mmmmmm' J It • > O : : ■■ ^ ; * H^iiU l*.r J ' 1 - ', j K ; Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrdsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/ancientgreeceskeOOcottrich GREAT NATIONS ANCIENT GREECE GREAT NATIONS In active prej>aration ROME By H. L. HaveU, B.A. FRANCE By Professor W. H. Hudson GERMANY By T. W. RoUeston IRELAND By Eleanor HuU and Professor Stanley Lane- Poole SCOTLAND By R. L. Mackie, M.A, MEDIEVAL ITALY By H. B. Cotterill, M.A. \ I White Attic Lekythus 2. Red-figured Lekythus ANCIENT GREECE A SKETCH OF ITS ART LITERATURE & PHILO SOPHY VIEWED IN CONNEXION WITH ITS EXTERNAL HISTORY FROM EARLIEST TIMES TO THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT BY H. B. COTTERILL M.A. Translator of the " Odyssey " Editor of " Selections from the Inferno" Goethe's "Iphigenie" Milton's "Areopagitica" Virgil's " Aeneid " I and VI etc. NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS "^W «>' -«? D^ ni c*" PRINTED AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS LONDON ENGLAND PREFACE WHEN the attempt is made in a book ot this size to give a continuous account of the external history of Greece, and into this framework to fit a number of sketches descriptive of its art, Hterature, and philosophy, as well as other matters, it is of course necessary to omit many details and to rely on whatever skill one may happen to possess in selection and combination. In regard to antiquities and literature, I have drawn attention chiefly to what is extant and of general interest, and have trusted to description, illustration, and quotation rather than to dis- quisition and criticism. The Sections appended to each chapter treat subjects that are closely connected with the period covered by the chapter. Any of these Sections can be omitted without seriously interrupting continuity. Temples, Dress, Coins, and Vases have been relegated to Notes at the end of the volume, seeing that they are not specially connected with any one period. The letters B.C. (but not a.d.) have been generally omitted, as unnecessary in a book on Ancient Greece. To name in full all the books that one has to use in such work is unnecessary, but, since space did not always allow of exact reference on occasions when I annexed a fact or a sentiment, it is right that I should here acknowledge my obligations to the following modern writers : Baikie, Berard, Bergk, Ber- noulli, Buchholz, Burrows, Bury, Busolt, Butcher, Archer Butler, Chamberlain (Grundlagen) , Christ, Dawkins, Deussen, Diehl, Donaldson, Dorpfeld, Dussaud, Sir A. J. Evans, Frazer (Pausanias), Furtwangler, E. Gardner, P. Gardner, Gomperz, Grote, Hall, Miss Harrison, Head, Hill, Hogarth, Holm, V PREFACE Hommel {Chronology), A. I/ang, W. I^eaf, I/)wy, Mahaffy, Meltzer, Mover, Mosso, A. S. Murray, G. Murray, F. A. Paley, Petrie, Sir H. Rawlinson, Canon Rawlinson, Ridge- way, Ritter and Preller, Schlegel, Schliemann, Schuchliardt, A. H. Smith, G. Smith, W. Smith, Tsountas, H. B. Walters, Wilamowitz, Wood (Ephesus), Zeller, Zimmermann. Also, in regard to the illustrations, my thanks are due to Mr. Hasluck, of the British School in Athens, and (especially in regard to vases) to Professor H. Thiersch, of Freiburg, as well as to many others whose names are mentioned in the I^ist. Some of the illustrations supplied by F. Bruckmann and Co. are from their fine series of Greek and Roman Portraits ; others are from Bernoulli's Griechische Ikonographie. The autotypes of coins in Plates I- VI are reproductions which I was permitted by the courtesy of the Director of the British Museum to make from Mr. Head's official Guide to the Coins of the Ancients. In quoting Herodotus I have, with the permission of Mr. John Murray, frequently made use of Canon Rawlinson's version, and in translating Thucydides I sometimes accepted the guidance of Dale. For the compilation of the index I am indebted to Mr. C. C. Wood. H. B. C, Freiburg im Breisgau, March 191 3 VI CONTENTS iAPTl R PAGE I. The Aegaean Civii^ization : The Achaean Supremacy i Sections : A. Language and Writing. B. The Old Religion. C. The ' Homeric Age ' and Homer. D. Chrono- logy of Aegaean and other Contemporary Civilizations. II. The Dark Age ' 74 Sections ; A. ' Dipylon ' Antiquities. B. Hesiod C. The Phoenicians and some other^Nations during the Dark Age. III. From the First OIvYmpiad to Peisistratus 113 Sections : A. Egypt and Cyrene. B. I,ydia : Ivist of Eastern Kings. C. The Games. D. The Poets. IV. The Age of Peisistratus and the Rise of Persia 172 Sections : A. Poets and Philosophers. B. Early Greek Sculpture and Architecture. V. The Persian Invasions 234 I Sections : A. The Greeks and Carthaginians in Sicily. B. Pindar. VI. The Rise of the Athenian Empire 283 Sections: A. Architecture and Sculpture. B. Aeschylus: Herodotus : Philosophers of the Period. V VII. The PE1.OPONNESIAN War 326 W Sections : A. Thucydides. B. Sophocles : Euripides : Aristophanes. C. Democritus : The Sophists : Socrates. D. Sculpture. vii CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII. The Spartan and the Theban Supremacy 387 Sections : A. Xenophon. B. Sicily and the Cartha- ginians. C. Plato. D. Sculpture, Architecture, and Painting till the Accession of Alexander. IX. The Rise of Macedonia : Phiup and Alexander 422 Sections : A, Isocrates : Aeschines : Demosthenes : I^ater Philosophers. B. Lysippus : Hellenistic Sculpture. Note A. Greek Tempi^es 449 Note B. Dress 458 Note C. Coins 462 Note D. Pottery and Vase-Painting 471 I^isT OF Important Dates 477 Dates of Foundation of the Kari,y Greek Coi^onies 479 IvisT OF THE Persian Kings 480 lyisT OF THE Chief Greek Writers, Phii^osophers. and scui^ptors 48 1 Index 483 viu LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS In the following list the names of those to whom the author is indebted for permission to use copyright photographs, &c., are given in italic below the title of the subject. MAPS PAGB Greece and the Aegaean Sea i Sicily and Magna Graecia 119 Athens and the Peiraeus 299 The Route of the Ten Thousand 390 COLOURED PLATES PLATE I. Two lyEKYTHi Frontispiece Photo Mansell & Co. The larger, a white Attic lekythus (funeral oil-vase) with polychrome painting of early, severe style {c. 460). The smaller, a red-figured lekythus of the earHer and still somewhat restrained ' beautiful style,' which afterwards became fanciful and fantastic ; date c. 450. In British Museum. II. lyATE-MYCENAEAN VASES (c. I200) 8 Photo Mansell &• Co. One has the polypus decoration ; the other is an example of the characteristic Mycenaean false-necked amphora (' Biigel-kanne '). In the latter vessel the neck, to which the handles are attached, has no aperture. The spout is set in the shoulder of the vessel, and in the picture it stands in front of the ' false neck ' and hides it. In British Museum. III. An Attic Hydria of the Middi^e Bi,ack-figured Period (c. 550) 218 Photo Mansell & Co. Found at Vulci. Maidens fetching water from a fountain. Similar vases are inscribed with the names of the fountains Kallikrene or KaUirrhoe. This vase has the names of some of the maidens with the adjective /caX?) (' beautiful ') appended, as frequently occurs in vase-paintings. On the lower part of the vase is depicted Heracles strangling the Nemean lion. In British Museum. iz LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATE PACK IV. A lyATK B1.ACK-FIGURED HyDRIA (c. 510) FROM Vui,ci 250 Photo Mans ell 6- Co. Harnessing chariot-horses. The driver in long white robe (c/. Fig. 74). Below, a boar- hunt. In British Museum. V. An APUI.IAN FuNERAi, Amphora with Voi^ute Handi.es 470 Photo Mansell 6- Co. Date c. 300. Scenes from the ' Sack of Troy ' {Iliou Persis) . Above, the death of Priam and of Hecuba; below, Ajax and Cassandra. In British Museum. COINS 462 463 464 465 466 467 VII. Portrait Coins 468 Plates I- VI consist of reproductions from the British Museum ' Guide to the Coins of the Ancients.' Plate VII is from photographs by F. Bruckmann. GENERAL ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. 1. Wai.1, of the Sixth City of Troy 6 From the Rev. James Baikie's ' Sea Kings of Crete ' {Messrs. A. &^ C. Black). Since this photo was taken the site has been further excavated. See, for instance. Dr. W. Leaf's new book on Troy. There can be very little doubt that these are the actual walls from a tower of which Andromache (if Homer's story is true) saw Hector being dragged round the city behind the chariot of Achilles (//. xxii. 460 sq.). 2. The lyiON Gate, Mycenae io Photo English Photographic Co. 3. Amenhotep III 10 Photo Mansell &> Co. British Museum. X I. Coins OF C. 700-500 11. c. 600-500 III. c. 480-400 IV. c. 480-430 V. c. 400-350 VI. c. 380-300 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 4. Men worshipping a Snake 10 From Miss J. E. Harrison's ' Prolegomena ' [Cambridge University Press). 5. Siege Scene 12 Photo Mansell & Co. On fragment of silver vase. From the copy in the British Museum. 6. Cretan Statue 12 Photo Maraghiannis. From Eleutherma. 7. From a Mycenaean G01.D Ring : Women and Sacred Tree 14 From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prihelUniques ' {Geuthner, Paris). Found south of Mycenaean acropolis. Sun and moon and Milky Way (or ocean stream ?) ; sky-deity with figure-of-eight shield and lance ; double axe ; child picking the date-like (or grape-like ?) fruit of the sacred tree ; row of animals' heads (?). 8. The ' Warrior Vase ' 14 Photo English Photographic Co. The painted fragment was found outside acropolis at Mycenae. Note corslet, short fringed chiton, leggings and footgear, metal (?) rings at knee and wrist, gourd or bag for water or food (?) hanging on spear, and the woman saying farewell. 9. G01.DEN Mask 14 Photo Rhomaides. The mask covered the face of one of the Mycenaean princes buried on the acropolis. 10 y II. Mycenaean Daggers 15, 16 From Professor Bury 's ' History of Greece ' {Macmillan & Co. Ltd.). 12. Goi^DEN Discs and Shrine 16 Photo Rhomaides. From the third tomb on the Mycenae acropolis. Of thin gold. Rather less than natural size. The discs probably dress ornaments. 13. GoivDEN Cups from Vaphio 16 Photo Rhomaides. 14. AcROPOus, Mycenae 18 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. 15. Excavations of Pai^ace, Cnossus 18 Photo Maraghiannis. xi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIC. PAGE i6. The Cup-bkarbr, Cnossus 20 Copyright. By permission of Mr. John Murray. 17. Acrobats and Bi^ands 21 Front Dussaud's ' Civilisations prShelUniques ' {Geuthner, Paris). Cretan gems. Instead of the usual bull we find here large antelopes like African elands. 18. ' Throne of Minos ' 22 Photo Maraghiannis. In the ' Council Chamber ' of the Cnossus Palace. Fresco of " griffin with peacock-plumes in a flowery landscape." 19. MiNOAN Game-board 22 Photo Maraghiannis. Found in Cnossus Palace. 20. Cretan Jars for Oii. or Corn 38 Photo Maraghiannis. Found in store-houses of Cnossus Palace. Five feet high. 21. CivAY Disc of Phaestus 38 Photo Maraghiannis. 22. Tabi^ets with Cretan I^inear Script 39 From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prehelUniques ' {Geuthner, Paris). Early linear writing {c. 1600 ?). 23. Inscription on Tataia's Fi.ask 42 Copied by the author from Mr. H. B. Walters' book on Vases. 24. ' Harvester Vase ' 48 Photo Maraghiannis. A small vessel of black soapstone, probably once covered with gold-leaf. Early Minoan work. Foimd at Hagia Triada, Crete. 25. Cretan Sarcophagus 48 Photo Maraghiannis. Later Minoan. Plastered limestone, painted. Funeral ceremony. Double axes. Musicians, one with seven-stringed lute. 26. Griffins and PiU/Ar 50 From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prihelUniques ' {Geuthner, Paris). Cretan gem. 27. Earth-Goddess and I^ions 50 From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prihelUniques ' {Geuthner, Paris). Imprint of seal found in Cnossus Palace. The Earth-Mother on mountain (Ida ?) with lions ; shrine and worshipper (or her son, Zeus Cretagenes ?). xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 28. RiTUAi. Danck and Uprooting of Sacred Tree 51 From Dussaud's ' Civilisations pr&helUniques ' {Geuthner, Paris). Gold ring. The uprooting of the sacred tree was perhaps a funeral ceremony. 29. Genii watering Sacred Tree 51 From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prShelUniques ' {Geuthner, Paris). Gem found at Vaphio. 30. The ' lyADY OF Wii,D Creatures ' 52 From Miss J. E. Harrison's ' Prolegomena' {Cambridge Uni- versity Press). Painting on a Boeotian amphora at Athens. 31. Cretan Seai,s 53 From Dussaud's ' Civilisations prShellSniques ' {Geuthner, Paris). Perhaps represent transformations in masked ritual dance, or perhaps worn as charms against evil spirits. 32. The Return of the Barth-Maiden 56 From Miss J. E. Harrison's ' Prolegomena ' {Cambridge Uni- versity Press). Vase at Oxford. I^ike the Anodos of Kore, but here the maiden is Pandora (generally the Greek Eve, but here probably the ' All-giver,' Earth-goddess). Zeus, Hermes, and Epimetheus welcome her return. Compare the northern myth of Holda, the goddess of spring. 33. MiNOAN, Mycenaean, and Trojan Ware 58 Photo Maraghiannis. Top left jug and two small cups are of the exceedingly fine Kamares ware ; found in Kamares cave. Mount Ida, Crete. Date c. 2000. Two other jugs on left, one with sunflower and papyrus (?), the other with octopus, are later Minoan, c. 1500- 1400. The former is in what is called ' Cnossus Palace style.' Top right-hand jug, probably from an island tomb ; date c. 2500. Black with incised lines filled with white substance. Two-necked jug of ' Hissarlik ' (Trojan) type. Date c. 1800, I^owest to right : Mycenaean ware, but found in Cyprus. Date c. 1300. 34. D1PY1.0N Vase 98 Photo Mansell &> Co. Two sides of same vase. Date about 850 or earlier. British Museum. xiii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 35. DIPYI.ON, PHAI.ERON, SamIAN, AND CORINTHIAN Ware, c. 800-600 100 Photo Mansell & Co. Upper row, three Dipylon vessels ; ancient animal decoration (bird, two horses at manger) combined with the revived geometric and maeander style. See Note D. Date c. 800. Lowest to left : ' Phaleron ware.' About fifty of such one- handled jugs discovered. Named after first, found on the road to Phaleron. Very different from preceding, and far more artistic. Oriental influence ? Date c. 700. Samian two-handled jug, found in the cemetery Fikellura, Rhodes. Date c. 600. Old Corinthian ; easily recognized by rather heavy but finely balanced shape, colours (rich browns and yellows) and style of animals, with spaces filled with flowers, &c. Corinth was anciently a great emporium, especially for trade with the far West. Date, about Periander's age, c. 600. 36. Foundations op Apoi,i.o's Tkmpi^e, West Dei^phi 104 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. See under Fig. 49 in this list. 37. Archaic Statue io6 From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' {Macmillan & Co. Ltd.). One of the so-called ' Tanten ' (' Aunts') excavated on the Athenian Acropolis. 38. ASSARHADDON WITH CaPTIVE EGYPTIAN AND AETHIOPIAN 112 Photo Graphische Gesellschaft. 39. The ' Francois Vase ' ii6 Photo Alinari. In the Etruscan Museimi, Florence. Perhaps the oldest inscribed Greek vase. Found by M. Fran9ois at Chiusi (Clusium, the city of Lars Porsena, where great numbers of tombs, &c., have been discovered). It was in about fifty fragments, but was nearly complete. In 1900, however, an insane employ & of the museum overthrew it, and while it lay shattered on the floor numerous shards were stolen, so that many important portions (as seen in the picture) are wanting. For questions of ancient Greek dress, weapons, chariots, vases, &c., it is invaluable. See Index and Note B. Many of the figures in the numerous scenes are named, and we learn the names of the painter and maker by the words KXir/as /z* eypayjfcv 'Epyori/xos- /x' iirolrjaev. Date perhaps about 650. Greek work imported into Etruria. 40. lyACiNiAN Cape and Column 120 From ' Aus dem klass. Siiden,' by permission of Herr Ch. Coleman, Liibeck. xiy LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PACm 41. Poseidon's TempIvE, Paestum 120 Photo Brogi. To left a part of the ' Basilica.' Note the greater bulge {entasis) of the columns. See Note A. 42. Apoi.i.o's Tempi^e, Corinth 130 Photo Simirioitis, Athens. See Note A. 43. Site of Corinth and the Acrocorinthus 130 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. Looking south. The rock of the ancient citadel Acrocorinth is some igoo feet high. A village existed on the old site till 1858, when it was destroyed by an earthquake, and New Corinth was then founded on the sea-shore. 44. C01.0SS1 OF Abu Simbeiv 148 Photo Frith. They all represent Ramses II {c. 1300, the Pharaoh of Moses' youth). The Greek inscription is on the legs of the headless colossus. It is signed by ' Archon and Pelekos/ who had " travelled with King Psamtik to Elephantine, and as far as the river permits." Date 594- 45. Cimmerians 148 Photo Mansell S'Co. A terra-cotta sarcophagus found at Clazo- menae, now in the British Museum. The head-dress, weapons, and war-dogs make it likely that these are the mysterious Cimmerians. Others take it for a chariot-race or a ' Doloneia.' 46. Site of Oi^ympia and Vai,e of the Ai^pheios 152 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. 47. Heraion, Oi^ympia 152 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. 48. Vai,e of Tempe and Mouth of River Peneios 156 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. 49. Site of Dei^phi 156 Before the old village of Zastri had been cleared away. Photo by Dr. Walter Leaf, Hellenic Society. In background lower precipices of Parnassus and ravine, from the left side of which springs the Castalian Fount. The great Temple lies further west. 50. ' Artemis of Dei,os ' 172 From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' {Macmillan &> Co. Ltd.). Primitive image with hair (as in Cretan statue, Fig. 6) in Egyptian style. Dedicated by Nicandra of Naxos to the Dehan Artemis. Found in ■ Delos. XV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS riG. PAGE 51. STEI.E OF ArISTION 172 Photo Alinari. Athens National Museum. 52. The Croesus Coi^umn 182 From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' {Macmillan &> Co. Ltd.). The inscription is on the moulding beneath the figure. It is unfortunately almost invisible. 53. Tomb of Cyrus 192 From Dr. Sarre's ' Iranische Felsreliefs ' {Ernst Wasmuth, A. -G., Berlin). See p. 193. 54. The OIvYmpieion, Athens 192 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. See p. 456. 55. Bl,ACK-FIGURED VASES, C. 70O-50O 204 Photo Mans ell S' Co. Greek vase found at Vulci, Etruria. Achilles slaying Penthe- silea. Date c. 550. Panathenaic prize vase. Victor being crowned. Date perhaps only c. 420, but in these prize vases the old black-figured style of the sixth century was kept. In middle : Attic amphora. Birth of Athene (springing from the head of Zeus). Left lower : Ancient Corinthian crater (mixing bowl). Return of Hephaestus to Olympus, mounted on mule and accompanied by Dionysus and satyrs. A not infrequent comic subject. From Daphnae, Egypt. Such water-jars (about thirty) only found at Daphnae (and perhaps Clazomenae). Decoration all of same type : above. Sphinxes ; below, geese ; in middle, procession of women. Black-figured style with white women's faces. Date c. 560 (age of Solon, Croesus, and Amasis). 56. Ancient Bi,ack-figured Amphora 210 Photo Mansell cS* Co. From Vulci, in Etruria, but Attic work. Athene, Zeus, and Hermes. Archaic style. Date c. 560. 57. TEMPI.E NEAR SEGESTA 214 Photo Brogi. See Note A. 58. Statue from the Branchidae Tempi^e 222 From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' [Macmillan &> Co. Ltd.) . Inscribed with name of Chares of Teichiussa. British Museum. 59. The ' Harpy Tomb ' 222 Photo Mansell 6- Co. British Museum. xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS riG. PAOB 60. EuROPA ON Tim BuLi, 226 From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture * {Macmillan 6* Co. Ltd.). Metope from temple at Selinus. At Palermo. Somewhat later than the Selinus reliefs of Perseus and the Gorgon, and the extraordinary fore- shortened chariot, models of which are in the British Museum. 61. The Tyrannicides 230 Photo Alinari, Naples. 62. Tkmpi<e of Aphaia, Aegina 232 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. See Note A. 63. Aegina Pediment 232 Photo F. Bruckmann. Central group. Restored by Thor- waldsen. 64. The ' Darius Vase ' 236 Photo F. Bruckmann. At Naples. An Apulian vase of about 300. Darius is seated in his throne, and before him stands a counsellor who is supposed to be warning him against invading Greece. 65. Pythagoras 242 Photo Alinari. Vatican. Almost incredible as genuine portrait. No sign of great character or intellect. 66. Aeschyi^us 242 Photo Alinari. Capitol. Old type in simple grand style. Possible portrait. Date c. 420. 67. MiLTIADES 242 Doubtful. He was painted, by Micon or Polygnotus, in pictures of Marathon, and his statue was the centre of a group by Pheidias at Delphi. Old drawings exist of ancient busts, now lost. This bust (helm ornamented with lions) is in the lyouvre. Replica, called ' Masinissa,' in Capitol. 68. Themistoci^es 242 Photo F. Bruckmann. At Munich. Often called "unknown archaic warrior." Very fine, and dates probably from Persian wars. B ernouUi says it is possibly Themistocles. 69. Thermopyi^ae 260 From a photo by Miss A . R. Fry, Failand, Bristol. From the Leonidas mound, looking west, towards MaUan Plain and the Spercheios. In foreground the West Gate and the Hot Springs ; to left KalUdromos and Trachinian cliffs. In distance, spur of Mount Oeta (?) and range of Mount Othrys. b xvii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 70. Tomb of IvEonidas (?) 260 Photo English Photographic Co. Ruins on a mound near Thermopylae ; just possibly remains of the tomb of I^eonidas, on which a lion was erected. 71. Bay of Sai^amis 266 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. From Mount Aegaleos, looking south. Aegina and Epidaurian coast in distance. Salamis to right, Psyttaleia to left. 72. Wai.i,s of Themistoci.es 266 Photo Simiriottis. Athens. From near Dipylon. Hymettus in distance. Acropolis and Theseion to right. 73. Tomb of Darius 274 The entrance, which is on the face of a perpendicular precipice. See Note, p. 193. 74. Charioteer found at Dei^phi 274 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. 75. OSTRAKA OF ThEMISTOCI^ES AND XANTHIPPUS, Father of Pericles 274 Photo Mansell & Co. The second is a shard of a painted vase " from the pre-Persian dibris on the Athenian Acropolis." Another has been found with the name of Megacles, possibly the Megacles mentioned by Pindar. 76. TempIvE of ' Concordia/ Acragas 278 Photo Brogi. See Note A. yy. ' HiERo's Hei^met ' 278 Photo Mansell 6^ Co. 78. Group of Gods, Parthenon Frieze 284 From Gardner's 'Handbook oj Greek Sculpture* {Macmillan & Co. Ltd.). 79. The ' Strangford ' Shiei<d 284 Photo Mansell cS^ Co. Copy of the shield of the Pheidian Athene Parthenos, in British Museum. The figure that half covers its face with its arm is said to be that of Pericles, and the "bald-headed but vigorous" man on his right side to be Pheidias himself. 80. Tempi^e on Sunion 288 Photo by Dr. Walter Leaf, Hellenic Society. 81. Theseion, or perhaps Tempi^e of Hephaestus 288 Photo English Photographic Co. xviii LISiT OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. FAO* 82. Metopes from the Parthenon 292 Photo Mansell 6* Co. British Museum. 83. Parthenon, from West 296 Photo Alinari. 84. ApoiviyO's Tempi^e, Phigai^eia 296 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. See Note A. 85. Portions of Parthenon Frieze 304 Photo Mansell cS- Co. 86. The Pediments of the Parthenon 306 Reconstructed by Karl Schwerzek, Ritter des kaiserl. Franz- Joseph Ordens. The work was specially favoured by the late Empress of Austria and the Imperial family. It is regarded as a very successful attempt, founded on a most careful study of all the remains. My thanks are due to the artist for kind permission to reproduce the pictures of his models given in his Erlduterungen, published by himself in Vienna. 8y. Probabi^e Copy of the Pheidian Athene I/Emnia 310 Photo R. Tamme, Dresden; reproduced by permission of the Director of the Alhertinum. A very fine head at Bologna was found by Professor Furtwangler to fit exactly a headless Athene at Dresden, which evidently belonged to the Pheidian school of sculpture. Our picture represents this body furnished with a cast of the Bologna head, and according to Professor Furtwangler, whose authority few would care to question, we have in the complete statue a fine copy of the celebrated lyemnian Athene of Pheidias. Another similar, but much mutilated, statue in the Dresden Museum has been restored on the same lines. The face of the Lemnia is cited by l^ucian in a famous passage {Imag. vi.) as of ideal beauty and nobility, and Himerius says, probably in reference to this statue, that Pheidias sometimes " decked the virgin goddess with a blush instead of a helmet." 88. Probabi^e Copy of Myron's Athene 310 Photo supplied and permission for reproduction given by Dr. Swarzenski, Director of the Stddtische Gallerie, Frankfurt- a.-M. The rather repellent Marsyas of Myron is well known from a coin, a painted and a sculptured vase, and from the statue in the £ateran Museum and a small bronze in the British Museum. The Marsyas belonged to a group in which Athene, who had invented flutes and had cast them away (because they disfigured her face when she played), was represented looHng disdainfully at the satyr, who " while advancing to pick up the discarded flutes is suddenly confronted by the goddess" and starts xix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VIC. PAGE back in dismay. The Athene was supposed to be hopelessly lost ; but about 1882 this statue of Parian marble was dug up in Rome, and after lying for twenty years in a shed was recognized as probably the lost Myron, and transferred by some rich German Hellenists to the Frankfurt Gallery. It is a beautiful statue, and, if it is Myron's, must give us an idea of him as artist very different from what we gain from the Marsyas or the Discobolos. Three possibi^e Copies of the Pheidian Athene : 89. head of a statue in rome 314 From Professor E. Luwy's ' Griechische Plastik * [Klinkhardt and Biermann, Leipzig). By Antiochos, a sculptor otherwise unknown. Museo Nazionale delle Terme. The dress and helm are not like those of the Athene Parthenos, but the face is believed to be the best extant copy of that of the Pheidian goddess, and is very much the finest of the three here given. 90. A STATUETTE FOUND AT ATHENS, NEAR THE VARVAKEION 314 Photo English Photographic Co. Supposed by some to be a model, by a Roman artist, of the Pheidian Athene. But it is q^uite incredible that it should be an exact repre- sentation. The general pose may be reproduced (as it is also in another half -finished statuette found by M. lycnormant near the Pnyx), but it is impossible to accept the face, or the exceedingly ugly device of the column supporting the right hand — though it may have been added to the original statue at some later time to prevent collapse. 91. A RED JASPER INTAGWO INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME ASPASIOS 314 From Brunn-Bruckmann's ' Denkmaler der griech. und rom. Sculptur.' At Vienna. Evidently a copy of the Pheidian Athene. 92. The * Meidias Vase ' 326 Photo Mansell &' Co. Hydria signed with name ' Meidias.' Winckelmann esteemed it " above all others known to him " for beauty of drawing. Date c. 430, but, though rich, still very pure and unaffected by the ' fine style.' Below, Heracles m the Garden of the Hesperides ; above, the l^eucippidae carried off by Castor and Pollux. 93. The Nike (Victory) of Paeonius 336 From Gardner's ' Handbook of Greek Sculpture ' [Macmillan (S' Co. Ltd.). In the Museum at Olympia. XX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. 94. Herodotus 348 Photo Brogi. From double herm (with Thucydides) at Naples. Ancient type and possible portrait. 95. Thucydides 348 Photo Anderson. Capitol. Somewhat like the Holkam bust, which is perhaps the best ; but the types vary considerably. 96. Perici^es 348 Photo Anderson. British Museum. Perhaps after the bust or statue by Cresilas, whose name is on a base found on the Acropolis. Date c. 450. Pericles was born c. 500, and is represented here in his prime. On the ' Strangford ' Shield he is probably ten years older. 97. Al^CIBIADES 348 Photo Anderson. Capitol. Doubtful, but ancient. Several copies exist. 98. Sophoci.es 358 Photo Anderson. I^ateran. Other statues and busts of same type exist. 99. Euripides 362 Photo Anderson. Vatican. Body once with other head. A Euripides head (too small 1) put on it by Pio VII. Tragic mask. 100. Socrates 376 Photo Brogi. Naples. Probably the most authentic of many portraits of the philosopher. loi. Pi,ato 376 Photo Brogi. Uffizi, Florence. Small — one-third of life-size. Built into the wall. Inscribed name ancient. A small bronze copy is at Oxford. A Plato bust at Copenhagen is somewhat similar. But Bernoulli says these are entirely overthrown by a bust lately discovered, now at Berlin. 102. Aristophanes 376 Photo Anderson. Capitol. Several of same type. 103. lyYSIAS 376 Photo F. Bruckmann. Capitol. Several of same type, one of the best at Holkam. 104. Mourning Athene 384 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. Perhaps mourning over the epitaph of warriors fallen in battle (c. 450). Found built into wall of Acropolis. 105. STEI.E WITH Woman carrying Vase 384 Photo English Photographic Co. From the Cerameicus at Athens. 106. Stei,e of Hegeso 384 Photo English Photographic Co. From the Cerameicus at Athens. xxi FIG. 107. 108. 109. IIO. LIiSiT OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure from Greek Tomb Photo Mansell &• Co. The ' Trentham Hall ' statue. Since 1907 in British Museum. Probably stood on a tomb in the Cerameicus. For dress see Note B. Date about fourth century. Probably found in Italy, and perhaps reinscribed for monument of Roman lady. Amazon by Poi,yci.eitus Photo Alinari. So-called ' Mattei Amazon,' in Vatican, Rome. STEI.E OF DEXII^EOS Photo Simiriottis, A thens. The inscription (in Athens National Museum Catalogue) seems to give Coroneia as the place where he fell, though others mentioned in the epitaph were killed near Corinth. From the Mausoi^eum Photo Mansell 6- Co. Ionic column and architrave in British Museum. III. Head of Cnidian Aphrodite 112. 113- 114. 115. 1x6. 117. 118. 119. xxii Photo F. Bruckmann. Possibly a copy from the statue by Praxiteles. In collection of Herr von Kaufmann, Berlin. The Hermes of Oi^ympia Photo Alinari. By Praxiteles. Hypnos Photo Mansell 6* Co. The well-known bronze winged head in the British Museum has lately been set on the body, newly discovered. It represents a youth running and bending forward. He probably held a poppy in his hand. The work is evidently of the Praxitelean age (c. 360), and is Greek, though found near Perugia, in Italy. The Satyr (Faun) of Praxitei.es Photo A nderson. Capitoline Museimi, Rome. The best known of the copies of the original. A torso in the I,ouvre is believed by some to be a part of the original statue. Apoi.1.0 Sauroctonos Photo Mansell 6* Co. Copy of the statue by Praxiteles. Demeter Photo Mansell 6- Co. Head perhaps by Scop as. KiRENE AND P1.UTUS Photo F. Bruckmann. By Cephisodotus. The Cnidian Aphrodite Photo Mansell 6* Co. Copy of the statue by Praxiteles. Drum of Coi^umn From the later temple of Artemis at Kphesus. Photo Mansell & Co, British Museum. PAGE 384 392 392 392 392 394 394 400 404 408 414 418 420 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 120. Mausoi^us 422 Photo Mansell & Co. British Museum. 121. The lyioN OF Chabroneia 430 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. 122. Arcadian Gate, Messene 430 Photo Simiriottis, Athens. Messene was founded by Epamei- nondas. 123. Alexander 434 Photo Mansell 6' Co. British Museum. 124. ISOCRATES 434 Photo Graphische Gesellschaft. Berlin. Same type as the bust with inscribed name in Villa Albani, Rome. Possibly copied from the statue of Isocrates by Leochares (see p. 443) set up at Eleusis by Timotheus, son of Conon ; but poor work, and represents him at earlier time of life. If genuine, the portrait taken during his life, for otherwise he would be represented as very old, having lived about ninety-nine years. 125. Aeschines 434 Photo Anderson. Vatican. Several of same type. 126. Epicurus 434 Photo F. Bruckmann. Copenhagen. 127. Demosthenes 438 Photo Anderson. Vatican. False restoration with book. Hands should be lightly interlocked and hold no book. 128. Aristoti^e 442 Sitting statue : Photo Anderson. Bust : Photo F. Bruckmann. The beardless seated statue in the Spada Palace at Rome has inscription arist . . . s, but the s is not at the right distance for aristoTEI^ES, and the head seems not to belong to the body. A drawing of an ancient bust of Aristotle (such busts were very common among the Romans — vide Juv. Sat. II, vi.) has been found in an old manuscript, and has led to identification at Vienna of the bearded bust, which may be an authentic likeness ; but unfortunately it has a restored irregular nose, whereas the drawing and old descriptions give him an aquiline nose ! 129. Aphrodite of Mei,os 444 Photo Alinari. I^ouvre. 130. The ' A1.EXANDER Sarcophagus * 446 Photo Sebah and Joaillier. Constantinople. The larger relief represents the battle of Issus. Alexander is on horseback at the left end. 131. The Nike of Samothrace 448 Photo Alinari. Louvre. 132. Temple of Athene Nike 454 Photo Alinari. xxiii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 133. Erechtheion 454 Photo English Photographic Co. 134. The Acropous from near the OivYmpieion 456 Photo English Photographic Co. Relics of ancient city wall and columns of Olympieion in foreground. Under Cimon's great south wall of Acropolis (just above the white house) the Theatre of Dionysus, and further left the site of the Odeion of Herodes. 135. Caryatid from Erechtheion 460 Photo Mansell & Co. 136. Monument of I^ysicrates 460 Photo Alinari. 137. Bronze and S11.VER Dress-pins 460 From the British Museum ' Guide to the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities.' Mycenaean and later. 138. Ionic Chiton and Himation 460 Photo Mansell & Co. A very beautiful bronze statuette in the British Museum. 139. Doric Chiton and Dagger-like Pins 460 From the British Museum ' Guide to the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities.' From a toilet-box in the British Museum. 140. Early Female Dress 461 From the Fran9ois Vase. 141. Red-figured Vases and White Lekythi, c, 520-350 472 Photo Mansell & Co. Attic hydria from Vulci, Etruria. Medea and the daughters of Pehas (The trick of the rejuvenated ram) . Date c. 470. Attic stamnos from Vulci. Odysseus and Sirens. Date c. 520. White Attic lekythi, oil-flasks, found generally in tombs. Earlier black on white, later polychrome. Date of these c. 400. Very fine collection m British Museum. Attic (or possibly Italian) hydria, found in Southern Italy. Late rich ' Apuhan ' style, but not debased. Scene similar to some on Attic stelae. Date c. 350. XXIV CHAPTER I THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION : THE ACHAEAN SUPREMACY (DOWN XO C. IIOO) SECTIONS : lyANGUAGB AND WRITING : THB OlyD RKI.IGION : the; ' HOMERIC AGE ' AND HOMER : CHRONOI^OGY OF AEGAEAN AND CONTEMPORARY CIVII^IZATIONS NOT very long ago the history of Greece (such history as is founded on the evidence of contemporary inscriptions and similar relics) was held to begin about the tra- ditional date of the first Olympiad — namely, 776. It is true that for some two thousand years a chronology of the 'pre- historic ' or ' mythical ' age of Greece was accepted with more or less diffidence, and has been handed down to our times. This chronology, based on the calculations of ancient writers ^ and drawn up finally {c. 220) by the keeper of the great Alexandrian library, Kratosthenes, takes us back to the founda- tion of Thebes by Cadmus in 13 13, a date of modest pre- tensions compared with those given by some old writers, who by calculating the generations of ancient dynasties and hero- families lead us back beyond Deucalion, the Greek Noah and father of all Hellenes, to Pelasgus, the ancestor of all Pelasgians, and his ancestor Inachus, the first king of Argos, who is said to have lived about 1986. All this chronology and all the traditions of the so-called mythical age were until quite lately rejected as of no historical value by almost every modern writer on Greece — as valueless 1 See Hdt. vii. 204, where, according to the accepted genealogy of the Spartan kings, Leonidas is shown to have been the twenty-first from Heracles, whose traditional date is 1261-1209. C/. Hdt. viii. 131. Some assert that Eratosthenes went back only to the Fall of Troy (i 184) . Thucydides fixes the Dorian invasion (return of Heracleidae) at eighty years after the Fall of Troy. Some of these dates come curiously near to those accepted by modern archaeology. A I ANCIENT GREECE as the legends of Brute the Trojan and the Cornish giants and early kings of Britain, which Geoffrey of Monmouth gives as serious history, and which even Milton in his history of England is half inclined to accept on the ground that " never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remember'd, cannot be thought without too strict an incredulity. '* That in this ' mythical age ' of Greece, long before the Fall of Troy, great wars had been waged ^ and great empires had existed was not denied ; but even such statements as those of Thucydides and Herodotus about the sea-empire of Minos the Cretan were relegated to the realm of fable — the realm of demigods and monsters. Nor was it denied that from certain points of view fables and traditions are of supreme interest and value. Plato himself has pointed out ^ the great ethical value of poetic fiction and the uselessness and folly of attempting to unweave the rainbows of old fables — of decomposing them into allegories or sun- myths ; and in this he has been followed by perhaps the greatest modern historian of Greece, Grote, who has devoted the first of his ten volumes almost entirely to the consideration of the Greek myths as wonderful products of Greek imagination, and has carefully weighed their influence on the Greek mind and on the course of Greek history. But Grote also agrees with Plato in believing it to be use- less and foolish to analyse these ancient myths for the purpose of discovering any deposit of historical fact. "The hope," he says, " that we may, by carrying our researches up the stream of time, exhaust the hmits of fiction and land ulti- mately upon some points of solid truth appears to me no less illusory than the northward journey in quest of the Hyperborean Elysium" — the Earthly Paradise of the ancients, the I^and beyond the North Wind. Within the last thirty years or more this point of view has been gradually abandoned, even by the most sceptical. How- 1 Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Multi. , . . — HoracB. 2 In the Phaedrus. THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION ever disdainfully the modern historian may still speak of such ' fables ' as those of Pelops and I^ycurgus (whom, borrowing a phrase from Herodotus, they describe as " not men, but only gods "), none would now venture to deny that there are " points of sohd truth" in legends that indicate the former existence of a great ancient Mycenaean civilization, or a still greater and more ancient civilization in Crete ; for we now possess indisputable evidence that such civilizations existed, and that in many an old legend there was at least a germ of truth. Nor is it impossible that ere long the excavator and the philologist (for both of whom a vast amount of unexplored and unde- ciphered material is at hand) may open up yet more wonderful vistas and help us to reconstruct and repeople far more fully and vividly the so-called mythical age of Greece. Should this happen, I doubt not that many more of the old myths will be found to contain some historical truth in the midst of their poetic fictions, and that once more many a sceptic will have to re weave his theories. This, however, is a task for the archaeologist and the linguist. For the historian it is still nearly as true as it was in Grote's day that " two courses, and two only, are open : either to pass over the myths altogether, or else to give an account of them as myths." And seeing that to give a full account of myths regarded as creations of poetic imagination, or as interesting folk-lore, seems to be in this age of specialists the task of other writers rather than that of the historian, and considering that classical dictionaries and books about mythology are easily obtained, and that a very full and systematic account of these ancient Greek myths may be found in Grote's first volume, I shall only relate, or mention, those which appear to have some connexion with historical facts, or with such reconstructions as may be reasonably built up on the relics of prehistoric times. The first part of my subject is the so-called Aegaean civiliza- tion, which has been brought to light within the last tliirty or forty years. Enough has been discovered by excavation and research to assure us that a once undreamt-of civilization of very considerable importance did actually exist in Aegaean 3 ANCIENT GREECE lands long before the first Olympiad, or the invasion of the Dorians, or even the first coming of those Achaeans by whom Troy is said to have been sacked — a civilization which in all probability was already in existence at a period as far anterior to the age of Pericles as that age is anterior to our own. So much seems certain ; but what further deductions we are justified in making, and how we are to adjust and use all the evidence that has come to Hght, it is at present difficult to see. It should therefore be the aim of every one who writes on the subject to place the evidence clearly, fully, and accurately before his readers and to indulge as little as possible in theoretics. A certain amount of theory and hypothesis is necessary in order that the facts may be classified and presented in a dis- tinct and graphic form, but it must not be forgotten that at any moment new discoveries may be made which may roughly upset our most plausible reconstructions. At what stage in the history of humanity the first wave of Aryan migration reached Central Europe we have no means of knowing, but it is indubitable that the people whom we call the ancient Greeks, and who called themselves Hellenes, were mainly ^ of this Indo-Germanic race, and that when their northern ancestors first pushed southward into Greece they found there a race of quite a different kind — a dark- haired, lithe-limbed race, which in that age under various names seems to have inhabited most of the European lands bordering on the Mediterranean. The Northmen probably came in small bands at first, and, like the Normans of later days i*n Southern Europe, established themselves as chieftains among the less warlike Southerners. In time they would be followed by successive waves of invaders, many of whom would settle in the country, appropriate the land and the ^ This is perhaps too strong. Possibly the intermixture of the northern (Achaean and Dorian) invaders with the aborigines was in time somewhat such as that of the Normans with the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic population in Britain, and the strangely rapid development and perfection of classical Greek art may have been due to the revival of art-feeling that had existed in the race before the advent of the northern invaders, just as the supremac}- of Tuscan art in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was possibly due to the old Etruscan element. THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION women and enslave the men, or drive them forth to take refuge in more barren or mountainous districts, such as Attica and Arcadia.^ Now the evidence supplied by excavation and research points to the fact that in Greece, at a period not much anterior to the age of the fair-haired Achaean princes described by Homer, this dark-haired, lithe-limbed Mediterranean race was still in possession ; and similar evidence makes it clear that in Crete a people probably belonging to the same race, and of a like civiHzation, existed from a very early time, and possessed a powerful empire until the advent of the northern conquerors. It is this so-called Minoan and Mycenaean civilization which of late years has been revealed to us. The Trojan Cities In the year 1870 the first beginning was made, by Dr. SchHe- mann, of the excavations that have led to this result. lyong before that date the ancient history of Egypt and of Mesopo- tamia had been to a large extent reconstructed by the dis- coveries of monuments and the deciphering of hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions, but of the first ages of Greece what few relics were known, such as old ' Pelasgic ' walls and a few ancient sepulchres and remnants of primeval pottery, were regarded with hopeless wonderment as the survivals of a civilization which had passed away into eternal oblivion. Much incredulity and some ridicule met the enthusiasm of Dr. SchHemann, therefore, when he announced his intention first to excavate ancient Troy and then to discover the tomb of Agamemnon (described by Pausanias) at Mycenae. The site of Homeric Troy he believed, in spite of the contrary opinion of scholars, to be that of the later Roman city Novum Ilium, now the Hill of Hissarlik. On this site»he and his successors discovered the remains of no less than seven — possibly nine — towns. Traces of the rough-stone walls of ^ In this connexion the celebrated opening chapters of Thucydides' history- should be read. The discoveries of late years have added greatly to their interest. ANCIENT GREECE the earliest of these towns are still visible, and within them have been discovered fragments of primitive black pottery and stone implements — among which is an axe-head of white jade (nephrite), a stone said to be found in its natural state only in China. ^ The second town had great ramparts with towers and a fortified gate, all of sun-baked brick, with a paved ramp and stone foundations. The relics were pottery (still hand-made) and stone and copper implements. Bronze seems to have been still rare, but near to the great gate, within a kind of acropohs, was discovered a very considerable treasure of gold and silver vessels and ornaments, together with copper weapons and a hideous leaden idol of some ancient female deity. The great ramparts and the wealth and art evidenced by these finely wrought gold and silver ornaments made Schliemann conclude that this was the Homeric city, and that he had discovered the Treasure of King Priam. But, almost incredible as it seemed before the discoveries of similar treasures and other works of art in Crete and at Mycenae, it is now beheved that this second city of Troy existed at least a thousand years before the days of Priam and Agamemnon, and that the ruins of the sixth stratum are in all probability those of the Homeric city. These ruins consist of great and well-built walls of wrought stone (Fig. i), far better built than so-called * Pelasgic ' walls, and enclosing a very consider- able area, with remains of a high- terraced acropolis, on the summit of which was doubtless, as at Mycenae and Tiryns, the regal palace. Of the four city gates the two greatest, those to the south and the east, were guarded by strong towers, and one of these might be the famous * Scaean Gate ' of the Iliad except for the fact that Homer's ' Scaean Gate * seems to have looked towards the Grecian camp and the sea — ^ Jade and jadite are to be found in the Alps and in European megalithic monuments. In one of the latter, in Brittany, an axe-head of white jade seems to have been discovered {Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race, by T. W. Rolleston). It seems therefore a little over-fanciful to build up on a bit of nephrite the possibility of commerce between this primeval Trojan town and China via Nineveh. But even such a guess may be verified by future discovery. 6 I. Wai.1, of the Sixth City of Troy THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION evidently to the north-west, in which part the old walls were demolished (50 B.C.) in order to fortify Sigeion (Sigeum). In this sixth city bronze ^ weapons were found, and many fragments of what is called ' Mycenaean ' pottery — a glazed and painted wheel-made ware which denotes the later period of Mycenaean civilization {c. 1400-1200), and which has been found not only in Aegaean lands, but in Spain, Italy, Egypt, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. From these and other evidences it seems highly probable that Homeric Troy was built at the time when [c. 1350) the northern Achaean race was still pouring down through Thessaly into lyower Greece ; that the builders were a northern Aryan (Danubian) people related to the fair- haired Achaeans, namely, the Bhryges, or Phrygians ; and that this sixth city ^ was afterwards burnt by foreign enemies, whom we may most reasonably suppose to have been the Achaean princes of Greece and their followers (a mixed host of Achaeans, Argives, and Aegaeans) described by Homer. The Bhryges, or Phrygians, were apparently a tribe of the same great Aryan race (originally from Northern India, but long inhabiting Central Europe) to which the Mysians and perhaps also the I^ydians and Lycians and other peoples of Asia Minor belonged,^ as well as the Achaeans of Greece. They seem to have come over from Thrace in successive waves during several centuries. The second city of Troy was probably founded by earlier Phrygian or northern invaders, and it was possibly to later invasions of the same northern race that the destruction and refounding of the third, fourth, and fifth cities were due, on which occasions the earlier comers (I^ycians 1 But only one specimen of iron — a knife, which Schliemann believed to have slipped down from a higher stratum. 2 Possibly also the fifth, for tradition tells us of a former sack of Troy by Telamon and Heracles. ^ The original inhabitants of Lydia may have been non-Aryan, but they were conquered by and amalgamated with the Phrygians. These mixed peoples are called. Maeonians (Mjyovfy) by Homer, who does not mention Ivydians. The Lycians I believe to have been of Aryan stock, but not the Carians, whom Homer describes as " speaking a strange tongue." The Pamphylians are believed to have belonged to the later Dorian race of invaders, of whom three tribes are often mentioned : Hylleis, Pamphyli, Dymanes. 7 ANCIENT GREECE and others) were driven further south. Or possibly these Aryan invaders for several centuries, before they made them- selves masters of these north-western parts of Asia Minor, had been obliged to fight for existence against the older inhabitants. Who these older inhabitants were is not known for certain, but it is believed that in this age the great Empire of the Hittites, a Semitic race (mentioned in the Old Testament, and perhaps the KrircLoi of Odyssey xi. 521), whose chief city was Carchemish, extended over much of Asia Minor. This seems proved by numerous inscriptions in Hittite script, a syllabic hieroglyphic writing, which has been partly deciphered. 1 Tablets, too, have been discovered with official correspondence between the Hittite kings and subject states, and a cuneiform version of a treaty between the Hittite king Chetasor and Ramses II of Egypt. We hear also of a great nation of Cappadocians (probably different from the Hittites), whose chief city was Pteria. These nations blocked the western expansion of Babylon and Assyria, and of eastern art and cuneiform writing. The Homeric Trojans were evidently a mixed people com- posed of northern and aboriginal elements (Queen Hecabe, for instance, was a Phrygian), speaking a language closely akin to that of the Achaeans, and worshipping similar northern deities.^ The chivalrous respect with which, in Homer's poem, the Achaean princes regard their foes doubtless existed in reality between the northern conquerors on both sides of the Aegaean, and, in spite of all arguments about pure Achaean blood and fair hair (which the Phrygian chieftains may also have had), we can feel assured that the traditions that make Pelops, the son of the Phrygian king Tantalus, give his name to the Peloponnese and found the royal house of the Pelopidae, to which Agamemnon and Menelaus belonged, as well as the traditions (repeated by the sane-minded Thucydides) which derived the great wealth of * golden Mycenae ' from Phrygian mines and the gold-sands of the Pactolus, have some historical basis. 1 See Section A, ' Writing/ * See Section B, ' The Old Religion.' 8 u t LIZ^IO lesian djiasty < ^^ no god reasc :iether fe was 1 the P0ponne • so. tlin i]iQ ( ell ] ed IiicJ lis, n 1 Tr< he t He lom ' rec )n ^ ^(■over iot B\ le ve ^perli£ le les Jpar1 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION That the founder of a royal Peloponnesian dynasty came from Phrygia, as tradition avers, we have no good reason to doubt, but the question is, I think, whether this was not long before the advent of the Achaeans in the Peloponnese or the Phrygians in Asia Minor. If it were so, then the older Pelopid monarchs of Pisa, Mycenae, and Sparta may well have been of Aegaean or even Hittite race, and have ruled over an aboriginal Aegaean population, and the tombs of which we shall soon hear may be those of these older monarchs, into whose family the Achaeans may have married when they conquered the land. Schliemann had proved conclusively that a great Trojan city had existed, and that it had been burnt about the time of the traditional date of the Fall of Troy (1184). He had shown that there is a very solid historical basis in Homer's great poem ; and further research has enabled us to recon- struct and repeople this Homeric age. But excavation was to open up vistas into far more distant ages. Mycenae Dr. Schliemann had announced his intention of discovering the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae ; and if he did not find, as he firmly believed he had done, the tomb and the very body of the great Achaean king, he found something perhaps still more wonderful. Homer's " golden, wide- way ed Mycenae," the home of Agamemnon, 1 was evidently one of the principal cities of Achaean Greece, larger than Argos, Tiryns, Corinth, or Sparta. In later days its importance declined so much that it could supply only eighty men for Thermopylae and two hundred for Plataea. Soon afterwards (462) it was destroyed by the ^ Some modern writers have propounded the idea that Agamemnon had nothing to do with Mycenae, but was king of the old district of Argos in Thessaly, and was ' translated,' together with his Achaeans and Argives, to the Peloponnese by some late contributor to the Homeric poems ! This would indeed be an easy solution of the Mycenae problem. In the Odyssey Agamemnon is evidently murdered at Mycenae. The dramatists make Argos the scene of the slaughter. ANCIENT GREECE Argives and the inhabitants were expelled, and the ingenuity of Thucydides finds some difficulty in explaining away the apparent insignificance of its ruins. Some of these ruins were the massive ramparts and the well-known lyion Gate, which still exist ; and it was within these walls of the ancient Mycenaean acropolis that the Greek traveller and writer Pausanias (to whose descriptions we owe much of our knowledge of Greek antiquities) saw the tombs, or what were then {c. a.d. i6o) believed to be the tombs, of Atreus and Agamemnon. " Some remnants of the encircling wall," says Pausanias, " are still visible, and also a gate which has lions over it. These, as they say, were built by the Cyclopes. . . . There is the tomb of Atreus and of the men whom Aegisthus slew at the banquet when they returned from Troy . . . and the tomb of Agamemnon. But Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus were buried a short distance outside the walls, for they were deemed unworthy to lie within, where Agamemnon was interred and those who fell with him.'' Trusting in this description, Dr. Schliemann, in 1876, sank a pit, some 40 yards square, within the walls of the acropolis, not far from the lyion Gate. He first came upon stone slabs, vertical and horizontal, forming what he thought to be the seats of an agora (place of council). Below these he found an altar and some tombstones (stelae) , and under these again, some 25 feet below the surface, six square tombs hewn vertically in the solid rock. These had originally been covered with great slabs of stone. The slabs had given way, and the tombs (which are from 10 to 15 feet deep and of various sizes) were filled with earth and stones, amidst which lay embedded no less than seventeen human bodies. On excavating these tombs a great amount of treasure was discovered — rings and sword-hilts and bracelets and pins and brooches and necklaces and hundreds of other ornaments, all of pure gold, more than seven hundred golden plaques (probably once attached to the women's dresses), diadems of gold on the heads of the women and masks of gold covering the faces of some of the men, 10 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION besides many other costly objects, in silver, bronze, amber, and ivory. " Au seul point de vue de la valeur venale," says DieH, " les bijoux representent plus de 100,000 francs d'or; au point de vue artistique et scientifique, leur prix est inestimable/' It was scarcely strange that Dr. Schliemann in his hour of triumph dispatched a telegram to the King of Greece announcing that he had discovered the tombs that Pausanias describes, and probably the tombs of those Achaean princes of * golden Mycenae ' of whom Homer sang. But are these the tombs which Pausanias saw ? And are they the tombs of the Achaean princes ? Before venturing to answer this question let us hear more. Besides the six shaft-graves on the acropolis there exist (partly known before excavation by Schliemann and others) nine great vaulted sepulchres, of which the so-called Treasury of Atreus is the largest. It is a lofty ' beehive ' chamber, about 50 feet high, sunk into the side of a hill, and approached by a deep passage about 40 yards in length. The fagade was once richly decorated. The portal, which has a lintel nearly 30 feet long and weighing some 120 tons, was flanked by alabaster columns with zigzag and spiral ornament.^ Above the lintel was a large triangle of red porphyry, the architectural device being evidently copied from the lyion Gate. In these great sepulchres no treasure was found. They had been plundered and stripped even of their bronze decorations. Nor were any bodies discovered. But what few evidences came to light made it clear that these tombs were of a later age than the shaft-tombs of the acropolis. Some less pretentious square tombs with slanting roofs were also discovered cut out of the rock on a lower level — probably the site of the town of Mycenae ; and the remains * Portions of these columns are in the British Museum. Another similar tomb, and nearly as large, is known as the Tomb of Clytaemnestra. It was mostly excavated by Mrs. Schliemann. In order to avoid perplexing the reader with details I do not describe the further excavations at Tiryns, Orchomenus, and other places, where interesting evidences of the Aegaean civilization were found, but nothing at all comparable with the tombs of Mycenae. II ANCIENT GREECE of a palace, probably of the Achaean age, were found on the summit of the hills. Now let us, with the aid of our illustrations, consider towards what conclusion the evidence points. I believe it will be found to point towards this conclusion : that the shaft-graves of the acropolis are the tombs of princes (possibly Pelopidae) who ruled over an ' Aegaean ' people before the advent of the Achaean invaders. And I believe that the great vaulted sepulchres of later date are most probably the tombs of the Achaean princes,^ and that the palace was built by them. (i) Firstly, the human remains were skulls and bones " on which were remnants of flesh and skin." They had evidently not been burnt. (Ashes were found, but probably these were the ashes of sacrificed victims — possibly also human.) Now the Achaeans, if we are to believe Homer, burnt their dead, sometimes burying the ashes under a great mound. Embalming or ' drying ' a body is once mentioned, but the slain Homeric heroes (Achilles, Hector, Patroclus, Elpenor) are all burnt on a funeral pyre, and the graphic account of the process given by the ghost of Odysseus' mother {Od. xi.) surely shows that burning was customary among the Achaeans. 2 (2) Secondly, the dress and arms of the portrayed Mycenaean warriors are not at all what one associates with the Homeric Achaeans. In a siege-scene depicted on a fragment of a silver vessel (Fig. 5) most of the defenders of the fort are armed with slings and bows, and are stark naked, while two in the rear rank are enveloped in great hide (or bark ?) shields, apparently suspended by a baldrick of thongs or cords, for the men are 1 This is of course inconsistent with the assertion of Pausanias given above. He may have seen the acropolis tombs, but it is very remarkable that if they were known in his day they should have remained unrifled. 2 Burial and burning often existed side by side, as was certainly the case in the ' classical ' age of Greece. A curious inconsistency occurs to me. The skeleton of the Achaean Orestes, Herodotus tells us (i. 68), was found at Tegea in a coffin over ten feet long ; but Sophocles brings on to the stage, in the Electva, the (supposed) ashes of Orestes enclosed in an urn. The supposed bones of Theseus, who belonged to the Aegaean age, were found by Cimon in Scyros, whence they were transported to Athens. 12 B in o w « o S o w to w o w THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION not holding them. Such shields are found, often in a figure-of- eight form, on other Aegaean (Mycenaean and Cretan) gems and seals. This great man-covering, ox-hide shield (" as great as a tower ") is, indeed, not unknown to Homer, but as a rule the Homeric shield seems to have been circular and smaller and carried by a handle,^ and the armour (helm, greaves, and breastplate) of the Homeric warriors was of bronze. Now the warriors on the Mycenaean ' Warrior Vase ' (Fig. 8) do certainly seem to carry a round, or rather a crescent-shaped, light shield, with perhaps a rim (avrv^) of metal, but the rest of their equipment is surely not Homeric. Allowance may be made for the artlessness of the painter, but surely these fighters are not the well-greaved, bronze-clad and bronze- helmed Achaeans. On an old painted tombstone found in the lower town of Mycenae there is depicted underneath a row of warriors a row of horses. Moreover, on old Aegaean pottery (see Fig. 33) and in paintings found at Tiryns and on gems one finds horses, and also warriors in primitive two-horsed chariots with wicker breastwork. Does this, it may be asked, point to an age after the Achaean invasion ? I think not. It is evident that the horse was introduced into Greece before the coming of the Achaeans, and probably the ancient myths that describe the wars between Thessalian I^apithae and the Centaurs are a reminiscence of a very early appearance of horsemen from the north. The myth of Pegasus, too (connected with Perseus and the Medusa), presupposes a knowledge of the horse. [It may be remarked in passing that the horse is said not to be found in early Egyptian art. Possibly it was introduced by the Shepherd Kings, about 1800. It is first mentioned in the Bible in connexion with Joseph and Jacob, who died in Hgypt (see Gen. xlvii. 17 and 1. 9). Joseph's chariot is also mentioned in Gen. xlvi. 29. Joseph probably lived under the ^ This is a point much disputed. Some argue from the apparent incon- sistencies that the Iliad is a poem of mixed authorship and diverse ages. The small shield was invented by the Carians, according to Herodotus (i. 171). The huge shield of Ajax in Homer has seven layers of ox-hide, and must have been of enormous weight. 13 ANCIENT GREECE last of the Shepherd Kings. Abraham, who visited Egypt about the year 2000, was given sheep and asses and camels by Pharaoh, but no horses are mentioned.] But to return to the subject of Mycenaean dress. In the * siege-scene ' there are women standing on the very solidly and regularly built rampart. They seem to be applauding their defenders and deriding the foe. Their dress is not easy to discern ; but on the gold ring (Figs. 7 and 28) one sees 7. From a Mycenaean Goi<d Ring distinctly what the dress of the Mycenaean ladies of this age was like. It apparently very much resembled that of fashion- able dames of modern times, except that the whole bust seems to have been often uncovered. Now in Homer the dress of the women is entirely different. Instead of rich-embroidered jackets or blouses {vQiy decolletees sometimes, or conspicuous for their absence) and heavily flounced skirts and lofty coiffures of hair, the Achaean ladies wore a thin ^ chiton (tunic, chemise) and an ample over-garment 1 Even the chiton of Odysseus was as soft and glossy as the inner skin of an onion. See Note B, * Dress.' 14 8. The ' Warrior Vase 9. Goi^DKN Mask from Mycenae THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION (peplos or pharos) of lighter or thicker stuff, according to the season, confined round the waist by a zone, and fastened over the shoul- ders and down the side by brooches. (The peplos given to Penelope by a suitor had twelve of such brooches ; and it is remarkable that scarcely one has been found among all the Mycenaean treasures.) Over the head they wore a coif of soft, glisten- ing tissue {Od. i. 354), and above this sometimes a large veil (Od. v. 232). The men, moreover, when not in armour were not content with the bathing-drawers sort of garment which we often find as the only article of dress in Aegaean por- traiture, but even such people as swineherds wore the tunic (chiton) and a mantle or cloak (chlaina, pharos). The tunic was fastened round the waist by a belt (zoster). Thus the dress, both of men and of women, of these Mycenaeans, as far as we can judge from the evidence supplied by excavation, was very different from that of the Homeric Achaeans. (3) The remains of various palaces and other buildings discovered at Mycenae, Tiryns, and other places where the relics (such as pottery) make us suspect a similar ' My- cenaean ' civilization are in some respects like the Homeric palaces, and a decorative material men- ^°- Mycknaean Dagger tioned by Homer (cyan, or blue glass-paste) has been found. IS ANCIENT GREECE These buildings, however, are possibly not Aegaean, but Achaean. (4) Among the weapons dis- covered at Mycenae are two daggers (Figs. 10 and 11) the blades of which are most skilfully inlaid with gold and silver and a dark substance on a ground of enamelled bronze. It is true that we find something similar in Homer, whose ' Shield of Achilles ' and ' Brooch of Odysseus ' and ' Belt of Hera- cles,' as well as his descriptions of the process of inlaying, testify to high skill in the art. But here again we have the loin-cloths and the figure-of-eight shield (in the lion-hunt), and a scene which reminds one much more of Egypt or Crete than of Homer, namely, a representation of cats, or ichneu- mons, hunting ducks amidst the papyrus on the banks of a river that may be meant for the Nile. There was discovered at Thebes in Egypt a very similar wall-painting ; but the art of the Mycenae dagger is distinctly not Egyptian : it is evidently native work, and is a striking evidence of the high development which the art of the metal - worker had already reached among the pre-Achaean Greeks. (5) But still more striking as works of art are two golden cups (Fig. 13) which were found, not at Mycenae, but at 16 II. Mycenakan Dagger 12. Goi^DEN Discs and Shrine 13. Goi^DEN Cups from Vaphio 16 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION Vapliio/ near the ancient capital of I^aconia, Amyclae. The skill, both in design and execution, with which the scene (perhaps the capture of wild bulls) is wrought is astonishing. '* We see here, as in the Mycenae daggers, the highest attain- ments of a mature art, not the promising attempts of one that is yet in its infancy. . . . They in no way resemble the often successful but always tentative experiments of an archaic Greek artist." - How are we to explain the existence of such art at such an epoch in Greece ? There are, I think, only two possible explanations : either these folk of golden Mycenae, whose warriors were, when clad at all, clad and armed so differently from the Homeric Achaeans, and whose women-folk were bedizened like the fashionable dames of latter-day Europe, not only possessed wealth and an abundance of gold (which assuredly was not produced by the Peloponnese, or any other part of Greece) and were in a high state of material civilization, but also must have been the heirs of an age of art — for such works as these Vaphio cups presume a long artistic training ; ^ or else these cups are not a native product, but were imported from some land where art had flourished for a long period. This land could not have been Assyria or Phoenicia or Egypt, for there is no trace whatever of the special characteristics of Oriental or Egyptian art in this splendid repousse work, which is like some chef-d'ceuvre of Benvenuto CelHni rather than a relic of antiquity. " The design," says Professor E. Gardner, " which is all round the outside of the cups, is beaten up from behind into bold relief and finished with a chisel in front ; the repousse plates are backed with others which are turned over at the back, so as to hold in the reliefs." If not native Mycenaean work, and if not Assyrian, Phoenician, or Egyptian, whence could these cups have come ? 1 In a great vaulted tomb that had been brought to light by a landslip— perhaps the tomb of some Pelopid lord of lyaconia. 2 Gardner's Handbook of Greek Sculpture. 8 If Dr. Flinders Petrie is right in tracing the periodical rise and decline of art by means of sculpture and in assigning about 2000 years to such periods, it would seem that the Vaphio cups were the product of an art at least 1000 years old. B 17 ANCIENT GREECE Crete There can be only one answer. They must have come from Crete, or must have been the product of Cretan workmanship, lyong before — perhaps for a thousand years before — the days of those ancient pre- Achaean kings whose bones were unearthed at Mycenae there had existed in Crete a civiHzation which has only of late years been brought to light, and which we now know to have produced artistic work of a quality no less admirable than that of the Vaphio cups, and to have passed its highest development before the era of * Mycenaean ' civilization — which civilization seems to have been at its highest and to have extended over a great part of the Aegaean islands and over parts of Northern Greece, and to Cyprus and Rhodes, about 1500 to 1200. This far more ancient Cretan civilization, evidences of which, discovered during the last dozen years, take us back to the Stone Age (say 3000 B.C. at the very least), is only indirectly connected with the history of the Hellenic race (if one uses the word history in its ordinary sense) , but it is of very great interest and importance in regard to artistic and rehgious matters. I shall therefore devote a short space to its consideration. The excavations in Crete that have opened up for us a vista into so vast a realm of the past — very much more distant than that revealed by the Mycenaean and the Trojan researches of Schliemann and his successors — were first seriously begun in 1901 by Dr. (now Sir Arthur) Kvans, who went to Crete primarily in the hope of discovering further evidence of an ancient written language, his curiosity having been awakened at Athens by Cretan seals engraved with unknown hieroglyphic and linear characters. After many difficulties he was enabled to make extensive excavations on the site of the ancient city of Cnossus (or Knosos), which Homer mentions as the chief of ninety (or a hundred) towns of Crete, and where the famous artist and inventor Daedalus built the lyabyrinth for King Minos, and a beautiful dancing-ground for the princess, fair- haired Ariadne. Ere long the excavators unearthed the foundations of a very large palace, and a vast complex of 18 14- AcROPOi<is, Mycenae 15. Excavations of Pai<ace, Cnossus THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION buildings which are beHeved by some to have formed the celebrated I^abyrinth. Store-rooms were found with rows of enormous jars, and shrines with idols and other sacred objects, and a great hall, and remains of frescoes, still bright with colour, and a handsome stone seat which has been dignified with the title ' The Throne of Minos,' and finely worked vessels of syenite and marble and alabaster and steatite (soapstone), and a great quantity of tablets covered with inscriptions of which no single word has been satisfactorily deciphered, and, of course, a great deal of pottery, some of it dating probably from at least 3000 — indeed, some of the ancient black pottery (hke Etruscan bucchero) found among the Stone Age deposits ^ on the hill of Cephala, near Cnossus, may date from very much earlier times, possibly from 8000. At Phaestus, on the south side of the island, and at Gortyna and Gournia and Hagia Triada numerous finds have been made that have supplemented and confirmed the evidence of Cnossus. Any day important discoveries may bring us further knowledge and upset some of our theories. lyct us briefly consider the present evidence, and then see what conclusions may reasonably be drawn from it. Our illustrations will give us a fair conception of some of the relics. The walls of the palace (especially in the great Hall of the Double Axes ^) show evident signs of a great conflagration. Possibly the palace and city were sacked twice during the long era of this so-called Minoan civilization, and almost everything portable that was worth carrying off (such as precious metals) has disappeared. Of what remains probably the thousands of inscribed tablets, none of which has yet been deciphered, will ultimately prove the most valuable to the historian, if only some bihngual monument should be discovered that will enable us to read and understand the old 1 These deposits (beneath the first stratum of the Bronze Age, which began about 3000) are about 20 feet deep, which gives, according to the usual calculations of archaeologists, a period of at least six thousand years. " For the ' I^abrys ' see Section B. 19 ANCIENT GREECE Cretan language, as the Rosetta stone, with its Greek trans- lation of a hieroglyphic inscription, enabled ChampolHon to read the ancient language of Egypt, and as a list of Persian kings proved the key to the cuneiform script, and as the cuneiform version of the treaty between Ramses II and King Chetasor taught us to decipher Hittite monuments. But at present these Cretan tablets are a closed book to us, and it is perhaps the pictures of these Minoan people that most deeply interest one. In the ' Cup-bearer ' (Fig. i6) we have a very striking portrait (perhaps some 3500 years old) of one of these Minoan Cretans — for the features are most certainly not Oriental or Egyptian. " The flesh-tint," says Sir^Arthur Evans, "is of a deep reddish brown ; the limbs are finely moulded, though the waist, as usual in Mycenaean fashions, is tightly drawn in by a silver-mounted girdle. . . . The profile is almost classically Greek, and the physiognomy has certainly no Semitic cast. There was something very impressive in this vision of brilHant youth and of male beauty recalled after so long an interval to the upper air from what had been, till yesterday, a forgotten world." The youth is bearing, says Mr. Baikie, a " gold-mounted silver cup. His loin-cloth is decorated with a beautiful quatrefoil pattern ; he wears a silver ear-ornament, silver rings on the neck and upper arm, and on the wrist a bracelet with an agate gem." Other frescoes contain similar youths, a lady (perhaps a queen) in a magnificent dress, and many other figures, as well as scenes from bull-fights. In these scenes (found also on seals), athletes, generally boys and girls, are depicted as awaiting the charge of the infuriated animal or catching it by the horns and turning a somersault, or vaulting, over its back. The bull figures largely in Minoan art. As will be seen later, the animal was intimately connected with the old Cretan rehgion, a fact which forms a '* solid point of truth " in the legends of Theseus and the Minotaur. The connexion between Mycenaean and Cretan art and rehgious practices is, more- over, graphically confirmed by a fresco found at Tiryns, near Mycenae, and by various gems or seals where similar 20 i6. The; Cup-bearkr, Cnossus 20 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION scenes are depicted. It is just possible, too, that the Vaphio cups may represent a scene of * bull-grappling ' {ravpoKaOdxpia) by athletes. The Minoan ladies are pictured (as we find also in Egyptian art and on early Greek vases) with a skin of chalky white- ness. They are dressed in the same w^ay as the Mycenaean women already described — with towering coiffures, tight bodices, often covering but little of the bust, richly embroidered heavily pleated and flounced skirts, and often with almost 17. Acrobats and Ei,ands{?) incredible wasp-waists. Such figures are found both in colour and also incised on seals (see Figs. 7 and 28). Besides frescoes there were found figures and other objects in terra-cotta, faience, ivory, and other material, and brightly coloured reliefs in plaster, one of which is a hfe-sized bull's head (perhaps once a part of a complete bull) . It is very finely modelled and coloured, and testifies to as highly developed art as do the Vaphio cups. Also many of the Minoan vessels are of artistic workmanship. One of the steatite vessels, once probably covered with gold-leaf, represents a boxing match, another a company of soldiers with their ofiicers (most interesting as a contrast to the Mycenae ' Warrior Vase '), and another (Fig. 24) a band of people in procession carrying what may be palm-branches and preceded by a huge figure in 21 L ANCIENT GREECE a curious plaited costume. It is generally called a procession of harvesters, but the presence of a man with a sistrum (metal rattle) seems rather to point, I think, to some religious ceremony — possibly a procession of Cretan Curetes, the priests of the Cretan Zeus. The painted stone sarcophagus found at Hagia Triada (Fig. 25) is not a specimen of good Minoan art (possibly it dates after the collapse of Cretan power and art, about 1400), but is intensely interesting as an illustration of religious rites. I shall speak of it again later, together with various idols, seals with pictures of demons (genii), and other objects. The only other rehc that I shall here describe is a very beautiful table (Fig. 19), which is believed to have been the board on which some game like draughts (mentioned in Homer) used to be played. Its framework was of gold-plated ivory, and it was richly set with crystals, blue cyan, gold, and silver, and decorated with reliefs of flowers and shells of great beauty. Besides such relics we have in the vast ruins a most impressive testimony to the greatness of Crete in this so-called Minoan age. Whether or not the excavators have brought once more to the light of day the veritable lyabyrinth of Cnossus or the actual dancing-ground made by Daedalus for fair-haired Ariadne, they have, at any rate, proved that the ancient traditions about the great naval power of the Cretans are not merely empty myths, and they have shown it to be highly probable that even the Minotaur fable is an imaginative version of facts, doubtless some of them of terribly tragic nature, connected with Cretan bull-worship and the bull-grappling spectacles, in which the boy and girl athletes must have often lost their lives. Thus it seems proved that in Crete a civiHzed and at one time powerful nation existed from at least 3000 (possibly from much earHer) down to about 1350, when some great calamity befell it, from which it never recovered. Now both Thucydides and Herodotus speak of the ancient naval supremacy of Crete under a king Minos. Old myths 22 8. ' Throne of Minos 19. MiNOAN Game-board THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION tell of two Cretan kings of this name. One was the son of Zeus, a great lawgiver, who after his earthly life was made a judge (as Homer describes him) in the nether world. The other Minos was said to be his grandson. He was the husband of Pasiphae, and in his reign Daedalus built the lyabyrinth for the Minotaur, whom the Athenian hero Theseus slew. Homer also speaks of this later Minos. He calls him the father of Ariadne and Deucalion and the grand- father of the Cretan hero Idomeneus, who fought at Troy, and says that he conversed as a famihar friend with Zeus, and reigned '' for a space of nine years." Now it is almost certain that ' Minos ' was, like ' Pharaoh,' a royal title, and that these kings of Crete or Cnossus were believed to be descended from the great Cretan god, the Dictaean Zeus, and it is thought that the king, as High-priest of Zeus, went up once every nine years to ' converse ' with the deity in the Dictaeatr cave and to receive his laws (like Moses on Sinai). Moreover, research and excavation have made it clear that the old Cretan religion was closely associated with the bull, as is intimated by the myths of Kuropa ^ and Pasiphae. Bulls were doubtless sacrificed to Zeus, and the king-priest seems to have performed ceremonies in the disguise of a bull-headed monster — a fact that is probably the real explanation of the Minotaur and Pasiphae myths. By some it is beheved that the priest-king, when he entered the Dictaean cave at the end of his nine-years reign, was walled up there, or slain, 2 and it is evident that at the bull-grapphng spectacles given in honour of the Bull-god many human victims were done to death, mostly youths and maidens (as in the case of the sacrifices of first-born children to Moloch). It seems, therefore, that behind these old myths of the ' Bull of Minos ' 1 Europa, according to the myth, was carried ofE by Zeus, in the form of a bull, from Phoenicia, and it was formerly assumed that the bull-headed Cretan deity was the Phoenician Baal or Moloch. Doubtless both the Minotaur and the Talos myth do seem to point to the bull-headed Moloch and human burnt sacrifice ; but at present the Phoenicians, like the Pelasgians, are in disrepute, and it is asserted that Phoenician influence on Crete and Greece was much later and much less important than was formerly supposed. * As happened to the Pharaoh-priest at the ' Sed ' festival in Egypt. 23 ANCIENT GREECE and Theseus and the Athenian youths and maidens sent every nine years (as Plutarch tells us) to be given over as victims to this Minotaur, there is a good deal of fact, and when Thucydides (who strongly condemns " careless investigation of truth ") tells us that Minos of Crete was the first monarch to acquire a navy and that he " made himself master of the greater part " of the Aegaean and " swept piracy from the sea/' we need no longer doubt his accuracy nor the possibility of trustworthy traditions of the great Minoan Empire having reached the age of Pericles. That it was an empire founded on naval supremacy is remarkably confirmed by the fact that Cnossus possessed no fortifications. Moreover, the existence of numerous settlements named Minoa on the Mediterranean shores seems to prove it. One of these was on the island oil Megara. In the Theseus myth Minos lays even Athens under tribute. But before we draw conclusions in regard to this Minoan race and its connexion with the early history of the Hellenic nation there is another group of evidence to be considered, namely, that which Egypt ^ suppHes. Egypt and Crete The earliest evidences of what is called Minoan civilization in Crete are perhaps a little later than the age (c. 3500) in which King Mena is said to have founded the first of the Egyptian dynasties,^ and the final fall of the Minoan Empire, about 1350, corresponds with the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty. In the age of the first two dynasties there was doubtless some intercourse between Egypt and Crete, but the only possible evidence of it consists in fragments of bucchero (black pottery) which have been found in very ancient Egyptian tombs. This pottery is believed to have come from Crete. On the other hand, very ancient vessels of syenite, some of which have ^ There is only the very faintest evidence, if indeed it can be accepted as evidence, of any intercourse in these ages between Crete (or any other Aegaean land) and Babylonia or Assyria, and (what seems strange considering the great antiquity of Sidon) very much less Phoenician influence than was formerly believed to have existed. 2 Others put this back some two thousand years to 5500. 24 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION been found at Cnossus, are believed to have come from Egypt. From the era of Cheops and other Pyramid-builders (Ilird to Xlth Dynasties) there is considerably more evidence of a similar nature ; but it was not till about 2000, during the Xllth Dynasty, that the Cretan ware, especially the beautiful ' Kamares ' porcelain, seems to have been largely imported into Egypt. Indubitable specimens of this polychrome Minoan ware have been discovered in Egyptian tombs of this period, together with cylinders inscribed with the name of Amenemhat III, the last of the dynasty. It was this great king who built the lyabyrinth near I^ake Moeris in Egypt which very possibly was imitated at Cnossus by King Minos — unless indeed the Egyptian I^abyrinth was suggested by the Cretan. ^ Then follows the Dark Age of Egyptian history (Xlllth to XVIIth Dynasties), during which for some five centuries the Hyksos (a Canaanite or African nomad race) were the lords of Egypt. Of these so-called ' Shepherd Kings ' the only one at all known is Khyan (' Embracer of I^ands '). His cartouche, carved on a lion, has been found even at Bagdad, and at Cnossus the lid of an alabaster box has been discovered bearing his name. After the Dark Age and the domination of the Hyksos (broken by the Wars of Independence) we have the famous XVIIIth Dynasty, founded by Aahmes in 1580. To this dynasty belonged the great monarchs Queen Hatshepsut, King Tutmes, and Amenhotep III (Fig. 3), who extended Egyptian trade and influence into distant countries. In the numerous inscribed and painted Egyptian records of this era there figure many foreign races, and among these is one, that of the Kephtiu, which formerly used to be regarded as Phoenician, but which is evidently Cretan. In feature, in dress, and in the high coiffure with long down-hanging tresses, these painted Kephtiu bear a most striking resemblance to the type that we have in the ' Cup-bearer ' (Fig. 16), and the ^ This Egyptian lyabyrinth, with its 4500 rooms, was seen by Herodotus, who describes (ii. 148) the enormous complex as the most wonderful building on earth, " surpassing the Pyramids." Evidently this lyabyrinth was very much larger than anything discovered in Crete. 25 ANCIENT GREECE name Kephtiu, which is said to mean ' the men from beyond ' {i.e. from beyond the sea), is one that well suits the Cretans. Also the fact that these Kephtiu are depicted carrying, as tribute or gifts, gold and silver vessels very similar to the Vaphio cups confirms one's behef that they are Cretans, all the more when one remembers that the era of this XVIIIth Dynasty corresponds to that of the great Palace at Cnossus, with its wonderful frescoes and other signs of an advanced civilization. Moreover, the evidence from pottery is here very strong, great quantities of Cretan ware of this period and of the succeeding centuries having been found in Egypt. It is very striking that about 1400, the era of the sack of Cnossus and the fall of the Minoan Empire, the Kephtiu suddenly disappear from Egyptian records, and that some 100 years later, about the time of the Biblical Exodus, the names of a number of strange northern tribes are found, among whom are the * Aqayuasha ' — very possibly the Achaeans. Not much later, again {c. 1200 — just about the time of the Trojan War), a great host of ' people of the sea,' leagued with the Hittites, threatened Egypt from the north-east, but they were defeated and dispersed by Ramses III. Among these invaders are mentioned Danauna (possibly Danai, i.e. Argives) and Pulosathu, who were probably Cretan refugees and identical with the Kephtiu — perhaps the Biblical Philistines of Kaphtor.i Egypt and Mycenae During the later period of Minoan civilization (say 1700-1400) the Mycenaean civilization was probably at its highest, ^ and 1 See Jer. xlvii. 4 and Gen. x. 14. After their defeat by Ramses these Pulosathu (Pelasgians ? Philistines ?) seem to have settled in Palestine, and it is remarkable that Cretan pottery is said to have been discovered at their chief town, Gath. Perhaps Goliath was a Cretan, and perhaps, after all, the Philistines were of a people that for some reasons may claim to be children of Light no less than the Israelites — artistically anyhow. 2 Not only are traces of ' Mycenaean ' civilization found in Aegaean lands and islands, as well as in Northern Greece, and even in Sicily and Spain, but it seems that there were Mycenaean kings in Cyprus about 1450. And yet Mycenae was evidently not a great naval power. 26 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION to this period may belong the shaft-tombs on the acropolis of Mycenae. Amongst the relics there discovered we have already noted an evident Nile scene on an inlaid dagger-blade. But besides this the cartouche of the Egyptian Amenhotep III (Fig. 3), the great king of the XVIIIth Dynasty, was found in one of the later vaulted tombs, as well as several pieces of porcelain inscribed with his name. Amenhotep reigned from 1414 to 1380, so it seems likely that these later Mycenaean tombs were built about 1400. The old Aegaean (Pelopid ?) kings of the earher tombs were probably supreme at Mycenae, and in the rest of the Peloponnese, until about this date, when Mycenae seems to have been conquered by some foreign enemy. Shortly afterwards the same enemy seems to have sacked Cnossus. General Conclusions The question now naturally arises, who were these invaders ? And this question leads us to a still larger one, namely, what conclusions can we from all this evidence reasonably draw in regard to the early inhabitants of Greece, and those migrations and invasions and heroes and dynasties of which Greek myths tell so much, but which till lately were generally regarded as quite worthless fables ? Firstly, then, who were these invaders who seem to have conquered Mycenae and some years later to have sacked Cnossus ? The old tradition, handed down to us by Herodotus, says that when Daedalus made himself wings and thus escaped to Southern Italy and Sicily he was pursued by Minos, and that, Minos having come to a tragic end in Sicily, a great host of Cretans set forth in ships to avenge his death ; but they failed in their object and lost their fleet in a tempest and founded Hyria in Southern Italy, where they changed their name to Messapian lapygians. Herodotus also learnt from the inhabi- tants of Praesos, in Crete, that after this national disaster " men of various nations flocked to Crete, destitute as it now was of inhabitants ; but none came in such numbers as the 27 ANCIENT GREECE Greeks." He places the death of this King Minos three gene- rations before the Trojan War, say in 1330 — i.e. not long after the time when, we are assured by modern archaeologists, Cnossus was sacked and the great palace burnt. What truth there may be in this tale of a Cretan-Sicilian expedition one cannot say. Possibly it represents the general exodus of Cretans after the advent of " men of various nations " from over the sea. Of these invaders, according to Herodotus, the Greeks (Hellenes) were the most numerous, and among the various nations which inhabited Crete in a somewhat later, post-Dorian, age the first that Homer mentions are the Achaeans,^ which looks as if then they were still the paramount race. All our evidence, I think, points to the Achaeans as the conquerors of the Mycenaeans and other Aegaean peoples, and as the sackers of Cnossus, and points to the period 1400-1200 as that during which these northern invaders (of whom we have already heard much in connexion with the Homeric age and the sixth city of Troy) extended their conquests over Greece and as far as Crete. That these Achaeans (perhaps the ' Aqayuasha ' of Egyptian records, of whom we have heard) made themselves lords not only of mainland Greece but also of the Aegaean, and perhaps Crete, seems probable also from Homer's statement (quoted by Thucydides) that Agamemnon, the great Achaean king, ruled not only over all Argos but over ' many islands.' The second and larger question which we must endeavour to answer is, what conclusions we may reasonably accept in regard to the races which inhabited Greece before the advent of the Achaeans. We have already seen that they were probably a dark-haired, lithe-limbed people, such as we find the ancient Cretans to be depicted, and we have spoken of them as the ' Aegaean ' race. I^et us now hear what old Greek tradition says about these early inhabitants of Greece, and their conquerors, the Achaeans. 1 Od. xix. 175. He mentions also aboriginal Cretans, Cydonians, Pelasgians, and the (evidently later) Dorians. 28 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION At the beginning of his history Thucydides, after speaking of the continual migrations of the tribes of ancient Greece, mentions the ' Pelasgian ' name as that which was most widely applied to these tribes. lyong before the time of Thucydides these Pelasgians had been frequently mentioned by Homer, who speaks of them in Thessaly, Boeotia, Attica, and even in the Peloponnese, and also in Asia Minor (possibly aboriginal Phrygians, fighting on the side of the Trojans) and in Crete He gives the epithet ' divine ' (heaven-descended ? aboriginal ?) to these Pelasgians. Moreover, he applies the epithet ' Pelas- gian ' to the northern (Thessalian) Argos, and to the Zeus whose oracle was at Dodona, in Epirus. Herodotus also tells us of Pelasgians who built the old walls of the Athenian AcroiDolis, and it seems certain that the original lords of what was later the Athenian Acropolis were those Pelasgi or Gecropes whom later ' autochthonous ' f amiHes , of Athens claimed as their ancestors. I It seems not impossible that these ancient Pelasgians were of the same race as the Etruscans or Tyrrhenians, called Tyrseni (perhaps ' Tower Men ') by the Greeks.^ It is also not impossible that the Pulosathu of Crete (the PhiHstines?), of whom we have already heard, were Pelasgians ; and, lastly, it is quite possible that the Turusha, one of the oversea tribes mentioned as having invaded Egypt about 1300 together with the Aqayuasha (Achaeans ?), were these Tyrseni or Etruscans. However this may be, it is not surprising that formerly all writers on Greece accepted the word * Pelasgian ' as the most satisfactory name to cover the unknown tribes inhabiting i Greece at the time of the Achaean invasions. But of late j ^ Hesiod (c. 750), or some early imitator, mentions the Tyrseni of Italy and possibly even King Latinus ! The Etruscans called themselves * Rasena.' Some three centuries later Herodotus asserts that the Tyrseni of Italy came from I^ydia, and also that Pelasgians were expelled from Athens and settled in lyemnos. Now other traditions say that there were people called Tyrsenes in Ivemnos, who were believed to be Tyrrhenians, and an inscription found in I,emnos is said to show similarities to old Etruscan. According to Pliny and Varro, there was a great I^abyrinth, like the Cretan, connected with the tomb of I^ars Porsena at Clusium, in Etruria. C/. Thuc. iv. 109. 29 ANCIENT GREECE years this name has met with disfavour, for it is evident that the newly discovered ' Aegaean ' race was not identical with the Pelasgic, and it is our knowledge of this so-called Aegaean race that now allows us to reconstruct and repeople to some extent that obscure * mythical ' age formerly regarded as unworthy of the attention of the historian. The only satisfactory answer, therefore, that we can give in regard to the pre- Achaean inhabitants of Greece is this : There were doubtless also other peoples (such as these Pelas- gians), but in the southern parts of Greece the main race, and the only race that we really know anything about for certain, was this Mycenaean, or Aegaean, race, to which probably the Cretans were closely related. They were a dark- haired, long-headed people, not of Semitic origin, but possibly with some affinity to the Egyptians. They lived in Greece in what is called the Bronze Age — that is, before iron came into general use — and perhaps before bronze was invented, which could not have been until tin was brought from western lands (from Spain, and perhaps even from Britain) . Before tin was procurable to mix with their copper, which they obtained in abundance from Cyprus and also from Chalcis, in Euboea, they were obhged to make their weapons and tools of copper, or of stone or obsidian. In early times possibly some of these Aegaean folk {e.g. at Orchomenus, Tiryns, and other marshy places) dwelt in lake- villages, like the Stone Age inhabitants of other parts of Europe. The northern invaders, the Achaeans, seem to have introduced the more general use of bronze for weapons and armour. Then, about 1250, iron, which hitherto had been among Aegaean peoples a rare material for rings and small ornaments, began to be used for sharp-edged tools (as we find it in Homer) , and gradually won its way into general use.^ Possibly the arts of smelting and of forging iron (graphi- cally described in the Odyssey, ix. 391) may have been intro- duced by the Achaeans ; but the metal may have been found less commonly by them in Greece, which may account for its comparatively rare mention by Homer. 1 See Hesiod's Erga for these various Ages. C/. p. 105. 30 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION During this Bronze Age (that is, before the advent of the northern invaders) there were in Greece doubtless other important cities, besides Mycenae and Tiryns and Amyclae and Orchomenus, inhabited by Aegaeans or Pelasgians or whatever else we may call these early races, but, except in a few cases, their memorials have utterly perished. Of Athens, however, and of Thebes we have some remarkable traditions. Athens in Pre-Dorian Times On account of the poverty of its soil, as Thucydides tells us, and also perhaps on account of the more warlike character of its inhabitants, Attica seems never to have been permanently conquered by invaders. It apparently remained (as also Arcadia in the Peloponnese) finally unoccupied by the Achaeans,^ and the ancient Pelasgian race was the main stock from which the later Athenians sprang, though much else was grafted upon it. Of these old Pelasgian aborigines a relic may still be seen, namely, a few blocks of bluish lime- stone which formed a part of the rampart built round their citadel. This old wall was by the later Athenians called the * Pelasgic ' or ' Pelargic ' wall, and to the north-west of the Acropolis was an open space called the ' Pelasgion,' on which it was forbidden to build, until at the beginning of the Pelo- ponnesian War (431), when thousands were flocking from the country into the city, the old law was allowed to lapse. ^ Herodotus tells of old Pelasgian kings of Attica, Cecrops and Brechtheus, regarded, of course, later as divine ^ and associated with the ancient snake-worship so common in the cult of the dead. According to one old legend, Cecrops came from Egypt — which, indeed, possibly was the cradle of the Aegaean and Pelasgian people. He is said to have introduced ^ This evidently accounts for the fact that Athens is ahnost entirely ignored by Homer, the glorifier of the Achaeans. (In later times the Athenians perhaps inserted certain lines in their own honour.) 2 Thuc. ii. 17. ' The ancient EJrechtheion, or * house of Brechtheus,' preceded the temple of Athene. Some writers assert that Cecrops (as also many another old hero, such as Odysseus, or even the lawgiver Lycurgus) was originally " only a god." i Surely the reverse process is more credible. 31 ANCIENT GREECE a higher form of rehgion and to have aboHshed bloody (human ?) sacrifice. On the old Cecropian citadel was built by his son Krechtheus a temple, first dedicated to Poseidon, but after- wards (as we see from Homer, Od. vii. 82) given over to the new tutelary deity, Athene ; ^ or perhaps they shared it until the first Parthenon was built. Aegeus, grandson of Krechtheus, is said to have been the father of Theseus, and if (as we have seen to be possible) the myth of Theseus and King Minos refers to facts that occurred in the last era of Minoan civiliza- tion — i.e. about 1350 — it will follow that Cecrops might have lived (granting that tradition is fairly correct) about 1450. Thus the era of the ancient traditional Pelasgian kings of Athens would correspond with the highest period of Mycenaean civilization, and the tradition which tells us that Theseus was driven from his throne ^ may very possibly be founded on the fact that the Achaeans, though they did not retain possession, captured Athens. And the strange story of the fierce battle, in the very midst of the city, in which Theseus conquered the Amazons may point to some disturbance caused by the pressure from the north of the Achaean invaders. Thebes in Pre-Dorian Times Another ancient city of Greece was seven-gated Thebes, which has left us many remarkable legends, but very few ruins, and almost no relics of its early existence — as is the case with most places that have been continuously inhabited. Homer speaks of Amphion (Niobe's husband) and Zethus as its founders, and perhaps this is the oldest tradition, and points to a dynasty (possibly from Phrygia, the home of Niobe and her brother Pelops) before that of Cadmus, who is ^ The contest between Poseidon and Athene for the tutelage of the city was the subject of the west pediment of the later Parthenon (see Fig. 86) . Codrus is said to have decided it. Others say that it was decided by the votes of the Athenian women, who beat the men by one vote — a^ad were straightway dis- franchised 1 2 He retired to the island Scyros, where he was murdered. Some nine hundred years later what were supposed to be his bones were brought to Athens by Cimon and consigned to the Theseion (Theseum) — perhaps not what is now so called. 32 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION generally said to have founded Thebes. Cadmus, according to Herodotus, was a Phoenician,^ and " introduced the art of writing, whereof the Greeks till then had been ignorant.'' Fourth in descent from Cadmus was Oedipus, whose tragic fate is related by Sophocles. One of the sons of Oedipus, according to the old legend, expelled by his brother fled to the Peloponnese and incited the famous and disastrous expe- dition of the Seven against Thebes, in which six of the seven heroes perished ; but later their descendants (Kpigoni) made a second expedition and razed Thebes to the ground. This well-known myth doubtless rests on traditions of real facts, and these facts were probably of this nature. When the successive waves of northern invaders — whom we may conveniently call by the collective name of Achaeans — rolled southward through Upper Greece, the seven-portal' d stronghold of Thebes, with its mighty ramparts and towers (see Od. xi. 264) and its Cadmeia, the acropolis built by Cadmus, at first proved impregnable ; but after the invaders had firmly planted themselves in southern Argos they sent an army across the Isthmus or the Gulf of Corinth and succeeded in capturing the city. With this theory the traditional date of Cadmus (1313) and that of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes (1213) fit in very fairly, and the theory that these attacks on Thebes were made by an elder generation of the Homeric ' Achaeans ' and ' Argives ' is in agreement with what Homer and Hesiod and others relate. But let us hear further what is known, or what may be reason- ably inferred, about these invaders who, doubtless in many successive waves and under many different names, poured into Greece, evidently from the north, during perhaps two centuries (1400-1200). It is said ^ that parts of Central Europe during these ages were peopled by a race which in many points resembled the ^ The name may possibly mean ' the Oriental ' ; cf. Hebrew gedent, the East. Some, however, assert that what few relics have been discovered of Thebes are purely Minoan in character. ^ See especially Professor Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece. Others regard this ' Hallstatt civilization ' as dating only from about 700. c 33 ANCIENT GREECE Achaeans described by Homer. In the Austrian Alps not far from Salzburg there is a place named Hallstatt, where about a thousand graves have been examined. The relics point to a transition between the ages of bronze and iron. Armour and shields (round metal shields very unlike the huge Aegaean shield) and swords of both metals were found, and a great number of brooches [fibulae, irepovm), such as those with which, as we have already seen, the Homeric woman's peplos and the man's chlaina were fastened. Not much silver was found, but many ornaments of amber (from northern seas), and gold and a blue vitreous substance like the Homeric cyan. Both burial and cremation seem to have been prac- tised. Whether there is any evidence of horses and chariots I do not know. It seems possible that bands of this northern, fair-haired, broad-headed Aryan race ^ made their way from time to time down into Epirus and Thessaly, and established themselves in the district of Pelasgic Argos, also called Phthiotis, the home of the Homeric Achilles. Here they probably collected a large army of the native Argives, and at the head of this Argive host pressed southward, crossed the Corinthian Gulf, over- ran the Peloponnese (except perhaps Arcadia), and founded that southern Argos of which Agamemnon was afterwards king, 2 and which before the advent of the Achaeans and their Argives was probably called lyarisa (one of the very numerous ' lyarisas,' or forts, in Greece and Asia Minor) and was a mere outpost of royal Mycenae. Now in Thessaly, perhaps before the advent of the Achaeans (unless they accompanied or followed them from the north), lived a people called Hellenes. They were evidently of Aryan, not Pelasgic, race. Tradition makes Hellen, their ancestor, son of the Greek Noah, Deucalion, and asserts that he ^ Tites-caffies is even nowadays (besides its other meaning) used as a sobriquet for the Teuton race. * In Homer Diomede seems to be prince of the city Argos, probably under the suzerainty of Agamemnon, who lived at Mycenae. The theory has already been mentioned that Agamemnon and his Achaeans and Argives were only transported from Thessaly to the Peloponnese by a poet's imagination. 34 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION reigned over Thessalian Phthiotis, or Phthia, as Homer calls it, which was the home of Achilles. The district inhabited by these Hellenes — the original Hellas — seems to have been the valley of the river Spercheios (now called Ellada), which runs into the sea not far north of Thermopylae. Some of these Hellenes seem to have joined in the southward march, and to have been merged in the larger host of Argives and Achaeans — for in Homer the Hellenes, and the pan-Hellenes, are still the Thessalian folk who followed Achilles, and Hellas is still only a district in Thessaly. It was not till much later, as Thucydides says, that the names Hellas and Hellenes won their broader meanings, and denoted the land and the peoples of what we call the Greek race not only in Greece proper but in Asia Minor, Africa, Sicily, and Italy. ^ These invading bands of Achaeans, with their Argive and Hellene followers, seem to have settled themselves chiefly in the Peloponnese. Mycenae was evidently captured by them, but the signs of conflagration which are found both at Mycenae and at Tiryns are very Hkely due to the later Dorians, of whom we shall hear ere long. The Achaeans were probably not such a refined and artistically civilized people as the Mycenaeans whom they had conquered, but they were not, as the Dorians seem to have been, what Homer calls " savages wanton and wild, despisers of justice," and they seem to have assimilated much that was valuable in the old Aegaean civiHzation. Indeed, the pictures that Homer gives us of these Achaean princes are those of men warlike and haughty, and sometimes terribly cruel and crafty, but endowed with deep feelings of affection and reverence and with a keen sensitiveness to all ^ It is curious also how the word ' Greek ' won its way from an equally obscure origin. Aristotle indeed asserts that near Dodona, in Epirus, there lived in early ages a people "then called Greeks, but now Hellenes"; and Sophocles perhaps used the name ; but it is generally supposed that it was the Romans who first gave the name to the Hellenes whom they met in Southern Italy (Magna Graecia). It has been pointed out that a band of Graians from Boeotia joined the Kuboeans in founding Cyme (Cumae) in Italy, and that their name was applied by the Romans to all Hellenic people. Nations are sometimes named from apparently small causes {e.g. Americans, Swiss), and are often known to foreigners by non-native names, e.g. Germans, AUemands, Xedeschi, Dutch, Kafirs, ]^truscans (Rasena), I/ycians (Termilae). 35 ANCIENT GREECE that is gracious and beautiful. To their possession of such quahties may be due the otherwise inexpHcable fact that the tombs of the Mycenaean monarchs were discovered intact after the lapse of more than 3000 years. How these could have escaped the Dorians and later marauders is puzzling enough, but that they were not at once plundered by the Achaeans seems explainable by assuming (as I assumed before) that these Achaeans did not ravage and enslave, but, like the Norman adventurers in later ages, constituted themselves the lords of the native population, and probably married princesses of the native dynasties. On this assumption Atreus and Agamemnon, though mainly of Achaean blood, might have regarded the old Pelopidae as their ancestors, and in this case would have carefully kept intact their tombs on the acropolis, lyater, i^erhaps, the effects of some conflagration may have concealed them from the invader. Having thus given a sketch of what is known about the early — so-called Aegaean — age of Greece, and having shown the connexion between this Aegaean civilization and that of Crete, Egypt, and Troy, and having discussed some of the more important traditions in their possible relation to certain great occurrences in Greece proper down to the final establish- ment of the Achaeans in Southern Greece (say about 1200), I shall now, before continmng the account of historical, or quasi-historical, events, treat in the following three sections three subjects connected with what has been already written — namely, the questions of (A) I^anguage and Writing, (B) The Old Religion, (C) The * Homeric Age ' and Homer. The fourth section will contain a chronological table (with, of course, many somewhat audaciously hazarded dates) which will give a bird's-eye view of the era that we have been considering. These and other such sections may be regarded as supple- mentary monographs, not as integral parts of the main subject of the book. 36 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION SECTION A : LANGUAGE AND WRITING A chapter on the old Aegaean and Pelasgic languages necessarily exhibits some similarity to the celebrated chapter on the snakes of Ireland. Of ancient Cretan, which was perhaps related to the Mycenaean and other Aegaean lan- guages, we do, indeed, possess some thousands of inscriptions, but not one single symbol or letter of all these inscriptions has yet been satisfactorily deciphered, far less has any certain meaning been extracted. It is uncertain whether Pelasgic was of the same family as the Aegaean and Cretan, and whether all these languages, or any one of them, belonged to the Aryan stock or to the Semitic, or to some other entirely unknown stock, from which perhaps also the Hittite language was derived. Herodotus tells us that, to judge from various Pelasgian tribes of his day (some in Macedonia, others on the Hellespont) and from cities " which have dropped the name, but are in fact Pelasgian," their language was certainly ' barbarous ' ; but of course this is no proof of its having been a non- Aryan language, and tells us no more than Homer does when he calls the Carians ' barbarous-tongued.' As we have already seen, there is a possibiHty of the Pelasgic being closely related to the Etruscan, and we have also seen that this same language may possibly have been spoken by Goliath and his fellow- Philistines. But to speak of the Pelasgic as the principal language or dialect of ancient Greece, and to assume that it may have been the same as the Mycenaean, and related to the Cretan, is, of course, mere guesswork. All we can be fairly certain about is that the pre-Hellenic language, or languages, left behind names of places and other words which were adopted by the northern invaders, and which are evidently from no Greek source. ' I^arisa ' is a name that survived both in Thessaly and in Asia Minor. It seems to mean ' a fortress.' 'Olympos' and 'Parnassus' are others. Words with the termi- nation 'inth{os) are thought to be Pelasgic or Aegaean — e.g, Corinthos, Tiryn(th)s, Olynthos, Zacynthos, Rhadaminthys, 37 ANCIENT GREECE Hyacinthos, and lyabyrinthos. As far as we can tell, these and other such words, supposed to be relics of the old Pelasgic or Aegaean, have no affinity to an}'' Aryan or to any Semitic language. Formerly it was believed that no writing existed in Europe before the Phoenicians introduced their alphabet into Crete, whence it was brought to Greece. There seems, indeed, no evidence that writing, whether alphabetic or other, was known in pre-Hellenic Greece, for although Herodotus (v. 58) asserts that Cadmus and his Phoenicians brought the art of writing, " whereof the Greeks had been till then ignorant,*' to Boeotia when they founded Thebes (traditional date 1313), nevertheless no inscription of any sort has, I believe, been found in Greece itself of a date earlier than about 700, and nothing at all in any script except the alphabetic. Amid all the costly and artistic treasures of the Mycenaean kings there has been discovered no sign of writing. But, strange as it may seem, writing was well known at this time not only in Egypt and Babylonia, and perhaps in a great part of Asia Minor, but also in Crete, and, as ancient seals and other inscribed objects prove, it had existed there ever since at least 2000 — long before the advent of the Phoenician alphabet. This Minoan script — of which there are various forms — was probably a Cretan ^ invention, although in its oldest form it seems to have some affinity to Egyptian hieroglyphics, and in its later possibly to the Hittite and Cypriot writing. In its oldest form Minoan script was pictographic. It consisted of rude pictures or symbols denoting objects themselves. lyater it became hieroglyphic, in which system the symbol denoted the name of an object, i.e. a word. Finally it became linear, each sign probably denoting a syllable (not a mere sound, as in the alphabetic system). Thousands of tablets with this linear script have been dis- covered. It went through various changes, and after the great catastrophe of c. 1400 developed a more systematic method of representing words and sentences, and a cursive 1 Similar script has been found in some of the islands— f.g. Thera and Melos. 38 20. Cretan Jars for Oii. or Corn 21. Ci<AY Disc of Phaestus 38 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION character which seems to presume the knowledge of pen and ink. In the later form the Minoan script stands on a level very much higher than Egyptian hieroglyphics or Babylonian cuneiform. Hitherto, as we have said, all attempts to decipher Cretan script have failed, except that possibly certain numerical symbols, like the Egyptian, have been recognized.^ Perhaps the most remarkable of all inscriptions found in Crete is that on both faces of the so-called disc of Phaestus 22. Cretan I^inkar Script (Fig. 2i), a circular clay tablet about 7 inches in diameter. The date is perhaps about 1800. It is evidently not merely pictographic, and is divided into periods, which may repre- sent words, or sentences. The regularity of these divisions and the repetition of certain symbols, such as the crested or horse-maned warrior ^ and the circle with seven dots (can they ^ Supposed to have been on a decimal system, the unit signified by an upright stroke, the tens by points, the hundreds by bars, and the thousands by lozenges. 2 Reminding one of Egyptian pictures of the Pulosathu (Philistines), and still more of the description by Herodotus of I^ibyans in the army of Xerxes who wore on the head " the scalps of horses with the ears and mane standing upright as a crest. ' ' In Central Africa I have seen similar crests made of zebra scalps. 39 ANCIENT GREECE be tlie sky and seven planets ?), have made some believe that it is a poem — possibly a hymn to the Cretan Zeus or the Great Mother. Sir Arthur Kvans holds it to be lyycian rather than Cretan script. In later times, after Greek influence had established itself in Crete, there was a considerable district at the eastern end of the island inhabited by the descendants of the old Cretan race (Eteocretes, or true-Cretans, as Homer calls them) Among them an old Cretan language survived, as the Krse in Ireland and the Basque in Spain. But the old script was apparently forgotten, and an inscription in this language written in Greek letters has been discovered. Unfortunately, although we can read it, we cannot extract any meaning from it. In Greece itself, as has been already said, there has been found no sign of any script but the alphabetic, and the hope of discovering a clue to ancient Mycenaean or Pelasgic is therefore immeasurably less than in the case of the old Cretan languages. The earliest mention of writing in Greek literature is probably to be found in Homer's Iliad (vi. i68), where King Proetus of Argos sends Bellerophon to lyycia with ' direful signs * written on a ' closed tablet,' in order that the Ivycian king should kill him on his arrival. These ' direful signs ' may have been pictorial, or (as Proetus had lived in I/ycia) they may have been in I^ycian writing,^ or in such a script as the Hittites employed — ^hieroglyphic or the so-called Cypriot syllabarium — which seems to have been widely used in Asia Minor, for imitations of it are said to have been found among the ornamental devices on ancient Trojan pottery. Although not related in very ancient Greek literature, the fable of Philomela (daughter of the old Athenian king Pandion) seems to imply the knowledge of some kind of writing, as she ^ The ancient Lycian alphabet is said to have had more vowels than con- sonant?, so that it was probably non-Semitic, but it differed entirely from the Greek, although Greece and Lycia seem to have been from early times closely connected. Indeed, the word ' Lycian ' is wholly Greek. The people called themselves ' Termilae,' as Herodotus says, and as is proved by inscriptions. 40 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION wove words into a peplos to communicate with her sister Procne ; and the Apple of Discord was inscribed. The invention, or anyhow the introduction into Europe, of the alphabet is due to the Phoenicians.^ The Phoenician script consisted (like other Semitic scripts) solely of consonants and breathings. The Greeks seem to have adopted about fourteen consonants from the Phoenicians and to have used the Phoenician breathings (aspirates) to represent the four vowel sounds A, B, I, O. Then from the East probably came the Greek upsilon (Y), which at first was a consonant [i.e. the digamma, pronounced like V or F), and the eta (H), which in classical Greek is e, but at first was an aspirate, as later in lyatin. It is found as aspirate on old Greek vases. lyater it was cut in half vertically, and the halves were used as the hard and soft breathings. The H as aspirate can be seen on Hiero's helmet (Fig. ^/y) and on Tataia's oil-flask (Fig. 23). Other consonants, e.g. "i^, ^, and the long vowel 17, were invented later — probably in Ionia, or perhaps Sicily. The ancient 9 {koppa ; Hebr. Koph) was introduced very early into Corinth, and is found on Corinthian vases down to Roman times. The old form of the four-stroke S was undulatory, nearly hke our S (Fig. 23). At Corinth it was sometimes written M. This is found also on coins of Paestum. Euripides (in a fragment) describes all the letters of the name 9H2EYE, and hence we see that in Attica about 440 the H was the e and the 2 was already written with four strokes. As we have seen, the art of writing is said by old authors to have been brought to Greece by Cadmus of Thebes. It is perhaps more probable that it was first introduced from the East into Asiatic Hellas, and thence to Athens. But several variations of Hellenic script existed, and the ' Cadmean' or some other may have preceded the Ionian in Greece proper. The full alphabet of twenty-four letters (called the Simonidean, after the Cean poet) seems first to have been used in Samos, and not to have reached Athens until after the Peloponnesian War * How far the Phoenician alphabetic system influenced Cretan script is not easy to determine. The latest form of Cretan script seems to be syllabic. 41 ANCIENT GREECE (403). At first the Greeks often wrote from right to left (see Fig. 23), as was done in Phoenician and other Semitic languages. Then they sometimes wrote alternate lines in different directions, " turning the oxen/' as they expressed it, at the end of each line (Pov<rTpo(l)vS6v) , or else they placed the words in a column [kiovyiSov), as in some Oriental languages. We may regard 1000-900 (i.e. about the age of Solomon and Hiram of Tyre) as the period in which the art of writing became known to the Greeks through the same Phoenicians who helped Solomon to build his Temple. Although doubtless ,@®T^\4 Tfu* 'i at. tKtt^ntH. »LC/}ea' an *> "^^^ Tpcrxt^j cfu hguBos ■ hos dkv fu h^6J/ih tiiJ^s &n^ ^ J Atn Taputu J^asA ,<^ uhoei/i^JiaJjnc s{<z/( ie^tmc v^'nd ^ FiGi 23- it was long before it came into anything like general use, it was most probably used for private, if not public, purposes ^ during one or two centuries before an Attic jar, now in the Museum at Athens, was incised with what is believed to be the earliest Greek inscription extant. The inscription, scratched on the shoulder of the jar in primitive Greek letters, is to this effect : " He who of all the dancers the most gaily skips. His shall be this vase." The date of this jar and of the inscription (which seems to have been incised in the still soft clay) is supposed to be about 700. Above is shown another very interesting inscription, perhaps nearly as old, scratched ^ The name of I^ycurgus is said to have been inscribed on the ancient discus of Iphitus which was preserved at Olympia. The entire absence of all relics of Greek inscriptions of this age is remarkable. 42 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION by a child (or for a child) on her lekythus — a clay bottle for oil or scented water. Do not the letters seem to build a fairy bridge across the gulf of all these 2500 years ? The signature of the artists Krgotimus and Clitias, who made and painted the Frangois Vase (Fig. 39), may be not very much later. The Greek inscriptions on the Abu Simbel colossus (Fig. 44) are of about 594. SECTION B : THE OLD RELIGION When we speak of the old religion of the Greeks as distin- guished from the later worship of the Olympian deities it must not be forgotten that the feeling of awe and the sense of mystery which were the sources of that earlier religion are inexhaustible in human nature, and that side by side with the worship of Zeus and Athene there continued to exist all through the so-called classical age many old rites and esoteric creeds and secret practices, such as we hear of in connexion with the Bleu- sinian and other mysteries, and with the Dionysiac (Bacchic) orgies, and the occult and doubtless sometimes noble teachings of the Orphic theology. Indeed, this old mysticism long survived, as it was bound to do, what has been called the short-lived puppet-show of the Olympian hierarchy, and one of the last things that we know of the Athenians is that many centuries after they had lost what little belief they ever had in the deities of their pantheon they had reverted to that * wonder ' which is said to be the fountain-head of all religion, and were standing once more in doubt and awe before the altar of a nameless god. It would be futile to divide the ages of Greek history into certain periods and assign to each its peculiar form of religion. But there are certain underlying principles and many external characteristics which distinguish the pre-Hellenic and the Homeric forms of religion; and even the external form of a nation's religion is of interest and helps one to understand that nation. I shall, therefore, first consider some of the distinguishing principles and then some of the very striking 43 ANCIENT GREECE differences in the kind of deities and the kind of worship that we find in the two rehgions. What chiefly distinguishes the old reHgion from the later is that it was based mainly, if not entirely, on the dread of evil spirits {^eKridaijULovla) . It was a religion of atone- ment, propitiation, exorcism, purification, riddance — the turning aside of evil influence (airorpoirri). Sacrifices and offerings were made on the principle do ut abeas — i.e. " I give in order that thou depart." As it is still with many a barbarous people, so also in Greece in early times, before the Hellenic imagination had personified in human shape the powers of nature, every not quite usual manifestation of natural force and every unusual natural object was suspected of harbouring powers hostile to man. " The earth is full of evil things, and full the sea," says Hesiod. Pests and plagues and deadly ' snatchers ' and winged disease were lurking and swarming and flitting about on all sides, and the evil eye was ever on the watch. Ghosts and ghoulish things haunted the darkness of night and of the grave. The souls of the dead manifested themselves not seldom in the form of snakes, to which propitiatory offerings were made, and the powers of the nether world, hungering for blood, were doubtless at times appeased by human sacrifice — of which many evidences survived to a later age in ceremonies of substitution or other curious rites whose meaning had long been lost.^ And in later times, as we shall see, there were many other survivals of old chthonic ritual, as it is called, con- nected with the worship of the powers of the earth, especially with that of the Karth-Mother, Demeter, and of Dionysus. This religion of dread and exorcism gave place — probably somewhat rapidly and not permanently — to a rehgion which was not only wholly different in its external forms of v/orship, but was founded on an entirely different basis, namely, that of service (Oepairela) , the principle of which was do ut des — i.e. ^ The stories of Isaac and of Iphigeneia denote the substitution of animals for the human victim. Aelian tells of a curious rite where a baby calf was dressed up and furnished with boots {cothurni) and thus sacrificed. 44 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION '' I give that thou mayst give/' The offering was no longer made in order to propitiate some dreaded demonic power, but given to a deity endowed with human feeHngs and human reason — one who would surely grant some favour in return for the service. The gloomy chthonic rites and the horrors of human sacrifice and the orgies of Dionysus Zagreus, in which the victim was torn to pieces and devoured raw (with some idea of * eating the god '), and all the ' spook ' and mystery and monstrosity and barbarity and sacerdotalism ^ that is connected with such religion, disappeared apparently in a short time after the coming of the Achaeans — for in all Homer there is scarce a trace of such things.^ It is true that we cannot infer from Homer's picture (even if it is a true picture of a certain class) that the bulk of the Greek nation in the so-called heroic age had renounced the old faith and adopted the new. Possibly behind the dazzHng scene of the Achaean and Argive hosts and behind all the brilliant ' puppet show ' of the Olympian hierarchy there was still a dark background in Greece itself where the old monstrous beliefs and the old ritual still lurked, like the Python of Delphi before it was slain by Apollo. But for a time at least this new and brighter religion was destined to prevail — to become the recognized national religion of Greece — and before returning to consider some of the ancient pre-Hellenic deities and their * supersession ' (as it has been called) by the gods of the northern invaders, we should note well how the Hellenic imagination transformed all the ghouls and pests and other evil and monstrous things into Fates and Harpies and Sirens and Gorgons, depriving them thus of the vague, gruesome horror of their mysterious wn-human nature. Apollo comes with his bright shafts, and ^ The immense number of priests, prophets, hierophants, and other such mediums connected with the Orphic and similar mystic systems is often mentioned. Priestly office connected with the mysteries was the hereditary right of certain great families, such as the i^umolpidae. What such things can develop into may be seen from the history of the Persian Magi. 2 There certainly is the slaughter of Trojan captives by Achilles at the funeral of Patroclus ; but that was scarcely liuman sacrifice. 45 ANCIENT GREECE Heracles, the god of health/ the conqueror of Death itself and the husband of ever-blooming Hebe — and they put to flight the swarming hordes of evil things, and the mountain glades re-echo to the laughter of dryads and nymphs, and the sands of the sea-shore become the dancing-grounds of ocean nereids. Kven the terrible Furies themselves — though in a later age still worshipped with mystical chthonic rites as denizens of Hell — seem to have won for themselves a worship of service, and almost of affectionate veneration, as the August and Kindly Goddesses. Instead of hideous and savage rites and human sacrifice and wild orgies where live victims are torn to pieces and their bleeding flesh devoured by the worshippers in their mystical yearning to ' eat the god ' and thus participate in the divine, we have Homeric prayer and sacrifice andhbation, by which the gods are invoked as beings endowed with human affections, in the full assurance (scarce ever deceived) of help and favour ; ^ we have joyous sacrificial feasts at which the gods themselves sometimes are present in visible shape. " Ever till now," says King Alcinous (who, though no Achaean, is of orthodox Olympian creed), "ever till now have the gods appeared to us in manifest form whenever we offered glorious hecatombs, and they feast with us, sitting at our side where we are seated. Ay, and if any lonely wayfarer meet them, they nowise conceal themselves — for we are nigh [akin] unto the gods." The common form of invocation to the supreme deity as ' Father Zeus,' the father both of men and of gods, whose thunder is often a sign of favour, and who " follows with his protecting care " even the stranger and the beggar, is in itself a striking evidence of the new religious spirit, reminding one much more of the northern All-Vater, Woden, than the Bull-god of Crete or the monstrous and horrid Dionysus Zagreus. In Homer all is intensely human. There is none of that 1 Miss Harrison reproduces pictures in one of which Heracles is beating to death with his club a little winged pest (/c^p) — perhaps a prehistoric bacillus — and in another an emaciated bald-headed thing — perhaps the bacillus of old age. * Unfulfilled prayer we find occasionally ; e.g. Od, ix. 553. 