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Title: Mosaics of Grecian History
Author: Marcius Willson
Robert Pierpont Willson
Posting Date: October 12, 2014 [EBook #6841]
Release Date: November, 2004
First Posted: January 31, 2003
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOSAICS OF GRECIAN HISTORY ***
Produced by Robert J. Hall
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 selections are taken are in
CAPITOLS.]
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. Boeo'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.
Lemnos.--Euboe'a.--Cyc'la-des.--De'los.--Spor'a-des.--
Crete.--Rhodes.--Sal'amis.--Ægi'na.--Cyth'-era.--
"Venus 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.
I. 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.
1. Story of Tan'talus.--BLACKIE
2. The Descent of Or'pheus.--OVID: HOMER.
3. The Elys'ium.--HOMER: PINDAR.
Hindu and Greek Skepticism.--(Cornhill Magazine).
II. The Earnest Inhabitants of Greece.
The Founding of Athens.--BLACKIE.
III. 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.
1. The Greek Armament.--EURIP'IDES.
2. The name Helen.--ÆSCHYLUS.
3. Ulysses and Thersi'tes.--HOMER. (POPE).
4. Combat of Menela'us and Paris.--HOMER. (POPE).
5. Parting of Hector and Androm'a-che.--HOMER. (POPE).
6. Hector's Exploits and Death of Patro'clus.--HOMER.
(POPE).
7. The Shield of Achilles.--HOMER. (SOTHEBY).
8. Address of Achilles to his Horses.--HOMER. (POPE).
9. The Death of Hector.--HOMER. (BRYANT).
10. Priam Begging for Hector's Body.--HOMER. (COWPER).
11. Lamentations of Andromache and Helen.--HOMER. (POPE).
The Fate of Troy.--VIRGIL: SCHILLER.
Beacon Fires from Troy to Argos.--ÆSCHYLUS.
Remarks on the Trojan War.--THIRLWALL: GROTE.
Fate of the Actors in the Conflict.--ENNIUS: LANDOR: LANG.
IV. 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.
V. The Conquest of Peloponnesus, and Colonies in Asia Minor.
Return of the Heracli'dæ.--LUCAN.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY GREEK LITERATURE, AND GREEK COMMUNITY OF INTERESTS.
Ionian Language and Culture.--FELTON.
I. Homer and his Poems.--ANTIP'ATER: FELTON: TALFOURD: POPE:
COLERIDGE.
II. Some Causes of Greek Unity.
The Grecian Festivals.
1. Chariot Race and Death of Ores'tes.--SOPHOCLES.
2. Apollo's Conflict with the Python.--OVID.
3. The Apollo Belvedere.--THOMSON.
The National Councils.
CHAPTER IV.
SPARTA, AND THE LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS.
Description of Sparta.--THOMSON.
I. The Constitution of Lycurgus.
Spartan Patriotic Virtue.--TYMNOE'US.
II. Spartan Poetry and Music.
Spartan March.--CAMPBELL.: HEMANS.
Songs of the Spartans.--PLUTARCH: TERPAN'DER: PINDAR: ION.
III. Sparta's Conquests.
War-song.--TYRTOE'US.
CHAPTER V.
FORMS OF GOVERNMENT, AND CHANGES IN GRECIAN POLITICS.
Introductory.--THIRLWALL: LEG'ARÉ.
I. Changes from Aristocracies to Oligarchies.--HEEREN.
II. Changes from Oligarchies to Despotisms.--THIRLWALL: HEEREN:
BULWER: TYRTOE'US.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS.
I. The Legislation of Dra'co.
II. The Legislation of So'lon.--PLUTARCH: A'KENSIDE: SOLON:
THOMSON: SOLON.
III. 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.
IV. Birth of Democracy.--THIRLWALL.
CHAPTER VII.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREEK COLONIES.
The Cave of the Cumæ'an Sibyl.--VIRGIL: GROTE.
The'ron of Agrigen'tum.--PINDAR.
Increase among the Sicilian Greeks.--GROTE.
CHAPTER VIII.
PROGRESS OF LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.
I. The Poems of Hesiod.--"Winter."--FELTON: MURE: THIRLWALL:
MAHAFFY.
II. 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.
Alcæus.--"Spoils of War."--AKENSIDE.
Sappho.--"Defence of."--SYMONDS: ANTIP'ATER.
