors of massacre! dare ye deplore
That the death-shriek is silenced on Hellas’ shore?
That the mother aghast sees her offspring no more
By the hand of Infanticide grasped?
And that stretched on yon billows distained by their gore
Missolonghi’s assassins have gasped?
Prouder scene never hallowed war’s pomp to the mind
Than when Christendom’s pennons wooed social the wind,
And the flower of her brave for the combat combined—
Their watchword, humanity’s vow:
Not a sea-boy that fought in that cause but mankind
Owes a garland to bon or his brow!
No grudge, by our side, that to conquer or fall
Came the hardy, rude Russ, and the high-mettled Gaul:
For whose was the genius that planned, at its call,
When the whirlwind of battle should roll?
All were brave! but the star of success over all
Was the light of our Codrington’s soul.
That star of thy day-spring, regenerate Greek!
Dimmed the Saracen’s moon, and struck pallid his cheek:
In its fast flushing morning thy Muses shall speak,
When their love and their lutes they reclaim;
And the first of their songs from Parnassus’s peak
Shall be “Glory to Codrington’s name!”
The result of the conflict at Navarino so enraged
the Turks that they stopped all communication with the allied
powers, and prepared for war. In the following year (1828) France
and England sent an army to the Morea: Russia declared war for
violations of treaties, and depredations upon her commerce; and
on the 7th of May a Russian army of one hundred and fifteen
thousand men, under Count Witt’genstein, crossed the Pruth, and
by the 2d of July had taken seven fortresses from the Turks. In
August a convention was concluded with Ibrahim Päsha, who
agreed to evacuate the Morea, and set his Greek prisoners at
liberty. In the mean time the Greeks continued the war, drove the
Turks from the country north of the Corinthian Gulf, and fitted
out numerous privateers to prey upon the commerce of their enemy.
In January, 1829, the Sultan received a protocol from the three
allied powers, declaring that they took the Morea and the
Cyc’lades under their protection, and that the entry of any
military force into Greece would be regarded as an attack upon
themselves. The danger of open war with France and England, as
well as the successes and alarming advances of the Russians, now
commanded by Marshal Die’bitsch, who had meantime taken
Adrianople, within one hundred and thirty miles of the Turkish
capital, induced the Sultan to listen to overtures of peace; and
on the 14th of September “the peace of Adrianople” was signed by
Turkey and Russia, by which the former recognized the
independence of Greece.
VI. GREECE UNDER A CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY.
Though freed from her Turkish oppressors, Greece
was severely agitated by domestic discontents, jealousies, and
even manifest turbulence. Count Cä’po d’Is’tria, a Greek in
the service of Russia, who had been chosen, in 1828, president of
the provisional government, aroused suspicions that he designed
to establish a despotism in his own person, and he was
assassinated in 1831. A period of anarchy followed. The great
powers had previously determined to erect Greece into a monarchy,
and had first offered the crown to Prince Leopold, afterward King
of Belgium, who, having accepted the offer, soon after declined
it on account of the unwillingness of the Greeks to receive him,
and their dissatisfaction with the territorial boundaries
prescribed for them. Finally, the boundaries of the kingdom
having been more satisfactorily determined by a treaty between
Turkey and the powers in 1832, the crown was conferred on Otho, a
Bavarian prince, who arrived at Nauplia, the then capital of
Greece, in 1833. Athens became the seat of government in 1835.
Says a writer in the British Quarterly, “The Greeks
neither elected their own sovereign nor chose their national
polity. In a spirit of generous confidence they allowed the three
protecting powers to name a king for them, and the powers
rewarded them by making the worst selection they could. They gave
the Greeks a boy of seventeen, with neither a character to form
nor an intellect to develop.”
The treaty by which Otho was placed on the throne
made no provision for a constitution, but one was expected; and,
after ten years of oppressive subjection by the king and his
Bavarian minions, both the people and a revolted soldiery
surrounded the palace, and demanded a constitution. The king
acquiesced, a national assembly was held, and a constitution was
framed which received the king’s approval in March, 1844. In this
bloodless revolution we have an instance both of the
determination, and peaceable, orderly, and well-disposed
tendencies of the Greek people. An eye-witness of the scene has
thus described it:
“I well recollect the uprising of 1843.
Exasperated by the miserable rule of Otho, a plot was hatched to
wrench a constitution from him, and when everything was ripe the
Athenians arose. At midnight the hoofs of horses were heard
clanging on the pavements, and the flash of torches gleamed in
the streets, as the populace and military hurried toward the
palace; and when the amber-colored dawn lighted the Acropolis and
the plain of Athens, the king found himself surrounded by his
happy subjects, and discovered two field-pieces pointing into the
entrance of the royal residence. A constitution was demanded in
firm but respectful terms—it being suggested at the same time
that, if the request were not granted by four o’clock in the
afternoon, fire would be opened on the palace. In the mean while
all Athens was gathered in the open space around the palace,
chatting, cracking jokes, taking snuff, and smoking, as if they
had assembled to witness a show or hear the reading of a will.
Not a shot was fired; no violence was offered or received; and
precisely as the limiting hour arrived, the obstinate king
succumbed to his besiegers, and the multitude quietly dispersed
to their homes.” [Footnote: B. G. W. Benjamin, in “The
Turk and the Greek.”]
The Constitution which the Greeks secured
contained no real guarantee for the legislative rights of the
people, and the minor benefits it gave them were ignored by the
government. A continuance of the severe contests between the
national party and foreign intriguers materially interfered with
the prosperity of the country. Other events, also, now occurred
to disturb it. In 1847 a diplomatic difficulty with Turkey, and,
in 1848, a difference with England, that arose from various
claims of English subjects, and that continued for several years,
assumed threatening proportions, and were only terminated by the
submission of Greece to the demands made upon her. When the
Crimean war broke out, Greece took a decided stand in favor of
Russia; but England and France soon compelled her to assume and
maintain a strictly neutral position. In 1859 the residents of
the Ionian Islands, which were under the protectorate of England,
sought annexation to Greece, and manifested their intentions in
great popular demonstrations, and even insurrections; but Greece,
though sympathizing with them, was too feeble to aid them, and no
change was then made in their relations.
THE DEPOSITION OF KING OTHO.
While these events were transpiring, the feeling
of hostility toward King Otho and the royal family was taking
deeper root with the Greek people, and open demonstrations of
violence were frequently made. The king promised more liberal
measures of government; but these fell short of the popular
demand, and the Greeks resolved to dethrone the dynasty. In
October, 1862, after several violent demonstrations elsewhere,
matters culminated in a successful revolution at Athens. A
provisional government was established by the leaders of the
popular party, who decreed the deposition of the king. Otho, who
was absent from Athens at the time, on a visit to Napoli, finding
himself without a throne did not return to Athens, but issued a
proclamation taking leave of Greece, and sailed for Germany in an
English frigate. He had occupied the throne just thirty years.
MR. TUCKERMAN thus describes him: “An honest-hearted man, but
without intellectual strength, dressed in the Greek fustinella,
he endeavored to be Greek in spirit; but under his braided jacket
his heart beat to foreign measures, and his ear inclined to
foreign counsels. But for the quicker-witted Amelia, the queen,
his follies would have worn out the patience of the people sooner
than they did.” The condition of Greece under his government is
thus described by the writer in the British Quarterly, who
wrote immediately after the coup d’état:
“To outward appearance, the Greece which the
Philhel’lenists of the days of Canning declared to be re-animated
and restored, has presented, during thirty years of settled
government, the aspect of a country corrupt, intriguing, venal,
and poor. The government has kept faith neither with its subjects
nor with its creditors; it has endeavored, by all means in its
power, to crush the constitutional liberties of its subjects; and
by refusing, throughout this period, to pay a single drachma of
its public debt, it has stamped itself either hopelessly bankrupt
or scandalously fraudulent. The people, meanwhile, crushed by the
incubus of a dishonest and extravagant foreign rule, remain in
nearly the situation they held on the first establishment of
their kingdom. In a word, Greece was thirty years ago transferred
from one despotism to another. The Bavarian rule was no
appreciable mitigation of the Turkish rule. If the Christian
monarch hated his Hellenic subjects less than the Mussulman
monarch, he was still more ignorant of the conditions of
prosperous government.”
THE ACCESSION OF KING GEORGE.
If it has ever had an existence, Greek independence may be properly dated from
the deposition of the Bavarian dynasty. In December, 1862, a committee
appointed by the provisional government ordered the election of a new king. The
national assembly shortly after met at Athens, and, having first confirmed the
deposition of Otho, of those proposed as candidates for the vacant throne by
the European powers, Prince Alfred of England was elected by an immense
majority on the first ballot. This choice of a scion of the freest and most
stable of the constitutional monarchies of Europe, was an expression of the
desire and the resolve of the Greek people to secure as full political and
civil liberties as was possible for them under a monarchical government. But
Prince Alfred was held ineligible in consequence of a clause in the protocol of
the protecting powers, which declared that the government of Greece should not
be confided to a prince chosen from the reigning families of those states.