46 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION ' spook ' and that childish dread of the supernatural which often make folk-lore lose its human interest. We find very few monstrous shapes (such as the huge octopus-like Scylla, and the vague terror of the ' Gorgon head ' in Od. xi. 634), no bull-headed or serpent-tailed men (Proteus is no permanent monster, and the sirens and sea-nymphs are purely human in form), no owl-headed Athene or cow-headed Hera, although the old epithets of these goddesses point to the monstrosities of an earher creed. Even the winged Pegasus is omitted in the story of Bellerophon as told by Homer. It is true that we have Circe (' Hawk-goddess ') with her wand and her baleful drugs — but how intensely human she is ! How this ' dread goddess,' this hawk-headed Eastern witch, is trans- formed into a human being with womanly affections of love and pity ! In the Homeric Hades, too, one feels, it is true, the presence of the supernatural. But could anything be more pathetically human than the meeting of Odysseus with his mother, or with Elpenor, or with Agamemnon — or with Ajax ? Here and there in the Odyssey charms and drugs are mentioned — but never with superstitious awe. The plant ' moly * which Hermes gives Odysseus as a charm — " black at the root, but the flower is like unto milk in its whiteness" — excites in us a sense of delight, not of dread or mystery ; and when the sons of Autolycus bind for Odysseus the wound that the boar of Parnassus had ripped in his leg, and " staunch the dark red blood with a song of enchantment," we notice it merely as we should notice some old superstitious habit of the present day. The Cyclops himself is nothing but an enormous human being ; and he too prays to Poseidon as his father, although he speaks contemptuously of the gods as his inferiors in strength. And how the touch of nature makes us akin to the divine when Hermes complains of his weary flight across the boundless expanses of ocean, afar from the cities of men where he might have obtained a little refresh- ment at some sacrificial feast ! And how touching is the I motherly pride and joy of I^eto while she watches her daughter Artemis among her attendant nymphs ! The Homeric gods 47 ANCIENT GREECE are as intensely human as the Pheidian gods that on the Parthenon frieze await the approaching procession of their worshippers. And they are the gods of all " bread-eating races of mortals " — universal deities, not mere local or ancestral divinities. This different conception of the supernatural was doubtless introduced by the northern invaders, whom we may perhaps speak of under the collective name of Achaeans. The character of these northmen evidently differed much from that of the southern peoples whom they conquered. They had the vigour, the courage, the open, if somewhat overbearing and inartistic, nature of northern folk ; they had the contempt for all craven dread of supernatural powers and monstrous things which characterizes the best of the Aryan people. They looked up to the heights of the sunlit dome of heaven and to the vast expanses of cloudland and imagined there the home of the gods — not in the gloom of a nether world haunted by forms of horror. They did not hide their dead in shaft-tombs, but sent them heavenwards in the flames that leaped upward from the funeral pyre. lyCt us now consider some of the ancient deities and rites as contrasted with those of the later ' heroic ' age. Out of a vast and confused congeries of fact and theory I shall choose just a few of the most intelligible. As in the case of pre-Hellenic races and pre-Hellenic civiliza- tion, we have to turn to Crete and Mycenae for most of our evidence in regard to pre-Hellenic religion. The evidence supplied by Crete is, of course, only indirectly appHcable, but it seems to confirm and supplement what little is known about the reHgion of the Mycenaean and other Aegaean and Pelasgic peoples, if we may use these words to denote the early inhabitants of what we mean by ' Greece ' and some of its adjacent islands. In the earliest age of which we have evidence no temples seem to have existed. Probably groves and caverns were first used, such as the cave at Delphi, or the Dictaean cave in Crete, the fabled birthplace of the Cretan Zeus, where an 48 24- ' Harvkster Vase 25. Cretan Sarcophagus 48 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION ancient altar and a table of libation have been found, as well as the ashes of victims and votive offerings, among which are numerous bronzed models of the double axe, the symbol of divinity. In Crete no remains have been discovered of large temples, but in the palaces as well as in ordinary houses small rooms seem to have been set apart for worship, and in one case, at Gournia, what seems to have been a little much- frequented shrine (for it was approached by a well-worn paved path) stood in the midst of the town. In Greece itself, among the Aegaean and Pelasgic peoples, if we may draw conclusions from the evidence of later days, the first objects of religious worship were stocks and stones — possibly sometimes such meteorites as the images of the Tauric and Bphesian Artemis, which "fell from heaven.'* These were at first formless and unhoused. I^ater they were shaped into some rough resemblance to the human form, though generally legless, as we see from old descriptions of archaic wooden Greek idols {^oam), and from many ancient images in earth- ware which have been dug up. In Crete, besides such ancient legless and armless idols, have been discovered many representations or models of (i) sacred symbolic objects, (2) divinities. The symbolic objects evidently signified the presence of divinity in what is called an-iconic ritual [i.e. a ritual without actual idols ; such as was used in the Mysteries, where certain sacred objects were believed to possess a supernatural influence) . Of these symbols the horns of consecration and the double axe (see the Cretan Sarcophagus, Fig. 25) are the commonest. The horns (reminding one of the horns of the Jewish altar, and evidently connected with the worship of a Bull-god — possibly Moloch) are depicted frequently in frescoes and on seals when any religious scene is represented. They have also been found at Mycenae. The double axe also occurs on seals and in frescoes, often in combination with the horns, and is, moreover, found impressed on stucco or cut on stonework. I D 49 Griffins and Pii,i,ar ANCIENT GREECE In the great Palace of Cnossus this Labrys, or double axe, is to be seen on many a pillar or block, and it can scarcely be doubted that Labyrinth means ' the house [or place] of the double axe.' The word Labrys is said to be Carian. It occurs in the title Labraunda, given to the Carian Zeus. The termination -nth we have already noted as probably Aegaean. What was symbohzed by the Cretan I^abrys, or double axe, is not known, but it has been supposed that it may have intimated the combined godhead of Sun and Moon, or of the ancient Cretan Karth-goddess and the Cretan Zeus. The symbol is not confined to Crete. It may be seen on Carian and other coins (Plates 1. 5 and V. 2). Besides the horns and the axe we find the pillar — evidently also a symbol of divine presence, as was probably the pillar set up by J acob at Bethel. In the picture of the I^ion Gate at Mycenae (Fig. 2) and in the figure with griffins it will be seen that between the animals stands a pillar, whereas in the next illustration we have the same motive, but the goddess herself has taken the place of the pillar. SO 27. BaRTH-GODDESS and I/IONS THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION Another symbol, or sacred object, is a tree that reminds one somewhat of the ancient Babylonian and BibHcal Tree of 28. RrruAi, Dance and UrRooTiNG of Sacred Tree lyife or of Knowledge. It occurs on gems and seals and in paintings (see Figs. 7 and 28). Sometimes it is being watered by grotesque genii, or is being uprooted by a priest, or it bears great bunches of fruit like dates, which in one case are being gathered by a diminutive female. Another very interesting sacred object — for such it seems to be, as it was found in a shrine — is a cross of grey and yellow marble, which is exactly like a Christian cross " of orthodox Greek shape," as Sir Arthur Evans says. A model of this cross may be seen in the British Museum. Many rude idols have been found — mostly legless and armless — merely grotesque attempts to represent the super- natural. Remarkable evidences of demon and bogy worship are given by numerous seals and gems (see Fig. 31), where we find hideous and monstrous combinations SI 29. Genii (Priests ?) WATERING Sacred Tree ANCIENT GREECE of bird, beast, and human being. Perhaps they were used as charms.^ But the most important fact of this nature that has been brought to Hght by excavation is that the most ancient Cretan deity was a goddess whom we meet in Greek mythology under various names — for doubtless Ge (Earth), Cybele ^ or Rhea (daughter of Earth and the Great Mother of the gods), Demeter (Mother Earth), and the ancient pre-Hellenic or Asiatic Hecate or Artemis (triform and many-breasted) are all 30. Tiiiv ' lyADY oi' WIJ.D Creatures ' closely related to this ancient Cretan goddess. We find her, pictured amidst all kinds of wild animals, as the goddess of nature, the ' I^ady of Wild Creatures ' {irorvia Qjjpcov), as was the later Artemis. Frequently, as we have already seen, she is attended by lions, or by serpents which coil them- selves around her. Possibly as goddess of the air she is given doves and other birds, as goddess of earth she is attended * Some hold these monstrous forms to be priests or priestesses in disguise, perhaps performing a kind of transformation dance. * Semele (mother of Dionysus) may also mean ' Barth-goddess * and be another form of Cybele. Both Cybele and Dionysus are attended by lions. Cybele (also Cybelle and perhaps Cybebe) seems to have been the Phrygian name of Rhea. S2 f3i. Crbxan Seai,s (from"_Zakro) ANCIENT GREECE by lions, and as goddess of the nether world she has the serpent, thus resembling the triform Hecate — who was moon- goddess Selene in heaven, the huntress Artemis on earth, and identical with Persephone in Hades. According to the Theogony of Hesiod the first of all things that sprang from Chaos was Gaia, or Ge (Earth), who by Uranus (Heaven) was the mother of the Titan-god Cronos (Time?). The sister and wife of this old god Cronos was Rhea (Rheia), or Cybele, and their children were the elder Olympian gods, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus (who seems to have been not the eldest, though the King of Olympus). Now Cronos had the habit of swallowing his offspring, but Rhea fled to Crete and gave birth to Zeus in a cavern on Mount Ida or Mount Dicte ; or, according to Hesiod, she gave over the child to " mighty Gaia in broad Crete to nurse and rear,*' and Gaia hid it "in an inaccessible cavern under the divine earth on the Aegaean ^ mount." It seems therefore, I think, very probable that the ancient Nature-goddess whose effigies have been found in Crete is this ' mighty Gaia ' of Hesiod — though doubtless she was assimilated to her daughter Rhea, who, as the mother of Zeus Cretagenes, is called the Idaean or Dictaean, or the Mountain Mother ClSala, AiKTvvpa, Mrjrtjp opelrj). We have seen how Greek mythology brings the northern god Zeus to Crete. His worship there was not grafted on to the old religion till the advent of northern invaders, who made their supreme Sky-god the son of the ancient Cretan Earth-Mother. ^ On old Cretan seals and gems there appears associated with the great goddess what seems to be an inferior male deity. He sometimes stands in a reverential attitude before her (as perhaps in Fig. 27), and is also depicted as floating in the ^ Aegaean (Aigaios) seems to come from some Pelasgic or Aegaean word of unknown meaning. The name of this Cretan mountain may have given rise to the myth that Zeus was suckled in the Dictaean cave by the goat Amalthea (Grk. aigeios = * of a goat '). Later writers derive ' Aegaean ' from Aegeus, the father of Theseus. 2 On coins of Phaestus Zeus is represented as quite young. 54 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION sky and apparently beating his figure-of-eight shield with his spear (Fig. 7). This possibly is meant to represent a sky-god producing thunder, but he cannot well be Zeus, for these relics date from an age far anterior to the introduction of the northern god. This inferior male deity was perhaps fused into the person of Zeus Cretagenes. There were other localities that claimed to be the birth- place of Zeus, among them Thebes and Ithome, and also the Trojan Ida, but the claims of Crete were generally recognized. A curious ancient legend relates that Zeus — weary perhaps of sovereignty — retired to Crete and died there. His tomb was said to be on Mount Juktas, near Cnossus. Doubtless this legend inspired the wondrous description by Dante of the gigantic image (Hke that of Daniel's dream) of Time, or the World's Ages, standing within the Cretan Ida. The claim of the Cretans to possess the tomb of the king of the gods is said to have caused, or increased, their reputation as liars ; but if the verse quoted by St. Paul was written by Epimenides (c. 600) they seem to have had the reputation considerably before what one would consider the probable date of the decease of Zeus. There seem to be also evidences of a younger Cretan goddess, the daughter of the Earth-Mother, whose presence some suspect in the stories of Britomartis, Europa, and Ariadne. In later times she seems sometimes to have been identified with Aphrodite ( Astarte) , but her true representative in the Olympian family is doubtless Kore {i.e. the Maiden), the daughter of Demeter, or Ge-meter, the Earth-Mother. This Maiden, it is fabled, was carried off by Hades to his realm of darkness while she was gathering flowers, and under the name of Persephone was made the Queen of the Underworld, but was allowed every year to return to her mother Earth — an allegory of the yearly return of spring (see Fig. 32) . Besides these ancient Cretan deities there are, as we have seen, many evidences of a monstrous bull-headed deity — whether of native origin or derived from some tauriform 5S ANCIENT GREECE Oriental deity, such as Moloch, or from the bull-Dionysus of Thrace, of whose orgies I have already spoken, it is impossible to feel certain. '' Of the ritual of the Bull-god in Crete," says Miss Harrison, " we know that it consisted in part of the tearing and eating of a bull ; and behind is the dreadful suspicion of human sacrifice." As we have already seen, Minos was probably the high-priest, and was possibly even regarded as the incarnation, of this monstrous deity, and may 32. The return of the Barth-Maiden (here Pandora) have himself been sacrificed in the Dictaean cave at the end of his nine years of sovereignty. The later legend makes Zeus the original Phoenician-Cretan Bull-god, and Minos his son, but it seems more Hkely that the monstrous deity existed in Crete long before the advent of Zeus or of the Phoenicians, and that behind the horrid story of Pasiphae and the Minotaur '' there lurks some mystical ceremony of ritual wedlock [of the Cretan queen] with a primitive bull-headed divinity." How far this ancient Cretan religion was similar to the rehgion of pre-Hellenic Greece it is impossible to say. The day may THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION soon come when a sudden shaft of light will be let into what is still a very dark corner of history. At present we can only point to the fact that numerous signs of connexion have been discovered. The bull is found in Mycenaean art ; the horns of consecration, the double axe, and the sacred tree occur on (perhaps native) gems and plaques and rings, and in many ancient tombs in Greece and the Aegaean islands small rude idols of stone, bronze, lead, and gold have been found which seem to represent a Nature-goddess (sometimes attended by birds) similar to, if not identical with, the Cretan Gaia. This is practically all that is known of the religion of Greece before the coming of the Achaeans and the Olympian gods, and, except what we are told by Homer and Hesiod, and the still more doubtful evidence that we gather from what was related afterwards by Herodotus and other Greek writers, almost all our knowledge of the Olympian gods and ritual begins after the Dark Age of some three centuries which followed the next invasion of northmen, that of the Dorians. A few facts, however, seem to emerge here and there, and these we will consider in combination with what we are told by Homer. But it must be remembered that Homer wrote perhaps three centuries after the Achaean, or heroic, age, and may have indulged in a good deal of imaginative recon- struction. In Homer we find the regime of the new gods already well estabhshed. Each has his or her special functions and appointed place in the Olympian family, and instead of a Mighty Mother we have a well-marked patria potestas. There are, indeed, signs that the worship of these new gods had already lasted a considerable time, for familiarity had already bred contempt, and the behaviour of some of the deities as described in the poems was such as to excite indignation in the mind of even such a philosopher as Plato. Of most of these Olympians it is difficult to trace the lineage. In some cases they are doubtless grand and beautiful 57 ANCIENT GREECE re-creations, the prime elements of which were deities of the older religions, Northern, Aegaean, Pelasgian, and also some- times Oriental. But Zeus is apparently almost purely northern — the Aryan Dyaus-piter, the Day-Father or Sky-god, and the Papas or Bronton (Father or Thunderer) of the Phrygians. He was evidently introduced in a very early age into the mountainous country in North-western Greece (Epirus, or ' Mainland,' as it was called by the islanders), which, as well as parts of Thessaly, was then inhabited by Achaeans, or others of the same race, before they made their great descent on Southern Greece.^ Kven before the coming of the Achaeans there existed in Kpirus the far-famed sanctuary and oracle of Dodona, where some Pelasgian Barth-Mother gave responses through her priestesses by the murmuring of her doves. This sanctuary was, it seems, annexed by the northern Zeus, who (as Homer tells us) adopted the name of the * Dodonaean ' or ' Pelasgic ' Zeus. As god of the air he gave his oracles through the voices of winds moaning and rustling in his sacred oak-grove amidst the murmur of falling waters and the clangor of bronzen vessels struck by wind-moved hammers. lyater he was brought to other Pelasgic and Aegaean lands, and given the kingship of the new Olympian hierarchy. Apollo was also doubtless of northern origin, but his many diverse attributes (as Sender of Pestilence, Sun-god, Harp-god, 8z:c.) show that he was a re-creation out of various deities. There was later a Dorian Apollo with special attributes (see Pindar, Pyth. v.), of whom many old statues ^ seem to be repre- sentations, but by the Achaeans, if we may believe Homer, Apollo was worshipped as Phoebus, '' the bright sun-god " and sender of sudden death. Hermes, the Messenger, was probably a native Aegaean (Arcadian) god. The Hermes statues of later art seem to be a survival of old legless and armless idols. Demeter, as we have already seen, was ^ The Achaeans were apparently driven finally from Epirus about the time of the Dorian invasion of Greece {c. iioo) by a barbaric northern tribe, the Illyrians. Epirus and Aetolia thenceforth were regarded as mainly barbarian (non-Hellenic) lands. 2 For these ' Apollos ' see p. 225. 58 33- MiNOAN, Mycenaean, and Trojan Ware c. 2000-1300 See List of Illustrations and Note D 58 ANCIENT GREECE as the Homeric question or the Athenian Constitution, derive their only real value and interest from the fact that they lead us towards a better understanding and a fuller appreciation of the art and literature and philosophy of Greece, and of the character of her greatest men. SECTION C : THE 'HOMERIC AGE ' AND HOMER Homer and the ' Homeric age ' do not really belong to the same period, for the Homeric poems — even the earliest parts of them — were not written in the age that they describe, as is evident from the fact that the poet frequently speaks of the men of his own age as far inferior to the heroes who fought at Troy, although these were again inferior to the greater heroes of an earlier age, such as Heracles {II. v. 304 ; Od. viii. 223, &c.) . But it is necessary to treat the two subjects together, for these poems are the only evidence of this Achaean or Homeric age. The Mycenaean shaft-graves have indeed supplied evidence of an age of unsuspected civilization, but, as we have seen, great differences are apparent in regard to dress, armour, disposal of the dead, and probably rehgion, between the Mycenaean civilization and that world which Homer describes. These differences and the necessary supposi- tion of an almost incredibly rapid and complete development of another state of things, and of another entirely different conception of deity, coupled with the fact that we have prac- tically no evidence whatever of this * Homeric age ' except what we are told by the Homeric poems, have made some writers assert that these poems give merely an imaginative picture of a world that never existed, and that, except a small ' nucleus ' (some ancient ballad describing the * wrath ' of a sea-god, Achilles, against a land-god, Agamemnon, both of whom had their habitat somewhere in Thessaly, whence they were transported by later Homeric bards to the Peloponnese), the Iliad is a farrago compounded by several generations of rhapsodists, a kind of epical romance in which the fiction of some long-past mythical age was depicted and from which 60 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION almost all anachronisms ^ were carefully eliminated by the bards themselves and their critical auditors. The Odyssey, according to such critics, is of much later date than the older parts of the Iliad, and was compiled by similar bards, or perhaps by a single highly gifted bard, from old stories of adventures in the Kuxine, which were transferred to western seas. 2 Moreover, Odysseus was " only a god,'' and Penelope only a goddess. There certainly is much vagueness in the geography of the Odyssey, and evident confusion of the far Bast with the far West. Circe's original home was Colchis, and her island Aeaea is said to have been near the sunrise. (She and her brother Aeetes were both, perhaps, originally bird-headed Eastern deities.) Moreover, the original home of the Cimmerians was evidently the Crimea. Altogether there can, I think, be no doubt that the poems, especially the Iliad, underwent in the course of centuries of pubhc recitation a certain amount of pruning and reshaping, that ancient AeoHc words may have been modernized into the later Ionian dialect, and that lines glorifying certain famiHes or places may have been inserted, and possibly also some episodes. Moreover, it is possible that when the poems were arranged into books and canonized in the age of Peisis- tratus (about 520) some readjustment and welding took place. But any long disquisition on these much-vexed questions 1 Such writers point gleefully to numerous cases where "good old Homer is caught napping " (to use Horace's expression) — various inconsistencies and slips of memory, such as occur in the best of poets. They also assert that he sometimes describes shields as man-covering and as huge " as a tower," and at other times gives the warriors the small round Carian shield and breast- plates, &c. — as if different kinds of shield and armour might not have been in use ! Also they point at the mention of iron {Od. xix. 13) as " attracting [to bloodshed]," whereas iron is elsewhere in the poems used only for knives and axes — not for weapons. But the ' Iron Age ' had already begun, and it rwas doubtless used already for weapons, though ' bronze ' was the usual term in poetry. How plentiful iron already was is plain from Od. i. 184, where a iwhole cargo of it is brought from Temesa (in Italy ?). * A French writer, Berard, has endeavoured to prove that the Odyssey is founded on the log-books of Phoenicians (who certainly as early as the time of Solomon visited Spain, and perhaps South Africa), and discovers Calypso's island on the African coast not far from Gibraltar. 61 ANCIENT GREECE would be here out of place, and I shall merely state my own slowly formed conviction that both these poems owe their main structure and most of their details to one great poet, that the age which he depicted was no mere fiction, and that he lived near enough to that age to paint, by the help of traditions and ballads, its main features with very considerable exactitude. It is a saying of Socrates that '' about flute- playing musicians judge best, and about poetry poets." When the poet Goethe first read the celebrated Prolegomena of the German scholar Wolf, the originator of modern Homer- scepticism, he was puzzled and half convinced. But he very wisely determined to re-read Homer, and ended by recanting his half assent to the " subjective stuff and nonsense," declaring that "behind these poems there stands a splendid unity — a single, lofty, creative mind." It was doubtless a similar poetic instinct, innate in the Greek race, which preserved the true Homer in the midst of a mass of inferior ballad-epics (those of the so-called Cyclic poets), many of which had appropriated his name, and finally sifted out the true ore and cast aside the rubbish. J The old Boeotian poet Hesiod, whose date and works have been subjected to a similar critical process, but whom (as I shall explain later) we may very reasonably beHeve to have lived not much later than Homer (possibly c. 850), gives testimony, of course rejected by the critics in question, that an age of heroes preceded his own age (the age of iron). In this heroic age, he says, took place the expedition of the Seven against seven-gated Thebes, and that against Troy for the sake of fair-haired Helen. I^astly, Herodotus, whose testimony is however of a much later date (about 480-430), tells us that he beHeved Homer and Hesiod to have both lived 400 years before his time, and after hearing all that modern criticism has to say I think we may quite reasonably accept this as fairly correct, placing Homer from half a century to a century before Hesiod — i.e. about 900 or 950. Seven cities claimed to have been the birthplace of Homer. The presence of Aeolic forms in his Ionic Greek seems to prove 62 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION that he Hved in Southern AeoHs, perhaps in Chios, or in Cyme or in its daughter-city old Smyrna, which was then AeoHan. (It was afterwards moved a few miles south over the Ionian frontier. But Ionia perhaps did not already exist as a defined country in Homer's time.) Some, indeed, imagine that the oldest strata of the Homeric poems were written entirely in ' ancient Aeolic ' (a dialect related to the later ' lycsbian ' of Sappho and Alcaeus), and afterwards worked over into Ionic (an early dialect of the Ionic used some four centuries later by Herodotus), Aeolian forms being left when the scansion did not allow of change. This is, of course, pure guesswork, as is also the theory that the old Achaeans of Thessaly in- vented the hexameter rhythm, and that their ancient ballads about their local feuds formed the basis of the Trojan fiction ; but until this is proved I think we may reasonably believe that Homer belonged to one of the early ' Ionian ' colonial families who began to come over about 1040, some 150 years after the fall of Troy had first attracted Achaeans and other Greeks to settle in Aeolis. Who these ' lonians ' were I shall discuss in the following chapter. Possibly Homer, though himself Ionian, lived across the Aeolian (Achaean) border, and thus came across the old Aeolic (Achaean) ballads (pos- sibly in hexameter rhythm) and thence formed his great epic, finding eager auditors amongst the descendants of those Achaeans who had sacked Troy and opened up the country to Greek colonization. Whether Homer himself emigrated from Greece, or whether he ever visited Greece, it is impossible to say. Hesiod uses words which have been made to mean that he met Homer at Chalcis, in Buboea, and conquered him in a poetical contest ; indeed, a varia lectio of these words (E. 657) asserts this ; but it is very improbable. Homer how- ever knew Greece well, though he may never have seen it. The local colour of his poems is that of the mother- country, and not of Asia Minor. His gods and his Muses dwell evidently on the Thessalian Olympus. Achaea, Pylos, Mycenae, Argos, |Phthia, and all other Greek places, are spoken of with a kind of Heimweh; and how often do the expressions ' homewards/ 63 ANCIENT GREECE ' fatherland/ * land of his fathers ' occur ! On the other hand, Asia Minor is for Homer a wild un-Greek country. Of Phrygia, Maeonia, I^ycia, and of islands such as I^esbos and Chios we hear [Od. iii. 170), but no word of AeoHs or of Ionia as Greek colonies. Miletus is mentioned as ruled by the " Carians of barbarous tongue." Doubtless Homer lived after the Dorian invasion of the Eastern Peloponnese (about iioo), and he mentions Dorians as already in Crete ; but he so entirely ignores them otherwise that it seems hardly possible that they could have already conquered Argos and Mycenae, and have become the dominant race in Southern Greece, which happened, as we shall see later, about 950. But all these questions as to personality and date are of very trivial importance in comparison with the priceless legacy of the Homeric poems — which were not written, as is too often assumed, for the antiquarian and the philologist. Possibly some day another Schliemann will excavate not only the tomb of Zeus in Crete but even Homer's tomb in the island of los, where the pseudo-Herodotus asserts that he was buried, and put an end to all our polemics as well perhaps as to such theories as that Odysseus was " only a god," or that the authoress of the Odyssey was Nausicaa herself — which has been seriously affirmed by the talented author of Erewhon. It would be out of place here to retell the oft-told tale of Troy and the Wanderings of Odysseus, but for those who do not reject the world of Homer as a fiction it is intensely interesting to examine his evidence — the only evidence we possess — in regard to this age of Achaean supremacy. I will therefore note a few points. In the Iliad we find the Achaeans and their Argive soldiery under the abnormal (though perhaps for them not uncommon) conditions of war and camp-life in a foreign land, and although we learn less of the state of civilization than we might have learnt had the scene of the epic been laid at Sparta or Mycenae, we learn much else. In the Odyssey, on the other hand, we have descriptions of home life : of palaces, of farmsteads 64 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION and orchards and agriculture, of the cottages and work of herdsmen, of townsfolk and their town, of meetings of the citizens, of busy wharves and arsenals and shipping, of masters and mistresses amid their servants and thralls ; and, besides these Ithacan and Phaeacian pictures, we are given particulars of a chariot journey (evidently on a tolerably good road) across a part of the Peloponnese and a very distinct picture of the home of Menelaus and Helen at Sparta, and also a glimpse of the Mycenaean palace of Agamemnon. By means of all these various pictures, and by fitting together the almost innumerable details that we find in both poems, we are able to form a fairly complete conception of the Achaean world in peace ^ and in war. Pictures of religious rites, of sacrifices and libations and funeral ceremonies are frequent, and sometimes we are reminded of the old rehgion. Thus in the visit to Hades {Od. xi.) we have a threefold libation to the ghosts of the dead — of honey- milk, of wine, and of water — reminding us of an ancient Cretan libation table with three basins found in the Dictaean cave. Moreover, on the same occasion Odysseus fills a hole that he had dug in the ground with the blood of victims, and the ghosts come flocking round it in their longing to drink — a picture that recalls the ' feeding holes ' for blood libation which have been found on the summit of Mycenaean tombs. Again, many instances occur of sanctuaries and altars in the open air, under oaks and plane-trees and palms {Od. vi. 162), and there is frequent mention of sacred groves and sacred precincts. But we also have a few definite references to temples — such as the ''house of Krechtheus'' at Athens (possibly a late accretion) and the " temples of the gods " and the "shrine of Poseidon" (evidently not a grove) in the * In the following very incomplete list every word conjures up some )icture or series of pictures for any one who knows the Odyssey : Spinning, laving, dress, beds, tables, chairs, metal-work, inlaying, forging, goblets, rooches, hunting, fishing, vineyards, gardening, bathing, swimming, horses, lules, goats, cattle, swine, geese, dogs, lions, eagles, palaces, house-building, lip-building, raft-building, sailing, rowing, feasting, athletic games, boxing, raughts, ball-playing, acrobats, dancing, music, law-courts, funerals, icrifices, beggars, clothes-washing, wagons, chariots. E 65 ANCIENT GREECE Phaeacian city {Od. vi. lo and 266), and in the sixth book of the Iliad there is given with a few touches a fine sketch of the temple of Athene in Troy and the seated statue of the goddess, on whose knees (1. 273) Hecabe lays a peplos, just as was still done by the Athenians of the age of Pericles at the Panathenaic festival — a scene depicted on the frieze of the Parthenon. There are also descriptions of funeral ceremonies, such as the celebrated picture of the funeral of Patroclus in the twenty- third book of the Iliad, and the exquisitely beautiful, though possibly not Homeric,^ scene of the mourning for Achilles (Od. xxiv.), and the cortege round his funeral pyre, and the pathetic lines which tell us how Odysseus and his men felled trees and built a pyre and burnt the body of their comrade Elpenor, and how they then piled a mound above his buried ashes and erected on the top of the mound the oar " with which in life he had rowed amidst his mates,'' as his ghost in Hades had implored them to do. Achaean funerals, as we have already seen, were generally of this character — cremation and burial of ashes. There is, however, one word (rapx^'etv) thrice used in the Iliad which seems to point to some older custom, such as was prevalent in Egypt, for the word means to ' dry ' (like smoked fish). Among the Homeric Achaeans the kingship was hereditary, although it seems as if the family prerogative had to be con- firmed by Zeus, probably through oracular response or omens, for Telemachus allows this (Od. i. 386 sq.) and speaks of the possibility of some other of the Ithacan princes (whom he also calls ' kings ' — (^aa-iXrjeg) being elected instead of himself. In the Iliad Agamemnon is the over-lord of all the Achaean princes and the head of the army ; in the Odyssey Odysseus is the over-lord of all the Ithacan chieftains and nobles and possesses large estates and many flocks and herds and the rights ^ The so-called Ne'/cuta Bevrepa (second visit to the dead), if not by Homer himself, is worthy of him. It is like a figure by Praxiteles added to an un- finished group by Pheidias. Some affirm that the first descent (Book XI) was inserted (and composed ?) by some Orphic teacher, perhaps Onomacritus, when the Homeric poems were collected and arranged in the time of Peisis- tratus. This I prefer not to believe. 66 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION of pasture on the mainland and in Ithaca. The king has a privy council (Boul^) formed of elders and nobles, and there is also a pubhc assembly (Agora), which in the Iliad naturally consists of all the fighting men — perhaps of others too, for one can hardly conceive Thersites as a fighter. In the Odyssey we have descriptions of both Ithacan and Phaeacian assemblies, consisting evidently of all the free men of the state. They seem, as a rule, to have been summoned merely to hear the decisions of the king and his Boule; but sometimes they certainly took their own course, breaking up in disorder, some following one leader and some another {e.g. Od. iii. The land seems to have belonged mainly to the Achaean noble families, who probably held their hereditary title from the king and Boule. There seem also to have been ' common lands ' (//. xii. 422), and even thralls, such as the swineherd Eumaeus, could receive in tenant-right a * lot ' {KXttpog) from his lord, and those who were not landowners {aKXr^poi) could engage farm-labourers and evidently hire land for culti- vation {Od. xi. 490), but the family kleroi (allotments) probably took up most of the good soil and pasturage. These allot- ments could be divided among members of a family (in Crete anyhow, as we see from Od. xiv. 209), but, being held in feu- right from a liege lord, could not be sold. Hesiod, however, speaks of the gods granting the blessing of " buying your neighbour's allotment instead of his buying yours." But that was later, and in Boeotia. The Homeric palace, or large house, stood often in a palisaded or walled courtyard. It consisted of a portico and a raised ' stoep,' where guests slept, and a great megaron (hall) which was used for meals and also as a sleeping-place ; but there were also frequently {e.g. in Odysseus' palace) workrooms and bedrooms in the back part of the house, those for the women upstairs. Descriptions are given, more or less full, of the palaces of Odysseus, Alcinous, Menelaus, Circe, and what I have called glimpses of Agamemnon's Mycenaean palace and of the quarters of Achilles in the Greek camp. Circe's palace had a flat roof 67 ANCIENT GREECE where guests could sleep. The palace of Alcinous had a frieze, or coping, of blue glass-paste {cyan) such as has been found in a palace at Tiryns. Its walls were bronzen (doubtless plated with bronze, as in the ' Treasury of Atreus * at Mycenae), and its doors and door-handle were of gold ; the door-posts and lintel were of silver and the threshold was of bronze. The palace of Menelaus is described as gleaming with bronze, gold, amber, silver, and ivory. Art treasures, Achaean and Sidonian, are frequently de- scribed : metal-work, embroidery, fine-woven cloths, carved woodwork, and other artistic objects. The ' Shield of Achilles ' testifies to a high proficiency in the art of metal inlay, though we must perhaps allow something for imagination. The art of writing has already been mentioned. Exceedingly beautiful are the relations between those who are bound by ties of affection and kinship. Nowhere in literature is to be found anything more touching and beautiful than the love of Achilles for Patroclus, of Andromache and of old Priam for Hector, of Hector for his wife and child, of Tele- machus for his mother, of Penelope and of Anticleia for Odysseus ; and even such love is equalled by the tender affec- tion of the old nurse Kurycleia and the swineherd Kumaeus and the old Dolius (all of them slaves) for their masters and their mistress. When the good old swineherd saw Telemachus once more, whom he feared the suitors had murdered, ... to welcome his master he hastened. Kissed him on both of his cheeks, on his beautiful eyes and his forehead, Kissed him on both of his hands, while big tears fell from his eyelids. And in the same way all the maids who had remained faithful to Odysseus, when they recognized him after the slaughter of the suitors, crowded round him, Ivovingly kissing his head and his shoulders in token of welcome, ^^ Grasping and kissing his hands. jfl In Homer there is not much of that high-wrought sentiment which plays such a large part in modern romance. Indeed, there is a good deal that would offend the deHcate sensibiHties of the writer and reader of such romance. An hour or so after 68 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION Odysseus' rather unconventional interruption of their ball- playing on the river-bank, Nausicaa (who was a lady if ever there was one) confesses openly and without the sHghtest touch of sentiment to her maidens that she would be deHghted to have him as a husband. Passionate love seems in Homer to be regarded as somewhat contemptible as well as dangerous. The names of Briseis, Calypso, and Circe do not awaken very pleasant associations. Helen bitterly bewails, even before Priam, the madness of passionate love sent her by Aphrodite, and although the greybeards of Troy seem to condone it on account of her irresistible charms, and although — what is still more strange — Menelaus himself condones it, and lives contentedly with her after her ten years' infideHty, the general verdict seems to agree with her self-accusation of ' dog-faced ' shamelessness and with her self -contempt. Clytaemnestra affords another example. She is described by Nestor as good by nature ; but ilHcit love maddened her and led her to murder her husband. With the deities passion cannot, of course, lead to crime, for they are above law, but in their case such emotions are represented as even more contemptible and ridiculous than in the case of a mortal ; and when Hephaestus, as an injured husband, demands compensation of Ares (Od. vii.) the satire reaches its climax. Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable than the way in which the gods — who are generally treated with great respect, and even veneration — are satirized in this matter. The Homeric Zeus is a majestic figure, and inspires deep rever- ence in mortal hearts, but he does not escape ridicule. Although he sends Hermes to warn Aegisthus against his design of seducing Clytaemnestra, the Father of the Gods himself earns an unenviable notoriety in matters of love, and at such moments stands on a much lower moral level than mortals such as Hector or Odysseus ; for though Odysseus was not faultless, the relations between him and tenelope are very much more edifying and very much more beautiful than are frequently the relations between the King 69 ANCIENT GREECE and Queen of Heaven. Indeed, family life on earth is pictured as being on the whole happier than it is in heaven. In spite of the fact that a wife was often practically bought by the suitor who could offer the largest ' bride-gift ' to the parents, married life in that age, if we may accept Homer's descrip- tions, was often a life of the deepest affection and of unbounded confidence — such a life as Odysseus himself pictured to Nausicaa : So shall the gods all blessings bestow tha thy soul desireth — Husband and home ; and oneness of heart may heaven vouchsafe thee. Blessing supreme — since nought can be wished that is greater and better While imited in heart and in mind are dwelling together Husband and wife. 'Tis a sight brings sorrow to wishers of evil, Joy to the wishers of good. But the joy in their hearts is the loudest. As a description of a work of art — of an art derived from the old Mycenaean and Cretan artists — the * Shield of Achilles ' (//. xviii.) is of great interest to the antiquarian, but its chief value, of course, consists in the fact that it is magnificent poetry and that it gives such wondrously vivid, and in their main features doubtless accurate, pictures of the life of this age — the age of Achaean supremacy. The fivefold shield was wrought by Hephaestus of " unyielding bronze and tin and costly gold and silver." In the centre he fashioned " earth and sky and sea and the unwearied sun and the full moon and all the constellations with which heaven is crowned, the Pleiades and Hyades and Orion and the Bear, who alone hath no share in the baths of Ocean." Round the outer rim flowed the " mighty strength of the river of Ocean," and in the middle space were city scenes and scenes of country life. First we have scenes of peace within a city — a bridal procession, a court of law ; then we see a city beleaguered, and warriors, led by Ares and Athene, arming for a sortie and an ambuscade ; then cattle- lifting and a general fray. Next come pictures of rural fife : a field being ploughed by many ploughmen, and as each one reaches the limit of the field he receives a cup of sweet wine, and turns refreshed, eager to reach again the end of his furrow, " and behind him it grew black, and looked Hke ploughed earth, though wrought in gold." Then we have a reaping 70 THE AEGAEAN CIVILIZATION scene, the heavy crop falling in swaths at the sweep of the sickles, and being bound into sheaves, while the king looks on in silence with exultant heart, and beneath a great oak a banquet is being prepared. Then comes a vintage scene — the luscious fruit borne in woven baskets amid music and dancing. Then herdsmen drive their cattle forth to pasture, and nigh to the watering-place and the waving reed-bed two lions attack and drag off a bull, while the men vainly urge on their dogs, who bark furiously but keep aloof. Then in a beautiful valley we see a great flock of white sheep and the sheepfolds and the shep- herds' huts. lyastly, there is a dancing-ground " like to that which once Daedalus made in broad Cnossus for fair Ariadne," and here maidens and youths are dancing, those crowned with fair garlands and these with golden swords hanging from silver baldricks, and two acrobats are turning somersaults amidst the surrounding crowd while a minstrel makes music with his harp. Very interesting, too, is the description of the dress and the golden brooch of Odysseus. The passage occurs in the fictitious account {Od. xix.) that he gives Penelope of how once in Cretan Cnossus he met and hospitably entertained — himself ! Purple and thick was the cloak that was worn by the godlike Odysseus, Twofold, knit by a brooch that was fashioned of gold and was furnished Doubly with sockets for pins ; and the front was embossed with a picture ; Here was a hound that was holding a dappled fawn with his forefeet, Watching it struggle ; and all that beheld were greatly astonished How, though golden, the hound kept watching the fawn as he choked it, While in the longing to win an escape with the legs it was writhing. Further, I noticed the tunic he wore : 'twas of linen that glister'd Like to the delicate skin that is peeled from a shrivelling onion ; Such was the softness thereof ; and it gleamed as the sun in his glory. 71 M 1 ja o tn O So a .S2 s " a O (/I n w»5 WW K •r! ft s.a o C/3 C/3H -^ « 2 of a ^ 00 u 1° ^.as •r< be (I4 u-> ca ra 2 «§ ^ d rt > S -si- a .aSa-ai t-1 P CIS G 1-1 "Q Jb rt o S « ::^'0 -a ■ 0Sgw2 rt 11:^ o ?> -po ftg «2 X 2 i I 2 2 a^l •^gao i2 ^ « S > c8 o f*' o dC-W ia-5 J CD cijs A< <u a-^t; ga-SSi" tbJt >^(d a 72 S' 3 o a ^ ^_^ 9, in >~- S g^ ^ Oifl o*: >> d'C a •2g o d •t38 c/^2 J ID PO >. 'S H (o Th Ml isJi rt -< '-' u_, »Q •"^ O C! o o 5 V o i) qP «l 11 ?o §e O ci +j ;-! 05 oj A 4iJ CO « o N 2 9 2 " ^a rt a ^ 5c O 1 I 2 J 3 Q, d « +j o HpLi 5t If •a a s" . 8 c •% d 8-^ ^« i2^-d ;2;g^ J5cH > 3 >> sQ i o "m d CU > .a « O 9 ^ t-H •^ S f/1 aa O -M a S^ 83 o 8 «o .H 2 g-S B'-S X .a till OS'S 2- « S,l U) « rt o rt ^c^^^'S-g o O M « S « S3 <«, i;l a o SI rt O ^5i •3^ « a'-S w m rt rt M-, « '3 O-m-mTJotOo!- w rt ja c9 <u ., .» d drtSrtS^^Sd rtrtd4»<o>g •^ d 3 «) P « P2 CHAPTER II THE DARK AGE (c. IIOO TO 776) The Dorians : The Coi^onization of Aeoi<is, Ionia, and Doris SECTIONS : DIPYLON ANTIQUITIES : HESIOD : THE PHOENICIANS AND SOME OTHER NATIONS DURING THE DARK AGE OF the age that we have been considering, that of the Achaean supremacy, we have in Homer's poems a wonderfully distinct, though perhaps somewhat imaginative, picture. These Homeric men and women and the world in which they lived, although we have no memorials of them but words, seem very near to us — nearer by far than many nations of whom we have abundant relics, such as the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Egyptians — nearer, too, than many a people of an age not far removed from our own. Without its vates sacer this Achaean age would doubtless be as much of a blank as the three centuries which followed it — an epoch which is indeed fairly rich in myths, but about which we know for certain much less than we do about the far earher Minoan and Egyptian civilizations. One fact, however, is indubitable. It was an epoch of great invasions or ' migra- tions,' which rapidly changed the character of the population and the civilization in many parts of Greece and extended the Hellenic name to large tracts of country on the other side of the Aegaean Sea. First, let us see what the myths say. Mythical Accounts of the Migrations Hellen, king of Phthia, in Thessaly, and son of Deucalion (the Greek Noah), was the mythical ancestor of all the Hellenes. 74 THE DARK AGE Aeolus and Dorus were his sons, Achaeus and Ion his grandsons through another son. From these ' eponymous ' heroes were descended the AeoHans, Dorians, Achaeans, and lonians. The AeoHans lived in Thessaly and the Dorians in Doris, a small district in central North Greece. The lonians settled in the country afterwards called Achaea, and the Achaeans conquered the whole of the Peloponnese except this district of the lonians and the mountain strongholds of the Arcadians. Now in the Peloponnese there had been before the coming of the Achaeans two great reigning dynasties — the descendants of Perseus (who is said to have founded Tiryns and Mycenae) and the Pelopid princes of Pisa, Olympia, and Amyclae, with whom, as we have already seen, the northern Achaean invaders probably intermarried and identified themselves. The last of the Perseid dynasty had been Eurystheus (the king of Argos who enslaved Heracles). He was succeeded by the Pelopid Atreus. On the death of Heracles (traditional date 1209) his children were exiled from Argos. They endeavoured to return and recover their possessions, but after Hyllus, the son of Heracles, had been killed in single combat they promised to renounce all further attempts for a hundred years. At the end of this time (1104) they put themselves at the head of a great army of Dorians,^ who espoused their cause, and who were finding the little district of Doris between Oeta and Parnassus too narrow for their needs. This Dorian host, helped by the Aetolians and I^ocrians, built a fleet at a port thereafter knoWn as Naupactus (' Place of Shipbuilding '), and overran most of the Peloponnese, which was divided among the Heracleidae and their Dorian alhes. The most powerful of the Peloponnesian monarchs was the Pelopid-Achaean Tisamenus, son of Orestes (and, therefore, grandson of Aga- memnon). He was either slain or else compelled to retire with ^ Plato gives a very different story, namely, that the Achaeans who returned from Troy were not received by the people at home, and, being expelled, put themselves under the leadership of a chief named Dorieus and changed their name to Dorians, They then allied themselves with the ! Heracleidae and recaptured the Peloponnese. This is worth mentioning if only to show the very great variations in such old myths. 75 ANCIENT GREECE his Achaeans to the northern district of the Peloponnese, which was, as already stated, inhabited by lonians. These lonians were driven out by the Achaeans, and took refuge in Attica. Now the king of Athens about this time was Codrus, of the race of Nestor, whose descendants had been driven out of Pylos by the Dorians. When the Dorians also attacked Attica Codrus devoted himself to death, and thus (in accordance with an oracle) saved his country. His sons quarrelled, and when the oracle gave its verdict for one of them the other went off with a ' mixed multitude ' consisting to a great extent of the Ionian refugees, and, making his way from island to island across the Aegaean, founded colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, which ultimately developed into Ionia with its twelve great cities. The story of the ' Aeolic migration ' is thus narrated by old writers. On the 'Return of the Heracleidae ' — i.e. invasion of the Peloponnese by the Dorians — those of the Achaeans who did not remain with Tisamenus in Achaea crossed the Isthmus and made their way to Boeotia and thence through Thessaly and Thrace to the Hellespont ; or else they reached the port of Aulis, the very place where Agamemnon had been delayed by winds and had started with his assembled fleet for Troy, and thence, accompanied by many Kuboeans and others, they sailed across the Aegaean by the chain of islands that stretches from Buboea to the Troad. They made settlements in I^esbos and the adj acent mainland, capturing or founding twelve cities, of which Cyme, named after a town in Buboea, was the first — the mother- city of Smyrna, and mother, or perhaps sister, to the more famous Cyme in Italy, the Cumae of the Romans. Other forms of the legend, one of which is given by Pindar, make this Aeolian migration take place some twenty years before the 'Return of the Heracleidae' {i.e. in 1124), and affirm that Orestes himself led the emigrants. According to the Augustan writer Strabo, Orestes started with them, but died in Arcadia — a version which agrees with the story of y6 THE DARK AGE Herodotus that the bones of Orestes were discovered some five and a half centuries later at Tegea, in Arcadia. Now under these various myths about the Dorian invasion and the AeoHc and Ionic migrations there is doubtless a basis of historical facts, and probably these facts are somewhat as follows. Aeolic Migration Possibly even before the siege of Troy there had been a considerable stream of migration across the Northern Aegaean by way of the islands that form a chain between the Pagasaean Gulf in Thessaly and the Troad. Pagasae is celebrated in mythology as the port where Jason built the Argo, and whence the Argonauts set forth on their voyage to unknown eastern lands, and the legend evidently gives poetic form to some such early adventures. From Thessaly, which was in early days the home of the Achaeans and the 'Aeolian Boeotians,' it is quite possible that bands of sea-rovers, who either called themselves or were called by their Mysian and Phrygian foes AeoHans (possibly a corruption of the word Achaeans), made their way across to I^esbos and the Troad, and that it was the hostility between these Greek adventurers and the natives (also of northern Aryan race) which ultimately brought about the Trojan War and the expedition of Agamemnon and his allies and the fall of the great Phrygian stronghold. Even if we accept Homer's account, which gives no hint of AeoHan or any other Greek settlements in Asia Minor, it is not unlikely that the fall of Troy may have at once opened up the south of the Troad and I^esbos and the adjacent mainland to emigrants from Greece, Achaean and other, who prob- ably assembled at Pagasae, or Aulis, or some such point of departure and crossed the Aegaean by the islands. This theory seems to fit in fairly well with the version of the myth which makes Orestes head the first band of emigrants not so very long after the Trojan War and some time before the invasion of the Dorian Northmen. Doubtless the pressure I of this invasion caused a large increase of emigration to the 77 ANCIENT GREECE Aeolian settlements, as well as to the country to the south of Aeolis, which had been till then only sparsely occupied, if occupied at all, by another section of the Greek race — the lonians, or lavones, as they called themselves. Ionic Migration According to the myths, as we have seen, the lonians originally inhabited the north of the Peloponnese, and when pressed by the refugee Achaeans withdrew to Attica, and thence, under leaders of the Pylian house of Codrus, passed over to Asia Minor. This would make the Ionic migration a direct result of the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese ; and doubtless, as already remarked, this invasion did cause a great exodus of the conquered peoples, many of whom made their way to the islands and to Crete, as well as to the mainland on the further side of the Aegaean. As Ionia plays such an important part in Greek history, it is a question of deep interest who these lavones, or lonians, were. They are only once mentioned by Homer. He gives them the epithet ' chiton-trailing ' — a strange epithet for warriors, and never used by any other Greek writer. They take part in defending the ships against the attack of Hector, and are apparently closely associated, if not identified, with the Athenians. All tradition agrees with Homer in such association or identification. If not actually Athenians, these lavones, or lonians, were certainly non- Achaean settlers in Argolis and Attica, and probably of the same Aegaean or Pelasgic race as the Athenians themselves. For it seems fairly certain that the Athenians, who always boasted of their old Pelasgic origin, remained to a large extent as a race unaffected both by Achaean and by Dorian influence. They were, as Herodotus asserts, Hellenized Pelasgians and Aegaeans rather than true Hellenes. In speech and religion they were Hellenic, just as much as the Achaeans, but in their deeper instincts there were elements which were derived from the old pre-Hellenic race and which very possibly accounted for many of their characteristics and proved the main cause 78 THE DARK AGE of that rapid and wonderful aesthetic and intellectual develop- ment which took place later among the Ionic section of the Greek race. In the case of the Asiatic lonians probably these aesthetic instincts were less modified by vigorous Northern influences than was the case with the Athenians, and doubtless also in time the enervating climate (though highly praised by Herodotus, whose native clime it was), as well as the enervating influences of the wealthy I^ydians and the semi-Oriental Carians and other peoples of Asia Minor, contributed to produce that Ionian luxury and voluptuousness which were in such sharp contrast to the a-oj^poa-wv, the self-restraint, of all that is greatest in Athenian art and character. For some centuries, however, Ionia, like the Greek colonies in Sicily and Italy, seems to have far outstripped the mother-country not only in the size and magnificence of its cities — some of which were probably never surpassed by Athens itself — but also in most civilized arts. For instance, as we have seen, Ionia probably knew and practised the art of writing for some time before it was much used in Greece. The colonists were by no means only lonians. Herodotus calls them a mixed multitude composed of many diverse tribes from North and South Greece. Moreover, he states that they brought no wives with them and intermarried largely with the Carians. They founded, or captured and refounded, in course of time the twelve important cities which later formed the Ionic Amphictiony, Phocaea being the northernmost and the southernmost Miletus (formerly a Carian city, according to Homer), which, together with Myus and Priene, lay on the magnificent Bay of I^atmus, now changed into a vast swampy plain by the deposits of the river Maeander. These twelve cities afterwards had a common place of assembly and of iworship, sacred to Poseidon, on the northern slope of Mount Mycale. Here they met at the pan-Ionic festival, as the Ipan-Hellenic world met at Olympia. But this is anticipating. For the present it sufiices to have pointed out the probability of this Ionian migration having 79 ANCIENT GREECE begun before the advent of the Dorians in the Peloponnese, and to have shown the Hkelihood that many of these * Ionian ' emigrants were of non-Hellenic (that is, of Aegaean rather than Achaean) race. The fact that in Ionia — indeed, on all the coast of Western Asia Minor — very few traces of ' Mycenaean ' civilization have as yet been discovered need not disturb us, for these lonians of, say, iioo were by no means the Aegaeans of the ' Mycenaean ' age, and the fact that the great Ionian cities were, with the exception of Miletus, con- tinuously inhabited down to a late age makes it unlikely that relics of early times have survived. Moreover, what few relics have been discovered — especially by Mr. Hogarth in his excavation of the earliest temple of Artemis at Ephesus — seem at least to have a strong affinity to the relics of Aegaean and Cretan civiHzation. Among these are many figurines of Artemis as Karth-Mother and golden plaques and the double- axe decoration. Doric Invasion Though the colonization of Aeolis and Ionia evidently began before the great pressure of the Dorian invasion (c. iioo), it was doubtless owing to that invasion that such multitudes found their way across the Aegaean. We have already heard the mythical account of these Dorians and of the * Return of the Heracleidae.' These myths probably arose from the fact that the descendants of these Dorian conquerors tried to make out some hereditary claim to the countries which their ancestors had invaded ; but it is, of course, possible that invasion may have been incited by exiles, a thing that has happened many times in history. More probably, however, the Dorians moved southward because they were hard pressed by other northern tribes. Northern Greece had been from early ages the scene of con- stant invasions and of constant migrations. We have already heard of a great nation of northern barbarians, the Illyrians, who poured into Kpirus and swept the Achaeans eastward across the Pindus range into the country north of the Peneios. 80 THE DARK AGE Hither from the north came the Petthaloi, or Thessaloi, and drove the Achaeans southward to Phthia. For some time these ThessaHans held North Thessaly and reduced the original natives to serfdom. Then they attacked the Boeotians, who were, it is said, an Aeolian people at that time inhabiting the fertile valley of the Peneios in Central Thessaly. The Boeotians, forced southward, occupied the country known henceforth as Boeotia ; and it is likely that this invasion may have caused the Dorians to cross over into the Pelo- ponnese. These Dorians were apparently just at that time encamped in the basin between Mount Oeta and Mount Parnassus (to the north-west of Delphi). The small area of this district of ' Doris ' seems to preclude the possibility that a great host of warriors, such as the Dorians certainly were, could have made it their settled home for any length of time. Probably they had made their way down from the far north, following the great central range of Pindus, and had for the time occupied what was afterwards known as Doris and regarded as the original home of the Dorian race. During their sojourn here or on their moves southward (which probably went on for years) they seem to have possessed themselves of the Delphic shrine and oracle, for we find at a later period ancient Dorian famiHes at Delphi possessing prerogatives as Apollo's priests. Doubtless these Dorians were of the same Aryan stock as the Achaeans. They seem to have worshipped the same, or similar, deities, and to have accepted the Olympian religion as they found it in Greece, possibly adding a few features, such as the cult of the Doric Apollo — possibly that god of the sun who with his bright arrows slew the Python of Delphi and banished the old snake- worship. But in many points they were evidently very different. Instead of assimilating the civihzation of the conquered peoples they seem to have swept it almost out of existence. But possibly the ' darkness ' of this age is due mainly to our ignorance. Although no evidence is forthcoming of anything in the way of art and refinement in the countries overrun by these early Dorians during several F 8i ANCIENT GREECE centuries, it is just possible that their advent did not cause such devastation as has been supposed. vStill, judging from the Spartans, who were the only pure Dorians of later times, one may reasonably believe that their early ancestors, fresh from the north, were barbarians such as the Gauls or Huns, and it seems a very natural conclusion that the Aegaean-Achaean civihzation was for a long time almost annihilated in Greece, except in Attica, which preserved its independence and helped also to foster civilization in the colonies of Asia Minor. The Dorians seem to have been armed with iron, the commoner use of which metal may have given them a great superiority in war. They bore round metal shields, and wore a square woollen cloak, fastened over the shoulders with brooches (safety-pins). \ We have seen that they built a number of ships at Naupactus. In these ships many of them evidently crossed over to the Peloponnese, landing at various points. They conquered all the south-western parts, driving out the Achaean or Aegaean lords of Amyclae^ near which they founded Sparta — destined, though without wall or citadel, to become the mistress not only of lyaconia, but for a time of nearly the whole of Hellas^ But it seems probable that a considerable force of these Dorians set forth at once in their new-built ships for more distant conquests. They captured and occupied the islands of Thera and Melos, and made a descent on Crete, where they swept away the last remnants of Minoan civilization and introduced Dorian customs and laws.^ The similarity of the name of one of the three Dorian clans (Pamphyli) to that of the people of Pamphylia has induced some writers to assert that these adventurers even reached and gave their name and language to that land. 1 The similarity of Spartan and Cretan laws and constitution is noticed by old writers. Homer speaks of Dorians as one of many diverse races in Crete — the only time he mentions the name — and possibly calls them ' three- tribed.' If these are the Dorians of i loo or so the mention is an anachronism, but it only proves that Homer did not write before that date. ' Pamphyli ' really means ' of mixed races.' 82 THE DARK AGE In the Peloponnese the Dorians eventually extended their conquests to Argolis, and it was doubtless their devastating fire which, about 950, left its marks on the ruins of Mycenae and Tiryns. Argos now was made the chief city of the Argive plain, and the Dorian occupation lasted apparently for some centuries ; but afterwards, although traces of Dorian govern- ment remained, Argos became a great adversary of Sparta. The lofty citadel of Corinth, the Acrocorinthus, was also seized by a Dorian adventurer, Aletes ('Wanderer'), and the city, under the sovereignty of the Dorian Argive kings, became, doubtless by virtue of its two seas, a place of maritime importance. Even Megara was seized and became a thoroughly Dorian town ; and later (perhaps about 800) the island of Aegina was also occupied, and for nearly four centuries proved a Dorian thorn in the side of Athens, until the Athenians were forced (as we were in the case of the Acadians of Nova Scotia) to clear the country of its older population and settle it anew with loyal colonists. It was probably after thus extending and consolidating their conquests in the Peloponnese that the Dorian chiefs led bands of emigrants across the Aegaean, evidently by way of the Doric islands of Thera and Melos, to Crete and thence to Rhodes, where they founded, or annexed, the three cities of Ivindus, lalysus, and Cameirus.^ Then the island Cos was occupied by them, and two cities, Cnidus and Halicarnassus, were founded on the mainland. These six settlements formed the Hexapolis of the new oversea Doris — ^nominally a Dorian colony, but to a large extent really Carian ; for, especially in Halicarnassus, which was by far the most important of these cities, the native Carian element was preponderant, and ' Carian dynasts ' (among whom we shall later find Queen 1 Mentioned in the ' Catalogue of the Ships ' {Iliad, ii.). The Rhodians also in this passage are described as divided into three (Dorian) clans. But the ' Catalogue ' is admittedly full of late intercalations. Thera, Melos, and Rhodes were colonized by Aegaeans long before the coming of the Dorians. A ' Mycenaean ' cemetery at lalysus has given many evidences of this. In Thera a volcanic disturbance buried a Mycenaean town, which has been partially excavated, and in Melos a citadel has been discovered dating from about 2000. 83 ANCIENT GREECE Artemisia I and Mausolus) seem to have established their rule from an early period. ^W^'^ !^-" Thus during this so-called Dark Age very great and im- portant movements and changes evidently took place. The Aegaean, from which (if Thucydides is right) in an earlier age the Minoan fleets had swept the pirates and expelled the Carians, became during this period a Grecian sea, fringed on all sides, except the extreme north, with Grecian colonies — which extended, as we shall see later, even to Cyprus. Nor were the changes in social and political matters less important, for even in the twilight of the archaic period, before we emerge into the full light of history, we can discern the fact that the old monarchical system has already begun to give way, that to a considerable extent constituted law has taken the place of absolute government and those unwritten traditional ordinances (Oeniiarre?) of which we hear in Homer, and that the city, with its larger and more systematized community and its function as political centre of a district, has succeeded to migratory life and loosely grouped village communities clus- tered (as in Mycenae) around the stronghold of some chieftain. Moreover, the sites of towns were affected by the new state of things, as Thucydides tells us in his celebrated opening chapters. "When there were now greater facilities for navigation," he says, '* cities were built with walls on the sea-shore, and they began to occupy isthmuses, with a view to commerce and security, whereas the older cities, owing to the long continuance of piracy, were built farther off the sea . " Of the cities especi ally affected by the disappearance of piracy and the more settled state of things was Corinth, which took advantage of its position on the Isthmus, and in early days became a great emporium and the first naval power in Greece, so that we may well credit the assertion of Thucydides that the first triremes were built there ^ — war-galleys of 170 oars with ^ This was not until c. 700, when they were perhaps introduced by the Phoenicians. The trireme does not seem to have superseded the old fifty- oared biremes in other parts of Greece till shortly before the Persian wars (c. 500). In later times warships had often five banks. Alexander and the Ptolemies built vessels which, it is asserted, had forty banks 1 84 THE DARK AGE three banks of oarsmen — and that the first Greek naval battle was between the Corinthians and their own colonists, the Corcyraeans. Of other cities in Greece during this Dark Age we have a few dim myths and a few relics, such as the contents of the so-called Dipylon cemetery at Athens (see Section A) and various objects found at Argos and Sparta. But when the veil rises and Greek history begins we find some of these cities, or rather states (for they had already begun to develop into organized com- munities), furnished with constitutions and in possession of much else that necessarily presumes a considerable period of stable government and prosperity. It will therefore be well to consider here some of the more important facts connected with two cities which will later occupy much of our attention, namely, Athens and Sparta, and see how far these facts, as they meet our view at the dawn of history (say about 700), may be traced to their sources in this Dark Age (say between 1000 and 700), although in doing this we shall be forestalHng to some ej^itent. It is, of course, quite incredible that these three or four centuries between the Dorian invasion and the beginning of certified history should in Greece itself have been a total blank, but almost the only proof that it was not so resides in facts that really belong to the next age — facts which it may not be too audacious to try to trace to their origin with the help of more or less mythical accounts given by ancient writers. Athens Of Athens and its ancient mythical history we have already heard something, namely, how it was perhaps captured, but not permanently held, by the Achaeans, how it repelled the I Dorians and retained its independence, and how the last of its kings, Codrus, for his country's sake devoted himself to death I (c. 1044). I Now so great, it is said, was the admiration of the Athenians I for this heroic act of Codrus that they determined to allow ': no one else the royal prerogatives, and elected Medon, the son 8s ANCIENT GREECE of the king/ as their chief magistrate for life, giving him the title archon {' ruler '). Such is the possibly mythical version of the fact that early in the Dark Age the absolute monarch in Athens was superseded by a constitutional and accountable magistracy — perhaps elected by the nobles out of their own body. This magistracy consisted probably from the first of three archons, such as existed (though combined later with ' lawgivers ') down to the time of the Roman Emperors. They were the chief civil magistrate (called later eponymos, because he gave his name to the year), the chief military commander (polemarch) , and the King Archon (basileus) . The King Archon may at first have belonged to the royal house, but he held the merest shadow of kingly power, being allowed to retain little but the pontifical functions of royalty (as the Rex Sacrificulus at Rome after the expulsion of the kings and the election of praetors and consuls). This seems to have been in many of the states of Hellas the first stage in the evolution of the later republics. On account of the great increase of ordinary citizens, traders, agriculturists, and so on, the military element gradually lost its exclusive political influence, and the king, as head of the army, lost his political supremacy. Some powerful clique or family of nobles then assumed this supremacy, electing perhaps one of their number as polemarch, or war- leader, and others as permanent, or annual, civil magistrates. This state of things — that of a close aristocracy or oligarchy — we find in early days at Corinth, where the Bacchiad family for a considerable time held the reins of government. And as it happened at Corinth, so it also happened in many other cases that some specially strong-minded and ambitious noble over- threw the aristocracy (sometimes by coming forward as a demagogue and obtaining the support of the people) and constituted himself ' tyrant ' or despot. He differed from a hereditary monarch by basing his claims on force rather than 1 His younger brother, Neleus, led the emigrants to Ionia (see p. 78). The archonship was at first a life-office and perhaps limited to the Medontid family. About 750 its term was reduced to ten years, in 683 it was made an annual office, and finally the pine chief magistrate^ were all called archons, 86 THE DARK AGE on divine right, and generally surrounded himself with a strong bodyguard, but not unfrequently he proved a beneficent ruler, and one that forwarded the material prosperity of the people far more than was often done by republican govern- ments. The last stage of evolution was, as we shall see later, the establishment of a constitutional democracy on the expul- sion of the tyrannos. It was either during the reigns of the early Athenian kings (tradition attributes it to the reign of Theseus) or shortly after the institution of the archonship that Athens became the capital of the whole of Attica — an event which was of the very greatest moment, giving her in time a position as political centre of an united state which was possessed by no other city in Greece. In spite of the poverty of its soil Attica had received many foreign immigrants, such as the Achaean and the Ionian refugees. We hear of twelve Attic * kingships ' in the age of Cecrops. These petty chieftains in course of time, either by com- pulsion or wilUngly, became subject to the growing Athenian power, which extended its dominion first over the plain of the Cephisus and then over the country east of Mount Hymettus and north of PenteHcus from Cape Sunion to Marathon. To the west, over Kleusis and its plain, the new Athenian state did not for the present extend its sovereignty, but the whole of the Ade (or ' coastland ') — ^from which word is probably derived the name ' Attica ' — formed now a single community.^ This community was divided into four tribes, which received old Ionian names,^ the meanings of which are obscure. Tradition attributes the formation and naming of these four ' Ionian ' tribes of Attica to the mythical King Ion, ancestor of all lonians. Some modern writers assert that the names were derived from Miletus, where similar tribes existed. But it seems more reasonable to suppose that they were names in use among Ionian settlers in Attica, who probably were divided into four tribes as the Dorians were 1 This a-vvoiKLa, or Union of Attica, was commemorated even in the days of Plutarch by a festival in which offerings were made to the goddess Eirene (Peace). * Geleontes, Argades, Aegicores, and Hopletes. 87 ANCIENT GREECE into three. Each tribe had its tribe-king, and contained three phratrias (brotherhoods) and numerous clans and famiHes.^ The famiHes of each clan recognized, and perhaps worshipped, a common ancestor, or a special deity, and were bound together by various social ties. They had a special burial-place, and perhaps community in land property. But besides this it seems probable that from the first these four ' Ionian ' tribes were divided into the trittyes (thirds) and naucraries (shipownings) of which we hear so much in later days. These divisions were perhaps local (Hke the original demes, or townships, into which Theseus is said to have portioned out Attica), but they were evidently made for purposes of military and naval finance, the naucraries each probably supplying, as later in Solon's constitution, the equip- ment of one ship. 2 During this period of about three centuries {i.e. from the abolition of monarchy until the first Olympiad), during which Athens gradually became the political centre of Attica, the Athenian state was doubtless, as we find it still in the seventh century, an aristocracy with democratic tendencies. This seems plain not only from the poHtical constitution which we have been considering, but also from what little we know of the social order. The whole people was divided into three classes, the Bupatridae (' Well-born '), the Georgi (' lyand- workers '), and the Demiurgi (' Public Workers '). The nobles were large landowners. Many of them had removed into the city from their country estates, which they worked by means of labourers, who retained a sixth of the produce. The Demi- urgi were craftsmen of all kinds, such as those who made and painted those ' Dipylon ' vases which are the sole relics of this age. Some of the workers probably had a limited franchise, but there seems to have been a large number * In later writers the calculation was i tribe = 30 phratrias = 90 clans = 2700 families, thus giving 10,800 families in all. * Until lately this has been doubted, and the word naucraria has been derived from other sources, because it was assumed that Athens had no fleet before the time of Solon. We shall see that this assumption was wrong. See Section A. 88 THE DARK AGE even of the free population who had not the rights of citizenship. This is about all we know, or can venture to guess, about Athens in the Dark Age, except what we may infer from what is called ' Dipylon civilization,' which I shall consider later. Sparta lyct us now turn to Sparta, which offers a very interesting contrast. After the Dorians had established themselves in the western and southern part of the Peloponnese some of them seem to have put themselves at the head of bands of those fighting men and adventurers who had doubtless accompanied them in great numbers from the north and to have set forth in quest of new conquests in lands over the sea. Other Dorian chiefs in course of time, as we have seen, also doubtless at the head of armies largely composed of non-Dorians, made themselves masters of Mycenae, Argos, Corinth, and even Aegina. But the main body of the true-born Dorians — a body of probably only some six or eight thousand warriors — seem to have chosen Sparta, or I^acedaemon, the ancient residence of the Achaean princes (in Homer it is the residence of Menelaus), as their permanent abode. It was evidently at this time a place consisting of several (afterwards five) villages, which even in a later age were not closely united in one community, and remained unwalled and without a fortified acropolis almost down to the time of the Romans ; for the Dorians despised fortifications ^ and relied solely on their superiority in open battle. They were a comparatively small number in the midst of a hostile population, and it was evidently with no small difficulty that they held their own, for even at the beginning of the so-called historical age of Greece (c. 776) they were in possession of little more than the valley of the Eurotas, on which their city lay, and tradition asserts that it ^ Their want of practice in siege operations caused them often great trouble in wars against the Messenians, and during the Persian and Peloponnesian wars they had frequently to rely on the assistance of their allies in such matters. 89 ANCIENT GREECE was not for over 200 years — i.e. not until the reign of the Spartan king Teleclus (c. 850) — that they succeeded in dislodging a remnant of the Achaeans from the ancient town of Amyclae, about half a dozen miles distant from Sparta. The aborigines, Aegaeans, Achaeans, Cynurians, or whatever else they may have been, were either reduced to serfdom and called Helots (probably 'Captives'), or were allowed to form free municipalities in the neighbourhood of Sparta ^ without being granted civic rights. These latter, treated, perhaps, more leniently because they had offered less resistance, were called Perioeci (' Dwellers round about '), and formed the mercantile class, the Spartiatae, or true Dorian Spartans, not deigning to engage in such occupations or to acquire wealth. The Helots were not slaves. They were in some ways no worse off than the mediaeval villein or Russian serf, and could even acquire property, which was more than the Roman slave was allowed, for even his peculium belonged by law to his master. But the original Helots had been masters of the country, and their descendants, conscious of this, and being doubtless often equal to the Spartiates in civilized instincts, bitterly resented their lot, and the constant danger of insur- rection was one of the main reasons why Sparta lived under martial law. A very striking specimen of the measures adopted by the Spartans to meet this danger was the Crypteia, or secret society of young Spartiates, who were empowered by law to kill at once any Helot whom they might suspect as dangerous. To cover such glaring injustice by a show of law it was the custom for certain magistrates (the ephors) every year, when assuming office, to declare war formally against the Helots ! The whole of the political power lay in the hands of the Spartiatae, who formed a military caste of no great size.^ As might be expected, kingship was the inherent and permanent ^ Later in the whole of Laconia, where there were a hundred such townships ; but they formed no organic state like the Attic towns— indeed, they were a constant source of danger to Sparta. * After Thermopylae (according to Herodotus) Xerxes was told by Dema- ratus that Sparta contained about 8000 full-grown men. After I^euctra (371) the Spartans with full citizenship numbered ovlj abpiit 1500. 90 THE DARK AGE form of rule. The Spartan kings, who claimed an unbroken lineage from Hercules (extending back a century beyond the advent of the Dorians), retained the regal office and title, if with diminished rights, for nearly a thousand years, while almost every other city of Hellas passed through various phases of government. Possibly the fact that two kings held power at the same time, though it sounds a dangerous state of things, may have limited the abuse of regal power and helped to preserve kingship from its usual fate. This dual kingship is said by old writers to have arisen from the diffi- culty caused by the fact that the king of the Dorian invaders, Aristodemus, left twins as heirs tohisthrone. Modern writers try to explain it by a possible coalition of two tribes, each of which insisted on retaining its king ; but the old explanation seems quite as probable. However that may be, the state of things was evidently not such as would seem likely to result in a very satisfactory dispensation of justice, far less in any form of settled government and constituted law. So it is not surprising that Herodotus (i. 65) is of the opinion that in early times the I^acedaemonians were "the very worst governed people in Greece." But Sparta at some period during the Dark Age received a very complete and rigid, if not a very highly organized, constitution. It was not such a constitution as is gradually evolved to meet the higher needs of a people. It has all the marks of construction, and the main structure was doubtless conceived and framed by some one lawgiver. This lawgiver, according to old tradition, was I^ycurgus. He was regent for his young nephew, King lyabotas, or Charilaus, and either during this regency or after a period of voluntary exile and of travel in distant lands, being encouraged by the Delphic oracle and having gained the support of the chief men of the city, he procured the introduction of his new constitution. Then, after having extracted a promise from the people to keep his laws until his return, he quitted Sparta for ever. Modern criticism tells us that " lyycurgus was not a man ; he was only a god " ;^ 1 The phrase seems to be borrowed from Herodotus : " Whether Zahnoxis was really a man, or nothing but a native god of the Getae, I now bid him 91 ANCIENT GREECE that his name means ' protector against wolves/ and that he may have been identical with the ancient Arcadian wolf- repelling deity who was called by the Greeks Zeus Lykaios. All this is possible ; but it seems to some minds more natural that one should begin by being a hero, or a great lawgiver, and end in being a god. Anyhow, to save time and space for more important matters, let us accept I^ycurgus, whether a man or only a god, as the great lawgiver who, when the " very worst governed people in Greece " found things becoming intolerable, was begged, or allowed, to draw up a constitution of a very rigid and drastic nature — such a con- stitution as should be fitting for a military camp where martial law was to prevail and where the one end of all law and all social order was to turn out the best soldiers and the best soldiers' wives. The following are, shortly stated, some of the chief features of this constitution as it existed about 700 to 600. It is impossible to say for certain which portions of the structure are the most ancient, but there is no reason to doubt that the greater part had existed, as Thucydides asserts, at least from about 800, and that many of these ' Dorian ordinances,' as Pindar calls them, were derived from very early times, if not, as he believed, from the days of the mythical Dorian hero Aegimius. The functions of the two kings were military and religious. They had supreme command and dictatorial power in war, and were high-priests of the Spartan Zeus and Apollo. The kingship was hereditary, but the son succeeded who was eldest born after his father's accession. In later times (for instance, during the Persian wars) only one king held military command. The kings had a council, like the Homeric Boule, called the Gerusia (Council of Elders). It consisted only of nobles, but they were elected by the people. There farewell " (iv. 96). Herodotus (i. 65) tells us that lyycurgus " introduced from Crete the system of laws still observed by the Spartans." This is also asserted by Aristotle. The resemblances in the Cretan and Spartan constitutions seem to be limited to a few features such as the syssitia, and are probably due to Doric influences in Crete, 92 THE DARK AGE was also a public assembly, like the Homeric Agora, called the Apella. To this every citizen of thirty years belonged. In early days it was summoned by the kings, later by the ephors. The vote of the public assembly was given by acclamation. Although Sparta never reached democracy pure and simple, things had with them, as everywhere else, a tendency towards democracy, of which the creation of the ephors (possibly not till about 760) was a proof. The ephors (' overseers ' or * guardians ') were representatives of the people, like the tribunes in Roman history, elected after long contests between the military caste and the working classes, which seem to have included many who had been degraded from the ranks of the Spartiatae as well as the lyaconian Perioeci. Every month the ephors and the kings exchanged vows to abide by the laws and to support one another's authority. There were five ephors — one evidently for each of the five villages, or demes, of which, as we have seen, Sparta was composed. They had much of the judicial power in their hands, and could even indict the kings. Two of them accompanied the army in war. Thus at Sparta we find a striking example of that mixed constitution which, when a carefully balanced construction, has proved elsewhere (as, for instance, in England) more durable than any other form of government, possessing something of the stability of the triangle of forces and of an universe of three dimensions, ■fe More characteristic even than this political machinery '^'was the social constitution of Sparta, which was regarded with intense admiration (at a distance) by many other Greek citizens, and which Plato, struck perhaps by its artistic symmetry, like that of some great Doric temple, took as the type after which he constructed the framework of his Ideal State — although his ideal ruler and ideal citizen had nothing in common with those of the Spartan lawgiver.^ ^ For a very full discussion of lyycurgus and his ' Laws and Discipline ' see Grote, Part II, chap, vi 93 ANCIENT GREECE Many of the details of this ' Spartan discipline ' and many stories connected therewith are well known. I shall therefore merely touch on a few points. , One of the main points was that the Spartiat warrior-citizen should be wholly free from the degrading necessity of working to provide for himself and his family. He possessed landed patrimony which could not be sold or broken up, and this land I was tilled by serfs, who had to supply the lord of the manor \ with corn, wine, and fruit. The serfs (Helots) of the Spartan noble were not his property. They belonged to the state, which alone could emancipate them ; and this was sometimes done as a reward for valour in war. Hence arose a class like the Roman lihertini (freedmen). Every new-born child was inspected by the tribal authorities, and if deemed too feeble or unhealthy it was taken to Mount Taygetus and left there to die. At seven years the boy was I taken from home and was kept in a great military school ! until the age of twenty, when he entered the army and was , allowed to marry, but was still obliged to live apart from his i wife in barracks. At thirty he was considered a man and received the rights of a citizen. Every Spartan male citizen was obliged to take his meals at a public ' mess ' (syssition) under the management of the jWar Minister — such messes as More imagined in his Utopia, except that in Utopia messing in the public halls was not compulsory, and women were also admitted. The education of the Spartan had an aim very different from that of the Athenian — anyhow the Athenian of the ; higher type in classical times, whose ideal was a truly cultured, ' perfectly balanced, harmonious character, not the production of a highly trained fighter nor professional or mercantile suc- cess. Money-making and luxury were indeed, theoretically, despised by the Spartiat, though he seems to have been more open to a bribe than other Hellenes.^ But his contempt ^ To substantiate this I would refer the reader to Hdt. iii. 148, v. 51, vi. 72 ; Thuc. i. 129 and 131, ii. 21, viii. 50. What use the gold would be to them in Sparta, where QSly^Jtpn money was allowed until the time of Alexander the Great, it is difficult to see. 94 THE DARK AGE for such things did not spring from any hunger for angels* food, as Dante calls it. The Spartan youth — as also the Spartan girl — doubtless received a splendid physical train- ing, and did full credit to the scientific breeding of muscular and athletic citizens, but they were, even in the age of Demos- thenes,^ for the most part not taught to read, and, according to Plato, many of the Spartans " could not do the simplest sum in arithmetic, nor did they care a jot for science, or logicL or any such things/' Thus the governing classes in Sparta were probably more illiterate than the mercantile Perioeci, or even the Helots, and had to depend (as was also often the case among the Romans) on slaves or hired amanuenses. The love of the Spartans for brevity in speech — which accounts for the meaning of the word ' laconic ' — is well illus- trated by the following story, told by Herodotus. Some Samians came to Sparta to ask for aid against the tyrant Polycrates, and " had audience of the magistrates, before whom they made a long speech, as was natural with persons greatly in need of help. Now after this speech was ended the Spartans replied that they had forgotten the first half of it and could make nothing of the remainder. So the Samians had another audience, whereat they simply said, showing a bag that they had brought with them. The hag needs flour. The Spartans answered that they did not need to have said The hag.*' In the speeches attributed by Thucydides to lyacedaemonians during the Peloponnesian War they seem to be quite as fond of long-winded argument as other speakers. But the pitilessly curt question by which, Thucydides says, they decided the fate of the Plataeans certainly savoured of Spartan brevity. A curious Spartan custom (scarcely traceable to their northern origin) was that of not only allowing, even in regard to female dress, a free exposure of the person, but also of insisting on nudity, in the case of both sexes, on certain public occasions, such as displays of gymnastic exercises. What many might regard as a survival of barbarism was regarded not only by the Spartans, but in course of time (as Thucydides * See Grote, ii. 307, and Plato's Hippias Major. 95 ANCIENT GREECE seems to intimate) by all Hellenes, as a proof of higher civiliza- tion — though only as far as male nudity was concerned. How different the feeling in the rest of Greece was in regard to female nudity can be seen from the fact that, though nude male statues in early times are the rule, undraped female statues are extremely rare until about 400. The Dorian race, like some other northern races, seems to have possessed very little art instinct ; but, as has happened in other cases, the intermingling of the vigorous northern with the softer and more imaginative southern nature produced a very fine type of artistic character. Many of the Dorian or half-Dorian cities of Hellas, such as Argos, Sicyon, Syracuse, Halicarnassus, and Acragas, were distinguished for art — for their sculpture, their coins, their magnificent temples — while I Sparta, or the dominant class in Sparta, remained to a wonder- ful degree purely Dorian, and inartistic. Some writers have suggested that before the introduction of their^ jnilitary ^dij- cipline the tastes of the Spartans were somewhat more cultured than they were in historical times. However that may be, a certain amount of art feeling seems to have survived even that discipline, for although, as Professor Gardner says, *' the traditional notion of the Spartan character is hardly such as to lead us to expect that Sparta was in early times a centre of artistic work and influence," nevertheless we do find that the art of sculpture, probably introduced from Crete, flourished in Sparta in the seventh century, and we hear of Sparta being visited by the great lycsbian musician, Terpander (676), and by the Lydian lyric poet, Alcman,^ who is said to have made it his home (c. 650). Terpander is said to have instituted at Sparta a musical contest at the great festival in honour of the Carneian Apollo. He was the musician who added three strings to the tetrachord of the lyre. It may seem strange that the conservative Spartans gave him such a friendly reception, for on a later occasion, when Timotheus of Miletus, who had added four * Fragments of songs by Alcman composed for choirs of Spartan girls are still extant. 96 THE DARK A.GE strings to the heptachord, visited Sparta, the ephors, says Cicero, ordered his extra strings to be broken before he was allowed to compete. By the way, Terpander seems to have got credit for what he was not the first to invent, seeing that on a Cretan sarco- phagus (Fig. 25) of a date at least eight centuries before Terpander a musician is depicted with a lyre of seven strings. We know, of course, very little about Greek music of this age, but it seems that the native Dorian music not only differed from the lyydian, Aeolian, Phrygian, and lastian (Ionian) in ' mode ' — whether that means scale or pitch — but also in rhythm and time, being used generally as accompaniment to processionals^ and ^martial strains rather than to bardic and lyric poetry. The Homeric KiOapi? (cithara), or phorminx, was perhaps originally the harp or lute of the northern races, and probably this instrument rather than the lyra or chelys (tortoise-shell) — i,e. the Aegaean and Egyptian lyre — was popular at Sparta, and what delighted the soul of the Spartiat was doubtless the old martial ballad or war-song, such as we shall hear of when we come to Tyrtaeus. We have wandered somewhat from the Dark Age while following up things which had their first origins in that eraj Before passing on to what until lately, before the discovery of the Minoan and Mycenaean civihzations, was regarded as the beginning of Greek history, I shall in the following sections briefly discuss two subjects, namely, 'Dipylon' antiquities and Hesiod's poems, the consideration of which may throw faint shafts of Hght into the obscurity of the two centuries preceding the first Olympiad. In the third section I shall offer a few remarks about the contemporary history of certain nations closely connected with the history of Greece. Of these the I somewhat mysterious Phoenician people specially interests us, for in early times it came into closer contact with the Hellenic world than did the great Oriental empires or Egypt, and the desperate conflict of this Semitic race with the Sicilian Greeks and later with the Romans lends additional interest to the subject. c 97 ANCIENT GREECE SECTION A ; ' DIPYLON ' ANTIQUITIES The expression ' Dipylon antiquities ' is used rather loosely to cover all Greek relics of the age to which belong many of the objects found in an ancient cemetery excavated near the ruins of the Dipylon — that is, the ' Double Gate ' of Athens, a great city gate with an inner and an outer portal, probably built in Periclean times not far from the more ancient and smaller Sacred Gate, through which the Sacred Way led to Eleusis, passing through the Outer Cerameicus (Potters' Quarter). The Cerameicus was used as the cemetery of Athens, and many beautiful monuments (stelae) of a later age are still to be seen there, in the * Street of Tombs.' The ancient cemetery near the Dipylon was to a great extent covered by later tombs, under and amidst which have been excavated some hundreds of ancient graves. Some of these are said to date from the ninth century or even earlier. In many of the graves of the ' Dipylon age ' (say looo to 800 B.C.) the dead had been buried unburnt ; in some their ashes were found. The most valuable relics were very numerous fragments of pottery, as well as entire vases, some of which, of large size, were standing upright on the top of shaft-graves or tile-built tombs. The oldest of this pottery, which is of red clay painted with lustrous black on a yellowish surface, is geometric in its style, showing that there had been a curious relapse from the much earlier Mycenaean style, in which we have already found sea animals and even human beings depicted. These early Dipylon vases (see Fig. 35) show a fine decorative sense, but at first offer nothing but geometric patterns. Then they begin to introduce animals, and more generally birds, of an amusingly primitive type. Then they give other animals, such as horses ; then human figures ; and finally we have large compositions (found, however, only on Athenian Dipylon vases) showing an ambitious style of painting not far removed from that of the first black-figured Attic vases, such as the Frangois Vase (Fig. 39) . These pictures give by far the most clear and intelligible information that we possess con- cerning the ' Dipylon age.' Almost all else besides pottery 98 34- DiPYi^oN Vase See List of Illustrations 98 THE DARK AGE seems to have entirely disappeared, except some old founda- tions and a vast quantity of bronze and terra-cotta objects, most of which tell us next to nothing. First to be noticed are the ships. They are biremes, with forty or fifty oarsmen in two ranks, and this proves that the Athenians already possessed the beginnings of a fleet and a considerable skill in shipbuilding and naval matters. The ships seem even already to be furnished with rams at the bows. But it also seems to show that these pictures date before the introduction of the trireme, which was known to the Corinthians by about 700, as we have already seen ; indeed, the picture of an Athenian bireme given in Fig. 34 may be of a date two centuries before 700, and is an exceedingly interesting and valuable confirmation of what we have heard on the subject of the Athenian naucrariae (p. ^^), Then we have numerous pictures of horses and of chariots : first two-horsed chariots, with very primitive horses and with men whose wasp-waists remind one of Minoan and Mycenaean art ; and in some cases much of the human figure is concealed by the great Mycenaean or Minoan figure-of-eight shield, while in others the smaller round shield is held by the handle. Then we find — what are not found in Homer — four-horsed chariots, and also even horsemen. Finally we have scenes — sea-fights, processions, funeral ceremonies, &c. Some of the funeral scenes intimate an ostentation and magnificence quite astonishing in this Dark Age — although not unknown to us in Homer — the bier being attended by a great number of chariots or ships. The general appearance of the Athenians (and doubtless of other Greek peoples) in the ' Dipylon ' age is depicted graphi- cally, though perhaps not flatteringly, on these vases. Both men and women have impossibly narrow waists, and the legs, when in view, are often enormously thick. Much of this is, of I course, due to want of skill and exaggeration, but the main [features of the dress are doubtless true. The women are dressed much in the same fashion as the Minoan and Mycenaean women, in tight bodices and bell-shaped skirts — such as Hesiod 99 ANCIENT GREECE also describes (p. 107) . It is evident that the Achaean peplos of Homer's women, if it ever became fashionable at Athens in early days, had in the period 1000-800 given way again to the earlier Mycenaean style of dress, while the square Doric dress, with a flap over the shoulder needing a long pin ox fibula (brooch, safety-pin), such as one sees on the Fran9ois Vase (Fig. 39), had not yet been adopted at Athens, although the immense number of very long metal pins and of large fibulae found with later * Dipylon ' vases in Boeotia and at Argos (not to mention Sparta) shows that fashion changed rapidly, as it is wont to do.^ Everything seems to point to a civilization at Athens in the Dark Age something like the old Mycenaean, and not much changed either by the Achaean (Homeric) or the later Doric influence — at all events, in its earlier stages. Pottery of the same kind as the Athenian, but not with large painted scenes, has been excavated from the temple of Apollo on Mount Ptoos, in Boeotia, and also at Tanagra and Thebes — mostly geometric in style, but some of it evidently dating from late Mycenaean times, notably an earthenware box discovered at Thebes, on which we find the Earth-Mother with her animals In the great Doric temple of Aphaia and the shrine of Aphrodite in Aegina much pottery has been excavated, some of it Mycenaean and some imported or native * Dipylon ' ware and early Corinthian This pottery supplements the evidence from Athens. In the temple of Hera at Argos, excavated by the American School at Athens, have been found, besides many bronzes and long dress-pins (used in the Doric female dress), a number of fragments of vases with pictures of horses and chariots like those discovered at Athens, and of the same ' Dipylon ' period. On the island Thera ' Dipylon ' ware and other relics of this age have been found, and what are possibly some of the first known Greek inscriptions cut on rock. At Delphi and at Olympia thousands of bronzes dating from this age have been excavated, all testifying to no mean civiliza- * For more on the subject of dress see Note B. 100 THE DARK AGE tion and to an enormous cult of certain deities. At Tiryns, besides much else, we have various representations of the female dress of the Dark Age, and again we find a tight-fitting frock, evidently more like the Mycenaean bodice and skirt than the square Doric chiton fastened at the shoulder with pins. Contemporary with this ' Dipylon ' ware, found in all these places and testifying to a civilization very different from the Spartan, we have the wonderfully beautiful proto-Corinthian ware, which shows a very advanced state of artistic skill, but gives us no such pictures of contemporary life as the Athenian vases. This is unfortunate, for Corinth in this age was a great trade emporium and a naval power, and it would be most interesting to discover some evidences of this Corinthian civilization. Now, if we turn to Sparta we find something quite different. Excavations made by the British School of Athens have brought to light what seems to be the base of the great altar of Artemis Orthia. This goddess and her altar are mentioned by Xenophon and by Plutarch.^ Spartan youths were flogged at the altar in order to test their endurance, and sometimes died under the ordeal. In or near this old altar and the neighbouring temple of Artemis Orthia (which existed from early days down to about 600) a vast number of lead and terra-cotta votive figures of the goddess, as well as bronzes and fragments of pottery, were found. The early pottery is geometric and something like the * Dipylon,* but the other relics seem to point to quite a different (Doric) civilization. There are many grotesque winged figures and evident Earth-Mothers, and also many nude female figures, which are attributed to Oriental influence (as being un-Greek), but which surely seem to point towards the curious Spartan ideas on this subject already mentioned. * In Hdt. iv. 87 we find an Artemis Orthosia at Byzantium, and we hear of her also in I^emnos. Also the form Orthasia has been discovered at Sparta. The word Orthia means ' straight ' or * loud-voiced ' in Greek. It may refer to the yells of the priests trying to drown the cries of human victims — ^for this ceremony of bloody flogging may have been substitutory. But perhaps it is some northern word in disguise. lOI ANCIENT GREECE SECTION B : HESIOD The personality of Hesiod has not been questioned like that of Homer. It is perhaps too frequently and strongly affirmed by Hesiod himself, who names himself and gives us a good deal about his father and his brother Perses, and a great deal about his own philosophy of life, whereas nowhere in the Iliad or the Odyssey is there any personal note, such as we have in Milton's great epic, nor any suggestion of the poet's existence, except in the opening addresses to the Muse — unless, indeed, we are to recognize Homer in his blind bard, Demodocus, as we recognize Shakespeare in Prospero. Hesiod's date, however, and Hesiod's poems afford rich material for the sceptic. Herodotus, as we have already seen, places both Hesiod and Homer at about 850 or 900, and he mentions Hesiod before Homer, as do several other writers. But internal evidence seems to show that the Homeric poems are older than the Erga and the Theogonia, and such modern criticism as delights in " bringing low the strong and diminishing the illustrious," as Hesiod expresses it, has brought low and diminished his date little by little until we find him flourishing about 700, seventy years and more after the first Olympiad. To discuss the question in detail is here impossible. As in the case of Homer, I can only state my belief. Much evidence seems to me to point to about 850 as the date of Hesiod's poems, and this belief is confirmed by something besides, and perhaps better than, philological and archaeological arguments. About two centuries after Hesiod's age we shall meet with what is sometimes called the first exact date in Greek history. It is the date April 6, 648, on which day, astronomers tell us, a total solar eclipse took place. Now Hesiod tells us something about the star Arcturus which, although it certainly does not allow us to make such an exact deduction, does supply us with very interesting information. He says that Arcturus had its sunset-rising sixty days after the winter solstice, 102 THE DARK AGE i.e. about February 19. But Arcturus now rises at sunset in Greece about March 30, and one can calculate from this difference (caused by the precession of equinoxes) that Hesiod probably lived about 2780 years ago. This gives his date at about 870. He had, of course, no means of observing very accurately such risings and settings of the stars, and he may have got his information from some older observer, so that the evidence cannot be regarded as quite exact, but within fifty years or so it seems to be trustworthy. Hesiod tells us that his father came from Cyme in Aeolis, whither perhaps the family had migrated from Aeolian Boeotia (Thessaly), and had settled at Ascra, on the northern slopes of Mount Helicon — a place "bad in winter, wretched in summer, and never pleasant." Possibly Hesiod was born at Cyme, and he may have had memories of the softer climate of Asia Minor, as also of the Aeolic dialect, which he sometimes uses ; but he seems to have passed his early years at Ascra, shepherding his father's flocks or working on the farm, and doubtless often wandering alone on Mount Helicon and neglecting his work ; and against the theory of his Asiatic birth stands the fact that, as he tells us, he was only once on the sea, namely, when he crossed the Euripus Strait, from Aulis to Euboea, in order to take part in a poetical contest — at which he won a tripod. lyCgend, as we have already seen, asserts that he won that tripod in a contest against Homer himself. On the death of his father his brother Perses succeeded in ousting him from his share of the farm by bribing the judges — " gift-devouring kings," as he calls them. The poems attributed to Hesiod, and cited as his by Pindar, Aristophanes, Plato, and other ancient writers, are the Works and Days (Erga kai Hemerai, i.e. ' Farming Operations and lyUcky and Unlucky Days ') and the Theogonia (' The Genea- logy of the Gods'). Another poem. The Shield of Heracles, is generally printed with his works, but is evidently of later date. The two former poems contain, no doubt, many interpolations made by rhapsodes and later ' Hesiodic poets,' but there is much that is undoubtedly authentic and valuable to the 103 ANCIENT GREECE historian. Moreover, what is of more importance, across the homespun warp of rules and maxims there runs many a bright thread of Horatian wit and wisdom and of deep and true feehng, and at times there comes a golden flash of true poetry, as in the description of the Five Ages in the Erga and the celebrated meeting of Hesiod with the Muses on Mount Helicon which forms the opening of the Theogonia. As a creative poet and a master of language Homer is incom- parably the greater, but Hesiod touches at times chords of far deeper import, giving voice to his own human nature and that of the common people. The Erga (' Works and Days ') is addressed to his brother, most foolish Perses,'' to whom he gives many a sharp reproof and much sage advice, in order to save him from being ruined by his thriftless and dishonest ways and his love of lounging and gossip. The poem offers us a very graphic picture of Boeotian country life in the ' Dipylon ' age. Hesiod 's love of the country and of animals and of the stars, his interest in farming and in ships and boats (in spite of his disHke of the " churlish sea"), his reverence for Zeus and his laws, his behef in prayer and in good guardian spirits (1. 122), his conviction that work is the happiest lot for a mortal, *' whatever he may be in fortune " ; that often " the half is more than the whole " ; that wealth should not be " clutched at " nor won by guile of tongue, but accepted as the gift of heaven ; that home-life is far better than gadding about and gossiping — all this testifies to a state of mind by no means entirely miserable and discontented among the country folk of Boeotia. The very epithets and names that he gives to animals show his delight in them and his keen observation. The ox is described as if he were, hke the Irishman's pig, a member of the family ; the snail is the ' house-carrier,' the ant is ' the knowing one,' the cuttle-fish is ' the boneless one,' wild beasts are ' forest-sleepers,' the swallow is ' early- wailing,' the spider is ' high-hovering.' Bees, drones, hawks, ravens, nightingales, dogs, mules, are all mentioned with knowledge and sympathy. The horse (if we exclude Pegasus) is referred to once only, and that in a line of 104 36. Foundations of ApoIvI^o's Tempi^e, West Dei^phi 104 THE DARK AGE doubtful authenticity. As regards Hesiod's keen observation of nature, what could be more Wordsworthian than his likening of a certain kind of tree-leaf as it unfolds in spring to the *' foot of an ahghting raven " ? But there is a dark side to his picture. He inveighs with great bitterness against the avarice and injustice of this age of iron in which fate has set him — this age in which '' money is the life of wretched mortals," and which will go from bad to worse until, *' veiling their fair faces in white mantles. Honour and Righteous Indignation shall leave mankind and flee away from the broad-wayed earth to Olympus, to the race of the immortal gods." He denounces people for their jealousies and strife and scandal-mongering and eternal lawsuits. *' Potter quarrels with potter and carpenter with carpenter; beggar envies beggar and minstrel minstrel." And his bitterness is especially intense against the heartlessness and greed and injustice that he sees in those around him — intensest, perhaps, against his own brother and the unrighteous judges who have deprived him of his heritage. He calls upon Zeus to smite with his thunderbolt, and to send again to earth his daughter, Justice,^ who has been dragged with insults through the streets by mortals and expelled from her own tribunals — that goddess who alone can bring back peace and golden prosperity to a land ruined by tyranny and the idleness of wealth. We have thus a picture of aristocratic oppression such as we found also intimated at Athens, and of an unhappy state of things among the working classes. I^aws and law-courts and law-court holidays are mentioned, but it is evident that the power of *' deciding questions of ancient right [OeVto-ra?] by straight judgments," of which Hesiod speaks, too often lay in the hands of " gift-devouring kings." Hesiod's cry for justice and for equality before the law is the earliest in European literature. So, too, he is the first to assert the nobiHty of work rather than that of rank and wealth, and to claim for * The word Dike (Justice), or some word derived from it, occurs fourteen times in thirty lines. Homer's description of the blessings brought by a good king offers a striking contrast {Od. xix. 109). 105 ANCIENT GREECE poetry a function higher than that of recounting pretty fictions in the halls of the nobihty.^ Hesiod touches at times on questions of the deepest import. His maxims are, however, not always such as we approve. Thus he tells us that " easy and smooth is the way to evil and toilsome the way to virtue, steep and rough at first ; but when one reaches the height then it becomes easier, though ever difiicult " — which reads like a combined quotation from the Bible and from Dante. But he also tells us to " love those who love us," to " give to him that giveth, but not to him that giveth not," and to ask a next-door neighbour to dinner because he may prove useful in some future village squabble. Again, " Give good measure," he says, " yes, an over-measure if you can, so that you may find a sure supply when you need it." Another of his maxims shows a dry humour and a worldly wisdom, doubtless learnt by bitter experience. " Even in the case of a brother," he says, " insist on having a witness — but do it with a laugh." In the Erga there are evident signs of that superstitious dread of the supernatural which we noticed in the older = Greek religion, but which is scarcely perceptible in Homer. Hesiod speaks with gloomy apprehension of all the curses, the swarming diseases and things of dread, that have been brought on the earth by the theft of Prometheus and the creation of the first woman. Pandora. " The land," he exclaims, " is full of evil things and full the sea." And he gives numerous rules for the avoidance of evil results : *' Not at a feast of the gods to cut the dry from the quick on the five-branched thing [the hand] " ; " not, when men are drinking, to lay the wine- ladle over the wine-bowl — for 'tis a most fatal thing to do." M * '' Field- abiding shepherds, shameless ones, mere belly-gods," exclaim the Muses who bring to Hesiod the staff of laurel, " we know to tell of many- things resembling what is real, but we know also to sing, whene'er we wish, of what is true." Doubtless he refers here once more to lounging and scandal- mongering, such as was connected with recitations of old ballads. It by no means follows that he considered ' didactic ' poetry higher than such poetry as that of Homer. He was too good a poet for that ; but he believed, as Aristophanes did, that the poet was the ' teacher of men ' in the highest sense. io6 37- Archaic Statue Excavated on the Acropolis See List of Illustrations io6 THE DARK AGE Then he gives a long list of lucky and unlucky days, reminding one forcibly of Old Moore's Almanack. lyastly, dress is sometimes mentioned. In his description of the effects of cold weather (which he evidently hated) Hesiod advises one to get as a '' protection for one's flesh" a thick-woven soft chlaina (mantle) and a chiton (tunic) reaching down to the feet, and ox-hide sandals lined with felt. This male attire is thoroughly Homeric ; but the dress of the fashionable lady among these Boeotian country folk seems to have been rather of the Mycenaean style, such as we found in contemporary Dipylon vase-paintings. Doubtless the lady in question wore a dress of the latest Athenian fashion, with tight bodice and flounced skirt and well-padded protrusions. Hesiod is giving advice to a young farmer, such as his brother : *' Don't let yourself be taken in," he says, " by any fashionably dressed woman who comes trying with wheedHng flatteries to making herself mistress of your farm " — and the real meaning of the epithet he applies to her is " furnished with a big bustle behind." The Theogonia is more Homeric in its language than the Erga, and of a quite different tone. It is chiefly taken up with a long account of the genesis of the Universe from Chaos and with a genealogy of the gods. The presence of I/Ove as the formative and creative principle in this Hesiodic Genesis is very remarkable. It forestalls some of the wisest guesses of later Greek sages. The poem does not throw so much light as the Erga on life in the Dark Age, but it shows that a very complex and complete mythology had already grown up around the hierarchy formed by the superimposition of the northern on the old Aegaean or Pelasgian deities. The ; opening lines of the Theogonia, describing the visit of the Muses to Hesiod on Mount Helicon, are of very high merit as • poetry, and, together with not a few other passages in his poems, entirely justify the honour conferred by these daughters 'i of Memory on one whom a modern writer has called a ' gifted rustic' I 107 ANCIENT GREECE SECTION C : THE PHOENICIANS AND SOME OTHER NATIONS DURING THE DARK AGE Since the discovery of the Minoan and Mycenaean civiliza- tions the Phoenicians have lost the credit of having introduced art into Crete and Greece. But they had most of the Aegaean and Mediterranean sea- trade in their hands for some centuries — probably from the decline of the Minoan naval supremacy until the rise of Corinthian and Athenian sea-power (about 1400 to 750). Indeed, in still earher times they seem to have been a nation of merchant princes, such as Isaiah describes them (xxiii.). They probably introduced the Egyptian decimal coinage into Babylon as well as the ' ell/ They are said to have brought the vine and the olive to Crete. In old Egyptian monuments the tribute of the Phoenicians includes the products of many distant lands. In the time of Moses (c. 1350) they possessed the colony of Tartessus, or Tarshish, in Spain; and had perhaps already reached Britain and the Baltic, as well as the west coast of Africa (where later they had three hundred factories) and the Euxine. Gades (Cadiz) was founded probably about the time of the Trojan War, and Utica about 1 100. In the time of Solomon (960) they had fleets also on the Red Sea, which brought gold from India or South Africa. Indeed, perhaps these were the oldest fleets possessed by the Phoenicians, for the men of Tyre and Sidon are said to have come originally from the Red Sea, or Persian Gulf — perhaps from the ' land of Punt,' as Abyssinia or Somaliland is called in an Egyptian inscription of the Vth Dynasty (c. 3000) . Possibly, too, the Greek name Phoenix, which was believed to mean ' the red man,' or ' the man of the red land ' (land of the sun, or sun-god?), may have originally meant ' the man of Punt' (cf. I^atin Punicus, Poenus). When Herodotus visited new Tyre (c. 450) he was told by the priests of Melcarth, the Phoenician Heracles, that ancient Tyre was founded about 2750. If Tyre was the ' daughter of Sidon,' as we are told in the Bible, Sidon must have existed from at least 3000, and it was the chief city of Phoenicia 108 THE DARK AGE until about 1120, when it was conquered by the Philistines. A century or so later, in the days of Solomon and King Hiram, Tyre took the lead. Both Jezebel, Ahab's wife, and Queen Dido were members of the same dynasty as Hiram. At this era Assyria became very powerful under Shalmanezer II, and Tyre was captured by the Assyrians. Perhaps on account of this Assyrian oppression a large body of Phoenicians, led, as tradition says, by the Princess Klissa (Dido), made a new home (c. 825) on the coast of Africa, not far from the older colony Utica. This new city was Carthage. The fact that the Phoenicians had settlements in all quarters of the Mediterranean even in the fourteenth century, and that they doubtless took with them the worship of the bull-headed Phoenician sun-god Baal, or Moloch, to whom human sacrifices were made, has very naturally caused many to believe that the Cretan bull-worship and the Minotaur and Talos legends were originally derived from this source, and that the myths of Theseus and Iphigeneia are reminiscences of the abolition of Phoenician human sacrifice by Greek influence. However that may be, it is evident that the Phoenicians had little or nothing to do with Aegaean and Cretan art or with ancient Minoan writing. But they introduced, as we have seen, the alphabet into Hellas, and they also {pace some modern writers) possessed no mean craft as ' cunning workers,' as the Bible and also Homer tell us. Thus a silver wine-bowl described by Homer was " more beautiful than all others on earth, since it was wrought by those cunning workers the Sidonians." Another such crater was given to Menelaus by the king of the Sidonians, and a beautiful peplos worked by Sidonian women is mentioned. But it must be allowed that the Odyssey usually gives us a picture of the Phoenician not as craftsman but as trader and artful huckster of gauds and trinkets — such a despicable creature as the Phaeacian Kuryalus describes when pouring contempt on Odysseus : Nay, O stranger, and truly I liken thee not to a mortal Practised in any of all of the contests known to the nations ; Rather to one that frequents with his well-benched vessel the harbours, 109 ANCIENT GREECE Skipper, methinks, of a folk of the sea who traffic as chapmen, Mindful of nought but the bales and careful of nought but the cargo. Ay and the grab and the gain. No large settlements were made by the Phoenicians on Aegaean shores, except perhaps Cameirus, in Rhodes, but they had numerous marts and purple-factories — one perhaps on the Isthmus of Corinth and another near the Peiraeus. The struggle between the Semitic and Japhetic races — a struggle which, no less than the Persian wars, was to decide the destiny of Kurope — took place, not in the Aegaean, but in Sicily, where by the eighth century the Phoenicians, Uticans, and Carthaginians possessed many trade-stations, and whither during the eighth century, as we shall see, a large stream of Greek colonists began to find its way. This struggle (with which the battles of Himera and Crimisus and the Punic wars are connected) lasted for six centuries, till the total demolition of Carthage by the Romans in 146. Of Crete during the Dark Age very little is known. We have seen that in the heroic age, if we may accept Homer's account, it possessed, some two centuries after the sack of Cnossus, ninety or a hundred towns and was inhabited by many different races, among whom Dorians are mentioned. The great Dorian invasion a century or so later evidently subjected the whole island to that race, and for some centuries it was probably under Dorian kings and had a constitution not unlike the Spartan, except that there seem to have been no perioeci, but only serfs and nobles. I^ater we find the kingly office aboHshed and an aristocracy in power, and the executive in the hands of ten magistrates called cosmoi. Of Cyprus we had some notice during the age of Aegaean civiHzation. Mycenaean kings are said to have ruled there in the fifteenth century. Aegaean pottery of this era, together with Egyptian scarabs and ornaments of the XVIIIth Dynasty (Queen Ti and Amenhotep III), have been discovered in a tomb at Knkomi, near Salamis, and clay tablets have been found in Egypt inscribed with cuneiform missives to the Pharaohs from these Mycenaean Cypriot kings. The island no THE DARK AGE was in early ages sometimes subject to Egypt, and on account of its valuable copper-mines was also evidently occupied by Phoenicians, but the latest researches (by Ohnefalsch Richter) seem to prove that Hellenic civilization and the Olympian gods (Athene, Heracles, Aphrodite, and others) preceded the Phoenician supremacy, and that the Phoenician kings destroyed Greek temples and razed Greek inscriptions.^ If this be so, the Paphian Aphrodite was not derived from the Eastern Astarte, but Astarte was super- imposed on the Cyprian-Greek divinity, who seems to have been a kind of Earth-goddess, or a Spring-goddess (Hke Kore), with such titles as * The Idaean Mother ' and * She who spreadeth abroad the roses.' The Greeks who introduced these deities were, of course, not the Mycenaeans, but Hellenes, and it seems likely that the old tradition (see Hor. Carm. I, vii., and Virg. A en, i. 619) about Teucer, brother of Ajax, having been expelled from Salamis on his return from Troy and having founded a new Salamis in Cyprus has for its basis an historical fact ; for about the time when the colonization of Ionia was at its height (c. 1050) a considerable body of Greeks, probably Achaeans with Arcadian and other followers who were pressed by Dorian invaders, are said to have left Greece and to have made their way to the old Aegaean colonies in Cyprus. The chief Greek towns in Cyprus were Paphos, I^apathus, Marion, Curion, Salamis, and later Soli ; but in some of these there was also a large Phoenician element. During the next two centuries and more Cyprus seems to have been ruled by the * kings ' of the numerous cities, for about 720 the Assyrian monarch Sargon (who carried Israel away into captivity) conquered the island, and we find in the inscription on the stele which he set up there (now in Berlin) seven Yatman (Cyprian) kings mentioned, and in an inscription of Assarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib (Fig. 38), ten Cypriot kings are described as his subjects. Of Egypt during this age the notices are scanty. In the ^ It seems strange that in these Greek (or Cypriot ?) inscriptions neither Zeus nor Kore nor Dionysus is mentioned. Ill ANCIENT GREECE period 1120-950 (from the time of Samson and the Philistine supremacy in Palestine until the days of Solomon) it was ruled by the inglorious priestly Tanite Dynasty (the XXIst). Then Sheshenk, or Shishak, of the XXIInd Dynasty, carried war into Palestine and captured Jerusalem, as we learn from an inscrip- tion at Karnak (c/. 2 Chron. xii.). After this Egypt was evidently overrun by the Aethiopian hosts of whom we read in 2 Chron. xiv., and the XXVth Dynasty was one of Aethiopian kings. Then, about 674, Egypt is conquered by the great Assyrian monarch Assarhaddon. The liberation of Egypt (c. 665) from the Assyrian yoke by Psamtik I with the aid of Ionian * men of bronze ' opened, as we shall see later, a new epoch, and brought Egypt into closer relations with Greece. The great empires of the East, Babylonia and Assyria, have hitherto come into no direct contact with Greece, nor even with the Greek colonies, except, perhaps, in the case of Sargon's conquest of Cyprus, which has been mentioned. It is enough to note here that Assyria during the Dark Age was in constant war with Babylonia, and in the ninth century, under its great kings Assurnasirpal and Shalmanezer II, conquered Phoenicia and made head against the Syrian kings of Damascus. After the expulsion of the Assyrians from Egypt, and the rise of the Median power under Cyaxares, these Oriental peoples will occupy more of our attention ; for one of the striking traits which especially distinguish the history of Greece is the fact that we are so often brought into contact with other great ancient civilizations, and it is of deep import that, although subjected to such influences, Hellenic art and literature and philosophy retained an almost perfectly in- dependent character, and have remained till our own day not only supreme in beauty of form, but also incomparable for originality, if we accept that word in its true sense. 112 38. ASSARHADDON, WITH CapTIVK EGYPTIAN AND AETHIOPIAN 112 CHAPTER III FROM THE FIRST OLYMPIAD TO PEISISTRATUS (776 TO 560) An Age of Coi^onization : The Kuxine : SiciIvY : South ItaIvY : The Homei;and : Argos : Sparta : Tyrants and Sages : Athens SECTIONS : EJGYPT AND CYREJNK : LYDIA. LIST OP BASTEJRN KINGS : TH^ GAMBS : THE) POETS AlyTHOUGH when we speak of Greek art and literature and philosophy (the three priceless legacies that Greece has left us) we instinctively think of Greece itself and especially of Athens, which in the so-called classic era was the * eye of Hellas/ the fact is that Greece owes much of its fame to its colonies.^ Of colonial origin were Homer, Archilochus, Terpander, Arion, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Simonides, Anacreon, the younger Simonides, Theocritus, and other Greek poets. The historian Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus. All the great early phifosophers were lonians. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes were of Miletus, Heracleitus of Kphesus, Pythagoras of Samos, Xenophanes of Colophon. Of the seven sages four were colonials, and among celebrated colonial artists may be mentioned Paeonius, Pythagoras, Scopas, Polygnotus, Parrhasius, Apelles, Zeuxis. The arts of working in marble and of bronze-casting came, it is said, from Chios and I^esbos ; sculpture came from Crete. The coins, too, of many of the cities of Greater Hellas, such as the beautiful Syracusan coins, were finer than any produced in the mother-country ; and, lastly, many of the magnificent ^ See dates of the foundation of early Greek colonies, p. 479. H 113 ANCIENT GREECE temples in Ionia, Sicily, and Southern Italy, of which some are still standing, were built long before the Parthenon. It is, indeed, a striking view that the Hellenic world offers about the end of the seventh century. Greece itself, with no very large population and in no very highly advanced state of civilization or art, is already the mother of cities, which extend from Sicily and Italy, and even the south of Gaul, to the further shores of the Kuxine. The Aeolian and Ionian and Cyprian Greek cities date, as we have seen, from much earlier times. Doubtless emigration went on continuously during the interval, but it is not till about the date of the first Olympiad that we hear for certain of the first Hellenic colonies in the West and on the Propontis and Buxine. The question arises, what were the reasons of this very large emigration from the old country ? Greece is not a fertile land. ** Want hath ever been a foster-sister to Hellas," said the Spartan Demaratus to King Xerxes. But doubtless also a land-grabbing aristocracy (who were glad to get rid of dis- contents) , as well as the wretched state of things that we have seen described by Hesiod, aggravated much the condition of the peasant and the artisan, so that without any great surplus of population ^ there was a natural impulse among the working classes to get away to freer lands ; and many of the leisured classes would also be attracted by the love of adventure. The vast numbers of emigrants may thus be partly explained, and the huge population of some of these colonial cities was, of course, partly due to a large native element. Although in early days serious conflicts took place between some of the colonies and their mother-cities, such as the naval war (c. 664) between Corinth and Corey ra already mentioned, the general result of the expansion of Greece was to strengthen immensely Hellenic patriotism, if one may use these words to express the sense of the oneness of the whole Hellenic race — or rather of the whole people of Greece, including all its diverse ^ Bven two and a half centuries later (430) Athens had only 80,000 inhabi- tants, half of whom were slaves. At Marathon (490) the Athenian army only numbered about 9000. 