Anac'reon.--"The Grasshopper."--AKENSIDE.
III. 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.
IV. 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.
V. Sculpture.
Glaucus, Rhoe'cus, Theodo'rus, Dipæ'nus, Scyllis.
Cause of the Progress of Sculpture.--THIRLWALL.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PERSIAN WARS.
I. The Ionic Revolt.
II. 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.
III. The Second Persian Invasion.
Xerxes at Aby'dos.--HEROD'OTUS.
Bridging of the Hellespont.--JUVENAL: MILTON.
The Battle of Thermop'ylæ.
1. Invincibility of the Spartans.--HAYGARTH.
2. Description of the Contest.--HAYGARTH.
3. Epitaphs on those who fell.--SIMON'IDES.
4. The Tomb of Leon'idas.--ANON.
5. Eulogy on the Fallen.--BYRON
Naval Conflict at Artemis'ium.--PLUTARCH: PINDAR.
The Abandonment of Athens.
The Battle of Salamis.
1. Xerxes Views the Conflict.--BYRON.
2. Flight of Xerxes.--JUVENAL: ALAMANNI.
3. Celebrated Description of the Battle.--MITFORD:
ÆSCHYLUS.
4. Another Account.--BLACKIE.
The Battle of Platæ'a.
1. Description of the Battle.--BULWER.
2. Importance of the Victory.--SOUTHEY: BULWER.
3. Victory at Myc'a-le.--BULWER.
4. "The Wasps."--ARISTOPHANES.
CHAPTER X.
THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.
I. The Disgrace and Death of Themistocles.
Tributes to his Memory.--PLATO: GEMINUS: THIRLWALL.
II. 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.
III. The Accession of Pericles to Power.
Changes in the Athenian Constitution.--BULWER.
Tribute to Pericles.--CROLY.
Picture of Athens in Peace.--HAYGARTH.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS, AND THE FALL OF ATHENS.
Speech of Pericles for War.--THUCYD'IDES.
I. 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.
II. The Athenian Demagogues.
Cleon, the Demagogue.--GILLIES: ARISTOPH'ANES.
The Peace of Ni'cias.
III. The Sicilian Expedition.
Treatment of the Athenian Prisoners.--BYRON.
IV. The Second Peloponnesian War.
Humiliation of Athens.
Barbarities of the Contest.--MAHAFFY.
CHAPTER XII.
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.
I. Lyric Poetry.
Simonides.--"Lamentation of Dan'a-ë."--MAHAFFY.
Pindar.--"Threnos."--THIRLWALL: PRIOR: SYMONDS: GRAY:
POPE: HORACE.
II. The Drama.--BULWER.
1. 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.
2. Comedy.
Characterization of.
Aristophanes.--Extracts from "The Cloud." "Choral Song from
The Birds."--PLATO: GROTE: SEWELL: MILTON: RUSKIN.
III. History.
Hecatæ'ns.--MAHAFFY: NIEBUHR.
Herodotus.--"Introduction to History."--LAWRENCE.
Herodotus and his Writings.--MACAULAY.
Thucyd'i-des.--MAHAFFY.
Thucydides and Herodotus.--BROWNE.
IV. 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.
I. Sculpture and Painting.
Phid'ias.--LÜBKE: GILLIES: LÜBKE.
Polygno'tus.--Apollodo'rus.--Zeux'is.--Parrha'sius.
--Timan'thes.
Parrhasius and his Captive.--SENECA: WILLIS.
II. Architecture.
Introductory.--THOMSON.
The Adornment of Athens.--BULWER.
I. The Acrop'olis and its Splendors.
The Parthenon.--HEMANS.
II. Other Architectural Monuments of Athens.
The Temple of The'seus.--HAYGARTH.
Athenian Enthusiasm for Art.--BULWER.
The Glory of Athens.--TALFOURD.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES.
I. The Expedition of Cyrus, and the Retreat of the Ten
Thousand.--THOMSON: CURTIUS.
II. The Supremacy of Sparta.
III. The Rise and Fall of Thebes.
Pelop'idas and Epaminon'das.--THOMSON: CURTIUS.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SICILIAN GREEKS.
The Founding of 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.
CHAPTER XV.
THE MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY.