Thereupon, in March, 1863, Prince George of Denmark, the present king, was
unanimously elected by the assembly, and his election was confirmed by the
great powers in the following July. There is every reason to suppose that
England assumed the honor of choosing Prince George. On the withdrawal of
Prince Alfred she expressed her willingness to abandon her protectorate of the
Ionian Islands, and cede them to Greece, provided a king were chosen to whom
the English government could not object. The Ionian Islands were ceded to
Greece within two months after the accession of King George; and Mr. Tuckerman
relates that, “when Prince Christian, King of Denmark, was in London, attending
the marriage of his daughter to the Prince of Wales, Lord John Russell
discovered the second son of Prince Christian in the uniform of a midshipman,
and suggested his name as the successor of Otho.”
King George took the constitutional oath in
October, 1863. In 1866 the revolution in Crete, or Candia, broke
out, and, owing to Greek sympathy with the insurrectionists,
thousands of whom found an asylum in Greece, grave complications
arose between Greece and Turkey, which were only settled by a
conference of the great powers in 1869. By the treaty with the
Porte in 1832 the boundary line of Greece had been settled in an
arbitrary manner, by running it from the Gulf of Volo along the
chain of the Othrys Mountains to the Gulf of Arta—by which
Greece was deprived of the high fertile plains of Thessaly and
Epirus, the largest and richest of classical Greece. At the close
of the late Russian-Turkish war, however, the boundary line was
changed by the powers so as to include within the kingdom a large
portion of those ancient possessions; but this change occasioned
serious conflicts between the government and the people of the
annexed districts, and difficulties also arose with Turkey in
consequence. But these were finally settled by an amendment to
the treaty, passed in 1881.”
With the exceptions just noted, no important
events have disturbed the peace of Greece since the accession of
King George. In him the country has a ruler of capacity, who is
in great measure his own adviser, and who comprehends the chief
wish of his subjects, “that Greece shall govern Greece.” As MR.
TUCKERMAN has said of him, “Unlike his predecessor, he is a Greek
by sympathy of language and ideas. He feels the popular pulse and
tries to keep time with it, not more as a matter of policy than
from national sympathy; and his hands are comparatively free of
the impediment of those foreign ministerial counselors who, each
struggling for supremacy, united only in checking the political
advancement of the kingdom.” It was no fault of the Greek people
that, under King Otho, Greece failed to make the internal
advancement that was expected of her on her escape from Moslem
tyranny. It was the fault of the government; for, when a better
government came, there was a corresponding change in the inner
life of the people; and at the present time, with the freest of
constitutional monarchies, and under the guidance of a ruler so
sympathetic, competent, and popular, redeemed Greece is making
rapid strides in intellectual and material progress. Of this
progress we have the following account by a prominent American
divine, a recent visitor to that country:
Progress in Modern Greece.
[Footnote: Rev. Joseph Cook, in the New York Independent, February,
1883.
“You lean over the parapet of the Acropolis, on
the side toward the modern city, and look in vain for the print
of that Venetian leprous scandal and that Turkish hoof which for
six hundred years trod Greece into the slime. In the long bondage
to the barbarian, the Hellenic spirit was weakened, but not
broken. The Greek, with his fine texture, loathes the stolid,
opaque temperament of the polygamistic Turk. Intermarriages
between the races are very few. The Greek race is not extinct. In
many rural populations in Greece the modern Hellenic blood is as
pure as the ancient. Only Hellenic blood explains Hellenic
countenances, yet easily found; the Hellenic language, yet
wonderfully incorrupt; and the Hellenic spirit, omnipresent in
liberated Greece. Fifty years ago not a book could be bought at
Athens. To-day one in eighteen of the whole population of Greece
is in school. In 1881 thirteen very tall factory chimney-stacks
could be counted in the Piræ’us, not one of which was there
in 1873. It is pathetic to find Greece at last opening, on the
Acropolis and in the heart of Athens, national museums for the
sacred remnants of her own ancient art, which have been pillaged
hitherto for the enrichment of the museums of all Western Europe.
During sixty years of independence the Hellenic spirit has
doubled the population of Greece, increased her revenues five
hundred per cent., extended telegraphic communication over the
kingdom, enlarged the fleet from four hundred and forty to five
thousand vessels, opened eight ports, founded eleven new cities,
restored forty ruined towns, changed Athens from a hamlet of
hovels to a city of seventy thousand inhabitants, and planted
there a royal palace, a legislative chamber, ten type-foundries,
forty printing establishments, twenty newspapers, an astronomical
observatory, and a university with eighty professors and fifteen
hundred students. After little more than half a century of
independence, the Hellenic spirit devotes a larger percentage of
public revenue to purposes of instruction than France, Italy,
England, Germany, or even the United States. Modern Greece, sixty
years ago a slave and a beggar, to-day, by the confession of the
most merciless statisticians, stands at the head of the list of
self-educated nations.”
INDEX.
[Names in CAPITALS denote authors to whom prominent reference is made,
or from whom selections are taken.]
Aby’dos. Xerxes and his army at.
Acade’mla, or Ac-a-deme’. A public garden or grove,
the resort of the philosophers at Athens.
Acarna’ni-a, description of; aids Athens.
Achæ’ans, the; origin of.
Achæ’an League, the.
Achæ’us, son of Xuthus, and ancestor of the
Achæans.
Acha’ia, description of. Name given to Greece by the
Romans.
Achelo’us, the river, described.
Ach’eron, the river; described.
Acheru’sia (she-a), the lake, described.
Achil’les, accompanies expedition to Troy; contends with
Agamemnon, and withdrawn; refuses to enter the contest, puts his
armor on Patroclus, and the armor is lost; description of his new
armor; he enters the fight; encounters Æneas, who escapes;
kills Hector; delivers the body to Priam; death of.
Acri’si-us (she-us), King of Argos.
Acrop’olis, the Athenian; seizure of, by Cylon; by Pisistratus; by the
Persians; famous structures of; its splendors in the time of Pericles; injury
to, inflicted by the Venetians.
Actæ’on, the fable of.
Adme’tus, King of Pheræ.
Æge’an Sea.
Ægi’na, island of; war of, with Athens.
Æ’gos-pot’ami. Defeat of Athenians at.
Æmo’nia, same as Hæmonia, an early name of
Thessaly.
Æne’as, a Trojan hero, and subject of Virgil’s
Æne’id; wounded, and put to flight by Diomed; fights for
the body of Patroclus; encounters Achilles, and is preserved by
Neptune; account of his escape from Troy.
Æne’id, the.
Æo’lians, the; colonies of.
Æ’olus, progenitor of the Æolians.
ÆS’CHI-NES, the orator; prosecutes Demosthenes; exile of;
oratory of. Extracts from: The Death of Darius; Oration against
Ctesiphon.
ÆS’CHYLUS, poet and tragedian. Life and works of. Extracts
from: Punishment of Prometheus; Retributive justice of the gods;
The taking of an oath; The name “Helen”; Beacon fires from Troy
to Argos; Battle of Salamis; Murder of Agamemnon.
Æscula’pius, god of the healing art. Shrine of.
Æ’son, King of Iolcus.
Æt’na, a city in Sicily, founded by Hiero.
Æto’lia.
Agamem’non, King of Mycenæ; commands the expedition
against Troy; contends with Achilles; demands restoration of
Helen; return to Greece and is murdered.
Agamemnon, the. Extracts from.
Aganip’pe, fountain of.
Ag’athon, a tragedian.
Agesan’dros, a Rhodian sculptor.
Agesila’us, King of Sparta. Defeats the Persians at
Sardis.
A’gis, King of Sparta.
Agrigen’tum, in Sicily.
A’jax. Goes with the Greeks to Troy; fights for the body
of Patroclus; his death.
AKENSIDE, MARK.—Character of Solon; of Pisistratus, and his
usurpation; Alcræs; Anacreon; Melpomene.
ALAMANNI, LUIGI.—Flight of Xerxes.
ALCÆ’US, a lyric poet.—Life and writings of. Extracts
from: The spoils of war; Sappho.
ALCÆ’US, of Messene.—Epigrams of, on Philip V.
Alcestis, the.
Alcibi’ades. Artifices of; retires to Sparta; intrigues
of, against Athens; is condemned to death, but escapes; is
recalled to Athens; is banished; death of.