114 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION races, and all its progeny in other lands — in contradistinction to the outer world of barbarians. The Greek colonies were, as a rule, more Greek than Greece itself. They looked on the mother-country with the deepest affection and reverence. No colony was founded without consulting the great Greek oracle at Delphi and procuring an oekist (founder appointed by some Greek mother-city) ; and a flame from the sacred fire that burnt in the town-hall (prytaneion) at home was carried abroad in order to light the public hearth in the new city. They took with them also the religion of their Grecian home. They sent frequent deputations to the festivals of the metro- polis, and received with reverence its envoys. The founder who had been supplied by the city in Greece was often wor- shipped after his death as a divinity ; and no new colony was sent forth from a Greek colony without obtaining a founder from the mother-city. And for Greece itself the existence of her colonies — of this great Hellenic community extending over so much of the then known world — was of great moment. " The_jiifluence of _Greate r Greece," says the late Professor Butcher, " is the detennimngjact iii-the history of the Hellenic people." Not only, as was the case in our Elizabethan age, did the opening up of new worlds stir the imagination and enlarge the vision of Greek poets and deepen the insight of Greek thinkers, but the existence of Greater Hellas had much influence in developing, for good or for evil, the imperial policy of Athens in the days of her power, and in determining her fate. The Euxine Although they were, perhaps, not so ancient as some of the : colonies in the far West, Greek settlements on the Kuxine and i the Propontis were founded in very early times. ^ Doubtless j there was trade between the Euxine shores and the Greek i cities of Asia Minor from early days of the first colonization of j Aeolis and Ionia. Indeed, as we have seen, the old fable of I the Argonauts points to the beginnings of intercourse between ^ The plates of coins should be referred to, and the explanations in Note C. "5 ANCIENT GREECE Greece itself and the Kuxine even before the Aeolian migration. The Greek town of Sinope, on the south shore of the Buxine, claimed to have been founded by Miletus about the middle of the eighth century. It was, old writers say, destroyed by the Cimmerians, and was refounded about 630. Another Milesian colony, Trapezus (now Trebizond), lay some 400 miles more to the east, not far from Colchis, the country of Medea and the mythical Golden Fleece. Probably even in these early days there were Grecian marts and halting-places along the coasts of the Propontis and Kuxine. On not a few of these sites regular settlements were in course of time founded by various Greek cities. I^ittle Megara especially distinguished itself by founding (c. 685) Chalcedon, on the Thracian Bosporus, and some thirty years later occupied the opposite shore, where, on account of the magnificent site that it enjoyed, the city of Byzantium rose rapidly to importance, and in later times became one of the most famous cities in the world. Sestos and I^ampsacus (once Phoenician) were settled by Aeolians, Abydos and Cyzicus by Milesians. These Hellespontine towns owed their prosperity to the ever-increasing commerce between the Kuxine and the Aegaean and Grecian ports. The trade in iron and silver and flax and other products from Colchis and the country of the Chalybes and other lands on the South Kuxine was in course of time supplemented by trade with its northern shores, where numerous Greek settlements were made, such as Odessus and Olbia, on the Dnieper mouth, and Panticapaeum in the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea), while at the mouth of the river Phasis — where the Argonauts reached the home of Medea — the Greek town of Phasis arose, and another, Dioscurias, still closer to the great range of the Caucasus. On the North Aegaean, too, various cities were now founded, of which Potidaea, a colony of Corinth, and Methone, a Kuboean settlement, are of the most importance historically. Cyme in Italy The western waters of the Mediterranean were navigated by Phoenician traders in very early times, and some of their 116 m 39. The ' Francois Vase ' See List of Illustrations Il6 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION settlements preceded the first Greek settlements in these parts by at least 500 years. By about 1350, as we have seen, Tarshish, or Tartessus, the Phoenician port in Spain, was well known, and Gades was founded about 1200. Doubtless these navigators spread the worship of their gods, Melcarth (the Phoenician Heracles) and the bull-headed sun-god Baal or Moloch, and hence we have the old Greek legends of Heracles erecting pillars at the straits near Tarshish and capturing the cattle of the monster Geryon, and of the sacred cattle of the sun-god Kelios, which, as Homer tells us, the com- panions of Odysseus slew in Sicily.^ Herodotus, indeed, intimates that a hundred years and more before the days of Odysseus a Greek city. Cyme (Cumae), existed in Italy, close to what was afterwards known as I^ake Avernus, nor far from the frontier of the great Etrurian or Tyrrhenian nation — those Tyrseni of whom we heard in connexion with the Pelasgians, and whom we shall meet again in the time of Hiero.2 The tradition about this ancient Greek city is repeated by Virgil ; Daedalus, he says, after flying from Crete to escape Minos, alighted at Cumae, and hung up his wings there in Apollo's temple. Cyme is also said by old tradition to have received Greek settlers from Corsica, where a still more ancient Boeotian colony of the Thespiadae is asserted to have existed. Perhaps, however, the first important colonization of Cyme by the Greeks took place about 800. The colonists were mainly from Cyme in Aeolis, the home of Hesiod's father, and from Cyme in Buboea, the mother-city. Chalcidians and other Buboeans joined, and it is just possible that a small contingent of Graioi from Boeotia gave to the Italians in the neighbourhood of Cumae the name which the natives of Italy first applied to the Hellene race, and by which we now generally designate it. * Od. xii. The seven herds probably have reference to the seven planets. Can the name Belios be connected with El, the primitive Semitic name of God — probably the sun-god ? ' Hesiod (if the passage is authentic) speaks not only of Etruria, but of the Latins and King Latinus. His connexion with Aeolian Cyme may explain his knowledge. 117 ANCIENT GREECE Sicily The Chalcidians of Euboea and the Cymaeans also founded (735) the first Greek city in Sicily, Naxos (destroyed in later times by Dionysius), and not long afterwards Catane (now Catania), I^eontini, Zancle (the ' sickle-harbour,' like Drepanon ; afterwards renamed as Messene), and Himera on the north coast (celebrated later for the great victory of Greeks over Carthaginians in 480, perhaps on the same day as the victory of Salamis ; finally razed to the ground by the Carthaginians in 409). Before the coming of the Greeks the eastern half of Sicily was held by the Sicels, who had probably crossed from Italy and driven the older inhabitants, the Sicans, towards the western parts of the island. Besides these there were the Blymi, whose chief city was Kgesta, and whom tradition asserted to be descendants of Trojans left there by Aeneas on his voyage to I^atium. On the SiciHan coasts there were also numerous Phoenician stations, but no large settlements. It was not until after the rise of the naval and military power of Carthage, about 550, that Sicily became the arena of the great struggle between the Semitic and Hellenic races. Some 1 of the most famous of the Greek cities of Sicily were founded by Dorians, mostly in the south-western corner of the island. Of these cities Syracuse, a colony of Corinth, was the oldest, and in the same year (734) Corcyra (Corfu) was also colonized by the Corinthians. ^ The small state of Megara, which showed such vigour on the Kuxine, placed a Hyblaean Megara on the coast north of Syracuse, and a century later this settlement, with the aid of the mother-city, founded on the south-western coast the city of Selinus, famed for its majestic temples, all built in the two centuries of its existence before its utter destruction by the Carthaginian Hannibal at the same 1 Our main authority is here Thucydides (Book VI). 2 Both sites had already been occupied by Buboeans, who were expelled. Corcyra never became of much importance, and after the Peloponnesian War dwindled to almost nothing, while Syracuse at its prime occupied a larger space than Rome under the Empire. Its walls were about fifteen miles in length, those of Rome about twelve. But Rome's population was greater by far. 118 < o < Q cc o 2 < CD O) < CD < ANCIENT GREECE time as Himera (409) . The remains of these temples and of the acropolis form probably the greatest mass of ruins in Europe, and the metopes of the temples afford some of the oldest and most interesting specimens of Greek sculpture (see Fig. 60). The name of SeHnus is probably of Phoenician origin, but the word selinon means * wild celery ' in Greek, and that the Selinuntines accepted this meaning is proved by their coins, on which the plant is depicted (see Plate IV, 5). Possibly Homer's descrip- tion of Calypso's isle with its " meadows of violets and celery " may have favoured the interpretation. About 688 Gela, a Sicel town overlooking the southern sea, was occupied by Greek Rhodians and Cretans. It became later a city of importance, and is famous as the home of the great Syracusan princes Gelo and Hiero, and as the death-place of Aeschylus. In 581 Gela founded, with an oekist from Rhodes, the city of Acragas (Agrigentum, and now Girgenti), about fifty miles distant towards the west, on a lofty site not far from the sea. Acragas, the city of the notorious tyrant Phalaris and of Thero, who shared with Gelo the victory of Himera, became a city of vast population and wealth, as was testified by the line of magnificent temples on its southern front, some of which are still standing (see Fig. 76). The greatest of these, the Olympieion, now a wilderness of ruin, was the vastest of all Greek temples. The Greeks did not try to colonize the west of Sicily.^ Here Egesta (or Segesta), the city of the Elymi, held sway in alhance with Phoenicians, whose settlements at Panormus (Palermo) and on the island Motya gradually developed into important towns. The people of Motya were afterwards (397) trans- ferred by the Carthaginians to the great Punic city of I/ily- baeum, on the neighbouring mainland. At the north-west corner of Sicily, on Mount Eryx, overlooking the sea, stood a famous temple dedicated to a goddess, called Aphrodite by the Greeks and Venus Erycina by the Romans — evidently either a Phoenician Astarte or some Elymi an (Phrygian ?) Nature-goddess. * But see Greek temple. Fig. 57. 120 40. Lacinian Cape and Coi^umn m 41. Poskidon's Tempi^e, Paestum I THE AGE OF COLONIZATION 'H /ULeydXrt "EXXay— MagnA GrAECIA We must now return to Italy. Here by the middle of the seventh century we find some fifteen flourishing Greek cities occupying almost the whole of the line of the southern coasts from Brundisium to Cumae ; and by about 550 their number will have increased to twenty or more, some of them greater than any city in the mother-country. The earliest of these was founded in 721 by Achaeans from the Peloponnese, who seem to have found their harbourless and rugged country, with its twelve obscure townships, both unattractive and over- populated, and to have made settlements first in the island Zacynthus, and then to have made their way across to Italy, as the south-western extremity of the Hesperian peninsula was already called. Here, just within the great gulf, they founded Sybaris, on an alluvial plain between the rivers Sybaris and Crathis, and some eighteen years later they planted Croton on a fine harbour, near to the Ivacinian promontory, where still stands a solitary column of the great temple of Hera which for ages greeted the Greek as he came from the motherland to Greater Hellas, and where he was wont to sacrifice and offer gifts before he sailed further (see Fig. 40). Both of these settlements became at an early era very great and powerful cities and the mothers of many other Greek towns. Sybaris is said to have possessed twenty-five such dependencies and to have ruled over four of the native peoples. It became a great trade emporium, and in order to extend its commerce by land-routes to Btruria and the far West it founded on the Tyrrhene Sea the ; cities of I^aos and Scidros and that of Poseidonia (Paestum), whose magnificent Doric temples are still standing almost intact (Fig. 41). The wealth and luxury of Sybaris are proverbial. i Its army is said to have numbered 300,000 (perhaps mainly native troops), and the circuit of its walls to have rivalled that of Syracuse. But even in the days of Herodotus Sybaris was only a memory, for in 510 it was utterly destroyed by its rival Croton, as we shall see later when we come to the life 121 ANCIENT GREECE of Pythagoras. On the western coast also Croton planted various towns, of which Terina was one (see coin 13 on Plate III). Another was on the site of the old Ausonian port Temesa (or Tempsa), perhaps mentioned in the Odyssey as an export-mart for bronze. ^ Another great Greek city was Taras, or Tarentum, situate in lapygian territory at the head of the great gulf which still bears its name. It is said to have been originally a Cretan settlement, but about 708 it was occupied by Spartans. Taras was the only colony ever founded by Sparta, and tradition accounts for its foundation by a strange story, perhaps invented to explain the word Partheniae (' The Maidens' Children '), who are said to have been its first settlers, for it was related that on their return from a very long campaign against the Messenians the Spartans found a large number of illegitimate youths, and that these, after an attempted rebellion, were dispatched to the far West under the leadership of a certain Phalanthus. This Phalanthus was afterwards worshipped as the son of Poseidon, and was represented on Tarentine coins astride a dolphin (see Plate II, 3). Taras became renowned for its industrial products — its wool and pottery and dyes — but is historically connected more with Rome than Greece, although for a long period, after the fall of Sybaris, it was perhaps the most powerful and wealthy of all the cities of Greater Hellas. Two other Greek cities, Metapontion and Siris, stood on the shores of the Gulf of Tarentum, between Tarentum and Sybaris. The former was founded by Sybaris with the aid of the Peloponnesian Achaeans, Siris by the Ionian city Colophon.2 No other city of Ionia attempted to found a colony during this age in the West ; but the Aeolians were more venturesome, for Phocaea, which had already the important settlement of lyampsacus on the Propontis, about 600 planted a colony at Massalia (Marseille), near the delta of the Rhone — the westernmost of all Greek cities, except its own later settlements in Spain. The Phocaeans also had ^ If so, this {Od. i. 184) is the earliest mention of any Italian town. * The poet Archilochus {c. 650) writes of Siris as if it were known to him. 122 r THE AGE OF COLONIZATION settlements in Corsica, where about 565 (according to Hero- dotus) they founded a city called Alalia. Some twenty years later, as we shall see, in order to escape from the Persians, almost the whole population of Phocaea took ship for Alalia, but being expelled from Corsica by the Carthaginians and Etruscans they fled to Rhegium and thence founded Elea (Velia), on the west Italian coast, to the south of Poseidonia. It is possible that Xenophanes of Colophon may have fled to Siris from Asia to escape the Persians, and may have joined the Phocaean fugitives at Rhegium and have been among the first colonists of the city, whose name owes its survival mainly to the fame of the school of philosophy that he founded there. Among the more important Greek colonies of this age must be mentioned Cyrene, in North Africa ; but as its foundation (c. 630) is connected with the opening up of Egypt to Greek com- merce it will be described later when we consider that subject. The Homeland : Corinth The Greeks calculated all their dates from the victory of Coroebus in the foot-race at the Olympic Games (revived, it is said, by I^ycurgus and Iphitus) in the year that we call 776 B.C. They regarded this as the beginning of the historical period ; but there is very little known for certain about Greece — less, perhaps, than we know about the Greek colonies — during the first century of this epoch. It is evident that about the eighth century Corinth was a great mercantile and maritime power. With her newly invented triremes and her great trading vessels she dominated two seas. She had founded Syracuse and colonized Corcyra, which colony had become strong enough by 664 to oppose her mother-city in the first sea-fight known to Thucydides. ^RGOS In the Peloponnese, while Sparta was engaged in long warfare with the Messenians and at times holding her own with diffi- :ulty, Argos seems to have been a leading state. In 668 the \rgives, it is said, defeated the Spartans at Hysiae. They 123 ANCIENT GREECE captured Mycenae and Tiryns, overran Aegina, and, perhaps, held for some time all the eastern coast of I^aconia and even the island of Cythera (see Hdt. i. 82). Corinth, too, is said to have fallen for a time into their hands. The successes of Argos at this era are attributed to the famous Argive king Pheidon, who (as we shall see later) reinstated the people of Pisa in the management of the Olympic Games and instituted himself as president, claiming the right through his ancestor Heracles. His date is, however, very uncertain. ^ To him is also attributed the introduction of systematic weights and measures, as standards for which he deposited bars of metal in the great temple of Argive Hera. The first homeland Greek coins were struck in Aegina, probably in Pheidon's reign and after Pheidonian standards. The Argive hegemony in the Peloponnese seems to have decHned rapidly after the reign of Pheidon, a fact evidently due to the rise of the Spartan power. According to tradition, Pheidon's interference at Olympia roused the wrath of the Spartans, who reinstated the Eleans and expelled the Argives. Sparta Sparta during the first century of the historical period, as we have seen, took but little share in colonization, and her one colony, Taras, is said to have originated from her political difficulties. During these years she was mainly engaged in fighting the Messenians — those western neighbours of hers who, after a hundred years of warfare, submitted (those who remained in Messenia) to be treated almost as slaves for two centuries, and then, having rebelled, were ejected (in 464) from their homeland, and finally, a century later, were restored by Epameinondas, never again to be conquered by their old enemies, but to become the subjects of Rome. These Messenians inhabited the south-western corner of ^ Alexander the Great, to prove his right to compete at Olympia, claimed descent from Pheidon. Pausanias (a.d. 160) asserts that Pheidon presided at the eighth Olympiad (748), but Herodotus says that Pheidon's son was a suitor for Agarista, which would make his date about 620, and his father's about 660. 124 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION the Peloponnese/ cut off from the Spartan valley of the Eurotas by the great range of Mount Taygetus. Their land consisted of the fertile plain of Stenyclarus, through which the river Pamisus flows ; and to the west is a mountainous district in which the strong fortress of Ithome was built, overlooking the plain across which Homer describes Telemachus driving on his journey from Pylos to Pherae and Sparta. The first Dorian chiefs, who, in order to justify their over- lordship, claimed descent from Heracles, seem to have resided at Stenyclarus, on the northern stream of the Pamisus, and never to have conquered the southern district of Pylos. The number of these Dorians was evidently small, and in course of time the dominant race may have been very considerably merged in the native Messenian people. This may partly explain the treatment these rebellious half-castes received — as severe as that accorded to revolted Helots — at the hands of the pure-bred Dorian Spartiates. Of the origin and the events of the first Messenian war (traditional date 743-724) many picturesque legends survive, handed down by writers who lived much later, but who may have collected the traditions from the Messenians restored to their country by Kpameinondas (370). These legends tell of a Messenian hero, Aristodemus, who determined to sacrifice his own daughter to save his country, then slew her in anger, and slew himself afterwards on her tomb. They tell of a Spartan king, Theopompus, who, after many battles, in the twentieth year of the war captured and razed Ithome and reduced all the Messenians who did not leave their country to the same level of serfdom as that of the Helots. After about forty years the Messenians again rebelled, and a second war of nearly equal length took place (traditional date 685-668) . In the first war some of the other Peloponnesian states had taken a part, and on the outbreak of hostilities Corinth again sent aid to Sparta, while on the side of the Messenians were the Argives, Arcadians, Sicyonians, and the * Homer mentions Messene, the district of Pherae, and its ruler Orsilochus. The city of Messene was first built by Kpameinondas. 125 ANCIENT GREECE people of Pisa. The hero of this war was Aristomenes, under whose leadership the Messenians inflicted such defeats on the Spartans that they sent to the Delphic oracle for advice. This bade them apply to Athens for a leader. The Athenians, it is said, sent them in disdain a lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus, and this man by his martial songs so aroused the courage of the Spartans that, although they were defeated in a great battle by the Boar's Grave, on the plain of Stenyclarus, they again renewed the contest, and besieged the Messenians, it is said, for eleven years in their new mountain stronghold, Eira. During this siege Aristomenes performed many prodigies of valour, and was several times taken prisoner ; but he always managed to escape — once, it is said, even from the great pit Caiadas in Sparta, into which the Spartans used to cast their criminals. This feat he performed by grasping the tail of a fox, which, struggling to get free, showed him the underground aperture by which it had entered. But no heroism could save the Messenians. Kira was captured. Many escaped to Arcadia or to Rhegium and other places over the sea ; the rest were again enslaved. Aristomenes is said to have gone to Rhodes, and to have died there. Fragments of the songs of Tyrtaeus exist, and I shall speak of them later. They mention some of the events of this second Messenian war ; but they do not name Aristomenes. The songs were, says Athenaeus, chanted by a single voice to the accompaniment of the flute. They consisted in spirited appeals to the Spartans to show courage in battle and to maintain law and order (eunomia) at home. It should perhaps be added that some modern writers regard Tyrtaeus as a Spartan and the story of his origin as an Athenian invention. Tyrants (Ionia : Corinth : Megara : Sicyon) While Sparta was thus laying the foundations of her future supremacy very important changes had been taking place in other cities of Greece. We have already seen how the old hereditary monarchies of Homeric days had in many cases given place to constitutions which were aristocracies in form 126 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION but which contained within them a strong tendency towards democracy — a tendency that even under the permanent monarchical system of the Spartan state manifested itself in the creation of the popular magistracy of the ephors. We have also noticed the growing demand for constituted law and the adoption by Sparta of a code possibly founded to some extent on the laws of Crete and other ancient nations. Besides the half -mythical lyycurgus we hear of the shepherd Zaleucus, who (about 664) was authorized by the Delphic oracle to devise a constitution for the Italian lyocrians, and slew himself for having unwittingly transgressed one of his own laws ; and of Charondas, who gave a code to Sicihan Catane ; and ere long we shall hear of the Athenian lawgivers Dracon and Solon. The cry for justice — for equality before the law — uttered by Hesiod was making itself heard. And the great increase of the trading and labouring classes began to give them a con- sciousness of power and the desire for self-government. More- over, the introduction of a new method in warfare helped greatly towards these ends. Instead of a Homeric Achilles or a Messenian Aristomenes we have serried ranks of mailed hopHtes, and it is on these infantry-spearmen, drawn from the poorer classes, rather than on the high-born hippeis (knights), that the hope of victory now depends. But the struggle of the people for self-government was long and difficult. In not a few cases it led to nothing but frequent and violent changes of constitution, which proved perhaps more disastrous than a permanent absolutism would have been. In others its first result was a relapse — or perhaps we may regard it as an advance towards democracy through a necessary phase. Aristocracy was exchanged for tyranny. The process has already been described. Feuds (such as arose in mediaeval Florence) disunited the aristocratic party, and some ambitious noble would invoke the aid of the people against his rivals and succeed in establishing himself as ' tyrant ' — that is, as an unconstitutional despot. ^ Greek * The word tyrannos (possibly a Doric form of koiranos, a ruler, and con- nected with the common word kurios, lord, or perhaps an Asiatic word) had 127 ANCIENT GREECE * tyrannies * seem to have first arisen in Ionia. About 620 we hear of a tyrant of Bphesus marrying the daughter of Alyattes, the king of I^ydia, and about the same time Miletus flourished exceedingly under the tyrant Thrasybulus. lyesbos, on the other hand, evidently suffered long and severely from its aristocrats and despots, being oppressed first by the oligarchy of the Penthelids and then by tyrants. The last tyrant seems to have been expelled from Mytilene by the people under the leadership of Pittacus and the brothers of the poet Alcaeus, of both of whom we shall learn more when we turn to the poets and sages of this era. Pittacus had distinguished himself in war against Athens, and had won the confidence of the people. He was elected absolute dictator (aisymnetes) of Mytilene for ten years, during which time he governed with such wisdom as to render possible the return of the exiled nobles, among whom was the poet Alcaeus himself. Of the wealth and splendour of the Ionian cities during this age of despots, both on the mainland of Asia and on the Aegaean islands, there is evidence enough, although we know almost nothing about their history. In the so-called Homeric Hymn to Apollo (perhaps dating from about 600) a fine de- scription is given of the magnificence of the great festival on the island Delos, which was the religious centre of the Ionic world until the Asiatic lonians instituted their festivals at the temple of Kphesus. Indeed, at this time Ionia was apparently far in advance of the homeland in many civihzed arts, and during the age of Solon and Peisistratus Athens adopted largely Ionian luxury and Ionian dress — that soft linen raiment and those golden cicalas, worn even by men as hair ornaments, of which Thucydides speaks somewhat contemptuously. And probably surpassing Athens itself in Ionian splendour were the Kuboean cities of Bretria and Chalcis, of which we have already heard as the mothers of colonies. But they exhausted themselves in a conflict for no moral significance. It merely signified that the ruler had no hereditary or' constitutional claim. It was perhaps first used by the Greeks with reference to the I^ydian kings (see Archilochus, frag. 21). The king of Persia was always Basileus. 128 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION the possession of the fertile I^elantine plain. So long and embittered was this war that, if we believe Thucydides, almost all Greece (as well as Miletus and Samos) took part in it. These Buboean cities declined rapidly in importance. Chalcis was crushed by Athens, and the Eretrians were carried away to Persia by Darius. In the homeland several important cities during this era (660-560) fell under tyrannies. Those of Corinth, Megara, and Sicyon are of special interest. At Corinth the monarchy of the Heracleid kings had long ago, as we have already seen, given way to the oligarchy of the noble, or royal, family of the Bacchiadae. This oligarchy was overthrown (c. 655) by Cypselus, about whose birth Herodotus relates a curious old story. The mother, it was said, belonged to the Bacchiad family, but she was lame, and was given in marriage to Action, who was poor but of the noble house of the I^apithae. An oracle had declared that their son would prove [a rock to fall on Corinth and crush lawless power, and the oligarchs sent men to murder the child ; but (as in the * Babes in the Wood ') the murderers were overcome by pity, and while they hesitated the mother, I^abda, hid her infant in a cypsele — either a corn-bin or a great jar (tt/^o?), such as the one depicted in Fig. 20 — and thus saved him. So he very naturally received the name Cypselus. The story is, perhaps, scarcely worth repeating except as an example of the kind of myth that higher criticism rejects as being evolved in explanation of a name ; but it is also interesting because this chest or jar connects itself, as we shall see later, with the celebrated ' chest of Cypselus' — perhaps the earliest Greek work of art (besides the Shield of Achilles and that of Heracles !) of which we have a detailed description. It was probably before, possibly during, the reign of Cypselus that the naval battle between Corinth and Corcyra took place which has been mentioned. Corinth evidently gained the victory, for while Cypselus and his son Periander held power this city seems to have developed on the north- western coast of Greece a considerable colonial empire, including I 129 1 ANCIENT GREECE Anactorium, Ambracia, ApoUonia, and lyeucas — which in the Homeric age was a peninsula (Nericon, the kingdom of lyaertes), but was now converted into an island by a channel cut through its isthmus. It was also evidently at this time that Corcyra, with an oekist of Heracleid descent from the mother-city, Corinth, founded that city of Bpidamnus which, according to Thucydides, was the first cause of open hostilities in the Peloponnesian War. The son of Cypselus, Periander, could claim at least the shadow of hereditary right, but he seems to have found it necessary to protect himself by means of a strong bodyguard of mercenaries and by forcibly ridding himself of troublesome nobles. In this connexion Herodotus tells almost exactly the same story that is told by lyivy about Tarquin. Periander sent for advice to Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, who said nothing to the messenger, but led him through a field of corn and " broke off and threw away, as he went, all such ears of corn as overtopped the rest.'' Aristotle and other writers confirm the description of Periander given by Herodotus. Together with Thrasybulus, he is said to have drawn up a regular code of ' sanguinary maxims,' as Grote calls them, of a Machia- vellian nature. He is described by Herodotus as at first " milder than his father," but afterwards a bloodthirsty despot ; and revolting stories are recounted of his private life (including the murder of his wife, MeHssa, and his quarrel with his son, whom he outlawed and banished to Corcyra) . So hated was the tyrant by all that when, in old age, he proposed that his son should return and take his place at Corinth, and that he himself should come to Corcyra, the Corcyraeans, in their terror at the prospect, put the son to death — ^for which deed Periander took on them a terrible vengeance.^ This is one view. Others laud Periander as a wise and just though a severe ruler, and explain away the alleged acts of cruelty and oppression as wholesome sumptuary legislation. His ^ See Hdt. iii. 48-53, v. 92. The story of the 300 Corcyraean youths whom Periander vseized and attempted to send to Alyattes of I^ydia is told with great detail by Herodotus and bears the stamp of truth. 130 42. Apoi^iyO's Tempi^e:, Corinth 43. Site of Corinth and the Acrocorint'hus THE AGE OF COLONIZATION wisdom was, indeed, so famed in some quarters that his name is found in some lists of the Seven Sages. That Corinth rose to great prosperity under his rule is undeniable, and it is more than possible that the immense increase of wealth and luxury- made repressive measures necessary. Of wealth and magni- ficence an evident proof is what we hear of a colossal golden statue of Zeus and the famous chest of Cypselus, two of many splendid offerings made to Olympia by the Cypselid family. At Delphi, too, the treasure-house of the Corinthians was built, it is said, by Cypselus ; and there still exists at Corinth a relic of the age, perhaps of the reign, of Periander — seven great columns of what was once a mighty Doric temple sacred to Apollo (Fig. 42). lyike others of the Greek tyrants, Periander seems to have been a patron not only of sculpture and archi- tecture, but also of music and poetry, for Arion, the Jonah- like story of whose escape (on the back of a dolphin) when cast into the sea seems to belong to the region of myths, was doubtless a minstrel at the Corinthian court. ^ Corinth, with its two seas, had fleets on both sides of the Isthmus, and was in touch not only with the Adriatic, Great Hellas, Sicily, and the far West, not only with the Euxine and with Miletus and Rhodes and Cyprus, but also with the newly founded Cyrene and with Egypt, in this age first opened up to Greek trade. The reign of Periander (625-585) was contem- porary with the last years of Psamtik I, who liberated Kgypt from Assyria, and the reigns of the famous Pharaoh Necho and his son Psamtik II. It is an interesting proof of the tyrant's close connexion with Egypt that the nephew who succeeded him bore the name Psammetichus. Megara, of whose adventurous spirit and maritime power we have already had remarkable evidence in the foundation of Byzantium and Selinus, seems to have suffered as much as any Greek city from a despotic aristocracy. At last, possibly with the help of the Corinthian Cypselus, a certain Theagenes estabHshed himself as tyrant (c. 630) by adopting the usual method of obtaining permission to form a bodyguard and then ^ For Arion see Index. 131 ANCIENT GREECE exterminating political rivals. After a reign of about twenty years his power was overthrown, and Megara became for a long time the arena of fierce conflicts between the popular and aristocratic parties, of which what little is known reminds one by its intensely bitter personal feeling of the old Florentine feuds rather than of political and social upheavals such as the Secession of the Plebs. Again and again the nobles were expelled and the popular party sated their lust for vengeance by confiscating property, cancelling the debts of the poor, and demanding even repayment of the interest ; again and again the nobles returned, and finally established themselves firmly in power. It is of these troubled times that the poet Theognis sings. I shall speak of his poems later. Sicyon, whose small territory lay not far to the west of Corinth and was under Dorian oligarchs in early times, seems to have been ruled by tyrants of Ionian blood from the days of the second Messenian war. Of these only Cleisthenes is known to history, and that mainly on account of his connexion with Athens ; for his daughter Agarista, of whose wooing and wedding Herodotus (vi. 126 sq.) gives us such a graphic and humorous account, was the wife of Megacles, and mother of the Athenian reformer Cleisthenes. The Sicyonian tyrant, it is said, in his hatred of all things Dorian and Argive, forbade at Sicyon the recitation of Homer, who glorifies Argos and the Argives, and changed the names of the three Doric tribes in Sicyon into names meaning swine, asses, and pigs. The Sages In the later period of the age which we are considering is found the first distinct evidence of that philosopliical thought, that earnest search after truth, which is one of the noblest characteristics of Greek civilization. Before the days of Socrates Greek thought was directed more towards the solution of physical than metaphysical problems. The so-called Ionic philosophers propounded theories of wonderful boldness and penetration on the origin and constitution of the material universe, which formed as it were stepping-stones to doctrines 132 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION on the nature of the soul and of deity. But even before these Ionic philosophers and others, whom I shall consider at the end of the age of Peisistratus, we find signs of deep reflexion on ethical questions, on questions of right and wrong, on the moral sense as a guide to action, on virtue and vice, justice and injustice. Many such reflexions, revealing the deep, fundamental beliefs of the human heart, we find in Homer — though not stated didactically — and, as we have seen, the cry for justice is loud in Hesiod. Of course these beliefs exist in every age ; but it is not till towards the end of the seventh century that we find them expressed by Greek thinkers and men of action, and the form of expression is either the sententious and passionate verse of the so-called gnomic poets (among whom Solon and Theognis and the older Simonides are reckoned), or moralizing stories in prose, such as the Fables of Aesop, or else short, pithy, wise sayings, such as those which are attributed to the Seven Sages. Some of these Seven, all of whom flourished in the period 600-550, and whom the next age reverenced for their wisdom, were men pre-eminent as rulers or lawgivers, and one was renowned as the first and perhaps the greatest of the Ionic philosophers. Most of them doubtless wrote, and some of their writings were probably well known to the ancients, but hardly anything remains except fragments of Solon's verse, of which I shall speak later. According to Plato the Seven Sages were Thales of Miletus, Solon of Athens, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of lyindus (Rhodes), Myson of Chenae, and Chilon of Sparta. Others, strangely enough, insert Periander of Corinth in the place of Myson. Opinions seem to have differed much as to the authentic list. Not only do the names of the last three vary considerably, but we have lists of ten, and even of seven- teen. In later times each of the Sages was credited with one distinctive maxim, and some of these maxims, such as " Know thyself," " Nothing too much," '' Know thy oppor- tunity," were inscribed on Apollo's temple at Delphi. Cleobulus 133 ANCIENT GREECE and his daughter seem to have made a reputation by their riddles, and the poet Simonides speaks of this vSage as a ' f oohsh mortal.' Periander, as we have seen, may have suffered much from calumny, but if his wisdom, as is Hkely, was such as is found in Machiavelli's Principe, we cannot wonder that Plato omits him. Athens, 776-560 In a former chapter we obtained glimpses of Athens in the Dark Age, and saw that she too, like most of the Greek cities, was at that time under the rule of aristocracies. This con- tinued during the seventh century. The government was carried on by archons, whose term of office had been [c. 750) reduced to ten years. Then, in 683, three annual archons were instituted. From this time onward a list seems to have been kept of the archons, the chief of whom gave his name to the year, and was therefore called the archon eponymos. As deliberative and legislative council, hke the Homeric Boule, the archons had the Areopagus, consisting of past archons and fifty-one special judges [ephetae) and other nobles (Eupatridae) . The Areopagus, one of the most ancient institutions of Athens, was originally a court of justice for cases of murder and homicide, evidently estabHshed, like the English ' blood- wite,' in order to regulate private vengeance. According to the legend adopted by the Greek dramatists, it was before this divinely instituted court, and by the votes of the gods them- selves, that Orestes was acquitted when, chased by the Furies for the murder of his mother, he sought sanctuary at Athene's shrine in Athens. As Aeschylus intimates, the court was closely connected with the worship of the Furies as avengers of blood, and it is likely that the name Areopagus, which was conferred to distinguish this court from Solon's Boule, and was in later ages believed to mean ' The Hill of Mars ' (Areios pagos), really means ' The Hill of the Arai ' (Avengers) — as the Semnai, or ' Awful Goddesses,' are called by Aeschylus himself. The court was gradually empowered to interfere in matters 134 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION of religion and morals, and then in political affairs ; but after serving as the supreme council of the aristocracy it lost much of its power under the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes, and finally (in the age of Demosthenes) was allowed to retain no authority except in trivial questions of ritual, gymnastics, public parks, and the like. The Athenian Kcclesia, the great popular assembly lineally descended from the Homeric Agora, probably began to gain more political influence after the institution of annual archons and of the tribal guilds. There are many evidences of a considerable advance towards democracy about the opening of the seventh century. On account of the great increase of trade and the invention of money, wealth began to abound and to determine social and poHtical status. As in the later Servian constitution at Rome, the people (formerly, as we have seen, divided into nobles, land-workers, and public workers) were now, or perhaps in Solon's time, for political purposes classed according to income. Five hundred measures of corn and oil (or the equivalent) put a man in the highest class, to which the chief magistracies were confined ; three hundred gave him the title of knight, and two hundred that of zeugites, which meant that he belonged to the rank of the well- to-do peasant, the owner of a span of oxen. Another sign of advance was the annual election (about 650) of six legislators (thesmothetae) , who, like the Roman decemviri, or perhaps more like the Roman tribunes of the people, represented a growing determination to acquire equal rights before the law. These six thesmothetae, whose ofiice was to examine laws and supervise justice, were associated with the three supreme magistrates, so that henceforth we hear of nine archons. While matters were in this state an event took place which, perhaps because it is so graphically described by Thucydides, as well as by Herodotus and by Plutarch, seems to stand out as the first distinct picture in the history of Athens. Among the Athenian noble families (Kupatridae) one of the most distinguished was that of the Alcmaeonidae, a branch of the Neleid family, which claimed descent from the kings of 13s ANCIENT GREECE Pylos. Now in the year 632, when the Alcmaeonid Megacles was archon, an attempt was made by an Athenian noble, Cylon by name, who had distinguished himself as winner of the foot-race at Olympia, to establish himself as tyrant at Athens. He had married the daughter of Theagenes of Megara, and, incited by this tyrant's success, and by an oracle which he misinterpreted, with a band of young Athenians and Megarian soldiery he seized the Acropohs, trusting in popular discontent. He was not supported, and, after being blockaded for some time, he is said by Thucydides (not, however, by Herodotus) to have made his escape. His comrades were forced to capitulate. They sought sanctuary at the " altar of the Acropolis " — evidently that of Athene PoHas. " And those of the Athenians who had been commissioned to keep guard, when they saw them dying of famine in the temple raised them up, promising to do them no harm ; but they led them away and killed them. Others were cut down as they tried to seat themselves in front of the altars of the Awful Goddesses." Plutarch adds a graphic touch — one that recalls other examples of the virtue of divine protection being transmitted by contact. He says that the besieged, when under promise of quarter they left Athene's temple, fastened themselves with a rope to the statue of the goddess and were making their way down from the Acropolis, when the rope broke,^ and they fled to the sanctuary of the Furies, which happened to be near, but were all cut down. Cylon' s unsuccessful raid is historically of importance, for the belief that a curse had been incurred by Megacles and by the Alcmaeonidae in this double act of sacrilege influenced the course of events on more than one occasion. The taint, as Grotesays, " was supposed to be transmitted to the descendants of Megacles, and we shall find the wound reopened not only in the second and third generation, but also two centuries 1 This, according to Plutarch, was urged by the Alcmaeonidae as a defence against the charge of sacrilege. For other cases of a belief in the eflScacy of attachment see Hdt. i. 26 (where Bphesus, when besieged, is connected by a cord with the temple of Artemis outside the walls), and Thuc. iii. 104 (where Rheneia is connected with Delos by a chain). 136 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION after the original event." (See Index and Hdt. v. 71, Thuc. i. 126.) For a long time public feeling seems to have been deeply affected by exasperation mingled with superstitious dread. At length — perhaps about 625, or perhaps later (for Solon is said by some to have suggested it) — the Alcmaeonidae were tried before a special court of 300 nobles and were banished, those who had already died being disinterred and cast forth as an ' accursed thing ' beyond the borders of Attica. But religious excitement and despondent gloom still dominated. Pestilence appeared, and neither sacrifice nor purification was of any avail. The Delphic oracle was consulted, and bade the Athenians seek some healer from a distant land. It will be remembered that in Hesiod, as well as elsewhere, there are many evidences of the persistence of the super- stitious dread of the supernatural and of the belief in the efficacy of propitiatory rites and charms which were such striking characteristics of the ancient Greek religion, but which seem to have crept away for a time into obscure hiding-places at the advent of the Olympian gods. In a later age we shall find these superstitions revived in the Mysteries and the Orphic religion, and it is interesting to notice that also at the period which we are now considering such vague terrors and beliefs prevailed very generally. We read of many magicians and healers, such as the Hyperborean Abaris, and Aristeas of Metapontion, and Thaletas the Cretan, who was summoned to Sparta to stay a pestilence, and in connexion with this ineradicable tendency towards deisidaimonia may be named I the philosopher JPythagora s and the Sicilian Empedocles, both of whom were regarded as more than human. The healer whom the Athenians sent for (perhaps about 625, perhaps considerably later) was the Cretan Epimenides, about whom wondrous tales are told. He is said to have fallen asleep in a cave and to have slept (like Rip Van Winkle) ior more than half a century, and to have lived 150 or even 500 years. By his contemporaries, as also by Plato and Cicero, he was regarded as divinely inspired, and even Aristotle limself speaks of him as something not quite canny. Besides 137 ANCIENT GREECE being a prophet and a healer, he was a proHfic poet, and possibly one very celebrated line of his, on the subject of the Cretans, has been preserved by St. Paul. As for his visit to Athens, I will quote what is said by Grote, who does not dis- miss this very possible case of faith-healing, which is of great interest both psychologically and historically, with the curt contempt shown by some other writers. *' Epimenides is said to have turned out some white and black sheep on the Areopagus, directing attendants to follow and watch them, and to erect new altars to the appropriate local deities on the spots where the animals lay down. He founded new chapels and established various lustral ceremonies ; and more espe- cially he regulated the worship paid by the women in such a manner as to calm the violent impulses which had before agitated them. . . . The general fact of his visit and the salutary effects produced in removing the religious despondency which oppressed the Athenians are well attested." The pestilence very probably departed in the wake of the religious despondency, but in this disturbed state of public feeling doubtless political animosities were intensified and lawlessness grew rampant. As a drastic remedy the Athenians commissioned Dracon, the archon of the year 621, to reform the laws and publish a written code. Dracon's laws were " written in blood," as an orator of later days expressed it. His reforms seem to have! consisted largely in terrorism. He increased penalties to such an extent that petty theft was punishable by death, ^ and debt exposed a man to the danger of slavery. Suchj relapse to barbarism may have had an effect for a time, but; could not permanently satisfy either rich or poor. The fact; 1 See Hor. Sat. I, iii. 115 sq., where the allusion is evidently to Dracon. Aristotle intimates that even idleness was thus punishable. An Egyptian lawj of King Amasis punished with death a man who would not work to support his family. Dracon's laws have perhaps been misrepresented. He may have merely codified old and severe laws, some already lapsed. He seems to have instituted some carefully framed legal forms, such as trials for variouf cases of homicide. Even inanimate objects charged with homicide, if con- demned, were solemnly cast forth beyond the frontier. Also the fifty-one ephetae (special judges) may have been his creation. 138 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION that the laws were now fixed in writing was an immense advantage, but their publication doubtless made the poorer classes realize all the more keenly the intolerable state of bondage and misery into which they had been brought by debt and mortgage and the insolent exactions of the rich, by which many had been reduced to actual slavery or to the necessity of selling their own children as slaves to pitiless creditors. At this crisis a great and wise man arose who refounded the state on the basis of true democracy, as some two and a half centuries later the celebrated Rogations of lyicinius set upon its true basis the Roman republic. I do not intend to give any detailed account of Solon's constitution. It is a subject that requires full and special treatment, and such it has received from writers who regard the political history of Greece as of great importance. To me it seems that we have little to learn from Greece in politics — as little, perhaps, as from her perpetual intestine feuds. I shall, therefore, while giving a sketch of Solon's personality, touch very briefly on his reforms. Solon was born about 638, some seventeen years before the archonship of Dracon. He claimed descent from Codrus, and from Poseidon through the PyHan Nestor, and his mother was a cousin of Peisistratus. But his patrimony had been wasted, and he took to trade and visited many distant lands, where he gained not only riches but a knowledge of the world and of human character and of letters which placed him on a level probably much higher than that of most Athenians of his day. It was natural that under such circumstances he should express his opinions and feelings in a written form ; and that this form should be verse was almost inevitable, for (as we shall see in a subsequent section) there was as yet no prose literature. His high birth and the great reputation that his knowledge brought him, and perhaps also his newly acquired wealth, led to his election, in 594, as archon with unlimited legislative powers, in order that he should discover some modus Vivendi between the people and the rapacious aristocracy. 139 ANCIENT GREECE Doubtless his life had brought him much in contact with the working classes, and at the same time he was closely connected with the nobility, so that great hopes were placed in his mediation. His first move must have startled both parties. On entering office he should have made the usual public declaration that he would " preserve undiminished all private property." Instead of this, he published an ordinance named the Seisach- theia (the ' Shaking off of Burdens '), which cancelled all obligations that pledged the liberty of the debtor and set free all deb tor-slaves. 1 Then he repealed all Dracon's laws except those that dealt with homicide, and having thus cleared the ground, and having deprived the oligarchic Areopagus of some important functions, he laid the foundation of the future Athenian democracy by extending the franchise to the Thetes (lit. hirelings), the lowest of the four classes, by instituting the Hehaea, or popular courts of justice, in which every citizen in turn could take his place among the dicasts (judges or jurymen), and by introducing election by lot.^ Moreover, he formed a new council (Boule) of 400 members chosen from the whole people except the Thetes, and transferred to this council from the Areopagus the work of preparing measures to be submitted to the Bcclesia. In addition to these con- stitutional reforms he limited private land-owning and forbade exportation of Attic products, except oil. Solon's laws were written, or inscribed, on tablets or pillars (agoi/e?, Kvp/Set^), which revolved on a pivot, and were first kept in the Acropolis, but later, by the advice of Ephialtes, were placed in the Agora. Whether it was before, during, or even long after his archonship is quite uncertain, but the conquest of Salamis by Athens is said to have been due to Solon's influence. Bleusis had been annexed long before, but Salamis, lying close in front * The Greek expression eTrt r« arafiari davel^eiv corresponds to the Latin nexum inire. See addictus and nexus in Diet. Ant. ' Lot was used for selecting the nine archons out of forty candidates pro- posed by the tribes. The Heliaea soon deprived the archons of all judicial power and became the final court of justice. 140 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION of the Peiraeus, was still in the possession of Megara, and so often had the Athenians vainly tried to conquer it that, it is said, they forbade under penalty of death any proposal to renew the attempt. Pretending to be in a divinely inspired frenzy, vSolon recited in public some verses in which he passion- ately denounced the cowardice of * Salamis-abandoners,' and called on the Athenians to *' cast aside their disgrace " and once more to *' fight for the lovely island." The result of this appeal was another attack on Salamis, which ended, perhaps by the arbitrage of Sparta, in the island being separated permanently from Megara and divided among Athenian cleruchs (' lot- holders '). It seems possible that Peisistratus acted as general in this war, and succeeded in occupying Nisaea, the port of Megara — a military success that perhaps made effective the Athenians' claim that Salamis had originally belonged to them.^ Herodotus tells us that the Athenians swore to obey Solon's laws for ten (Plutarch says a hundred) years, and that during these ten years he visited Egypt and Cyprus ^ and other distant lands. If this took place soon after his archonship he must have returned to Athens about 582, and as he did not die till about 558 there is an interval of over twenty years which we must suppose him to have passed at Athens, possibly making voyages from time to time across the Aegaean. But even if his visit to Egypt and Cyprus took place much later (Herodotus says he was in Egypt in the reign of Amasis, who came to the throne in 570), and if he did not return to Athens until about 562, there is no reason why between 560 and his death in 558 he may not have visited King Croesus, as Herodotus asserts — although this was denied even in Plutarch's day as chronologically impossible, and is denied by some modern writers. The well-known story of this visit, so beautifully narrated by Herodotus, will be given later. ^ Both sides appealed to the mode of burial in the ancient tombs of Salamis. The Athenians cited the (perhaps interpolated) line in the Homeric ' Cata- logue of Ships ' in which Ajax, who brought twelve ships from Salamis, is said I to have " drawn them up where the Athenian hosts were encamped." * In Cyprus he is said to have persuaded a prince to found the city Soli. 141 ANCIENT GREECE It was probably during the absence of Solon {c. 568) that the unsuccessful attack on Aegina was made by the Athenians which, according to Herodotus (v. 8y), had such a dramatic ending and caused a revolution in the dress fashions of Athenian women, on account of their having stabbed to death with their long stiletto dress-pins the sole survivor of the ill-fated expedition (see Note B, on Dress). This attack was repelled with Argive help ; and for some time to come we shall find Athens and Argos on anything but friendly terms Fierce dissensions had again broken out in Athens — so fierce that for two years no archons were elected. The party of the Plain, composed of rich landowners, was headed by lyycurgus ; that of the Coast, formed mainly of the industrial and working classes, was led by that Megacles who had married Agarista of Sicyon — a grandson of the Megacles whose sacrilege in the matter of Cylon had caused a temporary banishment of the Alcmaeonid family. At last, taking advantage of these dissensions, a friend and relative of Solon, a man who had distinguished himself in the war against Megara and had Vv^on great favour among the extreme democrats and other dis- contents, created a third party, that of the Hills — so called because it comprised many of the peasants of the Attic high- lands. This man was Peisistratus, the rise and fall of whose tyranny will be the subject of the next chapter. Solon is said to have detected and denounced, but in vain, the ambitious projects of Peisi stratus. He died about two years after the establishment of the tyranny. His ashes, it is said, were by his orders strewn over the soil of Salamis, SECTION A : EGYPT AND CYRENE {c. 670-570) In Section C, Chapter II, I sketched the history of Egypt, as far as it touches that of Greece, down to its conquest (c. 674) by the Assyrian monarch Assarhaddon. Some five years later this great king of Nineveh and Babylon abdicated (weary of power, like Charles V) , and was succeeded by the unwarlike and literary Assurbanipal, known to the Greeks as Sardanapalos. 142 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION Now of the twelve vassal-kings who still governed. Kgypt under the suzerainty of Assyria, one named Psamtik (Psam- metichus), of I^ibyan descent, who reigned at Sais, in the Delta, is said by Herodotus to have been dethroned by his fellow-rulers and to have fled to the marshes. Having sent to inquire of the famous Egyptian oracle of I^eto, he was told that '* vengeance would come from the sea, when bronzen men should appear." Not long afterwards some bronze-clad Carian and Ionian warriors were driven by storms to the Egyptian shore (modern criticism believes they were purposely sent by the king of I^ydia), and by their help Psamtik brought the whole land under his sway, founding thus the dynasty of the four Saitic kings, and defeated Assurbanipal {c. 664) and finally drove the Assyrians out of Egypt. He naturally showed great favour to the lonians and other Greeks, who now for the first time were allowed to settle freely in Egypt. About 660 the Milesians founded the trade-settlement Naucratis, the ruins of which have lately been discovered on the west bank of the Canopus Nile, not far from Sais.^ Greek mercenaries formed the right wing of the army, and also the garrison in the new and least remote Egyptian stronghold, Defenneh (called by the Greeks ' Daphnae,' i.e. I^aurels), which Psamtik had built as a defence against his eastern foes. These favours are said to have so incensed the native Egyptian soldiery, who had i to garrison the distant Aethiopian and lyibyan frontiers, that they revolted, and 240,000 of them marched south and settled inAethiopia (perhaps Abyssinia) , four months' journey beyond Syene (Assouan) and two beyond Meroe (Khartum). Psamtik reigned for forty-seven years, and extended his iominions to the boundaries of Syria, but there he was stopped 3y the Scythians, who at this period swept over the east of ^sia Minor and were only induced by a large bribe not to ittack Egypt itself. Of Necho, his successor, we have already leard. He also favoured the Greeks, and they helped him to ^ No large temples but numerous small ones have been found — evidently ;he ' chapels ' of the various Hellenic settlers. I^ater a great fortified brick inclosure, the Helleneion, with large stone storehouses, was built, probably iy leave of King Amasis. I ANCIENT GREECE build his triremes and merchant fleets. In his ships Phoeni- cians circumnavigated Africa. He cut a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, and prolonged the Suez Canal, begun in the fourteenth century B.C. by King Seti and finished by de lycsseps in the nineteenth century a.d. He defeated and slew King Josiah at Megiddo, and advanced as far as the Euphrates, but was defeated at Carchemish (6oi) by Nebucadnezar, the young king of the new Babylonian Empire — for Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire had fallen in the year 606. His son, Psammis (Psamtik II), made an expedition against the Aethiopians, or possibly the Deserters ^ who had settled in Aethiopia. In his army were many Greek mercenaries, and one can yet see at Abu Simbel, on the Upper Nile, some forty miles before reaching Wady Haifa, Greek names and inscriptions on the legs of a colossus (Fig. 44) cut by some of these soldiers. Psamtik II was succeeded by his son Apries (the Hophra of the Bible), who gave refuge to a ' remnant ' of Jews after Judah had been carried away to Babylon by Nebucadnezar in 587. Among these Jews was Jeremiah, who had been set free by Nebucadnezar and had in vain tried to dissuade his countrymen from leaving their native land, but had accom- panied them to Tahpanhes (Defenneh, or Daphnae), where they were allowed to settle, protected by the Greek garrison of the frontier fortress. ^ It will be remembered how Jeremiah (xliii. 10) buried great stones in clay at the entry of * Pharaoh's house ' Sit Daphnae and prophesied that Nebucadnezar would! come and set up his throne and his royal pavilion above thesej stones. Nebucadnezar did come (c. 572), as both Jeremiahj and Ezekiel had prophesied, and overran Egypt right up toi Syene (Assouan) ; and at Daphnae the modern excavator has found not only Greek pottery in abundance, but the relics! of the burnt palace of Hophra (which " to this day, most! curiously, bears the title of the house of the Jew's daughter")} and also a square pavement which may possibly be the veryi * Called also ' I^eft-wing men ' (' Asmachs' =Abyssinians ?) because deprived! of the place of honour on the right wing ; whence their discontent and rebellion.! 2 2 Kings XXV. 26 ; Jer. xl.-xliii. (perhaps partly by the ' Deutero- Jeremiah '). 144 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION stones " hid in the clay " by Jeremiah, above which the king of Babylon set up his throne and pavilion. Nebucadnezar and his Babylonians did not remain long, and an unsuc- cessful expedition by the Egyptian native army against Cyrene caused disturbances amidst which Hophra (Apries), although supported by his Greek troops, was dethroned by Aahmes, known in Greek history as Amasis, in whose reign, as we shall see later, there was much friendly intercourse between Egypt and Hellas ; for although Greek mercenaries had fought against him he was wise enough to forget it. The unsuccessful expedition of the Egyptian army against Cyrene was possibly made against the wishes of Apries, and none of his Greek soldiers took part in it — as was but natural, for Cyrene (some 200 miles to the west of Egypt) was a Greek colony. It was founded (c. 630) by aborigines of the small volcanic island Thera, who had quarrelled with Dorian settlers. After several failures ^ a site was found in the hills about eight miles from the coast and about 1800 feet above the sea, near to a fine spring and in a part of I^ibya where, according to Herodotus, there were three different climates, allowing harvest during eight months of the year, and such abundant rains that the natives described the place as one in which ** the sky leaks." Here Aristoteles of Thera founded Cyrene .and adopted the native name Battus (' King '), and for eight generations the Battiadae held kingly power. About 560 Cyrene founded Barca, which soon rivalled its mother-city. In its earlier days (c. 580) Cyrene gained literary fame from its poet Eugammon, who, like other Cyclic poets, tried to finish 5 the stories of the Iliad and Odyssey. He wrote the Telegoneia, ■the story of the son of Odysseus and Circe, and (as Virgil did for the Romans) connected the legend of Troy with the history of his countrymen. At a later period Cyrene was the home of several renowned philosophers and literary men, and Cyrenaica, with its five prosperous cities, became a very rich province of the Ptolemies, and afterwards of Rome. ^ Herodotus (iv. 145 sq.) gives a very long story of these Therans and of misinterpreted oracles, &c. See also iv. 199. K 145 ANCIENT GREECE The wealth of the country was largely due to the rather mysterious plant silphion — for which see coin 6, Plate VI. SECTION B : LYDIA (J76-S60) Except Cyrene there was no point of antagonism between Hellas and Egypt, and the conflict between the Hellenic and Semitic races in Sicily was yet to come, but in Asia Minor the Greek colonies had a vast hinterland of Oriental or semi- Oriental nations — the wild Pisidian tribes, the I^ycians, Carians, Mysians, Phrygians, I^ydians — some of them of Aryan blood largely intermixed with that of the old Cappa- docian and Hittite aborigines. And behind all these again loomed during the earlier ages the mighty empires of old Babylonia, of Assyria, and of the Babylon of Nebucadnezar, soon to be replaced by the still more dangerous empire of the Medes and Persians. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the destiny of modern Europe was decided by the battles of Salamis and Himera — which took place, if we may believe tradition, on the self-same day. Anyhow, it was decided by the result of the conflict of Hellas with the non-Hellenic world, especially with Persia and Carthage. It is therefore advisable, without distracting our attention too much, to keep the chief of these nations in view. Down to the conquest of I^ydia by Cyrus (546) the great empires of the far East had not come into direct contact with the Hellenic world, except that Greeks in Cyprus had become subjects of the Assyrian kings Sargon and Assarhaddon, and Greek mercenaries had fought against Nebucadnezar in Egypt. In Ionia and Greece itself much had doubtless been heard of the vast cities and armies of Assyria and Babylonia, and something of the learning of the East, such as the Chaldaean astronomy and their system of weights, had been introduced ; but during the age that we are considering (776-560) Phrygia and I^ydia formed a buffer between Asiatic Hellas and the far East, and what at present concerns us is the 146 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION history of these nearer Oriental countries and their relation to Ionia. In Phrygia, which enclosed I^ydia on the east, the dominant race (as we saw in Chapter I) was of Northern (Aryan) stock, and therefore was akin to the Greek. Phrygians evidently settled also in I^ydia and are the ' Maeonians ' mentioned by Homer (who knows nothing of * I^ydians '). They founded what some writers have even called a ' Heracleid * (Greek) dynasty of I^ydian kings, who, as also the Phrygian kings (named alternately Gordias and Midas), lived on friendly terms with the Ionian and Aeolian Greeks. The wealth and civilization of both nations were evidently considerable. They seem to have introduced the alphabet at an early age, and their music and decorative art had influence on the Greeks. One King Midas (perhaps the one to whom the fable gives donkey's ears) made the gift of his royal throne to the temple at Delphi — the first offering, says Herodotus, made by a ' barbarian.' But it is of lyydia that we hear most. Its capital, Sardis, was built on a precipitous spur of Mount Tmolus, whence flowed into the Hermus the gold-bearing stream Pactolus — one of the sources of I^ydian wealth. The ' Heracleid ' kings seem to have brought the country to a high state of prosperity. Herodotus even relates that these early I^ydians colonized Umbria, in Italy, and founded the Tyrrhenian (Ktruscan) nation ; and he tells us that they invented " all the games that are common to them and the Greeks,*' and also the use of gold-and-silver {electron) coinage. The last of the ' Heracleid ' kings was Candaules. ^ He was i slain [c. 716) by Gyges, who established the dynasty of the lative lyydian Mermnadae, to which Croesus belonged. Gyges extended the I^ydian power over Mysia and endeavoured to I conquer the Greek seaboard of the Aegaean, but about 680 * An Aryan name meaning ' dog-throttler,' corresponding to KwdyKr^s, in epithet given by Hipponax to the god Hermes : " O dog-throttler Hermes, ' ty the Maeonians called Candaules." War-dogs were used by the Cimmerians nd other barbarians. For the dramatic story of Candaules and Gyges see Idt. i. 7. Coinage was probably first introduced by Gyges. See Note C. 147 I ANCIENT GREECE Ivydia itself was attacked from the north and east by the innumerable hordes of a wild northern people called the Cimmerians. The Cimmerians (doubtless the originals of Homer's fabulous Cimmerians on the further shore of the river Ocean) were probably driven south from their country (Cimmeria, i.e. the Crimea) by the pressure of other northern tribes. Whether they came by way of the Danube delta or the Caucasus is unknown, but they captured the Greek city Sinope and made it their chief camp, whence they ravaged almost the whole of Asia Minor, and even attacked the great Assyrian king, Assarhaddon. At first Gyges was successful, and he sent many Cimmerian captives in chains to Nineveh — the first act of I^ydian homage to Assyria, if such it was, that we hear of. But two years later the Cimmerians again poured down from the north, slew Gyges, plundered vSardis, and pressed southwards, where they destroyed Magnesia and burnt the great temple of Artemis that stood outside the city walls of Kphesus. Of these hordes of ravaging northern barbarians the Kphesian poet Callinus speaks (as we shall see in Section D), and a vivid picture of them is given on a sarcophagus of Clazomenae (Fig. 45). Between Gyges and Croesus three kings reigned, Ardys (678-629), Sadyattes (629-617), and Alyattes (617-560). During this period we hear of various invasions of West Asia Minor by Cimmerians, while in the far Bast the Scythians, another wild northern people, totally defeated the king of Media, Cyaxares, and for twenty-eight years (640-612) were dominant even as far south as the Philistine city of Ascalon, which they sacked. Indeed, it was only by bribes that Psamtik I saved Egypt from them. In spite of these recurring Cimmerian invasions Ardys and Sadyattes seem to have attacked Ionia. Priene and perhaps other cities were taken, and Miletus was much harassed by them. Alyattes finally expelled the Cimmerians. He then turned his arms against the Greeks, wishing doubtless to acquire a seaboard for I^ydia. He took and utterly destroyed {c. 590) 148 44- Coi^ossi OF Abu Simbei. 45. Cimmerians on the Sarcophagus op Ci^azomenae 148 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION new Smyrna/ which now almost disappears from the history of ancient Greece, but after warring for eleven years against Miletus (now under the tyranny of Thrasybulus, Periander*s friend) he made peace, probably because I^ydia was assailed by a new foe, namely, the Medes, who under Cyaxares (the conqueror of Babylon) and his son Astyages were extending the new Median empire towards the Aegaean. In the sixth year this war between I^ydia and the Medes was ended by a strange occurrence. In the midst of a battle the sun was darkened, and the combatants were so alarmed that they ceased fighting and concluded a peace. This solar eclipse, the date of which was May 28, 585, is of interest not only because it . gives us (like the eclipse of 648 recorded by Archilochus) an exact date, but because it was foretold, more or less accu- rately, by the philosopher Thales. This was perhaps the first eclipse predicted by a European. Thales gained his know- ledge of the lunar cycle (of about seventeen years) and the ; astronomical data for calculating eclipses from the Egyptians, I who themselves, it is likely, were indebted to the Chaldaeans of Babylon. 2 But whatever may have been the source of his i knowledge, the prediction of Thales was a momentous event, for it was, as far as we know, the very first attempt made in Europe to lay the foundation of inductive science. It marks, as Grote says, the beginning in the Hellenic world of scientific prediction as distinguished from the prophecies of soothsayers, oracles, and omens. To seal the peace with Media King Alyattes gave his daughter in marriage to Astyages, and for the next forty years Ivydia enjoyed, under Alyattes and his son Croesus, brilliant prosperity, until Cyrus the Persian overthrew the Median Astyages, and twelve years later (546) attacked and overthrew the Ivydian Croesus also, as we shall see in the next chapter. ^ See p. 63. But Pindar afterwards mentions Smyrna as a ' bright city.' " Ptolemy, the great geographer and astronomer, although he lived in ^gypt, cites the Chaldaean calculations for eclipses as the earliest {i.e. from 721). Egyptian astronomical knowledge, however, dates at least from the I time of the Pyramids (c. 3000). 149 < ^s Q 00 ON N k^ S 4 i:- 7 00 vO CO '^ ^^ t>> < 03 < tn O D o O . M lO V.O ON A ? vn VO vn VO VJ . <o 1 to Q ca rt « ' ^ t^ C< CO W IH I •> <U <U (v| ^ O. VO VO ^ a, J^ 03 P o en CO ^ << d tJ rt o t:) 1-1 rtl "^H VO ■<^ in I o VO »o U p2 o a »o d vo5 »o •PC:^^ o^ vom ?^ 0>M t>^ to _^ • r-SJ o a ^ d «i IH (1) rt ^voo^z; o CiVO <v ^d d o d V o d d o ,o to 'd d d o fd . d w ^ M d Oh w ;< ^ w 04 o d j3 to rt ISO § 'd 'd -s C8 to CO < ^d \m O ^ to a> M O t^ to VO^ ^ M o r^ ^ ffi >o «5 o fl to ca^ q THE AGE OF COLONIZATION SECTION C : THE GAMES It is a trite remark that Greece was never a nation ; and it is true that Hellas, and even the Hellenic homeland, had no political coherence. Very rarely, as Thucydides says, did the Greek states take any combined action, and even against the Persians the combination was by no means complete. Greek patriotism was not based on the idea of political union, far less on that of any central imperial power. All imperialism, all hegemony of Greek over Greek, was as odious as tyranny to the deeper instincts of the race, and although such temporary structures as the Athenian Empire and the Spartan and Theban supremacies arose from time to time, they were maintained by forces foreign to true Hellenic genius. But though not united politically, often torn asunder by intestine feuds, the Hellenic world was united in heart by sentiments perhaps nobler than those of ordinary patriotism — by the proud consciousness of kinship not only in blood but in the deepest sympathies of human nature, such as find expression in religion and art and literature. This fact is finely stated in the message sent by the Athenians to Sparta before the capture of Athens by Mardonius the Persian : " Not all the gold that the earth contains would bribe us to take part with the Medes and help them to enslave our countrymen. . . . There is our common brotherhood, our common language, the altars and the sacrifices of which we all partake, and the common character which we bear. Did the Athenians betray all this, of a truth it would not be well,^' This consciousness, which more and more counteracted the old antipathies between Doric, Ionian, and other sections of the race, and inspired all Hellas with a feeling of boundless superiority over the nations that surrounded it on all sides — though some of these ' barbarians ' could boast of a civilization far more ancient and a sense of truth and honour ^ far keener 1 See later remarks on the Persian character. The traitor was never far to seek among the Greeks, but was scarcely known among the Persians. 151 ANCIENT GREECE than that of the Greeks — ^was fostered by the great religious festivals held by the mother-cities, to which the colonies of the Hellenic world sent solemn embassies (Oewplai) vying with each other in the magnificence of their offerings. Also for the Greeks of the colonies there were meeting- places where great festivals were held, such as the Ivicinian promontory in South Italy, and the island of Delos. This island, lying in the midst of the Cyclades, which offer easy transit between Greece and Ionia, was in early times an impor- tant entrepot. It was also the religious centre of the Ionian world, famed as the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo and for the most ancient oracle of the god.^ Every fifth year the birth of the twin deities was celebrated with magnificence, amidst a great concourse, vividly described in the ancient Hymn to Apollo : " Hither gather the long-robed lonians with their children and chaste wives. They wrestle, they dance, they sing in memory of the god. He who saw them would say they were immortal and ageless, so much grace and charm would he find in viewing the men, the fair-girdled women, the swift ships, and riches of every kind." (See also Thuc. iii. 104.) These festivals seem to have been accompanied by contests in music and poetry. The temple, with its priceless treasure of offerings, was not touched by the Persians, who plundered most of the other islands, but the Delian festivals seem to have ceased during the Persian supremacy. They were revived with great ostentation by the Athenians of the Empire, who used to send splendid theorias in the sacred Delian galley [Salaminia) ; but this revival was of short duration, for Delos had lost its special sanctity in rivalry with Delphi, and the centre of religious life for the lonians had been long since transferred to the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus, as that of their political life was transferred to the pan-Ionian assembly on Mount Mycale. ^ Homer speaks only of Apollo's altar in Delos. Excavation has revealed a sanctuary with small temples of Artemis, Apollo, I,eto, and Aphrodite — perhaps built on the site of the great ancient temple. Statues, possibly of Artemis, have been discovered (see Fig. 50). The original Delian statue of Apollo was said to have been brought thither by Theseus from Crete. 152 46. Site of Oi^ympia and Vai,k of the Ai^pheios 47. Heraion, Oi^ympia 152 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION By far the most famous, if not the most ancient, pan-Hellenic assembly was that held at Olympia, where Heracles is said to have consecrated (c. 1200) a sanctuary to Zeus, and to have founded games after his victory over Augeas, king of Blis. Others even attribute the foundation to Pelops (c. 1280) . Tradi- tion asserts that the games, which had fallen into disuse, were reinstituted by I^ycurgus of Sparta and Iphitus, king of Blis ; ^ to prove which was shown at Olympia the discus of Iphitus inscribed with the name of I^ycurgus. Perhaps it was on this occasion that the Eleans, supported by Sparta, usurped the presidency at the games, held till then by the people of Pisa, in whose territory Olympia lay, and to whom, as we have already seen. King Pheidon of Argos {c. 680) for a time restored their rights. During the seventh century all the victors were Spartans, Messenians, and Bleans, so that it seems as if the games were confined to these peoples. After the Messenian wars (c. 600) we find competitors from other Greek states, and later many of the most celebrated victors came from South Italy, Sicily, and other parts of Hellas. None but pure Hellenes were allowed to compete. Foreigners might be spectators, but no slave nor any woman was allowed to be present. 2 From 776 to 724 the games consisted merely of a foot-race of about three hundred yards. I^onger races were then introduced, and the pentathlon (a fivefold contest in running, leaping, wrestling, discus- and spear-throwing) and chariot-races, and lastly the pancratium (combined boxing and wrestling). The competitors had to undergo a training of ten months and special practice for a month at Olympia under supervision, and to make sacrifices and to vow that they would compete fairly. There were official trainers besides the judges (hellanodicae) , who awarded the prizes — wreaths cut with a golden knife from the sacred oHve-tree, which, it was said, Heracles had planted. ^ Traditional date 884. Others give 776, i.e. the year of the victory of Coroebus, from which the Olympiads are dated. * Perhaps no married women ; and possibly exceptions were made with Spartan women. A story is told of a woman being detected in male attire, but as her son was victor she was forgiven. IS3 ANCIENT GREECE Marvellous stories were told of the feats of some of the victors. The distances (fifty feet or so) covered by them in leaping seem incredible, but how they used the halteres — i.e. ' leaping weights ' held in the hands while jumping — is unknown. Of activity and endurance we have a striking example in the victor of the nine-mile race, who is said to have continued running after passing the goal, and to have reached Argos, some fifty miles distant, on the same evening. The festival took place every fourth year. At first it was limited to a single day (probably that of the first full moon after the summer solstice). After the Persian wars it was extended to five days. The vast multitudes who camped on the slopes of the Mount of Cronos and the sandy hillocks between the beds of the Alpheus and the Cladeus, and who for five days stood in dense throngs around the racecourse and palaestra, must have suffered greatly from heat and drought — for the river-water was scanty and bad, and it was not till a late age that a reservoir of pure water was made by the wealthy Roman, Herodes Atticus. No wonder that special sacrifices were offered to Zeus the Averter of Flies ! A ' holy truce * was proclaimed for the whole month, during which all warfare was forbidden and the land of Elis was considered sacred. The temenos, or sacred precinct, at Olympia was called the Altis.^ Within it stood in early days the ancient temple of Zeus, on the site of which was probably afterwards built the wonderful structure for which Pheidias made his famous statue, and where the equally famous chest of Cypselus was kept. Another temple contained the tomb of Pelops, and very ancient stone foundations have been excavated which are believed to have belonged to the temple of Hera and Zeus — an edifice of sun-baked brick with wooden Doric columns dating from perhaps looo (see Fig. 47). In an open space of the Altis stood the great altar of Zeus, and outside the walls was the Stadion, a racecourse about two hundred yards in * Probably the Elean form of aXaos, a sacred grove. The Altis was a square of about two hundred yards each way, enclosed by great walls. 154 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION length. Such was Olympia in the age of lyycurgus, and also of Pheidon ; but in time the old buildings were replaced by marble temples, and many other magnificent structures arose within and without the Altis — halls and porticoes and treasure- houses. More than eighty altars erected to the various deities testified to the vast numbers of the worshippers, who came from all parts of Hellas ; ^ the avenues were lined with the statues of victorious athletes, and both within and without the temples were erected the masterpieces of renowned sculptors, such as the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias, the Victory of Paeonius, and the Hermes of Praxiteles. 2 Even in the sixth century, as we shall see, men like Xenophanes the philosopher spoke disdainfully of the glori- fication of the athlete. Euripides, too, in the fragment that survives of his Autolycus, calls athletes the worst of all the ills of Hellas, and Socrates, one of the hardiest and bravest of soldiers, spoke of such men with contempt, as did also Epameinondas. In a still later age — when chryselephantine statues of royal Macedonians stood in the Philippeion at Olympia — the games degenerated into mere professional contests, and Alexander the Great himself is said to have despised ' athleti- cism.' Under the earher Roman emperors the Olympic Games were celebrated with great magnificence, but were abolished in A.D. 394 by Theodosius I. His grandson, Theodosius II, had all the temples burnt. But many a splendid ruin still remained, and afforded material to Christian church-builders, as well as to Goths, Slavs, and Turks. At last the great columns and pediments of the temple of Zeus were overthrown by an earthquake. Excavations made by the Germans about 1876 brought to light not only old foundations and many fragments of architectural sculpture, but also the two ^ As one might infer from its site on the western shores of Greece, Olympia was frequented far more by the Greeks of Western Hellas than by those of Ionia. Out of the twelve treasure-houses five were erected by Greeks of Sicily and South Italy, one by Epidamnus, one by Cyrene, and one by Byzantium. * See Figs. 93, 112, and cow 10, Plate III. ANCIENT GREECE statues already mentioned, the Hermes and the Victory — both of them original masterpieces by great Greek artists. Of these and of the sculptures of the Zeus temple I shall speak again later. Pan-Hellenic festivals with athletic and sometimes musical and poetical contests were held also at Delphi, at Nemea, and on the Isthmus. For all of them great antiquity was claimed. The Isthmian Games were said to date from the age of Theseus and Sisyphus, the Nemean from that of the Seven against Thebes, while Apollo himself was said to have founded the Pythian Games at Delphi. But very little is known of them until they were refounded — the Isthmian festival, in honour of Poseidon, possibly by Periander of Corinth, and the Nemean, in honour of Zeus, by the Argives. These festivals were biennial. At the same time as they were reinstituted (c. 580) the Pythian Games were revived. At the original Pythian festival there were probably only contests in music and poetry. The great temple stood, as the Homeric Hymn to Apollo says, "in a hollow, rugged glen beneath the overhanging crags of snowy Parnassus " — a site very unsuitable for athletic gatherings and horse-races. Nor did the god himself seem to favour such things, for in the same Hymn the poet protests in the deity's name against the clatter of chariots and horses around his temple, and the " drinking of mules at the sacred fountains." But when an arena was found at sufficient distance, so that the tumult of games should not disturb the sanctity of his oracle, Apollo was content and vouchsafed his favour. This arena was the plain of Cirrha, or Crissa, lying between Delphi and the sea. The people of Crissa, to whom belonged the port at which pilgrims landed, levied heavy dues and otherwise annoyed the people of Delphi, who had control of the Delphic shrine. These appealed to the Amphictiony ^ — a religious league of North Grecian states — which espoused their cause, and with the help of Cleisthenes of Sicyon, after * Amphictiones means 'dwellers around.' The league was probably begun by the neighbours of a shrine of Demeter near Thermopylae, and gradually grew until the Amphictionic Council had great influence. See Diet. Ant. is6 !. Vai,e of Tkmpe and Mouth of River Penfios 49. Site of Dei^piii 156 M THE AGE OF COLONIZATION a struggle of about ten years (the first Sacred War) , succeeded in capturing Crissa (590). They razed it to the ground and dedicated the Crissaean plain to the service of the Delphian god ; and on this plain was held the Pythian festival, which for its musical, poetical, and artistic contests, as well as for its chariot-races, became scarcely less famed than that of Olympia itself. French excavators have brought to light the remains of the great temple and of about six others, as well as a theatre, stadium, and gymnasium, not far from the Castalian Fount, and the paved Sacred Way which winds up the huge stone terraces on which Apollo's temple stood. This Sacred Way was lined by treasure-houses erected by many of the chief cities of Greece, and was once filled with priceless works of art, almost all of which have naturally disappeared, for Delphi was the prey of plunderers during many ages. Fine architectural sculptures have, however, been recovered, especially some that belonged to the Athenian, Sicyonian, and Cnidian treasuries, and also numerous statues, offerings to the Delphic god. Of these the most remarkable are a colossal Sphinx dedicated by the people of Naxos, and the bronze charioteer (Fig. 74) which was probably erected as a thank-offering for victory in a chariot -race by Polyzalus, the brother of Hiero. SECTION D : THE POETS (776-560) We have seen how by the time of Hesiod the old monarchical and feudal feeling had largely given way to the natural yearn- ings for personal liberty and independent thought, and how such yearnings, thwarted by the rich and high-born oppressor, found vent in bitter lament and the cry for justice and equality. The true poet — who ever interprets his age — no longer deigned to sing the praises of heaven-descended princes. The epic bard, or rhapsode, indeed, still existed, and the Cyclic writers (so called because they attempted to finish the whole cycle of the legend of Troy) supplied him with material such as the Sack of Ilion, the Cypria, the Little Iliad, and the Telegoneia, and sometimes, for a change, with mock-heroic 157 ANCIENT GREECE parodies of the Homeric epic such as the Margites, the story of a booby-hero who " knew many professions but knew all badly/' or the Batrachomyomachia, the ' Battle of the Frogs and Mice/ And there were (as there are in most ages) poets who wrote religious verse — hymns for festivals of the gods, some of them, such as the * Homeric ' hymns to Apollo and Demeter, of great dignity and beauty. But all this was a survival. The spirit of the age was another, and poetry demanded new forms in which to sing of freedom and fatherland, love and friendship, wisdom and virtue, life and death. The first of these new forms was elegiac verse, which in its original home, Caria and I^ydia, was of a dirge-like character and was accompanied by mournful flute-music. But the metre, a couplet consisting of the epic hexameter and a similar but shorter and more energetic verse with two emphatic monosyllables, was adopted by the Greeks for their war-songs, and also for exhortatory poetry [viroOmai) and sententious maxims {yvwimai), and for the expression of personal feelings and opinions on all subjects affecting human life. Among the elegiac poets of this age the chief were Callinus, Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, and Solon. The second form was iambic verse, generally of a satiric character, the chief writers of which were Semonides of Amorgos and Archilochus. The third form was lyrical verse. These early lyrical poets stand on a level immeasurably higher than that of the elegiac and iambic writers. The best known, though, alas ! by repute rather than from what has survived of their poetry, are Sappho and Alcaeus, with whom one may perhaps venture to associate Alcman, Arion, and Stesichorus. The following brief accounts of these poets and of some of their surviving works may prove interesting. Further bio- graphical details will be found in classical dictionaries. (i) Callinus of Ephesus was perhaps the inventor of the elegiac couplet. His seems to have been mostly war-poetry. Among the few verses of his that are extant he calls upon his countrymen to rouse themselves : *' How long will ye lie idle, 158 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION while war fills all the world ? . . . 'Tis honourable and glorious for a man to fight for his fatherland, his children, and the wife of his youth. ... It is not possible to escape one's destined death. . . . Many a man has fled battle and the clash of arms only to return to his home and find there the doom of death." In a verse preserved by Strabo Callinus exclaims : ** Now is coming the host of the Cimmerians, those doers of terrible deeds ! " It is therefore probable that by his war-songs he roused the Bphesians against these savages, who (c. 678) had captured Sardis and killed the I^ydian king Gyges, and soon afterwards burnt the temple of Artemis, just outside the walls of Kphesus. (2) Of Tyrtaeus {c. 660) we have already heard. Whether ^ he was really an Athenian, or whether his birthplace, Aphidna in I^aconia, was confused with Aphidna in Attica, is unknown. Fragments survive of * Tyrtaean ' marching songs in anapaestic measure — e.g. "Ayer'j w ^rrdpras evdvSpov Kovpoi iraTepoiv TroXiarav . . . — and about eighty elegiac couplets, some of which have a splendid swing, such as : TeBvdfievai yap koKov inl 7rpop.dxoi(n Trea-ovra avBp* dyaObv Trepl jj irarplSi fiapvdpevov . . . Km TToda Trap ttoSi Bus /cat eV d(nri8os damld* epfiaas . . . The language is almost pure Ionic, not Doric ; which is trange if he was really vSpartan. Moreover, his poetry (if t is his) contains numerous lines almost identical with lines |;)f Callinus, so that some hold that it was written in Ionia )y some Milesian poet and attributed to Tyrtaeus. Among : Tyrtaean elegiac exhortations (vTroOtiKai) sue some fine verses pncouraging young warriors not to desert their elders in battle. r What a foul sight," the poet exclaims, " is a white-headed /arrior lying dead in the front ranks ! But in the youth i verything is seemly ; he is handsome alive and handsome also /hen fallen in the van of the battle." Besides, he adds, ravery is the best policy ; the bold survive, while all the herd IS9 ANCIENT GREECE of cowards perishes. Of his elegy Eunomia (' Good Order ') about thirty Hnes are extant. In it the poet calls on the citizens i to avoid dissension and to respect the Pythian oracle as the source of law and order. He mentions the " god-honoured kings" of Sparta, especially Theopompus, under whose command, after nineteen years, " we conquered Messenia, good to plough and good to plant." Another fragment (possibly genuine) depicts vividly a well-known characteristic of i the Spartans : " The love of money and naught else shalli ruin Sparta. . . . Thus hath golden-haired Apollo prophesied! from his rich shrine." (3) The poetry of Mimnermus [c, 630) is of a more personal character. Some of it is addressed to Nanno, a flute-girl .! ** What is life," he exclaims, " without golden Aphrodite ? " Old age is a terrible thing ; its doom {kyip) is worse than that of death, destroying both eyes and mind.^ lyike Horace he sings ol the joys of youth, and bids one gather them donee virenti canities abest. Perhaps more interesting than his views on this subjed are the verses in which he tells how an ancestor of his drov( in rout the phalanxes of I^ydian horsemen on the plain of the Hermus. This was evidently in a fight between the people o: Smyrna, the poet's birthplace, and King Gyges, who failed t( take the city. Three generations later (c. 590) Alyattes o lyydia captured and razed Smyrna (see p. 149). But Mimnermu; probably did not live to see this evil day, though he seem to have survived to the manhood of Solon (c. 600), wh( answered his assertion that life was over at seventy ^ b bidding him substitute ' eighty.' (4) When Solon was in Egypt, says the grandfather Critias in Plato's Timaeus, he heard from the priests (the sam priests who told him that the Greeks were always childrer the wonderful story of the isle Atlantis. '' Ay," adds the ol Critias, "if he had not taken up poetry as a mere by-worl but had worked at it earnestly like others and had compose ^ Perhaps these Kr^pes of Mimnermus are the evil spirits, or, as Miss Harrisc has argued, the bacilli, of old age and death. See p. 46. ^ Strangely enough, Solon in his Ten Ages gives seventy as the limit, ar Herodotus makes him give the same in his conversation with Croesus. 160 l THE AGE OF COLONIZATION a poem on this story that he brought from Egypt, instead of having been obHged to neglect it on account of all the political troubles that he found here at Athens, I believe that neither Hesiod nor Homer nor any other poet would have been more famous." In spite of Critias, or even of Plato himself, it is not easy to believe that Solon could ever have been a great poet. But his verses are often exceedingly eloquent and forcible, and on account of his great reputation as statesman and sage they are of supreme interest. In an age when writing was still a rare accomplishment and one had to trust mainly to the living voice those who had anything to say and who wished to impress it on the memory of their hearers chose a rhythmical form — which, after all, is the natural mode of expression for the emotions, and far less artificial than literary prose. ^ Even laws, it is said, were anciently published in rhythmical language, and not only sages such as Solon and Bias (who wrote a poem of two thousand lines), but also many of the earlier philosophers, as Parmenides, Heracleitus, Xenophanes, Empedocles, and perhaps even Thales himself, expressed their doctrines in verse — a method which, as the magnificent De Rerum Natura of I^ucretius in a later age proved, allows the imagination its sublimest flights, but which might have its disadvantages for writers on what is nowadays called philosophy. The extant verses of Solon are (a) eight lines of his celebrated verses, originally a hundred, about Salamis ; (b) Exhortations to the Athenians ; (c) Exhortations to himself ; (d) some trochaic and iambic verses. The sense of his lines about Salamis is as follows : "I came myself as a herald from lovely Salamis, having composed an order [series] of verses instead of a set-speech. . . . Would that I had been then [when we gave up Salamis] a man of Pholegandros or Sicine [little Aegaean islands] rather than an * Aesop (c. 570) should here be mentioned. If he wrote his Fables in verse, as is probable, they were known later only in a prose version ; for Socrates, when in prison, bidden by the god to " make his life more musical," versified some of them. L 161 ANCIENT GREECE Athenian, for swiftly this report might be spread abroad : This is an Attic man — one of the Salamis-abandoners." In his Exhortations to the Athenians he eloquently describes the ruin brought on a city which loves injustice — how its poor are sold into slavery and not even the courtyard doors keep out disaster from a man's home. He sings of Order and Disorder, and of feuds between rich and poor. *' I stood holding before both a mighty buckler, nor did I let either win unjustly." " It is hard," he says, " to please all in great undertakings." He speaks of the Demos, and how it best obeys its leaders when not given too loose a rein nor held in too tight ; and he addresses a remark to this same Demos which shows how thoroughly he understood its nature : " Each one of you singly treadeth in the tracks of the fox [is foxish in cunning], but when ye are all together the mind within you is a gaping gooselike thing ; for ye pay regard to the tongue and the word of any wheedling flatterer and look not at all to what is being done." The Exhortations to himself contain many wise saws and maxims — e.g. " Wealth is good, but not when ill-acquired " ; " God is a righteous judge, not quick to anger as a man." A very interesting fragment is his Ten Ages, in which he depicts with almost Shakespearean art the state of man at every seventh year of his life — from the child of seven shedding his first teeth to the septuagenarian ''ripe to receive his destined doom of death," an expression inconsistent with his answer to Mimnermus. He probably lived eighty years himself, and one of his finest sayings was, " I grow old ever learning many things." Of historical interest (if genuine) are the lines that he addressed to Philocyprus, the Gyprian prince, bidding him farewell, and wishing him long life at his new city, Soli (see p. 141). Among the fragments of his trochaic tetrameters there is a rather amusing passage in which he pretends to quote public criticism of the fact that he followed the example of Pittacus rather than that of Periander " Solon," he says, " was a 162 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION man of no deep wisdom or judgment, for when God gave him good things he would not accept them, and, having enclosed his catch, became nervous and did not haul his big net to land. If / had got hold of such power and boundless wealth, even if I had been tyrant of Athens for a single day, I should have been willing to be flayed to make a wine-skin and have all my family exterminated." In his iambics he gives a most interesting account of how he released debtors and recalled those who had been sold into foreign slavery. (5) Horace says that '* fury armed Archilochus with his own iambus." Doubtless iambic rhythm (which in some languages, such as English, is the natural rhythm of emotional language) existed before.^ It is found, for instance, in the Margites, sometimes attributed to Homer, and it was probably used in chants at Demeter mysteries and other reli- gious ceremonies ; whence perhaps Archilochus borrowed it, for his father was a priest of Demeter, and he himself won the prize for a hymn to the goddess. But possibly the iambic trimeter (the metre used by the great Greek dramatists) was invented by this poet of Paros, who used it with dire effect, it is said, in his scathing satires against lyycambes and his daughters. From fragments of his poems (which comprised elegiacs, iambics, trochaic tetrameters, and also combinations of various rhythms, imitated by Horace in his Epodes) it seems that he visited Southern Italy, for he speaks of the '* streams of the Siris, more lovely than Thasos," Also he mentions Euboea, and describes the Kuboean mode of fighting : " not much bending of bows nor many slings, but the terrible work of the sword " ; so, perhaps, he took part in the lyelantine war of Chalcis and Bretria (p. 128). He joined an expedition to Thasos made by the Parians, attracted by the gold-mines of that island and of the opposite Thracian mainland ; but it seems to have been unsuccessful. He speaks of Thasos with * The essential difference between the hexametric and iambic rhythms con- sists in the fact that the spondee (or dactyl) is in equipoise, its two parts balancing each other and producing a smooth onward motion, whereas the trochee or iambus ("^ or ^~) causes an agitated, up-and-down movement. 163 ANCIENT GREECE dislike as a bare, rocky ridge " like a donkey's back." In a fight with Thracians he lost his shield (a fact that probably accounts for a similar story about Alcaeus, and certainly accounts for the imaginative loss of Horace's shield at PhiHppi). His lines on the subject may be thus rendered : Some Thracian's doubtless chuckling o'er an unexpected find — A brand-new shield, which much against my will I left behind. Well, anyhow, I saved my life. The shield may go to pot I Another and a better one can easily be got. More important for the chronologist is the fact that, perhaps while he was in Thasos, he witnessed a solar eclipse, for this gives us the first quite certain date in Greek history, viz. April 8, 648. " Nothing," he says, " is incredible and impossible any longer, since Zeus created night at noonday, hiding the light of the blazing sun ; and pale dread fell upon mortals. Henceforth all things can be believed and expected. I^et none wonder even if the beasts of the forest exchange with dolphins and dwell in the briny realms, and the resounding billows become dearer to them than the dry land, while the mountains delight those others." Possibly there is reference here to his former love for the fair Neobule, I/ycambes' daughter, now changed into the bitterest disdain. But of all that has survived of Archilochus the lines are the finest in which he addresses his own soul, as Odysseus does in the Odyssey. " Soul, soul, storm-tossed by desperate cares, come forth and defend thyself breast-foremost 'gainst thy foes, and station thyself in safety anigh the ambush of the enemy. And if victorious, triumph not openly, nor, if conquered, fall on thy face in thy house and lament, but rejoice in all that is joyous and vex not thyself too much because of evil men, remembering that such is the way of mortals." Words like these and a line such as Gyges with all his golden wealth is naught to me, come like a breath of fresh air across all the long ages of dusty, dreary warfare and politics that so often form the main subject of history. 164 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION (6) Semonides, called also Simonides, probably from being confused with the later poet of that name, was a Samian by birth, but migrated, perhaps as oekist of a Samian colony, to the little island of Amorgos. I^ike Archilochus, he used the iambic trimeter for satire ; but his satire was not directed against individuals, and his only extant complete poem, in spite of some very caustic passages, is quite Horatian in its playful humour. This poem, which is of about a hundred lines, describes the creation of ten different kinds of women — the dirty from the pig, the sly from the fox, the shameless and inquisitive from the dog, the stupid from earth, the unstable from water, the obsti- nate from the donkey, the thievish from the cat, the coquettish from the horse, the mischievous from the monkey, and, lastly, the good and industrious from the bee. The last he describes with as much enthusiasm as Solomon himself, and a couplet of his preserved by Clement of Alexandria repeats almost word for word Hesiod's assertion that "nothing can a man win better than a good woman, or worse than a bad one/' Some of the pictures in this poem of Semonides are exceedingly vivid — such as that of the coquette, who will take no share in household duties, but sits afar from the hearth, fearing the soot, and performs her ablutions and anointings twice or even three times daily, and " carries on her head a deep mane of hair all combed out and overshadowed with flowers — a pretty sight indeed for others, but to her lord and master a misfortune, unless he be some tyrant or sceptre-bearing king who delights in such things." (7) Alcman was born at Sardis, in I^ydia, but his father was probably Greek. How he came to Sparta is unknown. Either, like Terpander, he was invited thither, or he came originally as a slave and gained his freedom and civic honours by his poetry. He is, according to the canon of the Alexandrine grammarians, the first Greek lyric poet. His language is the old lyaconian dialect. He wrote hymns, love- and war-songs, and Parthenia (songs for Spartan maidens), all of which seem to have been true songs and of a far higher poetic value than the verses of Tyrtaeus. The form, too, of his poems 165 ANCIENT GREECE is very different from that of the elegiac and iambic poets. They consist of short hnes, mostly trochaic and dactylic, arranged in strophes and antistrophes — a system invented by him, amplified by Stesichorus and Pindar, and adopted by the Attic dramatists for their choral odes — in which also the Doric dialect is often used. He lived about 670-600, and was thus probably a contemporary of Tyrtaeus. Of his poetry numerous fragments remain. Of these the most important was discovered (written on papyrus) in Egypt about sixty years ago. It is a Parthenion, meant to be sung by virgins at the festival of Artemis Orthia (see p. loi). There are also four hexameters of great beauty, addressed in old age to the Spartan maidens. He laments that he can no longer take part in their songs and dances and wishes he were some bright-coloured sacred sea-bird *' that over the foam of the sea with dauntless heart amid the halcyons flies.'' His lines descriptive of the stillness of night have all the vividness, if not the pathos, of Goethe's Ueber alien Gipfeln ist Ruh'. (8) Arion {c. 625) was a native of lyesbos, which he left probably early, before the days of Alcaeus and Sappho. He spent most of his life at the court of Periander of Corinth, where he became famous as a minstrel and song- writer. According to Herodotus, as well as Aristotle, he was *' the first to invent the dithyramb measure." More probably he adapted the rough measures and boisterous ribaldry of the old Cyclic, or dithyramb, chorus, sung at vintage dances in honour of Dionysus. There is nothing of Aiion's poetry extant, although the historian Aelian (third century a.d.) quotes verses in which Arion himself is supposed to give an account of his rescue by the dolphin. Aelian also appeals to the inscription on the bronze statue of Arion and his dolphin erected on Cape Taenarus to prove the truth of that account ; and perhaps there is more truth in the story than we believe. Pliny tells of a dolphin (porpoise) who used to carry a boy to and from school every day across the bay of Baiae. (9) Stesichorus {c. 632-556) was born at Himera, in Sicily. One tradition asserts that he was a son of Hesiod. He incurred 166 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION the hostility of the notorious tyrant Phalaris and fled to Catane, where he died. His tomb gave the name to one of the city gates. This name, Stesichorus, he is said to have received in addition to his original name Tisias because he was famed as an ' arranger of choruses.' He is said to have brought the lyric art to perfection in language and rhythm, but the bulk of his writings seems to have been on epic subjects — the old Trojan and Orestean legends and the myths about Heracles. Of these poems numerous fragments survive, but they are of little interest except the first three lines (preserved for us by Plato) of the celebrated Palinode with which Stesi- chorus atoned for having slandered Helen of Troy and thus, it is said, recovered his eyesight : " It is not true — that story. Thou didst never embark on well-benched ships nor reach the battlements of Troy." It was not Helen herself that Paris carried off, but only a phantom — that ' double ' of Helen which plays a part in Greek legend and literature and is intimated in the beautiful episode of the Helena in Goethe's Faust. (id) Alcaeus {c. 645-580) belonged to a noble family of Mytilene in I^esbos. He took part against the tyrant Myrsilus, and after the defeat of the lycsbians by the Athenians at Sigeum (in defence of which stronghold he distinguished himself — and perhaps lost his shield) he, as well as his brother and many others of the aristocratic party, went into exile {c. 596). He seems to have been for some time in Egypt, where Apries (Hophra) was reigning and Naucratis, the Greek settlement, was already a flourishing town. Hither, too, perhaps with Alcaeus, came Charaxus, the brother of Sappho — and possibly even Sappho herself. The brother of Alcaeus took service under Nebucadnezar, and may have been at the sack of Daphnae (see p. 144), but probably he returned with the poet to Mytilene. Here Alcaeus violently opposed the democratic party, and when Pittacus (c. 590) was made dictator (p. 128) he was imprisoned ; but the wise Pittacus seems to have forgiven him, and probably the two became friends. A true and tender friendship existed also between 167 ANCIENT GREECE Alcaeus and Sappho, who was the younger by a few years. His poetry breathes passionate emotion. He sings of gods and of men, of war and arms, of love and wine. In verses still extant he describes the ship of the state (a picture copied by Horace) tossed on the waves, rolling to and fro with sails rent and the water rising ever higher in the hull. Two lines survive addressed to Sappho : " O violet- weaving, holy, sweetly smihng Sappho, I wish to say something to thee, but shame prevents me." Of all his poems (ten books of which once existed) we have but these lines and a few other fragments. Many of his odes were written in the measure (a stanza of four lines) invented by him, and named after him — a measure well known from Horace's translations and imitations of the Aeolian bard ; known also to English readers from Tennyson's fine stanzas addressed to Milton. (ii) Sappho, like Alcaeus, was a I^esbian, and had her home at Mytilene ; but for some years (c. 596-590) she too lived in exile, perhaps in Sicily — possibly also at Naucratis. At Mytilene her house, which she named ' The Home of the Muses,' was the gathering-place of many literary and fashionable women, and as I^esbos was at this time, it is said, rich in female writers, some of whom tried to found schools in rivalry of Sappho and her ill-fated friend, the poetess Krinna, jealousy and calumny were inevitable. Hence doubtless arose the tales that sullied her good name — tales which were more readily believed by the Athenians because of the very different ideas that prevailed at Athens and among the lycsbians in regard to the amount of social freedom allowable to women, lycss intelligible is the tale that relates her hapless infatuation for the mythical Phaon, the ugly ferryman who was rejuvenated and beautified by Aphrodite, and her fatal leap from the lycucadian precipice. Sappho's poetry has the exquisite natural grace and the delicate but distinct outlines of the finest Greek sculpture — such sculpture as we see on the frieze of the Parthenon or on some beautiful Athenian stele. Both in thought and in lan- guage it offers the very greatest contrast imaginable to what 168 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION is often regarded as the true poetical method of expressing deep emotion. It affects one not by the display of vehement passion, but by impressing on one's mind a picture which haunts the memory and ever afterwards has the power of stirring one's feelings as if it were a real experience. Even the fragments that remain of her nine books of poems allow us to accept without hesitation the judgment of ancient critics, who were unanimous in their almost reverential admira- tion. Among these surviving fragments are three probably complete odes in her favourite measure, invented by her (or some say by Alcaeus) and known as the Sapphic.^ No translation can give any hint of the beauty and power of her language, but even a rough prose version of some of these relics of her poetry may be more useful and interesting than biographical details and critical comments. First let us take the ode to Aphrodite : *' Immortal Aphrodite on thy throne of many colours, daughter of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I implore thee, break not my heart, O I^ady, with excess of love and of anguish, but come hither, if ever before thou heardest from afar my cries and, leaving the golden mansion of thy father, didst yoke thy :ar and come ; and swiftly thy winsome sparrows brought thee Dver the dark earth, eddying their rapid wings, from heaven ;hrough the midmost aether ; and quickly they arrived, and ;hou, O blessed one, smiling with thy divine countenance, iidst ask what ailed me now again, and why again I called on :hee, and what in my maddened heart I wished. Whom dost hou desire that Persuasion should bring to thy friendship P Vho doeth thee wrong, Sappho ? E'en if she fleeth, she shall von pursue thee ; and if she accepteth not gifts, yet shall she give hem ; and if she loveth not, soon shall she love — yea, even against ■er will. Come to me also now, and set me free from grievous ares, and all that my heart longs to be fulfilled do thou fulfil, nd be once more my helper ! " ^ Horace used the Sapphic metre twenty-six times and the Alcaic thirty- . ^ven times. Probably the best example of the metre in English is Canning's Needy Knife-grinder.' 169 ANCIENT GREECE The second is an ode that was discovered not many years ago among the papyrus manuscripts found at Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt. It was addressed by Sappho to her brother Charaxus, at Naucratis, where he is said to have disgraced himself with his relations by falling in love with the notorious Rhodopis, who was a slave-girl (a fellow-slave, says Herodotus, of Aesop the fable- writer), and was redeemed by Charaxus at a great expense — for which he was " often lashed by Sappho in her poetry " : '' I implore you, Sea-nymphs, grant that my brother return hither in safety, and that all things which in his heart he may desire be fulfilled, and that he may atone for all the errors of the past and become a joy to his friends and a sorrow to his enemies ; and to us may he never prove of no account. And may he wish to make his sister share in his good name, and may he forget the grievous pain of what in days past made him mourn and break his heart, as he heard at some festival of the citizens a wounding word that cut right deep into the quick and, though ceasing for a time, ere long returned again." The third ode, also in Sapphic measure, gives us, without any attempt at direct description, a picture of a beautiful maiden beloved by Sappho : " lyike unto the gods seemeth to me that man who sits in thy presence and nigh unto thee listens to thy sweet voice andn laughter, which ever sets a-throbbing the heart within my bosom. For when I look e'en for a moment on thee, no voice comes any more, but my tongue fails utterly and a soft glow at once spreads o'er my face, and I see no more with my eyes, and my ears are filled with sounds, and the sweat pours dowr and trembling seizeth all my body, and I am more pallid than grass and am so distraught that I seem nigh unto deatl itself." Another short poem, in a different metre, intimates by i different poetical process, and again without any direc 170 THE AGE OF COLONIZATION i description, the loveliness of Sappho's friend Atthis, who had married a I^ydian and had gone with him to Sardis : " Now amidst I^ydian women she shineth in her beauty as, whene'er the sun is set, the rosy moon, having round her all the stars, spreads abroad her light o'er the briny sea alike and o'er the flowery fields ; and the dew lies there, beautiful, and roses revive and bloom, and fragile chervil and rich- blossoming melilot." A very different woman is pictured in another fragment : " When thou art dead thou shalt lie there, and never shall there be any remembrance of thee nor any longing for thee in days to come, for thou hast no share in the roses of Pieria [poetry and music], but when thy soul has flown forth, also in the mansion of Hades unnoticed thou shalt flit about with the dim inglorious dead." Many other beautiful fragments of Sappho's poetry survive. Well-known lines of Byron were evidently inspired by her address to the evening star : " O Hesperus that bringest back all things which the gleaming dawn dispersed, thou bringest the sheep, thou bringest the goat, thou bringest the boy back to his mother." A graphic picture of autumn is given in a few words : " All round it pipeth chill amidst the orchard boughs ; the leaves are quivering and the foliage falls." Another touch of autumn, recalHng Coleridge's " one red leaf on the topmost twig," is given in what may be the fragment of some marriage-song : " As a sweet apple blusheth on the tip of the branch, on the topmost tip, and the apple-pickers have forgotten it — nay, have not forgotten it, but have been unable to reach it." Among the many papyrus manuscripts yet undeciphered or undiscovered we may have the fortune to come upon more of Sappho's poetry. Indeed, it was lately reported that some- thing more had been found. Were enough to come to light to influence modern literature, the gain would be inestimable, for the great qualities of Sappho's poetry are just what modern literature lacks most. 171 CHAPTER IV THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS AND THE RISE OF PERSIA (560-500) SECTIONS : POETS AND PHIIvOSOPHERS : THE ORDERS OP GREEK ARCHITECTURE : SCUIvPTURE, DOWN TO THE PERSIAN WARS TO the student of comparative politics the history of Athens from 560 to 500 is especially attractive, for during this period, while the democratic constitution framed by Solon still continued to exist, as Thucydides says, in its essential features, the state was for many years under the absolute control of a single man and his heirs, who, although the power was seized by the usual methods, may be regarded rather as constitutional rulers than as despots. That Athens for a time lost her liberty and emerged from the trial stronger and better prepared to face the foe of Hellas cannot but be of deep interest, but the phenomena of political evolution form by no means the main subject of Greek history. Such pheno- mena are due to ever-recurring influences working on average human nature, and they may be traced under various conditions in the stories of many another nation ; ^ but genius has ever something new to tell us, and from Greek genius we may learn what we cannot learn from any other source. I shall therefore content myself with giving a brief account of the reign, or tyranny, of Peisi stratus and his sons and of the reforms of Cleisthenes, and shall reserve more of the space at my disposal for matters of greater importance. When Solon returned to Athens (c. 562) dissension was at * By a strange coincidence the same year (510) saw the banishment of the Tarquins from Rome and of the Peisistratidae from Athens. 172 50. ' Artemis of Dei.os * 51. Stei^k of Aristion 172 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS its height, and it is quite possible that, finding his influence of no avail, he again left for the East and visited Croesus, who ascended the throne of I^ydia in 560. In this same year Peisistratus, the cousin of Solon, and the leader, as we have seen, of the so-called party of the Hills, consisting mainly of peasants and ultra-democrats, persuaded the people by means of a stratagem ^ to allow him a bodyguard, and seized the Acro- polis. Hereupon his political opponents left Athens, and he seems to have quietly assumed the reins of government and to have remained in power for about five years. Solon, when again in Athens, is said to have appealed to the people to " pluck the tyrant up by the roots,'* but in vain. Some relate that he returned to his friend the king of Soli, in Cyprus, but from his verses to Mimnermus (if they are his) it seems likely that he remained at Athens and lived till c. 558, and found life at eighty not unenjoyable, even under a despot. Two or three years later Peisistratus was driven out by the united parties of the Coast and the Plain, but they quarrelled, and by the aid of Megacles he returned (c. 550) . The stratagem by which this was effected would be incredible if we did not know how ineradicable proved the old deisidaimonia — that eerie dread of the supernatural which was so universal in an earlier age, and to which the Athenians seem to have been especially susceptible. The story is that Peisistratus entered Athens in a chariot on which there stood by his side a stalwart peasant woman arrayed as Athene, and that the mob accepted the apparition as genuine and reinstated him in power. Peisis- tratus had promised to marry the daughter of Megacles (who was the head of the Alcmaeonid nobles), and he did so, but he refused to treat her as his wife, for he had a family by a former wife and was unwilling to connect himself with descendants of Cylon, who were regarded as accursed. This led to his second banishment, which lasted for ten years, * By displaying self-inflicted wounds. We have a similar story connected with Sextus Tarquin, and with Odysseus {Od. iv. 244). The grant of a body- guard was proposed to the Kcclesia by Aristion, whose portrait we probably have in Fig. 51. 173 ANCIENT GREECE until about 540, when, with mercenaries from Argos and Naxos, he crossed from Euboea to Marathon, surprised or won over the Athenian troops and entered the city, where he re-estabHshed himself as absolute ruler, sending the children of his adversaries as hostages to his friend Lygdamis, tyrant of Naxos, and expelling the Alcmaeonidae. The rule of Peisistratus during the next thirteen years is said to have been wise and beneficial. He feued much of the land to peasants, encouraged agriculture, extended Athenian power and commerce abroad, recapturing Sigeuni from the lycsbians and promoting Greek influence on the shores of the Hellespont, where the Thracian Chersonese was now governed by an Athenian — the half-uncle of the famous Miltiades. About this elder Miltiades a picturesque story is told. He was, says Herodotus, a victor in the Olympian chariot-race and a man of high distinction, but an adversary of Peisistratus. One day (c. 558) as he sat in the porch of his house, probably brooding over the success of his rival, some wayfarers "in outlandish garments and armed with lances" approached. He offered them entertainment, and after the banquet was over they told him that the Delphic oracle had bidden them take back with them to their country, the Thracian Chersonese, the first man who offered them hospitality, for he would help them against their enemies. Miltiades, perhaps glad to leave Athens, acceded to their entreaties and became ' king ' of the Chersonese and a friend of Croesus. He was succeeded in his office as Thracian prince and Athenian governor of the Greek settlements on the Hellespont by a nephew, who was (c. 520) succeeded by the younger and more celebrated Miltiades. Under Peisistratus Athens seems to have begun to assert that hegemony in the Ionic world which she afterwards attained. The lord of the Ionian mother-city took upon himself, as Thucydides says, to ' purify ' Delos by removing | all the tombs within sight of the temple. He also ordered that the Homeric poems, recited at the Delian and other festivals, 174 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS should be collected and arranged and written out in the Attic script and divided into books. Possibly on this occasion lines may have been inserted in order to connect Athens with the great Ionian epic — for, whatever the reason may be. Homer had said but little about the Athenians and their legends. This revision of Homer was undertaken by Peisistratus and his son Hipparchus in order to regulate the hitherto arbitrary and disconnected recitations of the poem at the great festival of Athene, which had been lately founded. At this festival took place the musical and athletic contests and the stately procession of which we have such precious records in the so- called Panathenaic prize- vases and in the frieze of the Parthenon (see Figs. 55 and 85). Besides the Panathenaic festival Peisistratus revived or amplified the vintage festival, which had been held from early ages in honour of Dionysus (the lycnaia, or ' Festival of the Wine- vat '), such as we have already heard of in connexion with Arion at Corinth. At this new festival, which was called the Great Dionysia, the old dances and songs performed originally by peasants dressed up as satyrs were in course of time combined with dialogue and with representations of Did legends, and this ' goat-song ' performance (rpayfjiS/a) ieveloped little by little into the Attic drama. The chief bomposer and director of these Dionysiac performances in :he age of Peisistratus was Thespis, who is often spoken of as :he father of Attic tragedy. He is said to have first introduced , iialogue and to have himself taken the part of the actor who, I n various disguises and with a stained or masked face, con- versed with the chorus of dancers. The first representation i)f this kind at the New Dionysia is said to have taken place n535. During the rule of Peisistratus and his sons the huge f emple of Olympian Zeus was begun and many fine buildings i^ere erected. Some of these will be described later. One 'f his most useful works was a system of pipes by which dhens was supplied with water, possibly from the Upper lissus, or more probably from Kallirrhoe (' Fair-stream '), a ANCIENT GREECE natural source near the Ilissus and the Olympieion, to the south-east of the Acropolis.^ Peisistratus died in 527 and left the government to his eldest son, Hippias, while the second, Hipparchus (Hke a King Archon), had, perhaps together with a younger brother Thessalus, the control of religious festivals, literary and musical contests, and the like.^ For thirteen years Athens seems to have enjoyed an unevent- ful prosperity under the Peisistratidae. We know really next to nothing of this period, except that Hippias and his brother were, like the Medici of Florence, patrons of art, and thati Anacreon and Simonides of Ceos visited their court. Herodotus! speaks of them as oppressive tyrants, while Thucydides, whol was related to the Peisistratidae, but whose judgment was not| likely to have been warped by prejudice, asserts that they " cultivated virtue and intellect." He allows, however, thati '* their tyranny proved galling at last," and that Hippias! ultimately proved not only a tyrant but a traitor to his country.i In 514 Hipparchus was assassinated by Harmodius andi Aristogeiton. He had conceived an infatuation for the! young Harmodius, and having been repelled he insulted the! vSister of the youth, refusing her as a * basket-carrier ' in the Panathenaic procession.^ So the two friends planned to kill Hipparchus and his brother ; " but, having suspected," saysi 1 Remains of the water-pipes of Peisistratus have perhaps been discovered,' between the Pnyx and the Areopagus. KaUirrhoe, sometimes depicted onj Athenian vases, changed its ancient name, as Thucydides tells us (ii. 15),! to Enneakrounos ('Nine Fountains'), after the natural spring had been built over and the waters were collected into a reservoir furnished with nine distributing pipes, (Herodotus, however, speaks of it as Enneakrounos in connexion with the old Pelasgic inhabitants.) The spring still exists and retains its ancient name (KalUrroi), but almost every trace of the reservoii has disappeared. The pools formed by the spring are now used by Atheniani washerwomen. ' See Thuc. i. 20 and vi. 54 sq., and Hdt. v. 55. Also the pseudo-Plato in his Hipparchus says that this prince" first introduced Homer into Greece." The writer, whether Plato or not, evidently regarded Hipparchus as the chief ruler — a belief stigmatized by Thucydides. ^ According to Herodotus the Gephyraean family to which Harmodius belonged was originally Phoenician, and was " excluded at Athens from a number of privileges." Perhaps this was a legal ground for the rejection of the girl. 176 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS Thucydides, '' that information had been given to Hippias by their accompHces, they abstained from attacking him, as being forewarned, and as they wished to do something at all hazards, having fallen in with Hipparchus, who was arranging the Panathenaic procession, they slew him." Possibly at first no great enthusiasm was excited by the act — or else it was suppressed by dread — but not many years later, after the expulsion of Hippias, statues were erected to the Tyrannicides, and popular songs, such as the well-known drinking-song (skolion) composed by the otherwise unknown Callistratus, ' 111 wreathe my sword in myrtle bough,' prove how the Athenians had learnt to detest the name of the Peisistratidae. This hatred was much intensified by the tyrannical conduct of Hippias after the murder of his brother. " Being now in greater apprehension," says Thucydides, '' he put to death many citizens, and also kept his eye on foreign states in whatever quarter he had a prospect of safe retreat in case of revolution." Doubtless among these foreign states was Persia. After four years the revolution came. The exiled Alc- maeonidae, who longed to return to Athens, had at length succeeded in obtaining the aid of Sparta in the following way. The great temple at Delphi had been burnt down, and a public subscription through the whole of Greece had enabled the Delphic treasury to contract for its reconstruction. The Alc- maeonidae undertook the contract, and, using marble instead of the specified poros, rebuilt the temple with such magnificence and so won the favour of the Pythian priests that whenever the Spartans came to consult the oracle the invariable answer was, " First liberate Athens ! " Sparta, by the conquest of Tegea and the defeat of Argos, had made herself the head of a ' Peloponnesian league, and was strong enough to interfere in 1 Northern Greece. The first raid into Attica was defeated by cavalry sent from Thessaly to aid Hippias, but the Spartan I king Cleomenes then led a strong force against Athens, and Hippias, blockaded in the ' Pelasgic fortress ' (i.e. the Acropolis), and hearing of the capture of his children, capitulated (510). M 177 ANCIENT GREECE He was allowed to leave Attica ' under treaty/ together with his children, and went, says Thucydides, " first to Sigeum, then to lyampsacus, and thence to the court of King Darius." Now the head of the Alcmaeonidae who had been thus restored to Athens was Cleisthenes. He was the grandson of Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon, whose daughter married the Athenian Megacles. Of this Megacles we have already heard much. It was his daughter (and therefore the sister of Cleisthenes) whom Peisistratus married and rejected. On the expulsion of Hippias, whose absolute rule had kept open feuds in abeyance, political discussion once more began. Cleisthenes, the personal foe of the Peisistratidae, was naturally opposed to the old regime, and, as Herodotus expresses it, " called to his aid the common people." He was opposed by Isagoras and the aristocratical party. Isagoras, being worsted, appealed to Sparta, and the Spartans sent a peremptory order (as they did again seventy-seven years later, in refer- ence to Pericles) that the Athenians should " cast out the accursed thing " — the *' pollution of the goddess " — namely, the Alcmaeonidae.