I. The Sacred War.--THIRLWALL.
II. Sketch of Macedonia.
III. Interference of Philip of Macedon.
Demosthenes.--"The First Philippic."--GROTE.
Pho'cion.--His Influence at Athens.--GROTE.
IV. War with Macedon.
V. Accession of Alexander the Great.
VI. Alexander Invades Asia.
VII. The Battle of Arbe'la.--Flight and Death of Dari'us.--
GROTE: ÆS'CHINES.
Alexander's Feast at Persep'olis.--DRYDEN.
VI. The Death of Alexander.
His Career and his Character.--LU'CAN.
Reflections on his Life, etc.--JUVENAL: BYRON.
CHAPTER XVI.
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER TO THE CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS.
I. A Retrospective Glance at Greece.
Oration of Æschines against Ctes'iphon.
Oration of Demosthenes on the Crown.
II. The Wars that followed Alexander's Death.
Character of Ptolemy Philadelphus--THEOC'RITUS.
III. The Celtic Invasion, and the War with Pyrrhus.
Queen Archidami'a.--ANON.
IV. The Achæ'an League.--Philip V. of Macedon.
Epigrams on Philip and the Macedonians.--Alcoe'us.
V. Greece Conquered by Rome.
"The Liberty of Greece."--WORDSWORTH.
Desolation of Corinth.--ANTIPATER.
Last Struggles of Greece.--THIRLWALL: HORACE.
CHAPTER XVII.
LITERATURE AND ART AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
LITERATURE.
I. The Drama.--MAHAFFY.
Phile'mon.--"Faith in God."
Menander.--"Human Existence."--SYMONDS: LAWRENCE.
II. Oratory.--MILTON: CICERO.
Æs'chines and Demosthenes.--LEGARÉ: BROUGHAM: HUME.
III. Philosophy.
Plato.--HAYGARTH: BROUGHAM: KENDRICK: MITCHELL.
Aristotle.--POPE: BROWNE: LAWRENCE: SMITH: MAHAFFY.
Academe.--ARNOLD.
Epicu'rus and Ze'no.--LUCRETIUS.
IV. History.
Xen'ophon.--MITCHELL.
Polyb'ius.
ART.
I. Architecture and Sculpture.
Changes in Statuary.--WEYMAN.
The Dying Gladiator.--LÜBKE: THOMSON.
The La-oc'o-on.--THOMSON: HOLLAND.
II. 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.
CHAPTER XVIII.
GREECE SUBSEQUENT TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST.
I. Greece under the Romans.
The Revolt.--FINLAY.
Christianity in Greece.--FELTON.
II. Changes down to the Fourteenth Century.
Courts of the Crusading Chieftains.--EDINBURGH REVIEW.
The Duchy of Athens.--FELTON.
The Turkish Invasion.--HEMANS.
III. Contests between the Turks and Venetians.
Past and Present of the Acropolis of Athens.
The Siege and Fall of Corinth.--BYRON.
IV. 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.
V. 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.
VI. 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.
INDEX
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 Boeo'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. Boeo'tia.--Boeotia, 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.
Boeotia 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 Boeotia 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 spore.] 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
Boeo'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
Boeo'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
Boeotian 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 Boeotia, 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 Boeotian
--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, Boeotian, 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 Boeotia, 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 Boeotia. 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 Boeotia; 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
Boeotia 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 Boeotian 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 Boeotia
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."
* * * * *
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 Boeotian, 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 Boeotia. 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, [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 OEdipus." 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:
OEdipus 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 OEdipus, and
reared it as her own.
Thirty years later, OEdipus, 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?" OEdipus, 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 OEdipus 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,"
OEdipus 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
OEdipus, 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!
OEdipus 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, OEdipus 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 OEdipus, 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 OEdipus 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 OEdipus 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 OEdipus, 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.
OEdipus. 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.
OEdipus. 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 OEdipus, 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 OEdipus,
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 Boeotia.
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 Boeotia. 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 Boeotia.
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.
Boeo'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 Boeotia; 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 Boeotian 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 Boeotia. 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.
Diopl'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 Boeotia.
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'nla, 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 Boeotia. 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'llan 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 Boeotia.
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'la (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.
Qdy'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 OEdipus 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 Boeotia, 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 OEdipus 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.
[Illustration: (Map of) Ancient Greece with the Coast of Asia Minor.]
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