Alcin’o-us, King. Gardens of.
“Al’ciphron, or the Minute Philosopher”.
ALC’MAN, a lyric poet.—Life and writings of.
Alexander the Great. Quells revolt of the Grecian states;
invades Asia; defeats Darius; further conquests of; feast of, at
Persepolis; invades India; dies at Babylon; career, character,
and burial of; wars that followed his death.
Alexandria, in Egypt. Founded by Alexander.
Alex’is, a comic poet.
ALISON, ARCHIBALD.-Earthquake at Sparta, and Spartan heroism.
Alphe’us, river. Legends of.
A’mor, son of Venus, and god of love.
Amphic’tyon, Amphicty’ones, and Amphictyon’ic
Council.
Amphip’olis, in Thrace.
Amphis’sa, town of.
Amy’clæ, town of.
Anab’asis, the.
ANAC’REON, a lyric poet.—Life and writings of.
An’akim, a giant of Palestine.
Anaxag’oras, the philosopher; attacks upon, at Athens;
life, works, and death of.
Anaximan’der, the philosopher.
Anaxim’enes, the philosopher.
Anchi’ses, father of Æne’as.
Androm’a-che, wife of Hector. Lamentation of, over
Hector’s body.
An’gelo, Michael.
ANONYMOUS.—Tomb of Leonidas; Queen Archidamia.
Antæ’us, son of Neptune and Terra. Encounter with
Hercules.
Antal’cidas, the peace of.
Anthe’la, village of.
ANTHON, CHARLES, LL.D.—Apelles and Protogenes.
Antig’o-ne, the.
Antig’onus, one of Alexander’s generals; conquests and
death of.
Antig’onus II., a king of Macedon.—War of, with Phyrrus;
becomes master of Greece, and death of.
Antil’ochus (in the Iliad).
Anti’ochus, King of Syria.
ANTIP’ATER, of Sidon.—Extracts from: The birthplace of Homer;
Sappho; Desolation of Corinth; The painting of Venus rising from
the sea.
Antip’ater, one of Alexander’s generals. Is given command
of Macedon and Greece; suppresses a Spartan revolt; the Athenian
revolt; is given part of Macedonia and Greece; death of.
Antiph’anes, a comic poet.
An’tiphon, orator and rhetorician.
An’tium (an’she-um); a city of Italy.
An’tonines, the. Treatment of Greece by.
An’ytus, the accuser of Socrates.
Apel’les, an Ionian painter; anecdote of.
Aphrodi’te. (See Venus.)
Apollo, the god of archery, etc.; aids the Trojans;
character of; conflict of, with Python.
Apollo Bel’ve-dere, statue of.
Apollodo’rus, of Athens, a painter.
Apollo’nia, town in Illyria.
Ap’pius Claudius, the Roman consul.
Arach’ne, tower of.
Arbe’la. Battle of.
Arca’dia and Arcadians. Arcadians assist Messenia;
assist Thebes in war with Sparta.
Archidami’a, Queen of Sparta.
Archela’us, King of Macedon.
Archida’mus, King of Sparta.
Archil’ochus, lyric poet.
Archime’des, the Syracusan; Cicero visits the tomb of.
Architecture.—First period. Second period. Third
period.
Ar’chons. Institution of, in Athens.
Areop’agus, or Hill of Mars. Court of; changes in
power of.
A’res (same as Mars).
Arethu’sa, fountain of.
A’re-us, King of Sparta.
Ar’gives, the.
Ar’go, the ship.
Argol’ic Gulf.
Ar’golis.
Argonau’tic expedition, the.
Ar’gos, city of.
Ari’on, the poet.
Aristi’des, the Athenian general and statesman. At
Marathon; rise of, in Athenian affairs; banishment of, and return
to fight at Salamis; leadership and death of.
Aristi’des, a painter.
Aristoc’rates, King of Arcadia.
Aristode’mus, one of the Heraclidæ.
Aristogi’ton. Conspiracy of, against the
Pisistratidæ, and death of; tribute to.
Aristom’enes, a Messenian leader.
ARISTOPH’ANES, the comic poet. Life and works of. Extracts from:
The Wasps; Cleon the Demagogue; The Clouds; The
Birds.
Aristot’le, the philosopher. Life and works of.
ARNOLD, EDWIN.—The Academia.
Ar’ta, Gulf of.
Artaba’nus, uncle of Xerxes.
Artapher’nes, Persian governor of Lydia.
Artaxerx’es Longim’anus.
Artaxerxes Mne’mon.
Ar’temis. (See Diana.)
Artemis’ia (she-a), Queen of Carin.
Artemis’ium. Naval conflict at.
Arts. (See Literature.)
As’cra. Birthplace of Hesiod.
A’sius (a’she-us). A marshy place near the river
Ca-ys’ter, in Asia Minor.
Aso’pus, the river, in Bœotia.
Aspa’sia (she-a). Attacks upon.
Asty’anax, Hector’s son. Fate of.
A’te, goddess of revenge.
Athe’na. (See Minerva.)
Athenodo’rus, a Rhodian sculptor.
Athens, and the Athenians; founding of the city;
early history of; legislation of Draco and Solon; usurpation of
Pisistratus; birth of democracy at; battle of Marathon; affairs
of, under Aristides and Themistocles; war of, with Ægina,
and settlement of; abandonment of city; successes of, at
Artemisium and Salamis; at Platæa; empire of Athens; Athens
rebuilt; affairs of, under Cimon; at battle of Eurymedon;
jealousy of Sparta against; affairs of, under Pericles; changes
in Constitution of; war of, with Sparta; reverses of, in Egypt,
decline of, and thirty years’ truce of, with Sparta; the “Age of
Pericles”; war of, with Sparta; the plague at; violates the Peace
of Nicias; Sicilian expedition of; war of, with Sparta, and
revolt of allies; reverses and humiliation of; fall of Athens;
the rule of the Tyrants; lead of, in intellectual progress;
literature and art of; adornment of; glory of; alliance of, with
Sparta; engages in the Sacred War; leads against Macedon;
censured by Demosthenes; allies of, defeated by Philip; first
open rupture with Macedon; alliance of, with Thebes, and defeat
at Chæronea; revolt of, against Alexander; captured by
Antigonus; late architecture, sculpture, and painting of;
immortal influence of; the Duchy of Athens; captured by Turks and
Venetians; revolution at, against Otho.
A’thos, Mount, in Macedonia.
Atos’sa, mother of Xerxes.
Atri’dæ, the. A term meaning “sons of Atreus,” and
applied by Homer to Agamemnon and Menelaus.
Attica.
“Attic Wasp,” the.
Augustus, the Roman emperor.
Au’lis, on the Euripus.
Auso’nian, or Au’sones. An ancient race of
Italy.
Aver’nus, lake of.
Babylon.
Bacchus, god of vintage or wine; theatre of.
Bel’i-des, a surname given to daughters of Belus.
Beller’ophon, son of Glaucus.
BENJAMIN, S. G. W.—Revolution against Otho.
Bes’sus, satrap of Bactria.
Bias, one of the Seven Sages.
Birds, the.
BLACKIE, J. STUART.—Value of Greek fables. Fancies of the Greek
mind. Legend of Pandora. Prometheus. Story of Tantalus. The
founding of Athens. Pythagoras. Legends of Marathon. Xerxes and
the battle of Salamis.
Bœo’tla.
Boz-zar’ls, Marco.—Bravery and death of. Constantine
Bozzaris, and Noto Bozzaris.
Bras’idas, the Spartan.
Brazen Age, the.
British Quarterly Review.—The choice of Otho; and Greece
under his rule.
Bria’re-us (or Bri’a-reus).
BROUGHAM, LORD.—Demosthenes’ Oration on the Crown. The style of
Demosthenes. The doctrine of Plato.
BROWNE, R. W.—Thucydides and Herodotus. Aristotle.
BULWER, EDW. LYTTON.—Merits of a “Tyranny.” The battle of
Platæa, and importance of. Xerxes at Sardis. Earthquake,
and revolt of Helots at Sparta. Changes in Athenian Constitution,
Oratory of Pericles. The Drama. Adornment of Athens.
BURLINGAME, EDW. L.—Roman treatment of Greece.
BYRON, LORD.—Dodona. Parnassus. Allusions to Attica. The
Corinthian rock. The Isles of Greece. The dead at
Thermopylæ. Xerxes at Salamis. Deathless renown of Greek
heroes. The Athenian prisoners at Syracuse. The revenge of
Orestes. Alexander’s career. Siege and fall of Corinth. Greece
under Moslem rule. Views of Greek independence.
Byzan’tium (she-um).
Cadmus, founder of Cadme’a.
Cadmea, citadel of Thebes.