^ Cleisthenes was forced to leave Athens. This, however, did not content Isagoras and his party. They invited the Spartans ; whereupon King Cleomenes came and expelled 700 Athenian families. But on his trying to dissolve the Kcclesia and establish an oligarchy the Athenians rose. The Spartans were blockaded for two days in the Acropolis, and then accepted terms, pur- chasing their lives by handing over their mercenaries to the tender mercies of the Athenians, who put them all to death, among them a Delphian who, as pancratiast, had won three victories at the Pythian and two at the Olympic Games, and whose statue by the celebrated Argive sculptor Ageladas I (the master of Pheidias, Myron, and Polycleitus) was seen ' nearly 700 years later at Olympia by the traveller Pausanias. Cleisthenes and the 700 families were then recalled. Cleomenes 1 endeavoured to invade Attica again, and although the attempt j failed (the Spartan kings having quarrelled) , the Athenians were | ^ See about Cylon p. 136; also Thuc. i. 126, and Hdt. v. 70. 178 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS so alarmed, if we are to believe Herodotus, that they actually sent ambassadors to Sardis to sue for the alliance of Darius ; but they were told that the friendship of the Great King was only to be bought by earth and water, tokens of vassalage. Possibly it was not in alarm that they did this, but in arrogance, ! for we find them soon afterwards inflicting crushing defeats I on the Boeotians and the Chalcidians (of Euboea), who had j joined the Spartans in their last invasion of Attica. The rich lyelantine plain (p. 129) was allotted to Athenian settlers, ! and many Chalcidian prisoners were kept fettered at Athens 1 until they were ransomed at two minae apiece (say £8 nominal, [but perhaps ^^40 in present value). "The chains wherewith I they were fettered,'' says Herodotus, " were hung up by the Athenians in their Acropolis, where they were still to be seen in my day, hanging against a wall scorched by the Median flames." From a tenth of the ransom-money a magnificent bronze quadriga was set up to the left of the old gate of the Acropolis.^ Moreover, in a stoa (portico) at Delphi the Athenians I dedicated (as we learn from an inscription lately discovered 1 there) arms and beaks of ships captured in this war. 1 The people of Aegina had made common cause with the Boeotians against their old enemy, Athens. In Solon's time, ' as we have seen, the Athenians had attacked Aegina, not long I after their conquest of Salamis, but had been driven out of the I jj island by the Argives.^ Since that time hostility had smouldered, • I ; but it now broke out openly, and the Aeginetans carried on a e I- chronic 'unheralded' war with Athens right down to the 1, ( ; time of the Persian war, making constant descents on the coast :e i 3f Attica and on the Athenian port Phaleron. Such was their s,;:imbitterment that shortly before the battle of Salamis the asjJ5partans had to interfere and send Aeginetans as hostages to Vthens in order to prevent Aegina aiding the Persians ; nor lid Aegina cease to be a thorn in the side of Athens till (in 431) ^ P|' * Pericles perhaps set up another on the right hand (c. 446), and when the ew Propylaea were built {c. 437) they were probably put on new bases. 'ne of these bases with traces of the inscription quoted by Herodotus (v. 77) as been found. * See Hdt. v. 82 sq., and Note B, Dress. 179 ANCIENT GREECE the inhabitants were expelled and the island was incorporated in the Attic state. Thus Athens began to unfold her powers — a fact that Herodotus justly attributes to her regained political freedom. " These things show/' he says, " that while undergoing oppression they let themselves be beaten, since they worked for a master ; but as soon as they got their liberty each man was eager to do the best he could." Had this rewon liberty retained the basis of the old vSolonian constitution the old political feuds would have assuredly reappeared and led even again to some form of enslavement, but fortune willed it that Cleisthenes should discover a method by which all the local and clan influences which had made party feeling so rancorous and dangerous should be eliminated, and the weal of the state should become the one object of political activity. Having abolished the four old Ionic tribes, which were founded on locality, profession, and wealth, he formed ten tribes solely for political purposes. Each of these new political tribes consisted of three trittyes (thirds) taken from three different regions of Attica, so that the tribal vote was not prejudiced by local influences. Each tribe had to supply a contingent of hoplites, some cavalry,^ and one of the ten generals of the Athenian army. Fifty men from every tribe, chosen by lot from a selected number, formed the new council (Boule) of 500. This council, in conjunction with theF archons and other magistrates, managed all internal affairs' and initiated laws to be sanctioned by the great Assembly (Ecclesia). But for the dispatch of business the Boule had a permanent, committee. Each of its ten groups of councillors: took it in turn to act as this committee for thirty-six days (the tenth of the year of 360 days, which was rectified by intercalating a month every five years). While they sat on committee these deputies were called prytaneis (presidents),! and their tribe was the ' presiding tribe ' during this space of 1 The tribal regiment was called a ' tribe ' {phyle). The subdivisions werci tA^cls and Xo^ot. See Hdt. vi. iii. In Solon's time Athens could mustei barely a hundred horsemen, and even at the beginning of the Peloponnesiai War only about a thousand. 180 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS thirty-six days (which was called a prytaneia). The people's Assembly (Ecclesia) probably met, as it did in later times, every nine days — or it may have been summoned only on special occasions to sanction a law by plebiscite or to dispose of some referendum. Of the Areopagus we hear little at this period. It probably existed with only an empty show of authority. Ostracism may have been an invention of Cleisthenes, though it seems to have been used first in 488. It was an useful method of getting rid for a time of a dangerous citizen. The council and Assembly first decided (and could only do it during the sixth prytaneia) that an ostrakismos was advisable. On a fixed day barricades were erected in the Agora and every voter of the ten tribes gave his vote by casting into an urn an ostrakon (potsherd) on which he had inscribed the name of any citizen whom he held to be especially dangerous. The man against whom most votes were given, should his ostraka number at least 6000 — i.e. about a fifth of the number of the voters — was exiled for ten (later for five) years, but lost neither his citizenship nor his property. The Rise of Persia We must now turn from the affairs of the refounded demo- cracy of the little Attic state to note the rise of a mighty empire which ere long will threaten to annihilate the whole of the eastern while Carthage is endeavouring to annihilate the western world of Hellas. It would take us too far afield to follow Herodotus in his mvestigations of the origins of the feud between Greece and :he Asiatic ' barbarian,' nor will it be possible to repeat nany of the countless stories that he tells in connexion with lie lyydian, Median, and Persian kings, stories with which he Hures the reader to Egypt and Scythia and many another trange land and people before he launches out into the subject I the Graeco-Persian war. I have already traced the history of Assyria and Babylon own to the death of King Nebucadnezar in 562, that of 181 ANCIENT GREECE I^ydia to the accession of Croesus in 560, and that of Media to the death of Astyages in 559, and we have seen that the great kings of Nineveh and Babylon had never (except in the case of Cyprus) come into colhsion with the Greeks. But the early lyydian kings had attacked and subjugated several of the Ionian and Aeolian cities, and Croesus, as soon as he was firmly seated on the I^ydian throne, made himself master of all the Greek cities on the mainland of Asia Minor except Miletus, and even made preparations to invade the islands, but was, says Herodotus, deterred by a witty remark of the sage Bias.^ Kphesus was the first city he attacked — " The Ephesians, when he laid siege to the place, made an offering of their city to Artemis by stretching a rope ^ from the town wall to the temple of the goddess, which was distant from the ancient city by a space of seven furlongs." This was evidently the new temple of the Kphesian Artemis, which was still being built to replace the old temple burnt by the Cimmerians in 677. After capturing Kphesus, Croesus presented to this temple, says Herodotus, " golden heifers and most of the columns." The sculptured drum of one of these columns is now in the British Museum (Fig. 119). On it were found the Greek letters BA KP AN .... EN, which have been (doubtless rightly) restored to BA2IAEY2 KPOISOZ ANAGHKEN, i.e, " King Croesus dedicated." The wealth ^ of Croesus, as that of his ancestor Gyges and 1^ the Phrygian Midas, was proverbial. Although the conqueror of the Greek cities of Aeolis and Ionia, he was a great admirer !| of Hellenic civilization, and his court at Sardis was frequented 1 1 by many Greeks of distinction. He made, moreover, many splendid offerings to Greek temples, of which Herodotus gives a description that may well excite wonder, if not incredulity. Shortly after the accession of Croesus, perhaps in 560-5591 Solon not improbably, as we have seen, visited Sardis. Croesus, * Herodotus says: " Within my own knowledge Croesus was the first to inflict injury on the Greeks " ; but Alyattes, Sadyattes, and perhaps Ardys attacked the Greek cities. * See p. 136, foot-note. 3 See Hdt. i. 50 and 92. For the lyydian coinage see Note C, Coins. 182 52. The Croesus Coi^umn From the earlier Ephesian temple 182 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS a young man of thirty-five in the first flush of kingly pride, bade the sage tell him whom of all men he had ever met he deemed the most happy. Solon cited an Athenian, Tellos by name, who had been blessed with domestic happiness and had died a soldier's death in defence of his country, and as second happiest he cited the Spartan youths Cleobis and Bito, who, when the oxen failed to come, yoked themselves to a car and drew their aged mother five-and-forty furlongs to the festival of Hera at Argos, and died in the temple ; and when Croesus asked him in astonishment how he ventured to put the happiness of such people on a level with his, Solon replied that no wealth could give good fortune, and that even a fortu- nate man cannot for certain be called ' happy ' imtil he is dead, for '' in every matter it behoveth us to mark well the end." Soon afterwards Croesus learnt that all his gold could not save him from the grief of losing his favourite son, and some ten years later he was taught the wisdom of marking well the end. His kingdom had extended itself eastward over all Phrygia, Mysia, and Paphlygonia, as far as the river Halys, and hearing of the presumptuous doings of Cyrus and his Persians and Medes, he got together a great army of I^ydians and Greeks and crossed over into Cappadocia to challenge the new foe — not before having consulted the oracle at Delphi. The Delphic god, though he received gifts of almost indescrib- able magnificence from Croesus, played him a rather disingenu- ous trick, bidding him (as Ahab was bidden) go up, for he would destroy a mighty empire. So vast had the power of Croesus become that doubtless he had visions of making himself the king of Media in the place of this usurper who had dethroned the old Astyages. But the empire that he should destroy was his own, as the oracle afterwards ex- plained. After an indecisive battle near the ancient capital of Cappadocia, Pteria, he retreated to Sardis, which ere long was stormed by Cyrus. Croesus was condemned to die. He was placed, with twice seven noble I^ydian youths, on a great funeral pyre. The pyre was lighted, and as the flames shot 183 ANCIENT GREECE upward he was heard to call aloud three times on the name of Solon. Cyrus demanded the reason, and when he learnt it he bade the fire be quenched. But it was too late ; the flames were not to be mastered. Then Croesus called on Apollo, and a sudden deluge of rain extinguished the fire. Cyrus, deeply moved by the miracle, made Croesus his coun- sellor and constant companion. Cyrus captured Sardis probably in 546. Thirteen years earlier he had (according to Herodotus) dethroned the Median king Astyages. His father, Cambyses, a descendant of a noble chieftain named Achaemenes, was prince of the Persians, a race of bold and hardy mountaineers, closely akin to the Medes, living in the highlands between Media and the Persian Gulf. This Cambyses married a daughter of the Median king, and their son, the young Cyrus, putting himself at the head of a body of Persians, succeeded (in 559) in conquering his grandfather and establishing the Medo- Persian Empire. This Medo-Persian Empire, when first Cyrus mounted the throne,^ occupied, roughly speaking, the lands between the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, the Indus, and the valley of the Tigris. Its chief cities were Pasargadae, Persepolis, Ecbatana, and Susa. The general name given to this vast country by its inhabitants was Iran, and these inhabitants are therefore generally said to have belonged to the Iranian branch of the Aryan race. In religion they were followers of Zoroaster and worshipped Mithras, the sun-god. According to Herodotus they had neither images of gods nor temples nor * Herodotus gives a story about the infancy of Cyrus and his childhood at the court of Astyages which has great similarity to the Roman legend of Romulus and Remus and King Numitor (Hdt. i. 107 sq.). It should be mentioned that Xenophon, who wrote later but knew personally the younger Cyrus, and Ctesias, who was surgeon to that prince's brother (Artaxerxes II), give versions very different from that of Herodotus. Xenophon states in his Cyropaedeia, where he describes the bringing up of Cyrus the Great, that Cyrus never rebelled against his grandfather, but acted as his general and the general of his son, Cyaxares II (unknown to Herodotus), and that he even took Babylon (538) as the general of this Cyaxares II (perhaps the ' Darius the Median ' of Daniel v. 31), whom he later dethroned. Ctesias asserts that Cyrus and Astyages were in no way related. According to Herodotus, Cyrus was a great-nephew of Croesus, who married a sister of Astyages. 184 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS altars, " accounting the use of such things a folly." As fire- worshippers they probably had no idols, and there seems to be no trace of ancient Persian (though of course of Chaldaean) temples, but huge stone altars on open-air terraces have been discovered which were apparently used for sacrifice to the sun-god. Probably the Persians had a purer form of Zoroas- trian fire-worship than the other Iranian peoples, such as the Chaldaeans and Medes, regarding I^ight and Darkness as symbols of the powers of good and evil, also symbolized by the deities Ormuzd and Ahriman. The priests and religious teachers, called Magi, formed a very select and influential caste. Of the character and the customs of the Persians graphic and full descriptions are given by Herodotus (i. 131 sq, and elsewhere) and by Xenophon and other writers. It is here impossible to treat this intensely interesting subject as it deserves, but it is well to note in passing that, although we are indubitably right in regarding the result of the Graeco- Persian conflict with the deepest gratitude, nevertheless we must allow — as, indeed, did many of the Greeks themselves — that in some important points the Persian character (which was evidently very different from that of the Medes and the Babylonians) was originally greatly superior to that of the average Hellene. It was no strong character and soon con- tracted many Oriental and Hellenic vices ; but noble traits remained. Many acts of magnanimity are related of the Persian kings, ^ and their contempt for the huckstering and rhetorical arts and deceits of the Greek Agora, as well as for the venality and treachery not only of the ordinary Greek but even of Greek leaders, was frequently and openly expressed. " The most disgraceful thing in the world, in their opinion," says Herodotus, ''is to tell a lie " ; and when he ^ See Hdt. vi. 41 and 119, vii. 136, &c. Kven the mad Cambyses was ^capable of generous impulses. Doubtless such qualities coexisted with terrible callousness towards human suffering. As for the painful subject of the ever-present Greek traitor, one need only think of Bretria and Thermopylae and Marathon and Aegina and Thebes and Pausanias and Themistocles and Miltiades and many other names. For an arraignment of Greek character see Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece. 185 ANCIENT GREECE remarks that " the Persians look upon themselves as very greatly superior in all respects to the rest of mankind," we cannot but concede that in some respects at least they do offer a very striking contrast to the less admirable sides of the Greek cha- racter. Thus one cannot help contrasting such facts as the treatment by Darius of the Eretrian captives and the terrible decree passed by the Athenians against Mytilene. It is true that in this case intense excitement may be pleaded and the decree was ultimately reversed — so that the process somewhat reminds one of what Herodotus says about the Persians : ''It is their practice to deliberate upon affairs of importance when they are drunk, and then on the morrow, when they are sober, to reconsider it." ^ After his conquest of Lydia Cyrus returned to the far East, leaving his general Harpagus to reduce the Greek Asiatic cities, all of which, with the exception of powerful Miletus, had aided their liege-lord Croesus. Harpagus had no very difficult task, for these cities, in constant feud, were ever a prey to the invader. Had they but formed a confederation, as the sage Thales, it is said, advised, ^ Ionia and Aeolis might perhaps have offered a successful resistance to the advance of Persia ; but the consciousness of disunion in the face of such over- whelming odds paralysed them, and we are scarcely surprised when we hear that another sage. Bias of Priene, advised the lonians to migrate en masse to Sardinia, and that the people of Phocaea, when besieged, embarked on their ships and sailed away (most of them) to Corsica,^ while the people of Teos made for Thrace, where they founded Abdera. Cyrus meantime had attacked Babylonia. The great Nebucadnezar had died in 562, and had been succeeded by several Babylonian kings, the fourth of whom, Nabonid (whose regal title seems to have been I^abynetus), ruled in great state at Babylon, where the Jews with Daniel were still in captivity. ^ Sometimes, he adds, they reversed the process. See Tacitus, Germ. xxii. * Thales is said to have persuaded the Milesians not to aid Croesus. But Miletus was in alliance with I^ydia, and we hear of Thales himself aiding Croesus by damming up the river Halys in order to allow him to pass over. ' See p. 123 as to the Phocaeans at Alalia and Klea. 186 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS He had made alliance with Amasis of Egypt, Croesus of I^ydia, and Polycrates of Samos against the usurper Cyrus. The conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus seems to have lasted about ten years. In 538 he succeeded in capturing Babylon by diverting the Euphrates.^ Not content with the mighty empire that he had now under his rule, he made an expedition into what is now Russian Turkestan against a Scythian tribe, the Massagetae. In this remote land, near the Aral lake, he fell in battle (529).^ The queen of the Massagetae is said to have placed his head in a bowl of blood and bade it drink its fill. 2 Cambyses, his son, increased the Persian Empire by the conquest of Egypt. During the first thirty-four years of the period we are consider- ing in this chapter (560-500) Egypt had enjoyed independence and prosperity under King Aahmes (Amasis), whose friendship with the Greeks has already been mentioned. He had con- quered Cyprus and had formed an alliance with Polycrates, the powerful despot of Samos, who, with a strong fleet of fifty-oared ships of war, had defied Cyrus and Harpagus. All that Polycrates undertook seemed to prosper. His court, at which the poets Ibycus and Anacreon lived, and which Amasis possibly honoured with his presence, rivalled the fame of that of Periander or Peisistratus, and under his rule the city of Samos was furnished with its splendid harbour and the great temple of Hera and many other magnificent buildings, as well as with the celebrated Samian aqueduct, with its tunnel of seven furlongs. But the envy of the gods was aroused, and Amasis, foreseeing the ruin of the Samian tyrant (as all readers of Schiller's fine ballad know), renounced his friendship. Perhaps the fact lying beneath the story of the Ring is that the kings quarrelled ; for we hear that Polycrates sent forty of his penteconters (which mutinied and never arrived) to aid Cambyses in his attack on Egypt. Not long afterwards (523), having apparently broken again with Cambyses, he fell into an 1 Hdt. i. 191. The Belshazzar of Daniel is either Nabonid himself or (as inscriptions seem to prove) his son, who was acting as governor of Babylon. * See note at end of this chapter. 187 ANCIENT GREECE ambuscade laid by the satrap of Sardis, who crucified him. Bre Cambyses reached Egypt King Amasis had died (525). His son, Psamtik III, was defeated near Pelusium, and Memphis was then captured and the whole of Egypt and Cyrene sub- mitted to the Persians. But, incensed at his failure to conquer Aethiopia, Gambyses vented his fury in acts of sacrilege (such as mutilating the corpse of Amasis and stabbing the sacred bull Apis) and in other deeds so indescribably cruel and foolish that one is forced to believe that he was insane. One assassination, that of his brother Bardyia, or Smerdis, who was regent of some of the eastern provinces of the empire, caused the fall of the tyrant ; for a false Smerdis, one of the Magi, named Gaumata, pretending to be the murdered prince, proclaimed himself king, and Cambyses hastened homeward, and somewhere in Syria either met his death by an accident, as related by Herodotus, or committed suicide, as is stated by the Darius inscription at Behistun. The false Smerdis, keeping himself out of sight in his palace to avoid detection, held power for eight months so firmly that, according to the Darius inscription, " no Persian or Mede had the courage to oppose him." But seven nobles, who, by means of one of the women of the royal harem, Herodotus says, discovered that he possessed no ears and was a Mede and a Magian whom Cambyses had thus punished for some offence, slew the pretender and a great number of the Magi. One of these nobles, Darius, the son of the satrap Hystaspes, was elected king. Herodotus gives a graphic description of how it was arranged that the man should be king whose horse neighed first, and how the groom of Darius won the royal crown for his master. Some modern critics, however, reject the story as childish, and assert that Hystaspes ^ was the legitimate heir of Cyrus. The probability is that the false Smerdis was a pretender put forward by the party of the Medes and Magi (who, although Persian priests, were of Median * Hystaspes was, according to Herodotus, " governor of Persia" (iii. 70). In the Behistun inscription he is called a general of his son Darius (!) and a satrap of Parthia. 188 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS extraction), and that his overthrow meant the triumph of the Persian royal house of the Achaemenidae, to which Darius (as Xerxes asserts in Hdt. vii. ii) unquestionably belonged ; and Darius strengthened the tie by marrying Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus, who had been Cambyses' queen. Darius began to reign in 521, and reigned for thirty-six years. After suppressing revolts that broke out more than once in Media and Babylonia and forced him to capture Babylon twice, he confirmed the Persian sovereignty in his western empire by placing Phrygia, I^ydia, and Ionia under satraps, to whom the tyrants of the Greek cities of the main- land paid tribute and furnished troops and ships as vassals of the Great King. Samos, too, which under Polycrates had defied Darius, was conquered and ' netted ' and given over to the brother of Polycrates, who had won the friendship of the young Darius when he was in Egypt with Cambyses. ^ But it was not only in war that the empire of Darius was great. It attained a wealth and a magnificence of Oriental civilization which in ancient times were probably never equalled. 2 The gold staters of King Darius, known as ' Darics ' (probably the 'dram' of Ezra and Nehemiah), circulated throughout Hellas. The chief cities were connected by care- fully kept roads, and there was a system of royal mails carried by relays of horses and couriers {ayyapela). The ' royal road ' between Sardis and Susa, some 1500 miles in length and with about a hundred stations, was traversed by pedes- trians in about ninety days, and by a post or courier, of course, in far less time. (Herodotus, who describes it fully, probably travelled by this route.) After he had reigned about eight years Darius, it is said, con- ceived a desire to punish the Scythians for their invasion of Media, which had taken place about a century before (p. 148). Whether this was his real object or whether his purpose was the conquest of Thrace and the acquisition of the gold-mines ^ For this story see Hdt. iii. 139; and for the process of 'driving' or ' netting ' a hostile country see Hdt. iii. 149, vi. 31. - See Hdt. iii. 89 sq. for an account of the revenues of Darius from his immense empire of twenty satrapies. ^ 189 ANCIENT GREECE of this country and of Dacia is questioned. Herodotus had far better opportunities than we have of learning the truth, and there can be httle doubt that the professed object was what he asserts it to have been, but there is no less doubt that what he describes as a disastrous failure resulted in the establishment of Persian supremacy in Thrace, and even in Macedonia, for the next fifteen years or so. As for the story that Herodotus gives us of this Scythian expedition, it certainly contains a good deal that sounds impossible, especially in regard to the distances traversed in a comparatively short time ; but the chronicler himself had visited Scythia (he had been, for instance, four days' journey up the river Bug, and evidently knew the Dnieper and its sturgeon), and had collected an immense amount of informa- tion about the country, as well as reports, more or less founded on facts, about the nations further north, and what he relates has a deep interest for every one except the purely scientific historian. He tells us that Darius collected an army of 700,000 men and a fleet of 600 Greek ships. The ships, or some of them, he sent up the Danube, and ordered a bridge to be thrown across the river above the delta. His army crossed the Bosporus by another bridge, constructed by the Samian Mandrocles (who afterwards gave to the Heraion at Samos a picture of the passage of the troops, with Darius seated on his throne in the foreground), and two marble pillars with inscriptions in Greek and Assyrian were erected. One of these Herodotus seems to have seen later at Byzantium. Having reached the Danube, Darius left the Ionian Greeks in charge of the bridge, and, giving them a leathern thong in which sixty knots had been tied, he bade them untie one every day, and if he had not returned when the last had been untied they were to sail home. He then set out " with all speed," and, following the retreating Scythians, marched as far as the Maeotic lake (Sea of Azof) and the Don, and even perhaps the Volga ! But the Scythians doubled and re-entered their own country, and baffled and harassed the returning Persians ; and some of them, stealing ahead, reached the 190 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS Danube and urged the Greeks to destroy the bridge. This proposal was strongly seconded by Miltiades, who was now, as we have seen, the Greek ' tyrant ' of the Chersonese, and had been obliged to join the expedition. But when Histiaeus of Miletus opposed it, saying that their existence as tyrants depended wholly on Persia, the Greek leaders decided (to the great disdain of the Scythians, who called them the " faith- fullest of slaves ") only to break the bridge for a distance of a bow-shot from the Scythian side, and to await the return of Darius, though the sixtieth knot had long ago been untied. At length the Persians arrived. " It was night, and their terror when they found the bridge broken was great. . . . But there was in the army of Darius an Egyptian, who had a louder voice than any other man in the world. He was bid by Darius to stand at the water's edge and call Histiaeus the Milesian, who, hearing him at the very first summons, brought across the fleet. . . . Thus the Persians escaped from Scythia.'' And Darius, having reached Sestos, took the bulk of his army across the Hellespont and returned to Sardis. But, although Herodotus seems to regard the return of the king as a flight rather than a dignified withdrawal after a successful campaign, 80,000 men were left behind in Europe under the command of Megabazus, who '* subdued to the dominion of the king all the towns and all the nations of these parts." For some time the whole of Thrace and the islands of the North Aegaean remained in the possession of Persia, and tribute was probably exacted from the Macedonian king.^ After the revolt of Ionia in 499 the Thracians (whom Herodotus calls " the most powerful people in the world, except, of course, the Indians '') threw off the Persian yoke, and were forthwith invaded by the Scythians, who succeeded even in driving Miltiades out of the Chersonese. The fourth book of Herodotus consists mainly of his account of Scythia and the Scythians. Whatever may be its value from the standpoint of the historical critic, it is very fascinat- ing. Much that he recounts is founded on his own experiences ^ For the fate of one Persian embassy demanding tribute see Hdt. v. 17. 191 ANCIENT GREECE and may be accepted as trustworthy, and as for the stories that he retails about the fabled lands beyond the Tanais (Don) — about the one-eyed Arimaspi and the treasure of sacred gold guarded by griffins (recalling the Rheingold and the dragons of the Siegfried legend), and about the Hyper- boreans and the ' Perpherees,' those maiden-messengers who brought (possibly from Britain) gifts packed in wheat-straw to the shrine of Artemis in Delos, and died there, and were honoured as deities with the hair-offerings of Delian youths and maidens ^ — all such things he merely repeats on hearsay for whatever human interest they may possess, and he especially warns us that much of it was derived from a very weird person, namely, a poet and traveller named Aristeas, a kind of ' spectre-man,' as Herodotus calls him, who was said to have vanished on several occasions and to have reappeared after the lapse of years — once, indeed, after the lapse of over three centuries ; having recounted which fact, Herodotus uses his favourite formula and allows that " enough has been said concerning Aristeas." The geography of Herodotus is a subject too large to discuss fully here. I must content myself with one or two of his remarks. " I cannot but laugh,'' he says, " when I see numbers of persons drawing maps of the world . . . and making the ocean-stream running all round the earth, and the earth itself an exact circle, as if described with a pair of compasses, with Europe and Asia of just the same size." Doubtless here he is making a thrust at Hecataeus, his predecessor in history- writing, who composed a text to the map that Anaximander made of the world (p. 205). He then proceeds to give his own ideas as to the shape and relative size of the three continents, and asserts that Europe is by far the largest — so much larger that he " cannot conceive why three different names, and women's names especially, should have been given to what is really only one continent." In one point at least he was right. " As for lyibya," he says, " we know it to be washed on * Hdt, iv. 33. It reads like the legend of some St. Walpurga. Herodotus himself saw their graves " on the left as one enters the precinct of Artemis." 192 '"*' iir:^' '-^ "■^^lito -'• 53. Tomb of Cyrus From Dr. Sarre's ' Iranische Felsreliefs ' {Ernst Wasmuth, A.-G., Berlin) 54. The OlyYMPIEION, ATHENS 192 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS all sides by the sea, except where it is attached to Asia." He gives as proof the circumnavigation of Africa by Pharaoh Necho's Phoenician sailors/ but he rejects just the one bit of evidence that for us is conclusive. " On their return," he says, " they declared (and I for my part do not believe this, though perhaps others may) that in sailing round I^ibya they had the sun upon their right hand " — i.e. on looking towards the noonday sun the east was to their right. Another attempt to circumnavigate Africa was made, says Herodotus, by a nephew of Darius, who was condemned to death for some crime, but respited on condition that he should " sail round lyibya." He seems to have got as far as the Guinea coast, where he discovered a " dwarfish race," but his ships " refused to go any further " (perhaps on account of the south trade- winds), and he returned and (like Walter Raleigh) was put to death in execution of the former sentence. NOTE ON THE TOMBS OF CYRUS AND DARIUS (See Figs. 53 and 73) The story related by Herodotus about the death of Cyrus seems inconsistent with the fact that his tomb (a cenotaph ?) was to be seen at Pasargadae, where Alexander the Great visited it — and punished severely those who had pillaged it. There still exists at Pasargadae (if the ruins in the valley of the Murghab are really the remains of the ancient capital of the Achaemenid princes) a square building on an eminence amidst desolate scenery which may be this celebrated tomb of Cyrus, once surrounded by luxuriant parks. It is now called the ' Tomb of Solomon's Mother.' Here there have been discovered imany stones inscribed with the name of Cyrus, and also a relief of a four- winged figure surmounted by a curious structure I like an Egyptian headdress — possibly a portrait of Cyrus set up by Cambyses. Darius abandoned Pasargadae and built, sixty miles further down the valley, the magnificent city of Persepolis, called by the Greeks " the richest city under the 1 See p. 144. N 193 ANCIENT GREECE sun " — until Alexander plundered its treasury, where he found 120,000 talents of gold. On the site of Persepolis enormous ruins still exist of the architectural works and sculptures of Darius and Xerxes. There is a huge pylon or portal with winged bulls, and some of the hundred columns of the immense Hall of Xerxes, and the great flight of steps that led up to his palace, which, it is said, Alexander set on fire, incited by the notorious Athenian courtesan Thais. On the side of the Royal Mount near Persepolis are the tombs of Darius and of some of the later Persian kings, as well as many monuments of the Sassanidae, who ruled Persia during the Roman Empire and until Persia fell into the hands of the ^ Mahometans. The tomb of Darius is cut out of the solid rock in the middle of a perpendicular precipice (Fig. 73) . At Behistun in Media, between Babylon and Bcbatana, on the face of the rock in a precipitous gully there may still be seen the sculptured relief that records, with inscriptions in three Oriental languages, the victories over revolted provinces which Darius gained in the first three years of his reign. SECTION A : POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS (560-500) How far the political state of a country influences art is a question difficult to answer. Perhaps it might be possible to discover some apparent connexion between the events related in the last chapter and the fact that in the Hellenic world during this period, although many magnificent temples were erected and sculpture was beginning to show signs of the coming glory, as far as we can judge from surviving fragments no really great poetry was written — nothing at all comparable with that of Sappho or Alcaeus — while during the next century or so more great poetry, as well as great sculpture and architecture and oratory and philosophy, was produced by one single city of Greece than we can perhaps find in any other century of the world's history. At Athens, as we have seen, the first beginnings of the Attic drama were made, during the rule of the Peisistratidae, 194 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS by Thespis, who introduced dialogue into the rude choruses of vintage festivals. He was followed by Choerilus and Phrynichus and Pratinas and others, by whom these Dionysiac performances were developed into drama. All these three must have written plays of no mean value, for they contended not unsuccessfully with Aeschylus himself in his younger days. Of their works we know scarcely anything. Choerilus wrote something like 150 pieces. Phrynichus gained a tragic victory in 511, and some eighteen years later had the mis- fortune to write a drama representing the capture of Miletus by the Persians (494), which so painfully affected the Athe- nians that he was fined 1000 drachmae. Sixteen years later (478) he gained the prize with the Phoenissae. In this play he gave a description of the battle of Salamis which Aeschylus is said to have imitated in his Persae.^ But we are here encroaching on what belongs to the next century. Of other Greek poets, or verse-writers, of the period 560-500 the most notable are Theognis, Xenophanes, Ibycus, Anacreon, and Simonides of Geos. It may be remembered that one of the cities which fell under the rule of a tyrant was Megara. About the year 640 Theagenes overthrew the aristocratic party and held power for some time ; but he was ejected, and for the next century the state suffered from endless conflicts between the nobles and the people, in the midst of which troubles the Athenians, at Solon's instigation, wrested Salamis from Megara, and even for a time occupied her port, Nisaea. Among the nobles banished during a temporary supremacy of the democratic party was Theognis. He seems to have spent many years in exile in Sicily and Kuboea {c. 550), but to have returned and lived at Megara until the Persian peril was imminent ; for in his poem he prays Apollo to " keep far from this city the savage host of the Medes." Of the 1368 lines in elegiac metre which are attributed to Theognis (collected about 400 B.C.), about half — those addressed to a young nobleman, Gyrnus — are perhaps authentic. They pour the bitterest 1 See p. 315. In Aristophanes' Frogs (1296) this charge seems rebutted. 195 ANCIENT GREECE contempt on the ' bad ' and ' cowardly ' (KaKoi, SeiXoi) — cant terms among the aristocrats for the working classes — and call upon the ' good ' and * brave ' (ay aOoi, ea-OXol) to trample on the neck of their hated inferiors and to keep themselves from the contamination of the common herd. Theognis laments that Megara is still the same but her people are all changed, that for the sake of gold the noble deigns to wed the daughter of the vile plebeian, and that those who once were the good are now base and vile. Historically all this is of interest. It seems also to have been thought valuable educationally, for it was much used by schoolmasters and by lecturing Sophists ; but regarded as poetry it is very poor stuff, about on a level with Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, or even below it, being tainted with virulence and a maudlin pessimism. 1 Of a very different character are the verses of Xenophanes. He is, as we shall see, more important as a thinker than as a poet, but the vigorous lines in which he expressed some of his convictions are very notable not only for their thoughts but also for their form. In his chief poem {Hepl ^vcrecog, 'On Nature '), of which fragments survive, he inveighs against the popular anthropomorphic conception of Deity, and especially against Homer, and Hesiod for attributing human weaknesses and follies to the gods. " God," he says, " is wholly Sight and wholly Thought and wholly Hearing, and with no effort He rules all things by the working of His mind. . . . There is one God, supreme among divinities and men, hke unto mortals neither in body nor in thought." The Aethiop, he says, makes his gods black, the Thracian makes his blue-eyed and blond, and if horses and oxen and lions had hands and could write and do handiwork as men, they would have formed con- ceptions and made images of gods in their own likeness. We possess also fragments of his elegiacs, in which are found many wise and manly sayings about self-restraint and the ^ He steals, and spoils in stealing, the well-known saying, which King Midas learnt from the god Silenus, and which Sophocles used with such pathetic effect, that " The happiest lot is never to have been born — or to return as soon as possible thither whence we came." 196 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS true enjoyment of life, and a fine passage in which he contrasts the glory won by Olympic victors with that which wisdom confers on a man. " If any one should win by swiftness of foot, or in the pentathlon, there where is the precinct of Zeus by the streams of the Pisa, or else by wrestling, or by being skilled in painful boxing, or that formidable contest that they call the pancratium, he would be granted a conspicuous front seat at the games, and food would be given him by the city from public funds and a gift such as to be an heirloom for ever ; or e'en if he won the victory by means of his horses, and not by his own strength, he would gain all these things . . . but he would not deserve them as I do ; for better than the strength of man or of horses is our [human] wisdom.'* Xenophanes was born at the Ionian city Colophon, but left it (some say, banished on account of his heretical poem) at the age of twenty-five. In the fragment which tells us this he says that he is already ninety- two years old, having "tossed about through Hellenic lands" for sixty-seven years. In another fragment he asks himself : " How old wast thou when the Mede arrived ? " It seems probable, therefore, that he left Colophon on account of the Persian invasion under Harpagus [c. 545), when the Phocaeans abandoned their city and sailed to Corsica. We have already seen (p. 123) that he possibly joined these Phocaeans in founding Elea, where he is said to have lived in very modest circumstances to about his hundredth year. We shall hear more of him as a philosopher. At the semi-Oriental court of Samos we find the poets Ibycus and Anacreon (c. 550-522). Ibycus, a native of Rhegium, is said to have been tutor to Poly crates. From the few lines that we possess of his voluptuously imaginative poetry, and from the fact that he is called by Suidas the " maddest of all love-poets," one may infer what was his influence on the youth- ful prince. But it should be remarked that, as far as one can judge from a few lines, there was in Ibycus (as also in the genuine Anacreon) intense passion without any of that effemi- nate sentimentality which is found in later Greek love-poetry. His conception of Eros is that of a strong and terrible deity, 197 ANCIENT GREECE " like the Thracian Boreas blazing with lightning," or of an insidious and mighty wizard : " From under dark eyebrows shooting forth ravishing glances with enchantments of every kind, he casteth me into the immeasurable toils of the Cyprian goddess." He is said also to have composed epic poems similar to those of the Cyclic writers. The story of his death at the hands of robbers and of the detection of the crime has become well known through Schiller's fine ballad, The Cranes oflbycus^ Anacreon was a native of Teos, in Ionia. When the city was taken by Harpagus (544) he migrated to Abdera, in Thrace. Thence he came to Samos, and lived there until the crucifixion of Polycrates in 523, when Hipparchus is said to have sent a trireme to bring him to Athens. Here he spent some years, but probably returned to Abdera or Teos. He died two years after the battle of Salamis, at the age of eighty-five, choked by a grape-stone. The Athenians erected a statue of him (seen by Pausanias) in the characteristic guise of a drunken old man. Much that passed under the name of Anacreon is evidently the product of ' Anacreontic ' poets of later times. Some of these Anacreontic odes are exceedingly clever and pretty, such, for instance, as the Address to a Painter, which was adduced by lycssing, in his Laocoon, as an example of the kind of pictorial description that poetry should not attempt. It is nevertheless very charming, and ends in a most ingenious conceit. " Come, good painter," exclaims the poet, " paint my absent mistress as I bid thee." He then gives exact details — the soft black locks, the ivory brow, the milk and roses of the cheeks, the marble neck and bust; but, as if feeling the uselessness of all such word-painting, he bids the painter stop, and, turning to the picture created by his own imagination, he calls upon it to speak and answer him. It is exceedingly clever and pretty. But this is not how Homer and Shakespeare make us realize the beauty of Helen and Juliet. Probably, however, we form quite a wrong idea of Anacreon's poetry when we associate him with such delicately worded trifles, 1 Schiller imagines him journeying from Rhegium to Corinth to take part in the Isthmian Games. 198 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS for in fragments of what is undoubtedly his work we find a very different style and some quite different conceptions. Thus, like Ibycus, he gives us a picture of lyove (Eros) which offers a very striking contrast to the winged, roguish, rose- fettered urchin of the Anacreontics. " lyike a smith, with mighty hammer," he says, " Eros smote me and plunged me in a wintry torrent." This is the Eros of the older poets and sculptors, the first-born of the gods of whom Hesiod sings, the strong-Hmbed, manly Eros of Praxiteles, not the chubby little Cupid with his toy bow and quiver whom we meet so often in Hellenistic and Roman art. One generally associates Simonides of Ceos (556-467) with Marathon and Thermopylae. But while he was a boy Croesus was still reigning, and he was already nearly thirty years of age when Peisistratus died. About 525 he was invited by Hipparchus to leave his home on the island of Ceos and to come to Athens, where Anacreon was then living. When Hipparchus was murdered by Harmodius and Aristogeiton he went to Thessaly, probably to the court of the Aleuadae, the princes of lyarissa, whose submission to the Persians prob- ably occasioned his return to Athens. Here he became intimate with Themistocles and was held in great honour for his learning and poetical genius. Four years after the battle of Salamis, when he was eighty years old, he gained the prize at the Great Dionysia — the fifty-sixth public prize for poetry, as he tells us, that he had won. Soon afterwards, together with his nephew, the poet Bacchylides, he went to Syracuse, where, at the court of Hiero, he met Aeschylus and Pindar. He died at Syracuse, aged eighty-nine, in 467. Thus his life extended almost from the age of Solon to that of Pericles, and he was a contemporary for a few years of both Thales and Socrates. In considering him one is therefore obliged either to anticipate or to defer considerably. He seems to have produced a great amount of poetry in his long life — hymns to the gods, funeral eulogies and elegies, triumphal odes, dithyrambs, and odes in honour of victors at the games. In such odes he, as also his nephew Bacchylides, had a powerful 199 ANCIENT GREECE rival in Pindar, by whose sublimity of imagination and majesty of language, it is said, they were both eclipsed. Nevertheless some of the fragments of his poetry that survive are as fine as almost anything in Pindar, and the subject is certainly some- times on a far higher level than that of the ordinary Pindaric ode. In an encomium on those who fell with L^eonidas he says : " Splendid was the fortune of those who died at Thermo- pylae and glorious their fate. Their tomb is an altar ; instead of wails there is remembrance, and lamentation is changed into praise ; such a shroud neither decay shall e'er destroy, nor time, that conquereth all. This resting-place of brave men hath received to dwell within it the glory of Hellas." The metres of these odes are probably such as had been used from an early age in musical compositions. They seem to be conditioned by various musical rhythms (Doric, Aeolic, I^ydian, &c.), and to be, as Horace says with reference to Pindar, free from all law,^ except that the poem has certain divisions (strophes, antistrophes, epodes, &c.). Simonides is remem- bered chiefly on account of the famous lines, quoted by Hero- dotus, that were engraved on the monuments at Thermopylae. ^ Herodotus does not mention Simonides as their author, but Cicero and other writers do. Another couplet, on the Athenians who fought at Marathon, is attributed to Simonides by the rhetorician Aristides, and some lines of his beginning " I am the bravest of beasts " may have been composed as the inscription for the stone lion which, as Herodotus tells us, was set up at Thermopylae in memory of I^eonidas. Earlier in life (c. 506) he wrote, it is said, an epitaph for the Athenians who fell in the Chalcidian war. Simonides is said to have invented, or introduced, the letters v, Wj ^, \p. ^ Of the forty -four extant odes of Pindar only two have any decided metrical similarity, and these two are addressed to the same person and probably form one consecutive piece. * Thus translated by Rawlinson : Here did four thousand men from Pelops' land Against three hundred myriads bravely stand ; and Go, stranger, and to I^acedaemon tell That here, obeying her behests, we fell. 200 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS The Philosophers Some of the older Greek philosophers, such as Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Bmpedocles, may be classed also among the poets, and others, such as Thales and Pythagoras, would perhaps be conceded a like honour if their writings had sur- vived. The incomparable insight into the life of things which distinguishes Greek thought from what often usurps the name of philosophy was due mainly to the poetical spirit that animated it. As Plato tells us, the truths which are the object of the ' lover of wisdom ' cannot be learnt in the same way as scientific facts, but only by the help of our imaginative faculties and by contemplation ; and his statement is con- firmed by Aristotle himself, who says that " poetry is more philosophical and more worthy of serious regard than history.*' In the Greek thinkers of the period that we are examining there are noticeable three distinct methods of regarding the universe. The Ionic philosophers, fixing their gaze on the visible order of things, endeavoured to discover the prime element or self-created and self-moving elementary substance to which the material universe owes its origin and existence. The Eleatic school, of which Xenophanes was the founder, sought the one true existence behind appearances, denying the reality, or even the very existence, of the material world. Pythagoras taught that the life of things — that which alone gives them any true existence — is the relation that they bear to the one life of all (as numbers to unity), and that their nature and their reality as objects of the sensible universe depend on the relation that they bear (Hke numbers) to one another. Thus, all things being bound together into a cosmos by proportion, the universe is of the nature of harmony. To give any full and systematic account of the theories of these early Greek thinkers is here impossible, but if the essential characteristics of the three schools are kept in mind the follow- ing facts will perhaps fall into place and offer a fairly intelligible picture. Thales of Miletus (c. 636-546) was the first of the Ionic 201 ANCIENT GREECE ' Physicists,' and is regarded as the father of Greek philosophy, as well as the chief of the Seven Sages. Herodotus asserts that he was of Phoenician origin, and possibly the Semitic strain may account for genius in his case, as it has done in others. When Thales was still a young man, Miletus, then " a rich and powerful city " and the mother of many colonies, fell under the rule of the tyrant Thrasybulus (p. 130), the friend and Machiavellian adviser of Periander; and it remained under his rule for more than forty years. Thales is said to have visited Egypt and to have acquired there the knowledge of geometry and astronomical calculation which enabled him to foretell the eclipse^ that put an end to the battle between Astyages of Media and the I^ydian king Alyattes (585) . Possibly he also learnt in Egypt a certain amount of geology — enough to make him a ' sedimentarist ' and a believer in water as the prime element — for Herodotus, who also was in Egypt, gives us a long description of the formation of the country by alluvial deposit, which he held to have been going on for some 12,000 years. Miletus was harassed a good deal by Alyattes, but under Croesus the Milesians (almost alone of the Ionian Greeks) retained their independence, and Thales is said to have advised his fellow-citizens not to aid the I^ydian king against Cyrus — advice which probably saved the city from being taken by Harpagus. But the anxiety caused by the advance of Persia is shown by the fact that Thales tried to persuade th^Ionians to form a ' confederation,' with Teos as capital. It must have been soon after this that he died. Whether Thales wrote anything is not known. What we know of his doctrines we learn from Plato, Aristotle, and other writers. The fact that he chose water as the prime substance should be connected closely with the fact that he conceived such prime substance to be in perpetual motion, and mind, 1 The Chaldaeans, from whom possibly (but not probably) the Egyptians learnt their astronomy, are said to have registered, or calculated, eclipses from about 720. They are said to have believed the world to have existed for 172,000 years. But the Indian sages claim an antiquity of two million years for their astronomical tables, and doubtless the most ancient names of the constellations are of Indian origin. 202 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS or intelligence, to be present wherever there was motion ; ^ and, as motion exists everywhere in the universe, he asserted that " all is full of gods," and that even the kinetic power of the magnet and of amber proved their possession of what he called a ' soulless soul ' (or ' lifeless vitality '). Cicero, indeed, says that Thales spoke of the ' Mind of the Universe ' as being equivalent to ' God,' but it is probable that his theories were unconnected with religious ideas — that is, that they were entirely materialistic and without any assumption of a spiritual or intellectual ' first cause,* such as was proclaimed later by Anaxagoras. Consequently, in order to account for move- ment he was obliged to conceive his prime substance as self- moving, and, indeed, self -created, and was thus driven to face the same difficulties that all materialists are forced to encounter. Some writer has remarked that " a lake formed by the Maeander i now covers the native city of the man who taught that every- thing comes from and returns to water.'* The story of his falling down a well into his favourite element while star- gazing is perhaps a playful invention. In connexion with Thales it may be interesting to raise the question how far, if at all, Greek philosophy was indebted to the philosophy of the Bast. It is indubitable that Thales and Pythagoras, and perhaps other early Greek philosophers, visited Egypt, and perhaps other Eastern lands, and it seems possible that, as far as their external form is concerned, some of the doctrines of Greek thinkers, such as that of ' trans- migration,' had an Oriental or Egyptian origin,* and that the belief in the immortality of the soul, which we find so strongly ^ asserted by Socrates, was not evolved by Greek thought, but introduced from Eastern sources ; moreover, in Vedanta j philosophy there are doctrines of ' abstraction ' and of the kriune nature of the Deity (as Intelligence, Matter, and Multi- tude) which have a singular resemblance to the Socratic doctrine of the '' release and purification of the body " and to ^ Cf. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The theory of Thales is like that of the modern Monist. ^ Herodotus asserts this (ii. 123), but no proof has been found of it in EJgyptian monuments. 203 ANCIENT GREECE the Monad and Triad doctrine of Pythagoras, and others that closely resemble the Bleatic denial of the reality of the sensible world ; but it is surely not impossible that the human mind is so constructed that it may (perhaps must) arrive at similar formulae ; or, if it be true that Greece accepted certain forms of Eastern thought, it is no less true that Hellenic genius reinspired these forms with a new life so that they are as truly original creations as Hamlet or Faust. The human mind seems generally to find no insuperable difficulty in forming a vague conception of an inert prime element (more or less immaterial) existing from all eternity ; but for the conception of a cosmos, an ordered, differentiated universe, or even of ' matter ' itself, it is necessary to account for the ordering force, and one instinctively rejects the ' self- moved ' material prime element of Thales and the ' self-moved ' atoms of Democritus, of which we shall hear later. This difficulty accounts for the creative lyove (Eros) of Hesiod, the "love and hate of the atoms" of Empedocles, the Nous (Mind) of Anaxagoras, and all other such attempts to visualize and personify the mysterious power which manifests itself in motion and life, and it is not surprising that Anaximander (c. 610-545), 9- contemporary and fellow-citizen, perhaps disciple, of Thales, should have attempted to go a little further toward the realm of the Immaterial in his search for a first cause of motion. He is said to have been the first Greek philosopher who wrote a prose work. Of this work (entitled, as usual, About Nature) nothing but a few quotations survive, but they prove that the author proclaimed as the prime element, or rather the first ' principle ' (for he was the first to use the word apx'/) , what he called ' the infinite ' or ' unconditioned ' {to aireipov), by which he probably meant matter not exactly in a chaotic state, but with its elements {a-TOixeia) not yet differentiated.^ But his apxh is really quite as materialistic as that of Thales, and is less conceivable. Instead of ' self-' ^ See Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. Plato uses to aneipov for primal ' matter ' regarded merely as a passive, potential, formless existence — and this seems practically what Anaximander meant. 204 55- Bl,ACK-FIGURED VASES c. 700-500 See List of Illustrations and Note D 204 ,.^, '"_ J** i. if' I THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS movement ' he has to imagine ' counteracting forces,' such as heat and cold, dryness and moisture, in order to produce a cosmos. His theory that Hving things were evolved out of damp matter and that men as well as all other animals were at first fish-like has affinity to modern morphological doctrines. He is said to have invented the sun-dial (though Herodotus credits the Babylonians with the invention) and to have made a map of the world and an astronomical globe. The map is said to have been engraved on a brass tablet, and was perhaps the very one which (c. 499) Aristagoras of Miletus took over to show the vSpartans the extent of the Persian Empire, and for which Hecataeus wrote a text. A third Milesian, Anaxi- menes, proclaimed as the apxn an illimitable element of the nature of air — the life-breath, as it were, of the universe. This seems a relapse ; but we know too little of his doctrines to be certain. The earth he believed to float sustained in the midst of air, and he is said to have been the first (Greek ?) to teach that the moon's light came from the sun. If, as it is said, he taught Anaxagoras (born in 500) and was himself a disciple of Anaximander, he must have lived to a great age. In connexion with these Physicists may be mentioned Heracleitus of Kphesus, for, although he lived somewhat later (c. 540-470), and although his genius was of a strikingly original, imaginative, and independent character (justifying his proud remark, " 1 have gone to no teacher but myself," and perhaps even justifying the gift of his own book to the temple of Artemis as the most precious offering he could make), nevertheless the fact that he accepted a ' prime element ' makes it convenient to class him with the other Ionian philosophers. During most of the life of Heracleitus Ephesus was under the sovereignty of Persia and the rule of Greek tyrants. But he evidently lived to see the day of liberation, for in his work On Nature he pours bitter disdain on the Ephesian democracy for having banished his friend Hermodorus (who, by the way some twenty-six years later helped the Roman decemviri to draw up their Twelve Tables). This would seem to prove that he wrote the book after the recovery of Sestos by the 205 ANCIENT GREECE Athenians and the liberation of Ionia from the Persian yoke (478). To judge from the 136 short fragments of his writings that survive Heracleitus expressed himself in very trenchant aphorisms. The following are some of them : " War is the father of all things " (i.e. all things are evolved by antagonistic forces) ; ''No man can wade twice in the same stream " [i.e. material objects are always changing) ; " The wisest of men is an ape to the gods " \ " I^ife is the death of gods, death their life " ; " Men are mortal gods, gods immortal men " \ ''A man's character is his destiny " ; " lycaming teaches not wisdom/' In connexion with this last aphorism he added : '' Otherwise learning would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras and Xenophanes and Hecataeus." Still more strongly he expressed himself about Homer and Archilochus, saying that they " ought to be whipped." Such language is intelHgible enough, so that probably it was the abstruseness of his doctrines rather than his words that won him the title ' the Obscure.' Even Socrates confessed that there were many things in the book of Heracleitus that needed a * Delian diver ' to bring them up from their obscure depths. Heracleitus held fire to be the prime element. Possibly he was led to the choice by Oriental (Zoroastrian) influence. But by ' fire ' he meant a subtle, fiery, aetherial substance rather than flame. Of this self-kindled, ever-vibrating fiery aether he conceived the human soul and the soul of the universe, and even Deity itself, to consist.^ Doubtless fire, or heat, was believed by him (as it is, or was until lately, believed i by modern science) to be caused by, or to he, vibration ori undulation, and it was evidently as a most striking form, or symbol, of perpetual and inconceivably rapid motion that he I chose it, for all his philosophy was founded on the axiom thatj there is no true existence except in motion, in mutation, development, action, transition. " All is in flux " {iravra pel) * Anticipating by some 2400 years the assertion of the modern Monist, who tells us that the only possible God is "the sum total of the vibrations of the Kther." Socrates was accused by Aristophanes (of course falsely) of having enthroned ' Aetherial Vortex ' in the place of Zeus, 206 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS was his fundamental dogma. There is no such thing as a permanent state of being. Being (existence) consists in change. Nothing exists except in merging its identity in something else. Thus, " Death is life, life is death,'' and " Sleep and waking are the same,'' or (if I may slightly change his form of expres- sion and put some of his aphorisms into the words of three great modern poets), ''There is no Death ! What seems so is transition," ^ '* To sleep is to wake," and " lyiving are the dead, and I am the apparition, I the spectre." Such doctrines, so unintelligible to the many, probably credited him with the obscurity and melancholy which have attached themselves to his memory. Of the life and poems of Xenophanes I have already spoken. His philosophy offers a very striking contrast to that of Hera- \ \ cleitus, and forms a part of the first rude foundation on which \ \ was reared the Ideal Theory of Plato. Heracleitus asserted that nothing truly exists except in so far as it is in motion, mutation, transition — that is, as a link in the endless chain of cause and effect. Xenophanes, on the contrary, asserted that all motion and mutation and transition, ( as well as the things that they affect, are merely appear- I ances, the multitudinous phenomena of the senses [ra iroWa), I which are not existent except so far as they stand in relation to the one eternal and immutable Reality, the " unmoved source of motion" and the only source of all being. In his • poetry, as we have seen, he gives this immutable and eternal i Reality the name of God. As a philosopher he calls it the One — an expression used also by Pythagoras and by Plato. iBut though he held that things of the senses (the Many) are non-existent in their variety and their mutations and their relation to one another, he asserted that they exist truly by virtue of their relation to the One. Thus the keystone of the Bleatic school is ra iravra ev (' All things One ') rather than TO eV Km TOL iravra ('The One and the Many'), which vvas the formula of Platonic philosophy ; and we should regard ^ In the Phaedo Socrates (or Plato) speaks of transition from life to death and from death to life in reference to the immortality of the soul. 207 ANCIENT GREECE the creed of Xenophanes as pantheistic rather than duaHstic — that is, as identifying spirit and matter rather than separating them by an impassable gulf, as Plato seems to do. But how- ever that may be, it is clear that Xenophanes himself allowed the practical existence of sensible objects and of change and motion — allowed, as Socrates did, that such phenomena, although not the objects of true knowledge, could be used as ' rafts ' to carry us across the sea of human life — whereas some of his successors, such as Parmenides and Zeno, insisted on the absolute non-existence of the natural world, and were thus landed in absurdities. Under Zeno the sublime philosophy of the founder degenerated into metaphysical quibbles and paradoxes and puzzles about the infinitely small and great, such as the puzzle of Achilles and the tortoise. He denied not only the absolute reahty but also the practical existence of the sensible world and the possibility of motion — a doctrine refuted, it is said, by an unbehever who rose from his seat and walked across the lecture-room, or lecture-portico, of the philosopher. Hence the expression Solvitur amhulando. The one doctrine of real importance in the philosophy of Xenophanes, and that which places it on a level quite different from that of the Ionic Physicists, is that which asserts the reality of things to depend on their relation to the one true existence — a doctrine substantially the same as that of Socrates, who taught that everything exists by virtue of its true, not its apparent, cause, and that the only true knowledge is the knowledge of the true cause of things. Pythagoras {c. 570-490) was a contemporary of Xenophanes and a generation earher than Heracleitus. He and Xeno- phanes, living only some 120 miles distant from each other in Southern Italy, may be supposed to have met ; but there was evidently not much mutual admiration, if we may judge from some very contemptuous verses of Xenophanes. " They relate," he says, " that once when he [Pythagoras] was going past while a puppy was being whipped, he was touched with pity and exclaimed : ' I^eave off ! Beat him not ! for he is the soul of a friend of mine. I recognized it at once by his voice.' " 208 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS Pythagoras was a Samian, but about 540, after having visited the East and Egypt/ he left Samos, perhaps in order to escape from the frivolous court of Poly crates, and settled in Croton. Here he seems to have gained great influence with the wealthy aristocratical party. Three hundred Crotoniats he formed into an Order, bound together by vows of allegiance and secrecy, after the fashion of Freemasons, whom they also resembled in possessing secret signs. On new members a period of proba- tion, some say of seven years, was imposed, during which they were tested in their powers of keeping silence (like the Trap- pists) and in keeping their temper and in mental capacities. Only a few were initiated into the secret (esoteric) doctrines and rites, which were perhaps of an Orphic character, and seem to have been specially connected with the worship of Apollo ; and it is possible that Pythagoras was identified by his followers with Apollo and that he laid claim (as Empedocles did later) to supernatural powers. The rule of the Order seems to have included strict abstinence from animal food — a practice necessarily involved in the creed of transmigration of souls. 2 Music and athletics formed an indispensable part in the system. When a member wished to leave the Order he was presented with double his original subscription and allowed to depart, but over his seat in the refectory was erected a monument, and funeral rites were celebrated to intimate his philosophic decease. To the chief lodge (so to speak) at Croton were affiliated others in Taras, Sybaris, Metapontion, and other towns. Perhaps it was owing to the political influence of these aristocratical Pythagorean societies that in 510 (the year when Tarquin and Hippias were expelled) Croton utterly destroyed ^ Herodotus evid-ently alludes (iL 123) to him, though he declines to mention his name, when he speaks of certain Greek writers having appropriated and published as their own the Egyptian (?) doctrine of Transmigration. In iv. 95 he calls him " not the meanest of Greek philosophers." * Beans were also taboo, if we are to take Horace's joke seriously {Sat. II, vi. 63), who intimates that some relative of Pythagoras had been a bean. Grote rejects Pythagorean vegetarianism as a fable because Milo must have had a meat diet 1 o 209 ANCIENT GREECE Sybaris,^ which had led into the field, we are told, an army of 300,000 men, against whom Milo, the celebrated Pythagorean wrestler (six times Olympic victor), did deeds like those of Samson. Soon after this the popular party, under the leader- ship of Cylon, gained the upper hand in Croton, and the Pythagorean societies fell under ban. Milo's house, where forty disciples were assembled, was set on fire by the mob, and all but two perished — possibly Pythagoras among them ; but some say that he had fled to Taras some years, pre- viously, and thence to Metapontion, where 40a years later, Cicero tells us, his tomb was to be seen.^ Probably Pytha- goras, like Socrates and many other wise men, wrote nothing, although there is a story of his having left all his writings to his daughter Damo, with orders not to publish them — a com- mand that she kept, although in great poverty. There are extant so-called ' Golden Verses * (seventy-one hexameters) which are attributed to him, but they are evidently a late fabri- cation. One of his disciples, Philolaus, who is said to have escaped from the conflagration and taken refuge in Greece, incorporated the doctrines of the school in a book (of course called On Nature), but only a few questionable relics of this book, as also of about ninety other works by the older Pythagoreans, survive (including some fragments ascribed to Archytas, the famous Tarentine mathematician, well known to readers of Horace). The disappearance of these old records is doubtless due to the fierce persecutions to which the sect was exposed. For the life and doctrines of Pythagoras we are almost entirely dependent on a few comments of Aristotle and on the writings of Porphyry and lamblichus, neo-Platonists of the third century A.D., at which epoch, at Alexandria, there was a great revival of the mystical doctrines of the school and an attempt to proclaim Pythagoras as the anti-Christian Messiah. 1 Sixty-seven years later, after a vain attempt to revive Croton, Thurii was founded (443) in the vicinity. Herodotus probably took part in the founding of Thurii and saw the ruins of Sybaris. * In Cicero's time the revival of Pythagoreanism was beginning. In early days the Romans, when bidden by an oracle to erect a statue to the wisest of the Greeks, erected one to Pythagoras. 210 56. Ancient Bi^ack-figured Amphora See List of Illustrations and Note D THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS Plato himself borrowed largely from Pythagoras. Timaeus of lyocri, a Pythagorean, is said to have been Plato's teacher, and in the dialogue Timaeus Plato propounds views on the physical universe which are perhaps mainly Pythagorean ; but it is as impossible to say how far they are Platonized as to say how far the doctrines of Socrates were Pythagorized by Plato. In the Phaedrus Plato uses, doubtless merely as a parable, the doctrine of Transmigration and of the ten periods of the soul as it was taught by Pythagoras, and the Platonic theory of Ideas is founded on Pythagorean and Eleatic doctrines of the One and the Many. The main thesis of the Pythagorean system of philosophy is that the human mind recognizes within itself certain laws without which thought is impossible, and in these laws it possesses a revelation of the natural laws to which the structure of the universe is due. Now of these intellectual laws those of number are the most immutable and categorical, and the universe (both the sensible and the intellectual) is an ' imita- tion ' or ' realization ' of the laws of number, where Deity is the omnipresent Unit or Monad — of which all numbers consist, though it is itself no number — and prime (brute, chaotic) matter is the Duad, and the ordered Cosmos (formed by the addition of the creative Monad to the chaotic Duad) is the Triad. ^ Now, strictly speaking, the sensible universe, according to this theory, is number realized in space, and when number is realized in space it is geometry. Therefore we find that with Pythagoras, as with Plato, geometry was the foundation of all true science. He himself is said to have discovered the most important fact of the equality of the square on the long side of 1 a right-angled triangle to the sum of the squares on the shorter sides — and to have sacrificed a hundred oxen as thank-offering. ^ But in his philosophy he seems to have adopted numbers, as j being more readily expressive of ratio and proportion than are ^ Natural objects (under three dimensions) are triads, and human nature is a triad, and the mind's conception of Deity is also a triad. I^ater Pytha- goreans made the Four represent solidity, the Five quality (colour, &c.), the Six vitality, the Seven mind, and so on. ^ Hardly consistent with his transmigration and vegetarian principles ! 211 ANCIENT GREECE lines and areas. As numbers are dependent for their individual existence on the unit, so sensible objects are dependent for their specific existence on their true cause — the One, or Deity. But the existence of natural objects as phenomena depends on their relation to all other such objects (nothing being of any meaning or value, or conceivable, by itself), in the same way as every intelligible number stands related, in a certain ratio or proportion, to every other number. Thus all things of the senses are knit together into one harmonious whole, and the natural universe is a Harmony ^ — such as also modern science proclaims it to be " Throughout the processes of Nature,'' says Tyndall, " we have interdependence and harmony, and the main value of physics as a mental training consists in the tracing out of this interdependence and the demonstration of this harmony." In passing it may be observed that many phenomena seem (though this may be merely due to the constitution of the human mind) to be the results of the vibration of some one prime element (' ether ' ?) at different rates, so that we have light and electricity and the octaves of sound and colour, and possibly of taste and smell, all related and standing in certain numerical ratios each to the other. But their specific exist- ence, as light and sound and so on, is due, as Pythagoras expresses it, to their relation, not to each other, but to the Unit. Thus, when Professor Romanes asserted that with one persistent force and one prime matter he could account for the universe, Darwin answered : " 1 could not disprove it if some one should assert that God had given certain attributes to force so that it develops into light, heat, electricity, and magnetism — and perhaps even into life." This doctrine of the harmonious system of the universe is one of the most suggestive and illuminating of all parables. But scientifically Pythagoras was, of course, on the wrong lines. He attempted to force Nature into accordance with| his theories ; and of this we have a striking instance in the I ^ Hence the Pythagorean ' music of the spheres,' which our ears are too i dull, or from long familiarity too callous, to perceive. 212 I THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS fact that, in order to complete the mystic ' Decad/ he added a tenth to the then-known nine celestial bodies which circled round the central Fire or Watch-tower of Zeus. This tenth body he called the Antichthon (' Counter-earth '). How such a method differs from that by which Neptune was discovered need scarcely be explained. The gulf between Physics and Ethics Pythagoras conceived to be bridged by music, which is at once a subject of intellectual research and a means of affecting the emotions. The explana- tion of the musical intervals and of harmony as due to propor- tion is attributed to him, although some accounts of his experi- ments are apocryphal, seeing that hammers of different weight do not produce different notes from the same anvil or bell. But he seems to have discovered the fact that a chord at the same tension vibrates in proportion to its length : that half the length produces the octave above the original note, two- thirds produces a musical fifth, three-fourths a fourth, and eight-ninths a major tone. Thus from Physics to Ethics, from the sensible world to the world of mind and morals, we pass by the bridge of Music — climb the Beanstalk, as it were, and find ourselves in a fairy- land where our dull, boorish materialism not seldom wakes to find itself ' translated ' and invested with an ass's nowl. Even in this realm Pythagoras, or later Pythagorean philosophy, ventures to use the scale of Number and reads off vice as imperfect and virtue as perfect proportion — a virtuous life (i.e. virtue realized in action) as the straight line, abstract justice as the square number, and a just life as the geometric square. The soul he defines as a ' self-moving number,' or triune Monad, and thus asserts it to be of the same nature as Deity — a connexion that doubtless encouraged his claim to supernatural powers. These formulae are, of course, merely little curiosities preserved for us by later writers, and are of no value except as curiosities ; nor can we regard otherwise such stories as that of the recognition by Pythagoras in the temple of Hera at Argos of the shield whicn he had used (as Euphorbus, the Trojan) in a former life. But, however 213 ANCIENT GREECE unworthy of serious regard they may appear to some minds, such a parable as that of Metempsychosis, with its gradual redemp- tion of the human soul by purification, initiation, and intuition, until it is fit to dwell with the gods, and such an imaginative conception as the harmony of the universe and the music of the spheres, are (as Aristotle himself allows) of more value to the true thinker than much that goes by the name of scientific metaphysics. The main structure of the Pythagorean philo- sophy, however dimly it looms through the ages, is of impres- sive grandeur — a watch-tower of Zeus overlooking the infinities of space and time. SECTION B : THE ORDERS OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE : SCULPTURE, DOWN TO THE PERSIAN WARS Something has already been said about the primitive shrines of the Mycenaean age and the temples of Homeric times, and some of the temples of the earlier historic period have been mentioned. Others will be mentioned later in connexion with historical events and with sculpture, and further information will be found in Note A at the end of this book, and can be supplemented by reference to the Index and the I^ist of Illustrations. But without attempting to trace minutely the evolution of the Greek temple or to describe the technical details of Greek architecture (on which points full information can be found in dictionaries and text-books) it may be well to state here the main characteristics of the different orders and to add a few facts in connexion with some of the chief temples. The original shrine, generally of wood or sunburnt brick, was an oblong, or rarely a round, building, like the ancient Greek house, with a porch. Sometimes this porch had side walls and perhaps a couple of wooden pillars in front, so that the whole building consisted of a hall (the shrine proper, or mo?) and a closed forecourt (Tr/ooVao?).^ Then the row of pillars or columns was extended across the whole front of ^ Ex. the Treasure-house of Megara at Delphi. 214 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS the building and the side walls of the porch were omitted, so that an open portico was formed.^ Then a porch or portico was placed at both ends of the building. ^ Next, a row of columns was extended all round the building, which was said to be peripteros — i.e. winged, or aisled — and sometimes the portico had two rows of columns.^ Ivastly, two rows of columns were placed all round, and there were also columned porches at both ends of the building itself.* Such a temple was called dipteros, ' two- winged.' The interior sanctuary (the paog or a-rtKog, in which was the statue of the divinity facing east, so that the light of the rising sun should illuminate it) had side walls, but frequently had also inside them two rows of columns (as in the great Paestum temple) , forming aisles and perhaps supporting the roof. These interior aisles were sometimes formed by two tiers of small columns, one on the top of the other. Whether the interior building was generally, or ever, hypaethral — i.e. open to the sky — is not quite certain. Certain it is that the statue was not often unprotected by a roof ; and it is probable that the open space was only just enough to allow of sufficient light, as in the Pantheon at Rome. The number of columns in the front of a temple was two, four, six, eight, or ten. The side (counting the corner columns) had generally one more than double the number of the front columns. Thus the Parthenon is 8 x 17, the Theseion is 6 X 13, as also is the temple of Zeus at Olympia ; but Paestum is 6 X 14, and so is the splendid temple at Segesta (Fig. 57). The three orders of Greek architecture are the Doric (espe- cially used in Western Hellas), the Ionic (at first peculiar to Ionia), and the Corinthian. In the motherland we find all three styles, but the Doric is the most ancient. The Corinthian, with its slender shaft and its capital orna- mented with rows of acanthus leaves, need not occupy our attention now, for it was first invented about the time of the Peloponnesian War. The earliest specimen known (c. 430) 1 Ex. the Erechtheion. 2 Ex. the Nike temple at Athens. ' Ex. the Zeus temple at Olympia and the Parthenon. * Ex. the Artemis temple at Ephesus. 215 ANCIENT GREECE is said to have been a single column (now lost) inserted in the Ionic court of the Doric temple at Phigaleia (Fig. 84) . Other fine examples are the monument of Lysicrates (Fig. 136), the ' Temple of the Winds/ and the splendid columns of the Olympieion at Athens (Figs. 54/134), erected by the Emperor Hadrian. The Doric order has a baseless, somewhat tapering column, surmounted by a capital composed of a thick slab (abax, or abacus) lying on a very flat oval moulding (the echinus). The columns bear a plain architrave (' main beam '), which supports the frieze and the projecting cornice. The Ionic order has a slenderer column,^ standing on a base, and bearing a capital whose main characteristic is two large spiral volutes (evidently an artistic modification of the ox-heads which occur in Oriental architecture, e.g. in the Persepolis columns). The columns carry an entablature composed, as in the Doric order, of architrave, frieze, and cornice, but the face of the architrave is cut into three planes, each pro- jecting a Httle above the one below it, and the friezes of the two orders differ essentially. This difference of the friezes will be noted at once in pictures of Doric and Ionic temples. It will be seen that the Ionic frieze is one undivided space, either plain or filled with a line of figures in procession or otherwise forming a continuous series, whereas in the Doric temples the frieze consists of numerous spaces (metopes), either left plain or else filled each by a single group of figures, 2 and every metope is divided from the next by a kind of tablet of three bands sundered by flutings (triglyphs). These triglyphs are said to represent the ends of the rafters, which were visible in the old wooden temples, and the small 1 The Ionic column scarcely tapers at all. Its height is 16 to 18 semi- diameters (modules). That of the Parthenon columns is 12. In the great Paestum temple it is only 8, and in the Apollo temple at Corinth {the most ancient perhaps in Greece) it is only yf . The columns of Atreus' Treasury and the lyion Gate (Mycenae) taper downwards. ^ In the Parthenon the external frieze consisted of metopes and triglyphs, but the frieze of the inner building was Ionic in character, although the columns were Doric. This is the frieze, representing the Pan?ithetiaic procession, which is in the British Museum. 2l6 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS spherical ornaments (mutules) below and above the frieze are supposed to represent rain-drops, or perhaps nail-heads. Another characteristic, especially in the Doric style, is that the column not only tapers considerably but it has a slight outward curve (called the entasis) in the middle, the object of which may have been to correct some optical error in perspective. In the Parthenon this bulge is scarcely per- ceptible. In the temple of Demeter at Paestum, or still more in the ' Basilica,* it is disagreeably noticeable (Fig. 41). At Phigaleia it seems entirely absent. The columns of all three orders have almost always parallel flutings. The Doric are sharp-edged, shallower, and fewer (twenty in the Parthenon), the Ionic and Corinthian gene- rally separated by fillets, semicircular, and numbering from twenty-four up to thirty- two. Sometimes the lower part of the Ionic column was left plain, or (as at Ephesus) was used for sculptured reliefs. In later times spiral flutings were sometimes used. In point of size, especially in regard to height, Greek temples are, of course, not comparable with our cathedrals, nor with the great temples of the East, and, as Herodotus himself remarks, " although the temple of Ephesus is worthy of note, and also the temple of Samos, if all the great works of the Greeks could be put together in one they would not equal " things that are to be seen in Egypt. The length of the Olympieion at I Acragas (Girgenti), the largest temple in the Hellenic world, but (like its Athenian namesake) never completed, was 363 feet ; that of the Samian Heraion was 346, that of the (earlier) Ephesian temple was 342, and that of the Parthenon is 227 i feet. St. Paul's Cathedral is 513 feet long and St. Peter's at I [ Rome is 613 feet. I Sculpture, down to the Persian Wars In a former section we considered some of the main charac- teristics of the religion that preceded the introduction of the Olympian hierarchy, and noticed how the feelings of awe and dread for the supernatural revealed themselves in grotesque 217 ANCIENT GREECE and horrible effigies, which were regarded with superstitious reverence. This fetish- worship was by no means eradicated by the new Olympian religion. Although we find little or no trace of ' spook * or superstitious awe in Homer, who seems to shrink instinctively from all that is grotesque, monstrous, and uncanny, the old deisidaimonia survived (as we saw in Hesiod's case) side by side with the brighter and more openly professed Olympian orthodoxy, and during the sixth century there seems to have been a great recrudescence of ' chthonian ' cult, aggravated by the introduction and spread of the Orphic creed and rites and the institution, or revival, of Dionysian and Eleusinian Mysteries. This subject we shall meet again when we come to the philosophers of the fifth century. At present it will suffice to note the fact that Greek sculpture was apparently a direct evolution from the fabrication of grotesque fetish-idols, although it is impossible by any analysis to discover the vital force which effected this wondrous develop- ment — a development which in many cases, such as that of Egypt and of Assyria and of other Oriental nations, has scarcely taken place at all, and in no other case has been so rapid and so perfect as in Greek art. Certainly we cannot account for it by what we call civilization. In our sense of the word the Persian Empire was in the age of Aeschylus and Pheidias at a higher stage of civilization than Greece, and in the Hellenic world the advent of a more scientific learning and research and criticism was contemporary with the degeneracy, and was soon followed by the disappearance, of all true art, until its renascence in other forms. But however inexplicable it may be, it is an incontestable fact that within less than two centuries the superstitious awe attaching to some ghoulish monstrosity or some formless stock or meteorite gave place to reverence for the images of a Pheidian Zeus or Athene — reverence paid not so much to the present deity as to the manifestation of the grand, the serene, and the beautiful.^ 1 The testimony of many writers to the effect produced by the Pheidian Zeus at Olympia is very striking. " Let a man sick and weary in soul," says one of these, " who has passed through many distresses and sorrows, whose 2l8 An Attic Hydria of the Middle Black-figured Period 218 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS The vital power which effected this development revealed its workings not only in sculpture but also in other creations of Hellenic genius — in Greek literature, Greek thought, Greek mythology, and Greek theology, all of which bear testimony to a genius essentially formative and artistic — perhaps we may say essentially sculpturesque — a genius well described as the converse of that of the Jewish nation, and one for which the dangers of idolatry were to a great extent neutralized by poetic imagination and reverence for the ideally beautiful. Doubtless the imaginative and allegorical pictures of the Olympian gods and the Olympian creed which we find in the art of Homer and Pheidias and the dramatists do not reveal to us the gross anthropomorphic superstitions of the populace, which were, as we have seen, as bitterly denounced by Xeno- phanes as was Jewish idolatry by Isaiah. Doubtless, as in every age, the religion of the thinker and the true artist was not that of the people, but in spite of all the superstitions in which it was involved (and we need only think of Socrates to realize them) this anthropomorphism of the popular theology was a result of the same formative spirit to which was due the evolution of Greek sculpture from the formless or grotesque effigies of the early age of Greece. Whether we should regard Greek plastic art as lineally descended from Aegaean it is not easy to say. Aegaean plastic art (as we see by the Vaphio cups) attained an astonishing proficiency, but was apparently swept out of existence by the Dorians. It may have survived and been the germ from which sprang the glories of the Periclean age, but it is foolish to refuse to recognize in Hellenic art, as in Hellenic thought, the presence of many elements derived from other sources — from Crete, I^ydia, Phrygia, the East, and Hgypt — and to insist on an ' autochthonous ' originality in the case of Greek sculpture or Greek thought which cannot be claimed for Giotto, Dante, or Shakespeare. But whether pillow is un visited by kindly sleep, stand in front of this image ; he will, I deem, forget all the terrors and troubles of human life." (Quoted by Professor Bury.) 219 i ANCIENT GREECE of Aegaean or other origin in regard to some of its elements, the art of classical Hellas is, of course, original in the true sense of the word, being a re-creation — and that, too, into a far higher existence. Genuine statuary is said to have begun in Greece about 600, and the so-called ' archaic * period extends to the end of the Persian wars, say 480. Of this period I shall give a brief review, prefaced by a few remarks on the fetish-worship which preceded the attempt to represent deity, and later also the human form divine, as a thing of perfect beauty. The ancient Greek idol was often merely a symbol of divine presence — sometimes a rude figure (such as one finds in thousands on sites of temples) of clay or wood or lead, fre- quently grotesque or monstrous, sometimes a formless stock, ^ or a ' heaven-fallen ' stone, or a pillar, such as we hear of in the Bible and see in the Lion Gate at Mycenae and in pictures of the Earth-goddess. Real statuary assuredly existed in Greece (as, of course, in Egypt and the East) before the sixth century,^ and rich and elaborate relief-work was produced, as we see from the descriptions of the famous Cypselus chest and the carved throne of the Apollo image at Amyclae. The former, which Pausanias saw some 800 years later in the Heraion at Olympia, was presented probably by Periander, and was asserted to have been the actual chest in which Cypselus was hidden by his mother {c. 655). In any case it is probably the most ancient specimen of artistic Greek carved work (if it was by a Greek artist) of which we have historical record. The reliefs, in cedar wood, ivory, and gold, represented mythological subjects (Pelops, Heracles, Perseus, &c.) in thirty- three panels arranged in five parallel rows. The Amyclaean 1 These old wooden idols were called ^oava (' carved things ') , See Hdt. v. 82. ' E.g. the gold and silver dogs and the golden torch-bearers of Od. vii. and the Apollo statue intimated by //. i. 28, and the statue of Athene in//, vi. 92 and 303, evidently imagined in a sitting position. A colossal gold-plated statue of Zeus was given by Cypselus or Periander [c. 600) to Olympia. Also we hear of an artist of Rhegium, Clearchus, who at a very early period made a bronze statue (not cast, but plated) of Zeus at Sparta. Moreover, there is a stone sculpture still existing in Greece that is far older than Homer — the Lions of Mycenae. 220 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS throne was also decorated by about twenty-seven reliefs (probably in bronze), and was supported by figures of the Seasons, the Graces, Tritons, &c. It was the work of a I^ydian (Magnesian) artist, Bathycles, who may have come to Sparta in the time of Croesus (say 550), but whose date is possibly considerably earlier. This was a work produced by a foreign artist ^ as a throne, or screen, for a Greek god. But in what form was that god represented ? He was, as Pausanias tells us, a bronzen pillar, some 45 feet high, " with head and hands and feet attached." Such old fetishes, pillars and logs and meteorites, sometimes quite formless or else shaped into some rude resemblance to humanity or to some monstrous thing, and decked out with ornaments, were not seldom pre- served reverentially in temples^ — hidden away like Bambini and relics and displayed only on solemn occasions — long after a splendid statue of the deity had been erected in the sanc- tuary. At Troy we hear of the Palladium, and at Ephesus and on the Tauric Chersonese of the heaven-fallen image of Artemis, and in the Brechtheion there was kept an old ^oavov of Athene long after the Pheidian goddess had been erected in the Parthenon, and at Phigaleia existed (and was renewed in bronze by Onatas of Aegina) a monstrous horse-headed Demeter. Doubtless of the nature of the ancient wooden or clay idol were the ' Aeacidae ' — the images of the old Aeginetan heroes Aeacus, Telamon, and Peleus of which Herodotus tells us. The Aeginetans, he says, when appealed to by the Thebans for help, " sent them the Aeacidae," and the Thebans, " relying on the assistance of the Aeacidae," ventured on war, but were beaten ; whereupon they returned the Aeacidae and " besought the Aeginetans to send them men instead." Moreover, in spite of this experience, just before the battle of Salamis, * Ivydia, Phrygia, and I^ycia all seem to have reached an advanced stage in plastic art before Greece, and doubtless, as well as Egypt, Crete, and the East, contributed many important elements for the development of Greek sculpture. The great rock-relief of ' Niobe ' (probably the Earth-Mother Cybele) on Mount Sipylus in Lydia is very ancient, and so are recently dis- covered tombs in Phrygia with lions like those of Mycenae. Sculptured monuments of high antiquity, probably of Hittite provenance, have lately been discovered at Pteria, the ancient capital of Cappadocia. 221 ANCIENT GREECE says Herodotus, " sl ship was sent by the Athenians toAegina to fetch Aeacus and the other Aeacidae/' According to tradition, the first sculptors and workers in metals were superhuman beings, such as Hephaestus and the fabled tribes of Phrygian Dactyli and Cretan and Rhodian Telchines and I^emnian Cabiri and the Cyclopes. Then we hear of Daedalus. The name may be an epithet (' the artificer '), but there is no good reason to doubt that it was given to some great worker in metals and sculptor and inventor (possibly even of wings!), whom legend and Homer ^ connect with Minos, and thus also with Theseus and Athens, intimating doubt- less the artistic connexion between Crete and Greece in the Minoan age. Daedalus is said to have made statues that could see and walk, and even run away if they were not chained to their pedestals ! This we may accept as an imaginative way of saying that he first gave usable-looking legs to statues and opened their eyes and freed their arms.^ But it will be seen that he and his followers, the Daedalidae, did not succeed at once in banishing the type of the old image with cone-shaped or columnar nether extremities and arms glued to its side, or with its figure swathed in massive drapery and forming a solid piece with the marble on which it is seated — as if doomed to sit there for all eternity. After about 600 the sculptors and masterpieces mentioned by old writers become very numerous, but of many nothing survives but the name. For our object it will be enough to limit ourselves to what can be illustrated by extant monuments. Of these relics there are several well-defined types, in which we trace the evolution from the primitive idol to a statue of high artistic value. (i) The first of these types is a figure whose lower half, though no longer a mere column or block, is columnar, with the * Homer frequently uses cognate words (daidaXeos, SaidaXXeiv, &c.) in connexion with artistic decoration, but only mentions Daedalus as the maker of a dancing-ground for Ariadne. With ' Daedalus ' cf. the half-mythical sculptor ' Smilis ' ((t/xiXt; = sculptor's chisel). ' Something analogous can be said of Giotto. 222 58, Statue from the Branchidae Tempi^e 59. The ' Harpy Tomb 222 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS legs undefined and entirely hidden by a stiff, shapeless skirt, below which the feet protrude side by side. The arms are attached to the sides, the drapery has no real folds or texture, but is a solid mass marked with conventional lines. The head- dress is of an Egyptian or Oriental character, generally with broad flat masses of hair hanging down in front of each shoulder. This type is well illustrated by the ' Naxian Artemis ' (Fig. 50) discovered in Delos, where Nicandra of Naxos dedicated the image to the goddess, and by a similar, but headless, statue found near the site of the great Hera temple in Samos. (ii) Secondly, there are heavily draped seated figures which, in early examples, seem, as has been said, to form one solid piece with the block or throne on which they sit. Of this type the Branchidae statues (which are in the British Museum) offer fine examples. The specimen given in Fig. 58 is inscribed with the name ' Chares of Techiussa,' probably some great Milesian, possibly a tyrant of Miletus long before its destruction by Darius in 494. (See Note A at the end of this book for the Branchidae temple.) The Cretan statue given in Fig. 6 was perhaps of the same character. The lower half is wanting, but not only the flat masses of pendent (probably false) hair but also the general pose remind one forcibly of seated Egyptian statues. It is the only specimen extant of Cretan sculpture of this period, and shows perhaps the style of the followers of Daedalus, such as Dipoenus and Scyllis, who are said to have introduced statuary (c. 580) from Crete into the Peloponnese. This statue is perhaps considerably older than any of those from the temple of the Branchidae. (iii) Thirdly, we have winged figures, possibly an imitation ' from Oriental art. In classical Greek art wings are rare, as being unnatural. In Oriental art we often have four or six wings, and it seems just possible that the oldest Greek Victory (Nike) extant may have had six. It is a very uncouth thing, 1 For wings in Greek sculpture I may perhaps refer to an appendix in my edition of Virgil's A eneid, i. (Blackie & Son) . In later sculpture Victory, Cupid, and Death are winged. See Fig. 119 and p. 419. 223 ANCIENT GREECE but is highly interesting as one of the first Greek statues with unmistakable legs — legs, too, that are bent. Perhaps the goddess was represented flying. From small bronzes that repeat the type it seems probable that the figure floated, suspended by the drapery. Its wings were probably coloured. It has a rather sour archaic smile and an elaborate system of forehead curls and pendent tresses. It is also interesting because it may be the actual statue referred to by Aristophanes, who says that Achermus of Chios was the first to make a winged Nike. It was discovered in Delos, whither many statues were sent as offerings from other Aegaean islands, and a pedestal was discovered near it on which were the names of Micciades and Achermus, the Chian sculptors, whose date is about 570. Winged figures occur also on vases and in other paintings of this period. They are sometimes purely decora- tive (as perhaps on the Clazomenae sarcophagus. Fig. 45), sometimes they represent a winged Artemis, sometimes Harpies, Fates (/cr/pe?), genii, or evil spirits. The finest example of this (of about 550) is the famous ' Harpy tomb/ a monument evidently of Greek (Ionic) work, but discovered in lyycia and now in the British Museum (Fig. 59). The winged bird-like figures are doubtless death-goddesses who are carrying away the souls of the dead. The central portion represents probably Hades, the king of the lower world, or else a deceased hero, receiving gifts — a motive found on many Greek tombs, the earliest examples being very ancient Spartan gravestones. ^ These sculptures formed a part of the frieze of a massive square monument, some 30 feet high. The relief was elaborately painted, but the colours have quite disap- peared. From frescoes on the internal walls of the sepulchral chamber it seems as if the monument was used in early Christian times by a ' Stylite ' (a hermit who lived on the top of a column). (iv) Fourthly, we have draped figures, mostly female, in which the arms are, in later examples, no longer attached to the sides, but bent and projecting forward (made of a separate ^ Cf. the (later) stele of Hegeso, Fig. 106. 224 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS piece and inserted) or crossed over the body ; and^the left foot is almost always advanced. In these statues the drapery is no longer massive and conventional, but treated with a skill that shows a very great advance. Of this type we have striking examples in the fourteen female statues excavated some twenty-seven years ago on the Acropolis (p. 228). Their date is probably about 520 to 500. (v) I^astly, a large number of later archaic Greek statues belong to what is called the * nude male' type.^ They are full length, and fully developed in limb, and show great ana- tomical knowledge and artistic skill. They seem not seldom to represent the god Apollo ^ (thence are commonly known as ' Apollos '), but are evidently sometimes statues of athletes. Nude ' Apollos ' of this type have been found in Naxos, Thera, Melos, and other places. A very striking early example, now at Munich, was found at Tenea (between Corinth and Mycenae). It has the antique Egyptian 'wig' and the archaic grimace, but the anatomy is finely treated. The finest examples, however, come from Boeotia, especially from the sanctuary of Apollo on Mount Ptoon. They are archaic in style, but give evidence of a careful study of the human body, and are the first distinct intimations of that mastery of the Greeks in statuary which has never been approached. In connexion with these ' Apollos ' should be mentioned the statues of athletes. We hear of wooden statues of athletes erected at Olympia about 540, and one at Phigaleia perhaps as early as 560. The chief makers of athlete statues were the sculptors of Argos and Sicyon. Ancient writers speak of the great pre-eminence of these schools, and doubtless their statuary, which consisted at this epoch mainly of avSpLavTe<s (' men-portraits ') rather than ayoKixara or avaQrfiJ.aTa (images [for worship or dedication), had a very great influence on 1 Attic art. Unfortunately — perhaps because they worked 1 mostly in bronze, which tempted the plunderer — nothing of * These various types are given by Professor Vi. Gardner in his Handbook 'f Greek Sculpture. 2 A colossal nude Poseidon was found at Sunion in 1906. P 225 ANCIENT GREECE any importance, except a bronze statuette of a very heavily built athlete, has survived, and we must content ourselves with the facts that the Argive Ageladas ^ was the master of two of the most illustrious Athenian sculptors, Pheidias and Myron, as well as of Polycleitus (who himself was perhaps an Argive), and that Canachus of Sicyon made for the Branchidae temple a bronze Apollo which was carried off by Darius and restored by Seleucus. The reliefs on Attic tombstones of this period may be men- tioned in connexion with portrait sculpture. Of these the most interesting is that of Aristion (Fig. 51), probably the same Aristion who proposed giving a bodyguard to Peisistratus {c. 560). Although archaic in style, it shows the very delicate modelling and finish for which the early Athenian school is so remarkable. Thus, very faintly and discontinuously amidst all the complexities of the subject, we are able to trace the evolution of the statue of the classical period from the primitive Koavov, In doing this we have left unnoticed some very important facts connected with the use of statuary for architectural purposes. I shall, therefore, add a few words about, firstly, the sculptures from the ancient temple at Selinus ; secondly, the archaic sculptures excavated on the Athenian Acropolis ; and, thirdly, the Aeginetan marbles. (i) On the site of the most ancient of the temples at Selinus, in Sicily (see Note A), have been discovered some metopes (reliefs on a Doric frieze) which are probably the oldest extant perfect specimens of Greek architectural sculpture. Origi- nally they were coloured and had a dark blue background, but only faint traces of colour remain. They date from about 600, and are thus some half-century older than the Croesus column, and still older than the ' Harpy tomb ' (Figs. 52, 59). Three of the earliest of them, casts of which are to be seen in the British Museum, represent Perseus cutting off the Gorgon's ^ See Hdt. v. 72 for the Olympian victor {c. 520) whose statue by Ageladas was seen at Olympia by Pausanias. As Ageladas also made a statue of Zeus for the Messenians at Naupactus in 459, he must have lived and worked to a great age. 226 6o. BUROPA ON THE BUI^I, Metope from temple at SeJinus 226 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS head, Heracles carrying the Cercopes ^ suspended Hke rabbits to the two ends of a pole, and a chariot with its four horses facing the spectator — a clever bit of perspective. Some of the figures are exceedingly uncouth, misproportioned, and dis- torted, and the faces repulsive with their goggle eyes and mean- ingless stare, but they are interesting as being original Greek work (Selinus having been founded by Megara), and showing no such evidence of Egyptian, Cretan, or Oriental influence as is noticeable in much of the early sculpture that we have been considering. The Selinus metope of which Fig. 60 gives a representation is from another temple, and is perhaps of somewhat later date (say about 580). It is of very much more artistic conception and execution, and has considerable dignity and vigour and delicacy in detail, although it is thoroughly archaic in its outlines and perspective. The subject — Europa being carried by the bull across the sea (intimated by a dolphin) from Phoenicia to Crete — seems to point to Cretan workmanship or influence. (2) After the departure of the Persians, who had twice (in 480 and 479) sacked Athens and had burnt or broken down as far as they could every temple and monument, the Athenians at once set to work to rebuild on a more magnificent scale, and in order to obtain a larger area on the Acropolis they erected (on the advice of Cimon or Themistocles) strong walls on the upper slopes and filled in the spaces between these walls and the top of the hill, using for this purpose the relics of the old temples — such as the ancient temple of Athene Polias — which had stood on the summit. During the years 1882-87 these spaces were thoroughly searched, and many statues and inscriptions and architectural fragments were excavated, which have thrown a great deal of light on the question of Athenian sculpture in the sixth century. The most important of these finds are (a) remains of the pediments of some very ancient temples, {b) remains of the pediment of the temple of Athene Polias — rebuilt by Peisistratus — and (c) a series of fourteen female statues, more or less perfect. ^ For these mischievous little gnomes see Rawlinson's note to Hdt. vii. 216. 227 ANCIENT GREECE (a) The ancient pediments (to be seen in the Acropolis Museum at Athens) are of yellow limestone (poros). One represents Heracles killing the Hydra ; in another he is wrest- ling with Triton, the ' old man of the sea,' while from the other corner is advancing — perhaps against Zeus, who was his great adversary — the horrid monster Typhon, with three human heads and busts (reminding one of Dante's Geryon, whose face was that of a just man), and a winged body with inter- woven snakes for feet, and a long dragon tail. All these monsters were originally painted in bright reds and blues and greens, like terra-cottas, and set against a coloured back- ground. They doubtless date from a time earlier than that of Peisistratus — probably from about the same period as that of the Selinus sculptures. So shocking to the modern Hellenist does their barbarous monstrosity appear — especially when imagined in their pristine glare of colour — that some suppose them to be products of the Dark Age, and to have been buried out of sight long before the advent of the Persians, as offensive to public taste. Perhaps one was the pediment of the ancient shrine of Athene Polias before it was rebuilt by Peisistratus. (b) The pediment of the old temple of Athene was in Parian marble. Its fragments have been successfully reconstructed into a ' gigantomachia ' — a battle between Athene and giants. Three she has overthrown, and is striking at one with her spear while she holds extended the aegis — originally gorgeously decorated with red and blue and green scales. The date of this marble pediment may be about 540. It was probably erected by Peisistratus when he turned the old shrine of Athene into a Doric temple (see Note A) . (c) Fourteen female draped statues in Parian marble (eight of them with heads) were excavated, mostly from the filled-up space between the Erechtheion and the north-western wall of the Acropolis. What they represent, whether priestesses or donors or dedicated portraits, is unknown. Perhaps they stood in or near the old temple of Athene. They are all in slightly different attitudes, but all are erect, with left foot advanced and forearm projecting horizontally, as if they held 228 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS some offering in the hand (Fig. 37). The dress — evidently that which prevailed at Athens in the age of Peisistratus — consists of a long crimpled Ionic chiton, fastened above the upper arm with small brooches (jepovai, fibulae) or buttons, and a peplos, doubled and fastened over the right shoulder by fibulae. In some cases the peplos is wanting ; in others it is fastened, like a Doric chiton, over both shoulders. The drapery, of which parts were richly decorated and coloured, is of exquisitely delicate and elaborate workmanship, though in this, as in the type of face and otherwise, there is a great difference between the earlier and the later of these statues. Some have the goggle eyes and meaningless stare or grimace of archaic sculpture ; in others the face shows considerable character and is very finely modelled, giving evidence of a great advance in the direction of that feminine grace and delicacy which is one of the characteristics of early Attic sculpture, and to which, when wedded to the manly vigour of the athletic Argive school, we owe the development of the highest types of Greek plastic art — those which we associate with the names of Pheidias, Myron, and Praxiteles. Before the excavations on the Acropolis we possessed scarcely any relics of Athenian sculpture during the period preceding the Persian wars. Nor was this surprising, for the Persians were not only intensely embittered against Athens and therefore wreaked their vengeance by wholesale destruction, but they were also fire- worshippers and therefore iconoclasts. In Asia Minor the Bphesian temple was the only one spared by Xerxes, and in Attica every shrine and every image was destroyed or mutilated. This explains the total disappearance : of many buildings and works of art mentioned by ancient ; writers. And much that was made of valuable material and was transportable was doubtless carried off to the Bast. This probably accounts for the disappearance of the bronze four-horse chariot which is said to have been erected on the left hand of the steps leading up to the Acropolis, as a trophy ^ of the victorious Chalcidian campaign of 506. It certainly ^ Pericles probably set another in its place. 229 ANCIENT GREECE does account for the temporary disappearance of another work of art — the bronze statues of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton, made by the sculptor Antenor, whose name occurs on what is beHeved to be the basis of the largest and best preserved of the ' Tanten ' (' Aunts ') — to use a name that has been given to the draped female statues lately de- scribed. These bronze tyrannicides were carried off by Xerxes, but restored to Athens by Alexander the Great, or one of his successors, and were seen by Pausanias standing in the Athenian Agora side by side with the marble statues (possibly replicas from memory) which had been erected at once (c. 477) to retrieve the loss. Now for the most part of the six centuries between the age of Xerxes and that of Pausanias these groups — one in bronze and the other in marble — were among the most famiHar sights in Athens. They seem to have been spared even by the rapacious Sulla, and by Caligula and Nero himself, but possibly found their way to Constantinople with the bronzen Athene and the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias. Anyhow, they disappeared. But not many years ago re- productions of one of the groups on a vase and a coin and a marble chair (now at Broom Hall, in England) led to the recognition of two statues in the Naples Museum (Fig. 61) as copies — it is uncertain whether of Antenor' s bronzes or the marbles of Critius and Nesiotes. Probably Antenor's statues (if we may judge from the ' Tante ' attributed to him) were much more archaic in style than these dramatically animated figures. It should be remarked that the figure with the chlamys on the left arm is that of Aristogeiton, the elder of the two tyrannicides, and that the original statue had a bearded head, for which in modern times a youthful beardless head of fourth-century work has been substituted. The last Athenian statue that I shall mention here belongs as regards date rather to the next period, for Calamis, the sculptor who probably made it, was born only some ten years before Pheidias and survived him (having, it is said, made a statue to Apollo, the Stayer of Evil, to commemorate the cessation of the great plague of 430). Calamis is classed by 230 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS ancient writers among the greatest Greek sculptors, and the Hst of his works is long. He made many famous statues of gods, and was also celebrated for his horses. He is said to have been an Athenian, and his style was probably that of the earlier Attic school, which, as we have seen, was distinguished for its grace and delicacy rather than for athletic muscularity and vigour. Of his works we possessed until lately not one single specimen, and it is by no means certain that we now possess one, but it seems likely — especially as he is known to have accepted various commissions from Hiero of Syracuse and to have made him several bronze horses. The statue in question (Fig. 74) is an exceedingly fine bronze which was found at Delphi about fifteen years ago. It represents a youthful charioteer, who stood originally on a chariot at rest, to judge from fragments of the horses that have been found. The tranquil, self-possessed dignit^T- of the figure, the careful and graceful treatment of the long charioteer robe, and the ex- ceedingly delicate modelling of the arms, hands, and feet offer a striking contrast to the bold, Michelangelesque work of the Peloponnesian athletic schools. Upon the basis a fragmen- tary inscription contains the word polyzalos (' much-loved '), which may be a name ; and possibly the group was dedicated by Polyzalus, brother to Hiero. This high-bred youth is therefore possibly Polyzalus himself or some younger member of the princely Syracusan family. It is known that Hiero won chariot-races at Olympia. (3) The so-called Aeginetan marbles, remains of the two pediments of the temple of Athene (or, if we may infer so from an inscription found on the site, the temple of a local goddess named Aphaia), were discovered in 1811. Casts are to be seen in the British Museum, but the originals are in the Glyptothek at Munich, restored and reconstructed by the Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen (Fig. 63). A more successful reconstruction (the models of which are also in the Munich Museum) has been made by Professor Furtwangler, who in 190 1 excavated further frag- ments. He divides the combatants into groups, and makes the archers shoot towards the corners instead of towards the 231 ANCIENT GREECE centre, where Athene stands, and fills up the two cornets with two prostrate bodies. The scene of the west pediment is evidently some episode in the Trojan War in which Aeginetan heroes (Aeacidae, such as Ajax and Achilles ?) took part, and the subject of the east pediment seems to be the earlier expe- dition against I^aomedon of Troy made by Heracles and Telamon, king of Aegina. Both the figures of Athene are stiff and archaic. Possibly they are old statues belonging to the temple before the erection of the other figures — ^which date evidently from the years following the battle of Marathon. Some of the figures had bronze armour originally. At this epoch paint or gilt was used only for dress, ornaments, eyes, Hps, and hair. The nude was mostly represented by plain or tinted marble. Its surface was very often oiled and polished and slightly coloured, both in the case of Parian and also in that of the somewhat yellower Pentelic (Attic) marble, which came into use during the fifth century. The glittering white of Carrara marble, unrelieved by any colour, as we see it in modern sculpture galleries, would have seemed repellently cold and inartistic to the Greek. The dismay that we gene- rally feel at colour in statuary and architecture may be an evidence of very refined sensibility, but it is essentially un- Greek. The sculptor of these pediments is not known for certain, but probably it was Onatas, the most celebrated of the Aeginetan school, which was evidently closely related to the Pelopon- nesian schools of athletic sculpture. Before Onatas, another famous Aeginetan sculptor, Smilis, had made the Samian Hera ; and ancient writers give us to understand that Aegina in early times was famed for its sculptors, but of this we possess almost no evidence except these Aeginetan marbles ; and the Aeginetan school, even if famous, was short-lived, for the existence of Aegina as an independent state was blotted out by Athens in 455. Onatas is said to have made statues for many cities both in Greece and Western Hellas, and, like Calami s, to have received commissions from Hiero for bronze horses and charioteers. He also made warrior groups for 232 62. Tempi^e of Aphaia, Aegina 63. Aegina Pediment 232 THE AGE OF PEISISTRATUS dedication at Olympia and Delphi. It is therefore very probable that the pediments of the Aegina temple were his work. They show remarkable anatomical knowledge. The modelling of the limbs is exact and firm. But the faces are those of mere fighters or athletes, entirely devoid of higher human interest, and, except perhaps technically, these specimens of Aeginetan art stand lower than many older sculptures, and very much lower than the best Attic art of the next period. 233 CHAPTER V THE PERSIAN INVASIONS (500-478) SECTIONS : THE GREEKS AND CARTHAGINIANS IN SICILY : PINDAR IN the last chapter the thread of the narrative was dropped at the arrival of Darius at Sardis after his Thracian and Scythian expedition of 512. He had left Megabazus with an army of 80,000 men in Thrace, the greater part of which, as well as Paeonia, to the west of the Strymon, was brought under Persian dominion and remained tributary to the Great King for some fifteen years. When Darius left Sardis for Susa he appointed his brother Artaphernes satrap of the western province of the Persian Empire. The Greek cities on the mainland were governed by Greek tyrants who were responsible to this Persian satrap at Sardis. For some years things went on quietly. Then came the explosion known as the Ionian revolt, and this was followed by the Persian invasions of Greece : first (after an unsuccess- ful attempt by Mardonius) the invasion by the fleet and army of Darius under the command of Datis and Arta- phernes, who were beaten at Marathon ; then the far more serious invasion by Xerxes, whom the Greeks defeated at Salamis. The story of the Ionic revolt and the Persian invasions is told by Herodotus in the last four books of his history. With an art that veils itself in seeming artlessness he leads us leisurely onward with his simple, unaffected tale, lingering ever and again over what some may deem unessential details, and making long and delightful digressions, but leaving nevertheless in the mind a far more distinct picture than that which we gain 234 THE PERSIAN INVAftJONS from many more scrupulously critical and correct accounts. Those who have the leisure for such readinf^nd are not forced by a scientific conscience or by the exigencies of examination to use the more sceptical and accurate compilations of modern historians, will find in Herodotus, or in the admirable, though rather free, version of his history by Canon Rawlijfton, the best and most attractive of all descriptions of this period. The same kind of sensation as one has when gliding gently and steadily over a smooth blue sea, with now and then a slight pressure of the hand on the tiller, will be experienced as the story is followed, with now and then a glance at some foot-note which respectfully corrects or supplements the statements of the Father of History. This episode of the world's history is so well known and has been related so often that I shall not attempt to give any very detailed account of it. Moreover, whatever value the story, as told by Herodotus, has for the true student — and it has much — consists in its panoramic effects and its revelation of human and national character, and this value is not increased by a too anxious reconstruction of battles and other military operations, or a too anxious scepticism as regards statistics. I shall therefore briefly state the main facts, and then add a little colour to the bare outline by quoting descriptive passages from Herodotus or other sources.^ It will be remembered that Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, who had accompanied Darius on the Scythian expedition, had persuaded his fellow- Greeks not to break down the bridge over the Danube. The king bade him name his reward. He asked for the gift of the town Myrcinus, on the river Strymon, near the site of the future Amphipolis, and at once • began to fortify it and to collect troops — a procedure which so aroused the suspicions of Megabazus, the commander of the Persian army in Thrace, that he sent word to Darius. The j result was that Darius, who was still at Sardis, informed Histiaeus that he could not bear his absence any longer and ^ Quotations in this chapter are all from Herodotus, unless otherwise stated. ^y versions are founded to some extent on Canon Rawlinson's translation. 235 V I ANCIENT GREECE ordered him to come to Sardis, and thence took him to Susa, where for twelve years he led the envied life of a " benefacl-or of the king " — gnawing his heart with anger and longing for an opportunity for revenge. Now the government of Miletus had passed into the hands of Aristagoras, the son-in-law of Histiaeus. He quarrelled with a Persian commander, Megabates, with whom he had made an unsuccessful raid on Naxos, and (perhaps encouraged by a message from Histiaeus tattooed on the head of a slave) resolved to incite a general revolt of the Hellenic cities against Persia. Democracies were set up in place of tyrannies, and Aristagoras himself, having resigned his government, visited Sparta and vainly tried to win the aid of King Cleomenes. He then went to Athens, and " it being easier,'* says Herodotus, " to deceive a multitude than one man, he suc- ceeded with the Athenians, who were 30,000, though he had failed with Cleomenes. They voted that twenty ships should be sent to the aid of the lonians . . . and these ships were the beginning of trouble between the Greeks and the barbarians." The Eretrians joined with five triremes. With their fleet thus powerfully reinforced, the lonians, had they followed the advice of the historian Hecataeus to fortify some island, might have held their own in the Aegaean and on the coast, but, having landed near Bphesus, they marched up to Sardis " with a great host," and took it. The city contained many houses built of reed, and, a fire having broken out, it was burnt (497). The Greeks hastily retreated, but were overtaken and cut to pieces by Artaphernes and the Persians,_^ and though the revolt spread to Cyprus and Caria and the Propontis, it was suppressed. Aristagoras fled to Myrcinus and met his death in Thrace, but Miletus still headed the revolt against Persia. Histiaeus, having at length persuaded ^ Darius to let him return to the West in order to pacify his fellow-Greeks, aroused the suspicions of Artaphernes at Sardis and fled. He tried in vain to re-enter Miletus. Then he took to piracy in the Hellespont, but at last was caught and put to death by the Persian satrap, an act reprimanded by 236 64. TiiK ' Darius Vase; 236 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS Darius, who, when the head of Histiaeus was brought to him, bade it be buried honourably " as the head of a man who had been a great benefactor to the king and his people." The Persians then with a vast land force, and with 600 ships drawn from Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt, prepared to lay siege to Miletus. The Greek fleet of 353 triremes assembled at the island of lyade — now a hillock in the midst of the wide swampy plain which was once the splendid I^atmic bay at the mouth of the Maeander. Treason and cowardice gave the victory to the barbarians. The Samians deserted in the midst of the battle and sailed home.^ Miletus was captured (493). *' Most of the men were killed. The women and children were made slaves. Those whose lives were spared were carried to Susa, but received no ill-treatment from Darius, who established them at Ampe, a city on the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Tigris. The sanctuary [of the Branchidae] at Didyma was plundered and burnt." (See p. 223 and Fig. 58.) On his expulsion from Athens in 510 Hippias, the son of Peisistratus, had lived first at Sigeum. The Spartans had tried to restore him, but had been foiled by their allies. He then did his utmost to gain help from Persia, and Artaphernes had threatened Athenian envoys at Sardis that " if they wished to remain safe, they must receive Hippias back " ; but nothing had come of it. Though now an old man of seventy, Hippias himself, who was now at Susa, had doubtless urged his claims with Darius during these last dozen years or so, and had rejoiced at the anger of the Great King against the Athenians I and at the subjugation of the lonians. It was, however, not I the laments of the old Hippias but the burning of Sardis i that determined Darius to wipe out Athens and Kretria I from existence and transport their inhabitants to the far East. j In the spring of 492 he ordered Mardonius, " a youth lately I married to Artazostra, the king's daughter," to take a great I fleet from Cilicia to the Hellespont, whither a vast army was I sent to meet him. (On his voyage along the Ionian coast he I * Shortly afterwards a large number of the Samians " of the richer sort " 1 went off to Western Hellas and occupied Zancle (Messina). 237 ANCIENT GREECE '' put down all the tyrants and established democracies ' — a fact that Herodotus regards as " a marvel.") He crosse-; the Hellespont successfully with all his land army, but his flee' was wrecked while attempting to round the dangerous promontory of Athos. *' It is said that the number of ships destroyed was nearly 300, and the men who perished were more than 20,000. The sea around Athos abounds in monsters, and some of the men were seized and devoured by these animals." After subjugating a Thracian tribe, from whom he had suffered great losses, Mardonius withdrew to Asia, " having failed disgracefully. ' ' When Darius had first heard of the burning of Sardis, " laying aside all thought of the lonians, who would, he was sure, pay dearly for their revolt, he had asked, Who are these Athenians ? " — as Cyrus once had asked. Who are these Spartans ? — " and when he was informed, he called for his bow and placed an arrow on the string and shot into the sky, exclaiming. Grant me, Zeus " — he probably said Ormuzd — " to revenge myself on these Athenians I Then he bade one of his attendants every day when his dinner was served thrice to repeat these words : Master, remember the Athenians I " And now the failure of Mardonius had deepened his resentment and his determination. He transferred the command of the armament to the Mede Datis and to his own nephew Artaphernes, who had probably succeeded his father as satrap at Sardis. A mighty fleet was collected by the seaport towns tributary to Persia, and heralds were sent demanding earth and water from the islands and also from the cities in Greece, a large number of whom, says Herodotus, including Aegina, sent the required tokens of submission. But the heralds " were thrown at Athens into the barathron " — an oubliette for criminals — " and at Sparta ^ into a well, and bidden to take therefrom earth and water." Then Datis and Artaphernes, " with orders to carry the Athenians and Eretrians away captive and to bring them into the presence ' Probably the flight of the Spartan king Demaratus to the court of Darius in 491 had incensed the Spartans. I^ater two Spartans voluntarily went to Susa to atone for this murder of the heralds with their lives, but were freely pardoned by Xerxes (Hdt. vi. 134-136). 238 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS of Darius/' took their fleet of 600 triremes across the Aegaean. They burnt the city of the Naxians and took hostages from other islands, but by the command of Darius they spared the temple and treasure of Delos/ on which island Datis landed and made a burnt-offering of 300 talents of frankincense. " After his departure," says Herodotus, " Delos (as the Delians told me) was shaken by an earthquake — the first and last that has been felt there to this day." In passing we may remark that Thucydides (ii. 8) says exactly the same of an earthquake that occurred at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. The great fleet then reached Euboea. Eretria had begged Athens for help, and 4000 Athenian settlers were directed to act as auxiliaries, but these, finding the Kretrians meditating flight or treason, escaped from Buboea. After a siege of six days, two traitors, " both citizens of good repute," betrayed the city to the Persians. It was plundered and burnt, and most of the citizens were carried away to Susa. " King Darius," says Herodotus — and it is another example of Persian magnanimity — " before they were made his captives, cherished fierce indignation against these men for having injured him unpro- voked, but now that he saw them brought into his presence and subjected to him he did them no further harm, and only settled them at a place called Ardericca, 210 furlongs from Susa. . . . And here they continued till my time, and still spoke their old language." From Bretria, by the advice of the old Hippias, the Persians crossed over to Attica. " And because there was no place in all Attica so convenient for their horse as Marathon, and as it lay, moreover, quite close to Bretria, therefore Hippias con- ^ ducted them thither." Of the three Attic plains offering a favourable landing-place, the Thriasian, the Athenian, and the [ Marathonian, the last — about twenty-two miles from Athens — ^ A still more striking example of the regard that Darius and his Persians • — but not Xerxes — showed for the temples of Apollo (whom they perhaps identified with the Sun-god) is the fact that Datis, after his defeat at Marathon, ' having found a gilt image of Apollo that his men had looted, took it to Delos \ in his own ship and begged the Delians to restore it to its temple in Greece — which was not done for twenty years. 239 ANCIENT GREECE was for the Persian armament by far the most accessible ; and doubtless Hippias remembered vividly how, fifty years before, he had accompanied his father, Peisistratus, in his successful expedition from Bretria, and how they had landed at Marathon and had surprised and routed the Athenian army. " When intelligence of this reached the Athenians, they likewise marched their troops to Marathon, and there stood on the defensive, having at their head ten generals, of whom one was Miltiades." They seem to have chosen the rather shorter and steeper path that skirts round Pentelicus to the north, for we find them " drawn up in order of battle in the sacred precinct of Heracles," to the north-west of the Persian encamp- ment. " Before they left the city, the generals had sent off to Sparta a herald, who was by profession a trained runner. . ,- . He reached Sparta " — some 135 miles distant — " on the very next day. . . . The Spartans wished to help the Athenians, but were unable to come to their aid at once, being unwilling to break the estabHshed rule. They could not march out of Sparta on the ninth, when the moon had not yet reached its full. So they waited for the full of the moon." These state-^ ments, so composedly made by Herodotus, amaze one. Why, we ask, had not the Athenians secured the aid of the Spartans and other allies long ago ? Surely all that had happened in Buboea was known to them. Surely they knew that their turn would come next. And the fact that Aegina, and perhaps^ Thebes, and other Greek cities had sent earth and water to the barbarians ought surely to have made them still more anxious to organize resistance — if they meant to offer resistance. And how is it credible that a highly civilized Greek people, the people that prided itself on being representative Hellenes, the foremost of Greek states, the head of a powerful league of Greek cities, should have let a superstition which nowadays scarcely any longer incommodes the traveller in Central Africa prevent them sending help when the very existence of Greece was at stake ? It would truly be incredible had we not in Greek history other similar cases, and no explanation can be 240 W THE PERSIAN INVASIONS Pfound except, as Grote says, in a most astounding " attribute of Greek character " — or perhaps we might more justly call it Spartan character. One can but cite such instances and leave them to explain themselves. Other cases, as we shall see, occurred in connexion with Thermopylae and with Salamis.^ The battle has been described and ' reconstructed ' times without number. I shall content myself with noting a few points of interest. The Athenian hoplites numbered perhaps 9000 and the gallant little Plataean contingent 1000. The total Greek loss was 192 ! The Persians had about 200,000 - foot and 10,000 cavalry ; but all this armament could not well have taken part in the fight. They lost, says Herodotus, 6400 men and seven ships. The rest of the great fleet — some 600 triremes and many transports — at once sailed south and rounded Sunion, with the evident intention of capturing Athens, possibly incited to do so by a signal, the flashing of a shield from the top of Pentelicus, a treacherous act which none has ever explained, but which was attributed (Herodotus thinks wrongly) to the Alcmaeonidae. The walls of the city had been demolished ?by the Peisistratidae, and it could have offered no resistance had not the Athenian army, leaving Aristides and his regiment to guard the field, hastened back (Herodotus only says " with all possible speed," which has sometimes been interpreted as ''on the same day"), and the Persians, seeing them and probably learning the approach of the 2000 Spartans, who had at length started, abandoned their project and sailed away. " After the full of the moon," says Herodotus, " 2000 Spartans came to Athens. So eager had they been to arrive in time that they took only three days to reach Attica. They came too late for the battle, but as they had a strong desire to see the Medes, they continued their march to Marathon, and there viewed the tSiain. Then, after bestowing great praise on the Athenians for their achievement, they returned." Before passing on let us note a few points of personal interest. ' ^ See Hdt. vi. io6, vii. 206, ix. 7 ; Thuc. iv. 5, v. 54. One is reminded of 'the Jews refusing to fight on the Sabbath during the siege of Jerusalem by 1 the Romans. Q 241 ANCIENT GREECE After the Greek wings had closed in and routed the victorious Persians in the centre and had chased them to the sea, " they laid hold of the ships and called for fire ; and it was here that Callimachus, the polemarch, after greatly distinguishing himself, was slain . . . and Cynaegeirus, the son of Euphorion, having seized on a ship by the decoration at the stern, had his hand cut off by the blow of an axe, and thus perished." This Cynaegeirus was the brother of the poet Aeschylus, who himself, as well as another brother, Ameinias, was present at the battle ^ and probably took part in the celebrated charge of the Athenian hoplites. That Callimachus was the * pole- march ' — that is, the official commander-in-chief of the ten generals (each perhaps in command of a phyle of looo men) — is allowed by Herodotus, but he states that Miltiades won over Callimachus to give his casting vote for risking the battle, and that the other nine generals, " when their turn came to command, gave up their right to Miltiades," who nevertheless *' waited until his own day of command came," and then won the battle. This has been questioned, for it is asserted that daily command by rotation came into practice later ; but there is no sufficient reason to doubt the account given by Herodotus, and in any case Miltiades was practically, if not officially, > the victor of Marathon — as the Athenians, too, thought, for besides the ten pillars on the field of battle in memory of the fallen a monument was, it is said, erected in honour of him. It will be remembered that he had succeeded his uncle as tyrant of the Chersonese. He had incurred the resentment of Darius by voting for the destruction of the bridge over the Danube (p. 191) and by conquering and handing over to the Athenians the islands of lycmnos and Imbros, and on the failure of the Ionic revolt he had fled to Athens. His son, Metiochus, had been captured by the Persians. ('* Darius, however, when the Phoenicians brought him into his presence, was so far from doing him any hurt that he loaded him with favours, ^ He doubtless also fought at Salamis — so vividly described in his Persae — and at Plataea, and an Ameinias, possibly this brother of his, greatly dis- tinguished himself at Salamis. 242 65. Pythagoras 66. Aeschyi^us 67. MII^TIADES 68. ThemistocIvES 242 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS giving him a house and estates and also a Persian wife/') His popularity at Athens was partly due to the acquisition of lycmnos and Imbros and partly to his hostility to the Peisis- tratidae, who had assassinated his father Cimon (celebrated for having thrice won with the same mares the four-horse chariot-race at Olympia) ; moreover, his experience in war and his knowledge of the Persians doubtless led to his election as general. Besides Aeschylus and Callimachus and Miltiades two famous men, afterwards great rivals, Aristides and Themistocles, took part in the battle — the former as general, the latter a young man of perhaps twenty-six. Some thirty years later, in the great public portico near the Athenian Agora known as the Poikile Stoa (the ' Painted Portico '), the Michelangelo of antiquity, Polygnotus, depicted the battle of Marathon. He seems to have chosen three scenes : the first was the charge of the Athenians and Plataeans, the second was the slaughter of the Persians in the swamp, the third showed the attack of the Greeks on the ships. The Persian leaders, Datis and Artaphernes, and the Greek generals Callimachus and Miltiades and others were portrayed — Cynaegeirus, too, seizing the stem of the vessel. Something should perhaps be said here about the Spartan leaders — though they were conspicuous for their absence. We have several times already heard of the Spartan king Cleomenes. He had reigned since about 520, and had helped to eject Hippias, but had failed in a second expedition to Athens. He had resisted the appeal of the Milesians and the bribes of their envoy, Aristagoras.^ As was often the case (an inevitable and perhaps intentional result of the curious dual system), the two Spartan kings had quarrelled. Cleomenes, who was wild and impulsive (touched, indeed, with insanity, ^ See Hdt. v. 49 sq. for the story of the bronzen map and the dismissal of I Aristagoras for having suggested to the Spartans a three months* march up I to Babylon ; and how the little Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes, and after- wards wife of her half-uncle Leonidas, saved her father from accepting the bribe. ANCIENT GREECE if we are to believe Herodotus), succeeded finally, a year before Marathon, in persuading the Delphic oracle to declare his rival, King Demaratus, to be illegitimate. Demaratus fled to the court of Darius,^ and we shall find him later as the trusted adviser of Xerxes. A year after Marathon Cleomenes was proved to have tampered with the Delphic oracle in order to dethrone his rival, and took to flight. He was allowed to return, but showed signs of insanity and was fettered and placed under the guard of a Helot, and committed suicide. I^eonidas, his half-brother, succeeded, and when he died at Thermopylae" Cleombrotus and then Pausanias held the regency for his son Pleistarchus. Demaratus was succeeded by I^eotychidas, who reigned till 469. The counsel given by Solon to Croesus to " mark well the end " has a striking application in regard to many — indeed, to most — ^of the famous leaders and statesmen of Greek history. The end of Miltiades is especially painful. He used his popularity to persuade the Athenians to put a fleet of seventy" fully manned ships at his disposal, *' without saying what country he was going to attack, but only that it was a very wealthy land, where they might easily get as much gold as they could carry away." In order to avenge some private- wrong he attacked the island of Paros ; but after besieging the town in vain, he was persuaded by a Parian prisoner, a priestess, to steal some sacred object — for this was apparently his purpose in going by night to a Parian temple. On his return he injured himself when jumping from the wall of the precinct, and he returned invalided to Athens. Here he was impeached for having deceived the Athenians. His life was spared, but he was fined fifty talents. " Soon afterwards his leg gangrened and mortified ; and so Miltiades died ; and the fine was paid by his son Cimon." What was the end of Hippias is uncertain. Herodotus gives a graphic picture of the old man landing at Marathon, and *' marshalling the companies of the barbarians as they ^ Many famous Greeks went over to the Persians. I need only mention the two ' saviours of Greece,' Themistocles and the victor of Plataea, Pausanias. 244 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS disembarked " ; but we hear no more. Had he been killed in the battle we should have surely heard of it. Some assert that he retired to I^emnos, which was now for a time reoccupied by the Persians, but was reannexed by Athens after Salamis. We hear of Peisistratidae — perhaps sons of Hippias — at the court of Xerxes. The occurrences in Greece during the interval between the battle of Marathon and that of Salamis proved of very great moment in deciding the fate of the Hellenic race. I^et us first consider these, and then turn to Persia and the vast preparations of Darius and Xerxes for wreaking vengeance on Athens. The perpetual hostility between Athens and Aegina has been frequently mentioned, and it will be remembered that the Athenians had denounced Aegina to Sparta for having sent earth and water to the Persian king. Sparta, the head of a great confederation to which even Athens belonged, had lately^ by means of a rather mean ruse,^ defeated its great rival Argos, and had almost exterminated the Argive warriors — so that the city " was left so bare of men that the slaves managed the state and administered everything until the sons of those who were slain by Cleomenes grew up.'' Sparta, therefore, felt justified in acting in a high-handed manner, and, having taken hostages from the Aeginetans, handed them over to the Athenians. After Marathon these hostages were demanded back by the Aeginetans, but the demand was refused by Athens, and continual fighting went on between the two states from about 487 until 483, when, in prospect of I renewed invasion by the Persians, the Greek states assembled on the Corinthian isthmus and decided to patch up all quarrels. Probably, as Herodotus says, " the breaking out of this Aeginetan war was the saving of Greece ; for hereby the i Athenians were forced to become a maritime power.'' Even in the Dark Age, as we have seen, Athens possessed a considerable navy ; but as a maritime power she was then 1 Hdt. vi. 78. 24s ANCIENT GREECE out-rivalled by Corinth, and in later days by Corcyra and Syracuse, and had held her own with much difficulty against Aegina. The quarrel with this neighbouring island-state induced the Athenians now to build ships, and the man who suggested this (doubtless foreseeing Salamis) was the great statesman Themistocles. Bven before the battle of Marathon he had been archon,^ and had carried a measure for the fortification of the Peiraeus and the preparation of docks in the three natural harbours ; and the work was begun ; but it was not completed until after the Persian wars. Themistocles, as we are told by Thucydides in a masterly analysis of his character (i. 138), was " the best judge of things present with the least delibera- tion, and the best conjecturer of the future/' This insight and foresight made him beHeve that the safety of Greece and the future greatness of Athens depended on her sea-power. Marathon had been a victory for Athenian hoplites — the high- class citizens of Athens, whose political leaders were Aristides and Xanthippus. Themistocles, though no professional party- leader or demagogue, gained the allegiance of the mercantile and naval part of the population, of that ' nautical rabble ' on which Aristophanes — the praiser of good old Marathonian times — pours such contempt. The claims of the Peiraeus were begin- ning to make themselves heard. It was felt by some that Athens, if she was to be a great maritime power, should not be at the distance of four miles from the sea, and doubtless the transference of the city to the Peiraean peninsula would have saved her from enormous difficulties and expenses (such as those connected with her Long Walls) ; but the feeling against abandoning the ancestral site and the Acropolis was exceedingly strong and prevailed. The policy urged by Themistocles was that of fortifying the harbours of Athens and increasing her navy. About the year 483 fortune offered him the following opportunity. *' The Athenians, having a large sum of money * If this was, as stated, in 493-2, and if he was born, as stated, about 514, he would have been only about twenty-one years of age. Hitherto the open beach of Phaleron had sufficed for the warships. 246 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS in their treasury, the produce of the mines at lyaurion [near Sunion], were meaning to distribute it among the full-grown citizens, who would have received ten drachmae apiece, when Themistocles persuaded them to build with the money two hundred ships " — more probably to raise their navy to this number — " to help them in their war against the Aeginetans. . . . The new ships were not used for this purpose, but became a help to Greece in her hour of need." About the personality of Themistocles and his two chief rivals, Xanthippus and Aristides, a few words should be said. He was the son of a middle-class Athenian, Neocles. His mother was a foreigner, a Thracian or Halicarnassian. He owed, therefore, his citizenship to the late reforms of Cleisthenes, and his early political pre-eminence under such unfavourable conditions to very unusual abilities. His meteor-like career and fall will be related in connexion with historical events. Probably no one ever earned more justly the name of a saviour of his country, nor that of a traitor — although many illustrious Greeks contest with him the latter title to fame. Xanthippus was connected through his wife, Agarista (a niece of the reformer Cleisthenes), with the celebrated ^^l Alcmaeonidae. He was a leader of the old democratic party, which held to the reforms of Cleisthenes against the more advanced radical and nautical doctrines of Themistocles. In 483, things having come to a crisis between the two parties, an appeal was made to ostracism and Xanthippus was banished (see Fig. 75). At the battle of Salamis he returned, was made admiral in place of Themistocles in 479, and fought at My cale. He was the father of Pericles, who began to take part in public affairs about 469. Aristides was of noble Athenian family. He was, as we have seen, one of the generals at Marathon. In the following year he was archon. He had been an intimate friend of Cleisthenes (who had evidently died about 500) . His character gained him the surname ' the Just.' He took part with Xanthippus in opposing the policy of Themistocles, and like him was ostracized (483 or 482). In this connexion a rather trite 247 ANCIENT GREECE story should perhaps be retold. An ilHterate voter appealed to a bystander to scratch on his ostrakon (potsherd) the name Aristides. The bystander, who happened to be Aristides himself, complied with the request, but asked the man why he wished to ostracize Aristides. " Because," was the answer, " I'm so tired of hearing him called the Just." Aristides, permitted to return, took part in the battle of Salamis, as we shall see, and became a great power in the state. To him and Cimon, the son of Miltiades, was chiefly due the building up of the Athenian Empire. He lived to see the ostracism of Themistocles, and died, almost in poverty, in the year 468. Ivct us now turn to Persia. After the return of Datis and Artaphernes the determination of Darius to chastise Greece seems to have urged him to collect a still vaster armament. But in the midst of these preparations he died (485). His latter years had been troubled by the quarrels of his sons in regard to the succession. Artabazanes was the eldest, but was born before, whereas Xerxes was born soon after, the accession of Darius. Moreover, the mother of Xerxes was Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus and widow of Cambyses, and she was regarded as the chief wife of Darius. He therefore (influenced also, it is said, by the arguments of the exiled Spartan Demaratus, who had himself lost his kingship through a question of legitimacy) appointed Xerxes as his heir. Xerxes was a mere youth. He was at first " coldly disposed towards a Grecian war," and gave his attention to subduing Egypt, which had revolted, and over which he set his brother Achae- menes as satrap. (Achaemenes led the Egyptian naval contingent in the invasion of Greece, and was afterwards killed in Egypt.) After his return from Egypt Xerxes called a council and pledged himself " not to rest till he had taken and burnt Athens." The plan was warmly supported by Mardonius, who had' con- stantly incited Xerxes to avenge the Persians, and had been seconded by messengers from the Aleuadae (the Thessalian princes who had espoused the cause of the Persians), and by certain Peisistratidae (perhaps sons of Hippias), as well as by an ' oracle-monger,' Onomacritus by name, who had long ago been 24-8 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS banished by Hipparchus from Athens for having forged prophecies under the venerable name of Musaeus. This Orphic seer " had plied Xerxes with his oracles, and the Peisistratidae and Aleuadae had not ceased to press him with their advice, till at last Xerxes had yielded." But his uncle Artabanus was strongly opposed to the attempt, extolling the invincible bravery of the Greeks, while Mardonius sneered at them as cowards, saying, " Though I went as far as Mace- donia and came little short of reaching Athens itself, yet not a soul ventured to come out against me to battle." Xerxes was disquieted by the advice of his uncle ; but he had a vision which bade him keep to his former decision, and after the vision had twice appeared he bade Artabanus don the royal robes and lay himself on the royal bed. The vision then appeared also to him, and " threatened him and endeavoured to burn out his eyes with red-hot irons." So he was convinced ; and, encouraged by still another vision, Xerxes sent forth orders to all the nations in the Persian Empire to collect men and horses and chariots and transports and ships of war. Herodotus uses all the resources of his inimitable art in order to impress one with the incomparable vastness of the armament of Xerxes. Some of his statistics may perhaps be questionable, but in spite of all that it has suffered at the hands of scepticism and criticism his account of the invasion still remains by far the most worthy of perusal, for it is a work of art and not merely a bare enumeration of well-authenticated facts. As my space allows me only the choice between con- structing a narrative from provable statistics and offering some of the innumerable pictures delineated by Herodotus, I shall adopt the latter course, leaving it to the reader to fill up, if necessary, the numerous gaps by reference to some shortly told history of Greece. " In the first place, because the former fleet had met with so great a disaster at Athos, preparations were made there during three years. Detachments were sent by the various nations whereof the army was composed. These relieved each other in turn and worked at a moat beneath the lash. The people H9 ANCIENT GREECE dwelling about Athos also bore a part in the labour. Athos is a great mountain stretching out far into the sea, and where it ends towards the mainland there is a neck of land some twelve furlongs wide, the whole extent of which is a level plain, broken only by a few low hills " ; and the modern name of the locality (Provlaka) means 'the canal in front [of the mountain].' Distinct traces of Xerxes' canal are still visible. The isthmus is formed of deposits of sand and marl, and its highest part is only 50 feet above sea-level, so that the cutting of a canal was a comparatively easy task. " It seems to me," says, never- theless, our historian, " that Xerxes was actuated by pride, wishing to display his power and to leave a memorial to posterity, for, although it was possible with no trouble at all to have the ships drawn across the isthmus, he ordered that a canal should be made of such width as to allow two triremes to pass abreast with oars in action." Xerxes met the main body of his Eastern troops in Cappa- docia, and spent the winter of 481 at Sardis. Meantime all the contingents of nearly fifty different nations, land and sea forces, were assembling near the Hellespont, and preparations were being made to throw a double bridge across the strait. " Near Sestos and just opposite Abydos there is a rocky tongue of land which runs out for some distance into the sea. Towards this tongue they constructed a double bridge from Abydos, the Phoenicians making one line of it with cables of white flax, the Egyptians for the other using ropes of papyrus. But after the channel (which is seven furlongs wide) had been bridged it happened that a great storm arose and broke the whole work to pieces. Now when Xerxes heard thereof he was filled with wrath and straightway sent orders that the Hellespont should receive three hundred lashes, and that fetters should be cast into it. Nay, I have even heard it said that he bade branders take their irons and brand the Helles- pont. And while the sea was thus punished by his orders, he also commanded that the overseers of the work should lose their heads." So a new bridge was built. Six hundred and seventy-four ships 250 A Late Black-figured Hydria 250 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS of war (triremes and penteconters) were arranged in two lines, and over each of these were stretched by means of capstans six huge cables, some of flax and some of papyrus (the former weigh- ing not less than fifty-seven pounds the cubit) . Transversely were laid immense planks, and a road was formed with brush- wood and earth, and fenced with a high boarding, so that the animals should not see the water. Then Xerxes set forth from Sardis. " At the moment of departure the sun suddenly quitted his seat in the heavens, though there were no clouds in sight. "^ The omen was favourably interpreted by the Magi, and Xerxes " proceeded on his way with great gladness of heart. . . . First of all went the baggage-carriers and the beasts of burden, and then a vast crowd of many nations . . . then in front of the king a thousand picked horsemen of the Persian race and a thousand spearmen ; then ten sacred horses richly caparisoned and the holy car of Zeus [Ormuzd] drawn by eight milk-white steeds with their charioteer on foot ; for no mortal may mount upon the car. Next came Xerxes himself, in a chariot drawn by Nisaean horses — but when the fancy took him he would alight and travel in a litter. Then immediately behind the king a thousand spearmen, the noblest of the Persians, and a thousand Persian horsemen ; then ten thousand on foot, all picked men. And of these last one thousand carried spears with golden pomegranates at their lower ends instead of spikes, 2 and these encircled the other nine thousand, who bore on their spears pomegranates of silver ; and the thousand Persians who followed after Xerxes had golden apples." On reaching Ilium (Troy), where the water of the Scamander,^ naturally enough, ' ' failed to satisfy the thirst of men and cattle,' * 1 Here our chronicler seems to have made a slip, and to have transferred to this occasion an eclipse which occurred in the preceding spring — probably before the departure of Xerxes from Susa. 2 In the monuments of Persepolis such pomegranates or apples may be recognized. • The Scamander has, like many rivers in hot countries, a wide bed, but is reduced to a small brook in summer. It was now fairly early in the year ; but, as in other cases where the veracity of Herodotus has been questioned, it is very easy to believe that a host of perhaps a milUon with innumerable beasts of burden would soon exhaust the drinkable water of such a stream. 251 ANCIENT GREECE Xerxes (as afterwards Alexander) ascended the citadel, and " made an offering of a thousand oxen to the Trojan Athene, while the Magi poured libations to the heroes who were slain at Troy." Thence he arrived at Abydos, and from a white marble throne (or platform) viewed all his land forces and all his ships ; and when the appointed day had come " they burnt all kinds of spices on the bridge and strewed the way with myrtle boughs, while they anxiously waited for the sun, hoping to see him as he rose. And now the sun appeared ; and Xerxes took a golden goblet and poured a libation into the sea, praying the while with his face turned to the sun ; and after he had prayed he cast the golden cup into the Hellespont, and with it a golden bowl and a Persian sword of the kind that they call acinaces. I cannot say for certain whether it was as an offering to the sun-god that he threw these things into the deep, or whether he repented of having scourged the Hellespont. . . . And as soon as Xerxes had reached the European side, he stood to contemplate his army as they crossed under the lash. And the crossing continued during seven days and seven nights, without cessation or pause." From Sestos the land forces marched westwards and met the fleet at Doriscus on the Thracian sea-coast, near to the river Hebrus. Here Xerxes numbered his forces. ** A body of ten thousand men was brought to a certain place and made to stand together as close as possible ; then a circle was drawn round them and the men were let go ; then, where the circle had been, a fence was built about the height of a man's middle, and the enclosure was filled continually with fresh troops, till the whole of the army had thus been numbered." The sum total was 1,700,000. Herodotus takes this as the number of Asiatic foot-soldiers, and adds 80,000 horsemen, and also camel- riders and charioteers, and half a million seamen — the crews and soldiers of 1207 triremes and 3000 smaller vessels. Thus, together with some 300,000 men pressed into service in Europe, ^ he makes 2,641,610 combatants, and to these he adds the same * Also quite half the naval force was supplied by Greeks, or nations of Greek lineage. 252 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS number of non-combatants, arriving at a grand total of over five millions. Doubtless the nobles were attended by their harems and large retinues, but the Persian and Median picked troops only amounted, including the famous 10,000 * Immortals,' to about 24,000 (Hdt. vii. 40, 41) — about one- hundredth of the whole army, which was mainly a motley host of picturesquely dressed savages, many of them only armed with light javelins or flint-headed arrows (or " staves with one end hardened in the fire "), and certainly well able to look after themselves without such slaves and attendants as, for instance, the Spartan hoplites took into battle.^ As for the number of combatants given by Herodotus, we need not whittle it down to about a seventh, as is done by some sceptics. Six millions, it is said, took the Red Cross, and a million combatants, with a ' vast multitude ' of followers, composed the host of invaders in the First Crusade under far less favourable com- missariat conditions. Doubtless the provisioning of such a vast multitude as this army of Xerxes was difiicult, but those who have had experience of Africans and Orientals know how re- sourceful they are, and it should not be forgotten that immense stores had been laid up beforehand in Thrace, and that the whole country, according to Herodotus, was drained of its riches by the enormous strain put upon it (Hdt. vii. 25 ; see also vii. 1 18-120, where the cost of one meal is reckoned at about £100,000, and the joke is made that " if the order had been to provide breakfast as well as dinner, the people of Abdera must have fled, or have been entirely ruined "). The descriptions given by Herodotus of the warriors of the forty-six different nations, with their various weapons and costumes, are most graphic and interesting, but are too long to repeat. Doubtless he draws largely on his own reminiscences, for he travelled much in the East and in Africa. Some of his word-pictures are corroborated by Persian and Egyptian monuments. In one case — that of the Aethiopians — it seems that the fashions in battle costume have remained unchanged for some 2400 years, for, substituting zebras for horses, ^ At Plataea each Spartan hoplite was accompanied by seven Helots. 2S3 ANCIENT GREECE I have seen exactly the same in equatorial Africa. " When they went into battle," says Herodotus, '* they painted their bodies half with chalk and half with vermilion. . . . They wore on their heads the foreheads of horses with ears and mane attached to the scalp, the mane serving as a crest and the ears standing stiffly upright." ^ Among the many commanders may be noted Mardonius, the brother-in-law of Xerxes, and Achaemenes, his brother, and that other unfortunate brother of his, Masistes, whose tragic story is told by our historian (ix. io8 sq.), and that queen of Halicarnassus, Artemisia, who distinguished herself so highly at Salamis, and whose " brave and manly spirit moved the special wonder " of her fellow-countryman Herodotus. At Doriscus the king, having reviewed his land army, " exchanged his chariot for a Sidonian vessel, and, sitting beneath a golden awning, sailed along before the prows of all his vessels," drawn up at some distance from the shore, " with fighting men upon the decks accoutred as for war." Klate with pride, he turned to the exiled Spartan king Demaratus, asking whether the Greeks would dare to oppose such an armament. The answer was memorable : " Poverty hath at all times been a fellow-dweller with us in the land, but Valour has come to us as an ally whom we have gained by wisdom and strict laws. . . . Brave are all the Greeks, but as for the lyacedaemonians they will never accept slavery. As for their numbers do not ask ; for if only a thousand take the field they will meet thee in battle, so will any number, less or more." Thereat Xerxes laughed and rejoined : '' lyct them be five thousand and we shall have more than a thousand to each one of theirs " ; " and much more he said in contemptuous ridicule ; and Demaratus answered all, and added : ' Though they be free men they are not free in all respects, for law is their master. This master they fear more than thy subjects fear thee, and his commandment is always the same, for- bidding them to flee whatever be the number of their foes, * Heracles sometimes thus wears his lion-skin. Cf. also Virg. A en. xi. 680. 254 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS and requiring them to stand firm and to conquer — or else to die.' " From Doriscus the vast armament marched westward, crossed the Strymon, and arrived at Acanthus, near the Athos canal. Then, passing through Chalcidice, it reached Therma (later named Thessalonice after the sister of Alexander the Great). The fleet meanwhile sailed through the canal and rounded the promontories of Sithonia and Pallene, gathering fresh supplies of men and ships and provisions from the numerous Greek cities on the coast. During the land march — which followed the same route as that later traversed by St. Paul — " the camels were set upon by lions which came down by night " ; and Herodotus adds : " The whole of that region is full of lions ^ and wild bulls with huge horns, which are imported into Greece." From Therma King Xerxes beheld in the far distance the mountains Ossa and Olympus, and embarking on a Sidonian vessel he visited the mouth of the Peneios (Peneus), which dis- charges its waters through the narrow vale, or ravine, of Tempe (Fig. 48). "Wise men, truly,'' he remarked, "are they of Thessaly, and good reason they had to change their minds, for nothing more is needed but to fill up the gorge with an embankment, and lo ! all Thessaly would be laid under water." And possibly he was right, for Thessaly was once a great lake,* until, as Herodotus believed, the gorge of Tempe was formed by volcanic disturbance, or by erosion. The remark of Xerxes alluded to the fact that the Thessalians had begged the southern Greeks to make a stand at the pass of Tempe. Ten thousand hoplites were dispatched — the Athenian contingent under Themistocles — but the Macedonian king, Alexander I, sent to warn them of the vastness of the Persian army, and when it was discovered that there were several other practicable ^ Aristotle confirms this. Tradition from the age of Heracles to that of the Nibelungenlied asserts the presence of lions in E)urope. The ' wild bull ' is probably the auerochs (urus). Classical writers also tell of bonasi (wild oxen), alces (elk), bubali (buffalo ?). 2 The Greek tradition of the Deluge is connected with Thessaly, the Greek Noah, Deucalion, having been king of Thessalian Phthia. 25s ANCIENT GREECE passes from the north (by one of which Xerxes led his army) the troops were recalled ; whereupon the Thessalians, doubtless to the great satisfaction of their Aleuad princes, who had long before held treasonable correspondence with Xerxes (Hdt. vii. 6), " warmly espoused the side of the Medes, and were of the greatest service to Xerxes during the war." This expedition had set out while Xerxes was at Abydos ; for when the Greeks had learned for certain that the invasion would take place, they had convened an assembly, under the presidency of Sparta, at the Corinthian isthmus. It was the first time in Greek history that a congress of all the states of Greece had been summoned — the first time (with the exception perhaps of the Trojan War) that all Greece, indeed all the Hellenic world, was called upon to co-operate against a common enemy. Besides deciding to defend Thessaly, they agreed to put an end to all feuds among themselves, such as that between^ Athens and Aegina, and between Sparta and Argos. In spite of the jealousy of Athens, Sparta was given the leadership on land and on the sea. They determined also to send an appeal to Gelo, the powerful lord of Syracuse, and to Corcyra and Crete. Also they at once dispatched spies to Sardis, while Xerxes was still there. The spies were detected, but sent back unharmed by Xerxes, " after having been taken round the Persian camp and having viewed everything to their hearts' content " ; for he expected that the Greeks, when they heard of the vastness of his army, would submit and " save him the trouble of the expedition." The embassy to Gelo, " whose power was said to be far greater than that of any single state in Greece," failed because he demanded the chief command — or, anyhow, the command of the naval forces — and when this was indignantly refused he dismissed the envoys with the contemptuous remark : "Ye have, it seems, no lack of commanders ; but ye are likely to lack men to receive their orders." The Corey raeans made lavish promises, but failed to keep them — " watching to see what turn the war would take." The Cretans, warned by an oracle, refused point- blank. The Argives, when asked to lay aside their feud 256 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS and aid in repelling the Persians, applied to the Delphic oracle, which, in cowardly fashion, bade them " warily guard their own head." They then made, like Gelo, extravagant demands, and ultimately stood aside — probably in collusion with the Persians. " Some," says Herodotus, " go even so far as to say that the Argives first invited the Persians to invade Greece, because of their ill-success against I^acedaemon " — nor is this impossible, for at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War both the Athenians and the I^acedaemonians, according to Thucydides (ii. 7), '* intended to send embassies to the Persian king and to the barbarians in other parts, whencesoever either hoped to gain assistance." On their return from Thessaly the Greeks once more took counsel together on the Corinthian isthmus. " The opinion prevailed that they should guard the pass of Thermopylae^ since it was narrower than the Thessalian defile, and at th^ same time nearer to them. Of the pathway by which th( Greeks who fell at Thermopylae were circumvented they hac no knowledge as yet. At the same time it was resolved thai the fleet should proceed to Artemisium, in the region oi Histiaeotis [in Northern Kuboea]." The Greek fleet of rather more than 300 warships, of whic] 200 were supplied by Athens, took up its station near Art( misium, and the Persian fleet arrived at the precipitous promontory of Magnesia, which is formed by the long ridg( of Mount Pelion. They had sent forward ten swift ships) which succeeded in capturing three Greek vessels on the look- out, and when fire-signals ^ from the island Sciathos informed the Greeks of this disaster they " quitted their anchorage at Artemisium, and, leaving scouts on the Euboean heights to watch the enemy, withdrew to Chalcis, intending to guard the Euripus " — the narrow strait between Buboea and the mainland. But the movements and sequence of events as 1 Evidently some code was used by the Greeks, for such news could not ihave been foreseen. For fire-signals see Aesch. Agam. 29 and 272 sq. ; Thuc. 'ii. 94, iii. 22, 80 ; Hdt. vii. 182, ix. 2 (where a system of signals between 1 Attica and Sardis is mentioned) . The news of Plataea is said to have reached 1M7cale on ^he same day (see p. 273). R 257 ANCIENT GREECE described by Herodotus are difficult to follow. One great fact emerges — the wreck of 400 vessels of the Persian fleet, which had taken up a dangerous position off the harbourless Magnesian coast-line. " The ships of the first row were moored to the land, while the rest swung at anchor further off. The beach extended but a very little way, so they had to anchor off the shore, row upon row, eight deep. In this manner they passed the night ; but at dawn calm and stillness gave place to a raging sea and a violent storm. . . . Such as put the loss of the Persian fleet at lowest say that 400 ships were destroyed and that a countless multitude of men perished ^ and a vast amount of treasure was engulfed." To some the fact may appear not worthy of mention, but it may help one to realize better the Greek character when we learn that the people of Delphi " earned the everlasting gratitude of the Greeks " for cheering them with the oracle that " the winds would do Greece good service," and that the Athenians attributed this storm to the sacrifices and prayers that they offered to Boreas (to whom later they erected a temple on the banks of the Ilissus) . It is also psychologically if not historically interesting to note that the winds were influenced also by the entreaties of the foe, for " after the storm had lasted three days, at length the Persian Magi, by offering sacrifices to the winds and charm- ing them with the help of conjurers, succeeded in laying the tempest ; or perhaps," adds Herodotus, " it ceased of itself." The loss of 400 vessels out of their immense fleet was a matter of no vital importance to the Persians. They moved round Cape Sepias to the shelter of the great Pagasaean Gulf and took up station near the port whence Jason in the Argo put forth on to the high sea, called from that fact * Aphetae.' Meantime the Greeks had returned to Artemisium and managed to capture fifteen stray Persian vessels. Although terribly alarmed at the huge fleet of Xerxes, they held their post (Themistocles, it is said, having received a bribe of thirty talents from the Buboeans, and having given five to the Spartan admiral Eurybiadas), and in several engagements ^ As also at Salamis, for the Persians could not swim (Hdt. viii. 89). 258 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS did considerable damage to the enemy and captured thirty more of their ships. But the Persians, determined on their part to capture the whole Greek fleet, and " not let even a torch-bearer slip through their hands,'' sent a squadron of 200 warships to circumnavigate Buboea and seize the strait of the Buripus. News of this was brought to the Greeks, it was said, by a diver — a Greek of Scione, ScylHas by name. *' I marvel much," says Herodotus, " if the tale commonly told be true. 'Tis said he dived into the sea at Aphetae and did not once come to the surface till he reached Artemisium, a distance of nearly eighty " — really sixty — '' furlongs. Many things are related of this man that are plainly false, but some seem to be true. For my part I think he made the passage to Artemisium in a boat." The 200 Persian ships never arrived at their destination. *' Heaven so contrived it that the Persian fleet might not greatly exceed the Greek, but be brought nearly to its level. The squadron was therefore entirely lost about the Hollows of Buboea." The Greeks had scouts on watch near Thermopylae and near Artemisium, ready to sail at any moment with news. The watches in the Maliac Gulf " now arrived at Artemisium with the news of what had befallen lyconidas and those who were with him." Forthwith the Greek fleet sailed ofl southward, through the Buripus, and the Persians captured Histiaea and overran the north of Buboea. Themistocles had cut inscriptions on the rocks at various places on the coast, entreating the lonians and Carians not to fight against their ancestors, and pointing out that it was through them that Greece had incurred the enmity of the Persians. Whether this had any result we are not told, and whether any of these inscriptions are extant I cannot say. Meanwhile the battle of Thermopylae had been fought. It was the wish of the lyacedaemonians and their Pelopon- nesian allies that Northern Greece should be abandoned to its fate, and that a stand should be made at the Isthmus. But they were conscious that it would be vain to hold the Isthmus 259 ANCIENT GREECE if the Persians had the supremacy on the sea/ and that their safety depended on the fleet, two-thirds of which belonged to Athens. To please the Athenians, therefore, they sent a small body of men northwards. " They intended presumably, when they had celebrated the Carnean festival, to hasten in full force to join the army ; and the rest of their allies intended to act similarly, for it happened that the Olympic Games fell exactly at this period. ^ None of them expected that the contest at Thermopylae would be decided so speedily ; there- fore they were content to send forward merely an advance- guard." lyconidas took with him 300 Spartan veterans^ and some 3000 other Peloponnesians, and was joined by about 3000 from Northern Greece, including 400 Thebans, whom he " made a point of demanding from Thebes, because the Thebans were strongly suspected of being well inclined to the Medes " — a suspicion which, if we can believe Herodotus, was fully confirmed by their shameful surrender in the midst of the fight at Thermopylae, where they suffered the indignity of being branded as fugitive slaves by the Persian victor (Hdt. vii. 233. But later writers know nothing of this, and perhaps Herodotus was influenced by the bitter anti-Theban feeling prevalent after the Persian wars) . The pass of Thermopylae has been much broadened by alluvial deposits. A swampy plain of about two miles now separates the waters of the Maliac Gulf from the precipices of Mount Kallidromos. Formerly the pass itself (by the hot sulphur springs) was about fifty feet wide, and there were two other places where it was still narrower, that to the east 1 In a fine passage (vii. 139) Herodotus expresses his convictions on this point and, Doric as he was by origin, shows his impartiality. " I cannot see," he says, " what possible use walls across the Isthmus could have been if the king had had the mastery on the sea. If, then, a man should say that the Athenians were the saviours of Greece, he would not exceed the truth." With this compare the advice given to Xerxes by Demaratus (vii. 235) — viz. to send ships to attack the coasts of Laconia, and " the Isthmus and the cities of the Peloponnese will surrender without a battle." 2 Cf. p. 240. » All fathers with sons living. Sparta only possessed 8000 full-grown Sp artiats, if we are to believe Demaratus. The numbers given by Herodotus (vii. 202) do not seem to agree with the inscription that he quotes (vii. 228). 260 I 69. THERMOPYIyAE 70. Tomb of IvEonidas (?) 260 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS allowing only the passage of a single wagon (Herodotus how- ever speaks of marshes between the road and the sea). At Thermopylae itself there were the remains of an ancient wal\^ built by the Phocians as a defence against the Thessalians. This the Greeks now repaired, and here they determined to make their stand. Xerxes took up his headquarters at Trachis, just to the west of the pass, and " after waiting four days, expecting that the Greeks would run away, he grew wroth with their impudence," and sent Median troops, who were beaten back with great loss, and then commanded his Immortals to attack. " They, it was thought, would soon finish the business." But they too were repelled, and " during these assaults, it is said, Xerxes, who was watching the battle, thrice leaped from the throne on which he was sitting, in terror for his army." On the third day the traitor appeared. Bphialtes,^ a man of Malis, offered to guide the Persians by a steep pathway across the mountains so as to cut off the Greeks in the rear. Xerxes sent Hydarnes with the Immortals — probably not all the Ten Thousand. They ascended the ravine of the stream Asopus, between the Trachinian cliffs and Mount Oeta (famous in connexion with the legends of Heracles), and surprised at break of day and put to rout the thousand Phocians who were guarding this mountain path. I^eonidas, having learnt the fact from a seer and from deserters, ^ dismissed all the Greeks except his 300 Spartans, the Thebans (whose fidelity he suspected), and 700 Thespians. It is just possible that he detached other troops — numbering perhaps about 2500 — in order to oppose the Immortals ; but we hear of no collision. According to Herodotus, the devoted band of Spartans and Thespians, having retreated to a hillock, were assaulted on both sides 1 It is but fair to say that Herodotus names others ; but he feels so certain that he " leaves this name on record " as that of the real perpetrator. Bphialtes, anyhow, had a price set on his head by the deputies of the Amphictionic Council, which, by the way, had its ancient meeting-place at Anthela, in the pass of Thermopylae. 2 Both rather strange sources. The seer was Megistias, who refused to desert Leonidas and was killed and had the honour of an epitaph by Simonides (Hdt. vii. 221, 228). Who the deserters could have been is not easy to say. 261 ANCIENT GREECE and massacred, while the Thebans surrendered. I^ater and more rhetorical writers describe the battle with ridiculous exaggeration. One asserts that the Spartans not only drove back the Persians to their camp, but that I^eonidas snatched the diadem from the head of Xerxes. The account given by Herodotus bears the impress of truthfulness and impartiality — except possibly in regard to the Thebans. The loss of the Persians he gives at 20,000 (probably too many) and that of the Greeks at 4000, including many Helots {seven of whom generally attended each Spartan). He asserts that Xerxes gave permission to the seamen of the fleet to come and view the battlefield, and buried or concealed all the Persian dead except a thousand. " It was indeed most truly a laughable device— on the one side 1000 men lying strewn all about the field, on the other 4000 crowded together on one spot." Two brothers of Xerxes were among the slain. The body of lyconidas was maltreated by Xerxes, who cut off the head and crucified the trunk. This act excited the wonder of Herodotus : "for the Persians are wont to honour those who show themselves valiant in fight more than any nation I know " — a statement that is confirmed by many of his anecdotes. The sulphur springs still exist, and their water is bluish green, just as it is described by Pausanias. About a mile to the west of these springs is a round hillock which is probably the mound (KoXumg) on which the Spartans and Thespians made their last stand. " The hillock," says Herodotus, "is at the entrance of the pass " — i.e. as one comes from the west — " where the stone lion stands ^ which was set up in honour of I^eonidas. . . . The slain were buried where they fell, and in their honour and for those no less who were slain before lyconidas sent away the allies an inscrip- tion was set up . . . and another for the Spartans alone." For these inscriptions (rejected as later bombast by some modern critics) see p. 200. It will be noticed that 4000 " from Pelops' land " are mentioned. On a column at Sparta, which was seen six hundred years later by Pausanias, were ^ This lion existed till the time of Tiberius. 262 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS engraved the names of I^eonidas and his 300 Spartans — or 299, for one, being ill, or not returning when sent on a message, escaped. He was treated with great contumely, but " wiped away all his disgrace at Plataea," where he was slain. The Persian army now poured into Phocis, Boeotia, and Attica. The Phocians took refuge on Mount Parnassus, and the temple of Delphi was only saved by the aid of the god, who repulsed the barbarian plunderers by lightning and by hurHng down from the heights great masses of rock — seen afterwards by Herodotus. The Thespians and Plataeans, who alone of the Boeotians had not surrendered, fled to the Peloponnese, and their towns were burnt and plundered. Attica was ravaged. When Athens was reached it was found to be deserted, except for a small garrison in the Acropolis, who had " barricaded the citadel with planks and boards/' in accordance with what they held to be the meaning of a Delphic oracle. For the Pythian god, though he defended his own treasure, gave what seems craven counsel in this hour of need. He had bidden the Argives " warily guard their own head," and when the Athenians sent messengers to Delphi they were consternated by the answer that all was lost — head and body, hands and feet — and that they were to depart from the sanctuary and " o'erspread their hearts with woes" ; and when they as suppliants implored a more comfort- able response, the priestess answered that Athene could gain no more from Olympian Zeus except the promise that their * wooden wall ' should remain undestroyed. Some interpreted this literally, and demanded that the Acropolis should be fortified with wood and be strongly garrisoned, and this seems to have been done. But Themistocles (whom some accuse of having prompted the oracle) persuaded the great majority that by the ' wooden wall ' was meant the fleet, and the ques- tion now to be decided was whether to " quit Attica without lifting a hand and make a settlement in some other country " — as the Phocaeans and Samians had done — or to venture a sea-fight. In any case Athens would have to be abandoned for a time. Themistocles and his fellow-generals " issued a 263 ANCIENT GREECE proclamation that every Athenian should save his children and household as best he could. Whereupon some sent their families to Aegina, some to Salamis, but the greater number to Troezen. This removal was made with all possible haste, partly from the desire to obey the oracle, but still more for another reason." This reason was that the huge serpent which lived in the temple of Athene Polias (or was supposed to live there, for Herodotus throws doubt on its existence) no longer consumed its honey-cake ; "so they believed that the goddess had already abandoned the Acropohs." Xerxes therefore found and sacked a deserted city. The Persians set fire to the wooden wall of the Acropolis, and after two weeks' siege scaled the north side by a secret path, massacred the garrison, and destroyed the temples and statues. {The destruction was completed on the later occupation by Mardonius.) Meantime the Spartans under Cleombrotus (the regent for the child-king, Pleistarchus, son of I^eonidas), together with their allies — ^Arcadians, Corinthians, Eleans, and others — ^were busily fortifying the Isthmus. They blocked the Scironian Way, which led past precipitous rocks on the eastern shore, and then " decided to build a wall right across the Isthmus. Stones, bricks, timber, baskets filled with sand, were used . . . and they laboured ceaselessly night and day." Their policy was not only selfish but foolish, for had Themistocles carried out his threat made to the Spartan admiral Burybiadas, to sail away with all the Athenians and refound the city of Siris in Italy, little would have availed them their Isthmian wall. Councils were held now on both sides. The fleet of Xerxes had arrived off Phaleron, and he came aboard a ship (probably his favourite Sidonian vessel) and " sat in a seat of honour ; and the sovereigns of nations and the captains of ships were sent for, and took their seats according to the rank assigned them of the king. In the first seat sat the king of Sidon, and after him the king of Tyre, and then the rest in their order. And Xerxes sent Mardonius and questioned each whether a sea-fight should be risked or no. And all gave the same 264 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS answer, advising to engage the Greeks, except only Artemisia/' The speech of Artemisia, as given by Herodotus, was audacious in its contempt for the seamanship of the king's allies and for its advice to risk no naval engagement. It was fully expected that " her life would be forfeit." But Xerxes took it good-naturedly and " gave orders that the advice of the greater number should be followed, and resolved that he himself would be an eye-witness of the combat." The council of the Greeks was of a stormier character. The Spartan admiral Eurybiadas, seconded by the Corinthian captain Adeimantus, insisted that the fleet should retire to the Isthmus, and thus abandon Salamis, Aegina, and Megara ; and fierce altercations took place between them and Themis- tocles, who when bidden to be silent, " since he was a man without a city," replied with justice that his 200 ships of war were as good as any city in Greece. Eurybiadas, conscious that the only safety for the Peloponnese lay in these ships (for of 378 warships the Athenians supplied 200), at length yielded ; but Themistocles still feared the influence of the Peloponnesians, and sent a secret message to the commanders of the Persian fleet, saying that " fear had seized the Greeks and they were meditating a hasty flight." Forthwith the Persians " landed troops on the islet Psyttaleia, between Salamis and the mainland, and advanced their western wing towards Salamis ^ so as to enclose the Greeks, moving forward at the same time their centre so ats to fill the whole strait as far as Munychia." >^ At this critical moment Herodotus brings on to the stage Aristides. He and Xanthippus and other political exiles had been recalled while Xerxes was still in Thessaly, but he seems to have delayed his return, and is now just in time to co-operate with Themistocles (to whom he offers reconciliation) and to announce to the council of sea-captains that " he has come from Aegina and has barely escaped, for the Greek fleet is now entirely enclosed by the ships of Xerxes." 1 Diodorus, but not Herodotus, says that 200 Kgyptian vCvSsels were sent round Salamis to the south to cut off the retreat of the Greeks. 265 ANCIENT GREECE While they still doubted a Tenian trireme, which had deserted from the Persians (" and for this reason the Tenians were described on the tripod at Delphi among those who overthrew the barbarian"), arrived and confirmed the news. The battle of Salamis (September 20, 480) is described graphically by Herodotus (vii. 84 sq.), and also by Aeschylus (Persae, 359 sq.), who was an eye-witness but as a poet perhaps may have drawn somewhat on his imagination. The main features in both descriptions are similar. Numerous modern reconstruc- tions have been made, and almost every detail given by older writers has been questioned or modified. Some theorists (e.g. Gobineau and Chamberlain) have even doubted whether any real sea-battle took place. The main body of the Greek fleet engaged the Phoenicians and the rest of the Persian centre in the strait between Salamis and Mount Aegaleos (at the base of which Xerxes sat on his throne viewing the conflict), " fighting in order and keeping their line, while the barbarians were in confusion and had no plan in any of their movements, so that the result of the battle could scarce be other than it was." The immense number of the Persian ships proved disastrous to them. While attempting to overwhelm the Greeks they crowded tumultuously into the narrow strait, and the repulse of the foremost lines threw all the vast throng of vessels into inextricable confusion (vii. 89). Then the Aeginetan ships, which formed the right wing of the Greek fleet, ^ managed to turn the left wing of the Persians (held by the lonians) and charged the disordered centre of the enemy's fleet, while Aristides, " taking a number of Athenian hoplites which were drawn up on the shore of Salamis, landed them on the islet of Psyttaleia and slew all the Persians by whom it was occupied." The attack of the Aeginetans decided the battle. ^ 1 Either inside the strait or on the south-east coast of Salamis. 2 They were accorded the first prize for valour {to. dpLo-Tela). The Corin- thians were, perhaps unfairly, accused by the Athenians of having tried to desert in the midst of the battle. Aeschylus represents Xerxes as tearing his raiment and uttering shrieks when he saw the slaughter on Psyttaleia. I have omitted the well-known story of Artemisia sinking a friendly ship to save herself (Hdt. vii. 87). 266 71. Bay of Sai^amis 72. Wai,i,s of Themistoci,e;s 266 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS The Persians collected their vessels at Phaleron, and the Greeks, " expecting another attack, made preparations." But Herodotus represents Xerxes as in a great state of panic. " He riiade up his mind to fly ; but, as he wished to hide his project alike from the Greeks and his own people, he set to work to carry a mound across the strait to Salamis, and at the same time began fastening a number of Phoenician merchant- ships togethefl to serve at once for a bridge and a rampart." But his brothqr-in-law Mardonius was not deceived, for " long acquaintance toabled him to read all the king's thoughts," and with the approval also of Artemisia, who reminded Xerxes that he had burnt Athens and thus had gained the purpose of his expedition, the plan was formed that the king should return to the Bast^ yerland^hat the fleet should at once sail to the Hellespont to guard the bridge, and that Mardonius, after escorting the king throughTThessaly, should retain 300,000 men, including the 10,000 Immortals, for the purpose of com- pleting the conquest of Greece. If all the tales told of the return of Xerxes are true it was as disastrous as Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Herodotus himself refuses to believe that the king " never once loosed his girdle till he came to the city of Abdera, not feeling himself till then in safety " ; but he tells us that famine and disease so thinned the ranks of his troops that he reached the Helles- pont with a mere fraction of his former army. Aeschylus draws on his imagination and gives us a fine picture, scarcely less impressive than that of the disaster of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea. He tells us how the Strymon, frozen over in a single night and unfrozen by the heat of the next day's sun, swallowed up great numbers of panic-stricken fugitives. By some Xerxes is said to have taken ship from Eion (on the Strymon) and to have been nearly lost in a storm — during which, in order to lighten the vessel, a great number of Persian nobles, " having made obeisance, leaped overboard." Others say that he reached the Hellespont, but found the bridge destroyed by storms — not that this was of much consequence, for his fleet had arrived. 267 ANCIENT GREECE The Greeks had pursued the ships of the enemy only as far as Andros. Themistocles had tried to induce them to con- tinue the pursuit and annihilate the Persian fleet, but the Peloponnesians were still afraid that the land forces of Xerxes might march against the Isthmus, and refused to set sail.^ Then, it is said, Themistocles once more sent a messenger (the same faithful slave, Sicinnus, the tutor to his sons) and informed Xerxes that it was by his own influence that the pursuit had been abandoned. Possibly this was a fabrication of later days, after Themistocles had proved a traitor ; possibly it was a result of that preternatural insight into the future with which he is credited by Thucydides. However that may be, he is said to have urged this act as a reason for expecting favour when he reached the court of Xerxes as an exile. That the journey of Xerxes was not a flight is apparent from the fact that the troops which had accompanied him to the Hellespont not only returned to Thessaly, where they rejoined Mardonius, but also during their return march undertook, under the command of Artabazus, the reduction of the cities of Olynthus and Potidaea. Olynthus was captured and all the inhabitants were " led out to a marsh and put to death." Potidaea stood a siege, and treason, for three months, and ultimately many of the besieging Persians were caught by a spring- tide or bore and, " not being able to swim, perished immediately." " The Potidaeans say," remarks Herodotus, " that what caused this spring- tide was the profanation by these very men of a temple and image of Poseidon. And in this they seem to me to say well." Mardonius now sent as envoy to Athens the king of Mace-^ donia, Alexander I, who had ties both with the Athenians and with Persia. In the name of the Great King forgiveness and friendship were offered. But the Athenians answered : " So long as the sun keeps his present course we will never join alliance 1 Cleombrotus, in command at the Isthmus, had intended to follow up the retreating Persian land forces, but had been stopped by — an eclipse ! This happened, they say, at 2 p.m. on October 2, 480. 268 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS with Xerxes" ; and to the I^acedaemonians, who had hastily sent an embassy to oppose Alexander, they declared : " Not all the gold that the whole earth contains would bribe us to take part with the Medes. . . . First, there is the burning and destruction of our temples and the images of our gods. . . . Then there is our common brotherhood with the Greeks, our common language, the altars and sacrifices at which we all par- take, the common character that we bear. Did the Athenians betray all these, of a truth it would not be well. While one Athenian remains alive we will never join alliance with Xerxes.'* Mardonius therefore, though the Thebans advised him to stay in Thessaly and send gold to the leaders of the Greeks, marched down upon Athens. '' But on his arrival he did not find the Athenians. They had again withdrawn, some to their ships, the greater number to Salamis. So he only gained possession of an empty city." This was in July 479. The reason why the Athenians had again withdrawn was because the Spartans had refused to leave their Isthmian wall and march north to help in opposing Mardonius, alleging in excuse (as so often they had done) a religious festival — this time the ' Hyacinthia.' Mean and selfish as such conduct appears, especially in contrast to that of the Athenians, it was soon to be proved once more that when face to face with the foe they possessed a splendid courage. To them was mainly due the great victory of Plat^fi^ which for ever liberated Greece from the Persian invader. The Athenians, dispossessed of their city, though they had for a second time rejected with disdain the proposals of Mar- donius, sent word to the Spartan regent Pausanias (Cleom- brotus having died soon after the eclipse) that they, and also Megara and Plataea, would be forced to surrender to the Mede unless the I^acedaemonians would help them. Hereupon 5000 Spartiats were ordered to start northwards under tli£_ command of Pausanias. They were accompanied by many Helots and Perioeci and other Peloponnesians, and joined iby the Athenians under the command of Aristides, so that the iwhole army may have numbered 70,000 men, among whom, ccording to Herodotus, there were 38,700 hoplites. I ^^9 ANCIENT GREECE Mardonius, when he heard of this army, resolved to with- draw to Thebes, as Attica was too hilly for his cavalry and there was *' no way of escape from the country except through defiles/' Before leaving Athens he completed as far as possible the destruction of the city and its temples, leaving the Acropolis a waste of ruins. His army, says Herodotus, num- bered about 300,000 and perhaps 50,000 Greek auxiliaries. About six miles to the south of Thebes he built a huge fort, " a square of about ten furlongs each way," with ramparts and towers formed of trees that he cut down in all directions. His army he encamped along the Asopus, which flows through the plain between Thebes and the great range of Cithaeron, the boundary between Boeotia and Attica. Here, with his rear covered by the Thebans, he awaited Pausanias, who crossed into Boeotia, and, finding the enemy blocking the way, disposed his forces on the north slopes of Cithaeron. For ten days th^ armies faced one another. The Greeks were much harassed by the cavalry, having themselves no horse ; but in the skir- mishes the leader of the Persian horsemen, Masistius, a splendid warrior with golden breastplate, was slain ; whereupon the Persians " made great lamentation, shaving all the hair from their heads and cutting the manes from their war-horses and sumpter-beasts, while they vented their grief in cries so loud that all Boeotia resounded with the clamour." Day by day the numbers of the Greeks increased, but so great was the self-confidence of the barbarians that Artabazus advised Mardonius merely to wait, as the Greeks would never venture down into the plain, and to harass them and cut off their supplies and ply the leaders with bribes. The Persian horse did indeed cut off their communications by occupying the passes in their rear, and succeeded in reaching and choking up the fountain Gargaphia on which they relied for water. But Mardonius was impatient for a battle, and decided to attack, and, according to Herodotus, the news of this decision was brought to the Greek outposts by the Macedonian king Alexander. The battle is exceedingly difficult to * reconstruct.' I shall 270 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS not attempt to describe, far less to explain, all the false moves, the blunders, and the unobeyed orders that have complicated the question. The chief facts seem to have been that the Athenians, after accepting the proposal of Pausanias that they should oppose the Immortals and Persian picked troops, were ordered to fight the Thebans and other renegade Greeks, and that when the decisive moment came they were held in check by their opponents and were unable to take any great part in the actual rout of the barbarians. This rout was effected mainly by the I^acedaemonians and Tegeans. After faUing back and being followed up byjthe._main body of the Persians, 4:hey halted for some time—losing many men by the arrows of the foe, shot from behind the line of wicker shields, while they sacrificed and calmly waited for favourable omens — and then, the omens allowing it, they swept forward, broke through the array of wicker shields, and put the whole host of the enemy to flight. " The barbarians many times seized hold of the Greek spears and broke them ; for in boldness and warlike spirit they were nowise inferior to the Greeks, but they were without real shields, and far below their opponents in skill with weapons. . . . The fight was hardest where Mardonius, mounted on a white horse and surrounded by the bravest of the Persians, the Ten Thousand, fought. So long as he was alive these troops resisted, but when he fell,^ and those with him, all the others took to flight.'' Artabazus, seeing how the day was going, wheeled off with 40,000 men and made his ' way northwards. The Thebans, after fighting with desperate B fury and losing 300 men, retreated to their city. Most of the '■routed Persian army fled for refuge to their wooden rampart, closely followed by the Spartans, who, however, being unskilled in siege operations, had to await the arrival of the Athenians before they were able to take the fortification. ^ A terrible f massacre ensued. Only 3000 are said to have survived out I of the immense host ; but possibly many escaped and joined 1 His body was treated with respect by Pausanias, but was stolen. 2 Cf. Thuc. i. 102. The Spartan city itself was without walls. The Spartans 'despised and hated such defences, as is seen from their bitter opposition to the building of the Athenian lyong Walls. 271 ANCIENT GREECE Artabazus, who with great difficulty reached Byzantium and crossed to Asia. The spoil was enormous/ and during many years afterwards the Plataeans used to find treasures of gold and silver on the battlefield. The loss of the Spartans is given by Herodotus at 91, of the Tegeans at 16, and of the Athenians at 52 (though Plutarch states the whole loss, probably including Helots, at 1360) . It would therefore seem that, in spite of the fierce depreciation to which their conduct in the battle has been subjected by some writers, the Athenians had a certain amount of fighting. Of the Corinthians and Megarians Herodotus says that they were drawn up at some distance and did not know that a battle was being fought ! At last they learnt the fact and rushed forward, but were cut to pieces by the Theban cavalry. The Spartans were given the chief credit for the victory. " The Athenians," says Herodotus, " and the Tegeans fought well, but the prowess shown by the I^acedae- monians was beyond either." Pindar gives Sparta the chief praise. Aeschylus, too, attributes the victory to the ' Doric spear.' A tenth of the booty was set aside for the Delphic treasury, and colossal bronze images of Zeus and Poseidon were erected at Olympia and the Isthmus respectivel)^ At Delphi was dedicated, says Herodotus, " the golden tripod which stands on the bronze serpent with three heads close to the altar." On the base of the supporting pillar, formed of three serpents, were inscribed the names of the Greek states which had joined to repel the Persian invader. This base is still to be seen in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, whither it was removed by Constantine the Great. ^ The battle of Plataea was fought probably on August 12, 479. " On the same day," says Herodotus, " another defeat befell the Persians at Mycale, in Ionia." The Greek fleet had started in the spring to aid the lonians, who had entreated their help ^ The throne and scimitar of Mardonius and the golden breastplate of Masistius were still to be seen in the Athenian Acropolis in the time of Pausanias, 600 years later. ^ Discovered in 1880, when Constantinople was occupied by the Western Powers. Mahommed II, on the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, smashed the jaw of one of the serpents with his battle-axe (Gibbon, ch. 68). See p. 284. 272 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS against the Persians. But it had got no further than Delos, for " all beyond that seemed to the Greeks full of danger and>^ swarming with Persian troops.'* For some months it lay idle at Delos. But on the urgent appeal of the Samians the Spartan king lycotychidas, induced by favourable omens (especially by the lucky-sounding name of the Samian envoy), decided to attack the Persian fleet, which lay in the lee of Samos. When the Greeks reached the Samian coast near the^reat temple of Hera, the Persians, who shrank from a naval battle, dismissed all their Phoenician vessels and stranded the rest on Cape Mycale, where they had a land force of 60,000 men under the command of Tigranes. The Greeks disembarked and after a desperate fight carried the ramparts of the naval camp and burned the ships, the Athenians especially distin- guishing themselves, and the victory being rendered more easy by the wholesale desertion of the Ionian auxiliaries of the enemy. According to Herodotus, the news of the victory at Plataea, which had been gained on the very same forenoon, arrived in time to cheer the Greeks while advancing to the fight. This is, of course, rejected as a fable by many writers. Possibly fire-signals (if visible by day) may be the explanation. If not, perhaps it may have been one of those cases in which the knowledge of an event seems to have been transmitted over great distances by some unexplained agency — such as the Greeks named ' divine rumour ' ((pmv, ocrcra). The Greek fleet then sailed to the Hellespont, but when they ; found Xerxes' bridge destroyed the- Spartans went home. 'The Athenians, however, laid siege to Sestos, still in the possession of the Persians, and late in the autumn of 478 they succeeded in capturing it. " This done, they sailed back to Greece, carrying with them, besides other treasures, the shore fcables from the bridge of Xerxes, which they wished to dedicate |in their temples." ^ These are, all but a few lines, the last words ipf the history of Herodotus. ^ One is forcibly reminded of the chain cables still to be seen hanging in !the Campo Santo at Pisa. 8 273 ANCIENT GREECE SECTION A : THE GREEKS AND CARTHAGINIANS IN SICILY (500-478) While Greece was fighting for her existence against the Persian invader the Greeks in Western Hellas were also struggling against an Asiatic race — the Phoenicians and the Phoenician colony of Carthage. It seems, indeed, probable that Carthage and Persia were acting in concert. We have already noted the rise of the Greek colonies in Sicily and Southern Italy. During the first period of their exist- ence the Phoenician settlements in Sicily gave them little or no trouble, but these offered a valuable base to the navies of the rapidly growing Carthaginian state, which, in alliance with the powerful and piratical princes of Etruria, began to gain supremacy in the Western Mediterranean, and almost annihi- lated, as we have seen, the Phocaean fleet at the battle of Alalia, off the coast of Corsica {c. 535) . Carthage now domi- nated Sardinia and Corsica, and intended to dominate Sicily. Indeed, as early as about 565 a Carthaginian army, commanded by Malchus, had landed in Sicily, and seems to have won a battle against the tyrant Phalaris of Acragas. But it was not till the era of Xerxes that the Carthaginians made a serious effort to wrest the island from the Greeks. Meanwhile Hellenic civilization and power in Greater Greece, in spite of devastating intestine wars and such disasters as the annihilation of Sybaris by Croton, had reached a very high stage of development. The chief cities of Sicily had fallen into the power of despots. In the north Himera was ruled by Terillus. In the south and east Acragas (Agrigentum) and Syracuse ^ were ruled by Thero 1 For reference the following may be useful : Syracuse founded by Dorians 734 ; under aristocracies and democracies till the despots Gelo (485), Hiero (478), Thrasybulus""(467) ; then democracy ; besieged by Athenians 413 ; democracy overthrown by Dionysius (406-367), whose son, Dionysius the Younger, was finally dethroned by Timoleon in 343. In passing it is interesting to note that Sicily for some 3000 years (perhaps for much longer) has been the arena of racial strife. One need only mention the following names to recall such conflicts : Sicals, Sicanians, Elymi, Phoenicians, Greeks, Cartha- ginians, Romans, Franks, Odoacer, Bast Goths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Germans, French, Aragon princes. Bourbons. 274 73- Tomb of Darius 74. ChARIOTIvIvR found at DEIvPHI Themistokles,ofthe Deme' Phrearroi. m Xaav 6 L 7T n o <^ 'A£(^ L(|) (> o V o ^ XanTHIPPOS SONOF Arriphron. 75. OSTRAKA OF ThEMISTOCI,ES AND XANTIIIPPUS 274 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS and his son-in-law Gelo, and attained very great prosperity and power under these despots. Gelo, originally a general of Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, had succeeded to the lordship of that city, and when appealed to by the exiled Syracusan Gamori (landed nobility) had reinstated them and at the same time seized the power also in Syracuse. He gave over the tyranny of Gela to his brother Hiero, and as ruler of Syracuse adorned the city with many fine buildings and with magnificent docks and raised her to the rank of a great naval power, while he increased her wealth and her population greatly by transferring thither many of the richer inhabitants of captured Camarina and Hyblaean Megara — the poorer being sold into foreign slavery ; for he " regarded the demos,** says Herodotus, " as a most unpleasant neighbour." While Gelo and his brothers, Hiero, Polyzalus, and Thrasybulus, kept their magnificent court at Syracuse, the city of Acragas, though not yet adorned with its splendid temples, ^ became wealthy and powerful under the rule of Thero, whose daughter Demarete became Gelo's wife ; and when Thero quarrelled with Terillus and drove him out of Himera, and Terillus appealed to the Carthaginians for aid (as Hippias appealed to the Persians), the lords of Syracuse and Acragas combined to oppose the foreign invader. It was at this moment that the envoys from Greece came to beg Gelo for assistance against Persia ; ^ and it can cause no wonder that he was unable to promise it, though he possessed a "far larger eet and army " than any other Greek state. The Cartha- inians, about 300,000 men under Hamilcar, landed at Panor- us (Palermo) and besieged Thero in Himera. Gelo hastened his relief, and by a ruse gained entrance to Hamilcar' s naval mp. Then, profiting by the confusion, he assailed the land mp also. The struggle was fierce and long, but the victory mplete. Half the Punic army was massacred ; the rest ere enslaved. Only one single vessel, we are told by Diodorus, ^ Built by slave labour after the battle of Himera. See Note A (5). 2 See p. 256. Gelo is accused by Herodotus of having sent three ships to iielphi under the command of a certain Cadmus, who took with him " a rge sum of money and a stock of friendly words, and was to watch and see ^hat turn the Persian war might take." 27s ANCIENT GREECE reached Carthage. A fine picture is given by Herodotus, which is well worth a moment's pause, although it may not represent an historical fact ; indeed, Herodotus, as often, gives the thing for what it is worth — and it is worth much from a standpoint other than that of the scientific historian. " After the battle Hamilcar disappeared. Gelo made the strictest search, but he could not be found, dead or alive. The Carthaginians, who take probability for their guide, give the following account. Hamilcar, they say, during all the time that the battle raged, which was from dawn till evening, remained in the camp [near the shore] sacrificing and seeking favourable omens, while he burned on a huge pyre the entire bodies of victims. Here, as he poured libations on the sacri- fices, he saw the rout of his army ; whereupon he cast himself headlong into the flames, and so was consumed and disappeared. Whether it happened in this way or not, certain it is that the Carthaginians offer him sacrifice." The oft-repeated assertion of old writers that the leaders of armies, both Greek and Roman, would refuse to give battle without obtaining favourable omens ^ often gives one pause. Here is the case of the commander of a Carthaginian ^ arm}'- absenting himself all day from an important battle for such purposes. The battles of Himera and Salamis (as those of Mycale and Plataea) were believed to have been fought on the same day (September 20, 480). It is, of course, possible that this was not so ; but there is little to be gained by doubt- ing it. From, the spoil a large present was made by the Syra- cusans to Demarete, the wife of Gelo. The silver coins, called Demareteia, struck on this occasion, some of which still exist, are exceedingly beautiful (see coin 6, Plate IV). At Himera exist the remains of a temple near the mouth of the river. It may have been the very temple before which Hamilcar offered sacrifice to Poseidon. Gelo died in 478, the year of the capture of Sestos by the * The well-known exception of P. Claudius and the refractory chickens was followed by a crushing defeat ! 2 Hamilcar is said to have been Greek from his mother's side, and at Himera to have sacrificed, not to Phoenician deities, but to Poseidon. 276 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS Athenians, the last event recorded by Herodotus. The reign of his brother Hiero therefore really belongs to our next period ; but it may be better to anticipate a little for the sake of con- tinuity. During the twelve years of his reign Syracuse was probably the most notable city of the Hellenic world, both for its power and for its patronage of the fine arts. At the court of Hiero and at that of Thero of Acragas we find Simo- nides, Bacchylides, Pindar, and Aeschylus. The victories of Hiero and others of the Sicilian princes at the Olympic and Pythian chariot-races were celebrated by the first poets of the day. The exact dates of some of these victories (extending from 482 to 472) have been lately ascertained by means of papyrus manuscripts discovered in Egypt ; and at Delphi not many years ago was excavated the famous bronze statue of the charioteer (Fig. 74) dedicated by Hiero's brother Polyzalus, evidently as a thanksgiving for victory. Beneath all this iisplay there was doubtless much to disgust — much tyranny md inhumanity, 1 much insolent, if magnificent, patronage )f genius. Of all this there are evidences not only in recorded ,cts of barbarity, but even in hints dropped by Pindar himself, spite of his evident admiration of the feudal pomp of the yracusan court. One feat performed by Hiero justly earned gratitude of Hellas. The people of the Greek city of ae, or Cyme, in Italy (see p. 117), were hard pressed by the scans — the same Btruscans, or Tyrseni, whose pirate- t had rendered so much aid to the Carthaginians, the same pie who had espoused the cause of the Tarquins and had, der their king, I^ars Porsena, besieged Rome some thirty ars before. Hiero sent his fleet and inflicted a crushing efeat on the Etruscans. Of this victory we possess a most ^iteresting memorial (Fig. "jf) — a bronze Etruscan helmet, i*und (1817) at Olympia. Its inscription says : *' Hiero and 'le Syracusans [dedicate] to Zeus Tyrrhenian spoil from yme." In the splendid ode that Pindar wrote to celebrate, [imarily, the victory which Hiero's horses gained at the I Sinister stories are told of Hiero's conduct towards Polyzalus, who had irried Demarete. 277 ANCIENT GREECE Pythian Games in the same year (474) he also alludes to the victory of Cyme, and prays Zeus that " the Phoenician and the war-cry of the Tyrseni may remain in peace at home, having seen the grievous ruin of their ships before Cyme." In 472 Thero of Acragas died. His son quarrelled with Hiero and was overthrown, and Acragas became a free republic. Not long after Hiero' s death in 467 his brother Thrasybulus, who succeeded him, was expelled on account of his cruelty and avarice, and Syracuse also became free. Its further connexion with Greece will occupy our attention when we come to the ill-fated Sicilian expedition of the Athenians and to the visits of Plato to the court of Dionysius. SECTION B : PINDAR (522-442) Pindar and Aeschylus were contemporaries, but the plays of Aeschylus are perhaps better considered in connexion with those of the other Attic dramatists, whereas Pindar, both in feeling and in form, belongs to a different school. Although it is full of wise saws and pious sentiments, and parades with great pomp and solemnity the dogmas and legends of the popular religion, the poetry of Pindar — such at least as we possess — is for the most part a majestically magnilo- quent glorification of wealth and high birth and success ; while Aeschylus, though for a time he enjoyed, as did Pindar, the regal patronage of the Syracusan court, moved in quite another, and a far higher, world of thought and feeling, and in his dramas pictured, in language of still more superb audacity and with a far sublimer imagination, the wrestlings of the human soul against the mysterious decrees of Fate. Pindar was born at or near Thebes about 522. He studied at Athens, and when still a youth of sixteen composed dithyrambs for public festivals. On his return he came under the influence of the Theban poetess Corinna, some fragments of whose lyrics have been discovered in a papyrus manuscript. She advised him to introduce mythology into his poetry. The result was i a hymn written for the Thebans, twelve lines of which are | 278 76. Tempi;e of ' Concordia : 77. ' HiERO'S HEI.MET 278 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS extant. In these twelve short lines there are twelve different proper names and sixteen epithets, mostly long made-up words. This hymn is said to have introduced every mytho- logical character connected with Thebes. No wonder that Corinna's criticism was, '' One should sow with the hand and not with the whole sack." He seems soon to have become noted as a poet. The earliest of his epinikia (' songs of victory ') , all of which we probably possess, was written in 502. It was in honour of a Thessalian youth who had won the foot-race at the Pythian Games, and it extols the Aleuadae (Pyth. x.) . But Pindar did not share the Medizing propensities of these princes. He belonged to the small minority at Thebes which sympathized strongly with the victors at Marathon and Salamis and Plataea. Indeed, it is said that (perhaps later in life) in consequence of his praises of Athens (XiTrapai . . . KXeival 'AOavai) he was severely fined by his fellow-citizens, and that the Athenians made him their pubHc guest (Tr/ooSej/o?) and paid him twice the sum and erected a bronze statue to him. His poetry was greatly admired by Alexander I of Macedonia ^ — who, as we have seen, submitted to Persia, but was Greek at heart — and also by Thero of Acragas and Hiero of Syracuse, for both of whom he wrote numerous enkomia (panegyrics) and epinikia. In 473, a year after the great victory of Hiero at Cyme, Pindar went to Sicily, where he lived for about four years. Here he may have met Aeschylus (who, however, probably went there first in 468), and certainly met Simonides (who died c. 468) and the nephew of Simonides, the lyric poet Bacchylides, who was also employed by Hiero to celebrate his victories at the games. 2 In 468 Pindar was again in Thebes, whence he sent a fine ode [01. vi.) to Syracuse. Hiero was at this time suffering from a serious disease, and in 467 he died. In the next year Pindar wrote two of his finest odes (Pyth. iv. and v.) 1 As lovers of Milton's sonnets know, Pindar's house was consequently spared by Alexander the Great (as it had been already by the Spartans). 2 Bacchylides was regarded by some ancient writers as a formidable rival of Pindar, but fifteen of his poems discovered lately among Egyptian papyrus manuscripts seem to prove that, though he possessed elegance and taste, he was a poet of no high order. 279 ANCIENT GREECE for Arcesilaus IV, king of Cyrene — a descendant of Battus (see p. 145) — and it is just possible that the poet visited Cyrene and also Rhodes. In 460 he wrote one of his epinikia, and another in 452, at Olympia. His last poem was a hymn to Persephone, of which three words are extant. He is said to have died at Argos, in the theatre. There were seventeen volumes of Pindar's poems — hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, dirges, enkomia, epinikia, and others. Besides about 150 fragments of other poems, we possess, prob- ably complete, the forty-four epinikia, or odes of triumph, which were written in honour of victors at the gamCvS — Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian — and were recited at banquets or festive processions {kcojuloi). The earliest (P. X.) has been mentioned. Another early one {P. vii.) is in honour of an Athenian, Megacles, perhaps a son of the reformer Cleisthenes, and it is interesting to note that this ode, as also the only other written for an Athenian {NAi.), is remarkably short, and that there is a good deal said about avoiding envy. The date is that of the battle of Marathon, and Megacles had already been twice ostracized — so, what with the Medizing tendency of the Thebans and the democratic dislike of hero- worship at Athens, we cannot wonder at Pindar's brevity and sage advice. Exceedingly Gne and historically the most interest- ing are the numerous epinikia composed for Thero and Hiero — ' King of Syracuse,' as the poet calls him, using a title that Hiero assumed about 478. In one of these (P. i.) Pindar cele- brates the victory gained by Hiero' s chariot horses (or perhaps by his celebrated racer Pherenikus) at the Pythian Games in 474, and alludes (as we have already seen) to the still more important victory won at Cyme in the same year, and also to the battles of Salamis and Plataea and Himera. " I will claim a reward," he says, " from Salamis for the sake of the Athenians, and at Sparta I will tell of the fight before Cithaeron where the Medes with their crooked bows were smitten, and by the well-watered banks of the Himera I will pay the sons of Deinomenes [Hiero and his brothers] the hymn that is their due for deeds of valour." Fourteen of the odes are 280 THE PERSIAN INVASIONS for Sicilian victors, and not a few are in honour of Aeginetans, for whom Pindar seems to have had a special partiality. In a series of six of his ' Nemeans ' he extols the Aeacidae, and contrasts the noble character of Ajax with that of Odysseus, of whom he says : " I deem that his fame became greater than his deeds and sufferings through the sweet singer Homer." The metre of the Pindaric odes seems at first sight — as it seemed to Horace — to be quite arbitrary. But, although there is scarcely any resemblance between the metres of the various odes, each of them consists of parts (strophes, epodes, &c.) in which the same or a similar metre recurs. The rhythms were doubtless based on the kind of music (Doric, Aeolic, lyydian, &c.) to which the poems were set. Grandeur of expression, often rising to sublimity but sometimes sinking to magniloquence, is the striking characteristic of Pindar's poetry. Although he possesses no such sublimity of imagination ^ as Aeschylus, or Dante, or Milton, the onward rush of thought, clothed in superb language, is magnificent. He compares himself to an eagle. " I send thee," he says, " this mingled draught of honey and white milk — late indeed ! but amidst the birds of the air the eagle is swift : he marketh from afar, and, swooping suddenly, seizeth with his talons the tawny prey ; but cackHng jackdaws haunt the lower ground." Gray, too, has pictured for us the Theban eagle as Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air ; and Horace in one of his finest odes has likened Pindar to a mighty torrent, and to a wild swan winging its way through the realms of cloudland. Although he accepted many strange myths for artistic purposes, Pindar protested strongly, as Xenophanes had done, against all that was derogatory of the dignity of the gods. "It is seemly," he says, "for a man to speak nobly of the deities." And although for artistic purposes he makes use ^ The finest imaginative picture in Pindar is perhaps that of the eagle of Zeus lulled to sleep by the tones of Apollo's golden lyre (P. i.)- The paraphrase ; by Gray in his Progress of Poetry does it very poor justice. 28l ANCIENT GREECE of the Olympian gods, in most cases when he is expressing his own beHefs he speaks of ' God ' as Xenophanes and other sages, and indeed Homer himself, had done. " One must not strive with God," he says, " who now exalte th the one and now giveth great glory to others/' God, he tells us, " o'ertakes the eagle in its flight and passeth the dolphin in the sea." If God does not " swiftly put forth his hand to the helm of the state, it is oft no easy task for the rulers to guide it aright." He is full of wise, if rather trite, saws and maxims. The best of them is perhaps preserved by Herodotus and Plato : " I^aw is king of all." Others are : " Future days are wisest witnesses " (which reminds one of Solon) ; " Silence is oft wisest for a man " ; *' We all die but once." His wisdom does not bear the impress of deep conviction ; it is purely decorative — like exquisite embroidery. Not a few dark threads of melancholy and embitterment sometimes traverse the web — due perhaps to the rivalry of other poets, and to that ' envy ' of which he sometimes sings — possibly also to a too close contact with regal wealth and luxury. Pythagorean and Orphic influences can perhaps be traced in some passages where he speaks of purification and initiation, and of the rewards and punishments in a future life. A fine picture of the life of spirits in Elysium is given in a fragment of one of his dirges, reminding one of similar pictures by Virgil and Dante and of passages in Plato's Phaedo. In another fragmentary dirge he speaks thus of death : " By a happy destiny all travel towards a bourne where they are loosed from toil. The body, indeed, followeth almighty Death, but still alive remaineth a shadowy image of vitality, and this alone is of origin divine." The Orphic teachings doubtless were associated with much superstition and priestcraft, but, together with Pythagorean mysticism, they helped by their imaginative parables to keep alive in the hearts of many the beliefs that lie at the root of all true religion. zSz CHAPTER VI THE RISE OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE (478-439) SECTIONS : ARCHITBCTURK AND SCULPTURE : ABSCHYIvUS, HERODOTUS, PHILOSOPHERS OF THE PERIOD THE capture of Sestos is, as we have seen, the last event recorded by Herodotus in his history of the Persian invasions ; but Persia continued to hold important posts in Thrace,^ and, although after Mycale the Ionian and Aeolian cities regained autonomy, the barbarian was still at their gates ; nor was it unlikely that Xerxes would attempt to revenge himself on Greece itself. The need for combined action was therefore strongly felt. Hitherto Sparta had been regarded as leader. Although the victories of Marathon and Salamis had been due mainly to Athens, and although her ships formed the bulk of the Greek fleet, the allies had hitherto refused to submit to Athenian leadership, and the supreme command both on land and on the sea had been held by Spartans — by Kurybiadas at Salamis, by Pausanias at Plataea, and by I^eotychidas at Mycale. How the command of the allied fleet was acquired by Athens, and how she made herself the head of a great anti-Persian confederacy, and how out of this leadership (riyijULovia) in less than twenty years she developed an empire (apxn) which extended its victories even to Cyprus and Egyptian Memphis, has been recounted by many writers ; and although this period lies between those described in detail by Herodotus and by Thucydides, enough is told by both, especially by Thucydides,^ to render possible a fairly satis- factory reconstruction. 1 Doriscus was evidently still Persian when Herodotus wrote vii. 106-107. 2 Thuc. i. 89 sq. and the speech of the Athenians in i, 74. Other sources are inscriptions, Plutarch, and Nepos. 283 ANCIENT GREECE But it is not my purpose to follow closely the evolution of the Athenian Empire, nor the varying fortune of those long- protracted struggles for supremacy which often fill so many pages of Greek history with their wearisome and ever-recur- ring details of battles and sieges and seditions and revolts and butcheries. Such things, it is true, form the main staple of one of the greatest of histories — that of Thucydides — but they are so skilfully interwoven, now with the brilliant rhetoric and the intricate arguments of fictitious speeches, now with some subtle analysis of character or motive, now with some trenchant criticism or the vivid description of a beleaguered town or plague-stricken city or sickening butchery, that we are at times almost persuaded that these miserable squabbles and atrocities are, as he believed them to be, not only more worthy of record than what Herodotus calls " the great and wonderful deeds of the Greeks and barbarians " in the Persian wars, but even of more consequence to posterity than all the legacies of Greek art, Greek poetry, and Greek philosophy. A " possession for ever " doubtless his book will remain, but not by reason of its minute record of events, many of which have no longer any value except in so far as they may at times give us a fuller view of the dark side of Greek character. The transfer of the naval command from Sparta to Athens happened thus. In the year following the capture of Sestos (in which lycotychidas and the Spartan ships had taken no part) a fleet composed mainly of Athenian and Ionian vessels was put under the command of the Spartan Pausanias, who as the victor at Plataea enjoyed great popularity in spite of his overweening arrogance.^ He made for Cyprus and cleared the island of the Persians ; then he sailed to Byzantium. Here he laid himself open to the charge of Medism. He was accused of releasing Persian prisoners, assuming Median ^ On the dedicated tripod (p. 272) he had caused onlj'- his own name to be inscribed as the conqueror of the Mede. The Spartans erased the distich and engraved the names of the cities (Thuc. i. 132). This doubtless rankled in his mind, and (as seen in Cleomenes) the peculiar temperament and training of the Spartans seem to have induced a tendency towards unbridled passion and insanity. 284 78. Group of Gods, Parthenon Frieze 79. The * SXRANGFORD ' ShIEI^D 284 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE habits and dress, and even of treasonable correspondence with the Great King/ and was recalled to Sparta. The Ionian allies hereupon, weary of arrogant despotism, begged the Athenians to assume the command of the fleet, and although another admiral (Dorkis) was sent out from Sparta, he was not recognized. The acquiescence of Sparta seems remarkable, but was probably due to the influence of the military caste of the old school, which regarded sea-power as an illusion. To this influence was also probably due a raid on Thessaly made about this time (c. 476) by the Spartans under their king I^eotychidas, who landed in the Gulf of Pagasae, and might perhaps have annexed the whole of Thessaly unless he had proved as venal as many of his compatriots. He was convicted of receiving bribes from the Persian-loving Aleuadae, and only saved his life by seeking sanctuary at Tegea. Here we may perhaps glance at the question of what Thucydides calls the entirely different character of the Spartans and the Athenians. Many of these differences have been noted by the Attic historian, who during his exile of twenty years had special opportunities for studying them, and it would be a most interesting, if exceedingly difficult, task to collect all that he has said on the subject, to compare it with what has been said by Herodotus and other ancient writers, and to see how far it is borne out by historical facts. 1 His letter to Xerxes, proposing to marry his daughter, and the reply of Xerxes, are given by Thucydides. The fate of Pausanias may be best related here, so as to avoid discontinuity. He hired a private trireme and returned to Byzantium, where he conducted himself like a Persian magnate and was guilty of many excesses. He even got possession of Sestos, but the Athenians sent Cimon with a squadron and expelled him. Having retired to Cleonae in the Troad, he renewed his intrigues with the Persians and was again summoned to Sparta, where, suspected of inciting a rising among the Helots, and being also convicted by a ruse (see Thuc. i. 133) of his correspondence with Persia, he fled for sanctuary into a small building in the precinct of Athene and was walled up there by the ephors and died of starvation (471). Although he was carried out of the sanctuary while still breathing, the Delphic oracle ordered atonement for the pollution ; and this ' pollution ' was urged as a charge by the Athenians when, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, they themselves were ordered by the Spartans to cast out the Alcmaeonid ' pollution ' in the person of Pericles. 285 ANCIENT GREECE From various passages — such as the speech of the Corinthians in i. 70, where the contrast is strongly brought out, and in i. 141, where Pericles points out the practical advantages possessed by Athens, and his great speech (iii. 39-40), where he delineates the main features of Spartan and Athenian character — one may gain a fairly clear impression of his finely drawn distinctions, but to restate that impression in any other form, especially in a still more concise form, is almost im- possible. These passages should be studied. In passing I can but oifer a few epithets such as may perhaps occur to the reader of Thucydides as roughly intimating his judgments. The Spartans he seems to regard as eminently dilatory, enslaved to tradition and system, unimaginative, illiterate, boorish, short-sighted and narrow in policy, unenterprising, unideal, incapable of foreseeing difficulties, cold-blooded, tena- cious, heroically but stupidly regardless of danger and death, and incredibly superstitious and venal. The character of the ' Athenians he seems to consider a rare composite of the prac- tical and the ideal : they are at once " most enterprising and most prudent,'' " lovers of the beautiful but also of economy, lovers of learning but also of manliness," magnanimous but severe (alas! we might add, often inhumanly cruel), generous but exacting, sanguine, impulsive, imaginative, brilliant, versa- tile, restless but capable of strenuous and protracted effort, fascinating but false. The last two epithets may be exemplified by the intense affection and the intense hatred that, far more than Sparta, Athens seems to have excited under various conditions. The enthusiasmtfor Athens among the Ionian Greeks at the formation of^the Confederacy was evidently very strong, but it was soon^to be followed by a detestation as universal and still more intense, so that at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War " the good wishes of all men made greatly for the I^acedaemonians ... so angry were most with the Athenians, some of them from a wish to be liberated from their rule and others from a fear of being brought under it/' ^ ^ Thuc. ii, 8. All quotations in this chapter are from Thucydides, if not otherwise specified. Dale's translation has been used to some extent. 286 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE During the next few years we hear but little of Sparta. We have chiefly to note the foundation and rapid development of the so-called Confederacy of Delos — the work especially of Aristides and Cimon ; and, secondly, the important changes effected at Athens by the influence of Themistocles. The Confederacy of Delos The allies, especially the lonians, had begged Athens to assume the naval command. This led to the formation of a league, nominally anti-Persian, under the hegemony of Athens. The isle of Delos, the sacred ancient gathering-place of the Ionic race, was chosen as headquarters and as treasure-house. In course of time the Confederacy included about 260 towns (Aristophanes says a thousand!), situate mostly in Ionia and Aeolis and the adjacent islands and Kuboea. According to its wealth each state had to contribute its share in fully equipped vessels, or the equivalent in tribute ((popog). Most of the smaller and some of the greater states preferred the latter method, and thus practically subscribed to the enlargement of the Athenian fleet, and what was at first the voluntary subscription of a confederate was soon regarded by Athens as the tribute of a subject. The work of valuation was entrusted to Aristides, and his estimates gave such general satisfaction that they remained in force for half a century. To Cimon, 1" the son of Miltiades, was given the command of the confederate fleet. His first feat, after expelling Pausanias from Byzantium, was the capture of Bion — stubbornly defended by the Persian Boges, who finally lit a pyre and flung his wife and children and slaves and himself into the flames. A year or two later (473) Cimon distinguished himself by capturing from pirates the illustrious isle of Scyros, and still more by discovering, as was believed, the bones of Theseus, who, tradition asserts, when expelled from Athens was murdered on this island by tl^ycomedes (the king at whose court Achilles lived for some time disguised as a girl). The bones were brought to Athens, and possibly the Theseion was built to receive them ; but this is doubted (see Note A). Some five years later (468) the 287 ANCIENT GREECE confederate fleet, after having driven the Persians from several lyycian and Carian cities, gained a brilHant victory over the Persian fleet at the mouth of the Eurymedon in Pamphylia. About 200 of the enemy's vessels were destroyed, as well as a reinforcement of 80 Phoenician ships that arrived after the battle, and the Greeks are said to have disembarked and routed the Persian land troops on the same day. Shortly before this battle, doubtless with the full approval of Athens, though also doubtless not with the full approval of the confederate council (for Thucydides speaks of it as the " subjugation of an allied city contrary to agreement ''), Cimon had reduced by force the island of Naxos, which had signified its intention of withdrawing from the Confederacy. The Naxians were henceforth treated as ' subject allies ' of Athens, and this precedent was soon followed by similar cases. Thasos quarrelled with Athens about a gold-mine and ' revolted ' (for thus the Athenians now described withdrawal from the league). After two years it was reduced (463), having hoped in vain for the aid of the lyacedaemonians, who were prevented from keeping their promise by an earthquake — and this time a really serious one, as we shall see later. One after another the states of the Confederacy, discontented with Athens for using the funds and the fleet against Greeks instead of against Persians, were either reduced by force or acquiesced in being treated as tributaries of the Athenian Empire, until only Chios, I^esbos, and Samos were still autono- mous and not liable to military service under Athenian com-: manders, although obliged to contribute contingents to the confederate fleet ; and, if we allow ourselves to look forward a few years, we may note here that in 454 the treasury was removed from Delos to Athens and the Confederacy came prac- tically to an end, although this name still continued to be used ofiicially instead of the word ' Empire ' {apx^) — a word odious to the democratic Hellene, except in the case of such lovers of freedom as the Athenians, who, as Goethe said, loved no freedom but their own. From its full development in 454 until its total collapse at the end of the Peloponnesian War this 288 8o. Tkmpi;e on Sunion 8i. Theseion 288 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE Athenian Empire existed just half a century. But this is anticipation, and we must now return and note what has been occurring at Athens itself. Themistocles and Events at Athens In a former chapter I touched upon the personality and political tenets of the four leading Athenians during the Persian invasion, namely, Themistocles, Xanthippus, Aristides, and Cimon. To Themistocles it was mainly due that Athens had become a maritime power and had conquered at Salamis. Xanthippus had succeeded him in the command of the fleet, and had won the battle of Mycale. Aristides had distinguished him- self at Marathon and at Salamis, and had commanded at Plataea, and was the chief organizer of the Confederacy. Cimon, the youngest of the four, the son of Miltiades, was actively occupied in extending the oversea empire of Athens. He and Aristides belonged to the older school of Cleisthenic republicanism, opposed to the more advanced democratic and ' Peiraean ' influences of Themistocles, and were politically in sympathy with Xanthippus ; but between Cimon and Xanthippus was a very strong hereditary hostility, for Xanthippus had been the chief accuser of Miltiades. Themistocles was not a pro- fessional party politician, nor was he, as the other three, of noble family. He stood, therefore, somewhat apart, but exer- cised great influence on the decisions of the Kcclesia. Even before the battle of Marathon, in 493, he had as archon per- suaded the Athenians to begin the fortification of the Peiraeus and the formation of new docks. These operations had been stopped by the Persian invasions. On his suggestion they were now renewed, and walls round Athens itself were begun, enclosing a greater space than those demolished by Peisistratus and by the Persians. Hereupon Sparta sent envoys to propose the stoppage of the work and the demolition of all fortifications in Greece ; but Themistocles, says Thucydides, went to Sparta and deluded the authorities with various excuses, while at home ' the whole population, men, women, and children, worked at the building, sparing neither private nor public edifice. . . , T 289 ANCIENT GREECE And the building still shows even now " — as its relics do even in our day — '' that it was executed in haste, for the foundations are laid with stones of all kinds, and many columns from tombs and sculptured blocks were inserted." Thus ere long Themistocles was able to inform the I^acedaemonians that " Athens was already walled and capable of defending itself," and that " as the Athenians had abandoned their city without the leave of Sparta, so without her leave they intended to have their city walled." Besides the erection of city ramparts there was an immense amount of clearance and rebuilding to be done in Athens itself and on the Acropolis, where, as we have already seen, the debris of the old temples and sculptures was cast into the spaces between the new walls and the newly levelled plateau. On this plateau arose the new temples, which will be described later. The new walls of the Acropolis were probably erected, not by the advice of Themistocles, but by that of Cimon, since we hear of the southern wall being built out of the spoils of the battle of the Eurymedon (468), when Themistocles was an exile at Argos, or perhaps already a fugitive in Asia. Whether he was suspected of Medism or of receiving bribes, or whether arrogance made him unpopular, or whether his political opponents persuaded the Bcclesia that he was a danger to the state, is not known, but that he was ostracized is certain — and the fact is illustrated, if not proved, by the potsherd bearing his name that may be seen in the British Museum (Fig. 75). This was probably in 471, the same year in which Pausanias met his fate. For some years he '' had a house at Argos and used to travel about the Peloponnese." Then, apparently about 467, the lyacedaemonians accused him to the Athenians of having taken part in the intrigues of Pausanias. He fled, first to Corcyra, then through Thessaly (aided by the king, Admetus) to Asia, and ultimately reached Susa. Here he wrote a letter to Artaxerxes, who was now king (his father, Xerxes, having been murdered by Artabanus in 465) , claiming recognition as a " benefactor of the king " for his messages sent 290 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE to Xerxes (p. 268) and asking for a year's grace in order that he might learn the Persian language. At the end of this time he presented himself and gained such favour with the Persian king — to whom he proposed plans, never to be carried out, for the conquest of Greece — that he was made governor of Asiatic Magnesia and was supplied with bread and wine by the cities of I^ampsacus and My us. Thus he lived, as a Persian magnate, till about 450. The story that he poisoned himself with bull's blood probably arose from a statue that was erected to him in Magnesia, which represented him pouring a libation while standing near a slain bull. " His relations say that his bones were carried over to Attica and buried there without the knowledge of the Athenians." A tomb in the rock near the Peiraeus lighthouse is still shown as the tomb of Themis- tocles. Aristides had died ^ in the year of the battle of the Eury- medon (468), and Cimon was thus for a time without any powerful political opponent. But Xanthippus, his hereditary enemy, now dead or retired, had left behind him a son who was to attain by his splendid gifts of intellect and character an almost absolute control of the state. Nor was it long before the popularity of the victor of the Eurymedon — the generous and jovial old sailor whose plentiful lack of wit had been proverbial in his earlier days and whose preferences were still for wine- bouts and aristocratic boon companions rather than for states- manship and philosophy — suffered total eclipse. Ostracism — the almost inevitable fate of the eminent Athenian statesman — came upon him under rather dramatic circumstances. He had always obstinately maintained that the one object of Athens should be to extend her oversea empire and harass Persia, and that she should recognize the supremacy of Sparta on land and live at peace with her — a doctrine that won him the contemptuous sobriquet of the I^aconizer or Philo- I/aconian. Now in 464 a very severe earthquake laid Sparta 1 He is said to have died so poor that he was buried at public expense. Some of his descendants, fortune-tellers and beggars, were granted rations by the state. The descendants of Themistocles were wealthy and respected. One was a friend of Pausanias the traveller. 291 ANCIENT GREECE in ruins. Many Spartans perislied, and the opportunity was seized by the Messenian Helots, who, after defeating the Spartans with the loss of 300 men on the plain of Stenyclarus, fortified themselves (as their forefathers had done) on Mount Ithome. For more than two years they defied the Spartans, who at last appealed for assistance to Athens — the Athenians being skilled in siege operations. Cimon, in spite of the oppo- sition of Pericles and another newly risen anti-oligarchical politician, Bphialtes, carried the Assembly with him by his sailor eloquence. " Consent not,'' he exclaimed, " to see Hellas lamed and our city without her yoke-fellow ! " Four thousand Athenian hoplites were sent under his command to help in the siege of Ithome ; but Ithome was not easily to be taken, and the Spartans, perhaps suspecting treason, suddenly and insultingly dismissed the Athenian troops. The indignation at Athens was intense, and Cimon was ostracized. For about two years longer Ithome defied capture. At last the Messe- nians capitulated on the condition that they should leave the Peloponnese ; and Athens offered them a site for a new home at Naupactus, the haven on the Corinthian Gulf which, it will be remembered, was so called because it served as a ship-yard for the Dorians on their invasion of the Peloponnese. It had been lately occupied by the Athenians as a naval station, a kind of Gibraltar commanding the entrance of the gulf and the trade with Western Hellas. In a later age we shall hear again of these Messenians of Naupactus (see Figs. 93, 122, and pp. 336, 396) • Soon after the ostracism of Cimon the friend of Pericles, Bphialtes, was assassinated — probably in revenge for his attacks on the ancient and aristocratic council of the Areo- pagus, which he accused of corrupt practices and caused to be deprived of the relics of its political power, leaving it nothing but jurisdiction in cases of homicide and a few religious func- tions.^ Pericles now and for the next thirty years stood alone at the helm of the state, often, it is true, fiercely assailed, but only for one short period opposed by a rival of any importance. ^ 1 See remarks on the Eumenides, p, 319. 292 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE The * age of Pericles/ if we limit the name to these thirty years and except the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, offers comparatively little of moment in its military and political occurrences, but much that is of supreme literary and artistic interest. It is true that the fame of Pericles himself rests mainly on his statecraft, and it was to his genius and his good fortune that Athens owed a measure of peace during the time of her greatest artistic and intellectual activity, but, putting aside the question whether a policy which resulted in the universal hatred of Athens and the acclamation of Sparta as the liberator of Greece was really a great policy, what the Periclean age has of value for us is very slightly connected with the facts of its political history. These facts I shall therefore state as concisely as possible. 461-459. After Cimon's banishment Athens breaks with Sparta and forms an entente with Argos (the Oresteia of Aeschy- lus reflects this feeling). Megara puts itself under the pro- tectorate of Athens. lyong Walls are built between Megara and its port Nisaea and garrisoned by Athenians, who thus com- mand the passes of Geraneia leading to the Isthmus. A fleet of 200 Athenian and confederate ships cross from Cyprus to Kgypt to assist the I^ibyan king Inaros to free Egypt from the Persians. They sail up the Nile as far as the Pyramids and capture Memphis, except the ' White Citadel,' which holds out for years. (Finally, in 454, Artaxerxes sends a great army and besieges the Greeks on a Nile island, which he takes by diverting the stream. The Greeks burn their ships and capitulate and are allowed to retreat to Cyrene. A reinforce- ment of fifty triremes sent from Athens is annihilated by the Phoenician fleet in the Nile.) 458-450. The occupation of Megara by Athens causes war with Corinth and with Aegina. The Athenians, though many of their warships are in Egypt, capture seventy Aeginetan vessels and force Aegina to surrender the rest and to be enrolled as subject state in the Confederacy. The I^acedaemonians send troops to Northern Greece to defend their mother-country, 293 ANCIENT GREiECE Doris, against the Phocians, and use the opportunity to re- estabhsh a Boeotian league, with Thebes at its head, to counter- act Athens. On their return they threaten Athens and rout the Athenians at Tanagra, but soon afterwards Athens re- occupies Boeotia. At the battle of Tanagra the exiled Cimon had appeared and offered to fight as hoplite. His request was refused, but he was allowed to return to Athens. Some years later he negotiates a five-year truce between Athens and Sparta. He is reinstated as admiral of the confederate fleet, and once more renews naval operations against Persia. During the blockade of Cition in Cyprus he dies. From 458 to 455 the two lyong Walls from Athens to the Peiraeus are built (p. 297). 448. After the death of Cimon the Greeks and Persians seem to have agreed to abstain from hostilities. It is doubtful whether a formal treaty was made. Thucydides does not mention it. Some later writers assert that Callias, brother-in- law of Cimon, went to Susa to ratify it and that the Persian king promised to send no ships into the Aegaean or the Pro- pontis, nor to cross the river Halys, nor to claim the Greek Asiatic cities, except those in Cyprus, which were surrendered to the Phoenicians. A copy of this treaty, it is said, was engraved on a column at Athens. As we hear soon after (Thuc. i. 115) of a satrap of Sardis, some of these details are evidently incorrect. 447. Boeotia revolts and the Athenians suffer a severe defeat and lose many prisoners at Coroneia. Buboea revolts, but is reduced by Pericles. Even Megara, which had volun- tarily put itself under Athenian protection, finds Athenian imperialism too hard a taskmaster, or possibly is induced to revolt by the oligarchical faction, and massacres the Athenian garrison. Then a Peloponnesian army invades Attica. 446. Thirty Years' Peace is concluded. Athens agrees to surrender Megara and Achaea, and it is stipulated that neither side shall tamper with the other's allies. The terms are humiliating for Athens and for the policy of Pericles. The loss of Megara and the lyong Walls of Nisaea deprives Athens 294 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE of the command of the Isthmus of Corinth, and exposes her to attack from the Peloponnese. 445-431. During these fourteen years Pericles has absolute control of the state, not by virtue of any special official position (he is officially only one of the ten strategoi, or generals, re- elected yearly), but merely through strength of character and intellect. About 443 a politician named Thucydides (not the historian, but the son of Melesias), a relative of Cimon, heads a party that violently opposes the imperial policy of Pericles, asserting that even the weal of the empire should not override justice and honour. These * little Athenians ' (so to speak) sit apart in the public Assembly to show their contempt of the malodorous demos and its hero, whom they accuse (doubtless with some justice) of misappropriating the funds of the Con- federacy for the purpose of adorning Athens and carrying on her wars against fellow-Greeks. Pericles argues that as long as the allies are protected satisfactorily by Athens they have no right to interfere with the finances — an argument well suited to win the approval of an imperialistic mob. Thucy- dides, who seems to have been an orator scarcely inferior to Pericles himself, and who evidently stood on a higher level of political morality, is said to have complained, and doubtless with much reason, that " even when he had thrown Pericles he denied that he had fallen and talked over those who had seen him fall." It is therefore not surprising that when Thucydides proposed a trial by ostracism he himself was banished (443). It was perhaps in the same year that after an unsuccessful attempt had been made by the Sybarites to refound their city (destroyed by Croton in 510), Pericles settled the pan-Hellenic colony of Thurii near the site of Sybaris — a fact the more interesting because both Herodotus and the orator I^ysias were probably among the first colonists, and because Hippodamus (p. 298) laid out the plan of the new city on the new method, with streets at right angles, as he did at the Peiraeus. 