Cal’amis, the sculptor.
Calaure’a, island of.
Callic’ra-tes, a Spartan soldier.
Callicrates, an architect.
Callicrat’i-das, a Spartan officer.
Callim’achus, the Pol’emarch.
CALLI’NUS, a lyric poet.—Writings of.
Calli’o-pe, the goddess of epic poetry.
CALLIS’TRATUS.—Tribute to Harmodius.
Calyp’so, the nymph, island of.
Cambunian mountains.
CAMPBELL, THOMAS.—Music of the Spartans. Song of the Greeks.
Battle of Navari’no.
Can’dla, island of (Crete).
Can’næ, in Apulia. Battle at.
CANNING, GEORGE.—The Slavery of Greece.
CANTON, WILLIAM.—Death of Anaxagoras.
Capo d’Istria, Count.
Capys, a Trojan.
Carthaginians, the.
Caspian Gates, the.
Cassan’der, son of Antipater.—Master of Greece and
Macedon; death of.
Cassan’dra, daughter of Priam.
Castalian Fount, the.
Cat’ana, in Sicily.
Cau’casus, Mount.
Ca-ys’ter, the river, in Asia Minor.
Ce’crops.
Cecro’plan hill (Acropolis).
Celts, the.
Cephalo’nia, island of.
Cephis’sus, the river.
Ceraunian mountains.
Ce’res, goddess of grain, etc.
Chærone’a, in Bœotia; battle of.
Chal’cis, in Euboea.
Cha’os.
Cha’res, a Rhodian sculptor.
Cher’siphron, a Cretan architect. Story of.
Chersone’sus. the Thracian.
Chi’lo, one of the Seven Sages.
Chion’i-des, a comic poet.
Chi’os, island of.
Choëph’oroe, the.
Christianity in Greece.
Chro’nos, or Saturn.
Cicero, the Roman orator. Visits tomb of Archime’des.
Cili’cia (she-a).
Ci’mon (meaning Milti’a-des).
Cimon, son of Miltiades, and an Athenian general and
statesman; successes and rise of, at Athens; wins battle of
Eurym’edon; aids Sparta; the fall and banishment of; recall of,
expedition to Cyprus, and death of.
Cithæ’ron, Mount.
Ci’tium (she-um), in Cyprus.
Clazom’enæ, on an island off the Dorian coast.
CLE-AN’THES.—Hymn to Jupiter.
Cle-ar’chus, a Spartan general.
Cleo-bu’lus, one of the Seven Sages.
Cle’on, the Athenian.—Causes the Mityleneans to be put to
death; conduct and character of, and attacks upon, by
Aristoph’anes.
Cle’on of Lampsacus.
Cleon’ymus of Sparta.
Clouds, the.
Clis’thenes (eze), last despot of Si’çyon.
Clisthenes, founder of democracy at Athens; reforms
of.
Clytemnes’tra, wife of Agamemnon.
Cocy’tus, the river.
Codrington, Admiral.
Co’drus, early King of Athens.
Col’chis.
COLERIDGE, HENRY N.—The poems of Homer.
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL T.—Pythagore’an influences.
COLLINS, MORTIMER.—Fable of Hercules and Antæ’us.
Colonies, the Greek. In Asia Minor; history of, in Magna
Groeca, etc.; in Sicily, Italy, Africa, etc.
Col’ophon, in Ionia.
Comedy. The Old; the New.
COOK, REV. JOSEPH.—Progress in Modern Greece.
Corcy’ra, or Corfu, island of.
Corinna, a Bœotian poetess.
Corinth, and the Corinthians; conquest of; despotisms of;
war of, with Corcyra; aids Syracuse; destruction of; capture of,
by the Turks.
Corinthian Architecture.
Corinthian Gulf, the.
Corone’a, plains of. Athenian defeat at.
Coumour’gi, Äl’i, the Turkish Grand Vizier. Successes
of.
Councils, the National.
CRANCH, CHRISTOPHER P.—Temples at Pæstum.
Cran’non, battle of.
Crat’erus, one of Alexander’s generals.
Crati’nus, a comic poet.
Creation, the. Account of.
Cre’on.
Cresphon’tes, of the Heraclidæ.
Crete, island of; conquered by the Turks; revolution
in.
Cris’sa, town of.
Crissæ’an plain.
Cri’ti-as (cri’she-as), chief of the Thirty Tyrants.
Croe’sus, King of Lydia.
CROLY, GEORGE.—Pericles. Death of Pericles.
Croto’na, in Italy.
Crusaders, the. Courts of, in Greece.
Ctes’iphon, who proposed a crown for Demosthenes.
Cu’mæ, in Italy.
Cumæ’an Sibyl, the. Myth of.
CURTIUS, ERNST.—The Oration of Pericles. Retreat of the Ten
Thousand. Pelopidas and Epaminondas.
Cyc’la-des, the (islands).
Cyc’lic poets, the.
Cy’clops, or Cyclo’pes, the.
Cy’lon, the Athenian.
Cynoceph’alæ, In Thessaly. Battle of.
Cyprian queen (Venus).
Cyprus, Island of.
Cyrena’ica, colony of.
Cy-re’ne, colony of.
Cyropoedi’a, the.
Cyrus the Elder. Conquers Lydia.
Cyrus the Younger.
Cys’icus, Island of. Victory of Alcibiades at.
Cyth’era, island of.
Cytheræ’a, name given to Venus.
Damon and Pythias.
Dan’a-ë, Lamentation of.
Dan’a-i, the.
Dan’a-us, founder of Argos.
Dar’danus, son of Jupiter and Electra.
Dari’us I. (Hystas’pes), King of Persia; dominion of; he
suppresses the Ionic revolt; invades Greece; death of.
Darius III., King of Persia. Defeated at Issus, and at
Arbe’la; Flight and death of.
De-iph’obus, a Trojan hero.
De’lium, in Bœotia. Battle of.
Del’phi, or Delphos. City, temple, and oracle
of.
De’los, island of; Confederacy of States at.
Deme’ter. (See Ceres.)
Deme’trius, son of Antigonus. Seizes the throne of
Macedon.
Demos’the-nes, the Athenian general. Captures Pylus;
defeat and death of, at Syracuse.
DEMOS’THE’NES, the orator; pious fraud of; measures against, at
Athens, and attack upon, by Æschines; death of; oratory
of.—Extracts from: The First Philippic. Oration on the
Crown.
Deuca’lion, son of Prometheus. Deluge of.
Diana, or Ar’temis, temple to, at Ephesus.
Die’bitsch, Marshal.
Di’o-cles, of Syracuse.
Diodo’rus, the historian.
Diog’enes, the Cretan.
DIOG’ENES LAER’TIUS.—Xenophon.
Di’omed, a Greek hero in the Trojan war; valor of; fate
of.
Di’on, of Syracuse.
Dionysian Festivals, the.
Dionysius of Col’ophon, a painter.
Dionysius the Elder, of Syracuse.
Dionysius the Younger, of Syracuse.
Dionysius, the Roman historian.
Diopi’thes, the general.
Dipoe’nus, the sculptor.
Dis, a name given to Pluto.
Dodo’na, city and temple of.
Do’rians, the, migrations and colonies of.
Dor’ic architecture.
Do’ris.
Do’rus, progenitor of the Dorians.
Dra’co, the Athenian legislator.
Drama, the. Before Peloponnesian wars; characterization
of; influence of; the drama after Peloponnesian war.
Dry’ads, or Dry’a-des, the. Wood-nymph.
DRYDEN, JOHN.—Alexander’s feast at Persep’olis.
Edinburgh Review. Courts of Crusaders.
Eges’ta, in Sicily.
E’lea, in Lucania. Eleatic philosophy.
Elec’tra, the.
Eleu’sis, and the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Eleu’therre, in Attica.
E’lis and E’leans.
Elo’ra, temple of. Elora is a town in south-western
Hindostan, noted for its splendid cave-temples, cut from a hill
of red granite, black basalt, and quartz rock. Of these, that
called “Paradise,” to which reference is here made, is 100 feet
high, 401 feet deep, and 185 feet in greatest breadth. It is “a
perfect pantheon of the gods of India.”
Elysium, the.
Ema’thia, or Macedon.
En’nius. The Fate of Ajax.
Eny’o, a war-goddess.
E’os, The same as Aurora, a term applied to the eastern
parts of the world.
Epaminon’das, the Theban. Character of, and his successes
against Sparta.
Eph’esus.
Ephi-al’tes.
Epichar’mus.
Epicu’rus, Life and works of.
Epidau’rus, in Argolis.
Epime’theus (thuse).
Epi’rus.
Er-ech’the-um, the.