439. Samos, one of the three autonomous allies and the richest of them, now shared the fate of Naxos and of many 29s ANCIENT GREECE others of the confederates. The Samian oligarchy quarrelled with Miletus, and refused to accept the arbitration of Athens, which was in favour of the Milesians, some say because Aspasia, who was Milesian, influenced Pericles ! Pericles himself probably went out in command of the fleet and established a democracy ; but the exiles returned, and again Pericles went out, this time having as a fellow-s^m^^^os the poet Sophocles, who had lately gained great fame by his Antigone. After a blockade of nine months Samos surrendered her fleet and paid looo talents indemnity. Also Byzantium revolted, but was forced to return to allegiance. Perhaps it was at this time that Pericles visited the Euxine with a large fleet, and sailed as far as the Crimea. In his funeral speech in honour of those who fell in the Samian war his eloquence is said to have produced an extraordinary effect. He was crowned as an Olympic victor. But Cimon's sister Elpinice (who seems not to have accepted Pericles' definition of the ideal woman as one about whom least is said) reproached him publicly with having triumphed over fellow-Greeks, while her brother had triumphed only over the barbarian. We have now arrived at events (the sedition at Kpidamnus and the sea-fight of the Corcyraeans against the Corintliians) which were among the immediate causes of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, and it will be better to reserve them for consideration in closer connexion with the war. Also whatever more there is to be said, or quoted, on the subject of the policy and character of Pericles will be more intelligible if deferred to the end of his career. In the following sections a brief account is given of some of the important artistic and literary works produced during the period that we have been considering. SECTION A : ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE {c. 478-431) When the Athenians returned to their city after its second occupation by the Persians and the withdrawal of Mardonius in 479 they at once set to work, as we have seen, to clear away 296 8 3. Parthenon, from West :^5s:;: THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE the ruins and to rebuild. They were also persuaded by Themistocles to surround Athens with new ramparts and to fortify also the Peiraeus, and, probably by Cimon's advice, they set aside some of the spoil taken from the Persians at the Kurymedon for the building of the great south wall of the Acro- polis, and perhaps also for clearing and enlarging the plateau and either attempting to restore the old temple of Athene Polias (see Note A, 14) or laying foundations for new temples. More, however, was not accomplished until about twenty years later, when Pericles, at the zenith of his power, induced the Athenians to vote a large sum (partly their own and partly taken from the treasury of the confederates) for the erection of the Parthenon, which was built on old foundations, but after a new plan, devised by the architect Ictinus. But before we come to the Parthenon and its sculptures a few words should be said about some works of great political, if not artistic, importance, namely, the port of the Peiraeus and the I^ong Walls which connected it with Athens. The fortifications of the Peiraeus, as also the first formation of docks in its three natural inlets, Munychia, Zea, and ' The Harbour,' of which Cantharus (' The Cup ') was the part used by warships, were due to the influence of Themistocles, and probably the I^ong Walls were begun or planned before his exile ; but they seem to have been finished between 458 and 455. These walls diverged considerably in order to include both the Peiraeus and the open bay of Phaleron, the beach of which, some two miles in extent, offered an easy landing-place for an invader. About 443 Pericles induced the Athenians to remedy this defect by building another long wall parallel to the northern wall, and at a distance from it of about 400 yards, thus forming a far narrower and more defensible fortified passage of about four miles between the port and the upper city. After the completion of this third wall the old Phaleron wall was no longer kept in repair, and the open beach of the Phaleron bay was deserted for the quays and marts of the new harbours. The town of Peiraeus, spreading round the great harbour and Zea, and up the slopes of Acte and Munychia, 297 ANCIENT GREECE was laid out on a new plan, in rectangular blocks, by the Milesian architect Hippodamus, who also laid out the new cities of Thurii and Rhodes, and whose name was given to the chief market-place in the Peiraeus. A fine Kmporion, or * Place of Commerce,' and a spacious colonnaded ' Show-place ' (Deigma) for imported merchandise were constructed, and a thousand talents spent on new docks and an arsenal. The Peiraeus has of late years recovered its ancient name as well as its ancient prosperity. As late as 1835 it was known as Porto lycone. This name its little fishing hamlet received on account of the ancient stone lion which once stood at the entrance of the harbour, and which was carried off by the Venetians in 1687 and now stands in front of the arsenal at Venice. Having secured their city and their port by ramparts and long walls, the Athenians were easily won over by Pericles to beheve that it was their duty to show their gratitude for deliverance from the barbarian by erecting worthier shrines " to the gods. They had still stored up in their treasury a great amount of Persian spoil, aiidjt he yearly tribute of thejr. subject aUies was abmit 600 lakats — some at least of which they thought it justifiable to use in adorning the imperial city. On the Acropolis, in the place of the ancient temples burnt by Mardonius, had arisen — or perhaps had only been begun — a new shrine to receive the old wooden idol of Athene, which had doubtless been hidden away during the barbarian invasion. And Cimon, who did not believe in fortifying the city, had built a strong portal and a south wall for the citadel. Moreover, on the plateau inside Cimon' s Gate statues were again erected, among them {c. 460) a colossal bronze Athene by Pheidias, then about thirty-five years of age, and some ten years later perhaps his scarcely less famous I^emnian Athene (see Fig. 87 and lyist of Illustrations). The greater statue — which was dedicated from Persian spoils and was sometimes called the ' Promachos,' or Champion Goddess — is said to have been, together with its pedestal, 66 feet high. In representations of the Acropolis on coins 298 ANCIENT GREECE it overtops considerably the Parthenon and the Propylaea. The crest on the helmet and the gilded tip of the spear served, says Pausanias, as a landmark for sailors, like the gilt angel on the Venetian Campanile. The statue stood on the Acropolis for eight centuries, and was then probably taken to Constanti- nople, and was there destroyed by a mob in a.d. 1203. The lycmnian Athene was a smaller bronze statue dedicated by the Athenian colonists of I^emnos. This island, as we have seen, was gained for Athens by Miltiades shortly before the battle of Marathon, and the colonists probably commissioned Pheidias to make the statue about 450. But Athens possessed no longer — indeed, she never had possessed — any shrine worthy of her goddess, any temple so majestic as that of Delphi or of Olympia or Bphesus or Samos or Sicilian Acragas or Selinus, or even far-away Italian Paestum. So keenly did Pericles feel this that in 448, having perhaps failed in getting money voted by the Athenians, he induced or allowed them to send an embassy to the other Grecian states proposing a pan-Hellenic congress in order to discuss various matters, especially the restoration of the temples burnt by , the barbarians. Naturally the " twenty elderly Athenians I were rebuffed," as Grote tells us. Sparta cared httle for grand 1 temples and such things, and doubtless regarded the proposal as a sly stroke of policy for increasing the imperial power of Athens. Perhaps this rebuff effected what the eloquence of Pericles had failed to effect. The chief buildings erected by the Athenians in this period were the Parthenon (c. 445-438), the Theseion, the temple on Sunion, the Odeion, the new Propylaea (437-432), and the Hall of Mysteries at Bleusis. Besides these we may note the splendid temple of Apollo at Phigaleia, in Messenia, designed by the Athenian Ictinus, the chief architect of the Parthenon. Three of these, and also the Krechtheion, which was somewhat later, are described in Note A at the end of this volume. Of the others the following brief account may be useful. The Propylaea (i.e. the Gate-porticoes) took the place of the 300 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE fortress-portal built by Cimon, and were for show rather than for defence. The edifice was designed by Mnesicles and built between 437 and 432. It consisted of a massive wall in which were pierced five gateways, and on each side of the wall was a portico of six Doric columns. Through the central gateway ran the main road. The other gateways, two on each side, were on a higher basement, reached by several steps of marble and one of black Eleusinian stone. The gateways had massive doors, whose ' harsh thunder ' is mentioned by Aristophanes. The inner roof of the fore-portico was supported by six Ionic columns. This central building was to be flanked by projecting wings with colonnades backed by spacious halls. The north wing, much of which, together with considerable portions of the central building, still exists, was fairly well completed, and contained a portico and a hall (Pinakotheke) in which votive paintings were hung, some of them probably by the famous painter Polygnotus. (He had probably already painted his fresco (?) of the battle of Marathon in the Stoa Poikile, near the market-place, and a picture of the Descent of OdyvSseus into Hades for the I^esche of the Cnidians at Delphi.) The south wing, however, was never completed, either because of the Peloponnesian War or else because the ground had already been consecrated as the site of the temples of Brauronian Artemis and Athene Nike, and the priests refused to give it up. Whatever may have been the reason, the little temple of Athene Nike was built on this projecting cliff, as is explained in Note A. The Odeion, or Music Hall, was built soon after Pericles had got rid of his opponent Thucydides (442) and was able to indulge more freely his wish to spend public money on splendid structures. Its site was on the south-west slope of the Acropolis, not far from the theatre of Dionysus. (A far greater Odeion was built three centuries later near the Propylaea by Herodes Atticus. In passing note that the theatre of Dionysus, in which all the masterpieces of the Attic drama were first performed, was at this time only a somewhat primitive stage facing the Acropolis, on the natural slope of which the audience was 301 ANCIENT GREECE accommodated with wooden benches or dug-out seats. The huge auditorium, capable of holding 30,000 spectators, was excavated and furnished with stone seats in the fourth century.) The Hall of Mysteries at Eleusis was constructed about the same time to replace the old building destroyed by the Persians. The design was by Ictinus, and the superintending architect was Coroebus. The inner temple (Telesterion, or ' Place of Initiation ') was partly built into the rock of the Kleusinian acropolis. It was afterwards {c 310) furnished with a fine Doric colonnade. The Mysteries were celebrated here down to A.D. 396, when the building was burnt by Alaric. p The Parthenon was begun about 445, some three years before /the ostracism of Thucydides. It is therefore probable that his indictment of Pericles was based mainly on the great expenses / demanded for this magnificent temple. ^ The designer was I Ictinus, the builder Callicrates, and to Pheidias was entrusted the decorative work. It is regarded as the purest type of Doric architecture, the characteristics of which I have explained elsewhere. Its dimensions are 228 by loi feet ; its peristyle consists of 8 X 17 columns of about 35 feet. At both ends there is a double portico, the inner row of columns standing on a level with the inner temple and two steps above the stylobat (base- ment of the outer columns) . The sanctuary containing the gold and ivory statue of Athene by Pheidias, which was 38 feet high, formed the larger (eastern) part of the inner temple, and was enclosed by walls and divided lengthwise, like a church with its nave and two aisles, by two rows of small columns arranged in two tiers, one above the other. The statue stood facing the eastern portal, so as to receive the light of the rising sun, or perhaps the sunlight from the open space in the roof — if the Parthenon was a hypaethral temple. Behind this sanctuary (called the Hecatompedos, or ' Hundred-foot Shrine,' being 100 Attic feet in length) was a smaller compartment with its 1 Grote gives 3000 talents as perhaps spent at this time on public buildings (say ;^70o,ooo, representing three times as much in modern money). The gold on the Athene statue weighed 40 talents. In the treasury at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War were 6000 talents (Thuc. ii. 13). 302 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE ^ entrance at the west end of the temple. This was the ' Par- thenon ' proper. It was perhaps so named because it was (besides being the treasure-house) the dwelHng of the maiden priestesses of the goddess, and it may have given its name to the whole temple. But possibly the word ' Parthenon ' (' Room of the Maiden/ or ' the Maidens ') was originally applied to the temple itself, although it seems that at first it retained the name of the old temple of Athene Polias. Apart from its sculptures and regarded only as a building, the Parthenon possesses, even in its present state, a beauty and dignity such as we seek in vain in other ancient ruins, however impressive. It is as impossible to analyse and define such qualities as to discover by dissection the causes of what is great and beau- tiful in the art of Pheidias or of Sophocles ; but it is possible to note the wonderful care that in the best Greek architecture, as in the best Greek sculpture and poetry, was given to details of symmetry and proportion. Doubtless in order to render the perspective effect more perfectly harmonious and to lend a certain undefinable grace and beauty to the whole building, I the use of the absolutely straight line was avoided to a great extent. The columns not only taper gently, and gently diminish the width of their flutings, but have the slight convexity in their middle parts which is known as entasis. They also all lean very slightly inwards, and the corner columns are slightly thicker than the others. Even the steps of the marble basement are not exactly horizontal, but have a slight convexity. By what rules, if by any, the Greeks thus attempted to eliminate the imperfections of natural perspective as presented to us by our dull senses it is impossible to say. I The Parthenon was built of Pentelic (Attic) marble, which! was first used about this time, all finer architectural and statuary work having been until now done in the imported Parian marble. The Pentelic stone contains a certain amount of iron, to which is due the rich golden tint that it acquires. As has been stated elsewhere, colour was used for the decora- : tion of Greek temples and statuary very much more freely i than we are willing to believe, accustomed as we are to Greek 303 ^ ANCIENT GREECE j architecture and sculptures deprived of their original colours \ and to the dazzling white of Carrara marble in modern statues. j How far the Parthenon was decorated externally with colour I is not easy to discover, but probably the columns and architraves I were left uncoloured (though ornamented with wreaths, shields, &c.) or were only slightly tinted, while the mouldings and other decorations were brightly coloured, as well as the dress and other details of the pediment sculptures and the reliefs of the metopes and frieze, all of which had doubtless a background of dark red or blue. Above the architraves of the outer colonnade (as in all Doric temples) the frieze was divided by triglyphs into metopes. These metopes, ninety-two in number, were all sculptured in very high relief. As each forms a distinct picture it is easy to understand why metopes generally represent concentrated and vigorous action, every group being self-balanced and in- dependent. In the Parthenon the metopes depict contests between Centaurs and I^apithae and between Greeks and Amazons (Fig. 82), and possibly (on the north side, where the reliefs are very weather-worn) scenes from the Trojan War. Fifteen of the best are in the British Museum. Some are exceedingly vigorous and wonderfully balanced, and were possibly the work of Pheidias or of Myron, who excelled in poise amidst violent action (as in his Discobolos and his Marsyas) ; these have a decided likeness to the high-reliefs of the Theseion. Others again are of very inferior design and workmanship, jand were probably Ti>y disciples of the ' athletic^ scEooF^ iArgos. 5 ""The frieze of the Parthenon (much of which is in the British ; Museum) was a continuous frieze, as in an Ionic temple, and iran above the inner columns of the porticoes, all round I the outside of the walls of the sanctuary. It could thus be j seen by those who walked, or a procession which marched, round the Parthenon, and " the figures would seem to advance I as the spectator moved " (Gardner). Being under the colonnade and only lighted from below, the sculptures (especially the lower portions) were in very low relief, 304 ■" ' ' 'i ■■ "'UJHAJM '-r v 85. Portions of Parthi^non Frikze 304 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE .., so as to avoid too deep shadows. The continuous (Ionic) frieze- is, of course, well adapted for the representation of processions. The subject of the Parthenon frieze is the Panathenaic pro- cession, the great solemnity that took place every fourth year in connexion with the Panathenaic games, and in which all the richest and noblest born, all the magistrates and colonial and ; foreign representatives, all the youth and beauty of Athens, ■ took an eager part. The procession consists of knights on horseback, charioteers, victims for sacrifice, musicians, maidens carrying the sacred vessels and baskets, the archons and other dignitaries ; and over the main portal of the temple is seated in dignified expectation, awaiting the procession of worshippers, Athene herself with all the other Olympian divinities — a magnificent group. Nigh at hand is a priest with the sacred robe (peplos) which was offered to Athene on these occasions. There is an unity of design as well as a similarity of workmanship in the whole frieze from which it is fairly safe to conclude that it was mainly the jvotk of Phexdias himself, or carried out under his direct supervision. Perhaps there is a concentration of power in a single statue which may make it a more wonderful product of creative art than any sculptured group or continuous frieze can be (the difference being somewhat analogous to that between a drama and an epic), but by reason of its incom- parable grace and beauty the Parthenon frieze, even in its present state, holds something of the same place among works of sculpture that the Odyssey holds among works of poetic literature, while the groups of the two pediments may perhaps be likened to the Iliad. The sculptures of the pediments, doubtless also designed by Pheidias and executed under his direct supervision, were; still more wonderful for their masculine beauty and poweri than the frieze was for its beauty of delicate grace. So much we can tell from their scanty and mutilated remains — most of which may be seen in the British Museum. It is impossible for me to attempt any full description here, or to discuss the very numerous and diverse theories as to the meaning of the various figures and the way in which they were grouped. A fairly i u 305 I ANCIENT GREECE isatisfactory reconstruction, or rather restoration, made by jthe Austrian sculptor Schwerzek, is given in Fig. 86. All such reconstructions are considerably indebted to drawings ,; of the Parthenon that were made by a French artist, Carrey, ; in 1674, a few years before a German gunner of the Venetian forces besieging the Turks in the Acropolis succeeded in dropping a shell into the Turkish powder magazine, which was located in the Parthenon, with the result that a great part of the temple, until then in fair preservation, was demolished and many of the sculptures were shattered. The Venetian commander endeavoured to carry off the figure of Poseidon and the horses of Athene's chariot, but the whole group fell and was broken to pieces. In 1801 the English ambassador, lyord Elgin, procured a firman allowing him to " remove a few blocks of stone and figures," and removed the greater part of the metopes, frieze, and pediment sculptures — perhaps fortunately, as they were thus saved from further destruction by weather and vandalism. The subject of the east pediment was the birth of Athene. The central figures are lost. They perhaps represented the birth as it is frequently depicted on old vases, where the goddess in the form of a small fully armed figure springs forth from the head of Zeus, which has been smitten by Hephaestus with his hammer ; or more probably Pheidias chose a moment of more dignity, and represented the goddess already in full stature by the side of her father. An extant but mutilated figure is believed to represent Iris starting to take the news to mortals. In the left corner Helios (the sun) is rising from the sea in his chariot, and in the right the moon (Selene) is descending with her chariot into the waves. The other figures, sometimes called ' Theseus ' (or ' Olympus '), ' The Three Fates ' (or ' The Seasons '), and so on, are all of uncertain meaning. The subject of the west pediment was the contest of Poseidon and Athene for the land of Attica (see p. 32). Poseidon produced, to support his claim, a spring of salt water, and Athene made an olive- tree spring forth. (Both were preserved as objects of reverence in the ancient ' house of Erechtheus,' which was replaced by 306 m .:^«r, 'Ci vO O ro THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE , the Brechtheion.) The central group of Poseidon, Athene, ' and the horses of Athene's chariot were destroyed as has been explained. Carrey's sketch depicts Poseidon as a huge nude figure starting backwards in amazement before Athene, much as Marsyas does in Myron's group (see Fig. 88 and explanation, ; p. 309). The chariot of Poseidon, on the right, was probably | drawn by sea-horses. Reclining figures that once filled the ' corners may perhaps have represented the streams Ilissus and Cephisus, between which Athens lay. But the relics are too few and too mutilated to serve for any certain reconstruction, and it may be safer to confine one's admiration to them as single figures and as examples of unrivalled skill in the technique of sculpture — " marvellous translations into marble," as they have j been called, " of flesh and of drapery." Pheidias was born about 500, so he must have had distinct memories of Marathon, and perhaps fought at Salamis and Plataea. Among his earliest works was a group (Miltiades amidst gods and heroes) erected at Delphi, probably by Cimon to commemorate Marathon and his father. His colossal bronze Athene has already been mentioned, and his Athene lycmnia. Of his chryselephantine Athene Parthenos we are forced to form our only conception from two most unattractive statuettes and a few gems, busts, and coins (Figs. 89, 90, 91). After the dedication of the Parthenon in 438 (though the chronology is uncertain) Pheidias seems to have spent five years at Olympia working at his great statue of Olympian Zeus, which ancient writers describe as the most majestic and impressive of all images of the gods. The throne on which Zeus was seated was probably, with its supporting pedestal (22 feet broad), the most magnificent work of decora- tive sculpture ever produced. Every available surface was I used for reliefs or paintings. The statue itself was about 40 feet high, and the whole monument perhaps over 60 feet, so that, it was said, Zeus could not stand up without putting his head through the roof. On the extended right hand of the god stood a Victory, on his sceptre perched his eagle. Rough imitations of the monument and of the head of this Pheidian 307 ANCIENT GREECE Zeus may be seen on coins (Plate VI, 8, and Plate III, lo), and some of these heads are incomparably more satisfactory than any relic we possess of the Athene ; but this is all that is extant to help us to form any conception of the greatest masterpiece of Greek sculpture. Caligula tried to remove the statue, but portents, it is said, deterred him. It was probably after his return to Athens, about 432, that Pheidias was accused (by the enemies of Pericles) of peculation and sacrilege. He was able to refute the first charge because, by the advice of Pericles, he had made all the gold ornaments of the Athene detachable, and could thus prove that he had used the whole of the forty talents entrusted to him. The other accusation was based on the fact that he had introduced his own portrait and that of Pericles in the decorations of Athene's shield (see Fig. 79 and lyist of Illustrations) . It is said that he — the great artist who had been lately the pride of Athens and of all Greece — was condemned on this trivial charge and thrown into prison and died there — a fact almost incredible if we had not the cases of Anaxagoras and Socrates and others to prove how fatal were the results of giving judicial powers to a bigoted and litigious populace, whose vaunted reverence for law was merely a reverence for their own verdicts, not for any principles of justice and humanity. The creation of the dicasteries, that much-lauded gift (confirmed by the wise Pericles himself) to the Athenian mob, led to the pernicious influence of sophists and rhetoricians and inflammatory talk of all kinds, and the consequences were inevitable. Contemporary with Pheidias were the sculptor Calamis, renowned for his Attic grace uninfluenced by Argive ' athleti- cism ' and renowned for his horses (see the Delphic charioteer. Fig. 74 and p. 231), and Alcamenes, a I^esbian, and Paeonius, of Mende in Thrace. These two are said by Pausanias to have made the fine pediment sculptures for the magnificent temple of Zeus at Olympia [c. 450, some years before Pheidias was summoned to make the great statue) . Many of these sculptures have been recovered — enough to allow of a fairly complete reconstruction of the two pediments, which represented the 308 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE race of Pelops and Oenomaus and the fight of the Centaurs and lyapithae. Except one majestic statue with outstretched arm — perhaps an Apollo — the excavated figures have not, however, raised our esteem for these sculptors. Nor can one easily beheve that such a heavy, stiff, and somewhat antiquated style could ever have been practised by a sculptor who (perhaps when an old man and influenced by the Attic grace of Pheidias) was able to produce such a miracle of delicate beauty and lightness as the ' Nike of Paeonius,' one of the two great art treasures discovered by the excavators at Olympia (Fig. 93). Another and perhaps greater contemporary of Pheidias was Myron (c. 500-410), an Attic sculptor, who seems to have studied under Ageladas at Argos, probably together with Pheidias, and to have adopted the Argive ' athletic ' style. We have fine copies of two at least of his works — the well-known Discobolos (' Quoit- thrower ') and the equally well-known figure of the satyr Marsyas starting back when confronted by Athene. This group is described by Pliny and others, but the second figure was supposed to have been irrecoverably lost. Not many years ago was discovered at Rome what almost certainly is a copy of the Athene. It is in Frankfurt, and I am fortunate to be able to give a photograph of it (Fig. 88) . The original was in bronze, a material preferred by the Argive school and well adapted for statues representing violent motion — or, rather, that momentary poise in the midst of motion which is so conspicuous a characteristic of Myron's works and is selected by I^essing (in his Laocoon) as an essential characteristic of all great sculpture. SECTION B : AESCHYLUS : HERODOTUS : PHILOSOPHERS OF THE PERIOD How the Attic drama originated in Doric dithyrambs and in ' goat-dances ' performed at vintage festivals in honour of Dionysus, the wine-god, has been told, and we have seen how dialogue was introduced (perhaps by Thespis) between the L ANCIENT GREEiCE chorus and its leader, and also how the performances were transferred from the vintage gatherings * in the marshes ' outside Athens to a primitive theatre on the south-eastern slope of the Acropolis, where later the great theatre of Dionysus was constructed. In the time of Aeschylus (525-456) various innovations were made, some of them doubtless by him. A second ' hypocrite ' (i.e. ' answerer,' or speaker) was added, so that the narrative and the ' drama ' (action) became much developed and more independent of the chorus, which now fell more into the back- ground. Masks and costumes were improved and the high buskin [cothurnus, like the Elizabethan chopin) introduced. Statues, houses and temples, curtains, painted rocks and groves and other scenery, doors for exits and entrances, and other such stage apparatus, began to take the place of the central thymele (altar) round which the old dances had been performed, and, by about 430, movable platforms, wheeled or revolving on pivots, cranes, and other machinery for the descent and ascent of deities, became common. But to the end the classical Attic drama retained much of its original scenic simplicity. It was always more sculpturesque than pictorial. Sophocles introduced a third, perhaps a fourth, actor ; but this number was seldom, if ever, exceeded. Spectacular effects seem to have been almost entirely disregarded, and nuances of by-play and facial expression were made impossible by the great size of the open-air theatres and by the masks of the actors. The one thing of importance — and it must have been exceedingly difficult, needing mechanical aids — was audible and effective recitation both of dialogue and of chorus, for text-books were unknown, and the vast audiences would doubtless be eager to hear and criticize the new versions of the familiar legends that generally formed the subjects of these dramas.^ It has already been mentioned that Aeschylus fought at 1 The Persians of Aeschylus was a striking exception. So was the Capture of Miletus, by Phrynichus (p. 195). The knowledge of the audience and the supposed ignorance of the characters in the play as to the approaching cata- strophe allowed place to that ' dramatic irony ' which is especially associated with Sophocles. 310 w. I7. Probabi,e Copy of tiif. Phridian Athene: ItICmnia Probabi^E Copy of Myron's Athene 310 Marsyas group See List of Illustrations. THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE Marathon, where his brother Cynaegeirus was killed. Probably he was present also at Salamis and at Plataea, and some believe that the ' Ameinias of Pallene ' who at Salamis first attacked the Persians was the youngest of his brothers.^ He first competed for the tragic prize about 499, and first won it in 484. He is believed to have invented the ' trilogy ' — a group of three connected, or unconnected, tragedies, followed usually by a semi-comic ' satyric ' play. In 468 he was defeated by the young Sophocles, amidst great public excitement. Cimon in this year brought the bones of Theseus from Scyros, and he with his nine fellow-generals were asked to act as judges, and decided in favour of Sophocles. It has been said that either on this account or because he was beaten by Simonides in the composition of the Marathon epitaph (which, however, was in 489 !), or else because he was accused of revealing the Kleusinian Mysteries or of impious language (perhaps in his Prometheus, where Zeus is blasphemed), Aeschylus withdrew to the court of Hiero at Syracuse. It seems, however, that he had already been in Syracuse (about 475-470), where he must have known Simonides and Pindar. Hiero died in 467, and the poet, who was again in Athens in 465, returned to Sicily after the production of his Oresteia at Athens, and died (456) at Gela — killed, it is said, by being struck on the head by a tortoise dropped by an eagle, in fulfilment of a prophecy that he should perish by a ' stroke from heaven.' Of the seventy or more tragedies attributed to Aeschylus we possess only seven complete, ^ but these seven are more than enough to prove that in dramatic power and sublimity he is, with perhaps the one exception of Shakespeare, the greatest of poets, and in majesty and might of language unrivalled. His plots are simple, and in the earlier dramas there is a want ^ Hdt. viii. 84, 91 ; Aesch. Pars. 409 ; also scholia of the Medici MS. ^ The preservation of classical works is due mainly to the critics and writers of Alexandria, where there was a vast library (destroyed by Omar in a.d. 641) , founded by the Ptolemies (c. 300 B.C.) . They chose what was most popular and what best illustrated their theories of art. Sophocles wrote, it is said, 13O plays, of which only seven are extant. Of Euripides we have about twenty, and half the Hypsipyle, lately discovered. 3" ANCIENT GREECE of movement, the chorus sometimes being unduly prominent and using exceedingly obscure language ; but the dramatic effect is often overpowering. " Terror," says Schlegel, " is his element, and not the softer affections.^ He holds up a Medusa's head before the petrified spectators." His mind seems to have been deeply imbued by awe of mysterious powers — such powers as we hear of in the old religion of Greece and the Orphic and Kleusinian Mysteries. ^ There is constant reference to expiation and purification and the averting of evil, to dreams and oracles and portents and spectral appari- tions and to the ancient chthonian (infernal) deities, especially to the primal Earth-Mother. In some passages, says Paley, there is scarcely a word that does not involve some mystic doctrine. In splendid contrast to this background of gloom, with its sinister Fates and terrific Furies, stand the figures of the gods of Olympus, the benign sunHght deities — Zeus and Apollo and Athene. To these also Aeschylus pays reverence, but rather perhaps as personifications of Nature and agents of those supreme spiritual powers of good and evil the mani- festations of whose irresistible will are intimated under such names as Fate and Destiny and Justice and Retribution, and that Infatuation that maddens a man and goads him on to insolence and impiety and tempts him to " kick against the altar of Righteousness." Aeschylus is said to have belonged to the aristocratic anti-popular party of Aristides and Cimon, and to have opposed the innovations of Themistocles. But his glorifica- tion of the battle of Salamis seems scarcely consistent with a bigoted anti-naval poHcy, and his Eumenides is not, as is 1 In the Frogs of Aristophanes is an amusing scene (in Hades) between Aeschylus and Euripides, where the claims of the two poets are tested by Dionysus — partly by means of a balance to weigh their verses. Aeschylus boasts that " nobody ever accused him of describing a woman in love." " No," says Euripides, " there's nothing of Aphrodite in you ! " " And may there never be ! " answers Aeschylus. 2 It is notable that Aeschylus was born at Eleusis, and as a child may have received many such impressions ; and this may account for the charge of " revealing the mysteries " in his poetry. Cicero says that he was " almost a Pythagorean," and certainly there is much in his poetry that recalls Pytha- gorean doctrines. 312 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE sometimes imagined, directed against the action of the party of Kphialtes (p. 292) , but is rather a recognition of the Areopagus as the supreme court for cases of homicide. His reverence for the divine rights of kingship is very perceptible, and he seems to have been much impressed by the magnificence of the Persian court. Indeed, one may perhaps trace an Oriental influence in some of his imaginings, which at times are scarcely Greek in their audacity and grotesqueness — a quality noticed by Aristophanes, who makes Euripides ridicule the ' horse- cocks ' (griffins) and ' goat-stags ' of Aeschylean drama. No translation can reproduce the splendours and sublimities of the verse of Aeschylus, but some idea of the greatness of his dramatic power may be gained by reading even an unpre- tentious prose version, not of selected passages, but of an entire play, or, still better, of the great Trilogy — perhaps the mightiest drama in all literature. The pages of a volume on Ancient Greece could scarcely be better filled than with such a version ; but I shall have to content myself with giving a brief account of the seven extant plays. (i) The Suppliants is probably the earliest extant Greek tragedy. Some connect it with the alliance of Athens and Argos and the Egyptian expedition of 460-459. But from the style and the antique form of the drama, which consists mainly of chorus, it seems certain that the true date is about 488. The suppliants, who form the chorus, are the fifty Danaides who with their father. King Danaus, have fled from Egypt to Argos in order to escape hated nuptials with their cousins, the fifty sons of King Aegyptus. They plead for protection as descendants of Argive lo, whose wanderings (in the form of a heifer) had brought her to Egypt. Pelasgus, the Argive king, grants their prayer and repels the insolent black herald who demands their surrender. There were only two actors, as Danaus and the herald were played by the same person. The trilogy consisted of the Egyptians, the Suppliants, and the Danaides. In the last the Danaides were, it is believed, tried for the murder of their cousins (whom after all they had been compelled to marry), and were seemingly acquitted, although 313 ANCIENT GREECE according to the well-known legend they suffered punishment in Hades. It is unlikely that Aeschylus introduced the senti- mental exception of Hypermnestra, who alone — splendide mendax — out of pity or love, is said to have disobeyed her father and spared her husband (Hor. C. Ill, xi.). (2) The Seven against Thebes (467) was preceded in a trilogy by Laws and Oedipus, and followed by a satyric play, the Sphinx. For the story of the expedition of the seven heroes see p. 33. In the Frogs of Aristophanes Aeschylus describes it as a play "cram-full of Ares." The moment chosen is that of the assault on the city. After a long and vivid report by a messenger who describes the assailing host to the chorus of Theban women and the king, Eteocles stations a Theban hero at each of the seven gates, and, goaded by the Krinys of a father's curse, in spite of the entreaties of the chorus and his own foreknowledge of inevitable death, determines to meet his brother Polyneices in mortal combat, in which both are slain. Antigone and Ismene then appear, mourning their brothers in a very beautiful and pathetic lamentation, in which the younger echoes in somewhat different form the broken utterances of the elder sister. In defiance of the proclamation of the new ''ruler of the Cadmean city'' (Creon), Antigone now states her determination to bury Polyneices, her brother. Thus we are brought to the moment with which the Antigone of Sophocles opens ; and modern criticism gravely (and perhaps not unreasonably) suspects that this last scene may have been added by some later writer in order to link the Seven up with the Sophoclean play. (3) The Persae is the only extant Greek tragedy dealing with contemporary history. It was performed at Athens (with other plays on legendary subjects) about eight years after the battle of Salamis. Possibly it was written in Sicily for King Hiero and first performed at Syracuse. The scene is laid in Persia, in front of the tomb of Darius (Fig. 73 and p. 194), near Persepolis,^ where, awaiting Queen Atossa, is collected a 1 The " city of the Persians " (1. 15) may, I think, be Persepolis ; but Susa and EJcbatana are alone mentioned by name. 314 89-91. Three possible Copies of the Pheidian Athene 314 See List of Illustrations THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE band of twelve elders — * Faithfuls.' They chant of the crossing of the Hellespont and of the innumerable host that has accom- panied Xerxes to Greece, but express their anxiety at hearing no news. The mother- queen Atossa approaches. She too is full of anxiety about her son Xerxes, and has been disturbed by strange dreams, and will offer libations at the tomb of her deified husband. A messenger now arrives and relates the disasters of the Persians. The descriptions of the battle of Salamis and the terrified flight of Xerxes and the catastrophe at the river Strymon (see p. 267) are exceedingly fine, and most interesting as the earliest picture that we possess of any great historical event in Greek history — if we exclude the Homeric poems ! The ghost of Darius now rises from the tomb, and to him Atossa recounts the disastrous story of the invasion, whereat the spirit of the Great King, full of mourning and of wrath at the folly of his son, prophesies the utter defeat of the Persians at Plataea — being able, as are the spirits in Dante's Inferno, to foresee the future, though ignorant of the present. After the disappearance of the ghost of Darius, Xerxes and his retinue arrive in a pitiable state of despair and terror, and the play ends amidst their heart- rending lamentations — a scene that, however unhistorical, must have highly delighted an Athenian audience. ^ (4) Prometheus Bound was written perhaps a few years after the great eruption of Aetna (c. 478; see Thuc. iii. 116), which is mentioned prophetically (1. 375). But the highly developed form of the play, with its finely finished metrical and rhetorical language and the predominance of the dramatic over the lyrical element, and the possibility of a third actor (though Prometheus may have been an effigy), as well as the probable use of stage machinery {e.g. in the case of the ocean nymphs, whose advent is heralded by the flutter of wings), has induced some to give it a much later date and even needlessly to question its authenticity. ^ In the Frogs Dionysus exclaims (<i propos of the Persae) : " Ay, truly, and I was delighted when news was brought of the death of Darius." There seems some slight error here. 31S ANCIENT GREECE The other plays of the trilogy were the Fire-bearing Prometheus and the Loosing of Prometheus. Of the last some fragments survive, as well as a I^atin version by Cicero of about thirty lines — enough to prove that we have lost a magnificent Greek drama on the same subject as Shelley's very un-Greek Prometheus Unbound. The fable of Prometheus (with whom Bpimetheus and Pandora are sometimes asso- ciated) is of great antiquity and probably of Eastern origin. Aeschylus borrows names and the main features of his picture from Hesiod's Theogonia. He depicts the Titan, a divinity of the old dynasty of Cronos and the benefactor of the human race, fettered to the side of a precipice in the Caucasus, but still defying the power of Zeus and refusing to divulge the oracle of Themis which threatened the overthrow of the usurping Olympian deity. Prometheus is visited by the ocean nymphs and their father Oceanus. To him he recounts all the blessings of civilization (letters, numbers, astronomy, houses, horses, ships, &c.) that he had brought to mortals, whom he depicts as having been weak and miserable and living " like frail ants in sunless caverns " before his gift of fire,^ and he refuses the counsel of the sea-god to make peace with Zeus. Then lo, who has also been greatly wronged by Zeus and is now in the form of a heifer wandering through the world (from Argos to Egypt via the Caucasus), appears on the scene. She relates her wanderings and Prometheus foretells her future, and how her progeny (the Danaides) will return to Argos, and how an Argive hero (Heracles, a son of Zeus) will come to set him free, and how Zeus himself will have to appeal to him for help — power and deity have to appeal to knowledge. Hermes then visits him, but his arrogant behests are repelled with scorn, and amidst a terrific storm and earth- I quake the drama ends. It is interesting to note that although ' the real scene of the sufferings of Prometheus was, according to scholiasts, the *' European shores of the Ocean/' the spot ^ The golden age of Cronos seems inconsistent with this. Horace and others attribute diseases and degeneration to the advent of fire and the gifts of Pandora. The fable has analogy to that of the Tree of Knowledge. 316 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE intimated by Aeschylus (Scythia is mentioned in our play, and the Caucasus in a fragment of the Loosing) became so locaHzed that Pompey the Great during the Mithridatic war undertook a long journey in order to visit it. (5) The Oresteia, or ' Story of Orestes/ consisting of the Agamemnon, the Choephoroe (' lyibation-carriers '), and the Eumenides (' Furies '), won the first prize in 458. Soon afterwards Aeschylus went for the second time to Sicily, probably in order to produce the play there also. It is the only extant Greek trilogy. The (lost) satyric play by which it was followed was Proteus, which probably depicted the entertaining adventure of Menelaus among the seals. ^ The Agamemnon Jopens with the monologue of the sentinel who so long has watched at night for fire-beacons announcing the fall of Troy. Suddenly the signal flashes in the far distance, and he hurries forth to the queen. A band of Argive elders enters. In an ode of great sublimity they sing of the long, disastrous war, and of portents and of the direful curse that broods over the house of Pelops. Clytaemnestra now appears and exultingly proclaims the capture of Troy and the return of the king ; but our suspicions are aroused by the gloomy chants of the elders, who forebode some terrible catastrophe. A herald arrives. He describes the sack of Troy and then announces the approach of Agamemnon, who ere long ap- pears, followed by chariots laden with spoil and by captives, among whom is Priam's daughter, the prophetess Cassandra. Clytaemnestra welcomes her husband with feigned joy and reverence, and offers friendly words to her hated rival, Cassandra. The chorus once more utters its dark forebodings, and Cassandra, foreseeing the impending terrors and her own fate, breaks forth into lamentation and describes the ghastly visions that she sees in her ecstasy. Then she rushes 1 Od. iv. The only extant satyric play is the Cyclops by Kuripides. The subjects of these lighter plays were often taken from Homer ; e.g. Nausicaa, or The Washerwomen. It is noticeable that Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia at an age (sixty-seven) when nowadays men are regarded as past work, especially creative work. Sophocles wrote many of his finest plays between his sixty-fifth and ninetieth years. 317 ANCIENT GREECE into the palace to meet her fate, while from behind the scenes we hear the groans of the murdered king. The palace door opens and we see Clytaemnestra standing by the body of her murdered husband and hear her proudly, insolently, confess the crime and justify it as righteous requital for the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigeneia. Here she is joined by Aegisthus, her accompHce in infidelity and murder, amidst whose fierce altercation with the elders the drama ends. The Choephoroe tells the same story as the Eledra of Sopho- cles and of Euripides (to which it forms a most interesting contrast) — namely, the return of Orestes (who had been sent away to Phocis when a child by his mother Clytaemnestra), the recognition of him by his sister Blectra, and the slaying of the queen together with her paramour by her own son, who has brought her the false tidings of his own death. The character of Klectra is wonderfully drawn, and that of Clytaemnestra is perhaps even more impressive in its defiant pride and almost majestic lyady-Macbeth-like insolence than in the Agamemnon. The ' libation-carriers ' are the maidens who, together with Electra, have been ordered by the queen, because of an evil dream, to make offerings at the tomb of Agamemnon — probably in Mycenae. The drama ends by a vision of the Furies, beheld by Orestes, who flees in terror before them. The opening scene of the Eumenides is before the great temple at Delphi. The aged Pythian priestess enters the shrine to offer prayers to the goddess Earth and other ancient deities and then to take her seat on the oracular tripod. She returns terrified and scarce able to say what she has seen : a suppliant at the central altar, his hands and sword dripping with blood, closely surrounded by a band of slumbering monstrous forms — like Gorgons or Harpies, but wingless, black, distilling filthy ooze from their eyes and snorting forth in sleep their fetid breath. She has scarce ended when Apollo comes forth leading Orestes. He promises him safeguard to Athens, entrusting him to the care of Hermes. The temple door has remained open, and within we see the Furies lying 3i8 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE asleep around the central altar — the '* navel of the earth " — above which arises a spectral form, the ghost of Clytaemnestra, which calls on the sleepers to awake and pursue. With horrid moans and groans they answer, still asleep ; then, waking, they find their victim fled, and chanting their terrible song they dance wildly round the altar, till Apollo drives them forth from his temple. The scene now changes. Orestes is embracing the statue before Athene's temple on the Athenian Acropolis. The Furies arrive and claim their victim, uttering their terrible cry for vengeance in a magnificent hymn in which they chant of sin and inexorable retribution. But Athene appears in her four-horse chariot. She bids the herald summon the council of the Areopagus, '' the best of my citizens." Perhaps the scene is supposed to be changed to the ' hill of Ares ' (or rather ' of Curses ' — i.e. of the Avenging Goddesses). Apollo appears to advocate the cause of Orestes against the accusing Furies. The judges cast their ballots into the two urns. The votes are equal. Athene gives the verdict in favour of Orestes, and the rage of the Furies against the ' younger deities ' is allayed, and even their blessings are elicited, by the promise of Athene to assign them a special sanctuary " near the house of Erechtheus " (probably in the dark cleft still existing amid the north-eastern crags of the Areopagus). Here they are to be worshipped as the ' Eumenides,' or ' Kindly Goddesses.' Herodotus The passages that have been quoted from Herodotus in connexion with the Persian invasions will have shown, to some extent, the character of his work. Much has been written about it, both in praise and in depreciation, but for those who care to read the book itself — of which there are good annotated translations — such criticism is mostly super- fluous. Here I shall content myself with offering a few biographical data and a few general remarks. As historian Herodotus was preceded by Hecataeus of Miletus and Hellanicus of Mytilene. The former has already 319 ANCIENT GREECE been mentioned in connexion with the Ionic revolt and as having written a geography [Travels round the Earth) for the map or globe of Anaximander. His history is mentioned several times by Herodotus, who also speaks of his having been in Egypt. The ' Attic history ' of Hellanicus is men- tioned by Thucydides. Herodotus, who tells us (ii. 143) that he was not accus- tomed to '' boast of his family," was born (c. 484) in the Dorian city of Halicarnassus in Caria, whence he withdrew, or was banished, in consequence of a revolt against the ruler, or tyrant, I^ygdamis — the grandson of that Queen Artemisia whose courage at Salamis was so admired by Xerxes, and also b}'' his historian. Probably in Samos or I/Csbos he acquired the Ionic dialect in which he wrote — apparently a selection from the four forms of the ordinary Ionic combined with Attic and epic elements. His travels extended to Scythia (nearly to the Crimea), Babylon, and Elephantine (near Assouan). He seems to have returned to Halicarnassus and aided in expelling I^ygdamis. His evident admiration for Athens seems to confirm the assertion that he lived there, under the patronage of Pericles, for some time. It is even stated that the Athenians presented him with ten talents (some £2500) for reciting his history at the Panathenaea [c. 446) . Also perhaps he recited it at Olympia ; and Thucydides, then a boy, is said to have been present — and to have shed tears ; but chronology makes this improb- able. In 444-443 the Athenians and the cityless Sybarites founded Thurii, close to the site of ruined Sybaris, and Herodotus may have been among the first colonists. He may also have composed his history (from previous notes) at Thurii, and perhaps he died there about 426. Some say that he (as also the orator I^ysias) returned to Greece, and that he died at Pella, in Macedonia. From his mention (i. 130) of a revolt of the Medes against Darius, which was thought to be the revolt of 408 against Darius II, instead of the earlier revolt against Darius Hystaspes, it has been wrongly believed that Herodotus lived until nearly the end of the 320 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE Peloponnesian War. In spite of all the sins of omission and commission laid to his charge by the modern historical critic — his inaccuracies, his credulity, his reverence for prophecies and oracles, his belief in the efficacy of images and prayer and sacrifice, his tendency to seek for supernatural causes, his partiality, and so on ^ — this " naive, uncritical, entrancing story-teller *' possesses gifts that many a more scientific chronicler might well envy. By his keen powers of observation he has collected an immense amount of interest- ing and curious information in regard not merely to events but also to customs and character and cities and countries, and much else, and, what is of even greater importance, his human sympathies allow him an insight into the true causes of things which Thucydides, with all his skilful analysis of secondary and superficial motives, does not possess. The great agent in shaping outward circumstances, as Professor Butcher says, is the human will. But human will is pro- foundly influenced by beliefs and feelings that lie very deep in human nature, and into these depths mere critical acumen has no such insight as that which is sometimes vouchsafed to the ' naive * and sympathetic spirit. Philosophers of the Period The Eleatic philosophers Parmenides and Zeno have already been mentioned as followers of Xenophanes (p. 208), and it has been shown how his doctrine of the one eternal and im- mutable Reality, the source and cause of all the natural universe, degenerated in course of time into a barren denial of the existence (even the temporal, practical existence) of sensible things, and of the possibility of motion. With Par- menides the sublime philosophy of his master still retained much of its elevation and aroused the reverent admiration of Socrates and of Plato, who speaks of his " wondrous depth." As an old man Parmenides is said to have visited Athens 1 Sometimes he ventures to express a doubt [e.g. " or perhaps the wind ceased of itself "), or prays gods and heroes to forgive his scepticism. He was very far removed from a credulous fool or a bigot. " My duty," he says, " is to report all that is said, but I am not obliged to believe it all." X 321 ANCIENT GREECE {c. 448), and Plato describes (possibly invents) a very interest- ing interview in whicli Socrates, then quite a young man, imparts to him his newly conceived Ideal theory and is en- couraged by him to develop and apply it more boldly. Indeed, it was the Bleatic behef in the one immaterial Reality — involving the denial of the absolute reality of sensible objects — that was the foundation of the Socratic (or Platonic) beUef in the divine Will as the one true cause of all things. This denial of the real existence of natural objects has ever en- countered the ridicule of the uninitiated, but, " paradoxical as it may appear, this insistence on the unreality of the sensible world is the only way in which worth and meaning can be given to it." Misunderstood, it leads to all kinds of extrava- gant absurdities, as it did in the case of Zeno, who wasted his energies on endless intellectual puzzles and quibbles about the impossibility of motion and the non-existence of place and so on. He is interesting merely because the Sophists were (though they may not have acknowledged it) his lineal descendants. With them, as with him, there was no absolute truth, and consequently no absolute knowledge. Their highest object was intellectualism and rhetorical artifice — that art of Belial, " to make the worse appear the better reason." Zeno is said to have accompanied Parmenides to Athens in 448, and to have been at that time about forty years of age. The only important literary relics of these two Bleatics are about a hundred hexameters by Parmenides, besides a I^atin version of about fifty more. In one fragment he offers us a fine imaginative picture — a vision in which he is borne aloft, in a chariot drawn by the horses of Wisdom, out of the night of Ignorance and through the portal of the goddess Justice, up into the sunlit realm of Knowledge. In other fragments he insists again and again on the existence of the One and the non-existence of the Many, and he asserts that all sensible things are resultants produced by two counteracting principles, such as cold and heat, darkness and light, force and inertia. Kmpedocles of Acragas, the last of the great colonial sages, was a man of supreme intellectual powers and of a most extra- 322 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE ordinary character. His personality is half hidden in fable, for he claimed supernatural powers as a divinity exiled for a time from heaven, and was reverenced as such. Mounted on a chariot, clad in purple robes, and crowned with Delphic laurel and with gold, he made triumphal progress through Sicily. Many miracles of healing are attributed to him. It is even said that he raised the dead. By his art — perhaps by draining a marsh — Selinus was freed from pestilence (see coin 5, Plate IV). Some assert that he threw himself into the crater of Aetna (as happens in Matthew Arnold's poem) to solve the mystery of existence. Others say that after a banquet, when all his companions had fallen asleep, he disappeared, and, like Elijah, was borne aloft to heaven. The modern critic is more inclined to accept the statement of Timaeus, the historian of Sicily, that he took ship for the Peloponnese and died there. That he was a great poet is proved by the magnificent eulogy addressed to him by I^ucretius, and also by a fragment of about 470 lines from his poem on Nature, which is grand in language and contains some highly imaginative metaphors. His philo- sophy seems to have combined some of the main doctrines of the Ionic, Bleatic, and Pythagorean schools. lyike Xenophanes he believed in the one real existence, and denied the testi- mony of the senses to be absolutely true. He developed a cosmology, founded on the four elements. These elements, however, are not * self -created ' or ' self -moving,' as with the old Ionic sages ; they are mere material {v\ri) subject to the influence of immaterial forces, which he named * love ' and ' hate,' the attraction and repulsion caused by which set up an eddying motion and thus formed the natural world out of chaos. Should ' love ' finally conquer, the world would relapse into a state {airoLov) where there is no counteraction, no contra- distinction, no genus or species or other differentiation, and where everything is everything else. He seems to have origi- nated the theory of ' emanations ' (adopted by Democritus, and described by lyucretius) — that is, the giving off by natural objects of minute particles that affect those elements of our sense-organs which are of the same nature. Hence the doctrine 323 ANCIENT GREECE " lyike is affected by like," which was later applied even to things immaterial — as by Plato to the relation between the intellect and its cognate Ideas. The attribution of affections and will to elemental matter (or to prime monads, i.e. atoms) converted the universe, so to speak, into a living and sensitive thing, such as Virgil describes in a celebrated passage (Aen. vi. 723 sq.), but was in reahty no more intelligible than the old Ionic doctrine of self-created and self -moving prime elements. The one great difficulty remained, and for the materialist still remains, viz. to account for this omnipresent Will or Energy in Nature. *' Amid the mysteries,'' says Herbert Spencer, " that become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty that we are ever in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed." To attempt to explain it as due to chemical affinity, gravity, magnetism, or any such natural force does not in the least help towards a solution. We still ask : Whence comes the force that causes these physical manifestations ? It was Anaxagoras who first gave a definite answer to this question. He held, indeed, that matter was eternal, infinite, indestructible, and uncreated (for his mind refused to believe in " creation from nothing "), but he believed that it existed originally in a chaotic state in which " all things were to- gether [ojuLou] " — that is, not differentiated and distinguishable — until " Mind [N0O9] came and arranged them into a Cosmos." This Mind, or IntelHgence, is conceived by Anaxagoras as not immanent in matter, far less as identical with matter, but as an immaterial ordering Will, self -existent (e0' eavrov), omniscient, and " with supreme lordship over all things." Thus we have no longer a materialistic explanation of the universe (which, in spite of their doctrines in regard to the Deity, was still apparently held by Xenophanes and others like him), and no longer a Monistic identification of mind and matter, nor even such ' Higher Pantheism ' as that described by Tennyson, but a distinct confession of a spiritual cause of the ordered universe. 324 THE ATHENIAN EMP{IR[E Both Plato and Aristotle, however, complain that Anaxa- goras (as is the case with many of us) only called in this divine Intelligence when in difficulties — so that Socrates is said (in the Phaedo) to have given up the study of his works because the writer had not the courage to apply his own doctrine in physical questions. But, timid guess as it was, it was apparently the first conception by a Greek thinker of a God of infinite power and goodness, such as was proclaimed by Socrates, so that we cannot be surprised at the words of Aristotle : '* When one of them said that there is in Nature an Intelligence that is the cause of the order of the universe, this man appears alone to have been sober among the wild speculations of his prede- cessors." Anaxagoras (c. 500-428) was a native of Clazomenae, in Ionia. Probably soon after the battle of Salamis he went to Athens, where he lived for about thirty years. He was an intimate friend of Pericles, and his teachings exercised great influence on Euripides. In 450 he was accused of impiety by the Athenian mob and the high-priests of Olympian ortho- doxy, and only escaped death by the eloquent pleadings of Pericles. He retired to I^ampsacus, where he died in 428. 32s CHAPTER VII THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404) SECTIONS : THUCYDIDKS : SOPHOCI^BS, EURIPIDBS, ARISTO- PHANES : DEMOCRITUS, THE SOPHISTS, SOCRATES : SCUI^PTURE IN 445 a Thirty Years' Peace had been concluded between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, who had been in a state of almost continuous hostility for about fifteen years. This peace had lasted only some twelve years — those years during which the Parthenon and the third I^ong Wall of Athens and the docks and marts of the Peiraeus were built- — when events occurred that led to the declaration of war by Sparta. The conflict lasted for about twenty-seven years. After the first ten years of ineffectual warfare, consist- ing mainly of such reprisals as were possible between a maritime and a land power, a respite was given by the Peace of Nicias (421), but the break was so short that, with Thucydides, we may regard the war as scarcely interrupted. Hostilities were soon renewed. Had the Athenians remained true to the policy of Pericles and renounced all ambitious attempts to increase their oversea empire, they might have retained their maritime supremacy ; but, under the influence of such demagogues and adventurers as Cleon and Alcibiades, they embarked on the disastrous SiciHan expedition (415), by which, and by the revolt of almost all their allies, their power was fatally undermined and rapidly sank, until Sparta, which had built ships and had even stooped to solicit the powerful aid of Persia against the * enslaver of Greece,' crushed the Athenian fleet at the battle of Aegospotami, captured Athens, razed her lyong Walls, and put an end to her empire (404). 326 92. The ' Meidias Vase ' See last of Illustrations 326 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR The story of this Peloponnesian War (as we call it, regarding it from the Athenian point of view) is told very fully by Thucy- dides down to the year 411, and is continued by Xenophon in his Hellenica. I^ater historians have repeated, sometimes with a vast amount of comment, all the details of every little skirmish or poHtical compHcation. Doubtless during these twenty-seven years many heroic deeds were done, and some memorable events took place, as well as many that every true lover of Greece would gladly forget ; but there is a very great deal to be found in the hundreds of pages often devoted to this war which is for us of no importance whatever — except when we associate it with memories of Thucydides. All these miserable fightings and butcheries, all this hateful intestine strife and hatred and treason and inhumanity, bulk so largely in the ordinary Greek history because they have been recounted by a writer perhaps unrivalled for graphic description, for brilliant rhetoric, and for powers of subtle analysis. I do not purpose to make any attempt to describe fully the details of the war, but shall give a concise statement of the chief events of this period and then some descriptive passages from Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War (431-404) In the last chapter we followed the course of events down to the revolt and reduction of Samos in 439, Some five years later incidents occurred in connexion with two Corinthian colonies, Corcyra and Potidaea, which (as Corinth was the great maritime rival of Athens) induced the Athenians to interfere, and led to remonstrance and finally an ultimatum from Sparta, as the head of the Peloponnesian league and the champion of the Hberties of Greece. The trouble began at Bpidamnus (Dyrrhachium, in Illyria) , a colony of Corcyra (Corfu). The Bpidamnians, harassed by exiled oligarchs, appealed to Corcyra, and, obtaining no aid, with the advice of the Delphic oracle turned to Corinth, which sent them troops. The Corey raeans forthwith blockaded Kpidamnus. Corinth sent seventy-five ships against them, but 327 ANCIENT GREECE the Corcyraeans had a large fleet, and, after defeating the Corinthian ships, captured Epidamnus. Then Corinth, highly indignant, resolved to collect a great navy. Both sides appealed to Athens, and Athens (though it was a hostile act against the democracy of Epidamnus) was induced by the prospect of such strong maritime support against her future Peloponnesian enemies to make an alliance with Corcyra, and sent ships. A naval battle then took place (433) off the Sybota islets, near Corcyra. The Athenian ships held aloof at first, but interfered to save the Corcyraeans from defeat. The Corinthians sailed homewards, much incensed at the breach of the Thirty Years' Peace — a charge repelled by the Athenians, who asserted that Corcyra had belonged to neither of the two great confederacies, and that Athens had a right to defend her new ally. Another complication with Corinth arose in the regions Thraceward. Potidaea, on the isthmus of Pallene, was a Corinthian colony, but had become a tributary ally of Athens, and was now ordered by the Athenians to eject its Corinthian officials. It refused. Corinthian forces were sent to support its revolt, but were defeated, and Potidaea was closely invested for two years by the Athenians.^ Corinth now appealed to Sparta, which was itself incensed at Athens for having (on the advice of Pericles) excluded Megara from its ports and marts. An Athenian envoy was, perhaps accidentally, present at Sparta, and was allowed to answer the Megarians and Corinthians. Thucydides has taken the opportunity to give us some brilHant speeches, which, though fictitious, probably represent fairly accurately the arguments on both sides. The Peloponnesian confederates, he tells us, held two assembHes, and the Corin- thians were allowed a final speech, in which they vehemently incited Sparta to overthrow the * despot city ' which was trying to enslave all Greece. In spite of the prudent advice of the king, Archidamus, the violent war-speech of an ephor carried the assembly, and, after receiving encouragement from the Delphic oracle (which did not feel ashamed of thus 1 A monument now in the British Museum extols those who fell on the Athenian side. 328 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR inciting fratricidal war), and after making various trivial demands {e.g. that Athens should cast out the ' pollution * in the person of Pericles), Sparta sent an ultimatum : " The Athenians can avoid war if they restore the independence of the Hellenes.'' The speech of Pericles at this juncture was (if we accept the version given by Thucydides) a splendid example of fiery and yet dignified oratory. He advised a temperate answer and a proposal of arbitration, but a decisive refusal of all unjusti- fiable demands. Regarding war as inevitable, he reviewed the resources of both sides and pointed out that the I^acedae- monians, having neither ships nor money, could not carry on any protracted war. Formerly Themistocles had advised the abandonment of Athens ; Pericles now advised the Athenians to trust not only to their wooden but also to their stone walls, and to abandon their open country to devastation. He believed in a Fabian policy of exhaustion. War was inevitable, was indeed practically declared, but they still, says Thucydides, had intercourse without heralds, until early in the year 431, when the first act of open hostility took place — an attack by the Thebans on the town of Plataea, which, though Boeotian, had always remained faithful to Athens. The attack failed and a massacre of Theban prisoners — the precursor of many such barbarities, if that word can be appHed with double intensity to the Greeks themselves — was the signal for the beginning of the long and miserable civil war. Archidamus and his Peloponnesians forthwith invaded Attica, from which flocks and herds had been removed toKuboea and the inhabitants to Athens, where the overcrowding was terrible. Pericles, in spite of fierce opposition, prevented the Athenians from sallying forth against the foe. The fleet was sent against the Peloponnese and Peloponnesian colonies, but very little was effected. In their excitement and alarm, and perhaps in order to relieve the overcrowding of the city, the Athenians decided to expel the whole population of Aegina and to settle the island with Athenians. The Aeginetans found a home at Thyrea in I^aconia, as the Messenians had at 329 ANCIENT GREECE Naupactus, but a few years later were captured and enslaved by the Athenians. To what a degree our interest in the war is purely literary is plain from the fact that for many the most memorable event of this first year is the great speech of Pericles — a funeral panegyric in honour of those who had already fallen/ and whose bones were now buried with great ceremony in the Cerameicus without the walls. This celebrated speech, reported by one who was himself doubtless present, must have been so impressed on the memories, and perhaps also the tablets, of many that we may feel sure that we possess in the famous eleven chapters of Thucydides much of what Pericles actually said. Indeed, all the three great orations of Pericles that Thucydides has preserved — the first in favour of war, the second in honour of the fallen, and the third, spoken shortly before his death, in self-defence against his assailants — have, in spite of many a brilliant Thucydidean antithesis, an im- press of originality which we find in no other of his reported speeches. In the second year of the war, after the annual invasion and devastation of Attica, a calamity befell Athens which probably contributed more than the bloodiest defeats to her final overthrow.^ Out of perhaps 100,000 citizens about a fifth, besides an '' indiscoverable number " of slaves, foreigners, and others, died of a terrible plague ^ which continued for two years, and after a year's intermission broke out again with great virulence. A vivid description — as vivid as anything in Boccaccio, Defoe, Virgil, or I^ucretius — is given by Thucy- dides, who was himself struck down by the disease, but recovered. In the midst of this distress Athens made over- tures of peace, but they were rejected. Pericles meanwhile had 1 Fig. 104 represents Athene contemplating a stele with the names (pos- sibly) of these same warriors. 2 See Note A (Phigaleia). A statue to Apollo, the ' Averter of Pestilence,' by Calamis was dedicated in Athens about 430. * Probably some malignant form of variola, now extinct ; evidently not the bubonic plague. Curiously, no account is given by the great physician Hippocrates, who lived from 460 to 356. 330 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR made an unsuccessful sea-raid on the Peloponnese, and on his return was vehemently assailed, and fined, and deprived of his post as strategos. His eloquent and dignified defence caused a revulsion of feehng and he was reinstated in his command, but many sufferings had of late fallen upon him. He had been constantly lampooned and satirized and insulted both by political and private enemies. His friends Pheidias and Anaxagoras, the greatest artist and the greatest philosopher of the da)^ had been assailed by bigotry and calumny ; the one had died in prison, the other was an exile. Aspasia, with whom he lived, and whose house was a centre of intellectual and artistic life, had been accused, perhaps by Cleon, of impiety and immorahty. Both his sons (by a wife from whom he was separated) died of the plague, and the blow seems to have left him a broken man.^ A year or so later he died, it is said from a low fever after an attack of the plague. As he lay dying and seemingly uncon- scious, his friends, says Plutarch, spoke together in praise of him, but he heard it and interrupted them saying : " What chiefly gives me pride is that no Athenian ever put on mourning for any act of mine." By friends and enemies alike the wonderful eloquence of Pericles is attested. Aristophanes describes him as the Olympian Zeus hurling his flaming thunderbolts, and Plato extols his " majestic intelligence." His character and his policy are graphically described by Thucydides (see p. 348), and though the partiality of the historian is apparent, ^ we may rather accept his estimate than the suggestion of Plutarch that he corrupted the people by display and by distributions of public money and by " nursing up the city in elegant pleasures " in order to maintain his personal power, or the accusation of his assailants that he "fanned up the war" to escape the charge of peculation. At the same time, while fully allowing 1 Plutarch describes him as breaking down into uncontrollable tears and sobs at the funeral of his favourite son, Paralus. The elder, Xanthippus, was a mauvais sujet and caused him much trouble. His son Pericles, by Aspasia, was legitimatized before the death of his father. 2 In spite of the fact that he was related to the family of Cimon, the here- ditary opponent of Xanthippus and Pericles. 331 ANCIENT GREECE his integrity and sincerity, it is possible to doubt the wisdom of a poHcy which, although opposed to imperiaHstic adventure, was in support of an empire that had been built up on a foundation of tyrannical injustice, extortion, and bloodshed, and was doomed to perish by the hatred that it inspired not only in the rest of the Hellenic world, ^ but also among its so-called allies. While the plague was raging an armament had been sent to storm Potidaea, which still held out, but a fourth of the troops had perished by the disease and the rest returned. Karly in 429, however, the town surrendered to blockade ^ after such sufferings that the garrison had fed on the bodies of the slain. Fair terms were granted, which intensely displeased the Athenian mob, who had looked forward to a great capture of slaves and a wholesale butchery to gratify their resentment. About the same time the Spartans massacred a number of prisoners captured at sea and cast their bodies out for the birds and beasts. The Athenians retaliated by murdering Spartan envoys who had fallen into their hands and by serving the bodies in like fashion. Henceforward acts like these and of still greater ferocity became common, till at Aegospotami from three to four thousand Athenian prisoners were butchered in cold blood. The chief events of the next five years (429-424), besides the almost annual devastation of Attica, were the capture of Plataea by the I^acedaemonians, the revolt and reduction of Mytilene, the revolution and massacre at Corcyra, the capture of Spartans on Sphacteria, and the defeat of Athens at Delion. The following brief accounts of these facts will be supplemented later by descriptive passages from Thucydides. In 429, instead of devastating Attica, Archidamus and his Peloponnesians cross the ridge of Cithaeron, and the Plataeans, on the (never fulfilled) promise of aid from Athens, determine to stand a siege. The account that Thucydides has given of this 1 Thucydides, though an Athenian, tells us that at the beginning of the war public feeling through the whole of Greece was " greatly in favour of the I^acedaemonians " as adversaries of the ' despot city.' 2 Socrates served as Athenian hoplite in this campaign. 332 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR siege, with all its picturesque details of vallation and counter- vallation, of mines, battering-rams, and so on, and of the escape of about half the garrison, who on a moonless winter night amidst a storm of wind and rain scaled the besiegers' walls and waded across the flooded moats, covered with fragile ice, and reached Athens in safety — this picture has made the P siege of little Plataea, with its garrison of 400, and later only ' 200, Plataeans and 80 Athenians, as famous as that of Syracuse, Saguntum, or Magdeburg. Athens, either from cowardice or because of the plague, thought it best to forget its promised aid, and at last, in the summer of 427, the Plataeans surrendered at discretion. In vain they appealed to the memory of Mara- thon and their heroic ancestors and to the tombs of the Spartans who fell at the battle of Plataea. Commissioners sent from Sparta to decide their fate put to each man only the question whether in the present war he had done any service to the Spartans or their allies. All the 200 were slaughtered, as well as some Athenians, and Plataea was razed to the ground. While Plataea was still being besieged (428) Mytilene, the capital of I^esbos, nominally still an autonomous ally of [Athens, was induced by the oligarchical party to assert, as jSamos had done, its independence. I^esbian envoys appealed to the Greeks assembled at the Olympic Games, and lycsbos was admitted into the Peloponnesian league. The Athenians, though much crippled by the plague and by want of money, dispatched forty ships under Paches and blockaded Mytilene. The Spartans also sent a fleet, but it returned without daring to attack the Athenians, and ultimately the democrats in the city forced the authorities to capitulate on the condition that its fate should be decided by the Assembly at Athens. At Athens there had come to the front a politician named Cleon. The character of Cleon as drawn by Aristophanes, who was an aristocrat in politics and his private enemy, as well as by Thucydides, who was banished by his influence, is that of a loud-voiced, brutal, overbearing demagogue, one of the most pernicious products of the dicasteries and the Bcclesia ; and, after making all due allowances for personal dislike and for 333 AN,CIENT GREECE political rancour, as well as for the exaggerations of comic caricature, this tanner or leather-seller, who has been sedu- lously whitewashed by some modern writers, seems to have really been something very like the picture given by his two great contemporaries. That on one occasion, as we shall see, he gained a remarkable success, and that his chau- vinistic war-policy may have been more to the advantage of the Athenian Empire than that advocated by the milder-tempered Nicias, can be allowed without causing us to exchange the portrait of the man given us by Aristophanes in his Knights for that offered by writers who describe him as a " great Opposition speaker," not more unnecessarily virulent than Demosthenes, Cicero, Milton, or Chatham, and withal a discoverer and castigator of social and political scandals and a true friend of the poorer classes. This man proposed that all the grown-up men of Mytilene should be put to death, and his proposal was passed. A ship of war was forthwith sent with orders to Paches to carry out the terrible verdict. But a revulsion of feeling set in. On the next day the Assembly was again summoned, and by a small minority, in spite of Cleon's efforts, the decree was revoked. A swift vessel was dispatched to overtake the trireme, which had the start of a day and a night. Paches had already received the warrant and was preparing to execute it when the reprieve arrived. The Athe- nian mob was satiated with the blood of about looo ring- leaders who had been sent to Athens, and Paches, on his return, was arraigned on some charge and committed suicide in the presence of the Athenian burghers who were judging the case. One of the most vivid scenes depicted by Thucydides is that of the horrible massacres of the Corcyraean oligarchs by their fellow-citizens which took place at this period (427-425). The episode, with all its revolting details — perhaps as revolting in their inhuman, unnatural ferocity as anything in the world's history — has been recounted by many writers.^ The event is only indirectly connected with the Peloponnesian War, and very slightly, if at all, with the history of that Greece which is 1 See Thuc. iii. 71 sq., iv. 45 sq. ; Grote, 1. and lii. 334 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR of any importance to us. The last scenes of the insane butchery of fellow-Greeks and fellow-citizens, as described by Thucy- dides, together with his reflexions on moral and political feeling in Greece at this time, will be given or referred to later. Here it is only necessary to say that the trouble was begun by the fact that Corinth sent back to Corcyra the 250 high-born prisoners whom they had captured in the sea-fight off Sybota (433) . The rest of the prisoners they had sold as slaves, but had kept and treated with especial lenience these nobles, with the intention of using them later for the establishment of an oligarchy in Corcyra. The occasion now presented itself, as Athens was weakened by the plague and distracted by the lycsbian revolt. The return of these prisoners was the signal for a revolution, in which, after some temporary successes and many atrocities, the oligarchs were overwhelmed and driven out. They returned and entrenched themselves in a stronghold, Istone, but finally capitulated to the Athenians and the democrats and were all massacred. Another important event of this first period of the war, also vividly described by Thucydides, is the capture of some 300 Spartans on the island of Sphacteria. An Athenian fleet had been dispatched in 425 to interfere in the affairs of the Sicilian cities and to help the democratic party at Corcyra. As they coasted round the Peloponnese the Athenians had fortified and occupied Pylos,^ the promontory which together with Sphacteria forms the great landlocked bay famous in modern history under the name Navarino. The Spartans sent considerable forces by land and by sea to eject the Athenians, who were commanded by Demosthenes and numbered 200 with perhaps 1000 Messenians. The Athenian fleet then hastened back from Corcyra and defeated the Peloponnesian vessels, forcing them to run ashore at the north end of the bay. They then blockaded Sphacteria, on which was the main body of the picked land troops of the Spartans. The alarm was so great at Sparta that a truce was made in order that envoys should be sent to Athens to treat for peace. The stranded Spartan ships and others, sixty in 1 The Homerie * sandy Pylos,' Nestor's town, was probably in the vicinity. 335 ANCIENT GREECE all, were handed over to the Athenians on the promise that they should be restored at the expiration of the truce — a promise which, by the way, was not fulfilled. At Athens all right-thinking men were doubtless inclined for peace, and it would have been a wise decision, and one that might have affected deeply the future of the Hellenic race and of European civilization, had the Athenian people taken advantage of their good fortune to end honourably this most foolish and detestable civil war. But the evil passions of the mob and their greed for the aggrandizement of the empire were stirred up by Cleon. Nisaea (the Corinthian port), the ports of Megara, the whole of Achaea, and Troezen was the price that Athens demanded for peace ; and the demand was refused. But the blockade of Sphacteria lasted long and the mob at Athens grew impatient. " If I were commander," bragged Cleon before the Assembly, " I would soon do it ! " At these words Nicias, the strategos, who had been bantered by Cleon for not going off to Pylos and capturing the Spartans, rose up and offered to cede his command to the demagogue. The mob was tickled, and insisted. Finally Cleon accepted, and with a band of mercenaries, refusing the offer of Athenian hoplites and promising, doubtless amid great laughter, to return within twenty days with the Spartan captives, he set out for Pylos, and, to the amazement of all and the discomfiture of many, within the stipulated twenty days he and Demosthenes returned with the Spartan prisoners — nearly 300 men. The fight had been very severe. The Spartans had been driven with heavy loss gradually back till they had taken their last stand, as at Thermopylae, on a height ; but, when circumvented, as at Thermopylae, they doubtless felt no such enthusiasm for their cause as those around I^eonidas had felt, and they surrendered — a course never before taken, perhaps, in Spartan warfare. Sphacteria was strongly garrisoned with Messeiiians from Naupactus, whose exultation at the crushing defeat of their ancient foe found, and still finds, expression in a gift that they made from the spoil to the sacred precinct at Olympia — a splendid figure 336 i 93. The Nike (Victory) of Paeonius 336 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR of Victory floating aloft amidst trailing wind-blown drapery — the work of the sculptor Paeonius (Fig. 93). In the next year (424) the Athenians captured the island of Cythera — a formidable base for naval operations against Sparta. Also Nisaea and its lyong Walls (built by themselves c. 460) fell into their hands. Athens was now at the acme of her success, and might have well accepted the generous terms offered by Sparta. But some Ate seems to have goaded her onward to ruin. Elated by good fortune and incited by the ambitious militarism of the strategos Demosthenes and the harangues of Cleon, the populace determined to take revenge on Thebes for the defeat of Coroneia and the loss of Boeotia. The crushing overthrow of Delion (424) was the result. The Athenian general, Hippocrates, was slain and his army of 7000 hoplites and 20,000 Hght-armed troops was routed by the Thebans, who used, apparently for the first time, a formation (twenty-five deep) like that of the phalanx, to which their future victories were mainly due. With the battle of Delion is associated the name of Socrates. He is said to have fought with great courage and to have contributed much to an orderly retreat, thus saving many lives, among them that of Alcibiades. After the defeat at Delion (424) disaster overtook the Athenians also in Thrace. The Spartan Brasidas, who had already distinguished himself at Pylos and Megara, with a strong body of Peloponnesian hoplites, had traversed Thessaly and Macedonia, where he joined forces with Perdiccas, the Macedonian king, and invaded the Athenian possessions in Thrace, proclaiming himself as their liberator from slavery. His chivalrous and humane character seems to have favoured his success no less than his courage and the rapidity of his strategic movements. Acanthus, Stageiros, and other cities welcomed him, and by a forced march he surprised Amphipolis, which came to terms with him before the arrival of the Athenian ships from Thasos under command of Thucydides, the son of Olorus, as the historian calls himself when relating the mishap Thucydides rescued Kion, the port of Amphipolis Y 337 ANCIENT GREECE at the mouth of the Strymon, but this did not save him from banishment, which, he tells us, lasted twenty years (424-404) . Disheartened by the defeat at Delion and by the brilliant successes of Brasidas in Thrace, the Athenians concluded a truce, for the purpose of considering the terms of a definite peace. Two days, however, after the truce had begun the town of Scione (on Pallene, south of Potidaea) opened its gates to Brasidas and welcomed him with enthusiasm, offering him a golden crown as the liberator of Greece from Athenian slavery. At Athens the exasperation was intense, and Cleon carried a proposal that Scione should be razed and all its male inhabi- tants be slain — which was eventually done. Cleon" himself was sent with forces to Thrace, and in a fight under the walls of AmphipoHs both he and Brasidas fell. Their deaths strengthened the hands of Nicias and others who wished to put an end to the war, and in 421 the so-called Peace of Nicias was concluded for fifty years. Prisoners and places captured during the war were to be restored ; but AmphipoHs refused to belong again to Athens, and Athens refused to evacuate Pylos, and in spite of all the efforts of the prudent Nicias, who was thwarted by the intrigues of the brilliant and unprincipled young Alcibiades, formal peace soon relapsed into overt hostility. Sparta and Athens were nominally in alliance, but Alcibiades brought about an alliance also between Athens and Argos, which state had set itself at the head of a new Pelo- ponnesian league, thus defying the supremacy of Sparta. Such a state of things could not last. Sparta put an army into the field, and the alHed forces of the Argives, Mantineians, and Athenians suffered a severe defeat at the battle of Mantineia (418). For two or three years no great event, we are told, took place except the capture of Scione and the massacre of all its male inhabitants, and an entirely unprovoked and unjustifiable attack by Athens on the island of Melos, which was quite independent and had taken no part in the war. On the proposal of Alcibiades it was commanded to subject itself to the Athe- nian Empire, and on its refusal it was besieged and reduced ; 338 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR all the adult males were massacred, all the women and children sold as slaves. Thucydides gives us in full the arguments used by the Melians and by the Athenians at a conference held before the perpetration of this hideous atrocity. The cold- blooded inhumanity of the Athenians, their insolent assertion of the right of the stronger and their impious appeal to the example of the gods themselves to support that claim, affect one Hke the prelude to some terrific catastrophe in a tragedy of Aeschylus, and prepare us for the calamity that is shortly to befall Athens and her empire. The pitiful story of the Sicilian disaster is well known to readers of Thucydides and has been retold by many writers, who have vied with each other in depicting anew all its pathetic and harrowing incidents. What makes it so especially pitiable and horrible is the fact that this ferocious fratricidal conflict was due to nothing but the insatiable greed for dominion and supremacy on the part of that Hellenic people to whom for many reasons we owe an inestimable debt of gratitude. As the main object of this book is to draw attention to some of these reasons rather than to recount external history, and as this Sicilian episode has little or no connexion with the true inner life of Greece and would be, even as framework, of little assistance to us, the following facts may suffice. The Greek cities of Sicily and Southern Italy owed their origin, some to Dorian, others to Ionian founders, and, although their own intestine feuds and their own struggle for existence against the Carthaginians and Etruscans were for them matters of prime importance, their sympathies were doubtless enhsted on the side of their respective mother-cities in the long war that was desolating the land. But, in spite of the progress of democracy, sympathy with Sparta, increased by a growing resentment against the ambitious and tyrannical conduct of Athens, had become ever stronger, and when in 425 the Athenian fleet, sent, as has been related,^ to support I^eontini against Syracuse, at last reached Sicily it could do nothing, 1 This fleet had to return from Corcyra to Pylos, where it was detained for some time. 339 ANCIENT GREECE for at a conference of the Sicilian cities it was decided (on the proposal of the Syracusan Hermocrates) to lay aside dissension and to brook no foreign interference in Sicilian affairs. So incensed were the Athenians at this wise and most justifiable decision that they punished severely by fines and banishment the two admirals of their fleet, Sophocles and Eurymedon. Unhappily political rancour in Sicily led to further appeals for Athenian interference, and in 416, when called upon by Segesta for aid against SeHnus, the Assembly, cajoled by the fascinating eloquence of Alcibiades, in spite of the warnings of Nicias, determined to send a large armament of some 140 triremes and 500 transports, under the command of Alcibiades, Nicias, and Ivamachus, to support Segesta and other anti- Dorian cities in their revolt against the authority of Syracuse — the reduction of which city was the prime object of the expedition. Just before the expedition sailed a strange event occurred — the mutilation of the busts of Hermes which stood in front of temples and many private houses. The excitement and alarm was such as might be caused in some Roman Catholic countries by a wholesale mutilation of roadside crucifixes and Madonna images. Whether it was an act of drunken vandalism or of impiety or had political meaning was never discovered. Possibly it was perpetrated by paid agents of Sparta or Syra- cuse. Alcibiades was suspected, and evidence was forthcoming that he had indulged in profane mimicries of mystic Bleusinian rites. The fleet had already started, but orders were sent for his return. At Thurii he managed to get ashore and ere long was at Sparta, where he revealed all the schemes of the Athenians, vented his disdain of democracy as ' acknowledged folly,* and induced the Spartans to fortify Deceleia, in North- western Attica — a stronghold which proved most troublesome to Athens. The investment of Syracuse both by land and sea by Nicias — who after the gallant Ivamachus had fallen was the sole general — seemed at one time not unlikely to succeed. But Nicias was slow and unenterprising. Moreover, the Syracusans were 340 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR fighting for their homes and their liberty, while he and many of his men, when they thought of Marathon and Salamis, must have felt but little enthusiasm for their task. Soon, however, they themselves had to fight for their lives, for, their blockade on the land side being ineffective, Syracuse was reinforced by the Spartan Gyhppus (who with four ships had reached Himera and had collected 3000 men), and they therefore abandoned the higher ground and entrenched them- selves on Plemmyrion, near the sea. Here they were closely invested by the Syracusans and finally driven to camp on the marshy western shores of the great harbour near the mouth of the river Anapus.^ A fleet of seventy-three triremes under the command of Kurymedon and Demosthenes was sent from Athens for their relief and entered the harbour in triumph. But also the enemy had gained large reinforcements, and after some fruitless attempts to act on the offensive the newly arrived generals persuaded Nicias to embark the troops and withdraw by sea to some place of safety. This was still practicable, and the armament would have doubtless escaped had not an eclipse of the moon taken place (August 27, 413). The soothsayers insisted on the departure being deferred for a month, and Nicias yielded to the superstitious clamour of the soldiers. The Syracusans, learning the intention of the Athenians to escape, attacked with seventy-six vessels. Though five miles in circumference, the space afforded by the harbour did not allow the Athenians to take advantage of their superiority in manoeuvring. They were worsted and Kurymedon was slain. Then the Syracusans blocked the exit of the harbour with vessels and chains, and a desperate conflict took place, the walls of Ortygia, the heights of the upper city, and the shores of the harbour being crowded with innumerable specta- tors as in a mighty amphitheatre, while the two fleets — about ^ Ancient Syracuse lay on the island of Ortygia (joined to the mainland by a causeway) and extended up the heights of Achradina and Tyche, and later included the more westerly heights of Bpipolae, which the Athenians at this time occupied at first with their circumvallation. The Great Harbour is formed by Ortygia and Plemmyrion, between which there is a narrow exit. 341 ANCIENT GREECE 200 vessels, carrying thousands of armed men — struggled for mastery. At last the Athenians were driven back to their camp, and in spite of the entreaties of Demosthenes refused to make another effort to break through the barrier. It was then decided to attempt a retreat by land. In a state of pitiable distress and despair they started — a host of about 40,000. The march was directed inland with the object of reaching friendly Sicel territory. After four days they reached a precipitous hill, the Ascraean cliff, where the road passed through a narrow ravine. This was strongly occupied by the enemy, and the fugitive army turned southward. The rear division, under Demosthenes, was surrounded and capitulated. Nicias, after pushing forward desperately under enormous losses for two days more, surrendered to Gylippus. The chief captives — Athenians and their alHes — some eight thousand in number, were consigned for months to the stone quarries of Achradina and Epipolae, in which deep, unsheltered dungeons many perished miserably. The survivors were treated as con- victs or sold as slaves — a fate that doubtless befell all the rest of the prisoners.^ In spite of much that the true lover of Greece may well leave to chroniclers of the horrors and political insanities of which ordinary Greek history so largely consists, the intense human pathos of this SiciHan disaster as related by Thucydides makes it a most impressive and memorable episode. The remaining nine years of the war, two of which only are described by him, offer far less of interest. Athens had lost two-thirds of her ships and probably half her trained fighters. Incited by the renegade Alcibiades, almost all her allies now revolted. Sparta made an infamous treaty with the satrap Tissaphernes, giving over the Ionian Greek cities to Persia in return for financial aid against Athens. But Alcibiades, who had fallen into disfavour with the Spartans and had taken refuge with Tissa- phernes, persuaded him to transfer his aid to the Athenians 1 Browning's Balaustion should be read in this connexion. In commemora- tion of their victory over the invader the Syracusans issued some very beau- tiful coins of the same type as the Demareteia (coin 6, Plate IV) struck after the battle of Himera. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR on condition that an oligarchy should be set up at Athens. This was effected (411). A council of Four Hundred with practically absolute powers was instituted, but the army and fleet assembled at Samos (which had remained faithful to Athens) decHned to recognize it, and a counter-revolution took place re-establishing the democracy. In the midst of all these poHtical dissensions the Spartan fleet more than once nearly took Athens by surprise, and succeeded in defeating a hastily raised Athenian squadron off Kuboea and causing that island to revolt. The sea-power of the Spartans and their alHes had become almost equal to that of the Athenians, but the latter gained several naval successes in the next few years (Cynossema, Cyzicus, Byzantium), some of them due to the strategic genius of Alcibiades, who made a triumphal entry into Athens and was given supreme command of all land and sea forces.^ In 407, however, a slight defeat induced the mob to dismiss their hero, who retired in disgust to the Thracian Chersonese. ^ In 406 the sea-fight of Arginusae (near I^esbos) was won by the Athenians — a victory memorable chiefly for the fact that six of the victorious commanders (among them the son of Pericles) were accused of having abandoned the crews of certain disabled vessels, and without due hearing or legal process were condemned to drink hemlock. In passing it is interesting to note that the only man among the state-councillors (prytaneis) who, not overawed by t\& popular clamour, persisted in his protest against this illegali was Socrates. The final triumph of Sparta in the war was largely due to funds suppHed by Persia, especially by Cyrus, the younger brother of King Artaxerxes. Cyrus had been sent as satrap to Sardis ^ by his father, Darius II, and was strongly attached 1 The leaden plate on which the curses of the priests against him (as profaner of Mysteries) had been inscribed was cast into the sea by the hysterical demos. 2 Hence he tried to reach the court of Artaxerxes in Susa, but was prevented by Pharnabazus, and in 404 was murdered, probably through Spartan influence. ' Tissaphernes was ousted by Cyrus at Sardis and given the less important satrapy of Caria, which explains his hostility to Cyrus. Pharnabazus continued as satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia till about 387. 343 ANCIENT GREECE to the Spartan interest and to I^ysander, the Spartan com- mander, to whom he even entrusted his satrapy when he was called to the deathbed of his father in 405. In this same year, at Aegospotami (' Goat's Rivers '), on the coast of the Thracian Chersonese, I^ysander captured almost the whole of the Athe- nian fleet (of about 170 vessels) while the crews were on land. Between 3000 and 4000 Athenians were made prisoners and were all put to death. The Athenian commander-in-chief, Conon, escaped, but, fearing to return to Athens, took refuge with Bvagoras, king of Salamis, in Cyprus. I^ysander then blockaded the Peiraeus, while the kings Agis and Pausanias with the Spartan army invested Athens. A conference of the Peloponnesians was called, which voted that the city which for so long had enslaved Greece should be razed and her whole population sold into slavery. But, like Florence, Athens was saved by the magnanimity of her great rival. Sparta refused to destroy a city that had done such noble service against the barbarian invader. The conditions imposed (at first rejected by the influence of the demagogue Cleophon, a lamp-maker and a worthy successor of Cleon) were that Athens should become the ally and acknowledge the supremacy of Sparta ; that she should give up all her possessions except Attica and Salamis, and all her ships ; that the I^ong Walls and fortifications should be pulled down, and that all exiles should be recalled. After the terms were ratified, the Spartan fleet entered the Peiraeus (April 404) and the Athenians aided in demoHshing the walls to the sound of flutes and the jubilant shouts of the Peloponnesians, who imagined that at last the day of freedom for Greece had dawned. Even in this hour of humiliation the Athenians found it necessary to spend their remaining strength in the insane fury of political strife and intestine bloodshed. A supreme council of thirty (known as the * Thirty Tyrants ') was instituted under the approval of I^ysander, who occupied the Acropohs with his Spartans. To the Thirty belonged Theramenes, a former member of the Four Hundred, and Critias, a violent 344 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR oligarch, who had been exiled by the democrats.^ These two quarrelled and Theramenes was put to death. But the exiled democrats under Thrasybulus fortified themselves in the stronghold of Phyle, on Mount Parnes, and seized the Peiraeus, where Critias was slain in a fight. The Thirty were deposed by the Athenian mob, and, to make matters worse, a Council of Ten was elected, strongly supported by I^ysander. At last the Spartan king Pausanias intervened, and by his counsel and the influence of advisers from Sparta reconciliation and general amnesty were proclaimed, and the ferocious and turbulent Athenian demos had a season of enforced quiet under " the laws of Solon and the institutions of Draco." ^ SECTION A : THUCYDIDES The History of Thucydides has been mentioned and quoted several times already, and his main characteristics as a writer have been noted. All that is known for certain about his life and that is of any importance has been already related except what may be gathered from the following quotations and except the facts, if they are such, that during his exile he lived for some time at the Macedonian court, and that he was also in Sicily and perhaps present at the fight in the Great Harbour, and that not long after his return from exile [c. 403) he was assassinated at Athens, or, according to others, by a robber in Thrace. From internal evidence it would seem that the first three or four books of the History, except two passages 1 It did not redound to the popularity of Socrates that both Alcibiades and Critias had been among his followers as young men. Socrates, however, again showed his character by refusing to obey an illegal command of the Thirty. The orator Lysias, afterwards a considerable power, barely escaped the Thirty by fleeing from Athens. * It is strange how differently the acts of the Athenian demos affect some minds. Grote speaks of " a generous exaltation of sentiment and an absence of ferocity such as nothing except democracy ever inspired in Grecian bosoms." In so far as a democracy means self-rule it is ideally the highest form of government, but, even if it may not be indispensable (as in the case of Plato's ideal republic) that all self -rulers shall be philosophers, it is surely necessary that they shall be incapable of such insanities and atrocities as those perpe- trated by the Athenian mob. 345 ANCIENT GREECE inserted later, were finally composed (from his notes) during his exile in the pause that occurred after the Peace of Nicias (421), and that he at that time considered the war as finished ; but in Book V he protests against this view, and regards the subsequent (Deceleian) war as a continuation of the original war, which he asserts (v. 26) to have lasted twenty-seven years. The work ends abruptly at the year 411. Probably he had collected material for the rest, which had not been put into literary form at the time of his death. Book VIII was perhaps * written up ' from such notes — some say by his daughter, or by Xenophon. Without the slightest intention of presuming to offer what journaHsts call an ' appreciation ' of Thucydides, per- haps I may note once more his critical, analytical, sceptical (or, rather, agnostic) attitude, and his * surly ' reserve, as it has been called — qualities which are possibly admirable in an historian and which offer a striking contrast to the urbanity and humanity of Herodotus. Whether with all his descriptive powers, his analytic subtleties, his brilliant antitheses, and his polite scepticism he has the breadth of view and the deeper "^ insight that are sometimes vouchsafed to more childlike and sympathetic natures may perhaps be doubted. He mentions Hesiod and Homer, makes Pericles say, " We need no Homer to praise us," and quotes Homer for historical purposes. But he gives no evidence of any sense for art or poetry or philosophy, such as is frequent in Herodotus. Such contemporaries as Aeschylus, Pindar, Sophocles, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Pheidias he does not deign to mention, and never alludes to art, I think, except on one occasion (the famous ^iXoKoXovjULev yuer' ein-eXe/a?, " We love what is beautiful with economy "). There is, I think, in his book no sympathetic mention of any woman, such as of Artemisia, Atossa, Agarista, Gorgo, and others in Herodotus ; indeed, hardly any woman is named but Brauro, who murdered her husband. King Pittacus. Perhaps Thucydides, like Euripides (whom he must have known at Athens and also at the court of Archelaus in Macedonia), was a confirmed misogynist. Anyhow, he was no admirer of female notorieties, and evidently agreed warmly with what 346 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR he makes Pericles say : " Great is her glory who is least talked of among men either for good or for evil/' Herodotus, being a colonial and having lived long in Ionia, was not hampered by old-fashioned Athenian proprieties and could allow range to his broader sympathies as regards women. (i) Thucydides and his Book " Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, how they warred against each other, having begun directly it broke out, with the expectation that it would prove important and more worthy of description than any that had preceded it. . . . As for what was said on either side, it was hard to remember the exact words, both for me, in regard to what I myself heard, and for those who reported it to me from other quarters ; but as I thought they wcv^/i have most likely spoken on the subjects from time to time before them, while I held as closely as possible to the general sense of what was really said, so I have recorded it. But with regard to the facts and deeds of the war I did not think right to state what I heard from a chance informant, nor what seemed to me probable, but I have related only those events at which I was myself present and those which, after learning them from others, I have investigated with all possible care in every detail. . . . Now for recitation perhaps the unfabulous character of my work will appear not very attractive, but all who shall wish to study what really happened and what is bound by reason of human nature to happen again — in the same or similar forms — for such to judge it to be useful will be sufficient. The work is meant to be a possession for ever rather than a prize composition to be listened to for a passing hour. . . . The same Thucydides, the Athenian, has also written of all these things in order as they severally happened, by summers and winters, until the I^acedaemonians and their allies put an end to the empire of the Athenians and captured the lyong Walls and the Peiraeus. ... I lived on through the whole of the war, being of an age to apprehend events 347 ANCIENT GREECE and using my judgment in order to gain accurate knowledge. It was moreover my lot to be an exile from my country for twenty years after my command of the expedition to Amphi- polis, and being, by reason of my banishment, present at the transactions of both sides, especially of the Peloponnesians, I was enabled to gain at my leisure a better acquaintance with them." (i. i and 22 ; v. 26.) (2) Character and Policy of Pericles " But not long after, as a mob is wont to do, they again elected him general and entrusted all public affairs to him . . . and as long as he was at the helm of the state in time of peace he governed it with moderation and kept it in safety, and during his rule it was at the height of its greatness ; and when the war broke out he again seems to have foreseen the capabilities of Athens also in this respect. For he said that if they kept quiet and attended to their navy, and did not try to increase their empire during the war and thus imperil the safety of the state, they would prove successful — whereas they did exactly the contrary in all these matters, and in other matters too, which apparently had nothing to do with the war, their policy was actuated by selfish ambition and greed and proved fatal to themselves and to their allies. . . . And the reason [of his success] was that, wielding a powerful influence by means of his reputation and intellect and being manifestly and absolutely beyond the range of bribery, he controlled the populace with a free rein so that they followed his guidance, not he theirs, because he said nothing to please them for the sake of gaining power by improper means, but was able on the strength of his character to contradict them even at the risk of their displeasure. Whenever, for instance, he perceived them to be unseasonably and insolently self-reliant, by his words he dashed them down to alarm, and when, on the other hand, they were unreasonably terrified, he would restore them to self-confidence. It was in name a democracy, but in reality was absolute rule carried on by the foremost man of the state." (ii. 65.) 94- Herodotus 95. Thucydides 96. Perici,es 97. Al^CIBIADES 348 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (3) The Plague "It is said to have first come from Aethiopia and to have spread over Egypt and lyibya and most of the king's territory. On the city of Athens it fell suddenly, first attacking the people in the Peiraeus, so that it was reported that the Peloponnesians had thrown poison into the tanks. . . . Now, every one, whether physician or private person, can say what he thinks as to its probable origin and the causes that he considers sufficiently powerful to have produced such a distemper. I shall simply describe it and state clearly its symptoms so that any one who notes them may not fail to recognize it if ever it should break out again ; for I myself had the disease and I saw others who were attacked by it. " The year, as was generally allowed, happened to be par- ticularly healthy as regards all other disorders, and if any one did have any previous illness it always developed into this. In other cases persons who were quite well were suddenly and without any apparent reason seized at first with violent feverish headaches and their eyes became red and inflamed, and the internal parts, throat and tongue, at once assumed a bloody appearance and emitted a strange and noisome breath. Then sneezing and angina came on, and in a short time the pain descended to the chest, accompanied by violent coughing, and as soon as it settled in the stomach it produced vomiting . . . and in most cases the empty retching caused violent spasms. Externally the body was not excessively hot to the touch, nor was it pallid, but reddish, livid, and broken out in small pimples and sores ; internally there was such intense heat that they could not bear even the very lightest garments or fine linen to be laid upon them, nor to be anything else but naked, and most gladly would have thrown themselves into cold water ; indeed, many among those who were not taken care of did throw themselves into tanks, overcome by their unquenchable thirst ; and it made no difference however much or Httle they drank. . . . And the birds and quadrupeds that prey on human bodies either did not come near them, though 349 ANCIENT GREECE there were many unburied corpses, or perished after tasting them. . . . And what added much to the distress was the crowding into the city from the country, especially in the case of the newcomers, for as there were no houses for them they lived in stifling cabins in the hot season of the year, and the mortality spread uncontrolled, the bodies of the dying lying one on the other or rolling about half dead in the streets and round all the fountains, in their craving for water. The sacred precincts also, in which they had camped, were full of the corpses of those who had died there, for the calamity was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what was to become of them, came to disregard everything both sacred and profane alike. . . . Such was the calamity which befell Athens and by which it was afflicted, the people dying within its walls and the land being devastated without." (ii. 48 sq.) (4) The Night Escape from Plataea " They made ladders equal in height to the siege-wall of the enemy, calculating it by the layers of bricks where the wall looking towards them happened not to be plastered. Many counted the layers at the same time, and although some were bound to miss the correct number, most would hit it, especially as they counted often and were at no great distance. Thus they ascertained the right length of the ladders, guessing it from the thickness of the bricks. Now the rampart consisted of a double line of walls, which were about sixteen feet apart, and between these walls quarters had been built and assigned to the men on guard ; and they were continuous, so that it seemed to be one thick wall with battlements on both sides. And at intervals of ten battlements there were large turrets of the same breadth as the rampart, extending across to its inner and to its outer front, so that there was no passage alongside the tower, but they passed through its middle. Now at night, whenever it was wet and stormy, they left the battle- ments and kept watch from the towers, as these were at short distances from each other and were roofed. . . . When all was ready, having watched for a stormy night with rain and 350 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR wind and at the same time moonless, they sallied forth. First they crossed the moat that encircled the town, then they got up to the enemy's wall without being noticed by the sentinels, who could not see far through the darkness and could not hear them because the clatter of the wind drowned the noise of their approach ; moreover, they kept far apart so that their weapons might not clash together and attract notice ; also they were lightly equipped and were shod only on the left foot as security against the [slippery] mud. Thus they reached the battlemented rampart at a point between two towers, knowing that here it was unguarded. First those who carried scaling- ladders approached and planted them ; then twelve light-armed men, with only daggers and breast-plates, mounted , . . then more with javeHns, whose shields, to facilitate the advance, others carried in the rear, ready to hand them over as soon as they came upon the enemy. When now a considerable number had mounted, the sentinels in the towers discovered them, for one of the Plataeans in catching hold of the battle- ment dislodged a tile, which made a noise when it fell ; and forthwith a shout was raised." [The Plataeans nevertheless seized two towers and all got safely over the double wall ; but outside the external wall, as a defence against any attack from Athens, the Peloponnesians had dug a second moat, on the inner edge of which the fugitives now found themselves, and in the meantime 300 of the enemy with torches were rapidly approaching *' outside the wall and in the direction of the shouting.''] " Now the Plataeans from their dark position on the brink of the moat saw the enemy better and directed their arrows and javelins against the unprotected parts of their bodies, while they themselves were hidden and still less easily discerned on account of the torches, so even the last of them got safely across the moat, though with difficulty and after great efforts, for ice had formed upon it, not firm enough to walk upon but watery, as usual with a wind more easterly than north; and the night, being snowy and with a wind of this kind, had made the water in it deep, so that they crossed with heads barely above the surface ; but all the same 3SI ANCIENT GREECE it was the violence of the storm to which they owed their escape." (iii. 20 sq.) (5) CORCYRAEAN ATROCITIES " They [i.e. the democrats] then began to massacre all of their political opponents whom they had happened to catch, and dispatched, while they were landing them, all those whom they had persuaded to go on board. They also went to the sanctuary of Hera and persuaded about fifty of the suppliants to take their trial, and then condemned them all to death. Most of them were not to be persuaded, and when they saw what was being done they slew one another there in the sacred precinct. Some hanged themselves on the trees, others killed themselves as they could. During the seven days that Eurymedon remained there with his sixty ships the Corcyraeans went on murdering those of their fellow-countrymen whom they believed to be hostile to them. They accused them of abolishing democracy ; but some were killed for private enmity, and others were slain by their debtors for money owed them. Every kind of death was experienced, and all that is wont to happen at such times happened now, and still worse ; for father slew son and men were dragged out of sanctuaries and slain near them, while some were walled up in the temple of Dionysus and thus perished. So bloody was the course of the revolution." (iii. 81. See also remarks by Thucydides in 82, 83.) '' When the Corcyraean [democrats] had caught them, they confined them in a large building. Then they took them out by twenties and led them roped together through two ranks of heavy- armed men, who smote and stabbed any personal enemies they saw. And men with whips went by their side, hastening on their way those who were going too slowly. As many as sixty they had thus led forth and butchered without raising the suspicions of those in the building, who thought they were being removed to some other place. But when they learnt the truth (some one having informed them) they refused to leave the building. So the Corcyraeans, not 352 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR being disposed to force their way in by the doors, climbed up on to the top of the building, and, having broken through the roof, began to hurl the tiles and shoot arrows down on them. And they defended themselves as best they could, while at the same time many tried to kill themselves by thrusting down their throats the arrows discharged by their assailants and by strangling themselves with the cords of certain bedsteads which happened to be in the building and by strips that they tore off their clothing, and thus in divers ways during the greater part of the night (for night came on during these atro- cities), either by laying hands on themselves or by being struck by missiles from above, they perished. And when it was day the Corcyraeans piled them in cross layers on wagons and carried them out of the city ; and all the women who had been captured in the fortress [Istone] they enslaved.'' (iv. 47 sq.) (6) Sea-fight in the Harbour of Syracuse " When the Athenians came near the bar [formed by vessels and chains stretched across the harbour mouth] they charged, and with their first onset they got the better of the ships posted near it and tried to loosen the fastenings. But soon afterwards the Syracusans and their alHes bore down on them from all quarters, and the fight no longer went on only near the bar, but became general all over the harbour ; and it was a severe engagement, such as no previous one had been. . . . And as a great number of vessels attacked each other in a small space (indeed, never had so many fought together in so small a space, for altogether they fell scarcely short of two hundred) ramming was httle used, as to back water or to break through the enemy's fine was impossible, but collisions were more frequent, just as one ship might chance to run into another while flying from or attacking its adversary. Now, as long as a vessel was bearing down on another those on the decks used javelins and arrows and stones in great quantities against it, but when they came to close quarters the seamen \ fought hand to hand and tried to board each other's ships, ^nd on account of the narrow space it often happened that 2 353 ANCIENT GREECE while tiiey were charging others they themselves were being charged, and that two, or even sometimes several, vessels were forcibly entangled round one. . . . The foot-soldiers of both sides on shore, while the result of the sea-fight hung in the balance, experienced an intense anguish and conflict of f eehngs, the man of Sicily being eager for still greater honour and the invaders fearing to fare still worse than hitherto. For since with the Athenians all was staked on their ships their anxiety as to the result was Hke none they had ever felt before . . . and every kind of clamour was to be heard, lamentation and triumph, ' They conquer I ' ' They are beaten I ' and other such various exclamations as a great armament in great danger would be constrained to utter — until finally, after the fighting had lasted for a long time, the Syracusans and their allies routed the Athenians, and, following up their advantage brilhantly, with great shouting and cheering pursued them to the shore." (vii. 70 sq.) (7) The Retreat from Syracuse " It was pitiable, not only because of the fact that they were retreating after having lost all their ships and all their high hopes, and having brought themselves, and Athens too, into peril, but also because on leaving the encampment they all had to look upon things grievous to the sight and grievous to the mind ; for the dead were unburied, and whenever any saw one of his friends lying there he was filled with grief and with fear ; and the living who were being abandoned, the wounded and the sick, were to the living much more painful than were the dead, and more piteous than those who had perished, for, betaking themselves to entreaty and to wailing, they drove them into despair, begging to be taken, and calhng upon each one individually, if they saw anywhere any friend or relation, and hanging on to their comrades as they were on the point of departure, and following as far as they could ; and if strength or bodily power failed they were left behind not without many adjurations to the gods and many groans. So the whole army, filled with tears and distress of 354 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR this kind, did find departure easy, though it was from a hostile country and though they had already suffered woes too deep for tears, and were full of anxiety as to their sufferings in the unknown future. They resembled nothing so much as a city starved out and trying to escape by stealth — and no small city, for the whole multitude that started numbered not less than forty thousand." (vii. 75.) (8) The Surrender " The Athenians pressed on towards the river Assinarus, being urged to do this by the attacks of the enemy and also by weariness and the craving for water ; and when they reached it they cast themselves into it with no further regard for order, every one wishing to get across first, while the enemy assailed them and made the crossing difficult. For, being compelled to advance in a dense mass, they fell on the top of one another and trod one another down, and some were killed by falHng on the javeHns and baggage, and others got entangled and were swept down-stream. On the further bank, which was precipitous, stood the Syracusans and launched their missiles down on the Athenians while most of them were drinking eagerly and crowding together confusedly in the hollow river- bed. Moreover, the Peloponnesians came down to attack them, and slaughtered those especially who were in the river. And the water was forthwith spoiled, but none the less it was drunk by them together with the mud, all bloody, and was even fought for by most of them. At last, when many dead bodies were already lying one upon the other in the river and the army had been cut to pieces, some of it in the river-bed and whatever part escaped thence by the cavalry, Nicias surrendered to GyHppus." (vii. 84.) SECTION B : SOPHOCLES : EURIPIDES : ARISTOPHANES In the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides we can trace the same kind of development — or, as some would call it, degeneration — that is noticeable in the three principal 355 ANCIENT GREECE stages of Greek sculpture. First we have the supernatural, the mysterious, the terrible, the subHme — forms of more than mortal grandeur and a spirit ofttimes majestically disdainful of ordinary humanity ; then man's nature idealized and the perfect balance and exquisite symmetry of the human form divine — the mortal as he should be rather than as he is, such as we see him in the heroes and heroines of Sophocles and in the works of Polycleitus and the still more gracious forms of Praxiteles ; then the attempt to portray in sculpture and in sculpturesque drama the diversity and passion and movement of actual life, with details which, however significant and interesting they may be in life itself, often become trivial or offensive when borrowed by the artist for purposes of sensa- tion, pathos, or prettiness. A vast amount of learning and acumen has been employed in studying and contrasting the special characteristics of these three great poets, and for those who take interest in such questions there is an abundance of literature, from the Frogs of Aristophanes (of which Frere's sprightly version is good reading) to the latest modern ' appreciations,' German, French, or English. More satisfactory it is, of course, to form one's own opinion by reading the plays themselves, of which fair verse translations exist, or, still better, by seeing them acted ; for these old Greek poets are still a hving power on the stage, and, even when roughly translated into modern languages, their works produce surprising emotional effects on audiences to a great extent ignorant of the original poems and of the subjects that they treat. The ' appreciation,' moreover, of the literary critic is not always very trustworthy or edifying, for he is too apt to use the foil of depreciation — and that not merely for purposes of comedy, as did Aristophanes — and to waste our time in formulating his ideas about the * unfeminine ' and ' degenerate ' heroines of Sophocles, the * disagreeable features ' of Antigone and her ' vast inferiority to Alcestis,' and so on, or in expressing his contempt for the beggar- heroes, the enamoured dames, the querulous old men, the 356 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR effusive rhetoric, the sophistries, and the ' absurdities ' of Euripides.^ Few perhaps can admire equally things so different as the stern grandeur of Aeschylus, the perfect art, the sculpturesque strength, dignity, and beauty of Sophocles, and the vivid colouring, the living warmth, and varied movement of Euri- pides ; but even though we may with Aristophanes place Aeschylus (or Sophocles in his absence) on the throne of tragedy, we must surely be insensate if we do not feel moved by much in the plays of Euripides, by his passionate, almost Words- worthian love for our common humanity and for the beauty of Nature, and by his pathetic power, which has never, perhaps, been equalled except by Shakespeare — a power so supreme that Aristotle, the master of all critics, calls him " the most tragic of the poets/' How deeply he aroused the admiration of the ancients is shown by the fact that eighteen of his plays (as against seven by Sophocles) have survived, besides a great number of fragments, which still receive frequent additions from Egyptian papyri. Dante, the greatest of mediaeval poets, refers to him, though he mentions neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles. Browning's BalausHon, besides being a tribute of intense admiration from a great modem poet to Euripides, the Human With his droppings of warm tears, And his touches of things common Till they rose to touch the spheres, is founded on an historical fact that proves how magical among the ancients was the influence of the last Athenian tragedian. " Numbers of the Athenian captives in Sicily," says Plutarch, " were saved by Euripides, and when they had returned home they greeted him with gratitude and related how by singing his poems, as much as they could remember, they had been released from slavery, or how, when wandering 1 See, for instance, Schlegel's Dramatic Literature. Such sophistries as the oft- quoted " My tongue swore it, but my mind remained unsworn," may not prove that the poet himself approved of mean mental reservations, but they certainly do bring us down to a very low level. Cf. Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece. 357 ANCIENT GREECE about after the battle, they had by the same means procured food and drink." AeHan, too, tells us that Socrates seldom went to the theatre except to see some new play of Euripides, and the philosopher is even suspected of having had a hand in some of these plays. A few biographical facts and a brief account of some of the chief plays of Sophocles and Euripides may be of more use than comment. %^ ^ Sophocles was born about 495 at Colonus, near Athens. He is said to have led the chorus of boys at the rejoicings after Salamis, " dancing and playing on the lyre around the trophy." As already related, he conquered Aeschylus in 468, when Cimon and the other generals voted for his Triptolemus. About 440 he brought out his Antigone, which, probably against his wishes, procured him his election as a general in the expedition against Samos (p. 296). *' I do my best," he is said to have remarked, " since Pericles will have it so ; but I am no general." In 413, after the SiciHan disawSter, he was elected, doubtless unwillingly, as one of the * Advisers ' (irpof^ovkoi) who coun- selled the establishment of the Four Hundred. He died in 406, in his ninetieth year. Of his 130 (or 113) dramas perhaps half were written in the last third of his life. Seven are extant. The Antigone (c. 440) continues the story of the Aeschylean Seven against Thebes. In spite of the commands of her uncle Creon, who, after the sons of Oedipus had slain each other, has reinstated himself as king of Thebes, Antigone determines to bury her brother Polyneices — which she does by sprinkling dust on his dead body. She is condemned to be buried aHve in a tomb. Haemon, Creon's son, who loves her, kills himself, and his mother, Eurydice, also commits suicide. The strong and impulsive character of Antigone forms a fine contrast to that of her timid younger sister Ismene, but perhaps its strength is rather too virile. The Ajax, which seems from its form and style to be of early date, has for its subject the overthrow of a noble mind by the consciousness of shame. As a so-called psychological study it is comparable with King Lear or Hamlet, In order to follow the 358 98. SoPHOCIvES 358 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR internal action one must read the play. Its external action is simple. The arms of the dead Achilles have been adjudged to Odysseus. Ajax in his furious indignation determines to make an onslaught on the Achaean princes, but is afflicted by Athene with a sudden fit of insanity, during which he slaughters a number of sheep and cattle, believing them to be his foes. On his recovery his sense of shame drives him to suicide. After the catastrophe the play drags on rather wearily. Odysseus, though his great rival, persuades the Atridae to give Ajax burial. The Electra treats the same subject as the Choephoroe of Aeschylus and the Electra of Euripides, with which I shall compare it later. The contrast between two sisters, Electra and Chrysothemis, is not unlike that depicted in the Antigone. One of the finest passages in the play is a description given to Electra by an old man of a chariot-race at the Pythian Games, in which, as he reports, Orestes was killed. The lament of Electra over the funeral urn in which she believes the ashes of her brother to be is as beautiful as anything in literature, and for dramatic effect the last scene, where Aegisthus, believing it to be the corpse of Orestes, unveils the dead body of Clytaemnestra, is probably unsurpassed. The Trachiniae (so called from the chorus, consisting of maidens of Trachis, near Thermopylae) describes the fearful end of Heracles. The legend is that when Nessus the Centaur was killed by Heracles with an arrow that had been dipped in Hydra poison he bade Deianira, the wife of Heracles, pre- serve some of his blood as a love-charm. Being jealous of lole, a princess captured by Heracles, Deianira steeps a robe in this poisoned blood and sends it to him for a sacrificial ceremony. The robe cleaves to his flesh and the venom enters his body. In his madness he seizes I^ichas, his companion, by the feet and hurls him into the sea, and writhes in terrible anguish while trying to tear the clinging poisoned robe from off his Hmbs. He is borne in a litter, or ship, to Trachis, his home. Deianira hangs herself. Heracles bids his son Hyllus bear him to the peak of Mount Oeta and place him on a pyre of wood and 359 ANCIENT GREECE set it aflame. Hyllus at last obeys, and the play ends as Heracles is being carried away. From other writers we learn that Hyllus refused to light the pyre, which was done by a shepherd, Poias, who was passing by. This Poias was father to Philoctetes, to whom he bequeathed the bow and arrows given him in gratitude by Heracles. Some say that Philoctetes himself lit the pyre and was given the weapons. Oedipus Tyrannus was probably composed in the year (430- 429) of the Great Plague, to which there is evident allusion in the well-known opening Hues. Although written long after the Antigone, this drama and the Oedipus at Colonus {c. 420 ?) were doubtless intended to form together with it a Theban trilogy on somewhat the same Hues as those of the Aeschylean trilogy to which, as is beheved, the Seven against Thebes belonged. The story of Oedipus — how he, as was fated, slew his own father and was wedded to his own mother, and how he discovered the terrible truth and blinded himself — scarcely needs recounting. The art with which all is made to lead up to the awful catastrophe, and with which the contrast is depicted between the powerful and haughty monarch of the opening and the bHnded and humiliated sufferer and outcast of the later scenes, is supremely great. In the second play the old blind king, led by his daughter Antigone, comes to the grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, a village near Athens (the birthplace of Sophocles). He feels conscious that his involun- tary crimes have now been atoned for and that the Avenging but Kindly Goddesses ^ will receive him. His other daughter, Ismene, now joins him, and Creon of Thebes appears and tries to carry off the two girls. Theseus, the Athenian king, re- covers them and protects the suppliants. Him the blind Oedipus, as guided by some inner light and by the calling of a voice, leads to the place (perhaps the sanctuary chasm of the Kumenides) where it is fated that he shall die ; and here he passes away from sight. In the Philoctetes is related how Odysseus and Neoptolemus i^The sanctuary itself was in a cleft of the Areopagus, near the Acropolis, two miles from the village of Colonus. 