Erech’theus (thuse).
Ere’tria.
Erin’nys. (See Furies.)
Euboe’a, island of.
Euboe’an Sea.
Eu’menes, Alexander’s general.
Eumen’i-des, the.
Euphra’nor, a sculptor.
Eu’polis, a comic poet.
Eupom’pus, a Siçyonian painter.
EURIP’IDES. Life and works of. Extracts from: The Greek Armament.
Alcestis preparing for death.
Euri’pus, or Euboean Sea.
Euro’tas.
Eurybi’ades, a Spartan general.
Euryd’i-ce.
Eurym’edon, in Pamphylia.
Farnese Bull, the. Sculpture of.
Fates, the.
FELTON, C. C., D.D.—Ionian language and culture, Unity of the
Iliad. Works of Hesiod. Christianity in Greece. The Duchy
of Athens. The Klephts.
Festivals, the Grecian.
FINLAY, GEORGE, LL.D.—The Revolt against Rome.
Flamin’ius, Titus, Roman consul.
Frogs, the.
Furies, the.
Future State, the. Greek views of.
Gan-y-me’de, Jove’s cup-bearer.
Gedro’sia (she-a), in Persia.
Ge’la, in Sicily.
Ge’lon, despot of Gela. Becomes despot of Syracuse;
dynasty of, extinguished.
GEM’INUS, TULLIUS.—Themistocles.
George, Prince of Denmark. Is chosen King of Greece;
progress of Greece under.
Giants, the; battle with Jupiter.
GILLIES, JOHN, LL.D.—Memorial to Miltiades. Aristophanes and
Cleon. The works of Phidias.
Gladiator, the Dying.
GLADSTONE, WM. EWART.—The humanity of the gods.
Glau’cus, a Trojan hero.
Glaucus, a sculptor.
Gods, the. Personifications and deifications of; moral
characteristics of; deceptions of.
Golden Age, the.
Gor’gias, the Sophist.
Gorgo’pis, lake, near Corinth.
Goths, the. Overrun Greece.
Government, forms of, and changes in.
Graces, the.
Grani’cus, the river. Battle at.
GRAY, THOMAS.—Pindar.
GROTE, GEORGE.—The Trojan war. The Cumæan Sibyl. Increase
of power among Sicilian Greeks. The Seven Sages. Lesson from the
fate of Miltiades. Transitions of tragedy. Aristophanes. The
Sophists and Socrates. Demosthenes’ first Philippic. The
Influence of Phocion. Conquests of Alexander. The Oration on the
Crown.
Guiscard (ges-kar’), Robert. Conquests of.
Gy’ges, the.
Gylip’pus, a Spartan general.
Gyth’e-um (or Gy-the’-nm), port of Sparta.
Ha’des.
Ha’drian, the Roman emperor.
Hæ’mus, mountain chain of.
Halicarnas’sus, in Caria.
HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE.—Marco Bozzaris.
Hamil’car, a Carthaginian general.
Hannibal, a Carthaginian general.
Harmo’dius, an Athenian.
Harpies, the. Winged monsters with female faces and the
bodies, claws, and wings of birds.
HAYGARTH, WILLIAM.—Acheron and Acherusia. Ancient Corinth.
Sparta’s invincibility. Battle of Thermopylæ. Athens in
time of peace. Temple of Theseus. The Academia. Immortality of
Grecian genius.
He’be, goddess of youth.
Hecatæ’us, the historian.
Hec’tor, eldest son of Priam, King of Troy; parting of,
with Androma-che; exploits of; encounters Achilles, is slain, and
his body given up to Priam; lamentation over, by Andromache and
Helen.
HEE’REN (ha’ren).—Authority of Homer. Freedom in colonies.
Character of a “tyranny”.
He-ge’sias (she-as), the sculptor.
Helen of Troy. Abduction of; the name of; laments Hectors
death; supposed career of, after the Trojan war.
Hel’icon, Mount, in Bœotia.
Hel’las, or Greece; survival.
Hellas, the.
Helle’nes, and Hellen’ic (Hellen). Spirit of, in
modern Greece.
Hellen’ica, the.
Hellen’ics, the.
Hel’lespont, the.
He’lots, the. The revolt of.
HEMANS, FELICIA.—Mount Olympus, 2. Vale of Tempe, 3. City and
temple of Delphi, T. Mycenæ. Spartan march to battle.
Legend of Marathon. The Parthenon. The Turkish invasion.
Hephæs’tus, or Vulcan, M.
He’ra. (See Juno.)
Her-a-cli’dæ, the return of the.
Heracli’tus, the philosopher.
Hercules, frees Prometheus; twelve labors, &c., of;
fable of; encounter of, with Antæ’ns; sails with Argonautic
expedition; legends of, at Marathon; statue of.
Hermes. (See Mercury.)
Hermi’o-ne.
HEROD’OTUS, the historian. Life and writings of; compared with
Thucydides.—Extracts from: Xerxes at Abydos. Introduction to
history.
Heroic Age, the. Some events of; arts and civilization
in.
Heros’tratus.
Hertha, goddess of the earth.
HE’SI-OD. Life and works of.—Extracts from: Battle of the
Giants. Origin of Evil, etc. The justice of the gods. Winter.
Hi’ero I. Despot of Gela; becomes despot of Syracuse.
Hiero II. Despot of Syracuse.
Him’era, in Sicily.
Hippar’chus.
Hip’pias, son and successor of Pisistratus. Is driven from
Athens; leads the Persians against Greece.
Hippocre’ne (or crene’ in poetry), fountain of.
Hippopla’çia (also Hypopla’kia). Same as The’be, in
Mysia, and so called because supposed to lie at the foot of or
under Mount Plakos.
History. To close of Peloponnesian wars; subsequent period
of.
HOLLAND. J. G.—The La-oc’o-on.
HOMER. Life and works of.—Extracts from: The gardens of
Alcin’o-us, Prayer to the gods. The taking of an oath. The Future
State. The descent of Orpheus. The Elysium. Punishment of Ate.
Ulysses and Thersites. Parting of Hector and Andromache. Death of
Patroclus. The shield of Achilles. Death of Hector. Priam begging
for Hector’s body. Lamentation of Andromache; of Helen. Artifice
of Ulysses. The Raft of Ulysses. Similes of Homer. Jupiter grants
the request of Thetis.
HORACE.—Description of Pindar. Greece the conqueror of Rome.
Horolo’gium, the, at Athens.
HOUGHTON, LORD.—The Cyclopean walls.
HUME, DAVID.—The style of Demosthenes.
Huns, the. Overrun Greece.
Hy’las, legend of.
Hymet’tus, Mount.
Hype’ria’s Spring, in Thessaly.
Ib’rahim Pä’sha (or pa-shä’).
Ica’ria, island of.
Ictinus, the architect.
I’da, Mount.
Idalian queen (same as Venus).
Il’iad.
Il’i-um, or Troy. Grecian expedition against; the
fate of; fall of, announced to the Greeks; discoveries on site
of.
Illyr’ia.
Im’bros, island of.
In’achus, son of Oceanus.
In’arus, a Libyan prince.
Iol’cus, in Thessaly.
I’on, son of Xuthus.
ION, of Chios. The power or Sparta.
Io’nia, and Ionians; language and culture of.
Colonies of.
Ionian Sea.
Ion’ic Architecture.
Ionic Revolt, the.
I’os, island of.
Ip’sara, isle of.
I’ra, fortress of, in Messenia.
I’ris, the rainbow goddess.
Isag’oras, the Athenian.
Isles of Greece, the.
Isoc’ra-tes, an Athenian orator.
Is’sus, in Cilicia. Battle of.
Isthmian Games, the.
Italy, Greek colonies in.
Ithaca, island of.
Itho’me, fortress of.
Ixi’on. The punishment of.
Jason.
Jove. (See Jupiter.)
Julian, the Roman emperor.
Juno, or Hera, temple of, at Samos; temple of, near
Platæa.
Jupiter, Jove, or Zeus. Court of; temple of, and
games sacred to; hymn to; divides dominion of the universe;
statue of, at Tarentum.
Justin, the Latin historian.
JUVENAL.—Stories about Xerxes. Flight of Xerxes from Salamis.
Alexander’s tomb.
Kalamä’ta.
KENDRICK, A. C., LL.D.—Plato and his writings.
Klephts, the.
Knights, the.
Kot’tos.
Laç-e-dæ’mon, or Sparta.
Laco’nia.
Lævi’nus, M. Valerius.
Lam’achus, an Athenian general.
Lamp’sacus, on the Hellespont.
LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE.—Reconciliation of Helen and Menelaus.
LANG, A.—Venus visits Helen of Troy. Reconciliation of Helen and
Menelaus.