360 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (son of Acliilles) intend to carry off from I^emnos the son of Poias, Philoctetes, who (see above) possessed the bow and arrows of Heracles, without which Troy could not be taken. Philoctetes had been stung by a viper, and the loathsome sore thus caused on his foot had induced the Greeks before Troy to banish him to lycmnos. He refuses to return, and at first Neoptolemus consents to aid Odysseus in using guile ; but his nobler nature revolts, and he confesses all to Philoctetes. Heracles then appears from heaven and induces Philoctetes to change his mind. It is interesting that in two at least of these plays the main action is founded on motives such as are not present, or not easily to be discovered, in any drama of Aeschylus — on the dictates of what we call conscience, or the moral sense — on those inviolable unwritten laws of the heart which are higher than all ordinances proclaimed by human authority in the name of justice or religion. Both Antigone and Neoptolemus obey that voice by which, as Goethe says in his Iphigenie, the gods speak to us through our hearts. Antigone, '* daring a holy crime," perishes, but, Hke Cordelia, proves herself a conqueror over death. Neoptolemus, like the heroine of Goethe's play, will dare or suffer anything rather than practise a mean deceit. Here, I think, is intimated a very essential difference between the ethical teaching of the two poets. As we have already seen, Aeschylus depicts man in his struggle against inexorable Fate — against the external and immutable laws of Necessity ; but Sophocles points to a moral law within the heart, which to obey is to conquer destiny and death. ^ In Euripides we have indeed at times admirable courage and defiance of misfortune, but it is the courage and defiance of the Stoic. There is no deep sense of the eternal laws of the conscience, nor even a ^ " The interest of a Sophoclean drama is always intensely personal, and is almost always centred in an individual destiny. In other words, it is not historical or mythical, but ethical. Single persons stand out magnificently in Aeschylus, but the action is always larger than any single life, ... In Sophocles vast surroundings fall into the background and the feelings of the spectator are absorbed in sympathy with the chief figure on the stage, round whom the other characters (the chorus included) are grouped with the minutest care." — Professor Lewis Campbell. 361 ANCIENT GREECE tragic battling against an overwhelming fate, for all is guided by Chance rather than by Necessity, and the gods themselves are little else but useful stage machinery.^ He gives us a picture, often intensely real and moving, of human character amid the various accidents of life ; but, as tragedy was still limited to the myths of gods and heroes, the purely human element often causes a descent from the sublime to the commonplace, and even to the ridiculous, so that the remark is not so unjust as it may seem that Euripides was the precursor of the New Comedy. Indeed, the writers of this later comedy of common Hfe and character, such as Menander, acknowledged Euripides as their model, especially in dialogue, where clever repartee, smart epigram, and quotable apophthegm were in request. Euripides was born, some say, in Salamis on the very day of the battle (c. September 20, 480). When twenty-five years of age he was ' granted a chorus ' (officially allowed to compete), but did not win the prize till fourteen years later. Of his ninety- two plays, it is said, only four or five were crowned, which seems to show that his popularity was very much greater than his appreciation by contemporary critics. I^ate in Hfe (about 408) he withdrew to Thessaly, and thence to the court of King Archelaus of Macedonia, possibly on account of the domestic troubles which embittered so much of his life, or because his philosophical and poHtical sentiments exposed him to danger at Athens. He died in 406, a few months before Sophocles. The story that he was torn to pieces by dogs possibly arose from the fact that in his last play, the Bacchae, written probably in Macedonia, Pentheus is torn to pieces by infuriated Bacchanals. Of the eighteen extant plays of Euripides (excluding the Rhesus, which is probably a later imitation, but including the Cyclops, the only surviving classical satyric drama) perhaps the finest are the Alcestis (438), Medea (431), Ion (c. 420), and|the two Iphigeneias (412-408), the stories of which are well 1 In nine out of the eighteen extant plays of Euripides the problem is solved by the appearance of a deus ex machina. 362 99- Euripides 362 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR known and need not here be recounted. ^ But in order to illustrate some characteristics of the poet a few remarks may be made on one of his less known dramas, the Electra. All three of the great Athenian dramatists treated the subject of the Electra, and all three dramas are extant. The main action of the Choephoroe and of the Sophoclean Electra has already- been briefly intimated. Euripides has chosen the same story, namely, the return of Orestes, his recognition by his sister and the slaying of Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus ; but he has used a very different setting, his object doubtless having been to bring it all nearer to us — '' menschlich naher," as Schiller expresses it. The scene opens, not before the palace of Argos or the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae, but before a cottage, out of which steps forth an old peasant. In a long prologue — an introductory device much used by Euripides — ^he explains for the benefit of the audience, though evidently talking to himself, that Electra had been forced by her mother to marry him, and that she lives with him, but as a daughter, not as a wife. Electra then enters, bearing on her close-shorn head a pitcher, and, in spite of the dear old man's entreaties, insists on performing the menial work of the household. With such a mise-en-scene we might have had a very pathetic and withal a dignified play ; but, unfortunately, there is much that one might think more adapted to satisfy the taste of the tragical- comical players in Hamlet than that of an Athenian audience. After the catastrophe Electra puts a wreath on her brother's head, while he holds the head of Aegisthus suspended by its hair; she then pours vituperation and sarcasm on the dead man's head. When Orestes, in his alarm (though he sees no Furies, as in the Choephoroe), determines to flee, Electra exclaims, a Httle irrationally, *' Who will now marry me ? " The play is wound up by the appearance ex machina of Castor ^ The Alcestis is finely translated by Browning (in Balaustion). The recon- structions of the Medea by Grillenparzer and of the Iphigeneia in Tauris by Goethe are interesting as not unsuccessful attempts at re-creation in the modern spirit. The imitations by Racine and Voltaire are, as Goethe says, mere parodies. Professor Murray's translations into English are popular. 363 ANCIENT GREECE and Pollux, who order Py lades to marry Blectra and to give a liberal compensation to the peasant. But perhaps nothing in the whole play ' lets us down ' quite so much as the dehberate and sarcastic way in which Euripides expresses, through Blectra (11. 524 sq.), his disapproval of the means used by Aeschylus to bring about the recognition, namely, a lock of hair and footprints. Certainly the scar that he uses for the purpose has Homeric precedent and is more satisfactory ; but the attack on his great predecessor is surely in bad taste and much out of place in a work of art. In the Iphigeneia in Aulis the dea ex machina, or rather the substitution of a fawn instead of the victim by the invisible Artemis, is in keeping with the old legend, but in the case of the Iphigeneia in Tauris the deadening effect on our sympathies of such contrivance is apparent when we think of the solution of the knot by Goethe, who in the place of a stage divinity makes the power of courage and truth on the part of Iphigeneia save her and her brother from the infuriated Scythian king. In some of his dramas, such as the Phoenissae, in which the Oedipus story is employed, Euripides alters the old legends very considerably or uses rare versions. He even gives con- tradictory versions in different plays. In the Helena the heroine (whom Homer and Herodotus state to have been in Egypt, evidently on her way back from Troy with Menelaus) never reaches Troy at all. What accompanied Paris to Troy was a wraith. The true Helen was all the time in Egypt, in charge of King Proteus. Schlegel calls it the " merriest of tragedies." But I prefer to end with Goethe's words, referring to Schlegel, rather than with Schlegel's disparage- ment. " If a modern critic," he said, " must pick out faults in so great a master of drama, he should do it on his knees." The names are known of 104 Greek comic poets. About forty were writers of the prisca Comoedia, the Old Attic Comedy [c. 480-390) , and produced something like 360 plays. Of these nothing worth mention has survived except eleven, out of perhaps forty, of the comedies of Aristophanes. How great 364 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR our loss is we cannot tell. Aristophanes was a great poet as well as a comedian. " The Graces," said Plato, " chose his mind for their dwelling." But, excepting his work and Terence's paraphrases of Menander, we have no evidence that there was much of permanent value in all this immense output of comic verse, and for our purpose it will suffice if, after a few remarks on the rise of Greek comedy, we consider briefly- some of these eleven plays that have been preserved by the admiration of Alexandrian critics. Tragedy, as we have seen, originated at the vintage festivals, where the peasants, disguised as goat-eared satyrs, or dressed in goatskins, danced and sang their * goat songs ' and dithy- rambs in honour of Dionysus, and in course of time introduced dialogue and representations of old legends, both tragical and satyric.i Comedy, the song of ' revelry ' (KayjuLo^ — which is also the name of the god of revelry), originated, as Aristotle tells us, in festivals connected with the divinities of fertility, at which much carneval licence was allowed (as at the Roman Saturnalia), much coarse jesting and abuse and repartee and pasquinade and comic dialogue (as with the old I^atin Fescennine songs), accompanied by processions and dances of mummers and maskers in all kinds of quaint and indecent dis- guises. (On old Attic vases may be seen such maskers depicted — disguised as birds or other animals, and in one case as knights mounted on the back of slaves.) lyudicrous acting was then introduced — first mere improvised mummer-show. We hear of an early and rather mythical Attic comic poet, Susarion, but it was in Sicily that comic plays were first learnt for recitation, and it was Bpicharmus, of Sicilian Megara (about 500, somewhat 1 Plutarch says that after the Thespian tragical performances had come into vogue the common people were discontented, missing the old humour of the original ' tragedy ' — i.e. the ' goat ' or ' satyr ' song — and asked : " What has this to do with Dionysus ? " Therefore humorous ' satyric ' dramas were often acted in connexion with the later ' tragedies,' which had become too serious for public taste. In the greatest of all tragedies, Shakespeare's, there is humour — unintelligible to minds like Voltaire's, but not to minds like that of Socrates, who affirmed that every tragic poet should also be a comic poet. Plato, too, calls jesting the " sister of earnestness," and Horace tells us that it often decides great things better and quicker than seriousness. • 365 ANCIENT GREECE later than Thespis, the Attic founder of tragedy), who first com- posed parodies, or burlesques, of old legends. A few small frag- ments of his plays are extant. This old Sicihan comedy was transplanted to Athens in the age of the Persian invasions, and rapidly struck root. It was ere long recognized by the state, and the comic poet was granted a chorus like the tragedian, and allowed to compete publicly for a prize. Among the first Athenian comic poets we hear of Chionides, Magnes, Crates, Cratinus, and Eupolis. The last two were early contemporaries and rivals of Aristophanes. Crates was perhaps the first to raise comedy above personal lampoon and to attack vice and folly in the abstract. Under Pericles great licence was allowed to the comic poet, but he might be impeached for " doing wrong to the people " by attacking un- fairly their magistrates. During the trouble with Samos (440) comedy was suppressed, and again when democracy fell in 411, and although it revived with the democracy it was no longer allowed to satirize pubHc characters. Of the life of Aristophanes (c. 445-380) very little is known. He produced his first play, the Banqueters, in 427, when " hardly more than a boy," and two years later he won the first prize with the Acharnians, the earliest of his extant comedies. It was directed against the iniquity and folly of the war. A good old Attic farmer, angry at the constant rejection of peace, sends a private embassy to the Spartans and secures immunity for himself and his family. He rails off his property and invites his neighbours to an open market and all the blessings of peace, including a fine banquet. The play teems with political allusions. The consequent complications, social and political, are most ludicrous. The chief butts of the satire are the demagogues and Euripides. In the Knights (424) a most audacious attack was made on Cleon, just then elated by his success at Sphacteria (p. 336). It was the first play that Aristophanes exhibited in his own name, and as no one dared to play the part of Cleon, nor even to make a mask for the character (see 1. 232), the poet himself, it is said, undertook the role with his face stained, as in old 366 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR times, with wine-lees. Cleon is represented as the drunken and crafty Paphlagonian slave and ' demagogue ' of the old gentleman, Demos (the People), and is finally outwitted by a sausage-seller. After ridding himself of his pestilent ' dema- gogue ' the old Demos appears rejuvenated, takes again into favour his honest servants Nicias and Demosthenes, and is enthusiastic for good old Marathonian times. It was probably on account of this play that Cleon brought an action against Aristophanes to prove that he was an alien and not entitled to exhibit plays. What grounds there were for the action is uncertain, though it is possible that the poet's father came from Aegina, or Rhodes. Anyhow, the suit failed, and Aristo- phanes prided himself later on his Heraclean contest with the monster ; but he never again ventured on any such violent personal attacks on public characters, unless we except Euripides, and perhaps Socrates. The Clouds (423) is directed especially against the sophists and rhetoricians and the ' modern education.' An old gentle- man, deep in debt, takes his son (evidently typical of Alci- biades) to Socrates to be educated in the new sophistry, so as to free himself from his creditors by forensic quibbles ; but he suffers so much from his up-to-date offspring that he burns down the Socratic ' thinking shop ' on the stage. The attack on Socrates is elsewhere described (p. 377). It is evident that the humour was understood by even such an admirer of Socrates as Plato, for he sent the play to Dionysius, and in the Symposion he speaks with admiration of Aristophanes. In the Wasps is satirized the mania for lawsuits and serving as jurymen (dicasts), whereby all home life and professional duties are neglected, the whole male population swarming like wasps to the law-courts. In 421 Aristophanes exhibited his Peace, in which (in reference to the Peace of Nicias, concluded in that year) a peace-loving Athenian flies up to heaven, mounted on a dung-beetle, in search of the Goddess of Peace. In heaven, however, he finds only the Demon of War, pounding up the cities and races of men in a gigantic mortar. Peace has been hurled from heaven and lies buried in a deep pit, 367 ANCIENT GREECE whence all the nations of Greece haul her forth with ropes. The Birds (414), in which the building of ' Cloud-cuckoo City ' is described, probably alludes to the great air-castle that the Athenians were endeavouring to erect by extending their empire to Sicily. The play appeared shortly before the disastrous end of the Sicilian expedition. In the Frogs (405) the god Dionysus descends, like a second Heracles, to Hades — crossing the Styx amid loud croaking of the chorus of frogs — in order to bring back Euripides (who had lately died) to give the Athenians, now in great political trouble, his sage advice. Dionysus finds him disputing with Aeschylus the right to the throne of tragedy, and finally Aeschylus returns to earth with Dionysus, leaving Sophocles as his representative in Hades. In the remaining extant plays social questions are dealt with. In the Plutus we have the unjust distribution of wealth and the question of communism. In the coarse but exceedingly humorous Lysistrata and the Women in Parliament we have the rights and political influence of women (who institute a sociahstic state with community of wives). In the Thesmophoriazusae the women assembled at the festival of the Thesmophoria, to which no men were admitted, swear to avenge themselves on Euripides for his misogyny, and finally amidst indescribable excitement detect the presence of his brother-in-law, whom he had persuaded to enter the assembly in female disguise. SECTION C : DEMOCRITUS : THE SOPHISTS : SOCRATES Greek thought deHneates or suggests in sculpturesque out- line every philosophy worthy of the name, and especially distinct is the picture that it offers us of the gradual develop- ment of the conviction that the ordering force omnipresent in the universe cannot be accounted for by any supposed ' self-creation ' and * self-movement ' of prime matter, but solely by the existence of an IntelHgence and a Will that not only manifests itself in the sensible world, but is also recogniz- able by the mind as the one Reality. Theoretically, at any rate, Anaxagoras had reached this doctrine, and we shall see 368 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR later how Socrates and Plato accepted it as the foundation for their philosophy. But here it is necessary to note a remarkable genius of the materialistic or ' mechanical ' school, whose influence aided the development of those brilliant intellectuaHsts and fashionable lecturers known as the Sophists. Democritus of Abdera, in Thrace, was born in 460, and is said to have lived until 361. He was perhaps the son of that Damasippus who entertained Xerxes at Abdera. After some years of travel, of which he writes somewhat boastfully, he resided at Athens, and seems to have excited the dislike of Anaxagoras (his senior by forty years), probably on account of his self-conceit and mockery — which may have earned him the sobriquet ' the lyaugher ' (6 y^Xoov) . Plato, too, is said to have disliked his writings so much that he wished to collect and burn them. lycngthy fragments of these writings remain. His style is praised by Cicero as similar to that of Plato. His physical theories were derived from I^eucippus, of whom nothing is known. They come to us mainly through Epicurus {h. 341) and the Roman poet lyucretius. He, or lycucippus, is regarded as the founder of the atomic theory, which has been largely held by modern science and which supposes matter to consist of minute soHd particles [not infinitely divisible, as Anaxagoras believed) possessing weight and the power of coherence. These ' atoms ' Democritus conceived as infinite in number ; therefore it was necessary to assume a boundless space to accommodate them. Through this boundless, dark Inane streamed Hke everlasting rain the endless torrents of atoms, clashing together and by fortuitous concurrence forming '' another and another frame of things for ever," as is described by Tennyson in his poem Lucretius. By giving his atoms weight Democritus assumed persistent gravity — which is absurd in the case of bodies moving endlessly through boundless space. Moreover, atoms acted upon by any such force would " ruin along th' inimitable Inane " for ever in parallel fines without colfiding. He, or perhaps Epicurus, saw this difficulty and tried to meet it by asserting that Necessity (self-created from all eternity), or else Chance, as a kind of side wind, caused the atom-streams 2 A 369 ANCIENT GREECE to deviate, collide, and combine, thus forming all the objects of the natural world, and by the coherence of specially fine and durable particles forming also living organisms and even spiritual beings and the Deity himself. Thus is the materialist, if he is not content with agnosticism, ever forced to assume some immaterial first cause, even though he may not vouchsafe it intelligence or will. As ethical thinker Democritus preached (so did Epicurus later) moderation and virtue as the means of attaining cheerfulness — a comfortable state of mind (ivOvjuLLr}) like the Stoic's aequus animus ; and since no one is willingly unhappy, the one thing necessary for virtue he held to be knowledge. This seems very like what Socrates taught, but the 'knowledge' of Democritus (seeing that he believed in nothing but his atoms and his Inane) was something very different from that of Socrates, who, if we are to believe Plato rather than Aristophanes, regarded the investigation of physical causes as, at the best, an innocent form of recrea- tion, and likened the erudite and fashionable intellectualists of the day to men eagerly scanning and discussing shadows cast on a cavern's wall, while the rhetoric by which they degraded the search for truth into a mere display of dialectic skill he disdainfully put on the same level as the art of cookery. And yet some of these Sophists — whom Aristotle describes as *' trading in false wisdom " — were men of great learning, exceed- ingly ' well educated ' from our modern point of view.^ Such was the SiciHan Gorgias, who was sent (427) as an ambassador to Athens and excited there by his eloquence intense enthu- siasm. Such was Protagoras of Abdera, friend of Pericles and Euripides, whose philosophy was summed up in the asser- tion that " man is the measure of all," and who, according to Plato, made by his teaching more money than Pheidiasand ten other sculptors, and was impeached at Athens for asserting that he was " unable to know whether the gods exist," and is said to have perished at sea while fleeing to Sicily. However, 1 Some regard the Sophists as valuable ' spreaders of enlightenment,' and assert not only that Socrates was called a sophistes by contemporaries, but that there was no essential difference between his teaching and theirs. 370 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR whatever their merits may have been, their ideal, which was that of the mere intellectuahst, was entirely false, in the judg- ment of Socrates, who, when the Delphic oracle proclaimed him the wisCvSt of men, interpreted it to mean that he alone was fully conscious of his own " nothingness in regard to wisdom." But perhaps I cannot use my limited space better than by giving two pictures, copied roughly from Plato, of some of these professional lecturers. The first is from the Hippias Major. Hippias of Klis, the popular teacher and lecturer, has been bragging to Socrates how he had been sent on embassies of state and had also been going from city to city lecturing on science and literature and history and logic and ethics and the like, and winning huge renown and a large fortune by his discourses. " Going to Sicily," he says, " in a very short time I made more than 150 minae [say £600, or much more accord- ing to the present value of money]. Indeed, I am inclined to think that no two other Sophists, name whom you will, ever acquired so much money. And even at Sparta, where the law prevents a foreigner from giving instruction to the young, everybody flocked to my lectures and lavished much praise upon me. " Socr. But in the name of the gods, of what kind were those lectures for which they gave you such rewards and praises ? On what subjects do they so delight to hear you harangue ? No doubt they were the subjects in which you have such sur- passing knowledge — the stars and the celestial phenomena. " Hipp. Yes, sometimes. But the Spartans will hear no word on such subjects. " Socr. Then I suppose it was about geometry and mathe- matics. " Hipp. Not at all. Most of the Spartans are ignorant of the most elementary rules of arithmetic. " Socr. Then was it logic and the art of persuasion ? Or perhaps that subject in which you of all men are so expert in accurately distinguishing and defining, I mean letters and syllables and the harmony of words and rhythms ? 371 ANCIENT GREECE " Hipp, The Spartans care nothing for such subjects. " Socr. Well, do tell me — since I cannot find it out by myself. " Hipp. It was about genealogies of heroes and distinguished men, and about the migrations of tribes and settling of colonies, and the antiquity and first founding of cities — in a word, every- thing concerning ancient history. And I have been obliged for their sakes to work up these subjects and perfect myself in that kind of knowledge. " Socr. By Zeus, Hippias, it was fortunate that they didn't want you to give a list of all the archons from the time of Solon ! '' Hipp. Why so, Socrates ? Upon hearing fifty names repeated only once I will undertake to remember them." Thus Socrates (or Plato) banters the self-conceited intellec- tualism of the lecturing Sophist. The other picture is from Plato's dialogue Protagoras, in which Socrates describes, with sly humour, a scene in which are introduced many of the more famous Sophists.^ " Entering, we found Protagoras walking up and down the poxtico, and with him, on one side, were Callias, Paralus, and Charmides, and on the other Xanthippus, the son of Pericles, and Antimaerus of Mende, who bears the highest reputation of all the disciples of Protagoras, and is studying with a view to hereafter being a Sophist himself. Others followed behind to catch what was said, seeming chiefly to be foreigners whom Protagoras brings about with him from every city through which he travels, charming them [kti^oov] with his voice, as Orpheus of old, while they under the fascination follow the voice ; some also of our countrymen were in the train. As I viewed the band [xopov] I was delighted to observe with what caution they took care never to be in front of Protagoras, but whenever he turned, those who were behind, dividing on either side in a circle, fell back so as still to remain in the rear. ' Him past, I saw ' (to speak in Homeric phrase) Hippias of Elis enthroned beneath the opposite portico ; around whom, on benches, sat Kryximachus, Phaedrus, and others. They ^ I have here borrowed from the version given by Archer Butler in his Lectures on Ancient Philosophy. 372 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR seemed to question Hippias concerning the sublimities of nature and the revolutions of the stars, while he, reposing upon his throne, resolved each successive difficulty. Presently I came upon Prodicus of Ceos, who was not yet risen, but lay cushioned in a retired chamber among bedclothes, and around him were Pausanias, Adimantus, and others. The subjects of their discussion I could not gather from without, though extremely anxious to hear Prodicus ; for I hold him to be a man of wisdom more than human ; but the perpetual rever- beration of his voice — an extremely deep one — confused the words in their echoes." To give any full account of the teachings of Socrates, or even a bare outline of the great structure of Ideal philosophy built thereupon by Plato, lies far beyond the range of this volume. I shall only offer a few biographical facts and a few remarks and quotations for the purpose of intimating the nature of these teachings and this philosophy rather than of describing their exact form. For the Hfe and personality of Socrates we are chiefly indebted to the Dialogues of Plato and the Memoirs of Xenophon ; for his doctrines, although Aristotle tells us some- thing, we have to investigate the fundamental principles of Platonic philosophy, endeavouring to distinguish them from the superstructure ; for how far Socrates used the forms of thought and imagination (such as those of Ideas, and the allegories of Metamorphosis and Prenatal Existence) attributed to him by his great disciple is quite uncertain ; nor can we feel quite sure that Plato has given us a perfectly trustworthy picture in all details even of such scenes as the trial and the last hours of his master. Still, it seems incredible that he should have misrepresented the essential tenets and the personality of Socrates, for it would have been at once detected and resented by those who had known him, and who, to use the words of one of them, had loved him as " the wisest and justest and. best man they had ever known." Of the external life of Socrates we know comparatively little, but we know enough to recognize a noble attempt to practise 373 ANCIENT GREECE what he taught, r In my hfe," he said a few hours before his death, *' I have striven as much as I was able, and have left nothing undone, to become a true philosopher. Whether I have striven in the right way, or whether I have succeeded or not, I suppose I shall learn in a little while, when I reach the other world, if it be the will of God.'' The philosopher was born about 469 in the demos Alopeke (' The Place of Foxes '), not far from Athens. His father was a sculptor, or rather a ' stone- worker,' and he himself attained such proficiency that a group of three draped Graces made by him was to be seen on the Acropolis, Pausanias asserts, six centuries later. He received the ordinary ' musical ' and gymnastic educa- tion of an Athenian citizen — an education in the arts patro- nized by the Muses and in athletic exercises — the object of which was something very far removed from professional or mercantile success. His knowledge of Homer and other old poets was evidently extensive. From Xenophon we learn that he was " fond of studying the treasures that wise men of old had left in their books," such as the abstruse philosophy of Heracleitus, whose book, lent him by Euripides, he is said to have greatly admired, but to have found at times so difficult that "it needed a Delian diver." With the mathematical, astronomical, and philosophical works of Pythagoras he was acquainted, and in the Phaedo he tells us that when young he was passionately fond of physical science, but that he aban- doned it later as dealing, not with reaHties, but appearances, and as useless except for merely practical purposes or as a recreation. He seems to have had an iron constitution and to have borne unflinchingly pain and fatigue and the extremes of heat and cold, so that the soldiers, says Alcibiades, " looked angrily at him." He went, at least in later years, always bare- foot, and wore the same coarse, homely cloak in summer and winter alike. His features were not at all such as one associates with intellect or with Hellenism. Neither friends nor foes spared their jests en his satyr-hke physiognomy, with its broad nose, its wide, thick-lipped mouth, and its prominent, glaring'^eyes. 374 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR In the Sym^osion Alcibiades likens him to a figure of the satyF-gM~Silemis, which, when opened, discloses images of the Olympian gods. " He thinks all such things as beauty and riches of no value and spends his Hfe among us in irony and jest. But when he is serious and is opened, I know not if any of you have seen the images within. But I have seen them, and they appeared to me so divine, golden, all-beautiful, and wonderful that I was ready to do in an instant whatever Socrates might command.'' In 432, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, Socrates served as a hoplite in Thrace, at the siege of Potidaea, and here he saved the life of the wounded Alcibiades. At the battle of Delion, in 424, where the Athenians suffered a serious defeat, he behaved, as Alcibiades tells us in the Symposion, with great courage in covering the retreat, and perhaps saved the life of Xenophon, carrying him a long distance. Two years after Delion Socrates fought a third time for his country at the battle of Amphipolis, and once more distinguished himself by his courage and endurance. He was now forty-seven years old. Some time before this he had taken to frequenting the markets and colonnades and other public places and talking in a familiar way to any one, rich or poor, who cared to listen and answer his questions, " babbling," as Alcibiades puts it, " about market-donkeys and coppersmiths and shoemakers and tanners" — testing those who thought they were wise and proving that they knew nothing truly, and didn't even know that — plaguing high-priests with some such elementary question as " What is religion ? " or the learned with " What is know- ledge ? " and poHticians with " What is justice ? " — refusing to accept cant definitions and current valuations but going back to primary, indisputable facts and simple, distinct conceptions, to the true nature and true value of everything — beginning discussion with some such tiresome, elementary question ^ as " Do you allow that justice is anything ? and if so, what is it ? " 1 The true subject of Plato's Republic is Justice, the ordinary conception of which is described by Socrates. He compares the high-priests of Justice in Athens to men who undertake to tame some savage animal. They learn 375 ANCIENT GREECE — implanting thus in minds filled with the conceit of false knowledge the seed of self-knowledge and endeavouring to make men reaHze their own ignorance as the first step in the search for wisdom. As Bacon in science, so Socrates in a higher sphere set himself and others the task (as Bacon says of himself) of *' throwing entirely aside received theories and conceptions and applying the mind, thus cleansed, afresh to facts." It is this inductive process, this search for a solid basis of fact on which to build up a general law, that Aristotle held to be the most important factor in the teachings of Socrates. Socrates likens himself to a troublesome gadfly, and doubtless he did arouse great resentment among the fashionable and self- conceited intellectualists and the high-priests of Olympian orthodoxy, as any man is bound to do who goes about annoying respectable people with inconvenient questions on matters which should be left to the care of theologians and cabinet ministers. Doubtless, too, the fact that his example incited the young to disprove the wisdom of their elders by the application of the Socratic scrutiny must have winged a deadly shaft of accusation against him. " I go about," he says in his Apology, " testing and examining every man who has the reputation of being wise, and if I find that he is not wise, I point out to him on the part of the God that he is not wise. And I am so busy in this pursuit that I never had leisure to take any part worth mention in public matters nor to look after my private affairs. I am in very great poverty by reason of my service to the God." Twice, however, we hear of his taking part in pubHc affairs (pp. 343, 345), and on both occasions, unsupported and at the peril of his life, he refused to give his sanction to gross injustice. That Socrates had gained notoriety and had aroused ani- mosity even as early as the battle of Delion is proved by the celebrated scene in the Clouds of Aristophanes (423) in which he is depicted as a believer in strange deities (such as Aether its moods, learn what sounds provoke and soothe it and how to manage and coax it, and having thus discovered the temper and caprices of the many- headed beast, the public, they call that justice which it likes, and that injustice of which it disapproves. 376 ■■ ^ -. f |k ^ ... .'/ mir-*^-'^^'' loo. Socrates loi. Pl,ATO :o2. Aristophanes 103. lyYSIAS 376 J THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR and King Vortex — deities not unknown to modern science) and as a swindling Sophist and a corrupter of the young. But especially he is represented (of course quite falsely) as a scientist impiously prying into the secrets of Nature, suspended mid-air in a basket in order to examine the nature and motions of the heavenly bodies, and endeavouring to calculate the length of the leaps of a flea by dipping its feet in wax and using the impression as a measure. Aristophanes was not personally hostile to Socrates (at least in the Symposion the two seem on quite friendly terms) , but he was a staunch Conservative, a praiser of old Marathonian times, rigidly orthodox, strenuously imperialistic, and apparently quite incapable of distinguishing Socratic wisdom from the blatant intellectualism and the atheistic materialism of the day. Suspicion and resentment gathered year by year until at last the storm broke, and he who was among the Greeks the first to proclaim a God of perfect wisdom and goodness, whose will is the true cause of all things, and to assert that he " held it more certain than any- thing else that the soul exists after death and that it will be better in that other hfe for the good than for the evil," is condemned to die as a malefactor, on the charge of *' not believing in the gods of his country " and for " corrupting the young," exemplifying to no small extent in himself that " truly just man " whom in Plato's Republic he thus describes : ''He will be misjudged, despised, and hated ; he will be condemned as unjust and as an evil-doer ; he will be scourged, tormented, fettered, have his eyes burnt out ; and lastly, after having suffered all manner of evil, will be crucified." The last scenes — those of his trial, imprisonment, and death — are well known, and to give any worthy picture of them is here impossible. I can only refer those who have not yet read it to the vivid and touching account given by Plato in the Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo, Doubtless many of the wisest and best were deeply shocked and grieved. The great Athenian rhetorician I^ysias is said to have composed a speech for Socrates to use in his defence — but Socrates would not use it. Diodorus (who Hved in the age 377 ANCIENT GREECE of Julius Caesar) and other writers assert that even the Athe- nian rabble bitterly repented their act, and put to death the accusers of Socrates. It is said that certain verses of the Palamedes of Euripides (" Ye have killed, O Greeks, the all- wise, the nightingale of the Muses . . . '') made the audience burst into tears. Such hysterical changes of public sentiment are common enough, but although there were many who, like Xenophon and Plato and Phaedo and Crito and Simmias, loved Socrates as the " best and wisest man they had ever known," it is not at all probable that the Athenian mob and its leaders were capable of repenting what they believed to have been a perfectly justifiable and wise extermination of a noisome and intolerable influence. Justifiable, from the point of view of the dicast, it may have been, and some historians, such as Grote, who regard with favour the Athenian dicast, speak of the " marked and offensive self -exaltation '* and the "insulting tone" — such a tone as " dicasts had never heard before " — with which Socrates forced his judges to '* uphold the majesty of the court and the constitution." To some of us the unwritten law which Socrates by his character and his teaching proclaimed was of a majesty inexpressibly more sacred than that of the Athenian dicasteries, to which with such calm dignity he submitted himself. Some of the intellectual and imaginative forms in which Socrates, perhaps, clothed his beliefs will be mentioned on a later occasion. Here I add only a few more words about the methods that he used — so entirely different from those employed by the fashionable lecturers and teachers of his day. His wisdom consisted, as he tells us, in the consciousness of his own ignorance. " I never professed," he says, *' to teach any one any knowledge." He did not profess to impart ready- made opinion, but by quiet discussion he tried gradually to bring about a certain attitude or frame of mind such as would prove receptive of truth. One of these methods was what is known as Socratic irony. In one way the ' irony ' of Socrates was, of course, no pretence — for he was deeply conscious of his own ignorance — but he often pleaded ignorance in order to 378 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR elicit the definitions of his opponents or hearers. " Here is a specimen of your well-known irony," exclaims some one in the Republic. " I knew all the time that you would refuse to answer, and would pretend ignorance and do everything rather than answer a straightforward question." How far the respect that Socrates often shows for the learned ignorance of his opponents was pretended or sincere it is not always easy to discover, but his ' irony ' never has any tendency to sarcasm ; it is always good-natured and modest ; but nevertheless it must have often given great offence to self-conceit. Another Socratic method is what he calls the maieutic, or ' midwife ' method. In playful allusion to the profession of his mother, Phaenarete, he says that he too merely helped at the birth of thought — helped the labouring mind to produce its offspring — something that shall be its own by the rights of nature, not merely a supposititious foundhng picked up in the gutter of public opinion. The word ' dialectic ' (discussion) is used nowadays in rather a loose way to describe any of the artifices of disputation ; but the dialectic of Socrates (or Plato) in its highest sense is the discourse of the mind on the beliefs of the soul — the mani- festation in thought and words of that '' discussion of the soul with herself which takes place without the voice." But, as Dante tells us, " form accords not always with the intention of art," and even the serenest self-communion may seem sometimes to take the form, in Plato's dialogues, of rather exhausting and apparently quibbling disputation. To those of us who are impatient for conclusions the long-drawn discussion may at times seem tedious and unprofitable. In some cases no conclusion at all is arrived at, and one looks in vain for any dogmatic summing up, such as no modern writer on such subjects could afford to dispense with, if he had any respect for the critics. How entirely different the object of Socrates was from that of most who argue may be seen from what he says in the Phaedo : "I am not in the least anxious that any one present should believe in my theories, except just as may happen. ... If this is not true, then something like it 379 ANCIENT GREECE may be true." He knew well that the highest truths were not to be thus attained and formulated — a fact that is well stated in a letter written probably by Plato himself. ^ " About these things," he says — ^he means the highest objects of philosophy — " there never was and never will be any treatise of mine. For a matter of this kind cannot be expressed in words like other kinds of learning, but by long familiarity and living together with the thing itself a Hght, as it were of a flame leaping forth, will suddenly be kindled in the soul and will nourish itself there." Perhaps it may be asked : "Of what nature, then, was this inexpressible object of the Socratic philosophy ? And what is the use of this dialectic, or of any intellectual process, if it cannot hope to attain and formulate the highest kind of truth ? " What Socrates (or Plato) believed to be attainable by intel- lectual processes is explained in one of the most interesting and most difficult of the Platonic dialogues, the Theaetetus, where Socrates comes to the conclusion that the highest certainty attainable by the mind is what he calls '* a true opinion with reason " — that is, an observed fact which is confirmed by other facts and can be classed under a general law. Such inductive truths he accepted as * rafts,' seaworthy enough to waft us over the waters of intellectual and practical life. But there are truths beyond the reach of the unaided mind — truths of which the knowledge is identical with virtue (so that wrong-doing is only due to ignorance of such truths, and "nobody is willingly — but only ignorantly — wicked"). To gain a vision of such truths and realities is possible by means of some contemplative faculty, the " reasoning part of the soul," as it is called in the Phaedrus, and dialectic in its highest sense, as the " voiceless discussion of the soul with herself," induces these seasons of calm weather in which such visions 1 The Seventh Epistle, which describes Plato's relations with Dion and Diony- sius in Sicily, and seems, although sometimes questioned, to be genuine. (See Selections from Plato, edited by T. W. RoUeston.) 380 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR are vouchsafed. And should we wish for some intimation of the nature of these truths, after which Socrates searched so earnestly, perhaps we cannot do better than turn to the definition that he has given of true philosophy. If we consult a text-book of modern philosophy ^ we shall find that " Philo- sophy proper is the science of the phenomena and laws of Mind," or something similar. If we open the Phaedo we shall find that " True philosophy is nothing else but the study of how to die and to be dead." But perhaps the following passage may still more clearly inti- mate of what kind was that knowledge of the true nature and cause of all things which was the aim of Socratic philosophy. " When I was a young man," says Socrates in the Phaedo, shortly before drinking the cup of hemlock, " I was wondrously desirous of that kind of wisdom which they call natural science. It seemed to me a very grand accomplishment to know the causes of everything, and I tossed myself in speculating whether matter, when by alternations of cold and heat it has arrived at a certain state of putridity, generates life — and whether it was the blood or air or animal heat or the brain that generates intelligence and the senses, and thence memory and opinion. . . . However, I received no advantage from my inquiries. . . . But once I heard somebody reading out of a book which he said was by Anaxagoras, and when he came to that part in which he says that Intelligence [Nouc] orders and is the cause of all, I was delighted and thought it an excellent idea that Intelligence orders everything and puts it where it is. But from this grand hope I was swept away when I read the book and found that the man made no use of this Intelli- gence in the ordering of the cosmos, but talked about airs and aethers and waters and all kinds of strange things. And he appeared to me like one who should first assert that all the actions of Socrates are due to intelligence, but should then declare that I am sitting here because my body is composed of bones and muscles, and that the muscles being elastic and ^ Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures. I suppose the definition applies rather to ' psychology,' as it is now called. 381 ANCIENT GREECE the bones solid enable me to bend my limbs, and that this is the reason why in tliis crouching attitude I am sitting here, utterly ignoring the true reason, namely, that, since the Athenians thought it better to condemn me, on this account I also have thought it better to sit here, and more honourable to remain and endure whatever punishment they may have ordained. Otherwise, by the Dog, I think these muscles and bones would have long ago been somewhere in Megara or Boeotia." ^ SECTION D : SCULPTURE {c. 440 to c. 400) To divide anything of such vitality and continuous growth as Greek sculpture into distinct periods is perhaps unwise, but much of what was produced between the chief works of Pheidias {c. 450-432) and those of Scopas and Praxiteles (c. 390-360) seems to possess marked and interesting characteristics. Nothing is more striking in the wonderful development of Greek art and literature during the fifth century than the rise and pre-eminence of Athenian influence. We have already seen how in the earlier part of the century the influence of the ' athletic ' Peloponnesian school found its way into Attica, especially through Ageladas, the master of both Pheidias and Myron, and how this vigorous, masculine style, wedded, as it were, to Attic grace and dehcacy, produced the incomparable art that we still admire in the Parthenon frieze and pediments. In its turn the new and beautiful Athenian style influenced the sculpture of the Peloponnese and extended even to such distant regions as I^ycia and Western Sicily. (i) At Athens itself we find lyycius, son of the great sculptor Myron. Nothing of his has survived, but he is less of a mere name than many once famous Greek artists, for besides the numerous works mentioned by old writers, such as the cele- brated group at Olympia representing the combat between Achilles and Memnon, he made one or more of the bronze * Phaedo, xlv. sq., abbreviated in parts. 382 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR equestrian statues that once decorated the Propylaea/ and on the basis of one of these his name may still be read. Another Athenian sculptor, a Cretan by birth and Cresilas by name, is of greater interest, for in the British Museum may be seen what is a fine copy (Fig. 96) of his bust of Pericles, the basis of which has been discovered during the excavations on the Acropohs. It is supposed to be an ideal rather than a realistic portrait — " not so much an accurate presentment of the features of Pericles as an embodiment and expression of his personaHty.'' It was probably one of the first statues of public men erected at Athens. As in the case of coins, portraiture in Greek sculpture was rare till the fourth century. Even the statues erected to victorious athletes were usually, it is supposed, not realistic portraits, nor were, as a rule, in earlier times, the figures on tombstones. On the other hand, we have the statues of the Tyrannicides as early as about 500, and such portraits as that of Aristion, about 550 (Fig. 51). A figure of Miltiades, as we have already seen, stood in the Marathon trophy at Delphi, and Polygnotus introduced portraits into his pictures, and Pheidias did the same in the case of the notorious shield of Athene (Fig. 79) ; but until this bust of Pericles was set up, evidently to record the founder of the Parthenon and the Propylaea, no great Athenian seems to have been honoured by a public statue in his lifetime. Another Athenian sculptor of this period, Strongylion, has real interest for us, for one of his works, a colossal bronzen figure of the wooden horse of Troy, is mentioned (c. 414) by Aristo- phanes, and its basis has been discovered on the Acropolis. (2) Attic influence in the Peloponnese is well exemphfied in the temple of Apollo at Phigaleia, in Arcadia (Fig. 84 ; Note A) . It was built either after the Great Plague of 430 or about ten years later by the Athenian Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon. The frieze, which is complete, is now in the British Museum. It represents combats between Centaurs ^ The great bronze four-horse chariots, one erected after the Chalcidian war in 506 and another probably by Pericles about 446, were probably placed on new bases when the new Propylaea of Mnesicles was built, c. 437, and perhaps the statues by I^ycius were then erected. 383 ANCIENT GREECE and I^apithae and between Greeks and Amazons. Although the execution appears to be by local workmen and is defective, the design is undoubtedly by some great Athenian sculptor, and the figures and the grouping and the splendid, though roughly finished, drapery recall the Parthenon sculptures. An exceedingly finely balanced and vigorous group is that of which Heracles and the Amazon queen form the centre. But perhaps the greatest triumph of Attic influence is to be noted in the celebrated Argive (or Sicyonian) sculptor Polycleitus, who is said to have been a fellow-pupil of Pheidias in the studio of Ageladas at Argos. Polycleitus continued the traditions of the Argive school, with its heavy-limbed, strongly muscular, and highly unintellectual athletes, but he combined with massive strength a certain amount of Pheidian grace and proportion, so that his statues were regarded as almost perfect representations of the highest ideal of the human form, and, although the numerous marble copies that we possess doubtless give a very poor idea of the bronze originals (which are said to have been of an exquisite finish) , we can still recognize in the Spear-hearer and the Diadoumenos (an athlete binding a fillet round his head) something of what formerly excited such great admiration. The former (the Doryphoros) represents a nude athletic figure holding a spear sloped over his left shoulder, and was known as the ' Canon ' — that is, the * Rule ' or standard of perfection in proportion — and served as an embodiment of the rules which Polycleitus pub- lished in a treatise of like name. But he did not limit himself to the athletic style. Influenced doubtless by the Athene Parthenos and the Olympian Zeus, he made a great chrysele- phantine statue of Hera for her temple near Argos ; and this Hera is praised by some ancient writers as equalhng or even surpassing the Pheidian statues. The goddess was enthroned and crowned and held a pomegranate in one hand, and in the other her sceptre, on which was perched a cuckoo. The head of this Hera given on Argive coins (Plate V, 7) is certainly very much more beautiful than any relic of the Athene Parthenos. On the site of the Heraion near Argos have been found fragments 384 104. Mourning Athene 105. SteIvE with Woman carrying Vase 106. Stei,e op Hegeso 107. Figure from Greek Tomb 384 THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR of its sculptures, which both in the grace and variety of the figures and the floating or clinging drapery reveal a strong Attic influence ; and many of them are in Attic (Pentelic) marble. An exceedingly beautiful female head in Parian marble, now at Athens, perhaps belonged to the pediment, or to a decorative statue. If these sculptures are by Poly- cleitus, as some beUeve and many hope, he must have been much more influenced by Attic grace than could be inferred from his Spear-bearer or from his heavily built and square- jowled Amazon (Fig. io8), and if more of his work were extant we should probably feel no surprise when ancient writers give the palm for ' art ' to Polycleitus and for ' grandeur ' to Pheidias. (3) The Nereid Monument, probably a regal tomb, was discovered by Sir Charles Fellows in I^ycia. Its remains, lying scattered by earthquake, were brought to England in 1842 and are to be seen in the British Museum. On a square base, ornamented with two bands of frieze, rose an Ionic j building, between whose columns stood female figures in float- ing drapery, probably representing ocean nymphs (Nereides) skimming over the surface of the sea. Some of these recall vividly the beautiful Victory of Paeonius (Fig. 93), and the subjects and style of the friezes show unmistakable resem- blance to Attic work (such as the friezes of the Athene Nike temple at Athens) and to the Phigaleian sculptures. The date of the Nereid Monument is probably about 420. Another, and perhaps older, lyycian monument which reveals similar influences has been found at Trysa, and is now at Vienna. It is, however, very weatherworn, being made of soft stone, and not, as the Nereid tomb, of Parian marble. (4) Greek tombstones {a-rfjXdi) are to be seen in many t museums, and at Athens especially there is a very large number of beautiful specimens of Attic work, found in the Cerameicus and in Athens (some built into the walls of Themistocles), and at the Peiraeus and elsewhere in Attica. Some of these, such as that of Aristion (Fig. 51), keep something of the form of the original stele (i.e. column), which was anciently erected 2B 385 ANCIENT GREECE on the tumulus, and in older examples the single figure is perhaps more often a portrait than it was in later times, when tombstones seem not seldom to have been bought ready made, it being enough if they represented fairly well the required age and sex. The single figure often represented the deceased occupied in some characteristic pursuit ^ — as an athlete with his strigil and oil-flask, or a child with a bird or a toy, or a hunter with his dog, or a lady (as in Fig. io6) with her jewels, or the warrior in battle (Fig. 109) . Many of the most beautiful and pathetic of these stelae date from the fourth century, but, as is natural in the case of funeral monuments, the designs are generally old and carry one back sometimes to Pheidian days. The original narrow pillar gave way considerably to broader tombstones, and the sculptured relief was often enclosed in an archi- tectural framework. Frequently we find a family group represented, and a scene of farewell — a maiden perhapvS having her sandals put on, as a sign of departure, or a man clasping affectionately the hand of his wife, or his child, or his aged father or mother. No relics of antiquity bring us nearer to past ages than these Athenian tombstones, nor do any surpass them in calm and delicate beauty. ^ Thus in the Odyssey Blpenor begs that his oar shall be erected on his tumulus. 386 CHAPTER VIII THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY {404-362) SECTIONS : XENOPHON : SICIIyY AND THE CARTHAGINIANS : PI/ATO : SCUIyPTURE, ARCHITECTURE. AND PAINTING THE story of the Persian invasions is associated with much that is great in Greek character and much that is inte- resting in the history of humanity, and the rise and fall of the Athenian Empire deserves study, in spite of many tedious and many revolting details, not only on account of the incomparable skill with which it is depicted by Thucydides, but also because it has many points of contact with the true history of Greece — with the history of that Greece which alone retains any importance for our age. But the period that intervened between the fall of Athens and the rise of the Mace- donian power is not of this nature. It offers, indeed, some splendid examples of courage and self-devotion, which we must needs admire, however little we may sympathize with the causes that called them forth ; but the endless quarrels and battles and political combinations, details of which, raked together from old authors, compose what is generally called the history of this rather dreary interval, no longer possess for us any appreciable value, except perhaps as an exercise for the memory. I shall, therefore, give only a short summary of the external events of these forty-five years, during which the baneful lust for ' supremacy ' ever again reared its head, until a semi-barbaric empire arose against which ancient Hellas, drained of her life-blood by internecine strife, was powerless to stand. 387 ANCIENT GREECE (i) The Spartan Supremacy At Aegospotami (405) lyysander had captured nearly the whole of the Athenian fleet, and shortly afterwards Athens was forced to renounce almost all her empire and to acknow- ledge the supremacy of Sparta both on sea and land. For thirty years Sparta had proclaimed herself as the liberator of Greece from the enslavement of the * despot city/ At the beginning this claim had been sanctioned by the enthusiastic approval of the greater part of the Hellenic world, and at the end of the war the Ivong Walls of Athens had been pulled down to the music of flutes and amid jubilant shouts welcoming the dawn of the new liberty. But the enthusiasm was short-lived. It was soon apparent that Sparta had no intention of granting independence to the cities that acknowledged her supremacy. Athens was, like a wounded Honess, too dangerous to meddle with. For a year or so a Spartan harmost (' regulator,* or commandant) with his troops had occupied the Acropolis, and a decarchy (oligarchy of ten) managed the civil government, but the wisdom of the Spartan king Pausanias, doubtless influenced by the success of the political exiles under Thrasy- bulus, finally allowed the re-establishment of the democracy, while in the subject cities of the Confederacy, now under the control of Sparta, rapacious harmosts and subservient decarchies, from whom there was no appeal (as there had been under the Athenian Empire), for a long time continued to exercise the worst kind of tyranny. Sparta proved herself wholly incapable of founding any pan-Hellenic Empire. During her short-lived supremacy her one object was her own territorial extension, both in Greece and in Asia, and not only did greed and a brutal and stolid militarism render her incapable of any conception of pan-Hellenic federation or even any true imperial policy, but she also stooped to the meanest treachery against the Hellenic world. The descendants of the heroes of Thermo- pylae and Plataea, after overthrowing the Athenian Empire by Persian aid, purchased by the betrayal of the Ionic cities, and after proving faithless to their barbarian allies and attacking 388 SPARTA AND THEBES the western satrapies in the hope of Asiatic plunder, and after losing their naval supremacy at the battle of Cnidus (394), overpowered by the Persian fleet under the command of the fugitive Athenian admiral Conon (p. 344), proved capable of once more abandoning the lonians and of accepting the humiliating peace (that of Antalcidas, or the ' Peace of the Great King ') by which Persia was recognized as the overlord and arbiter of the Hellenic states — and this merely in the hope of securing their own supremacy in their miserable quarrels with their neighbours in Greece. This hope was frustrated by the victory of Thebes at lycuctra in 371. Such is the bare outline of the Spartan hegemony, and into this framework the following facts will easily fit themselves. Of the first period the most important fact is probably the expedition of Cyrus, related by Xenophon in his Anabasis (see Section A of this chapter). It will be remembered that Cyrus had been sent by his father, Darius II, to supersede the satrap Tissaphernes at Sardis. He was the favourite of his mother. Queen Parysatis, and had been saved by her influence when his elder brother, Artaxerxes, who had succeeded Darius in 405, had endeavoured to put him to death on a charge of high treason, brought by Tissaphernes. He was intimate with the Spartan I^ysander, whom he liberally supplied with money, and being a great admirer of Greek discipline and courage and fully aware of the powerlessness of Oriental forces against even a small body of trained hophtes, he determined to dethrone his brother, and set about enhsting Greek mer- cenaries ; and in this he was helped by the Spartan government, who placed 700 men at his disposal. Kre long he had collected about 100,000 native troops and a body of 10,600 Greek hoplites under the command of Clearchus, a Spartan harmost who had been banished for trying to make himself the tyrant of Byzantium. Cyrus had led his army through Phrygia and Ivycaonia and as far as Tarsus in Cilicia before the Greeks discovered that the object of the expedition was not, as had been given out, the punishment of the robber tribes of Pisidia, but a more distant 389 ANCIENT GREECE goal, and it was not till they reached the Euphrates at Thapsacus that they learnt that they were marching against the Great King. By lavish promises of pay they were induced to proceed. The vast hosts of Artaxerxes barred their progress at Cunaxa, some sixty miles north of Babylon. Although the left wing of the barbarians fled in panic at the charge of the Greeks, their centre and right outflanked^ and surrounded the much smaller army of Cyrus, who in an ecstasy of fury led a band of horsemen against his brother and actually succeeded in wounding him with a javelin, ^ but was struck in the eye by the javelin of a Carian soldier, and, together with all of his faithful 'table-companions,' was overpowered and slain (401). Commanded to lay down their arms, the Greeks refused to obey, but they accepted the guidance of Tissaphernes, who misled them towards the north across the Tigris. Clearchus and Proxenus and three other generals and twenty captains 1 " Wounded him through the corslet, as says Ctesias the physician, who also says that he himself healed him " {An. i. 8). Ctesias was a Greek, a native of Cnidus, who for seventeen years was the physician of Artaxerxes and wrote a history of Persia, of which we possess abstracts given by the writer Photius. 390 SPARTA AND THEBES were induced to visit the camp of Tissaphernes for a parley, and were massacred, together with their attendant soldiers. Then Xenophon the Athenian, though he had no rank, having joined the expedition as the guest of Proxenus, took the lead, and under his guidance and that of the Spartan Cheirisophus the Greeks, striking boldly northward through Kurdistan and Armenia, after many sufferings and losses succeeded in reach- ing the Buxine Sea at Trapezus (Trebizond), whence, partly by sea and partly by land, they made their way to Chalcedon, on the Bosporus. After serving for a time in Thrace they — the 6000 that still remained together — crossed over again to Asia Minor, where they found service against Persia under the Spartan general Dercyllidas and under King Agesilaus, with whom the remnant returned to Sparta. With these survivors of the Ten Thousand was Xenophon, who for a time had returned to Athens, reaching it a few weeks after the death of his much-loved master, Socrates (399). Of his subsequent life, as well as of his Anabasis and other works, more will be said later. The death of Cyrus and the return of Tissaphernes to Sardis, intent on revenge, naturally alarmed the Greeks in Asia. They appealed to Sparta, and the Spartans, to whom the expedition had revealed the impotence of Oriental forces against Greek discipline, tempted by the hope of rich plunder and possibly the annexation of the Persian Kmpire, sent troops under Thimbron and then under Dercyllidas. But after some successes they made a truce with Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus and sent envoys to Susa to propose alliance and the betrayal of Greek Asia. The proposals were rejected. Artaxerxes had determined to prosecute the war by sea, and had set Conon, the exiled Athenian admiral, over 300 Phoenician and Cilician ships. Thereupon (in 396) the Spartans sent out with large reinforcements their king Agesilaus, who, lame and puny in stature but big with courage and ambi- tion, regarding himself as a second Agamemnon, ^ dreamt of ^ He tried to sacrifice, like Agamemnon, at Aulis before starting, but was expelled by the Thebans — an insult he never forgave. His succession to his 391 ANCIENT GREECE conquests such as some sixty- six years later Alexander realized. Having got rid of the troublesome and ambitious I^ysander (who shortly after was killed at Haliartus, in Boeotia), he defeated Tissaphernes — who was consequently deposed and murdered by a successor sent from Susa by the influence of Parysatis — and occupied Phrygia, the satrapy of Pharna- bazus ; but affairs in Greece compelled the Spartans to recall him. Reluctantly renouncing his schemes of Oriental conquest, he left his brother-in-law, Peisander, in command of the Greek fleet and returned with his troops by the overland route — that of Xerxes — through Thrace and Macedonia. The troubles in Greece that had recalled him were due to the insolent and overbearing conduct of the Spartans, who had alienated their allies, almost exterminated the Kleans, expelled the fugitive Messenians from Naupactus (p. 336), and caused Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Thebes (incited by Persian emissaries) to form a hostile league. Fighting had taken place near Corinth ^ and at Haliartus, in Boeotia, and when Agesilaus arrived from the north a fierce and bloody battle took place at Coroneia (Western Boeotia), in which the Spartans were technically victorious ; but their king, who was himself nearly trampled to death in the fight and was disheartened by the news of the defeat at Cnidus, retreated to the Pelopon- nese, crossing over from Delphi, as the confederates held the Isthmus. Only a week or two before Coroneia (August 394) there had been fought a naval battle near Cnidus, in which Peisander had been slain and his fleet utterly routed by the Persian fleet under the command of Conon. The result of this defeat was that all the Greek cities of Asia expelled the Spartan harmosts and acknowledged Artaxerxes as their overlord. The satrap Pharnabazus then with his Persian brother Agis, the fellow-king with Pausanias of Sparta, had been secured (in spite of an oracle that warned against a ' lame monarch ') by I^ysander, who, being foiled in a project to establish his own military dictatorship, and believing that he would easily rule such a cripple, voted for him against the son of Agis, lycotychidas, whom he accused of illegitimacy — as son of Alcibiades. ^ See explanation of Fig. 109 in lyist of Illustrations. 392 io8. Amazon by PoIvYCi,e;itus 109. Stei<E of Dexii^eos no. From the Mausoi^eum III. Head of Cnidian Aphrodite 392 \^ SPARTA AND THEBES fleet cruised round Greece, overawing the Spartans, and he allowed Conon with the crews of some of the Persian ships to land at the Peiraeus and help the Athenians to rebuild their lyong Walls. Thus ended the naval supremacy of Sparta, which had lasted ten years (404-394). Her land supremacy Sparta still upheld, though with ever- increasing difficulty. Kven in Asia Minor she still warred against Persia, for the Great King had again disdainfully rejected her overtures for purchasing his alliance by the betrayal of the Greek Asiatic cities. At length, however, an impolitic and somewhat ungrateful act of Athens — the support of the Cypriot king Bvagoras in his revolt against Persia — gained for Sparta the favour that she craved, and Artaxerxes listened graciously to the pleadings of her envoy, Antalcidas, and issued a decree claiming for himself Cyprus and all the Hellenic cities in Asia, and proclaiming himself the arbiter of Greece. " If any," he said, '' refuse to accept this peace, I shall make war on them with ships and with money." This decree was engraved on tablets that were set up in all the chief sanctuaries of the Grecian states. To such a depth of humiliation by its insane fratricidal feuds had Greece demeaned herself before the barbarian. Nor did even such a foe of Persia as Agesilaus seem to feel the humiliation. He strongly favoured the ' King's Peace ' (generally known as the * Peace of Antalcidas '), and laughingly remarked that " the Persians were I^aconizing." On the strength of this understanding with Persia, and a similar understanding with the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius, the Spartans began again to act in a high-handed fashion. The city of Mantineia, in Arcadia, had at times given them trouble. They now razed it and dispersed the population into the five country villages of which it had originally [c. 470) been formed — an act worthy of Darius or Xerxes. Three years later (382) I^acedaemonian troops on their way towards Macedonia (where a confederation was beginning to cause Sparta suspi- cions) seized the citadel of Thebes — a violation of peace and an act of tyrannical insolence denounced by all right-minded 393 ANCIENT GREECE men in Hellas, such as the venerable orator lyysias and Isocrates, and regarded sorrowfully by Xenophon, the lover of Sparta, as the fatal deed that brought down heaven's just retribution. This retribution came surely but somewhat slowly. The Cadmeian citadel was recaptured by Pelopidas with a band of Theban exiles, disguised as women, and under the new tactics and the discipline of his friend, the great Theban general Kpameinondas, the military power of Thebes rapidly grew till she became the head of a Boeotian confederacy, and as the rival of Sparta won the alliance even of Athens, her hereditary enemy. Moreover, Athens had already, since the crushing defeat of the Spartan fleet at Cnidus, regained her naval superiority and was again endeavouring to found another confederacy, if not another empire. In 376 she won a naval victory over the Spartans near the island of Naxos, and her new fleet, under Timotheus, the son of Conon, cruised triumphantly around the coasts of the Peloponnese, and an attack that the Spartans, aided by the SiciHan Dionysius, made on Corcyra was foiled by the Athenians. But Athens became jealous of the rising power of Thebes. She consented to an alHance with Sparta (the ' Peace of CalHas,' 371). Thebes was to have been included in the peace, but refused to take the oath except as the head of the Boeotian confederacy. " Will you leave the Boeotian cities independent ? " asked the Spartan king Agesilaus. " Will you leave the Peloponnesian cities in- dependent ? " replied Kpameinondas. The name of Thebes was therefore struck out of the treaty. Athens was now once more a * great power,' and had Sparta been content to allow her the naval supremacy and to retain for herself the hegemony on land, this Peace of Callias might possibly have brought about some such pan- Hellenic federation as that which the Athenian orator Isocrates had so enthusiastically described in the Panegyric that he delivered before the Greeks assembled at the Olympian festival (p. 437). But two new forces had arisen to disturb the equilibrium — Thebes and Thessaly ; for the military chief 394 SPARTA AND THEBES {tagos) of Thessaly, Jason, tyrant of Pherae, was aspiring to play a part similar to that borne so successfully a little later by Philip of Macedon. Relying on his powerful Thes- saHan cavalry, a large body of paid hoplites, and a rapidly increasing navy, he dreamed of uniting all Hellas under his command, and when in 371 the Spartans were routed and slaughtered by the Thebans at lycuctra, not far from Plataea, in Boeotia, it was Jason who, though he arrived too late to help the Thebans, dictated the terms. He behaved as the victor, and overawed all Northern Greece, threatening to usurp the rights of the Amphictionic Council and to elect himself president of the Pythian Games — possibly even to seize the treasury at Delphi. But after four years his career was cut short by assassination, and the power of Thessaly subsided as rapidly as it had arisen. (2) The Theban Supremacy (371-362) lycuctra was won by the tactics of Bpameinondas. He adopted and improved a formation already used by the Thebans at Coroneia. He drew up his men in a wedge, fifty shields deep, which cut through the twelve-ranked Spartans, as Xenophon says, " like the beak of a charging trireme." A thousand lyacedaemonians, among them King Cleombrotus and four hundred Spartiats, were slain. During the next nine years the Thebans held the coveted ' supremacy,' and again and again invaded the Peloponnese under their ' Boeotarch ' Bpameinondas, while Pelopidas made frequent expeditions into Thessaly and Macedonia to support the cities against the despots and to extend the Theban hegemony. Both in the Peloponnese and in Thessaly the Theban influence, guided by the wisdom of Bpameinondas, was on the side of liberty, and in the midst of continual bloodshed we hear of certain acts that proved beneficial and of permanent value. Two great means of defence against tyranny, whether of a despot ruler or a despot city, are confederation and synoecism — that is, the centralization of a scattered population into fortified towns. This had induced Sparta to raze the 395 ANCIENT GREECE Arcadian city of Mantineia and disperse its inhabitants, and no sooner was Sparta rendered powerless by the defeat at lycuctra than the Mantineians rebuilt their home and sur- rounded it with a double line of walls, in spite of the impotent remonstrances of old King Agesilaus. An Arcadian con- federation was then formed, and by the advice of Bpamei- nondas a new federal capital, Megalopohs (' Great City '), was founded not far from the lyaconian border, on an affluent of the Alpheus. Thirty-eight village communities formed the bulk of its population. It was encircled by a strong double line of fortifications more than five miles long. The remains of its theatre and the great federal assembly -hall, the Thersilion, are still to be seen. Bpameinondas and his Thebans now invaded the Pelopon- nese. They crossed the Kurotas by Amyclae and (what no foe had ever done before) approached and threatened Sparta itself, and, had not prompt assistance arrived from alHed Peloponnesian towns, the unwalled city would prob- ably have been taken. ^ Bpameinondas then crossed into Messenia, where on the slopes of Mount Ithome, using the site of the old stronghold for the new acropolis, he founded the city of Messene, to populate which the Messenian exiles, ejected in 399 from Naupactus by the Spartans and scattered through the whole of Hellas, came flocking. This new city — a Uberia in which the former thralls of Sparta were now free citizens of a hostile state planted on Spartan terri- tory — ^held its own until (in 146) it was incorporated in the Roman Bmpire. The fortifications of Messene are described by the traveller Pausanias as the strongest he had ever seen, and the remains (Fig. 122) are still impressive. In her distress Sparta now appeals to Athens and to Diony- sius of Syracuse. Athens, jealous of Thebes, consents to an alliance. Dionysius sends troops — ^but soon withdraws them. Constant fightings take place, among them a ' tearless battle,' 1 The number of Spartans with full citizenship at this time is said to have been no more than 1500. To fill up the ranks of the fighters thousands of Helots had been emancipated. 396 SPARTA AND THEBES in which on the Spartan side not a man is killed. Vain attempts are made to patch up peace by a conference at Delphi. Then a general appeal is made to Persia to arbitrate in the insane fratricidal strife, and Artaxerxes (gained over by Pelopidas, who went as envoy to Susa) graciously issues a rescript dic- tating terms of peace favourable to Thebes and insisting on the recognition of Messenian independence. But even the will of the Great King proves powerless. Also in Thessaly and Macedonia the Thebans were combating Spartan and Athenian influence and supporting liberty against despotism — the federated cities of Thessaly against the succes- sors of Jason of Pherae, and the free cities of Chalcidice against the Macedonian kings (Alexander II, and afterwards the usurper Ptolemy Alorites) . Pelopidas succeeded in making all the north of Thessaly a Theban protectorate and in forcing Macedonia to acknowledge Theban supremacy. From the usurper Ptolemy he took hostages, one of them being the boy -prince Philip (afterwards the famous Philip II of Macedon), who was sent to Thebes, where he was trained in Theban military science — soon to be used with such fatal consequences. But fortune deserted the gallant Pelopidas. He was caught and imprisoned by Alexander of Pherae, and it needed all the promptitude and diplomacy of his friend Epameinondas to rescue him. Some three years later he set forth for a third time from Thebes (against the warnings of an ominous solar eclipse, July 13, 364) in order to aid the Thessalian cities against the tyrant, and at the ' Dogs' Heads ' (Cynoscephalae) , crags that rise on the east of the Pharsalian plain, he fell in battle, having rushed into the ranks of the enemy at the sight of his hated adversary, I as Cyrus did at Cunaxa. Athens meantime, aided by the skill of [its generals Iphicrates and Timotheus (son of Conon), had been rapidly consolidating her new empire in the Aegaean and in the parts Thraceward. To check this a Boeotian fleet of 100 triremes was built, and Epameinondas, scouring the Aegaean and the Propontis, succeeded in disaffecting several of the 'Athenian subject allies. ^' Thus the state of unstable equilibrium continued. For 397 ANCIENT GREECE some years there was an interminable succession of fights and alliances and quarrels and endless political combina- tions and recombinations, fighting, between Pisans and Eleans, even going on in the sacred Altis of Olympia during the celebration of the games. The ridiculous folly of all these squabbles is evident from the fact that we find even Mantineia, which had been destroyed by Sparta and rebuilt by the aid of Thebes, now deserting Thebes and fighting on the side of Sparta. To prevent further disaffection and to defend Messene and Arcadia the Thebans under Epameinondas now made their fourth descent on the Peloponnese. They once again nearly captured Sparta, the surprise planned by Epameinondas being foiled only by the swiftness of a Cretan runner. Then on the plain to the south of Mantineia, which city also he just failed to capture by surprise, Epameinondas (in the autumn of 362) out-manoeuvred the Spartans and their alHes, and, as at Leuctra, the mighty wedge-formed column of the Thebans,, like the ram of a trireme, came sweeping obliquely down on the right wing of the enemy, broke through the ranks of the lyace- daemonians, and put the whole army to flight. In the excite- ment of the pursuit Epameinondas fell mortally wounded, and with his dying breath he advised the Thebans to make peace. As at lyiitzen and at Quebec, the joy of victory was changed into mourning, and for Thebes the loss was irreparable. Her supremacy was doomed, for it had been sustained by the genius and the personality of her great general, and even he had been unable to combine Boeotia into a compact and per- manent state. All that was great in the Theban supremacy — and there were elements of real greatness in it — was due to Epameinondas. The unanimous verdict of ancient writers, including even the Sparta-loving Xenophon, affirms him to have been not only a great military leader, but also in personal character one of the noblest of the Greeks — frinceps Graeciae, as Cicero calls him. Xenophon says that the battle of Mantineia (in a preliminary skirmish of which, by the way, his son Gryllus was slain) was 398 SPARTA AND THEBES expected to be a very decisive engagement, but that it left things in a " ten times more unsettled " state; and this is probably true, except that it confirmed the independence of Messenia and Arcadia. Sparta had sunk low even before the battle. To what depths she descended is apparent from the fact that as early as 365 the white-haired King Agesilaus, perhaps partly actuated by his old hatred of Persia, but also, it seems, moved by the hope of high pay, had taken Spartan troops across to Asia to fight as mercenaries for Ariobarzanes in his revolt against the Great King ; and now, after Mantineia, being eighty-four years of age, he took a thousand mercenaries to Egypt to aid in another rebelHon against Persia. In Egypt the old warrior was at first treated scornfully on account of his lameness and insignificant person, but his military services brought him a fee of 230 talents. On his homeward journey he died, at the harbour of Menelaus in the territory of Cyrene. SECTION A : XENOPHON Most of the facts that are known about Xenophon's life have been mentioned in connexion with Socrates and with the expedition of Cyrus. He was born near Athens about 444, and he seems to have lived over ninety years. After his return to Athens in 399 (p. 391) he was banished, probably on account of his relations with Cyrus. He rejoined the remnant of the Ten Thousand in Asia Minor, and, having returned overland with Agesilaus to Greece in 394, fought on the side of Sparta at Coroneia. The Spartans then gave him an estate in Triphyleia, near Olympia, where with his family he passed twenty years of quiet country Hfe ; but when Sparta, after the ' King's Peace,' began to stir up strife and had seized the Theban Cadmeia, Triphyleia became a bone of contention, and the Eleans succeeded in ejecting Xenophon. His sentence of banishment was repealed when Athens made alliance with Sparta (374), but whether he returned to his native city or spent the rest of his Hfe at Corinth is unknown. Besides the Anabasis he wrote the Cyropaedeia, an imaginative account of the 399 ANCIENT GREECE boyhood of Cyrus the Great and of the early Persian court and nation, and the Memoirs of Socrates, and the Hellenica, a chronicle of the Spartan and Theban supremacies. He also wrote a book about hunting, and although a soldier and a leader of men he was evidently happier amid natural sur- roundings, country scenes and wild animals, than amid the clash of arms and the turmoil of fratricidal wars. His keen observation and his picturesque descriptions of remote regions and of wild men and animals lend a charm to the Anabasis which is entirely wanting in the Hellenica. His piety, which recognized the will of heaven in every event and believed implicitly in the efficacy of vows and sacrifice, reminds one less, perhaps, of the childlike naivete of Herodotus than of the manly. God-fearing character of such a soldier as Gordon. The follow- ing passages from the Anabasis are characteristic of his style : " Now there was a certain Xenophon, an Athenian, accom- panying the army neither as a general nor a captain nor a common soldier, whom Proxenus, an old family friend, had invited to come over from Greece, promising to obtain for him the friendship of Cyrus. When Xenophon had read the letter he informed Socrates about the expedition ; and Socrates, fearing that friendship with Cyrus might inculpate Xenophon with the Athenians, seeing that Cyrus zealously supported the Spartans against Athens, advised him to go to Delphi and ask the god about the expedition. So Xenophon went and asked Apollo to which deities he should offer sacrifice and prayer so as best to undertake the journey that he con- templated and succeed and return in safety. And Apollo gave answer and told him to what gods to sacrifice. But Socrates blamed Xenophon because he had not first inquired whether it were better to go or not. ' However,' he said, ' since you put the question in this manner, you must do all that the god commanded.' " (iii. i.) " In this region the country was one great plain, as level as the sea, and covered with wormwood ; and whatever other shrubs and reeds grew there were all fragrant, like aromatic 400 114. 'The Satyr (Faun) of Praxitei.es 40 SPARTA AND THEBES pot-herbs ; and not a tree was to be seen. And there were all kinds of wild animals, especially wild asses, and many ostriches, and also bustards and gazelles. When one chased the wild asses they would gallop off and then halt, for they were much swifter than the horses, and as soon as the horses approached they would do it again, and it was impossible to catch them except by posting hunters at intervals and taking up the chase with fresh horses. Nobody got an ostrich. Those who chased them on horseback soon gave it up, for the bird drew off at great speed, using the feet for running and lifting herself along with the wings, as with a sail. But the bustards [wild turkeys] can be caught if one follows them up quickly, for they fly only a short distance, like partridges, and soon tire ; and they are very good eating." (i. 5.) " Thence they marched three stages, five parasangs [i.e. about nineteen miles in three days], over a plain, through deep snow. The third stage proved difiicult, and a biting north wind opposed them, piercing through everything and freezing their very blood. One of the augurs suggested sacrificing to the wind. This was done, and every one remarked that the violence of the wind decreased perceptibly. The snow was six feet deep, so that many of the beasts of burden and of the menials perished, and about thirty soldiers. They got through the night by lighting fires, for they found a large store of wood where they encamped ; and wherever a fire was Ht the snow melted and great pits were formed right down to the ground, and one could thus measure the depth of the snow. . . . But those who had fallen behind on the march had to camp without food or fire, and some of them perished, and although dense masses of the enemy were pressing on the rear, frequently capturing broken-down pack-animals and fighting with each other over them, it was nevertheless necessary to leave behind those of the soldiers who had been blinded by the snow and those whose toes had been rotted off by the cold. . . . And they fught sight of a dark patch, where there was no snow, and ought it had melted ; and so it had, on account of a stream lich was steaming in a gully near by. And they left the Hue . ,. ANCIENT GREECE of march and sat down there and refused to move. And Xenophon, who was bringing up the rear, when he perceived it, used every art and means of persuasion to induce them not to give up, telHng them that great masses of the enemy were close behind ; and at last he grew angry. But they told him to kill them, for they simply could not go any further." (iv. 5.) " Their homesteads were underground, with openings like the mouth of a well, but below they were extensive. For beasts of burden there were entrances excavated, but the people descended by means of ladders. In the homesteads there were goats, sheep, cattle, fowls, and their young. All the beasts in the place were fed on hay. There was also wheat and barley and pulse and barley- wine in bowls ; and the barley- corns themselves were there, level with the brims ; and reeds without joints were lying in the bowls, some of them large, others small ; and one was expected, whenever one was thirsty, to take a reed and suck." (iv. 5.) " When the vanguard had got to the top of the hill a great clamour arose. And Xenophon and the rearguard, when they heard it, thought that some other hostile bands were making an attack. But as the shouting became louder and nearer, and each company as it came up started running towards those who continued to shout, and the uproar became greater as the crowd increased, Xenophon felt that it must be some- thing of importance. He therefore mounted his horse, and together with lyycius and the cavalry rode forward to the rescue ; but soon they hear that the soldiers are shouting The sea I The sea ! and are passing the word to their comrades. Thereupon all set off running, even the rearguard, and the beasts of burden were driven forward and the horses ; and when all had reached the summit they began to embrace each other, generals and captains and everybody, shedding tears of joy." (iv. 7.) [In explanation of the following passage it should he stated that a tithe from the ransom of certain prisoners had been entrusted to Xenophon for dedication to Artemis, and that 402 SPARTA AND THEBES he had for a time deposited this money in the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus.] " But when Xenophoti was banished, and was already settled at Scillus, near Olympia, Megabyzus, the warden of the Ephesian temple, came over to attend the Olympic festival, and restored the deposit. So Xenophon, having received the money, purchased a precinct for the goddess in a place pointed out by the god [Apollo ?]. A stream called SeHnus [' Wild Celery River '] happened to flow through the place, just as a river Selinus flows past the temple of Artemis at Ephesus ; and in both there are fish and shells ; but in the precinct at Scillus there are chases [preserves] of all kinds of game. And he built an altar and a shrine from the same money, and henceforward he used to devote to the goddess the tithes of all the produce of the estate at a sacrificial festival in which all the townspeople and neighbours, both men and women, took part, camping in booths and being supplied by the goddess with meal, bread, wine, dried fruits, and a share of the consecrated portion of the sacrifice, and also a share of the game ; for with a view to the festival a hunt was got up by the sons of Xenophon and of the other townspeople, and grown-up men joined in it, if they wished. The quarry consisted of wild pig, gazelles, and deer. Now the place lies on the road between Sparta and Olympia, about twenty stades [2 J miles] from Olympia. . . . And around the shrine .was planted a grove of cultivated trees, the fruits of which grow ripe and edible. And the shrine was a small model of the great Ephesian temple, and the wooden image [Koavov] was like the image at Ephesus, as far as cypress wood can esemble gold.'' (v. 3.) SECTION B : SICILY AND THE CARTHAGINIANS The struggle between the Hellenic and Semitic races in licily was probably more important for the future of humanity, Liid was certainly on a larger scale and of a more interesting lature, than the intestine strife that for a century exhausted 403 ANCIENT GREECE Greece, and after humiliating lier before the barbarian left her an easy prey to Macedonia. But the connexion between Western and Eastern Hellas after the disastrous Sicilian expedition was slight. We hear of triremes and troops sent to the aid of Sparta by the elder Dionysius ; Plato visits Syracuse in the vain hope of founding a model state ; Corinth commissions Timoleon and a thousand mercenaries to eject from Syracuse the second Dionysius ; Archidamus, son of the old warrior Agesilaus, takes Spartan troops across to help Tarentum (^' 338) . against the I^ucanians, and is slain on Italian soil ; but, on the whole, the later history of the Sicilian and ItaUan Greeks has little to do with the history of Greece proper. They formed no part of the world-empire of Alexander and his successors, but continued to struggle for existence against Italian tribes and the Phoenician power until Rome swallowed up both them and their foes. For my present purpose a very brief resume of Sicilian history during this period will suffice. After the crushing defeat of the Carthaginians at Himera in 480 they gradually re-estabhshed their power in Western Sicily, and when, about 410, Segesta appealed to Carthage for aid against its rival Selinus, the Carthaginian shophet (general) Hannibal, grandson of the Hamilcar who perished at Himera, was sent from Africa with 100,000 men. He sacked Selinus and then attacked Himera, which, although Syracusan ships rescued some of the inhabitants, was captured and utterly destroyed ; and Hannibal sacrificed with torture 3000 captives on the spot where Hamilcar was said to have leapt into the flames (p. 276). In 406 he blockaded Acragas. A pestilence broke out among his troops and he himself died. After eight months the besieged sallied forth at night, leaving sick and aged behind, and reached Gela in safety. Himilco, Hannibal's successor, massacred the abandoned Acragantines and sacked the place. (But the gigantic temples survived the sack, and the city was afterwards rebuilt by Timoleon, though the great Olympieion was never finished. Finally it was captured by the Romans (210), and, as Agrigentum, was one of the 404 115. The Apoi^IvO Sauroctonos of Praxitei.es 404 J SPARTA AND THEBES chief cities of the Roman province of Sicily.) In 405 Gela was taken by Himilco, in spite of the assistance of Syracuse, or possibly with the connivance of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius. This Dionysius, a man of obscure origin, who had risen to the position of sole military authority in Syracuse (profiting by political feuds between democrats led by Diodes and aristocrats led by Hermocrates — both of whom had been expelled), had persuaded the people to allow him a bodyguard, and, in the same way as Periander and Peisistratus, had seized the chief power, which he retained for thirty-eight years. To assure his position he made peace with the Carthaginians and recog- nized their lordship over almost the whole of Sicily, but in 397, having extended his sway over Catane, I^eontini, and other cities, he felt strong enough to renounce the compact. Thereupon Himilco blockaded Syracuse, and Dionysius was reduced to such straits that he tried to make his escape. Pestilence, however, once more attacked the Carthaginian troops, encamped in the marshes of the Anapus, and Himilco was glad to purchase safe retreat with a bribe of 300 talents, leaving all his allies behind to be massacred by the Syracusans. The empire of Dionysius now extended rapidly. In 393 he defeated Mago, a Carthaginian, who came over with a great army from Africa, and by 384 we find him master not only of all Sicily except the western extremity, but also of a great part of Magna Graecia (Italian Hellas) and of Kpirus, the Greek mainland opposite Corcyra. He even planted on the distant shores and islands of the Adriatic various colonies, such as Ancona, Issa, and Hadria, near the mouth of the Po. Syracuse was at this time the greatest and most powerful city of all Hellas. It had 500,000 inhabitants and was enclosed by a line of ramparts, which encircled not only the original stronghold on the island Ortygia and the higher ground of Achradina, NeapoHs, and Tyche, but also the heights of Epipolae — a line about eighteen miles long, considerably longer than the AureHan walls of Imperial Rome. (Massive ruins of the fort E^uryalus, at the western angle of the ramparts, still 405 ANCIENT GREECE exist, and beneath them a labyrinth of underground passages and chambers.) Dionysius cultivated art and literature, and, after many failures that excited much ridicule at Athens, one of his tragedies is said to have won a prize ; but he seems to have been jealous of real genius, to judge from his relations with Plato, who in 388 is said to have visited his court, and to have soon left it under a cloud — indeed, according to one report, he was sold as a slave to the Spartans by the despot ! On the other hand, stories are told of the wisdom and generosity of Dionysius, one of which is well known through Schiller's ballad Die Burgschaft. When Dionysius the elder died in 367 (perhaps in consequence of a great banquet held after his tragic victory at Athens) he was succeeded by his son Dionysius II, a weak and self-opinionated young man. The new lord of Syracuse at first was under the influence of a wise adviser, Dion, the brother of one of the late tyrant's wives. Dion invited Plato to return to Syracuse, suggesting that he might attempt to realize the model state the outline of which he had sketched in his Republic. Plato gladly fell in with the suggestion, for it was his behef that such a model state was a possibility in case " fortune should bring a wise lawgiver in the way of a young ruler who was intelligent, brave, and generous." Unluckily the young ruler in this case proved a failure, or perhaps Plato, like Milton, was too exacting with the young. (In accordance with the rule of his academy,- "I^et no one enter who is ignorant of geometry," he insisted, it is said, on putting his royal pupil and the whole court of Syracuse through a preliminary course of this science, holding that, as Kuclid remarked to King Ptolemy, " there is no royal short cut to geometry.") Dionysius soon afterwards (360) succeeded in expelling his mentor, Dion, and Plato was allowed to return, doubtless somewhat disillusioned, to his Academeia on the Cephisus. Once more, perhaps persuaded by Dion, who was at Athens, Plato acceded to the request of Dionysius and returned (357) to Syracuse, whence he seems to have escaped with his life 406 SPARTA AND THEBES only through the influence of the Pythagorean Archytas. About the same time, while Dionysius was absent on an expedition to Italy, Dion returned and was enthusiastically received as their ruler and lawgiver by the Syracusans. However, their hopes were disappointed. Dion developed tyrannical proclivities and was assassinated in 353, and a few years later (346) Dionysius returned and re-established himself in the stronghold of Ortygia. In 344, hearing that the Carthaginians were preparing a vast armament for the invasion of Sicily, the Syracusans appealed to their mother-city, Corinth, and ten ships with 1000 hoplites were sent under the command of Timoleon. This man had once saved his own brother's hfe in battle, but had afterwards killed him, or instigated his murder, to save the state from his treasonable plots. Abhorred by many as a fratricide and admired by others as a patriot, he had long lived in obscurity, but was now given the chance of proving his real character. He was welcomed as deliverer by many of the Sicilian cities, and ere long Dionysius capitulated and was allowed to retire to Corinth, where he spent the rest of his life in fashionable diversions, and, it is said, in presiding over a school, or literary academy — perhaps in imitation of his old teacher ! Timoleon succeeded in ejecting the tyrants from many of the SiciHan cities and uniting the Hellenic power against the Carthaginians, who were planning another great invasion. In 339 they brought over an army of 70,000 men and 10,000 horses in a fleet of more than a thousand vessels. Timoleon's forces amounted to less than 10,000 ; but on the river Crimisus he gained a complete victory. Many thousands of the enemy were slain or drowned, 15,000 were made prisoners, and immense spoil was captured. Carthage was glad to make peace and to confine herself to the western end of the island. Timoleon now resigned his powers and retired to an estate near Syracuse. He had become totally bhnd. Plutarch tells us how at times he visited Syracuse and was drawn in a car into the middle of the great theatre amid the deafening applause of the immense multitude, who listened with reverence to his 407 ANCIENT GREECE words. He died in 336, only two years after his great victory — ^in the year that Alexander the Great ascended the Macedonian throne. The Syracusan democracy lasted till 317, when Agathocles, a potter, made himself tyrant. The Carthaginians had once more overrun all Sicily. They defeated Agathocles at Himera and blockaded Syracuse ; but Agathocles boldly transported an army to Africa and for years laid waste the Carthaginian territory. Finally he established himself as the king of Sicily. In 270 Hiero II was elected king of Sicily. At first he sided with the Carthaginians against the Romans, but afterwards became the faithful ally of Rome. His grandson, Hieronymus, reverted to the Carthaginians, and Syracuse was thereupon (212) besieged and captured by Marcellus and became the chief city of the Roman province of Sicily. SECTION C : PLATO Some of the facts of Plato's life have been given in connexion with Socrates and with Dionysius. It is only necessary here to add that he was born at Athens in 428, and became a follower of Socrates when about twenty years of age. After the death of his master he lived for a time at Megara, and seems to have visited Cyrene, Egypt, and possibly other Eastern lands, as well as Sicily and Magna Graecia, where he became intimate with Pythagorean and Eleatic philosophy. When forty years of age (after his first visit to Dionysius) he acquired a small estate on the southern slope of Colonus, and for the next forty-two years, except during his two later visits to Syracuse, occupied himself by writing his dialogues and by teaching in his own house or in the gymnasium and avenues of the Academeia — a place of public resort, named after the old hero Academus, and laid out by Cimon — adjacent to his garden. All his chief works, thirty-six dialogues, have come down to us. Of these the Republic consists of ten and the Laws of twelve books. In the case of Socrates it is the personaHty of the man and 408 1 1 6. DEMKTER 408 SPARTA AND THEBES the fundamental principles of his teaching that are of interest ; with Plato it is rather the superstructure of thought and imagination that is important, not only for the consummate grace and power of his style — which is perhaps the most perfect in all prose literature, reminding one of the movements of some strong and beautiful animal — nor only for the poetic faculty by which he bodies forth the forms of things unknown and intimates to us in parables what " cannot be communicated directly by words like other kinds of learning/' but also for the illumination and insight that his intellectual conceptions bring us. No more can here be done than to indicate the more important of these intellectual conceptions, and give one or two specimens of his imaginative parables. Aristotle tells us that Plato as a young man was much impressed by the doctrines of Heracleitus, as taught by the Athenian Cratylus, concerning the ceaseless movement (flux) and instability of all things and the impossibility of any certain knowledge founded on phenomena. These doctrines, which we find constantly in Plato (generally attributed by him to Socrates) , were doubtless confirmed by his study of the Eleatic philosophy, such as that of Parmenides ; but he, or Socrates (with whom we may henceforward identify him), was too wise to accept the paralysing Kleatic denial of the practical reality of the natural world. While holding the sole absolute reality of the One he accepted the Many as practically real, as ' rafts ' useful for wafting us over the sea of earthly life. And for intellectual existence also he accepted such ' rafts.' In the Phaedo he says that he had given up gazing directly at absolute truth, lest he should be bhnded as those who gaze too long at the sun, and had sought its reflected image — i.e. he had given up pure contemplation, as apt to paralyse thought and action, and had taken to forming intellectual conceptions, which he accepted as temporary rafts, to be abandoned at any time if they did not prove seaworthy. When Socrates gave up the study of natural science, won- dering how any one could be so bhnd as " not to be able to distinguish between a true cause and that through which it 409 k. ANCIENT GREECE operates/' he went back, like Descartes, to fundamental principles and the simplest possible conceptions. " I began thus," Plato makes him say. " I assumed what I judged to be the strongest principle " — the strongest beam for his raft — " and then accepted as true whatever was in agreement with it." What one of these strongest principles was he tells us in the Phaedo. " Nothing," he says, " has any reality except so far as it participates in the real Existence, or Idea, of which it is the manifestation. ... If any one tells me that a thing is beautiful because it possesses a rich colour, or a certain shape, or so on, I bid farewell to such statements, for they only confuse me. I keep to the simple, uncritical, and perhaps foolish opinion that nothing else causes it to be beautiful but the presence, or operation, of ideal Beauty. How this takes place I cannot say, but I do assert that all beautiful things become such through ideal Beauty." In another passage he puts it thus : No two material things were ever perfectly equal. What then do we mean by saying that things are equal ? We must mean that they more or less approach that perfect Equality which, as it exists nowhere on earth, we must have seen in some other life, before the sleep and forgetting of our birth ; and just as we are reminded of a person by a portrait, so when we see two things nearly equal (" longing for Equality ") we are reminded of that truly existing ideal Equality of which they are the imperfect manifestation. This is the Platonic doctrine of Reminiscence [Anamnesis], which connects itself with the doctrine, or parable, of a conscious prenatal existence, and, as we shall see later, with that of Transmigration (Metempsychosis). In order to gain any satisfactory view of Plato's doctrine of Ideas, it is necessary, I think, to regard it from various standpoints. Firstly, the parable of the One and the Many is useful. Secondly, an Idea has some analogy to what one calls an Archetype — and one may conceive, if one can, such Archetype as an independent objective existence, of which all the individuals of a genus, or species, are more or less imper- fect copies ; or, from the opposite standpoint, we may consider 410 SPARTA AND THEBES it (though Plato tried not to do so) as a mere generahzation, or abstraction, existing only in our own minds. Again, an Idea may sometimes be regarded as the real Cause, or lyif e, of a thing. For instance, when the scientist analyses the protoplasm and finds nothing left in his pot but water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, and exclaims, " I^o, here in my pot is the First Cause ! " the intellectual conception or parable of an Idea of life — an ideal Reality, a true Cause, existing in all eternity quite independent of *' that through which it operates " — is helpful, just as a raft. And there is another way of regarding the Platonic Idea which is sometimes useful. In the case of both things and persons there are certain accidental qualities which seem to affect only the senses and the mind and to make no difference in our feelings, whereas there are other elements, both in things and in persons, which appeal straight to our affections, and it is these elements that compose the real person or the real thing. So we may, perhaps, say that the Idea is that real inner Self of a thing or of a person which appeals to our heart rather than to our mind. Thus Plato speaks of that ecstasy of * divine madness ' which we experience when we recognize in earthly forms the reflexion of that divine Idea of beauty or of truth which our soul has seen and loved in a former existence. As in every allegory, there are in this parable of Ideas various points against which our understanding stumbles. Firstly, it is not easy to understand how our mind is related to these Ideas, and how we apprehend them, or are certain of their existence as Realities. They seem to be mirrored darkly in our mind as Reminiscences, and to be contemplated by some special " reasoning part of the soul.'' Secondly, in regard to the presence or operation of the Idea in material things Plato himself says, " How this takes place I cannot say." It is the same kind of question as that of the connexion between mind, or life, and matter. In such cases one has once more to take refuge in allegory, and Plato does so when he tells us that the material universe is an ' imitation ' and that it ' participates in ' and * has community with ' the Perfect and Eternal and Divine. 411 ANCIENT GREECE By allowing that all things participate in Perfection he endowed the natural world with a certain reflected reality and dignity, such as lends a value to earthly existence, but (as Socrates is made to confess to the old Parmenides in the dialogue of this name) he was also obliged to suppose an Archetype, or Ideal, of everything, even of ugliness, of filth, of evil. To such an " unfathomable abyss of absurdity " was he led by his theory. And yet he retained his theory as the most seaworthy raft he could find, and on this ' strongest principle ' he reared a structure that has proved for many a refuge against the blasts of materialism. The following are specimens of Plato's imaginative allegories : " ' Imagine/ says Socrates, ' people in a subterranean place like a cavern, with an entrance expanding to the light across the whole width of the cave. Suppose them to have been in this cavern from their childhood with chains on their legs and necks, so as only to be able to look towards the inner part of the cave, and unable to turn their heads round. And suppose behind, between these fettered men and the light, a low stage or parapet, like those on which mountebanks show their curious tricks. And imagine that along this parapet pass men bearing all kinds of things raised aloft — human statues and figures of animals and all kinds of utensils.' " ' You mention,' says Glauco, * a strange comparison and strange fettered men.' " ' Yes,' answers Socrates, ' but such as resemble us human beings. Now I suppose you will allow that they can see nothing but only the shadows thrown by the light on the further wall of the cavern ? ' " ' How can they,' says Glauco, ' if all their life they have had their heads thus fixed ? ' " ' Such people as these, then, will believe that there is nothing truly existing except these shadows ? ' " * Necessarily.' " ' Well, then, if one of them should be loosed and made suddenly to rise up and turn his head round and look towards 412 SPARTA AND THEBES the light, and in doing this should be so pained and blinded by the splendour as to be unable to behold the things of which he had formerly seen the shadows, do you not think he would turn away from the light and seek again the shadows and believe that they alone are real ? ' '' ' He certainly would do so/ " ' Well, but if some one should drag him thence by force up the steep and rough ascent and never stop till he had drawn him right up to the sunlight, would he not be distressed and full of indignation ? And when he had come up into the light and his eyes were filled with its splendour, would he be able to see any of the things that are there called real ? Would he not require time so as to become accustomed to it ? And first he would perceive shadows best, and then the images of things reflected in water, and after that the things themselves. . . . Ivast of all, he would be able, I think, to perceive and contem- plate the sun itself/ " ' Assuredly,' answers Glauco. " ' Well, then, when he remembers his first habitation and the wisdom that was there, and those who were his companions in bonds, do you not think he will esteem himself happy by the change, and pity them ? " ' He will, greatly/ " ' And if there were any honours and renown and rewards among those fettered men for him who most acutely perceived the shadows that passed along the wall, and who best remem- bered which were wont to pass foremost and which last, and which of them went together, and from this knowledge were even able to foretell what was coming, does it appear to you that he would be desirous of such honours, or envy those who are thus honoured and rewarded ? Or would he not wish, as Homer says. To work as the hireling of some portionless man, or to suffer anything, rather than to hold such opinions and five in such a fashion ? ' " ' I think,' says Glauco, ' that he would rather suffer and endure anything/ " ' Now consider this. If such an one should descend once ANCIENT GREECE more into the cave and resume his seat, would not his eyes be filled with darkness in consequence of coming back suddenly from the sunlight ? And should he now be obliged to give his opinion about those shadows, and dispute about them with those men who are there, eternally chained, whilst still his eyes are dazed and before they have recovered their former state, would he not afford his companions laughter ? And would it not be said of him that, having ascended, he had returned with his eyes damaged, and that it is wrong to attempt to go up to the light, and that should any one ever try to liberate them and lead them up to the light, if ever they should lay hands upon him, he should be put to death ? ' " ' They would most certainly,' says Glauco, ' put him to death.' " {Rep. vii.) " lyct us compare the soul to the combined energies of a winged chariot and a charioteer. The horses and charioteers of the gods are all noble and of noble descent, but those of other natures are very various. With us men the charioteer does indeed direct the chariot, but of the horses one is well proportioned and well bred and the other is quite the reverse ; whence it results that the work of guiding the chariot is exceed- ingly difficult. ' ' [These winged chariots are described as soaring up to the apse of heaven preceded by the host of the divine charioteers.] " The sovereign ruler Zeus leads the van, guiding his winged chariot and disposing and controlling all. After him comes the host of the gods and divine powers in eleven com- panies, Vesta (the Central Fire) alone remaining in the palace of the immortals. And as they ascend to the zenith of heaven's vault the chariots of the deities, always in perfect balance, advance with lightness and ease, while the others toil on with difficulty, for the evil courser drags down earthwards the car, unless he has been right well trained by his driver. Here comes the great and sore trial of the soul. The souls of the immortals, when they have reached the zenith, place themselves on the outer surface of the heavenly vault, and the revolution carries them round and they behold that region above the sky of which 414 1 1 7. EiRENE AND Pl^UTUS By Cephisodotus 414 SPARTA AND THEBES no earthly poet has ever sung nor ever shall sing worthily where true Existence (Reality) dwells, colourless, formless, impalpable, not to be contemplated except by the mind that guides the soul. . . . Such is the life of the gods. Among the others that soul which best follows and resembles the divine lifts the head of the charioteer into the upper region and is carried round by the revolution, but it is much troubled by its horses and with difficulty contemplates true Existences. Another is now lifted, now depressed. The plunging of its horses allows it to see some Existences and not others. The rest follow afar, eager to contemplate the higher region, but are powerless to do so and are carried round beneath the surface. They clash together and fall one over the other, each attempting to get to the front ; they crowd, they battle, they toil, and by the awkwardness of their charioteers many are lamed and many lose the best part of the plumage of their wings, and after painful and unavailing efforts are foiled in gaining a view of Reality and are obliged to find their aliment in the fodder of opinion. Such a soul, becoming fattened on the gross food of vice and f orgetfulness, gravitates, loses its wings, and falls to earth, and takes to itself a body ; but the law pro- tects it from animating the body of a beast in its first stage." The philosopher then describes the destinies of the undying soul passing through various forms of death — sinking perhaps even below the level of the beasts, until it is cast as incurable into Tartarus, or rising in the course of ten earthly lives and through ten millenniums of purgatory until it regains its wings and finally reaches heaven, where it " dwells for ever with the gods." In one case only this period is abridged — in that of the lover of Wisdom, whose soul recovers its wings after the third mil- lennium. During his earthly existence he prizes above all else the reminiscence of those Realities which in a former life he has beheld. " The man who turns these precious recollections to good account," says Plato, " shares perpetually in the true and perfect Mysteries and himself becomes perfect. For withdrawn from earthly interests and attached to things divine, ANCIENT GREECE he is warned by the multitude to give up his folly. They treat him as an idiot. They see not that he is inspired." (Phaedrus, 246.) SECTION D: SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURE, AND PAINTING TILL THE ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER There is a striking difference between the sculpture of the fourth century and that of the fifth. In the fifth almost all works of sculpture were pubHc dedications. Even the statues of victorious athletes and charioteers, erected by cities or tyrants or other wealthy persons, were for the most part national monuments and seem to have been generally rather of a typical character than personal — as is seen also in the case of sculptured tombstones and in such idealized portrait busts as that of Pericles (Fig. 96). The gods, too, were represented as majestic and somewhat impersonal beings beyond the range of mortal affections. In the fourth century sculpture became (as in Homer poetry long before had been and as in the plays of Euripides even the drama had now become) more individual, personal, and emotional, and the artist began to inspire his statues of the divinities with human feelings, and to lend them the subtle distinctions of personal character, without, how- ever, disturbing (as was done later by the more emotional Hellenistic and Graeco- Roman sculpture) the perfect balance of dignified self-restraint that is essential in all great plastic art. The great sculptors of this period are Praxiteles and Scopas (c. 390-340). In connexion with Praxiteles should be mentioned his father (or maybe his elder brother), Cephiso- dotus, a copy of one of whose statues is at Munich. This work (Fig. 117) represents Eirene (Peace) as a benignant matron holding on her left arm the infant Plutus (Wealth). It very forcibly illustrates the new tendency, its touch of nature and human affection reminding one of the Madonna and Child of mediaeval art. Also it is interesting because the attitude and motive are almost identical with those of the one work that we possess by the hand of the son, or brother, of Cephisodotus — 416 SPARTA AND THEBES the famous Praxitelean Hermes with the infant Dionysus. This Hermes (Fig. 112) was found by German excavators, about the year 1877, in the Heraion at Olympia (Fig. 47 and Note A). It is doubtless the very same statue that Pausanias saw there and described as " a Hermes of marble, carrying the infant Dionysus, a work of Praxiteles.'' It is the only extant ancient Greek statue that we know for certain to be the actual work of one of the great Greek sculptors— though perhaps we may not be wrong in beheving parts of the Parthenon frieze and pediments to be the work of Pheidias, or in attributing the Charioteer to Calamis, or the Aeginetan marbles to Onatas. The Hermes has eHcited much enthusiastic admiration from experts on account of its wondrous technical perfection, but to many it does not appeal strongly. There is a well-groo'med, somewhat dandified air about the god, and the child, " whose proportions are those of a much older boy," seems far less attractive than the infant Plutus of Cephisodotus— indeed, more of a homunculus than a real child. The masterpieces of Praxiteles, according to old writers, were the Aphrodite of Cnidus, the Bros of Thespiae, the Satyr, and the Apollo Sauroctonos (' the I^izard-killer '). It is said that the famous professional beauty Phryne, to whom Praxi- teles had promised a statue, wished to discover which he considered the best, and told him that his house was on fire, ivhereupon he exclaimed that he was ruined if his Satvr and lis Kros were burnt. The Cnidian Aphrodite, regarded by nany old writers as the most beautiful of all statues, was, it s said, offered to the Coans, who, however, preferred a draped joddess.i The people of Cnidus thereupon bought it, and luring many years it attracted multitudes of visitors to their own. The Bithynian king Nicomedes offered to pay off the mblic debt of Cnidus in exchange for it, but in vain. From 'nidian coins, on which it is represented, copies of the statue .ave been recognized. The best of these is in the Vatican Fig. 118 is from a cast taken before the statue was clothed, 1 And jetCoae vestes had a bad repute as almost invisible garments affected J lashionable women in Rome ! 2D 417 ANCIENT GREECE by papal orders, in a tin skirt. See also Fig. iii). THe face of the Vatican statue is very much more beautiful than that which we find on Cnidian coins, and may give us some idea of the original, which the Greek writer I^ucian praises so highly for its loveliness. The goddess shows strong human feeHng, a natural shrinking, as it were, from even her own unveiled presence, but it is combined with perfect self-command, dignity, and repose, whereas in the Graeco-Roman Venus dei Medici (which copies the motive) we see affectation and assumed embarrassment before human spectators. Of the Bros no copy is known. The god was, to judge from coins, probably represented as a full-grown youth and with long wings — more like the strong, manly Bros of antiquity than the chubby Cupid of later times. The so-called Cupid of the Vatican may be a reminiscence of it. The little Boeotian town of Thespiae, Phryne's birthplace, to which she gave the statue, became as celebrated by this means as Cnidus. The Satyr, of which the ' Faun of the Capitol ' is perhaps the best extant copy, needs no description (see Fig. 114). It is well known from Hawthorne's Transformation. A fine torso in the I^ouvre is thought by some to have belonged to the original statue. Of the Apollo Sauroctonos (perhaps a bronze) marble copies exist, of which the best, though evidently a late and rather weak and emasculated imitation, is to be seen in the Tribuna at Florence (Fig. 115). Praxiteles was the inheritor of the early Attic manner, in I which beauty of form was pre-eminent, rather than a follower of Pheidias, whose style combined all the best quahties of Atticj grace with the mascuHne vigour of the Argive school. He isfi credited with many great works of which no known relic is extant except small and vague reproductions on coins. Possibly many of the well-known but unauthenticated statues in our| galleries may be derived from some Praxitelean type — ^though the general motive may be sometimes more ancient. The: genius of Praxiteles probably created many types of gracq and beauty which deeply influenced Hellenistic and Graeco-^^ 418 1 1 8. The Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxitei«es 418 SPARTA AND THEBES Roman art, but they were too often spoilt by the false sentiment and prettiness of the later sculptors. Scopas of Paros excelled in dramatic expression of strong emotion, which in his open-eyed and strenuous faces and figures offered a striking contrast to the calm restraint and dreamy beauty of Praxiteles, and was a quality more Peloponnesian than Attic. Although he is sometimes described as the Greek Michelangelo, we have no certain proofs of this greatness. Two heads with traces of intense passion on their mutilated faces have been excavated at Tegea, the temple at which place he is said to have rebuilt, and also a decidedly fine figure and head that may perhaps belong to each other and represent Atalanta. These are sometimes attributed to him, as also the head ^ of a Demeter statue in the British Museum (Fig. ii6), which was discovered at Cnidus. The Roman writer Pliny tells us that Scopas sculptured one of the columns of the new temple of Artemis at Ephesus (begun about 355 ; see Note A) . Fragments of the drums of several of these columns are in the British Museum. One is fairly complete and of great beauty (Fig. 119). It probably represents the scene between Alcestis, Death, and Hermes the Guider of Souls. It is totally unlike what we should expect from Scopas. Its delicate beauty of form and sentiment is decidedly Attic — and far more like the work of Praxiteles than anything we know of Scopas. It is, however, probably by neither of these sculptors, for many artists were employed. The influence of the passion-fraught style of Scopas on later art was evidently very strong, and as Praxitelean beauty degenerated into effeminacy and coquetry, so the dramatic vigour of Scopas led to such inartistic strenuosities as the Pergamon Altar, the Farnese Bull, and (pace I^essing !) the I^aocodn. Probably numerous sculptures exist which are more or less close imitations of his works, such as of his cele- brated raving Bacchante. The Apollo Citharoedus at Rome 1 The head is of Parian marble and of far finer work than the body, which, although grandly designed, is of inferior execution and of inferior Cnidian marble. 419 ANCIENT GREECE (a statue of the god singing to his harp) and the Venus Victrix of the lyouvre may possibly be copies of his works. Of the Niobe group I shall speak later. A subject of great interest in connexion with Scopas is that of the Mausoleum of HaHcarnassus, the magnificent monument erected by Artemisia (352- 350) to her husband Mauso- lus, lord (dynast) of Caria. It was an oblong building with thirty-six Ionic columns (Fig. no) on a high base- ment decorated with reliefs. Above the columns was prob- ably a frieze, and this was surmounted by a roof in the form of a pyramid with twenty-four steps, on the top of which was a chariot. Pliny, who thus describes it, tells us that Scopas and four other famous Greek artists were employed on the sculptures. The Mausoleum stood till perhaps the tenth century of our era, and it was almost entirely demolished by the Knights of St. John, who used the material for building the castle of Budrum, and burnt most of the marble sculptures for hme. All that remained was excavated and brought to England about 1857, and is in the Mausoleum Room of the British Museum. Some of the fragments of the frieze reliefs (Greeks and Amazons and Centaurs) show a dramatic vigour such as one might expect in a work of Scopas, and in the reHef depicting a chariot- race there is a fine figure of a charioteer leaning forward on his long chiton (Hke the Delphi charioteer) which may well be by him. But by far the most interesting relic of the Mausoleum is the very striking and noble statue of Mausolus (Fig. 120), which probably stood inside the building, not on the roof beside the chariot, as is intimated by its position in the Museum, for, although found near the remains of the chariot, the statue, 420 The Mausoi^eum Reconstruction by Adler iig. Drum of Coi^umn From the later temple of Artemis, Ephesus 420 SPARTA AND THEBES as also that of Artemisia, seems too small in proportion to the chariot, and too well preserved to have stood in the open and to have sustained a fall from such a height. The statue is evidently a realistic portrait of the Carian prince, the features being decidedly non-Hellenic. A word should be said here on the subject of painting, ^ which since the time of Mandrocles (p. 190) and of Polygnotus (p. 243) had attained great development. As, however, the works of the great Greek painters have entirely perished, the subject has little value except for the antiquarian. It will suffice to mention a few names. Apollodorus the Athenian is said to have first given attention to the effects of light and shade (chiaroscuro), or rather what Plutarch calls apochrosis — i.e. tone, or the gradations not only of light into shade but of colour under the influence of light and shade. By such means, as Pliny says, he first painted men and natural objects realisti- cally and so as to ' attract observation.' Zeuxis of Heraclea, who was patronized by King Archelaus and may have met Euripides and Thucydides at the Macedonian court, was a great master of colour, and especially excelled in depicting female beauty of the heroic type. The Helen that he painted for the people of Croton, using as models five of the most beautiful Crotoniat maidens, was one of his most famous pictures. (See Note A, ' Temple of Hera lyacinia,' and Fig. 40.) Parrhasius of Bphesus, who lived mostly at Athens (c. 400), was somewhat younger than Zeuxis and rivalled him in splen- dour of colouring and grandeur of form. He called himself the ' prince of painters,' and according to Pliny was the most insolent and arrogant of artists, not even excepting Zeuxis. Many other painters are named, and many of their pictures are described by old writers and many anecdotes are related about them, but the complete loss of all such works makes the subject almost valueless in comparison with that of Greek sculpture. 1 For vase-painting see Note D. 421 CHAPTER IX THE RISE OF MACEDONIA : PHILIP AND ALEXANDER (fo 334) SECTIONS: ISOCRATES, AESCHINBS, DBMOSTHBNBS, I,ATBR PHILOSOPHERS : LYSIPPUS, HBLLBNISTIC SCULPTURE WE have seen how after Mantineia the Theban supre- macy rapidly declined, and how Athens once more began to build up an oversea empire. In this she might have been successful had it not been for the rise of two semi-Hellenic powers, Caria and Macedonia. Whether she would have held her own against the maritime expansion of Caria, which under Mausolus seems to have been very remarkable, it is idle to speculate, for both she and her rival were swallowed up by Macedonia, and it is a question of more practical import whether an united Greece (if such a thing is conceivable) might not have succeeded in resisting the Macedonian conqueror, against whom the miserable feuds that for seventy years had drained, and were still draining, her life-blood now left her powerless. 1 When Thebes was at the height of her power Pelopidas had brought even Macedonia under Theban influence, if not under Theban dominion, and to assure the fideHty of the Macedonian ruler (at that time a usurper, Ptolemy Alorites) he had sent as a hostage to Thebes the young Macedonian prince, Philip, afterwards the victor at Chaeroneia and the father of Alexander the Great. Until this time neither Macedonia nor Thessaly had really ^ Of course another view can be taken. One may regard Macedonia as a Hellenic state and Philip and Alexander as the beneficent founders of a vast Hellenic Empire in which the petty squabbles of the Greek cities found peace as brawling streams when they reach the sea, to use a Dantesque simile. 