La-oc’o-on, a priest of Apollo. Statuary group of the
Laocoon.
Lap’ithæ, a people of Thessaly.
LAWRENCE, EUGENE.—The murder of Agamemnon. Herodotus. Menander.
Aristotle.
Lebade’a, temple and oracle of.
LEGARÉ (le-gre’), HUGH S.—Character of a Greek democracy.
The eloquence of Æschines. The eloquence of
Demosthenes.
Lem’nian (relating to Vulcan).
Lem’nos, island of.
Leon’idas, a Spartan king. Bravery and death of, at
Thermopylæ; the tomb of.
Leotych’i-des.
Lepan’to.
Lernæ’an Lake.
Les’bos, island of.
Le’the.
Leu’cas, or Leucadia.
Leu’ce, in the Euxine Sea.
Leuc’tra, in Bœotia. Battle of.
LIDDELL, HENRY G., D.D.—Legends of the Greeks.
Literature and the Arts. In the Ionian colonies; the poems
of Homer. 1. Progress of, before the Persian wars; poems
of Hesiod; lyric poetry; philosophy; early architecture; early
sculpture. 2. Progress of, from the Persian to close of
Peloponnesian wars; lyric poetry; the Drama-tragedy; old comedy;
early history; philosophy; sculpture and painting; architecture.
3. Progress of, after Peloponnesian wars; the drama;
oratory; philosophy; history; architecture and sculpture;
painting.
Livy, the Roman historian.
Lo’cris, and Locrians.
LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL.—A Pythagorean fantasy.
LÜB’KE, WILHELM.—Art at Athene. Phidias and his work. The
Dying Gladiator.
LU’CAN.—The Delphic oracle. Alexander’s career and
character.
LUCRE’TIUS (she-us).—The plague at Athens. Epicurus.
Lyce’um, the, at Athens.
Lycur’gus, the Spartan law-giver; legislation of.
Lyric Poetry. Before the Persian wars; from Persian to
close of Peloponnesian wars.
Lysan’der, a Spartan general. Acts of.
Ly’si-as (she-as), an Athenian orator.
Lysic’rates, monument to.
Lysim’achus, Alexander’s general.
Lysip’pus, of Sicyon. Works of.
Maca’ria, plain of.
MACAULAY, LORD.—Herodotus. Literature of Athens, and her
immortal influence.
Maç’edon, or Maçedo’nia. Invasion of,
by the Persians; by Xerxes; Athenian colonies in; supremacy of;
sketch of; interference of, in affairs of Greece; war of, with
Greece; with Persia; revolt of Sparta against; invasion of, by
Celts, and war with Pyrrhus; conquest of, by Rome.
Macis’tus, Mount, in Euboea, near Eretria.
Mæ-o’tis, same as Sea of Azof.
MAHAFFY, J. P.—The society of Olympus. Political life of the
Greeks. Domestic life in the Heroic Age. Hesiod’s description of
the Styx. Archilochus. Stesich’orus. Barbarities in the
Peloponnesian wars. Simonides. Æschylus. The “Alcestis” of
Euripides. Thucydides. The Sophists. Socrates. Late Greek
tragedy. Aristotle.
Magne’sia (she-a).
Mah’moud, the Sultan.
Mantine’a, in Arcadia.
Mar’athon, the plains of; battle of, and legends connected
with.
Mardo’nius, Persian general. First invasion of Greece; his
second Invasion and defeat at Marathon; defeated at Platæa,
and is slain.
Mars.
Mavrocordä’to, Alexander.
Mede’a.
Medea, the.
Meg’ara.
Me’lian nymphs. They watched over gardens and flocks of
sheep.
Me’los, island of.
Melpom’e-ne, inventress of tragedy.
Memno’nian Palace. So called because said to have been
founded by the father of Memnon.
Memorabil’ia, the.
MENAN’DER, the comic poet. Life and works of. Fragment from.
Men-e-la’us.
Men’tor, a friend of Ulysses.
Mercury, or Her’mes.
Messa’na, in Sicily.
Messa’pion, Mount, in Bœotia.
Messe’nia, and Messe’nians, wars of, with
Sparta.
Messenian Gulf.
Messenian wars, the.
Metamorphoses, the.
Mi’con, a painter.
Mile’tus, in Ionia.
Milti’a-des, the Athenian general, etc. Commands at
Marathon; disgrace and death of; lesson of.
MILTON, JOHN.—Cocytus and Acheron. Heroic times foretold. Xerxes
crosses the Hellespont. Reference to Alcestis. Socrates.
Oratory.
Mi’mas, a mountain-range of Ionia.
Minerva, temple of; statue of, at Athens.
Mi’nos, Cretan law-giver.
Minot’ti. Story of.
Missolon’ghi. The sortie at.
MITCHELL, THOMAS.—The Old Comedy. Style of Plato. Xenophon.
MITFORD, WILLIAM.—Æschylus’s account of Salamis. Character
of Pericles.
Mityle’ne.
Mnemos’y-ne, mother of the Nine Muses.
Mnes’icles, a sculptor.
Mnes’theus.—A great-grandson of Erechtheus, who deprived
Theseus of the throne of Athens, and led the Athenians in the
Trojan war.
Molda’via.
Monembasï’a. On the south-east coast of Laconia.
More’a.
Morosi’ni, a Venetian admiral.
Mum’mius, a Roman consul.
MURE, WILLIAM.—The “Works and Days” of Hesiod. Alcman.
Muses, the Nine.
Mye’a-le. Defeat of Persians at.
Myce’næ.
My’ron, a painter.
Myr’tis, a poetess.
Mys’ia (she-a).
Mythology, Grecian.
Na-i’a-des, or Nai’ads, the.
Nap’oli di Roma’nia.
Naupac’tus.
Nau’pli-a.
Navarï’no; battle of.
Nax’os, in Sicily.
Ne-ap’olis, in Italy.
Ne’mea, city of.
Ne’mean games.
Ne’mean lion.
Nem’esis, a female avenging deity.
Neptune, or Posei’don; temple of.
Ner-e’i-des, or Ner’e-ids.
Nestor, a Greek hero and sage.
Niçi-as (she-as), the Peace of.
Niçi-as, the Athenian general.
Niçi-as, a painter.
Ni’o-be, and her children.
Oaths, of the gods, etc.
O-ce-an’i-des, the.—Ocean-nymphs and sisters of the
rivers; supposed personifications of the various qualities and
appearances of water.
O-ce’anus, god of the ocean.
O-de’um, the.
Ody’ssey, the.
OEd’ipus Tyran’nus, the.
OE’ta, Mount.
Olym’pia, in E’lis; statue of Jupiter at.
Olym’piad.
Olym’pian Jove. Temple of; statue of.
Olym’pus, Mount; society of.
Olyn’thus, in Macedonia.
Oratory.
O’re-ads, the.
Ores’tes, son of Agamemnon.
Or’pheus (pheus), the musician.
Orthag’oras of Sicyon.
Ortyg’ia, in Sicily.
Os’sa, Mount.
Otho, King of Greece; revolution against and deposition
of.
O’thrys Mountains.
OV’ID.—Apollo. The Creation. Deluge of Deucalion. The Descent of
Orpheus. Apollo’s Conflict with Python.
Pæs’tum. Ruins of temples at.
Pagasæ, Gulf of.
Painting.
Palame’des, a Greek hero.
Pal’las (same as Minerva).
Pami’sus, the river.
Pam’philus, a painter.
Pan; legend of.—The god of shepherds, in form both man
and beast, having a horned head and the thighs, legs, and feet of
a goat.
Pan’darus, a Trojan hero.
Pando’ra, legend of.
Paradise Lost, the.
Par’çæ, or Fates.
Paris, of Troy. Abducts Helen; combat of, with Menelaus;
kills Achilles.
Parmen’ides.
Parnas’sus, Mount.
Par’nes, mountains of.
Par’non, mountains of.
Pa’ros, an island of the Cyclades group.
Parrha’sius (she-us). Anecdotes of.
Par’thenon, the; glories of; destruction of.
Passä’rowitz, in Servia. The peace of. Concluded
between Austria and Venice on the one side, and Turkey on the
other.
Pa’træ.
Patro’cius, a Greek hero.
Pausa’nias, a Spartan general. At Platæa; treason,
punishment, and death of.
Pax’os, island of.
Pegasus, the winged horse.
Pelas’gians, the.
Pe’leus.
Pe’li-as.
Pe’li-on, Mount.
Pelle’ne, or Cassandra, in Achaia.
Pelop’idas, the Theban.
Peloponne’sus, the.
Peloponnesian wars, the; the first war; the second
war.
Pe’lops.
Penel’o-pe, wife of Odysseus.
Pene’us, the river.
Pentel’icus, or Mende’li, Mount.
Pen’theus, King of Thebes.
Perdic’cas, Alexander’s general.
Perian’der, despot of Corinth; one of the Seven Sages.
Per’icles, the Athenian general, etc. Accedes to power in
place of Cimon; constitutional changes made by, at Athens;
measures of, for war with Sparta; defeat of, at Tanagra; recalls
Cimon; progress under his rule; attacks upon, at Athens; declares
war against Sparta; oration of; death and character of.
Persep’olis. Alexander’s feast at.
Per’seus (or se’us).
Per’seus, King of Macedon.
Persians, the.
Persian wars, the. Account of.
Phoe’do, the.
Phale’rum, bay of.
Phe’ræ, in Thessaly.
Phid’ias, the sculptor; the work and masterpieces of.
PHILE’MON, the comic poet. Life and works or.
Philip of Macedon; interference of, in Grecian affairs;
invades Thessaly; attacks of Demosthenes against; captures
Olynthus; reveals his designs against Greece, and defeats Athens
and Thebes at Chæronea; is invested with supreme command,
and declares war against Persia; death of.
Philip V. of Macedon; defeat of, at Apollonia and
Cynocephalæ.
Philippics, the.
Phil’ocles, bravery of.
Philopoe’men.
Philosophy. Before the Persian wars; to close of
Peloponnesian wars; subsequent to Peloponnesian wars.
Phleg’ethon, or Pyr-iphleg’ethon.
Pho’cion (she-on), Athenian statesman. Opposes the policy
of Demosthenes.
Pho’cis and Phocians, sacrilege of, and war
with.
Phoe’bus, the sun-god (Apollo).
Phoe’nix, warrior and sage.
PHRYN’ICHUS. Tribute to Sophocles.
Phy’le. A fortress in a pass of Mount Parnes, north-west
from Athens. This was the point seized by Thrasybulus in the
revolt against the Thirty Tyrants.
Pi-e’ri-an fount.
Pi-er’i-des, name given to the Muses.
Pi’e-rus, or Pl-e’ri-a, Mount.
Pi’e-rus, King of Emathia.
PIN’DAR. Life and writings of. Extracts from: The Greek Elysium;
Christening of the Argo; Spartan music and poetry; Tribute to
Theron; Athenians at Artemisium; Threnos; Founding of Ætna;
Hiero’s victory at Cumæ; Admonitions to Hiero.
Pin’dus, mountains of.
Piræ’us, the.
Pi’sa and Pisa’tans.
Pisis’tratus and the Pisistrat’idæ;
usurpation of Pisistratus; death and character of; family of,
driven from Athens.
Pit’tacus, one of the Seven Sages.
Plague, the, at Athens.
Platæ’a and the Platæ’ans; battle of
Platæa; results of; attack on, by Thebans.
PLATO, the philosopher. Life and works of.
PLATO, the comic poet.—Tomb of Themistocles; Aristophanes.
PLINY.—Story of Parrhasius and Zeuxis.
PLUMPTRE, E. H., D.D.—Personal temperament of
Æschylus.
PLUTARCH.—Songs of the Spartans; Solon’s efforts to recover
Salamis; Incident of Aristides’s banishment; Artemisium; Lysander
and Phil’ocles.
Pluto.
Pnyx, the.
Polyb’ius. Life and works of.
Pol’ybus, King of Corinth.
Polycle’tus, a sculptor.
Polyc’ra-tes, despot of Samoa.
Polydec’tes, a Spartan king.
Polydec’tes, King of Seri’phus.
Polydo’rus, a Rhodian sculptor.
Polygno’tus, of Thasos.
POLYZO’IS.—war song.
POPE, ALEXANDER.—The Pierian Spring; Tribute to Homer;
Description of Pindar; Aristotle.
Posei’don, (See Neptune.)
Potidæ’a, revolt of.
Praxit’eles, an Athenian sculptor.
Priam, King of Troy.
Prie’ne, in Carla.
PRIOR, MATTHEW.—Description of Pindar.
Prod’icus, the Sophist.
Prome’theus. Legend of; Hesiod’s tale of.
Prome’theus Bound, the.
Propon’tic Sea.
Propylæ’a, at Athens.
Pros’erpine, daughter of Ceres.
Protag’oras, the Sophist.
Pro’teus (or te-us), a sea-deity.
Protog’enes, a Rhodian painter.
Ptol’emy Cerau’nus, of Macedon.
Ptol’emy Philadelphus, King of Egypt.
Ptol’emy So’ter, Alexander’s general.
Pyd’na, in Macedonia. Battle of.
Py’lus, in Messenia.
Pyr’rha, wife of Deucalion.
Pyr’rhus, a son of Achilles.
Pyr’rhus, King of Epirus; war of, with Macedon; with
Sparta; death of.
Pythag’oras, the philosopher; doctrines of, etc..
Pythag’oras, a painter.
Pyth’ia, priestess of Apollo.
Pythian games.
Py’thon; Apollo’s conflict with.
Py’thon, an orator of Macedon.
Quintil’ian, the historian.
Rhadaman’thus, son of Jupiter and Europa.
Rhapsodists, the.
Rhe’a, daughter of Coelus and Terra (Heaven and
Earth).
Rhe’gium, in Magna Groecia.
RHI’GAS, CONSTANTINE. War song.
Rhodes, island of; sculptures of.
Rhoe’cus, a sculptor.
Roger, King of Sicily.
Rome and the Romans; called into Sicily, and become
masters of the island; defeat of, at Cannæ, and victory of,
at Cynocephalæ; become masters of Greece and Macedon; their
administration of Greece.
RUSKIN, JOHN.—The “Clouds” of Aristophanes.
Sacred War, the.
Sages, the Seven.
Sal’amis, island of; naval battle at.
Saler’no, bay of, in Italy.
Saloni’ca, once Thessaloni’ca.
Sa’mos, island of.
SAP’PHO (saf’fo), a poetess. Lire, writing, and characterization
of.
Sar’dis, in Asia Minor.
Saron’ic Gulf (Thermaic).
Sarpe’don, a Trojan hero.
Sat’urn. (See Chro’nos.)
Sa’tyrs, the.
Scæ’an Gates, the, of Troy.
Scaman’der, river in Asia Minor.
Scaptes’y-le, in Thrace.
SCHILLER.—The building of Thebes; the poet’s lament; wailing of
the Trojan women; Damon and Pythias—The Hostage; a visit to
Archimedes.
SCHLEGEL, A. W., von.—Character of the Agamemnon.
Sçil’lus, In E’lis.
Sçl’o, island of.—Massacre at.
Sco’pas, the sculptor.
Sculpture.—Before the Persian wars; from Persian to close
of Peloponnesian wars; subsequent to Peloponnesian wars.
Sçyl’lis, a sculptor.
Sçy’ros, Island of.
Seleu’cus, Alexander’s general; the Seleucidæ.
Seli’nus.—Ruins of temples at.
Seneca, Roman philosopher.
Seri’phus, island of.
Seven Chiefs against Thebes, the.
SEWELL, WILLIAM.—Anecdote of Chrys’ostom.
SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE.—The sufferings of Prometheus; an image of
Athens; a prophetic vision of the Greek Revolution.
Shield of Hercules, the.
Sicilian Expedition, the.
Sicily, Island of.—Colonies in; invasion of, by
Carthaginians; by the Athenians; affairs in the colonies under
Hiero, Dionysius, etc.; the Roman conquer.
Si’çy-on and Siçy-o’nians
(sish’i-on); sculpture of; painting of.
Slle’nus, a demi-god. The nurse, preceptor, and attendant
of Bacchus, to whom Socrates was wont to compare himself.
SIM’MIAS.—Tribute to Sophocles.
Sim’o-is, a river of Troas.
Simon’ides of Amorgos.
SIMON’IDES OF CEOS.—Life and writings of. Extracts from:
Epitaphs on the fallen at Thermopylæ; battle of Eurym’edon;
Lamentation of Dan’ae.
Slavonians, the.—Influences of.
SMITH, WILLIAM, LL.D.—Socrates. Aristotle.
SOCRATES; attack upon, by Aristophanes. Life and works of.
Extracts from: His Defence. Views of a Future State.
Solon, the Athenian law-giver.—Life and legislation of;
capture of Salamis by; his integrity; protests against acts of
Pisistratus; voluntary exile and death of; classed as one of the
Seven Sages. Extracts from: Ridicule to which his integrity
exposed him. Estimate of his own character and services.
Sophists, the.
SOPH’OCLES. Life and works of. Extracts from: The taking of
an
oath. Chariot-race of Orestes. The Œdipus Tyrannus.
SOUTHEY, ROBERT.—The battle of Platoon.
Sparta and the Spartans; Sparta is assigned to sons of
Aristodemus; early history of; education and patriotism of; their
poetry and music; conquests by; colonize Tarentum; reject the
demands of Darius, but refuse to help Athens at Marathon; efforts
of, to unite states against Persia; in battle of
Thermopylæ; monuments and epitaphs to; in battle of
Salamis; or Platæa; on coasts of Asia Minor; loses command
in war against Persia; earthquake at Sparta, and revolt of the
Helots; accepts aid from Athens; alliance of, with Athens,
renounced, and war begun; defeats Athens at Tanagra, and is
defeated; truce of, with Athens; begins Peloponnesian war;
concludes the peace of Nicias; war of, with Argives, and victory
at Mantinea; aids Syracuse against Athens; successes of, against
Athens; occupies Athens, and withdraws from Attica; supremacy of
Sparta; her defeat and humiliation by Thebes; engages in the
Sacred War; revolt of, against Macedon; war with Pyrrhus; with
Antigonus.
Spor’a-des, the (islands).
Sta-gi’ra, in Macedonia.
Stati’ra, daughter of Darius,
STEPHENS, JOHN L—A visit to Missolonghi.
Stesich’orus, the poet.
STORY, WILLIAM W.—Chersiphron, and the Temple of Diana.
Stroph’a-des, the (islands).
Stry’mon, the river.
Styx. A celebrated torrent in Arcadia—now called “Black
water” from the dark color of the rocks over which it flows—from
which the fabulous river of the same name probably
originated.
Su’da, in Achaia.
Su’sa, capital of Persia.
Susa’rion, a comic poet.
Syb’aris, in Italy; destroyed by Crotona.
Sylla, a Roman general.
SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON.—The “Theogony” of Hesiod; Archilochus;
the ladies of Lesbos; Sappho and her poems; the era of Athenian
greatness; Pindar; Euripides; Menander.
Syracuse, in Sicily.—Founded by Corinthians; progress of,
under Gilon, and war with Carthage; destroys the Athenian
expedition; affairs of, under Hiero and succeeding rulers.
Syrts, two gulfs in Africa.
TALFOURD, THOMAS NOON.—Unity of the Iliad; Sophocles;
the glory of Athens.
Tan’agora, in Bœotia, battle of.
Tan’talus, the story of.
Taren’turn, in Italy.
Tar’tarus, the place of punishment.
Ta-yg’etus, mountain-range of.
TAYLOR, BAYARD.—Legend of Hylas.
Te’gea, in Arcadia.
Teg’y-ra, battle at.
Tem’enus, of the Heraclidæ.
Tem’pe, Vale of.
Ten’edos, island of.
TENNENT, EMERSON.—Turkish oppression in Greece.
Ten Thousand Greeks, retreat of.
Te’os, in Ionia.
TERPAN’DER, the poet; Spartan valor and music.
Te’thys, wife of Ocean.
Tha’is, an Athenian beauty.
Tha’les, one of the Seven Sages; philosophy of.
Theag’enes, despot of Megara.
The’be, a city of Mysia.
Thebes, city of; Thebans at Thermopylæ; attack of
Thebans on Platæa; sympathy of, with Athens; seizure of, by
the Spartans; rise and fall of Thebes; defeat of, at
Charonea.
The’mis, goddess of justice, or law.
Themis’to-cles, Athenian general and statesman; at
Marathon; rise of, in Athenian affairs; character and acts of; at
Artemisium, and at Salamis; banishment, disgrace, and death of;
monuments and tributes to.
THEOC’RITUS.—Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Theodo’rus, the sculptor.
THEOG’NIS, poet of Megara.—The Revolutions in Megara.
Theog’ony, the.
The’ra, island of.
Therma’ic Gulf (Saronic).
Thermop’ylæ, pass of; battle at.
The’ron, ruler of Agrigentum.
Thersi’tes; a Greek warrior.
The’seus (or se-us), first king of Athens; temple to, at
Athens; legends of; temple of.
Thes’piæ and the Thespians.
Thes’pis.
Thes’salus, son of Pisistratus.
Thes’saly and the Thessa’lians.
The’tis, a sea-deity; “Thetis’ son” (Achilles).
THIRLWALL, CONNOP, D.D.—The Trojan war. Want of political union
among the Greeks. Character of an ochlocracy. Effects of the fall
of oligarchy. Writings of Theognis. The rule of Pisistratus.
Reforms of Clisthenes. The “Theogony” of Hesiod. Progress of
Sculpture. Themistocles. Pericles. Pindar. The Greeks in the
Sacred War. Last struggles of Greece.
THOMSON, JAMES.—The Apollo-Belvedere. Sparta. Tribute to Solon.
Teachings or Pythagoras. Architecture. Aristides. Cimon.
Socrates. Architecture. Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Pelopidas
and Epaminondas. The Dying Gladiator. The La-oc’o-on. The
painting by Protog’enes at Rhodes.
Thrace.
Thrasybu’lus, an Athenian patriot.
Thrasybulus, despot of Syracuse.
THUCYD’IDES, the historian. Life and Works of. Extracts from:
Speech of Pericles for war; Funeral Oration of Pericles; Athenian
defeat at Syracuse.
Thu’rii, in Italy.
Tigra’nes.
Timo’leon, a Corinthian.—Rebuilds Syracuse, and restores
her prosperity.
Timo’theus.
Tire’sias (shi-as), priest and prophet. (See Œdipus
Tyrannus.)
Tir’yns, in Argolis.
Tissapher’nes, Persian satrap.
Ti’tans, the.
Tit’y-us, punishment of.
Tragedy.—At Athens; decline of.
Tra’jan, the Roman emperor.
Tripolit’za, modern capital of Arcadia.
Tri’ton. A sea-deity, half fish in form, the son and
trumpeter of Neptune. He blew through a shell to rouse or to
allay the sea.
Trojan War, the.—Account of; consequences of.
Troy. (See Ilium.)
TUCKERMAN.—American sympathy with Greece. Character of Otho. Of
King George.
Turks, the; invade Greece; contests of, with the
Venetians; Siege and capture of Corinth by; final conquest of
Greece; Greek revolution against; compelled to evacuate
Greece.
Tydl’des, a patronymic of Diomed.
TYLER, PROF. W. S.—The divine mission of Socrates.
TYMNÆ’US.—Spartan patriotic virtue.
Tyn’darus, King of Sparta.
Tyrant, or despot.—Definition of.
Tyrants, the Thirty. The Ten Tyrants.
Tyre, city of.
TYRÆ’US.—Spartan war-song.
Ulys’ses, subject of the Odyssey; goes to
Troy; rebukes Thersites; advises construction of the wooden
horse; wanderings of; character of; raft of, described.
Ulys’ses, a Greek general.
U’ranus, or Heaven.
Venetians, the; contests of, with the Turks;
capture the Peloponnesus and Athens; evacuate Athens; abandon
Greece.
Ve’nus, or Aphrodi’te, goddess of love; appears to
Helen; statue of; painting of, rising from the sea.
Vesta.
VIRGIL.—Landing of Æneas. The taking of an oath. The fate
of Troy. The Cumæan Cave. The Eleusinian Mysteries.
Vo’lo, gulf of.
Vulcan, god of fire.
WARBURTON, ELIOT B. G.—The sortie at Missolonghi.
Wasps, the.
WEBSTER, DANIEL.—Appeal of, for sympathy with the Greeks.
WEYMAN, C. S.—Changes in statuary.
WILLIS, N. P.—Parrhasius and his captive.
WINTHROP, ROBERT C.—Visit of Cicero to tomb of Archimedes.
WOOLNER, THOMAS.—Venus risen from the sea.
WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM.—Fancies of the Greek mind. The joy of the
Greeks at the Isthmian games.
Works and Days, the.
Xan’thus, or the river Scamander.
Xenoph’anes, the philosopher.
Xen’ophon, the historian.—Leads the retreat of the Ten
Thousand. Life and works of.
Xerxes, King of Persia; prepares to invade Greece, and
reviews his troops at Abydos; stories of; bridges and crosses the
Hellespont; defeats the Spartans at Thermopylæ: is defeated
at Salamis: his flight; death of.
Xu’thus, son of Helen.
YOUNG, EDWARD.—The persuasive Nestor.
Ypsilan’ti, Alexander.—The first to proclaim the liberty
of Greece.
Zacyn’thus, Island of.
Ze’no, a philosopher of Elea.
Ze’no, the Stoic philosopher, of Citium.—Life and works
of.
Zeux’is, the painter.—Anecdote of.
THE END.