422 I20. MAUSOI^US 422 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA come within the range of Hellenic poHtics. We hear indeed of Thessalian cavalry under their king, Cineas, coming to help Hippias {c. 510) and defeating the Spartans, and of constant wars between Thessalians and Phocians (Hdt. vii. 176), and of the Thessalian Aleuadae, who sided with the Persians and fought for them at Plataea; and later we hear of a Spartan attempt to subjugate Thessaly (476) and the wild attempt of Jason of Pherae, after the battle of I^euctra (371), to seize the hegemony and place himself at the head of the Hellenic world (as did afterwards Alexander) ; but Thessaly was not regarded by the southern Greeks as a part of Hellas, and Macedonia, though its kings claimed to be of Hellenic blood, was looked upon as scarcely less a barbarian country than Scythia itself. The race that in the early age of Greece inhabited Macedonia was probably related to the Thracians and the Phrygians. It was of Aryan stock (as the remains of the language prove), but not Hellenic — that is, neither Achaean nor Doric. I^ater the coast region and the more fertile inland plains were overrun by Hellenes from the south, who drove the natives to the hills. These Greeks, or semi-Greeks, of the lowlands regarded them- selves as ' companions ' of the king. They composed the royal bodyguard and, like the Norman nobility, formed a distinct class. It was long before the wild Macedonian hill tribes, as well as the Paeonians, Thracians, and lUyrians, were sufficiently subjugated and civilized to coalesce with their conquerors and to form a powerful nation. The Macedonian kings, as has been said, claimed to be of Hellenic descent — a fact that Demosthenes fiercely denied, calling Philip Ha" pestilential Macedonian [oXiOpog Ma/ceSwv — a Macedonian pestilence] and in no way related to the Greeks.'' But it was proved to the satisfaction of the judges when Alexander I, who had entered for the foot-race at Olympia, was challenged as a non-Hellene. " He proved himself to be an Argive," says Herodotus, who in another passage (viii. 137) gives us a very picturesque story about three Argive brothers, descendants of Temenus (and therefore of Heracles), who fled {c. 700 ?) to Illyria and thence crossed ANCIENT GREECE to Macedonia " and took up their abode near a place called the Gardens of Midas, where there are roses of incomparable sweetness, many with sixty petals. And above the gardens rises a mountain called Bermius,^ which is so cold that none can reach the top. . . . And from this place by degrees they conquered all Macedonia." Such is the legend that intimates the reflux of Hellenes from the south. The youngest and cleverest of the brothers, Per- diccas, founded the dynasty of the Macedonian kings. The fifth of these, Amyntas I, was contemporary with Peisistratus and submitted to Megabazus, the general of Darius (p. 191). His son and successor, Alexander I, about whose assassination of some Persian envoys Herodotus tells a weird story (v. 22), was obliged to side with the barbarians during the Persian invasion, and was sent by them as ambassador to Athens ; but he is said to have been secretly in favour of the Greeks and to have clandestinely imparted to them at Plataea the plans of the Persians. He competed at the Olympian Games as above stated, and set up a golden statue at Delphi (Hdt. viii. 121). Perdiccas II lived during the Peloponnesian War and changed sides more than once. Then came Archelaus, who was a great admirer of Greek civilization and art, and entertained at his court many Greek notabilities, such as Euripides, Thucydides, Agathon, and Zeuxis. The relationships of the succeeding Macedonian monarchs will be best explained as follows : Amyntas II (393-369) 1 1 Al^EXANDER II (369-367) PERDICCAS III 1 Pfttjp II Murdered by usurper Ptolemy (364-359) (359-336) Alorites, who is killed by Perdiccas | Amyntas (Put aside by Philip and Al^EXANDER III afterwards executed by (Great) Alexander) (336-323) 1 Now Verria, the range running north of Olympus and separated from it by the valley of the Haliacmon. Under the range lay Aegae (Kdessa), the old capital and burying-place of the Macedonian kings. Archelaus made Pella the capital. 424 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA When Perdiccas III fell fighting against the Illyrians his brother Philip was probably acting as his gerent. After crushing the Illyrians, PhiHp, probably by the invitation of the nobles, put aside his young nephew Amyntas (to whom he after- wards married one of his daughters) and assumed the crown. Philip's education in Thebes had given him a deep insight into Creek character and Greek politics. He possessed great intellectual gifts and a genius for diplomacy. Under a frank and attractive personality he concealed a subtle cunning and an ambition that was as unscrupulous as it was boundless. Conscious that the last appeal was to force, he gave the greatest attention to the formation and training of a powerful standing army, the efficiency of which was much increased by the use of newly invented engines of war (catapults, &c.), and also by the introduction of a new formation — that of the famous Macedonian phalanx, the idea of which Phihp probably took from the deep wedge-like column invented by Bpameinondas and used with such effect at I^euctra. The single phalanx (at least later) consisted of about 4000, and its ordinary depth varied from sixteen to thirty-two (that of the old Spartan phalanx having seldom exceeded eight) . The men were heavily armoured and bore great shields. Their principal weapon was a very long spear (the sari^sa), and the files were so arranged that the spears of even the fifth rank protruded three feet in front of the first rank. The greater phalanx sometimes con- sisted of four such bodies of about 4000 each ; but even the single phalanx was unwieldy, and if once broken was useless. Otherwise its impact was almost irresistible. But Philip did not trust only to his army. By the acquisition of Thracian mines and by getting Thasian miners to work the gold in the neighbourhood of his town, Philippi, newly founded on the site of the ancient Crenides, he obtained large revenues (see Note C, on Coins), and it was by gold that he gained many of his successes. ^ ^ Diffidit urbium Portas vir Macedo . . . muneribus {Hot. C. Ill, xvi.). Juvenal calls him the callidus emptor Olynthi. Cicero tells us that Philip used to say he could take any town into which an ass could climb laden with gold. i 425 ANCIENT GREECE Philippi and its gold-mines brought Philip and the Athenians into collision. AmphipoHs, at the mouth of the Strymon, cut him off from the sea and commanded the access to the gold- bearing range of Mount Pangaeus. This city, a colony of Athens, had been more or less independent ever since the time of Brasidas (p. 338), and the Chalcidian Confederacy of Greek towns, headed by Olynthus, had tried in vain to gain it as an ally. By cunningly playing off Olynthus against Athens Philip duped both of them and captured Amphipolis, and soon after- wards Pydna and Potidaea fell into his hands. This happened in 356 — ^the year in which his son Alexander was bom ; and, as Plutarch remarks, the year brought Philip a third gift of fortune, namely, an Olympic victory. It is not my purpose to follow closely the tortuous and per- plexing course of events during the next twenty years. Some of the more important details will be given later in connexion with Demosthenes. The following brief summary will suffice to show how the crafty Macedonian took advantage of the rivalries and dissensions of the Greek states, and how he deluded the hopes of those who, as Isocrates and Bubulus and Phocion, more or less openly and warmly hailed him as the healer of the feuds of the Greeks and their leader against the barbarian foe. We shall see how he extinguished the last possibilities of liberty and of nationality and of that self-government whereof the Hellenic world, by its never- ending fratricidal wars and its political animosities and atrocities, had proved itself to be unworthy. Between 357 and 355 Athens has once more, as of old, serious troubles (sometimes called a ' Social War ') with her allies. Byzantium, Rhodes, Chios, Cos, I^esbos, Corcyra, all revolt. Expeditions are sent, first under a young firebrand. Chares, and the old warrior Chabrias, the victor of Naxos, and when Chabrias is defeated and slain the veteran commanders Timotheus (son of Conon) and Iphicrates are dispatched to support Chares. This fiery and dissolute son of Ares*^accuses his more prudent colleagues of cowardice, and the Athenian mob, evidently influenced by bribed demagogues, actually 426 b THE RISE OF MACEDONIA condemns Timotheus and imposes a fine of loo talents, so that the old admiral has to escape to Chalcis, where he dies. Chares then allies himself with the revolted satrap Artabazus and so incenses the Great King, Artaxerxes III (Ochus), that he threatens to aid the revolted allies of Athens. Mausolus, too, the dynast of Caria, who had acquired a large fleet and had annexed I/ycia, actually affords them aid, so that finally the Athenians are obliged to recognize the independence of many of the subject states of their new empire, the whole revenues from which now amount to no more than forty-five talents yearly. Meanwhile a disastrous quarrel had broken out between the Thebans and the Phocians. Phocis was accused of having cultivated a part of the sacred Crissaean, or Cirrhaean, plain near Delphi. Some ninety years before (448) the Phocians had with the aid of Athens seized Delphi, but had been ejected by the Spartans, who restored the Delphians.^ On the present occasion the Athenians openly and the Spartans secretly sided with Phocis, which had of late become powerful enough to contest the ' supremacy ' with Thebes and to occupy Thessaly, and had renewed her claim (founded on a line in Homer) to the possession of ' rocky Pytho.' Being fined heavily by the Amphictionic Council, the Phocians, led by Philomelus, Seized Delphi. The Thebans, however, defeated them and Philomelus perished, leaping over a precipice to save himself from capture. The Phocians were then led by Onomarchus, brother of Philomelus, who hired a large body of mercenaries with the treasures of the Delphic temple. At this juncture (353) PhiHp of Macedon intervened. He had just captured Methone,^ on the Thermaic Gulf, the last ally of Athens in that quarter, and pushing down into Thessaly, after two serious repulses, utterly routed the Phocians and killed Onomarchus ; but, finding Thermopylae and Boeotia occupied by the Athenians, he returned to Macedonia, and 1 The three ' Sacred Wars ' of c. 590, 448, and 356 should be noted. 2 He is said to have lost an eye during the siege. As Demosthenes said, " To gain empire and power Philip had an eye knocked out, a collar-bone broken, an arm maimed, and a leg lamed." 427 ANCIENT GREECE turned his attention to the conquest of Thrace and the Chersonese. It was now that Demosthenes, who for the last three or four years had been attracting notice by his pubHc speeches, came forward to attack PhiHp. PubHc affairs at Athens were at this time under the guidance of a poHtical party the chief leaders of which were Eubulus and Phocion. The former had proved himself a wise financier as president of the public Theoric Fund, and his poHcy, as well as that of the strategos Phocion, was that of non-aggression, of peace and amity among the Greek states, and of friendliness and confidence towards Macedonia — without probably going so far as the old orator Isocrates, who seems almost to have hailed Philip of Macedon as the heaven-sent leader of Hellas. Whether was wisest the policy of this moderate party, the pro-Macedonian pan-Hellenism of Isocrates, or the fierce miso-Philippic, self-centred, and exclusively Athenian patriotism of Demosthenes, is not an easy question to answer satisfactorily. The programme of Isocrates was what was destined to be carried out — except that Greece was to become enslaved by the heaven-sent Macedonian leader — but it is impossible not to feel moved by the fiery indigna- tion and the eloquent zeal of the great Athenian orator, however much one may deplore a state of things in which an irresponsible and excitable democracy is swayed by mere oratory. PhiHp, as we have seen, had already possessed himself of AmphipoHs, Potidaea, and other Athenian towns in Chalcidice and the neighbourhood. He now (351) threatens Olynthus, the chief of the Greek Chalcidian Confederacy. Demosthenes endeavours by his Olynthiac orations to rouse the Athenians, but the peace party is slow to move, and Philip, by means of his war-engines and his gold, gains possession of the town. He razed it to the ground and enslaved the population. Then he attacked the Chersonese, and thus threatened to cut off the Euxine trade, on which Athens largely depended for supplies — a move by which at last public feeHng was thoroughly excited and the influence of Demosthenes strengthened. 428 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA Meanwhile the ' Sacred War ' between the Phocians and Thebans had been continued from year to year with no decisive results, although both Athens and Sparta had sent large contingents to help the Phocians, whose leader, Phayllus, a brother of Philomelus and Onomarchus, freely plundered the Delphic treasury to pay his mercenary troops. At last Athens, weary and possibly somewhat ashamed of her Phocian allies, was meditating friendship with Thebes, when Philip, quick to see and seize his opportunity, made overtures to the Athenians. They forthwith dispatched to Pella an ambassador, Philocrates, with nine officials in his train, among whom were Demosthenes and his great rival, Aeschines ; but the wily Macedonian seems to have been too clever for them all, and to have once more found his gold effective. He sent commissioners to Athens, and a second Athenian embassy visited Pella and was kept waiting for weeks till he returned from a Thracian expedition, and then had to dance attendance on him while he marched through Thessaly ; and when at last they were allowed to return, with the humiliating treaty at length fully ratified, they were closely followed by Philip, who this time found Thermopylae unoccupied and the Phocians at his mercy. Great was the indignation and the consternation at Athens when it was realized that, instead of crushing Thebes, Philip meant to annihilate Phocis. The partisans of Demosthenes were full of impotent fury, and he himself fiercely assailed Aeschines ^ and Philocrates on the charge of accepting bribes from Philip and playing a treasonable part as peace-com- missioners ; but the Athenian mob was paralysed with fear and sent congratulations to Philip, renouncing their support of the Phocians. Every town in Phocis, except Abac, was then razed to the ground and the inhabitants dispersed into small hamlets. For this act Philip had craftily obtained the sanction of the Amphictionic Council, which also decreed 1 He was, however, cowed for the time by an attack made by Aeschines on Timarchus, one of his associates of evil repute, and did not renew the charge until 343, when Philocrates evaded trial by flight and Aeschines, who was supported by Eubulus and Phocion, made a plucky defence and was acquitted — though doubtless he had accepted Philip's gold. 429 ANCIENT GREECE that Phocis should restore by yearly payments all that had been taken from the Delphic treasury. The Macedonian king, as a Greek potentate, was then given the votes in the Amphictionic Council (see coin 9, Plate V) which had been possessed by Phocis, and as champion of the Delphic god he was granted the presidency of the Pythian Games, which happened to be celebrated in this year (346). At Athens this was regarded as insufferable. No delegates were sent to the festival. Philip contemptuously ignored the insult, but sent a formal notification of his election, which was equivalent to, an ultimatum ; however, he deferred open hostiHty till a more convenient season. Such was the sequel of the dishonourable Peace of Philo- crates, in which Athens had been thoroughly outwitted by the craft and the rapidity of Philip. She was forced to conceal her shame and indignation under a show of servility. Even Demos- thenes himself thought it advisable in his speech On the Peace to advocate a temporizing submission, while at the same time his fury against his personal enemy, Aeschines, was, as we shall see, intensified by the failure of his impeachment. More worthy of our respect, even if we cannot allow it our full sympathy, was the action of the ' old man eloquent,' Isocrates — now in his ninety-first year. By his written speeches and letters he had for a long time persistently and quietly asserted his belief in Macedonian hegemony, and he now addressed to Philip a letter full of dignity, urging him to assume the leader- ship against Persia and begging him to prove that he was not plotting against the liberties of Greece. Between 346 and 341 this Peace of Philocrates, though a hollow affair, continued to remain formally unbroken, in spite of the vehement attacks made on the Macedonian king by Demosthenes, whose Second Philippic (344), by its outspoken accusations of perfidy, proved that the orator had recovered from his temporary mood of submission. Philip took but little notice. He was waiting for his opportunity. Meantime he ravaged Illyria, occupied Thessaly, and, having built a con- siderable fleet (ostensibly against Persia), began to menace the 121. The Lion of Chaeroneia ^""^ ■■ ;d itti m^'.^ bJtk 'i 1^:., .. MM '^^^^fr ^9^ ■"H. •i--^ ^ «- :.-«-. 122. Arcadian Gate, Messene 430 I THE RISE OF MACEDONIA Athenian settlements on the Chersonese, whereby Athenian and Macedonian troops actually came into collision. Hereupon Philip, with crafty impudence, sent a letter of remonstrance to Athens, recounting his grievances and complaining that the Athenians had rejected his overtures and refused arbitra- tion. A result of this was a speech by Demosthenes In Answer to the Letter of Philip, and another Concerning Affairs in the Chersonese, and these speeches were followed up by the still louder war-blast of the Third Philippic. Moreover, the orator actually tried to practise what he preached. He went to the Hellespont and persuaded Byzantium and Perinthus to secede from alHance with Philip. But the man of deeds recked little of the man of words. He forthwith captured various Greek towns on the Propontis and brought up his siege-engines against Perinthus, and tried to surprise Byzantium. In these undertakings, however, he was foiled by the advent of a large Athenian fleet under Chares and Phocion. For a few months he withdrew into the wilds of Thrace in order to punish rebel- lious Scythian tribes ; but the open defiance of the Athenians had determined him to take his revenge on the first oppor- tunity. This opportunity soon came. The cultivation of the sacred ground near Delphi (anciently called the Crissaean or Cirrhaean plain) had once more excited the votaries of the god. This time it was the town of Amphissa that had perpetrated the sacri- lege, and the Amphictionic Council called upon PhiHp, as the champion of the deity, to punish the offender. In the spring of 338 he marched southward ; but instead of attacking Amphissa he seized Klateia, a town of Northern Phocis, and began to entrench himself. At Athens the news caused an indescribable panic. On the advice of Demosthenes an embassy was sent to beg the Thebans for support, and a combined army of Thebans and Athenians, with a few auxi- liaries from Corinth, Megara, and Kuboea, marched to meet the Macedonians. A few miles before they reached the frontier of Phocis they were met, on the plain of Chaeroneia, by the army of PhiHp, and suffered a disastrous defeat (August 7, ANCIENT GREECE 338). The battle is said to have been decided by a brilliant charge of the Macedonian ' companions ' (horse-guards) , led by Alexander, then a youth of eighteen/ but the result was mainly due to the larger numbers of the Macedonians and their superiority in arms, training, and generalship — for the best of the Athenian commanders was Chares, and he was opposed to Philip himself. The Thebans who fell were buried on the field of battle, and beside the cemetery was erected a great stone lion, which was still in position in the days of Pausanias, but sub- sequently was overthrown and covered with earth. Not many years ago the fragments were excavated, and quite lately they have been reconstructed (see Fig. 121). Demosthenes was present at the battle as hoplite, and saved himself by flight. It is said that Philip, after celebrating his victory at a banquet, came reeling drunk to the field of battle and jeered at his prisoners and the flight of the great orator, singing in triumph the words (that happened to make a comic iambic verse) Ari/uLOcrOevr}? A-nimocrOevov^ Haiavievg tolS^ elirev — " Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes, of the deme Paeania, thus spake." But among the captives was an Athenian orator named Demades, who, though a bitter adversary of Demosthenes and an advocate of Macedonian supremacy, was so moved by disgust as to tell Philip that " though fortune had given him the part of Agamemnon he was playing the part of Thersites." This sobered the king, and instead of resenting the remark of Demades he took him into his confidence and sent him as envoy to Athens. Moreover, he had the magnanimity, or the diplomatic wisdom, to treat the Athenians with surprising lenience, and to win their approbation by his severity against the Thebans. He sent back all the Athenian prisoners unran- somed and laden with gifts, while he occupied the Cadmeia of Thebes with a Macedonian garrison. He then marched south- wards, and after accepting the submission of all the Pelopon- nese except Sparta, whose territory he ravaged, he held a ^ 'Alexander's oak,' under which, it is said, his tent was pitched, still stood some centuries later. 432 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA congress at Corinth and was appointed chief commander of the Greek states against Persia.^ l^ War was formally declared against the barbarian, and after consolidating his northern dominions, from Ambracia to Byzantium, the Macedonian generalissimo of Hellas began to collect a great army for the invasion of Asia. But Philip's dream of Oriental conquest was not to be realized. He had already sent across to Asia the vanguard of his army under the command of his generals Parmenio and Attains, and was intending soon to follow, when his life was cut short. Olympias, the mother of his son Alexander, was an Epirot princess, daughter of the king Neoptolemus, who traced his descent from the son of Achilles. She had perhaps inherited the proud and wrathful temperament of her great ancestor, and possessed the somewhat savage characteristics of Epirot women, who were noted for their wild excesses in the worship of Dionysus. Her uncanny habits (one of which was the keeping of poisonous snakes) and her violent temper seem to have repelled PhiHp and to have exposed her to the suspicion of insanity — a suspicion that seems justified by not a few acts of her son. Philip, who is said to have possessed a considerable harem besides his queenly spouse, took to himself as consort (perhaps after formally repudiating Olympias) the niece of his general Attains, Cleopatra by name. At the wedding feast the intoxicated uncle of the bride called upon heaven to bless the marriage with a ' legitimate ' heir to the throne of Mace- donia, and Alexander, in furious indignation at the insult, hurled a wine-goblet at Attains. Philip seized his sword, but reeled and fell as he rushed at Alexander, who left the banquet-hall exclaiming, " lyO, the man who wishes to cross from Europe to Asia, but falls as he crosses from one couch to another ! " Olympias and her son fled — she to her brother Alexander, king of Epirus, he to Illyria. Philip, however, offering the hand of a daughter to his brother-in-law, and bringing his powers 1 Artaxerxes III was poisoned by the eunuch Bagoas in 338, and his son Arses was also murdered by him (336), whereupon the all-powerful Bagoas set Darius III on the throne. In 338 Athens entreated Persia for help against Philip, but was ' haughtily and barbarously ' repelled. 2E 433 ANCIENT GREECE of persuasion to bear on the young Alexander, succeeded, strange as it may seem, in effecting the return of the fugitives. In the spring of 336 the marriage of PhiHp's daughter and the Kpirot king was solemnized with great magnificence at Aegae, the ancient capital. On the following day a public procession took place, during which a young man suddenly rushed forth from the crowd and plunged a sword into Philip's side, kilHng him on the spot. He was pursued and cut down by the royal guards. It is said that his motive was to revenge an outrage of Attains which Philip had refused to punish ; but doubtless he was also instigated to the deed by Olympias. That Alexander knew and approved is not probable, although one of the accomplices, Alexander of I^yncestis, who was fore- most in acclaiming him as the new monarch, not only escaped the punishment that Alexander threatened against the con- spirators, but later enjoyed the friendship of the king and was loaded with honours. The existence of ancient Greece as a free country (a nation she never had been) is often said to have ended with the disaster of Chaeroneia. Her history is henceforth, after a few vain attempts to regain liberty, for many years merged in that of Macedonia, and is no longer of much interest except in so far as by her art and literature and philosophy she *' took captive her barbarian conqueror." ^ But perhaps we may regard the departure of Alexander for the East in 334 as the real beginning of the Hellenistic age, for ere this took place he had asserted the Macedonian supremacy and crushed out all hope of resistance by a chastisement still more terrible than that of Chaeroneia. ^ Demosthenes had proposed to celebrate Philip's death by a public thanksgiving and to pay honour to the memory of his assassin. The proposal had been indignantly opposed by the more noble-minded Phocion, who, in words that recall the rebuke administered by Odysseus to old Eurycleia, 1 Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit . . . (Hor. Ep. II, i. 156) applies equally well to Macedon and to the later conqueror, Rome. * Once more, after Alexander's death, Athens persuaded other Greek cities to join her in revolt, but was finally overwhelmed at Crannon, in 322. 434 123- Al^EXANDER 124. ISOCRATES 125. Aeschines 126. Epicurus 434 r" THE RISE OF MACEDONIA exclaimed that " nothing shows a more dastardly nature than to rejoice over the death of an enemy." But pubHc jubilations took place in Athens, and Demosthenes poured his contempt on the young king, whom he likened to the Homeric * Margites ' — the well-known type of a blatant braggart. Other cities also began to show signs of disaffection, and embassies were being sent to Persia and to Attains, who had declared for his niece's infant son. But with astounding rapidity Alexander swept down on Greece, suppressed an insurrection in Thessaly, strengthened the Macedonian garrison in Thebes, received a submissive embassy from Athens, called a congress at Corinth (where he was appointed generalissimo of Greece in the place of his father, and had his celebrated interview with the Cynic Diogenes), and then hastened back to chastise the Thracians and other northern tribes, whom he chased over the Danube, and finally turned his arms against the western tribes of Illyrians and Taulantians and reduced them to submission. A rumour now reached Greece that Alexander had been slain in battle. Demosthenes produced a man who swore that he had witnessed it. The Thebans blockaded the Macedonian garrison in the Cadmeia, and called on Athens and other cities to rise. But suddenly, ere any plan had been developed, a Macedonian army was reported in Boeotia, and scarce had the Thebans recovered from their delusion that he was dead when Alexander was before their walls, and soon after he was in possession of their city. A terrible massacre took place. Six thousand were butchered and thirty thousand enslaved. The Greek allies of Alexander, the Phocians, Plataeans, and Orchomenians (or perhaps the delegates of the Corinthian Congress), were commissioned to decide the fate of Thebes. The city was razed to the ground and her territory divided among other Greek states. Only one single house was left standing — the house of the great Theban poet. Perhaps the temples were spared, although Milton tells us that The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground. 435 ANCIENT GREECE Alexander, it is said, repented this destruction, and attri^ buted his fits of uncontrollable fury (in one of which he killed Cleitus, who had saved his life) to the anger of the wine-god Dionysus, who specially favoured Thebes. The city, thus cruelly destroyed in 335, was rebuilt by Cassander in 316, but never again became of much importance. The conduct of the Athenians on this occasion, although allowance may be made for panic, seems very contemptible. A few days after deciding to send troops to aid Thebes in her revolt they sent an embassy to Alexander congratulating him on the annihilation of the rebellious city. Alexander replied by demanding the surrender of Demosthenes and other anti- Macedonian demagogues, and Demosthenes owed his life to the intercession of Phocion. The name of Phocion reminds us that we should not judge the Athenian people solely by the decrees of popular assemblies, the verdicts of dicasteries, and the rancour and sophistries of orators. Although scorned by the militant imperiahsm and Demosthenic patriotism of the day as a pro-Macedonian and an advocate of peace at any price, Phocion, like doubtless many other wise and honest men in Athens, sincerely, if mistakenly, believed in what he held to be a higher form of patriotism, not merely Athenian, but Hellenic, and he was, what can be said of very few Greek political celebrities except Aristides and Timoleon (and certainly not of Demosthenes), as ''mani- festly proof against bribery " as Pericles himself. It is pleasant to be able to end this brief chronicle of the external history of ancient Greece with an anecdote which is well invented, if not (though it possibly is) perfectly true. Alexander sent Phocion a present of a hundred talents. Phocion asked how he had deserved such a distinction. " Because," repUed the envoy, " the king regards you as the only just and honest man in Athens.*' " Then," answered Phocion, '* I beg him to allow me to remain such." Alas ! justice and honesty force one to add that some eigh- teen years later, amidst frenetic acclamation, this ' one just man' was condemned to death for treason by the Athenian 436 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA Assembly — to the same death as that by which Socrates had died — and that not long afterwards they celebrated his funeral obsequies at public expense and erected a statue to his memory, thus honouring him as a patriot and martyr. SECTION A : ISOCRATES : AESCHINES : DEMOSTHENES : LATER PHILOSOPHERS Isocrates (436-338) was an Athenian. Among his teachers were Socrates (who in Plato's Phaedrus prophesies great things of him) and Gorgias. He first taught rhetoric in Chios, and afterwards in Athens, where he acquired great reputation and wealth. Of his twenty-two extant orations the best known are the Panegyricus and the Areopagiticus. On account of his timidity and weak voice, as he tells us, he renounced pubhc speaking, and even the Panegyricus, an early work and osten- sibly addressed to a national assembly (Tramjyvpi^) , such as that at Olympia, may not have been delivered in pubHc. The one great idea that dominated Isocrates all through his long hfe was the possibiHty of putting an end to the insane fratricidal strife of the Greek cities for ' supremacy ' and of uniting them against the common enemy. It was shortly after the humi- liating ' Peace of the Great King ' (Peace of Antalcidas) in 387 that he wrote his Panegyric — fifty years before Chaeroneia, and some thirty years before PhiHp's accession. At this time he had not yet given up the hope that Athens and Sparta might be reconciled and might share the hegemony, Athens supreme on the sea and Sparta on land. He begins by lament- ing (as Solon did) that while honours are showered on athletes no honour awaits the wise counsellor, for rhetoric with its sounding brass and its sophistries fascinates pubHc regard, "depreciating what is important and exalting triviahties, talking in a new-fangled way of old things and in archaic fashion of new." He next states his case for the amicable division of the supremacy, and then launches out into eloquent and enthusiastic praise (hence the later meaning of ' pan- egyric ') of Athens, showing how from the legendary age of 437 ANCIENT GREECE the heroes down to the present she had deserved well of Greece and had won, and lost, and yet once more was winning, a supremacy as queen of the sea. He defends her (not very successfully) against the charge of despotism and inhumanity. Then he turns to Sparta and speaks of Thermopylae and Plataea, and how she has won a right to military supremacy on land. He then points out how, in spite of her great size, Persia had never been able to hold her ground before Greek courage, and he cites Marathon and Cunaxa. Then he returns to the burden of his lamentations against the civil wars of Greece, and bids his imaginary hearers think of the glorious and exhilarating poetry, such as that of Homer and of Aeschy- lus, that describes the victories of Greeks over barbarians, and reminds them (forgetting the Seven against Thebes, but otherwise reminding them with justice) that no great Greek poetry described the quarrels of Hellenes with each other. And very justly, too, he inveighs against the shameful peace lately dictated by the Great King, and once more turns with rapture to the visions of an united Hellas and of the conquest of Asia Minor by the Greeks. One of these visions was indeed in a fashion realized, but under a hegemony of which he at that time did not dream. The Panegyric was applauded as a triumph of literary oratory, but the visionary politics of Isocrates were not taken seriously by the Athenian pubHc, and even by men like Phocion they were probably regarded as of such stuff as dreams are made of. Athens and Sparta could no more share hegemony than nowadays could England and Germany, though between the Ionic and the Doric Hellene there existed a closer relationship than that between Anglo-Saxon and Teuton. The Areopagitic Oration (after which Milton named his famous treatise on the liberty of the Press) was written c. 355, after the so-called Social War, in which Athens had lost some of her chief subject-allies. It was not spoken, but is addressed to the Athenian}^ Kcclesia. After warning the Athenians against their love of money and display and their arrogant self-conceit, and urging a return to simplicitv and manliness, 438 127- DEMOSTHENES 438 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA he points out the perils that threaten them, and then states (what must have excited many a smile) that the only means of safety is to restore the old Solonian and Cleisthenic democracy and to revive the supreme authority of the ancient and aristocratic court of the Areopagus. In 346, when a peace (that of Philocrates) had been made with Philip, Isocrates, as we have seen, addressed him a letter. " This is," he says, " no sudden and passing whim of an imbecile old man, but a belief that I have held all my life. The hour is now come. Under thy leadership Hellas shall conquer Persia.'' But he entreats PhiHp to prove that he is not plotting against the liberties of Greece. What Isocrates thought of Philip's rapid acquisition of Hellenic cities and of the fate of the Phocians it is not easy to discover. Whether the tidings of Chaeroneia did cause, as Milton asserts, the death of the ' old man eloquent,' and whether it was caused by grief or by a sudden access of hopeful enthu- siasm, are questions that have received very diverse answers. Aeschines Of Aeschines, the great rival of Demosthenes, we possess only three orations — that against Timarchus, that on the Embassy, and that against Ctesiphon. All three are directed against Demosthenes. After the failure of his attack on Ctesiphon, who had proposed that Demosthenes should be presented with a golden crown in the great theatre at the festival of the Dionysia, Aeschines, not having gained a fifth of the votes, was heavily fined, and escaped to Rhodes, where he founded a school of rhetoric. He died at Samos 11314- Demosthenes Many of the facts of the life of Demosthenes have already been related, for his rhetorical activity is intimately connected with the political events of the last period that we have con- sidered. For some time after the departure of Alexander for the East in 334 we hear comparatively little of him. The 439 ANCIENT GREECE cause celebre of the Golden Crown was decided in 330. We possess the speeches of both orators, and can Hsten, as it were, to the very tones of the passionate denunciations that they thundered at each other. The speech of Aeschines, with its scathing review of the Hfe of Demosthenes, is so irresistibly eloquent that, like his audience at Rhodes, to whom he recited it, we can hardly believe it possible that it should have failed — until we read the reply of Demosthenes, which, if it does not impress us so much with its sincerity and straight- forwardness, is incomparably greater in eloquence. In 324 the general Harpalus, whom Alexander had left to administer the satrapy of Babylon, having revolted, passed over to Greece with a fleet of thirty ships and much treasure and endeavoured to incite the Greek cities to join him. Har- palus was murdered, and 700 talents of his money were seized by the Athenians to be handed over to Alexander. Half of the money disappeared, and Demosthenes was condemned of theft or of gross negligence. He was imprisoned, but escaped, and lived in Troezen and Aegina till Alexander's death, when he was recalled. But Antipater, Alexander's gerent in Macedonia, crushed the Greeks at the battle of Crannon (322) and Demosthenes fled. He was overtaken by Anti- pater's emissaries on the islet of Calaureia, near Troezen, where he had taken sanctuary. When arrested he poisoned himself. In the oratory of Demosthenes, as in that of Cicero, there is nothing of the sublime. Its characteristics are passionate intensity, dauntless courage in attack, unrivalled skill in defence, and an incomparable mastery over words. He used a language . free, natural, personal, direct, perfectly plain and unaffected, i entirely untainted by the rhetoric of the schools. He depended, not on an elegant and decorated diction, but on force, vigour, and dramatic emphasis — such as he meant when he said that the three things necessary for the orator were Acting (vTroKpio-ig), Acting, and Acting. A few lines from his Third Philippic, though they suffer much in translation, may illustrate this. How different his feeling about the fratricidal wars of the 440 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA Greek states was from that of Isocrates is very evident from the opening words. " Ay, and what is more, you know well that whatever wrongs were done to Greeks by the Spartans or by us were at any rate done by genuine sons of Greece, and one might regard it just in the same way as when a son who by birth is the genuine heir to a large property indulges in some pursuit not admirable or right. Such conduct in itself certainly deserves to be blamed and reprimanded ; but one cannot regard it as if he did not belong to the family and were not the heir, whereas if a servant, or some supposititious child, were to destroy or spoil what was not his own, good heavens, how much more readily would every one declare that he was a scamp and deserved their anger ! But concerning Philip and his doings they have no such feelings — and yet he is not only not a Greek and no connexion of the Greeks, but not even a barbarian of any country of which one can speak with respect. He is just a pestilential Macedonian — of a country from which one never could buy even a decent slave." The following passage is, in the original, a good specimen of his vigour and his pugnacity — and perhaps also of his ingenuity, for in many of the manuscripts the word which I have translated by ' hireHng ' is in this passage accented on the first syllable, iull(t0(jjto9, whereas the accent generally falls on the last, and this seems to confirm the truth of the story that Demosthenes purposely mispronounced the word, and that the audience, far more shocked at the false accent than at any iniquity of Aeschines, shouted out fjucrOiDTog — thus at the same time correcting the orator's mispronunciation and answering his question as he desired. '' As for what then took place, there is much more that I could 3ay. But I think I have said enough — ^perhaps more than enough. And it is his fault if I have, for he so drenched me with the dregs of his own rascality and that of his rascally conduct that I was obliged to clear myself before those who 441 ANCIENT GREECE are too young to remember the facts. But even before I said a word you yourselves were probably thoroughly disgusted — those of you who knew about his hireling servility. He, forsooth, calls it intimacy and friendship, and on some late occasion spoke about my * insulting his friendship with Alex- ander/ Where did he get it from ? How did he earn it ? I wouldn't call him a ' friend ' either of Philip or Alexander — I'm not such an idiot — unless one ought to call reapers, or others who do anything for hire, the ' friends ' of those who hire them. No ! I call you a hireling — formerly of Philip and now of Alexander ; and so do all these gentlemen. If you don't believe me, ask them ! — or, rather, I'll do it for you. . . . Which, O Athenians, do you think Aeschines to be — Alexander's friend or his hireling ? . . . You hear what they say ! " {De Corona, 242.) Later Philosophers The greatest teachers, knowing that truth, as Plato says, " cannot be communicated like other branches of learning," have ever been more anxious to intimate, and to enforce by word and deed, deep-lying principles than to formulate doctrines and build up systems. Of such nature was the teaching of Socrates. He wrote nothing," and it is probable that the underlying principles that he enforced were intimated by him in a much less systematized form than that in which they are presented by Plato. It was therefore natural that his followers, when they began (as was inevitable) to formulate and systema- tize, should split up into various schools. The doctrines of these diverse schools of post-Socratic philosophy, being in- timately connected with the later philosophy, that of the Romans and the early Christian ages. He beyond the scope of this volume. I shall therefore only say a few words on the subject. Besides Plato, Socrates' greatest disciple, who, as we have seen, founded the Academic school, should be mentioned Kucleides, Aristippus, and Antisthenes, who founded respec- tively the Megaric (Dialectic), the Cyrenaic, and the Cynic 442 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA schools. To the Cynics belonged Diogenes, and the Cynic philosophy led towards Stoicism, which was founded by Zeno of Cyprus about the same time as Epicurus of Samos was proclaiming his philosophy {c. 300). Far more famous (at least in mediaeval and modern times) than any of these philosophies was that of Aristotle and his followers, the so-called Peripatetics. Aristotle was born at Stageiros (or Stageira), a town of Chalcidice, which was destroyed by Philip, but rebuilt, at the philosopher's request, by Alexander. In 342 Aristotle was invited by Philip to act as tutor to the young Alexander, and remained at Pella till 335, when he settled at Athens, and for thirteen years taught at the I/yceum. He died in Euboea in 322. SECTION B : LYSIPPUS : HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE Scopas and Praxiteles, as we have seen, flourished from about 390 to 350. Towards the end of this period we hear of lycochares, who together with Scopas was employed by Artemisia to supply sculpture for the Mausoleum. He is of interest also because he was the designer of the gold and ivory images of Philip II and his family which were erected in the Philippeion, a hall built at Olympia by the Macedonian king. Moreover, the bust of Isocrates (Fig. 124) may be founded on his statue of the orator which was erected at Kleusis, and the well-known group of Ganymede and an eagle, copies of which are to be seen in museums (the best of them in the Vatican) , was probably his work. Considered as a realistic production, the latter offends by the evident impossibility that the bird could lift such a weight — though Professor Gardner tells us that " boy and eagle strain upward in an aspiration like that which Goethe expresses in his poem of Ganymede " — and regarded as a work of art, it seems to fail entirely in satisfying one's imaginative faculty. It is doubtless clever, but surely rather too much of the tableau vivant type. Somewhat younger than Teochares was Ivysippus, whose name one associates with Alexander, for it is said that the 443 ANCIENT GREECE monarch allowed no sculptor but I^ysippus and no painter but Apelles to portray him — that is, probably, other artists were denied a sitting after having once " failed to render," as Plutarch says, " his manly and leonine aspect while trying to represent the bend in his neck and the emotional glance of his eyes/' I^ysippus was of the school of Sicyon — the athletic school of Polycleitus — ^but his ideal of the manly form was more Hthe and slender than that of his predecessor, with a smaller head (an eighth instead of a seventh of the total height). It is said that he put a coin in his money-box whenever he received payment for a commission, and at his death 1500 coins were found within it ; and yet until lately the only extant statue believed to be a copy of a work of his was the Apoxyomenos of the Vatican (an athlete scraping himself with a strigil), to which was sometimes added the bust of Alexander found at Alexandria and now in the British Museum (Fig. 123), the best of many such portraits. But the French excavations at Delphi have brought to light an exceedingly fine statue of the athlete Agias, probably a marble replica of a bronze original — a much finer work of art than the Apoxyo- menos, The face, though not highly intellectual, is of a far nobler type than that of any known statue by Polycleitus or Scopas, or than that of the Praxitelean Hermes, and the skill shown in the splendid nude figure displays the great artist, not merely the anatomical expert. I^ysippus produced several works of enormous size, among them a colossal Zeus at Tarentum, sixty feet high, and a Sun- god (Helios, or Baal) in a four-horse chariot at Rhodes — anticipating the Colossus of Rhodes, which was by his pupil, Chares — and a huge seated Heracles, of which he made a minute copy as a table ornament for Alexander — a statuette which, if we are to believe Martial, afterwards belonged to Hannibal and Sulla. A statue of Alexander by I^ysippus, described by Plutarch, represented him (somewhat as in the bust, Fig. 123) gazing upwards with the head a httle bent to the left (in consequence of a wound), a defect, Plutarch tells us, imitated by some of 444 129. Aphrodite of Mei,os 444 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA his successors. The ' leonine ' face with its overhanging mane of hair and its ' swimming ' eyes, in whose depths passion and madness seem to lurk, became a type which long pervaded sculpture, so that not a few extant works of the later period are either evidently meant for portraits of Alexander or contain reminiscences of the type created by I^ysippus ; and doubtless Apelles, whose famous picture of Alexander repre- sented him wielding a thunderbolt, helped to confirm this type. A magnificent work of art which is doubtless a product of the school of I^ysippus — ^possibly even a work of I^ysippus himself, who is known to have made groups representing Alexander in battle and hunting with his companions — is the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus (Fig. 130). It was found, together with others,^ at Sidon, and is now in the Constanti- nople Museum. On it ''we seem to recognize the features of more than one Macedonian warrior besides Alexander himself, and their peculiar helmets and arms are rendered with accuracy, as well as the swathings and drapery " — and the hraccae or anaxy rides — *' of their Persian opponents.'' It is probably the best preserved of all monuments of antiquity. The colours with which the marble was stained are still plainly visible. " No one," says Professor Gardner, " who has not seen this sarcophagus can realize the effect produced by a correct and artistic appHcation of colour to sculpture." Another product of this period, and one which illustrates the tendency towards bigness and theatrical pose, is the well- known and often much-admired group of Niobe and her children. The original was brought to Rome, probably from CiHcia, about 35 B.C. PHny describes it and tells us that it is " doubtful whether it was by Praxiteles or by Scopas." It is most evidently by neither. Although free from the contortions ^ E.g. the 'Tomb of the Satrap,' and the ' I^ycian Sarcophagus' (of about 420 perhaps), with Attic influence, such as we see in the Nereid Monument (p- 385), and a sarcophagus with eighteen most beautiful female figures, ' the Mourners,' reminding one of Athenian tombstones. The Alexander Sarcophagus is of Pentelic (Attic) marble. It is not supposed to have contained his body. A sarcophagus in the British Museum (brought from Alexandria) has better claims to this honour. 445 ANCIENT GREECE of later Hellenistic art, it shows neither in its forms nor faces nor drapery nor attitudes the characteristics of the best Greek sculpture. The group probably stood, not in the pediment of a temple, but on some rocky elevation against a background, and possibly statues of the vengeful deities, Apollo and Artemis, were placed on some higher level. Good ancient copies of fourteen of these figures are to be seen in the Niobe Hall of the Ufiizi at Florence. Some of them were dug up at Rome in 1583, and may possibly be the statues seen by Pliny. Hellenistic Sculpture It may be useful to add a few words indicating the main features of later Greek sculpture. After the conquests of Alexander Greek art died down to the root, though it did not become entirely extinct, in the mother-country, but its scions, planted in Eastern soil, flourished exceedingly. The religious characteristic of old Greek statuary, the main function of which was to produce images of the gods and heroes, has been to a large extent lost. Sculpture is now used a great deal for portraiture, and for personifica- tions such as of Wealth and Peace and Fortune and of countries and cities,^ and the tendency towards the colossal, already observed in I^ysippus, becomes stronger. This is especially noticeable at the two great centres of Hellenistic art, Rhodes and Pergamon. In Rhodes, according to Pliny, more than a hundred huge statues existed, of which the greatest, the famous bronzen Colossus, made by Chares, was 105 feet high. It represented the Sun-god (see coin 13, Plate VI). The well-known groups of I^aocoon and the Farnese Bull were brought to Rome from Rhodes, and are wonderful illustrations, though comparatively small, of later Rhodian work, with its Michelangelesque mastery over huge masses of material and its ostentatious display of anatomical know- ^ Europe and Asia are figured on the little Arbela tablet (given in my Quintus Curiius), and a very beautiful seated female figure representing the ' City Antioch,' by a pupil of Lysippus, is given in Gardner's Handbook. In earlier art a river was often personified by a river-god (or bull), and a city by its tutelary deity ; but that was an essentially different method. 446 130. The ' AiyEXANDER Sarcophagus 446 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA ledge. In connexion with this taste for the gigantic may be mentioned the bronze equestrian statues of, perhaps, Castor and Pollux on Monte Cavallo at Rome, which are evidently a Greek work and of this period — although an inscription (of the age of Constantine) attributes them to Pheidias and Praxiteles ! The other great Hellenistic school of sculpture was the Pergamene. Attains, the third king of Pergamon, the Troad city which was later the Hterary rival of Alexandria, erected many statues and groups to commemorate his victories, espe- cially those over the Gauls (Galatians), whom he had forced to settle down in the province henceforth known as Galatia. Many of the bases of these sculptures have been discovered, and from the way in which the feet of the statues have been carefully cut out of the pedestal it is certain that the figures were carried away to Rome or Constantinople. One of these — or possibly only a copy of the original bronze — is the Dying Gaul (in the Capitol at Rome), formerly called the Dying Gladiator. Other sculptures of smaller size, representing battles of Greeks with Persians, Athenians with Amazons, and Greeks with Gauls, were placed by Attains on the Athe- nian Acropolis. The son of Attains, Eumenes, made Perga- mon famous by means of the enormous base (lOO feet square) on which, surrounded by a colonnade, stood the altar of Zeus. On this altar-base there were friezes whose huge contorted figures represented the battle of the Giants against Zeus and all the di majores et minores of the Greek Pantheon, aided by numerous non-Hellenic deities and by various demi-gods, each of the great divinities attended by his or her sacred animal — a " writhing mass of giants with whom their divine antagonists are inextricably entangled," reminding one of the horribly impressive giant-frescoes by Giulio Romano in the Mantuan Palazzo del Te. The weather-worn remains of these Pergamene sculptures are now at Berlin. Of the many other extant statues that are attributed to the earlier Hellenistic age, or the preceding period, perhaps the finest are the Aphrodite of Melos, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Nike of Samothrace (Figs. 129, 131). The Aphrodite was discovered 447 ANCIENT GREECE on the island of Melos in a grotto, in which also a fragment of a pedestal was found bearing a few words of an inscription that contained the last part of the artist's name, viz. ' sander ' or * xander,' and gave Antioch on the Maeander as his home. The sculptor is unknown, but from the character of the writing the inscription was believed to date from about loo. How- ever, it is quite uncertain whether this fragment ever belonged to the pedestal of the statue, and it has now disappeared. To judge from the statue itself one cannot but believe that it dates from a much earlier period. " For a conception of the female figure at once so dignified and so beautiful," says Professor B. A. Gardner, " we have to go back to the sculpture of the Par- thenon, and we see the same breadth and simplicity of modelling in the drapery as in the nude. . . , The sculptor who made this Aphrodite must have lived in spirit in the age of Pheidias." The Apollo Belvedere is by some attributed to lycochares, merely by reason of some supposed similarity (perhaps in technique) to the Ganymede. This attribution I find quite impossible to accept. Modern criticism has rightly pointed out that the Apollo shows what might be called a degradation of Praxitelean grace and a loss of masculine vigour. The attitude is somewhat theatrical, and the modelling of the nude is smoothed away so much and the limbs are made so slender that we have an almost painful idealism and unreality. But in spite of all this it remains unquestionably one of the most magically beautiful of all Greek statues, although only a marble copy of a bronze original. The Victory (Nike) was discovered on the island of Samo- thrace, and is now (headless, alas ! and armless) in the I^ouvre. The trophy was erected by Demetrius PoHorcetes to commemo- rate a naval victory won in 306. The goddess — a magnificent figure with wind-swept draperies like the Nike of Paeonius, but more stately — stands on the marble prow of a warship with her wings outspread, reminding one of the vision of Dante on the shore of the Purgatorial Mount — the angel standing on the vessel with his snow-white wings outspread as sails, Trattando I'aere con I'eterne penne. 448 131. The Nike of Samothrack 448 NOTE A GREEK TEMPLES IN order to avoid the distraction that would be caused by frequently interrupting the narrative, or by dealing with the subject in several widely separated Sections, I have rele- gated to this Note a few details concerning the chief Greek temples of different ages. The chronology is, of course, not always certain. The Index and lyist of Illustrations should be consulted. Pictures are given of thirteen of these temples. (i) The Heraion (Temple of Hera), at Olympia. Doric : 6 X i6. Built perhaps c. 900. The stone foundations (probably the most ancient relic of a Greek temple extant) were originally surmounted by walls of sunburnt brick and wooden pillars. Stone columns were gradually substituted, which accounts for the fact that, to judge from the remains of thirty-six of the columns and of twenty capitals, they were almost all different. Pausanias saw one old wooden pillar still remaining. Nothing has been found of an entablature, frieze, &c. The Hermes of Praxiteles was found in this temple, buried in the clay of the sunburnt bricks. (2) Temple of Apollo, Corinth. Doric : 6 x 15. Probably built by Periander, c. 600. Seven monolith columns of rough limestone, originally overlaid with yellowish stucco, still stand and bear a part of the architrave. They are finely pro- filed, with a noticeable entasis, but are shorter than usual in proportion to the thickness, the height (23 J feet) being only 7f modules (semi-diameters), and the capitals are remarkably 'massive. 2 F 449 ANCIENT GREECE (3) Temple of Apollo, Delphi. Built to replace the ancient temple, burnt down in 548. The architect was Spintheros of Corinth. A fourth of the expense was to be borne by the Treasury of Delphi, and the rest was raised by subscription through all Hellas (even Amasis of Egypt con- tributed). But the Alcmaeonidae undertook the construction (thus probably saving the Treasury much expense), and carried it out in a more splendid manner than was stipulated in the contract, using Parian marble in many parts instead of poros or tufa. The remains show that the columns were of white tufa coated with stucco, and that the outer colonnades were Doric and the inner Ionic. The pediments contained figures of Apollo and other deities and the nine Muses. To the architrave were attached golden shields, offerings of the Athenians after the battle of Marathon. In the vestibule were engraved the sayings of the Seven Sages — e.g. " Know thyself," &c. (4) Temple of Athene (or Aphaia), Aegina, in the north- eastern corner of the island. Doric : 6 x 12. Built perhaps before 500. The pediment sculptures were erected probably soon after the battle of Salamis. Twenty- two columns are still standing, bearing the entablature. They are of yellow limestone covered with stucco. The sculptures of the pedi- ments were discovered in 181 1, and bought by the Crown Prince of Bavaria. They were restored and reconstructed by Thorwaldsen, the great Danish sculptor, and are preserved in the Glyptothek at Munich. An inscription excavated in 1901 seems to show that the temple was sacred to Aphaia, a '' local goddess with affinities to Artemis.'* (5) Temples at Selinus and Acragas (Sicily). The remains of seven ancient Doric colonnaded temples, some of great size, built probably soon after the foundation of the city, c. 628, are to be seen at Selinus, in South-western Sicily, where a wilderness of enormous ruins covers the acropolis and an adjacent hill. The greatest of these temples, called the Apollonion, was almost as large as the huge Olympieion at Acragas, and was, similarly, not finished when the city was 4S0 GREEK TEMPLES taken by the Carthaginians in 409. Some of the still unfinished column drums are to be seen in a quarry three miles distant. The most ancient of the SeHnus temples had the unusual proportions 6 x 17. Many of its huge columns are lying in a row side by side, just as they fell when a great earthquake (it is not known when) overthrew all the temples of Selinus and some at Acragas. Some very ancient metopes from the frieze of this temple are preserved at Palermo. At Acragas (lyat. Agrigentum, Ital. Girgenti) many splendid temples were erected by Thero after the victory over the Carthaginians at Himera in 480. A portion of the still older Athene temple is yet to be seen forming a part of a church inside the city, but the temples erected by Thero lined the south city wall, and from their lofty plateau overlooked the sea. Of these the unfinished Olympieion was the greatest Greek temple in existence, as its widespread ruins testify. The magnificent ' Concordia ' temple (Doric : 6 x 13) is one of the finest and most perfect Greek temples extant (Fig. 76), and the so-called temple of I^acinian Hera (also 6 x 13), of which many columns still stand on an elevated site, is one of the most impressive of all ruins. The name * Concordia ' is due to a I^atin inscription which has nothing to do with the temple, and the ' lyacinian ' temple got its name from a mistake made by Pliny, who states that Zeuxis painted for Agrigentum a picture of Helen of Troy, whereas it was painted for the temple of Hera on the I/acinian promontory (see paragraph 11 of this Note). (6) Temple of Apollo at Didyma (now Hieronda), near Miletus, called the Temple of the Branchidae, who were the priestly family in charge. It was famed for its antiquity and wealth and for its oracle. The original temple perhaps dated from the early days of Ionian migration (say about 1000). In 603, before the battle of Carchemish, Pharaoh Necho presented his cuirass to the temple. Also Croesus made costly golden offerings (Hdt. i. 92) . The building was plundered and burnt by the Persians after the capture of Miletus in 494 (possibly without the consent of Darius, who, as a letter of his to the satrap of Ionia proves, felt great reverence for this oracle of Apollo). 451 ANCIENT GREECE The Branchidae were accused of having surrendered the temple and treasure, and to save them from the vengeance of the lonians Xerxes tiransplanted them to Sogdiana (Turkestan), not far from I^ake Aral, where they founded a Greek town, some 2000 miles distant from Miletus. But about 170 years later Alexander, when greeted on his victorious campaign by this httle Greek colony, revived the accusation and massacred every man, woman, and child — one of the foulest deeds that his insanity perpetrated. The Branchidae temple was rebuilt in the age of Alexander, and probably by his orders, and was said to be the greatest Greek temple in Asia Minor — so great that it could not be roofed ! Some of the magnificent Ionic columns are still standing, buried to a third of their height, which is said to be 60 feet. But by far the most ancient relics of Didyma are some of the great seated figures which lined the ' sacred way * from the temple to the sea (about two miles). These date from about 550. Several are in the British Museum (see Fig. 58, and Hdt. i. 92, 157, v. 36, vi. 19). (7) Temple of Artemis, Ephesus — about a mile north-east from the ancient city. The first temple was burnt by the Cimmerians about 678. The second, which during the siege of Ephesus by Croesus was attached to the city by a rope (p. 182), was finished during his reign and received many gifts from him, including the sculptured drums of some of the columns, one of which is in the British Museum (Fig. 52). The huge Ionic front columns rested, it is thought, on great square blocks which brought their shaft bases on a level with the floor of the temple, and these blocks, as well as the lowest drums of the columns, were decorated with bas-rehefs. This second temple — the only Greek temple spared by Xerxes — was burnt down (by Herostratus — merely, it is said, in order to perpetuate his name !) on the very night when Alexander the Great was bom (356) . The third was begun at once and finished about 300. Alexander offered (c. 334) to bear the whole expense if he were allowed to have the fact recorded by an inscription ; but his offer was declined with the rather clever excuse that " it was not meet 452 GREEK TEMPLES for one deity to build a temple to another." (No such scruples seem to have deterred Croesus !) This third Kphesian temple was a copy of the second (see sculptured drum, Fig. 119), but on a more magnificent scale, and was the largest temple of the Greek world. It was regarded as one of the Seven Wonders, and continued in use (see Acts xix.) till the abolition of paganism. (8) Temple of Apollo at Phigaleia, or Bassae (' The Ravines,' a village near Phigaleia, in Arcadia), stands on a fine site among mountainous solitudes. It was probably built to enclose an ancient shrine of Apollo Epikouros ('the Helper'), and was, says Pausanias, erected in hope of averting the Great Plague of 430 — and seemingly not in. vain, for Thucydides says the disease did not spread to the Peloponnese. The architect was Ictinus, who built the Parthenon. It is Doric, 6 x 15, but the inner temple had ten Ionic and one Corinthian column (now lost) . What is unusual, it faces north and south ; but the inmost shrine (probably the ancient sanctuary around which the temple was built) had its door to the east, so that the image of the god faced the rising sun. The great bronze statue of Apollo was taken by Megalopolis. It was replaced by a marble statue, of which fragments, as well as twenty-three tablets of the frieze, are in the British Museum. In spite of earthquakes about thirty of the thirty-eight external columns are standing. (9) The Temple of Segesta. The SiciHan city of Segesta (Greek Kgesta) was situate in the mountainous north-west coast of Sicily. It was originally the chief city of the Sicihan Klymi (see p. 118), who had a town and a great temple on Mount Kryx, a promontory some 2000 feet above the sea, dedicated to Aphrodite (or rather to Astarte, the Phoenician goddess). But Greek influence afterwards prevailed, as is testified by a magnificent Doric temple that now stands in majestic solitude among the hills, not far from the ancient site of Kgesta. Its columns are of rough stone without flutings, and the fact that they were never finished gives us a clue to the date of the temple. The cessation of the work was probably due to the troubles caused (about 410) by the quarrel between Segesta and Sehnus, which ended in Segesta calHng on Carthage for aid and in the 4S3 ANCIENT GREECE destruction of Selinus and the establishment of Carthaginian supremacy in Western Sicily. (10) The Temples at Paestum, in Southern Italy. Posei- donia, called Paestum by the Romans, was a colony of Sybaris, founded c. 524. Of its three Doric temples that of Poseidon (6 X 14, built about 450) is by far the finest, rivalling the Parthenon and the * Concordia ' in its splendid proportions. The so-called 'Basilica' is unusually broad (9 x 18). It is perhaps more ancient, but the architecture is not so perfect. It was divided down the middle by columns, the two portions having probably been sacred to different deities. The temple of Demeter, as it is called, is less massive than the Poseidon temple, and the columns have an exaggerated entasis, but it is a splendid ruin. (11) Temple of Hera Lacinia, near Croton. One solitary column (Fig. 40) remains of this great Doric temple, built probably about 480-450 to replace the ancient temple which was for centuries the first landmark that greeted the Greek on his way to the far West. Here he generally landed and made sacrifice. The marble-roofed temple was surrounded by pine-groves where were erected statues of Olympic victors. It was the assembly-place of the Greeks of Greater Hellas, and festivals were celebrated here, with athletic games. It possessed great riches — amongst other things a pillar of gold and a picture of Helen by Zeuxis. Hannibal here slaughtered 2000 Italian mercenaries and put up a brass tablet (used by Polybius) to recount his victories. In a.d. 1600 the temple was still almost intact, but was demolished by a bishop, I^ucifero by name. Two columns were left. One was overthrown by earthquake in 1638. (12) Temple of Hera at Samos. Of this, the greatest Greek temple known to Herodotus, only one Ionic column remains. It stands not far from the sea-shore about four miles from the ancient city of Samos. The temple was finished by Polycrates and burnt by the Persians, but rebuilt in the time of Herodotus. (13) The Parthenon is regarded as the ideal of Doric 454 132. Tempi^e of Athene Nike --^ 133. Krechtheion 434 GREEK TEMPLES architecture. For details as to its proportions, its sculptures, &c. , see Chapter IV, Section B, and Chapter VI, Section A. (14) The Erechtheion is in a depression on the north side of the Acropolis plateau. It stood incomplete for many years and was finished (as proved by an inscription in the British Museum) c. 409. It is considered a model of Ionic style, but is of very unusual form, being as different from the ordinary Greek temple as San Vitale is from the ordinary Christian basiUca. It is only about 66 feet long, and has two side porches, as well as the eastern portico. The southern of these porches is that of the ' Maidens ' or Caryatides (one of these Maidens is of terra-cotta, the original being in the British Museum). The unusual form of the building was evidently occasioned by the fact that it included several distinct old Ionian (Athenian) shrines — that of Krechtheus and that of Athene Pohas and perhaps others. Krechtheus, the old Athenian snake-hero-god, was identified with Poseidon, and in early times shared with Athene the ' house of Krechtheus ' (mentioned by Homer) . The lair of his snake, and the hole made by Poseidon's trident in the rock, and the olive planted by Athene, were all shown in the old Krechtheion, which was burnt by the Persians in 480. Athene's olive thereupon put out a long new shoot within two days, and the new temple was promptly taken in hand. The question of the old site is puzzling, for between the Parthenon and the Krechtheion, and almost contiguous to it, have been discovered the foundations of the ancient temple of Athene Polias (the ' Hecatompedos,' the ' hundred- foot ' temple, built, or more probably turned into a Doric temple, by Peisistratus) . If, as some assert, this old temple was rebuilt on the same site after the Persian invasion the Caryatid porch could not have been erected without making a breach in the wall of the new building, and thus utterly ruining the view of the porch and forming a most ugly and ridiculous complex. It is easier to believe that the Krech- theion replaced this old temple (whose site was left unused), and that it also included the ancient shrines in the precinct. (15) The Theseion, the best preserved of all ancient Greek 4SS ANCIENT GREECE temples, stands on an elevation north-west of the Acropolis. It is smaller than the Parthenon {i.e. 6 x 13), and the columns of PenteHc marble are somewhat slenderer. The sculptures of the pediments have entirely disappeared. Only the metopes on the east front, and four of the adjoining fields on each side, were sculptured. These eighteen reliefs represent the labours of Heracles and of Theseus, and the frieze of the sanctuary (which, as in the Parthenon, is continuous, like an Ionic frieze) depicts the contest of Centaurs and I^apithae, in which Theseus had a part. It seems, therefore, very probable that the temple is, as till lately has been universally beheved, the building in which Cimon deposited the bones of Theseus. But because Pausanias seems to ignore it and speaks of a temple of Hephaestus, and because the architecture seems to be as late as that of the Parthenon, some writers have asserted that it cannot be Cimon's * Theseion.' (16) The Olympieion at Athens was begun (about 530) by Peisistratus (Thuc. ii. 15). This original temple was Doric. It was planned on such a vast scale that at the height of her power Athens never ventured to complete it. Aristotle mentions it as a " work of despotic grandeur." In the year 174 Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, undertook to finish it. The fifteen huge Corinthian columns still standing (56 J feet high) may date from this period. Sulla (85 B.C.) when he plundered Athens carried off some of the smaller (Doric ?) columns. Augustus forwarded the work (described by Ivivy as the " only temple on earth worthy of the greatness of the god "), but it was not finished until the reign of Hadrian (a.d. 120). It had 100 columns and was 353 J feet in length. (17) Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Built c. 470 by the people of Elis from the spoils of Pisa, which they had destroyed a century before (c. 572, when they finally won from the Pisatans the supremacy in the games). It was a Doric temple (6 x 13), 210 feet long, with a sanctuary, aisled by two rows of columns, containing the famous statue by Pheidias of Zeus Olympios. Many of the columns and some capitals are still to be seen, lying where they fell when overthrown by earthquake. For 456 o Pi a <1 w w H GREEK TEMPLES the sculptures of pediments and the statue of Zeus, &c., see Chapter VI, Section A. (i8) Temple of Athene on Sunion. Cape Sunion (I^at. Simium), now Cape Colonna, is the steep promontory, about 200 feet high, in which Attica terminates. The earhest temple on ' sacred Sunion,' as Homer calls it, was dedicated to Poseidon (at least Aristophanes calls Poseidon " the god invoked on Sunion "), but, as at Athens, the sea-god was forced to share his shrine with Athene (or possibly to allow his shrine to be over- shadowed by her larger temple). Eleven Doric columns of Laurion marble still stand. The temple was like the Theseion, but somewhat smaller, and was built about the same time. Some very weather-worn sculptured metopes possibly once depicted the feats of Theseus. (19) Temple of Athene Nike [i.e. Athene in her character as Victory), sometimes wrongly called the temple of ' Wingless Victory,' is a small early Ionic shrine (only 27 x 18 feet) of Pentelic marble, with a portico of four columns at each end. It was built on an elevated platform of rock to the right of the Propylaea, as one ascends, probably after the original great plan of the Propylaea had been given up [i.e. during the Peloponnesian War, c. 425) . In 1684 i^ was entirely demolished by the Turks, who used the material to build a bastion. In 1835 the fragments were carefully collected and the shrine was reconstructed. 4S7 NOTE B DRESS TO follow with any certainty, after the lapse of millenniums, the ever-varying fashions of dress is impossible. The differences that prevail on the subject among antiquarians are mainly due to the fact that fashions are apt to change very rapidly, to revert to old types, to develop new combinations, and to exist simultaneously, even in close contact. But some well-marked characteristics are noticeable at certain periods of Greek history. (i) In Minoan and ' Mycenaean ' civiHzation, to judge from pictorial evidence (Figs. 5, 10, 16, &c.), the men when at war generally wore nothing at all, and at other times often only a sort of bathing-drawers garment, and footgear curiously like our * puttees.' Their hair was often built up into a high coiffure with long pigtails, and in many paintings they have extraordinarily slender waists, as if they laced tightly; or perhaps they gained their slimness by such gymnastic train- ing as was necessary for the Cretan matadors (Fig. 17). The women had strangely modern-looking costumes — heavy, deeply flounced, embroidered skirts, and (when the bust was not nude) puff-sleeved jackets or blouses (often very decoUeUes). The hair was elaborately coiled and curled. (2) In Homer we find quite a different dress, which we may call Achaean, evidently of northern origin. It differs essen- tially from the Minoan and Mycenaean composite sewn dress, and consists (with the possible exception of the linen under- garment) of a single piece of cloth, or lighter stuff, fastened by brooches, or safety-pins {fibulae, Trepovai), which were not required, except for ornament, in the older sewn garments. 458 DRESS Homer's men wear a chiton (an under-garment, sometimes of thicker coloured stuff, sometimes " soft and shiny as the skin of a dried onion") and either a kind of mantle called the pharos (* thin/ ' silver-white/ ' purple/ ' great ') or a warmer cloak, the chlaina (' woollen,' ' shaggy/ ' purple '), which was also used at night as a blanket. The chlaina was fastened in front by a brooch, as we see from the celebrated passage in which the golden brooch of Odysseus is described {Od, xix. 225). The women have the chiton and the pharos (' light,' * silver- white' — Od. V. 230), or else the warmer peplos, a long robe fastened with brooches. (A peplos with twelve brooches is mentioned in Od. xviii. 293.) The brooch, or safety-pin, was perhaps introduced by the northern (Achaean and Dorian) invaders, and was of course necessary for unsewn garments. On the head women in Homer sometimes wore the Kpy^e/uLvov, 3L kind of scarf or short veil (but long enough to be tied round Odysseus' body — Od. v. 346), or a * covering ' (KaXv-Trrpri), a head-dress often richly ornamented (Hesiod calls it 'daedal '). (3) In the Asia Minor colonies the long hnen chiton and ample over-garment were retained by the ' chiton-trailing lonians,' as Homer calls them, but the Dorians (say about iioo-iooo) seem to have introduced into the Peloponnese and Doric colonies a simpler northern style of dress for both sexes, viz. a single square woollen raiment, which took the place of both the Hnen chiton and the over-garment. This * Doric chiton ' was sleeveless and simply wrapped round the body horizontally under the armpits and fastened, either with or without flaps, over both shoulders by long dagger-like pins. It was left open at one side (even in the case of women at Sparta), or sometimes fastened with brooches (safety-pins), or confined with a girdle. The Doric fashion does not seem to have found favour at Athens for some time, since the ancient Mycenaean cut-out and sewn dress is still depicted on Attic (Dipylon) pottery of the Dark Age ; and also in Hesiod's Boeotia the female dress with protruding ' bustle ' still prevailed (p. 107). Doubtless the anti-Spartan sentiments of the Athenian women were more incHned to perpetuate the 4S9 ANCIENT GREECE old Aegaean or Ionian fasliions or to introduce the luxurious style from the Ionian colonies — against which, it is said, Solon had to legislate — than to adopt the new and simpler Doric chiton. But even before Solon's age, probably about 750 or 700, a Doric-like chiton with shoulder-flaps and dagger-pins (or is it a cut-out and sewn bodice ?), combined with a richly ornamented skirt of the Minoan style, seems to have been in 139. Figures from a Toii,et-box in the British Museum vogue at Athens, as is proved by the very fashionably dressed dames on the Fran9ois Vase (Fig. 140). ^(4) About 568 the tragic event took place (see p. 142) which forcibly and suddenly changed the fashion in Athens. The women were commanded to give up their long, dangerous stiletto-pins and to adopt the long, soft, and generally crimpled Ionian Hnen chiton, stitched or buttoned, or fastened with quite small safety-pin brooches, over the shoulder and down the upper arm. Above this was worn a wrap or shawl (himation, lyat. pallium), which at first was small and oblique, fastened over one shoulder and under the other armpit (as in Fig. 37). In course of time this outer garment becomes much larger and more elaborately folded and decorated (hke the Roman toga or the palla). In ' classical ' statuary we have 460 i ^ 'M^MM, 135. Caryatid from Erech- THEION 136. Monument of IvYSicrates 137. Bronze and Shaver Dress-pins 138. Ionic Chiton and Himation 460 ■ I DRESS generally the long Ionic chiton in the case of women, and a shorter tunic for men, and for both sexes a voluminous outer garment, coarser and heavier in the case of men (see Figs. 98, 107, &c.), as well as the smaller chlamys, a scarf or cape that sometimes takes the place of the heavier woollen himation, and sometimes is carried loosely on the arm or shoulder. (5) It should, however, be noticed that after the Athenian women were thus forced to adopt the Ionian dress {c. 568) the new and more effeminate Eastern chiton seems to have prevailed for a time also among the men, but only for a time. Thucydides tells us (i. 6) that " the Athenians were the first who gave up wearing iron [military garb] and changed to greater luxury. And the elders among the rich classes not long ago ceased wearing linen chitons and binding up the coil of the hair on their heads with a fastening of golden cicalas." Now " not long ago '' would mean about the time of the Persian wars, and it seems that then or a little later the Athenian men reverted to the simpler and (in war) more convenient woollen Doric chiton, or to a short shirt-like linen chiton with a square woollen himation, which was the male dress during the Peloponnesian War. I^astly, it should be remembered that this change to simpler Doric, or northern, habits which is mentioned by Thucydides meant also the rejection of the loin-cloth of the older Aegaean and Ionian civiHzation, and the adoption in athletics, as also to a great extent in war, of nudity (except for armour and tunics), a matter in which, curiously enough, the Greek con- sidered himself far in advance of the Oriental, who regarded nudity as shameful. 140. Figure FROM THE Francois Vase 461 NOTE C COINS COINS are believed to have been first made in I^ydia, where the Mermnadae kings began, c. 700, to punch ingots of electron (an alloy of gold and silver) with official marks (see I, i) as assurance of full weight. The Greek Asiatic cities soon adopted the invention and used engraved dies, and the lower side (obverse) of the coin was adorned with the badge of the state or city (often an animal) or a tutelary deity or his symbol (see I, 2, 3, 4, where Kl. = electron). Croesus probably first used gold and silver coins (staters) instead of electron, and Darius adopted the practice in his gold daric and silver siglos (shekel). Pheidon, the Argive king, is said to have first intro- duced standard weights and measures into Greece, and the first European coins were probably struck in Aegina (see I, 15). Archaic coins are frequently bean-shaped. In the earliest specimens the reverse generally bears only an official mark, or incuse square (I, 6), but later both sides bore a type. Before about 500 the eye of the profiled human face is represented (as in some old reliefs) as if fronting one, and the hair consists of small dots and the mouth has the ' archaic smile ' (I, 5, 9 ; II, I). In the period c. 500-400 very great advance was made in artistic engraving. The Syracusan coins are especially notice- able for their exquisite beauty (II, 10 ; IV, 6). The Athenian: coinage had so great a circulation through Hellas and so higl a reputation for weight and purity that it was thought inad- visable to alter the old type. Hence the Athenian coins do not show such technical perfection as one might expect (see III, 7J compared with II, i). 462 PIRATE I {c. 700-500) lyYDiA. El. c. 700, Earliest known coin. Mii^ETUS. El. c. 630. Samos. El. c. 525. Reign of Poly crates (?). Oi,D Smyrna (?). El. Phocaean stater, c. 600. Tenedos. Aeoi^ian Cyme (?). Before 600. DEiyOS. Before Persian wars. 8. Phocaea. x\ge of Croesus. 9. Cntdus. 10. Lycia. Before 480. 11. Thasos or Thrace. El. 12. POTIDAEA. 13. CORCYRA. 14. Thebes. 15. Aegina. Age of Pheidon (?). c. 650. 16. Corinth. AgeofPeriander. c.6oo. 462 n.ATH II (c. 600-500) I. Athens. About age of Solon. 6. Sybaris. c. 600. c. 570 7. Crotona. c. 600. 2. Crete. Minotaur and Labyrinth. 8. Acragas ( Agrigentum) . C. 550. 3. Taras (Tarentum). c. 560. 4. PoSEiDONiA (Paestum). c. 510 5. EI.EA (Velia). c. 520. 9. HiMERA. Before 481. o. Syracuse. Reign of Gelo, c. 480. 463 COINS In the age of Praxiteles and Scopas — that is, during the Spartan and Theban supremacies (400-338) — and in the early times of Alexander the Great numismatic art is considered to have reached its highest perfection. The electron staters of Cyzicus (III, i) continued to have a large circulation in Asia Minor (especially as medium between Agesilaus and the Persian satraps), and in Greece proper the chief currencies were Theban, Athenian, and Corinthian (Sparta had probably till the third century only iron money, of which no specimen remains) . After the victories of Epameinondas and the founding of Messene we find Arcadian and Messenian coinage (V, 11, 12). In Southern Italy and in Sicily during the Dionysian tyranny and under Timoleon many very beautiful coins were struck (VI, I, 2, &c.). The fine coinage of Philip II of Macedonia is especially noticeable (V, 5, 6, 8). The working of his Thracian mines, and especially of those near his new-named city of Philippi, afforded him a great abundance of gold for his ' royal coinage,' as Horace calls his ' Philips,' and the means to " break open the gates of cities and undermine rival kings by bribes " (Hor. C. Ill, xvi.). Until these golden 'Philips' attained currency the coinage of Greece itself had been mostly silver, gold being coined only on .special occasions, when treasure had to be melted down to meet exceptional needs. (Gold staters of Croesus and golden Darics were, however, current in Greece in earHer times.) The usual type of Alexander's coins (VI, 7, 8) shows a Heracles head with the lion-skin (the features bearing a distinct likeness to those of Alexander), and on the reverse the seated figure of the eagle-bearing Olympian Zeus of Pheidias. After his death and deification some of the states of the empire {e.g. Macedonia and Greece) continued for two centuries to issue coins in his name and with his portrait, as Heracles with the lion-skin, and also with the ram-horns of Zeus Ammon, whose son he had claimed to be. In Egypt, Syria, and other provinces the Diadochi (Successors), such as Ptolemy Soter, Seleucus, and lyysimachus, at first struck coins as the vicegerents of Philip III and of the young Alexander IV, the son of Alexander 463 ANCIENT GREECE the Great and Roxana {e.g. VI, ii) ; but when they assumed the regal title they began to introduce (as had long been done by Persian kings and satraps) their own portraits — the first in Greek coinage with the exception of Alexander's (who was a god !) — at first timidly under the type of the Heraclean Alexander and then in propria persona and no longer under the guise of a deity (VI, 9, 10). For some time the reverse bore the seated Zeus, or some design of a similar motive. The following additional explanations of some of the reproduced coins may be useful. I, 5. Janiform head, possibly Zeus and Hera. For the religious symbol of the double axe (Labrys) see Index ; and for Zeus Labrandeus see V,2. I, 8. A ' type parlant,' for the Greek word phoke means a seal. I, 9. The lion was symbol of the Asiatic sun-god. On the reverse is Astarte, the Asiatic Aphrodite. I, II. A centaur (Thessalian or Thracian ?) carrying off a nymph (?). I, 12. Poseidon Hippios (equestrian) with trident. The horse was sacred to Poseidon, who is said to have created it. The type is very possibly that of Poseidon's image that, according to Herodotus, stood ' in the suburb ' of Potidaea (viii. 129). I, 13. The floral pattern in the sinkings is by some thought to represent the ' Garden of Alcinous ' described by Homer (Od. vii.). Corcyra (KEpKvpa, Corfu) was believed to be the Homeric Scherie, the island of the Phaeacians. I, 14. A Boeotian shield and an incuse at the centre of which is a cross in a circle — the archaic form of theta (first letter of Thebes). I, 15. Sea-tortoise. Perhaps the oldest extant Greek silver coin. See Index, ' Pheidon.' 464 plate: III {c. 480-400) Cyzicus. El. c. 470. Persia. Gold Daric. c. 480, Methymna. c. 480. Kphesus. c. 450. Chios, c. 450. Ol^YNTHUS. C. 475. Athens, c. 460. EiyiS. Nike. 9. Ki/iS. Hera head. 10. KIyIS. Zeus head. 11. Byzantium. 12. KrETria (Euboea). 13. Terina. 14. NEAP01.1S. 15. Thurit. c. 440. 464 PLATE IV {c. 480-430) 1. Etruria (Fiesole ?). c. 460. 2. GEI.A. c. 430. 3. HiMERA. c. 450. 4. IvEONTlNI. C. 475. 5. Seunus. C. 450. 6. Syracuse. Demareteion. c. 480. 465 COINS I, i6. Pegasus and tlie old letter koppa, used anciently for K. Pegasus was captured by Bellerophon at the Corintliian fountain Peirene. II, 3. Tlie mythical Taras, son of Poseidon and founder of Tarentum, riding on a dolphin. On reverse a sea-horse and scallop-shell. II, 4. Poseidon. II, 5. Unknown archaic head ; perhaps the river- nymph Hyele, Vele, or Elea ( = the glassy stream ?). Cf, II, 10. II, 7. Notice the QRO instead of KPO. II, 8. Before the seizure of Himera by Thero of Acragas in 481. II, 10. The nymph Arethusa, about whose fountain on Ortygia see Class. Diet, under ' Alpheus/ An Olympic victory of Gelo is intimated by the Nike and the chariot. Cf, IV, 6. Ill, I. Cecrops, the mythical first king of Attica, half man, half serpent, holding oHve-branch. The electron staters of Cyzicus had great circula- tion down to about 380. The usual mint-mark is a tunny-fish. Ill, 2. Gold Daric : the Great King with bow and spear. Ill, 3. Archaic head of Athene. Helmet ornamented with a Pegasus. Ill, 4. The bee was the badge of Bphesus and a symbol connected with the worship of the Bphesian Artemis. III, 5. Sphinx seated before an amphora. Chios was famous for its wine, and the Sphinx is a symbol of Dionysus, the wine-god. Ill, 8. Copied on the medal commemorating Waterloo. III, 9, 10. Heads of Hera and Zeus. See Note A for Heraion and temple of Zeus at Olympia. III, II, 12. The cow represents lo, who crossed by the Bosporus (' Cow-ford '), and according to one version recovered her human form and gave 2 G 465 ANCIENT GREECE birth to Epaphus, not in Egypt, but in Euboea. The bird on the cow's back may be Zeus, who in this form guided Hermes to lo in order tha the might slay the hundred-eyed monster, Argus. Ill, 13. This most beautiful coin of Terina, in Southern Italy, probably represents Nike (Victory). The (j), scarcely visible behind the nape of the neck, is the artist's signature. It is also found on the obverse of III, 15. All the finest coins of Terina are by this artist. Ill, 14. Athene. Naples was founded by Cyme (Cumae) possibly as early as 700. This coin may date from about 470. The naval battle off Cyme when Hiero beat back the Etruscans was in 474. III, 15. Thurii was colonized by Athenians and cityless Sybarites in 443. IV, I. Winged Gorgon, said to be symbol of moon- goddess worship. Date about 470 probably. At Fiesole (Faesulae) there are ancient Etrus- can ruins. IV, 2. River Gelas in form of bull. For Gela see Index. IV, 3. The river-nymph Himera sacrificing. Silenus bathing at a fountain. IV, 4. Head of Apollo and laurel-leaves. Probably by the artist of the Demareteia (IV, 6). IV, 5. River-god SeHnus sacrificing to Asclepios, whose symbol, a cock, is figured below the altar. Behind is figure of a bull (symbol of the river) and a leaf of selinon (wild celery). On reverse Apollo and Artemis in chariot, Apollo dis- charging arrows, a symbol of the plague which about 445 desolated Selinus and which Empe- docles is said to^^have stayed — perhaps by draining a marsh. IV, 6. A silver Demareteion, named after Gelo's wife Demarete and coined from the Carthaginian 466 PlyATE; V {c. 400-350) I. Coi^OPHON (?). Tissaphernes (?). 8. Phiwp c. Aoo. Q. 10. De: c. 400. 2. Coin of Mausoi^us. c. 370. 3. Tyre. c. 400. 4. SiDON. c. 375. 5. 6. PHII.IP II. 7. Argos. Hera head. II. c. 350. 9, 10. Dei^phi. II, 12. Messenia. 13. CnossUvS. Hera head. 14. Phaestus. Talos. 15. 16. Syracuse. Age of Dionysius I. c. 400 466 PIRATE VI (c. 380-300) I, 2. Syracuse. K1. Age of Timo- 10. Sophytes (India). leon. 3, 4. Carthage, c. 380 5, 6. Cyrene. c. 380 11. Egypt. Alexander IV. 12. Ptoi^Emy Soter. c. 306. 7, 8. Coin of Ai^exander the ^3. M- Rhodes, c. 304 Great. 9. Syria. Seleucus I. c. 306. 15. Tarsus, c. 323. 16. SiDON. c. 340. 467 COINS spoils (or indemnity) after the battle of Himera, 480. The head is that of Nike — pos- sibly with a suggestion of the features of Demarete. V, I. A satrap, perhaps Pharnabazus or Tissaphernes. " He wears the tiaras not the royal Kidaris '* (Head). A fine example of an early non-Greek portrait-coin. V, 2. A coin of the Carian king Mausolus, representing Zeus with sceptre and double axe (see Index under ' Lahrys'). V, 3. Melcarth, the Phoenician (especially Tyrian) sun- god and city-god (identified by the Greeks with Heracles), riding over the waves on a sea-horse and holding a bow. V, 4. Galley before a fortified city. Below two lions (sun-god symbols). V, 5, 6. A silver ' Philip.' Head of Zeus, perhaps from the Pheidian Zeus of Olympia. Jockey-boy on horse and holding palm-branch in com- memoration of Philip's Olympic victories. V, 7. The very fine Hera head copied from the celebrated Hera by Polycleitus at Argos (p. 384). V, 8. A gold ' Philip.' V, 9, 10. Demeter and Apollo (seated on Delphic om- phalos). Issued by Amphictionic Council after the Sacred War of 346. V, II, 12. Demeter and the eagle-bearing Zeus, probably copied from the statue made by Ageladas c. 455. But the coin must date after the found- ing of Messene in 369. V, 14. Talos, or, as here spelt, Talon, was the bronzen giant who kept watch for Minos over the Cretan coasts, making the circuit of the island thrice daily and killing all strangers by em- bracing them in his red-hot arms — evidently a Moloch image. 467 ANCIENT GREECE VI, I. Head of Zeus and legend " Zeus Eleutherios IXiberator]/' referring to the liberation of Syracuse by Timoleon. VI, 3, 4. Female head in Phrygian-like tiara — possibly Dido, or the moon-goddess Astarte. lyion and date-palm. There are no Carthaginian coins till about 400. VI, 5, 6. Zeus Ammon. The silphion plant (see Index). VI, 7-12. See notes on Alexander's coins, p. 463. Sophy tes (or Sopithes) was an Indian king who sub- mitted to Alexander and later issued coins of a Greek model. In VI, 11, the lion-skin is replaced by an elephant's scalp. VI, 13, 14, Radiate head of HeHos (sun-god), perhaps copied from the famous Colossus of Rhodes. On reverse a rose (five-petalled) . Greek rhodos = ' a rose.' VI, 15. I^egend (in Aramaic character), baal tars (Zeus of Tarsus). VI, 16. King (probably Artaxerxes III) in chariot. Attendant with sceptre and flask. Sidon was taken by Artaxerxes III c. 350. VII. These portrait coins are mostly of late date, some of them struck in the age of the Roman emperors by Hellenic cities, which introduced portraits of their most celebrated citizens. These are sometimes imaginative, but sometimes they are doubtless taken from old types, or from old busts and statues, and on this account they are of great interest. VII, I. Silver coin of los (one of the Cyclades), where the supposed grave of Homer was shown. Some of these fine los coins go back to the fourth century B.C. I^egend, OMHPOY. VII, 2. Bronze coin of Priene. I^egend, BIAC. VII, 3. Bronze coin of Mytilene. The only example; in Paris. I^egend, niTTAKOC. 468 PIRATE) VII. PORTRAIT COINS 1. Homer. 2. Bias. 3. PiTTACUS. 4. Al^CAEUS. 5. Anacreon. 6. Stesichorus. 7. Sappho. 8. Pythagoras. 9. HERACI^ElTrS. 10. Themistocles ri. Anaxagoras. 12. Hippocrates. 468 COINS VII, 4. The reverse of VII, 3. I^egend, ALKAIOC MYTILHNH. VII, 5. Coin of Teos, home of Anacreon. I^egend, THI12N ('Of the Teans'). Probably from an early statue. On the Athenian Acropolis was one (p. 198) side by side with that of Xanthippus, his friend, which Pericles is said to have erected. The description given of it is hardly credible, viz. that it represented him in a state of intoxication, with his clothes fallen to the ground and one sandal lost. There is a more decent picture of him on a vase in the British Museum. VII, 6. Coin of Himera, perhaps of the second century B.C. After the destruction of Himera in 409 another town was built on the further side of the river and called Thermae. Hence the legend: OEPMITAN IMEPAION ('Of the Himeraean people of Thermae '). The figure of Stesichorus is evidently taken from the statue which Cicero says Verres wished to steal, and which represented Stesichorus *' lean- ing over a book.'' VII, 7. Coin of Mytilene. I^egend, ^An..l2. There are numerous busts and vase-pictures of Sappho, but many very dissimilar and none trustworthy. VII, 8. Coin of Samos. I^egend, nYGArOPAC CAMION. Column and globe. VII, 9. Ephesiancoin. lyCgend, . . . TOO EcE»ECLlN. The club in the left hand probably alludes to Heracles and the name Heracleitos. VII, 10. Bronze Athenian coin of Roman Empire. Prob- ably copy of some early representation of the Salamis monument. Themistocles standing onf a galley and holding a wreath and a trophy. 469 ANCIENT GREECE VII, II. Coin of Clazomenae with figure holding globe — probably Anaxagoras. VII, 12. Coin of Cos. I^egend, III . . . Numerous busts of the great physician Hippocrates exist, but none very trustworthy. This coin represents him as a very old man. He is said to have lived 104 years (460-356). Remains exist on the island of Cos of the baths, arena, temple, library, theatre, &c., connected with his famous school of medicine, which included open-air treatment and evidently also some kind of faith-heaHng, for fragments of prayers addressed to Asclepios have been found, and the god's ' famiHars ' in the shape of serpents were religiously tended by the patients. There is also to be seen a mighty plane-tree (2350 years old !) under which, it is said, Hippocrates used to sit. Dante speaks of " supreme Hippocrates, whom nature produced for the animals that she holds most dear {i.e, human beings]." 470 An Apulian Funeral Amphora 470 NOTE D POTTERY AND VASE-PAINTING IN the I/ist of Illustrations information will be found con- cerning the thirty-nine specimens of archaic pottery and Greek vases which are depicted in this volume. Here I shall add a few general remarks, and shall first note the fact that, while many of the vases of the classic era are of exquisite beauty and of inestimable value as works of art, also a fragment of common old pottery — the shard, maybe, of some ill-shaped, hand-made earthenware vessel, roughly decorated with scratches, or with artless and grotesque pictures of plants or animals or human beings, or incised perhaps with a few rudely scrawled letters — may be of very great interest, and that too not only for the antiquarian. It may have sur- vived many a majestic work of art, many a splendid temple, many a famous city ; it may have outlived the rise and fall of mighty empires ; it may possess the power, as I said in reference to the inscription on little Tataia's oil-flask, to throw for us a fairy bridge across a vast abyss of time. Of archaic pottery directly connected with Greek ceramics we have two important types — the Cretan and the Aegaean, or * Mycenaean.' (i) Among the relics of the NeoHthic Age (c. 6000-3000) are numerous fragments, excavated in Crete, of black, hand-made, unfired and undecorated pottery of the same character as the ancient Italian bucchero, the intensely black colour of which is supposed to have been obtained by laying charcoal and resin on the wet clay. lyater relics of this age are hand-burnished and have linear incisions filled with white ANCIENT GREECE pigment. The ' Early Minoan ' pottery (c. 3000-2000) is somewliat thick, but finely glazed and painted and often decorated with the so-called ' spiral ' pattern. Many ' beaked ' jugs belong to this period, towards the end of which wheel- made ware seems to appear.^ The ' Middle Minoan ' pottery (c. 2000-1500) is richly polychrome, beautiful in form and of wonderfully dehcate consistency, like the finest porcelain. The decoration is both geometric and naturalistic — ^flowers, sea-plants, and marine animals, such as the polypus, being favourite designs. (For this and the beautiful Kamaresware see Fig. 33 and I^ist of Illustrations.) In the ' I^ate Minoan ' era {c. 1500-1400), although fresco-painting, carving, metal- work, and plaster-moulding give evidence of a high degree of civilization, pottery shows manifest signs of decadence. (2) Much archaic pottery of what is called the Mycenaean type (although it is very doubtful whether Mycenae itself was the chief, or even an important, centre of export) has been found in Rhodes and many other Aegaean islands, in Cyprus, Egypt, and Sicily.^ The earliest specimens resemble the Neo- lithic Cretan pottery, being black or monochrome, with incised lines filled with white pigment ; then we find dull, lustreless colours, geometric or spiral patterns, and pot-bellied forms ; then lustrous yellowish glaze, more graceful shapes, designs imitated from flowers, sea-plants, and marine animals, as in Middle and I^ate Minoan ware, and sometimes we have rude effigies of horses and men. (See plate facing p. 8 and Fig. 33, and the Mycenaean ' Warrior Vase,' Fig. 8.) A very charac- teristic example of the * Mycenaean type ' is the false-necked amphora shown in the plate facing p. 8. After the advent of the Dorians and the disappearance of Cretan and Mycenaean civilization there is a Dark Age in the history of Greek ceramics. Between the latest pottery of the ^ The date of the invention or introduction of the potter's wheel is much disputed. It is generally placed " towards the end of the Bronze Age " (c. 1200 ?). In Cyprus and the Aegaean islands all the pottery of c. 2500 to 1500 seems to be hand-made. The wheel is mentioned by Homer (//. xviii. 600). 2 The ' Hissarlik ' (Trojan) type is again somewhat different. (See Fig. 33.) 472 141. RED-FIGURED Vases and White IvEkythi c. 520-350 See List of Illustrations and Xote D 472 POTTERY AND VASE-PAINTING Mycenaean type and the vases of the classic era we have little but ' Dipylon ' vessels and ' Phaleron ' jugs (see Chapter II, Section A, and Fig. 35), rare specimens of exquisite pear-shaped ' proto-Corinthian ' lekythi, of which fine examples may be seen in the British Museum, a few beautiful relics of ' Fikellura ' (Samian) ware, numerous rather heavy but impressive Boeotian amphoras, some of them ornamented with carved or moulded figures, and the * old Corinthian ' ware, also rather heavy, but finely proportioned and richly decorated in a strikingly characteristic style (see Fig. 35). Before passing on to the classic age of vase-painting it should be remarked that by far the greater number of the almost innumerable extant Greek vases of this era have been found, not in Greece, but in Italy, especially in Tuscany. From the latter half of the eighteenth century onwards many thousands have been unearthed at Vulci and Chiusi (Clusium, the city of lyars Porsena) and at Nola in Campania and on other sites of old Btruscan or South Italian cities. In 1767 great quantities of these so-called ' Etruscan vases ' were brought to England by Sir W. Hamilton, and formed the nucleus of the splendid collection in the British Museum. It is not surprising that these magnificent vases were at first believed to be of Etruscan origin. The ' Etruscan theory ' was stoutly maintained by most scholars of the day, and, although strongly opposed by the great German archaeologist Winckelmann, it was not finally disproved until about 1850, when the researches of Jahn and other Hellenists showed that these so-called Etruscan vases were indubitably of Greek (mostly of Attic) workman- ship, and that the products of native Etruscan art were of a very different character. ^ * As those who have visited the Etruscan Museum at Florence know, the pottery of the ancient Etruscans (however interesting their terra-cotta plastique may be) seems surprisingly rude when compared with their work in gold and bronze, which is regarded as perhaps the most beautiful in existence and is eagerly copied by modern jewellers. Etruscan metalwork is said to have been largely imported into Greece in the classic era. (In Od. i. 184 Homer mentions Temesa, probably an Italian town, as an export- haven for bronze.) Egyptian influence is traceable in old Etrurian art, and cartouches of Psamtik I (660-610) have been found in Etruscan tombs. 473 ANCIENT GREECE The question is how the presence in Etruria of such great quantities of Greek vases at such an early period is to be explained. In later times, doubtless, many imitations of Attic ceramic were produced in Italy, perhaps by Greek craftsmen, and in the third century there was a vast output of Italian vases — Apulian, lyucanian, and Campanian. But this does not explain why genuine Greek vases of the sixth and fifth centuries have been found in such great abundance in Etruscan cemeteries. The difficulty can only be solved by supposing that there was at this early age a large importation from Greece of such works of art. It will be remembered that even in the seventh century there was a very considerable emigration from Greece to the far West, and that Greek-Italian cities, such as Cyme, Sybaris, Croton, and Taras, as well as many Hellenic colonies in Sicily, rapidly became populous and wealthy, and liberally patronized the arts of the mother-country. It was doubtless through such settlements that Greek art became known to the great nation of the Tyrseni, or Etruscans, of whose powerful navy, allied to that of the Carthaginians, we have read, and who, in spite of their defeat by the Romans at IfSke Regillus (498) and by Hiero at Cyme (474), continued for two centuries to be formidable for their military prowess and renowned for their riches and their luxury ; and it seems unquestionable that the Tyrrhenian lyucumones (Princes) and other rich men of Etruria bought up large quantities of the finest obtainable works of Greek vase-makers. The facts, moreover, that these vases were much used for sepulchral purposes, and that the Etruscan cities were to a large extent depopulated, and their cemeteries forgotten, after the final subjugation of the country by the Romans {c. 280 B.C.), may be the reason why so many more Greek vases have been discovered in Tuscany than in Greece itself, where systematic pillage during several centuries accounts for their disappearance. The age of classic Greek vase-painting may be divided into three periods, which, though not sharply definable chrono- logically, are strongly distinguished by their characteristic styles. These three periods are : 474 POTTERY AND VASE-PAINTING (i) That of the ' black-figure style ' (c. 700-490). (2) That of the ' red-figure style ' {c. 490-350), (3) That of the ' new ' or ' beautiful ' style, which degenerated into the richly ornate, florid, elaborate style of South Italian ceramic art. In the Greek vases of the first classic period, of which the Frangois Vase (Fig. 39) is one of the earliest extant specimens, male figures are black silhouettes on the red earthenware back- ground. Details of the nude and the dress are given by lines incised in the black pigment. The nude of female figures is painted in a chalky white, as also are white horses, linen gar- ments, and certain bright portions of armour. In order to represent heavy drapery the black pigment is sometimes laid on thickly and assumes a purplish or greenish tint. In other cases, where the pigment is thin, a reddish brown is produced. The black silhouette does not allow of the marvellous beauty and delicacy of outline and detail which we find in red-figure work ; but these earlier vases with their naive and realistic pictures are not seldom more valuable archaeologically and more interesting for the student of human nature than the more artistic and more idealized — sometimes more conven- tionalized — paintings of the later period. Fine specimens of the black-figure style are given in the plates facing pp. 218 and 250, and in Figs. 55 and 56. The jar found at Daphnae, and the Greek amphora found, like the Fran9ois Vase, in Etruria, are evidences of the wide influence of Attic skill in ceramics. A fairly distinct line of demarcation between the first and second period seems to be supplied by the fact that all the vases except one found in the Marathon tomb are black- figured, whereas most of the fragments excavated on the Acropolis — relics of the sack of Athens by Xerxes — are of red- figured vases. This appears to prove that a sudden change of style took place between 490 and 480 ; but we must reckon here with the facts that for sepulchral purposes the old- fashioned black-figure vases were preferred long after the advent of the red-figure style, and that even in the fourth 475 ANCIENT GREECE century, or later, antique black-figured vases continued to be given as prizes at the Panatlienaic festivals (Fig. 55). It is likely that for a considerable time vases of both kinds were produced, and it seems certain that some celebrated craftsmen worked in both styles.^ In these vases of the second classic period, the figures, which are of the natural red colour of the baked clay, are blocked out against a background of black pigment, the contours being softened by delicate incised lines, while details on the red surface are filled in with lighter shades of black. The best vases in this style are of incomparable dignity in composition and show exquisite skill in execution (see Figs. 92 and 141). White Athenian lekythi (sepulchral oil-flasks) seem to have been in fashion contemporaneously with the red-figured vases. Many of them, especially earlier specimens, which present delicately outHned figures on a white ground, are exceedingly beautiful. (See Frontispiece and I^ist of Illustrations under Fig. 141.) Towards the end of the fourth century the simplicity, dignity, and classic repose of Greek vase-painting began to be seriously influenced by a taste for elaboration, prettiness, and dramatic affectation. In South Italy this ' new and beautiful ' style struck root and flourished luxuriantly, while in the mother- country the art of vase-painting suffered a sudden decline, and by about 250 B.C. was practically extinct. Immense quantities of large and magnificently decorated vases, with elaborate paintings and with splendid mouldings and volute handles, were now manufactured in Apulia, I^ucania, and Campania in order to adorn the palaces and villas of Roman nobles (see plate facing p. 470 and Fig. 64). But in spite ^ of their mag- nificence these vases are for the most part of no great value artistically, the paintings being weak and fantastic in compo- sition, overcrowded with figures, and overloaded with architec- tural designs and trivial details. ^ At Palermo a vase, signed by Androkides, shows on one side black and on the other red figures. 476 LIST OF IMPORTANT DATES (See also pp. 72-73 and 150) 776. First year of first Olympiad. 743-668. First two Messenian Wars (traditional date). c. 700 (750 ?). Pheidon of Argos. 683. I/ist of annual Athenian archons begins. 664. Naval battle between Corinth and Corey r a. 648 (April 8). Solar eclipse mentioned by Archilochus. c. 632. Cylon's attempt to seize power at Athens. c. 620. Dracon's legislation. c. 600. Periander tyrant of Corinth. 594. Solon's archonship. c. 590. First ' Sacred War.' 585 (May 28). Solar eclipse during battle between Alyattes of Lydia and Astyages of Media. 560. Peisistratus seizes power. 556-540. Peisistratus is twice exiled. 540-528. Peisistratus rules Athens till his death ; his sons succeed. 523. Polycrates crucified. 514. Hipparchus killed by Harmodius and Aristogeiton. 510. Hippias banished (Tarquins banished from Rome). Sybaris destroyed by Croton. c. 510-505. Reforms of Cleisthenes. 499. The Ionic revolt. 497. Burning of Sardis. 494-3 (495-4 ?). Battle of I/ade, and fall of Miletus. 493. Themistocles archon. 490. Battle of Marathon. 489. Death of Miltiades. 482. Ostracism of Aristides. 477 ANCIENT GREECE 480. Battles of Artemisium, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Himera. 479. Battle of Plataea. 478. Capture of Sestos. Foundation of Confederacy of Delos (Athenian Empire). 474. Battle of Cyme (Italy). 472-471. Ostracism of Themistocles (d. 449). 470. Revolt of Naxos. 468. Battle of the Eurymedon. 464. Great earthquake at Sparta. Revolt of Helots. 462-460. Rise of Pericles. Cimon ostracized. 458-455. Building of the I/ong Walls. Athenian naval power at its height. 457-456. Aegina conquered by Athens. 446. Thirty Years' Peace between Athens and Peloponnesians. 440-439. Revolt and reduction of Samos. 438. Parthenon finished. 431-404. Peloponnesian War. 430. Outbreak of plague. 429. Pericles dies. 425. Capture of Spartans on Sphacteria. 424. Battle of Delion. Brasidas in Thrace Thucydides banished. 421. Peace of Nicias. 418. Battle of Mantineia. 415. The SiciHan expedition. 413. The SiciHan disaster. 411-410. The Four Hundred at Athens and restoration of democracy. 406. Battle of Arginusae. Acragas destroyed by Carthaginians. 405-367. Dionysius I of Syracuse. 405. Battle of Aegospotami. 404. Athens surrenders. The I^ong Walls demolished. ' The Thirty.' 404-371. Spartan supremacy. 403. * The Thirty ' overthrown. Democracy restored. 401. Battle of Cunaxa. 399. Death of Socrates. Return of Xenophon. 478 IMPORTANT DATES 398-360. King Agesilaus of Sparta. 395. Long Walls again begun. 394. Battles of Gorinth, Cnidus, and Coroneia. 387. Peace of Antalcidas (the ' King's Peace '), 386. Mantineia destroyed by Sparta. 382. Spartans seize the Theban Cadmeia. 379. Spartans expelled from Thebes by Pelopidas. 378. Second Athenian Confederacy (Empire) founded, exactly 100 years after the founding of the first. 371. Battle of lycuctra. Jason of Pherae. 371-362. Theban supremacy. Epameinondas rebuilds Man- tineia and founds Messene. Pelopidas in Thessaly ; he is killed at Cynoscephalae (364) and Epameinondas at Mantineia (362). 361-360. Agesilaus in Egypt ; his death. 359-336. Philip II of Macedonia. 346. Peace of Philocrates. Phocians crushed. Philip president of Pythian Games. 339. Timoleon defeats the Carthaginians on the Crimisus. 338. Battle of Chaeroneia. 336. Philip assassinated. 336-323. Alexander the Great. FOUNDATION OF EARLY GREEK COLONIES Cyprus has Mycenaean kings, Sybaris, c. 721. c. 1400. Taras, c. 708. ' Aeolian migration,' c. 1200. Croton, c. 702. ' Ionian migration,' c. iioo. Gela, c. 688. Cyprus colonized by Hellenes, Chalcedon, c. 685. c. 1050. Byzantium, Sestos, Abydos, Doris colonized, c. 900. Cyzicus, c. 650. Cyme in Italy founded, c. 800 Cyrene, c. 630. (or earlier). Selinus, c. 610. Naxos, in Sicily, c. 735. MassaHa, c. 600. Catane, Himera, Syracuse, and Acragas, c. 580. Corcyra, c. 734. 479 LIST OF THE PERSIAN KINGS Gyrus, 559 {549 ?)-529. Sardis taken, 546. Babylon taken, 538. Cambyses, 529-522. Egypt conquered, 525. The false Smerdis (usurper for seven months), 522-521. Darius I (son of Hystaspes), 521-485. Thrace conquered, Scythia invaded, 512. Marathon, 490. Xerxes I, 485-465. Salamis, 480. Artabanus (usurper for seven months), 465-464. Artaxerxes I (lyongimanus), 464-425. Xerxes II (two months), 425. Sogdianus (seven months), 425-424. Darius II (Ochus and Nothus), 424-405. Married Parysatis, Artaxerxes II (Mnemon), 405-359. Revolt of Cyrus the younger. 'A nabasis. * Cunaxa, 401 . Artaxerxes III (Ochus), 359-338. Arses, 338-336. Darius III (Codomannus), 336-331. Conquered by Alexander at Arbela, 331. Note. Darius I was probably of the same family (Achaemenidae) as Cyrus, but was not the son of Cambyses. Sogdianus and Darius II were illegitimate brothers of Xerxes II. Darius III was a distant relative of Arses. With these exceptions and two brief-lived usurpations the crown descended from father to son. 480 LIST OF THE CHIEF GREEK WRITERS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND SCULPTORS I. Poets, Historians, and Homer. Hesiod. Archilochus, /. c. 700. Semonides, ^. c. 660. Tyrtaeus, c. 660. Stesichorus, c. 632-556. Alcman,^. c. 630. Arion,_/?. c. 625. Alcaeusl „ r Sappho ]fl' '' ^^^' S'il<MV^*.£u6oo.^^^_^ Theognis,/. c, 550. Ibycus,^. c, 540. II. Philosophers Thales, c. 636-546. Anaximander, c. 610-545. Anaximenes, /. c. 544. Pythagoras,^, c. 540-510. Xenophanes, /. c. 540-500. Parmenides, c. 513-445. Heracleitus, /. c. 500. Anaxagoras, c, 500-428. III. Sculptors Ageladas, c, 540-455. Antenor,/. c. 500. Calamis, c. 500-430. Pheidias, c. 490-432. Myron, c. 500-410. Orators Anacreon,/. c. 530. Simonides, c. 556-467. Kpicharmus, c. 540-450. Aeschylus, 525-456. Pindar, c. 522-442. Sophocles, 495-406. Herodotus, c. 484-426. Euripides, 480-406. Thucydides, 471-401. Aristophanes, c. 445-380. Xenophon, c. 444-350. Isocrates, 436-338. Demosthenes, c. 385-322. Zeno, c. 488-420. Empedocles, c. 480-425. Protagoras, c. 480-410. Socrates, 469-399. Democritus, 460-361. Plato, 428-347. Aristotle, 384-322. Polycleitus, c. 480-412. Paeonius,/. c. 425 (450 ?). Scopas,/. c. 370. Praxiteles,;^, c. 360. lyysippus,/. c. 330. 2H 4-81 I INDEX AahmeS I, 25 Aahmes II — see Amasis Abac, 429 . Abaris, 137 Abdera, 186 Abu Simbel, colossi at, xv, 43, 144 Abydos, 250 Academeia, 408 Acanthus, 337 Achaea, Athens and, 294 ; in Pelo- ponnesian War, 336 Achaean supremacy, 28-36 ; Homer's evidence relative to, 64-70 Achaeans, origin of, 7, 75 ; con- querors of Aegaean peoples, 28 ; capture Thebes, 33 ; finer qualities, 35-36 ; inspire new religion, 48 ; funeral customs, 48, 66 Achaemenes, 248, 254 Achaemenidae, 189 Achaeus, 75 Acharnians of Aristophanes, 366 Achermus, 224 Achilles, 34, 287 Achilles and Memnon group at Olympia, 382 Achilles, Shield of, 70-71 Achradina, 341 w., 342, 405 Acragas, 120, 274, 275, 277, 278, 404 ; temples at, 451 Acrocorinthus, xv, 83 Acropolis, Athens, xviii, xxiv ; early sculpture found at, 227- 229 ; rebuilding on, under the Empire, 290, 297 ; theatre of Dionysus on, xxiv, 310 ; pottery found at, 475 Admetus, 290 Aeacidae, 221, 222, 281 Aeetes, 61 Aegae, 424 «., 434 Aegaean civilization, 1-36 ; race, 30, 31 ; language, 37 ; age, approxi- mate chronology, 72-73 Aegicores, 87 «. Aegina, 142, 179 ; remains of temple of Athene at, 231-233 ; and sculp- ture, 232 ; conflict with Athens, 245, 293 ; joins Confederacy of Delos, 293 ; in Peloponnesian War, 329 Aeginetan marbles, 231-233 ; war, 245 Aeginetans, at Salamis, 266; Pin- dar and, 281 ; in Peloponnesian War, 329-330 Aegospotami, 326, 332, 344, 388 Aeneas, and the i^lymi, 118 Aeolians, origin of, 75 ; migration of, 76-78 Aeolis, colonization of, 76 Aeolus, 75 Aeschines, 429, 430, 439, 440, 441 Aeschylus, xvii ; at Marathon, 242, 310; description of Salamis, 266, 267, 312, 315 ; intellectual quality, 278 ; and development of Attic drama, 310; life, 311 ; works, 311- 319 Aesop, i6in. Action, 129 Agamemnon, and Mycenae, 9 ; tomb of, 10 Agamemnon of Aeschylus, 317-318 Agarista, 132, 247 Agathocles, 408 Agathon, 424 Ageladas, 226, 309, 382 Agesilaus, 391, 392, 393, 394. 396, 399 Agias, 444 Agis, 344, 392 n. Agora, in Homer, 67 Ahriman, 185 Ajax of Sophocles, 358-359 Alalia, 123, 274 Alaric, 302 Alcaeus, 128, 167-168 Alcamenes, 308 Alcestis of :Euripides, 362, 363 «. Alcibiades, xxi, 326, 337, 338, 340, 342, 343, 345 n., 367; on Socrates, 375 INDEX Alcmaeonidae, 135, 137 ; and Peisis- tratidae, 174, 177, 178 ; and temple of Apollo at Delphi, 177, 450 Alcman, 96, 165-166 Aleuadae, 279, 423 Alexander I of Macedon, 268, 270, 279, 423. 424 Alexander II, 397, 424 Alexander III (the Great), 124 w., 279 «., 422, 423, 424, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 439, 440. 444, 445, 44^ ; destroys Thebes, 435 ; and Stagei- ros, 443 ; and the Branchidae, 452 ; and the temple of Artemis, Ephe- sus, 452 ; coinage of, 463 Alexander of Bpirus, 433, 434 Alexander of Lyncestis, 434 Alexander of Pherae, 397 Alexander Sarcophagus, xxiii, 445 Alexandrian library, i, 311 w. Alphabet, introduction of, into Europe, 41 Altis, 154 Alyattes, 148 Amasis (Aahmes II), 145, 187, 450 Amazon, statue by Polycleitus, xxii, 385 Ameinias, 242, 311 Amenemhat III, 25 Amenhotep III, 25, 27 Ampe, 237 Amphictionic Council, 156, 261 «,, 427, 429, 430, 431 Amphictiony, Ionic, 79 Amphion, 32 Amphipolis, 235, 337, 338, 426 ; Socrates at, 375 Amphissa, 431 Amphora, 'false-necked,* ix Amyntas I, 424 ; II, 424 ; III, 424, 425 Anabasis of Xenophon, 399, 400 ; extracts from, 400-403 Anacreon, 187, 197, 198-199, 469 Anaxagoras, 205, 308, 325, 331 ; philosophy of, 324-325 ; and Democritus, 369 Anaximander, 192, 204-205, 320 Anaximenes, 205 Ancona, 405 Androkides, 476 n. Antalcidas, 393 Antalcidas, Peace of, 389, 393, 437 Antenor, 230 Antigone of Sophocles, 314, 358, 360 Antioch, statue representing the city, 4i6n. Antiochos, sculptor, xx 484 Antiochus Kpiphanes, and the Athe- nian Olympieion, 456 Antipater, 440 Antisthenes, 442 Apella, 93 Apelles, 444, 445 Aphaia, 231, 450 Aphetae, 258 Aphrodite, Cnidian, xxii, 417 ; of Melos, 447, 448 Aphrodite, the Paphian goddess, iii Aphrodite, temple of, on Mount Eryx, 453 Apollo, probable northern origin of, 58 ; the Delian statue, 152 n. ; temple of, at Corinth, 216 w., 449 ; throne of the image at Amyclae, 220, 221 ; statues of, 225 ; respect of Persians for, 239 n. ; temple of, at Phigaleia, 216, 217, 300, 453 ; temple of, at Delphi, 450 ; temple of, at Selinus, 450-451 ; temple of, at Didyma, 451 Apollo, 'Averter of Pestilence,' statue, 330 n. Apollo Belvedere, 447, 448 Apollo Citharoedus, 419 Apollo Epikouros, 453 Apollo Saurocionos, 417, 418 Apollodorus, 421 ApoUonion, Selinus, 450-451 Apology of Plato, 377 Apoxyomenos, 444 ' Aqayuasha,' 26, 28, 29 Arbela tablet, 446 n. Arcadian confederation, 396 Arcesilaus IV, 280 Archelaus, 421, 424 and n. Archidamus, 328, 329 Archilochus, 163-164 Architecture, orders of Greek, 215- 217 Archons, 86 Archytas, 210, 407 Ardericca, 239 Ardys, 148 Areopagiticus of Isocrates, 437, 438- 439 Areopagus, 134, 181, 313; council of the, 292 Argades, 87 Arginusae, 343 Argives, and Persian invasion, 257 ; in Peloponnesian War, 338 ; Mace- donian kings descended from, 423- 424 Argolis, Dorian invasion of, 83 INDEX Argos, Pelasgic, 34 Argos, southern, founded, 34 ; Dorian occupation, 83 ; development, 123- 124 ; and sculpture, 225, 304, 308, 309 ; conquered by Sparta, 245 ; in Peloponnesian War, 338 ; joins league against Sparta, 392 Arimaspi, 192 Ariobarzanes, 399 Arion, 131, 166 Aristagoras, 205, 236, 243 Aristeas, 137, 192 Aristides, 243, 247-248, 265, 266, 287, 289, 291. 312, 436 Aristion, stele of, 226, 385 Aristippus, 442 Aristodemus, Dorian king, 91 Aristodemus, Messenian hero, 125 Aristogeiton, 176, 177 Aristomenes, 126 Aristophanes, xxi, 3 12 w., 313, 331, 333, 364-365, 366 ; works, 366-368 ; and Cleon, 366-367 ; and Socrates, 367, 376-377 Aristoteles of Thera, 145 Aristotle, xxiii ; and the philosophy of Anaxagoras, 325 ; on Euripi- des, 357 ; on the Sophists, 2t2P '> and theteachings of Socrates, Xl^'> life, 443 Armour, Homeric, 13 Art, quality of ancient Cretan, 18 ; connexion between Mycenaean and Cretan, 20 Artabanus, 249, 290 Artabazanes, 248 Artabazus, Persian commander, 268, 270, 271, 272 Artabazus, satrap, 427 Artaphemes, 234, 236, 238 Artaxerxes I, 290, 293 Artaxerxes II, 343, 389-393. 397 Artaxerxes III, 427, 433 n. Artemis, Delian statue, xv ; Orthia, temple of, loi ; temple of, at Bphesus, 215 n., 419, 452 ; Naxian statue, 223 ; Brauronian, temple of, 301 Artemisia of Halicarnassus, 254, 265, 266 «., 267, 320 Artemisia, wif e of Mausolus, 420, 443 Artemisium, 258, 259 Ascalon, 148 Aspasia, 296, 331 Assurbanipal (Sardanapalos), 142 Assyria, in the Dark Age, 112 ; kings, eighth to sixth century, 150 Astarte, iii ; temple of, on Mount Eryx, 453 Atalanta, supposed statue of, 419 Athene, and tutelage of Athens, 32 ; remains of pediment of old temple of, on Acropolis, 228 ; remains of temple of, at Aegina, 231-233 ; in Marsyas group, xix-xx, 309 ; temple of, at Aegina, 450 ; temple of, at Acragas, 451 ; temple of, on Sunion, 457 Athene Lemma, xix, 298, 300, 307 Athene Nike, temple of, 301, 457 Athene Parthenos, xx, 302, 307, 308 ; shield of, xviii Athene Polias, temple of, 297, 455 Athene Promachos, 298-300 Athenians, racial origin, 78 ; at Plataea, 269, 271, 272 ; character, contrasted with that of Spartans, 285-286 Athens, in pre-Dorian times, 31-32 ; and Dorians, 76, 85 ; Codrus and, 85 ; under archons, 86 ; becomes capital of Attica, 87 ; develop- ment of the state, 87, 134-142 ; division of the community into tribes, 87 ; social order, 88 ; Cylon's insurrection, 136 ; Dracon's laws, 138-139; Solon's constitution, 139- 140 ; under Peisistratidae, 173- 177 ; return of Alcmaeonidae, 177 ; Cleisthenes' reforms, 180 ; sacked by Persians, 264 ; Persians' second occupation, and destruction, 269, 270 ; rise of the Empire, 283-296 ; and Confederacy of Delos, 287- 296 ; Themistocles and, 289-290, 297 ; building of walls, 289-290, 297 ; breaks with Sparta, and joins with Argos, 293 ; assists Egypt, 293 ; war with Corinth and Aegina, 293 ; routed at Tanagra, 294 ; truce with Sparta, 294 ; war with Persia renewed, 294 ; Long Walls built, 294, 297 ; truce with Persia, 294 ; defeated at Coroneia, 294 ; and Thirty Years' Peace, 294 ; and her temples, 300 ; in Peloponnesian War, 326^-345 ; the great plague, 330 ; the Long Walls demolished, 344 ; under the Spartan supremacy, 388 ; joins league against Sparta, 392 ; re- gains her power, 394 ; during the Theban supremacy, 396, 397 ; and the rise of Caria and Macedonia, 48s INDEX 422 ; Philip of Macedon and, 426, 429, 430, 431,432; the ' Social War, ' 426-427 ; in third Sacred War, 42^, 429 ; Thebes joins, against Philip II, 431 ; and the defeat of Chaeroneia, 431-432 ; appeals to Persia, 433 n. ; finally over- whelmed at Crannon, 434 n. ; atti- tude in the conflict between Alex- ander and Thebes, 436 Athos, 249-250 Atossa, 189, 248 Atreus, tomb of, 10; Treasury of, 11, 216 n. ; succeeds Eurystheus, 75 Attains, general of Philip II, 433, 434, 435 Attains, king of Pergamon, 447 Attica, resistance of, to conquest, 31 ; Dorians and, 76, 82 ; Athens be- comes capital of, 87 ; origin of the name, 87 ; in Peloponnesian War, 329, 330, 332. 344 Atticus, Herodes, 301 Augeas, 153 Axe, double, xi, xii, 49-50 Baai,, 109 Babylonia, conquest of, by Cyrus, 187 Bacchae of Euripides, 362 Bacchante, statue by Scopas, 419 Bacchiadae, 129 Bacchylides, 199, 279 Bagoas, 433 n. Banqueters of Aristophanes, 366 Bare a, 145 Bardyia, or Smerdis, 188 Basilica, Poseidonia, xv, 454 Bathycles, 221 Batrachomyomachia, 158 Battiadae, 145 Battus, 145, 280 Bermius, 424 Bhryges, or Phrygians, Aryan origin of, 7 '^■'W^HSTfnSistophanes, 368 Boeotia, revolt of, against Athens, 294 Boeotian league, 294 Boeotians, 81 Boges, 287 Boule, in Homer, 67 ; Athenian, in- stituted, 140 ; new Athenian, 180 Branchidae, statues, 223 ; temple of the, 451-452 ; Xerxes and Alex- ander and, 452 Brasidas, 337, 338, 426 Brauro, 346 486 Bronze, in ancient Troy, 6, 7 ; intro- duced by Achaeans, 30 ; imported from Italy, 473 « Brute the Trojan, 2 Bucchero, 19, 24, 471 Bull, the, in Cretan art, 20 ; in Cretan religion, 20, 23, 56 Bull-god, identified with Zeus, 56 Byzantium, 131; revolt against Athens, 296 ; sea-fight at, 343 ; in ' Social War,' 426 ; and Philip II, 431 Cadmus, i, 32-33 Caiadas, 126 Calamis, 230-231, 308, 330 «., 417 Calaureia, 440 Caligula, and statue of Olympian Zeus, 308 Callias, 294 Callicrates, 302 Callimachus, 242 Callinus, 158 Callistratus, 177 Cambyses, father of Cyrus, 184 Cambyses, son of Cyrus, 187, 188 Canachus, 226 Candaules, 147 * Canon,' of Polycleitus, 384 Cantharus, 297 Cappadocians, 8 Capture of Miletus of Phrynichus, 310 Carchemish, 451 Caria, 343 «., 422 Carrey, drawings of the Parthenon by. 306, 307 Carthage, founded by Phoenicians, 109; demolished, no; power in Western Mediterranean, 274 ; and Sicily, 403-408 ; invaded by Syra- cuse, 408 Cassander, 436 Castalian Fount, xv, 157 Castor and Pollux (?), statues, 447 ' Catalogue of Ships,' 83 n. Catane, 118 Cecrops, 31, 32 Ceos, 199 Cephala, excavations at, 19 Cephisodotus, 416 Cerameicus, xxi, 98, 330 Chabrias, 426 Chaeroneia, 422, 431-432, 434, 439 Chalcedon, 116 Chalcidian Confederacy, 426, 428 Chalcis, 128, 129, 427 Chaldaeans, and astronomy, 202 n. Charaxus, 167, 170 INDEX Chates, general, 426, 427, 431, 432 Chares, sculptor, 444, 446 Chares of Teichiussa, xvi, 223 Charilaus, 91 Charioteer of Delphi, 231, 308, 417 Charondas, 127 Cheirisophus, 391 ' Chest of Cypselus,' 129 Chetasor. 8 ma, possibility of commerce of, with ancient Troy, 6 «. Chionides, 366 Chios, 288, 426 Chiusi, 473 Choephoroe of Aeschylus, 317, 318 Choerilus, 195 Chronology of ' mythical ' age, i , 72-73 Cimmerians, xv, 61, 148 Cimon, father of Miltiades, 243 Cimon, son of Miltiades, 244, 248, 287, 289, 290, 291, 292, 294, 295, 296, 297. 298, 301, 307, 311, 312, 456 Cimon's Wall and Gate, Athens, 297, 298 Cineas, 423 Cition, 294 City, development of the, 84, 85 Clazomenae, xvi ; sarcophagus, 224 Clearchus, artist, 220 n. Clearchus, Spartan harmost, 389, 390 Cleisthenes, Athenian reformer, 132, 178, 180, 280 Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, 132 Cleitus, 436 Cleob^T^JUa^ Cleombrotus, regent, 244, 264, 268 w. Cleombrotus, king, 395 Cleomenes, 178, 236, 243-244 Cleon, 326, 331, 333-334. 336, 337. 338, 366, 367 Cleopatra, a consort of Philip II, 433 Cleophon, 344 Clouds of Aristophanes, 367 Clytaemnestra, Tomb of, 11 n. Cnidus, battle of, 389, 392; and statue of Aphrodite, 417 ; head of the Demeter statue found at, 419 Cnossus, excavations at, 18-22 ; sack of, 27 Codrus, 76, 85 Coins, portraiture in, 383, 464 ; first use of, and earliest types, 462 ; artistic advance in, 462 ; Syra- cusan, 462 ; Athenian, 462 ; per- fection in manufacture, 463 ; early Spartan iron money, 463 ; of Sicily and Southern Italy, 463 ; of Philip of Macedon, 463 ; of Alexander the Great, 463, See Plates I-VII, and explanations, pp. 464-470 Colonies, debt of Greece to, 113 ; influence upon patriotism, 114- 115 ; affection of, for the mother- country, 115 Colonization, Hellenic, causes that produced, 114; influence on the national history, 115 Colonus, 358, 360 Colophon, 122, 197 Colossus of Rhodes, 444, 446 Comedy, Old Attic, 364 Comedy, origin and development of, 365-366 ' Concordia ' temple, Acragas, 451 Confederacy of Delos, 287-288 Conon, 344, 389, 391, 392, 393 Corcyra, 118, 123, 129, 130, 296, 327, 328, 332, 334-335. 426, 464 Corcyraean oligarchs, massacre of, 334-335 Corinna, 278, 279 Corinth, xiv ; Dorian occupation, 83 ; development, 84, 123 ; under tyrannies, 1 29-1 31 ; in Pelopon- nesian War, 327, 328, 335 ; joins league against Sparta, 392 ; Philip II at, 433 ; Alexander the Great at, 435 Corinthian order, 215-216, 217 Coroebus, architect, 302 Coroebus, athlete, 123 Coroneia, xxii, 294, 337, 392 Cos, 83, 426 Cosmoi, no Council of Ten, 345 Crannon, 434 n., 440 Crates, 366 Cratinus, 366 Cratylus, 409 Cresilas, xxi, 383 Cretan civiUzation, early, 18 ; art, 18, 20, 21 ; inscriptions, 19, 20, 39 ; women's dress, 21 ; naval power, 22 ; religion, and the bull, 20, 23, 56 ; script, 38-39 ; numerical symbols, 39 ; deity, the first, 52-54. See also Crete Crete, and Vaphio cups, 18 ; excava- tions in, 18-22 ; human sacrifice in, 23 ; intercourse with Egypt, 24-26 ; writing in, 38 ; Dorians invade, 82 ; in the Dark Age, no 487 INDEX Crimea, «= Cimmeria, 148 ; Pericles at, 296 Crimisus, battle of, 407 Crissa (Cirrha), 156, 157 Crissaean plain, 156, 157, 427, 431 Critias, 344, 345 n. Critius, 230 Crito, 378 Crito of Plato, 377 Croesus, 149, 182-184, 451, 452 ; column, xvi, 182 Cross, sacred, 51 Croton, 121, 122, 474; Pythagoras at, 209 ; and the Helen of Zeuxis, 421 ; temple of Hera I^acinia near, 454 Crypteia, 90 Ctesias, 390 n. Ctesiphon, 439 Cimaxa, 390 ' Cup-bearer,' 20, 25 Curetes, 22 Cyaxares, 148 Cyclic poets, 62, 157 Cyclops of Euripides, 317 w., 362 Cylon of Athens, 136 Cylon of Croton, 210 Cyme, Aeolian, and Buboean, 117 Cyme (Cumae), in Italy, 76, 117, 277, 474; Daedalus legend and, 117; Hiero and, 277 Cynaegeirus, 242 Cynic philosophy, 443 Cynossema, 343 Cypria, 157 Cyprus, in the Dark Age, iio-iii ; early pottery in, 472 and n. Cypselus, 129 ; ' chest ' of, 129, 220 Cyrenaica, 145 Cyrene, 123, 145, 293 Cyropaedeia of Xenophon, 399 Cyrus the Great, 183-184 ; takes Babylon, 187 ; death, 187 ; tomb, 193 Cyrus the younger, 343, 389, 390, 391 Cythera, 337 Cyzicus, 343 ; coinage of, 463 Dabdai^idab, 222 Daedalus, 18; and Cyme in Italy, 117 ; and statuary, 222 Damasippus, 369 Danaides of Aeschylus, 313 Danauna, 26 Daphnae, xvi, 143, 144, 475 Darius I, xvii, 188-191, 193, 451 ; tomb of, 194 ; invades Greece, 234-243 ; death of, 248 | 488 Darius II, 343 Darius III, 433 n» Dark Age, in Egypt, 25 ; in Greece, 74-107 Datis, 234, 238 Deceleia, 340 Deigma, Athens, 298 Deinomenes, 280 Delion, 332, 337 ; Socrates at, 375 Delos, XV, 152, 239 ; Confederacy of, 287-288 Delphi, dedication in temple at, in honour of Plataea, 272 ; Alex- ander I's golden statue at, 424 ; and the Sacred Wars, 427 Delphic oracle, and Dorians, 81 ; and Persians, 263 ; in Peloponnesian War, 328 ; and Socrates, 371 Demades, 432 Demaratus, 238 n., 244, 254 Demarete, 275, 276, 277 n. Demareteia, 276, Plate IV Demeter statue, head of, by Scopas (?), 419 Demeter, temple of, at Paesttmi, 217, 454 Demetrius Poliorcetes, 448 Demiurgi, 88 Democritus, 369-370 Demosthenes, 335, 336, 337, 341, 342, 439-441 ; and Philip II, 423, 427 n., 428, 429, 430, 431, 432, 434 ; at Chaeroneia, 432 ; and Alexander the Great, 435, 436 ; extract from the Third Philippic, 441 ; extract from De Corona, 441 Dercyllidas, 391 Deucalion, i, 255 Diadoumenos, 384 Dicasteries, 308 Dictaean cave, 48 Didyma, 237; temple of the Bran- chidae at, 451-452 Diogenes, 435, 443 Dion, 406, 407 Dionysia, Great, 175 Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, 393, 394. 396, 405. 406 Dionysius II, 406, 407 ; and Plato, 406 Dionysus, theatre of, Athens, 301, 310 ; festivals of, and beginnings of Attic drama, 309 ; Alexander the Great and, 436 Dipoenus, 223 Dipylon, 98 ' Dipylon ' antiquities, 98-101 INDEX Discoholos, XX, 304, 309 Dorian invasion, i n., 80-83 Dorians, in Homer, 64 ; origin, 75, 81 ; alliance with Heracleidae, 75 ; repelled in Attica, 76, 82, 85 ; and oracle of Delphi, 81 ; religion, 81 ; found Sparta, 82 ; invade Crete, 82 ; invade Argolis, 83 ; at My- cenae and Tiryns, 83 ; occupy Argos, Corinth, Megara, Aegina, Rhodes, and Cos, 83 ; found Halicarnassus and Cnidus, 83 ; contempt for fortifications, 89 ; lack of art instinct, 96 Doric order, 216, 217 Doris, 81 Dorkis, 285 Dorus, 75 Doryphoros, 384 Double axe, xi, xii, 49-50 Dracon, 138 ; laws of, 138-139 Drama, beginnings of Attic, 175, 309 ; development of, 310, 355- 356, 365 ; comedy, 364-366 Dress, Minoan and Mycenaean, 12, 14-15, 458 ; Homeric or Achaean, 14-15, 458-459 ; ' Dipylon,' 99- 100, loi, 459 ; the ' Doric chiton,' 459 ; early Athenian, 459-460 ; later Athenian, 460-461 ; in ' clas- sical ' statuary, 460-461 Dying Gaul (or Dying Gladiator), 447 Dyrrhachium — see Epidamnus Ecci,KSiA, 135, 181 Eelios, 117 Egesta — see Segesta Egypt, intercourse with Crete, 24- 26 ; and Mycenae, 26-27 '» approxi- mate chronology of the ancient civilization, 72-73 ; in the Dark Age, IH-112 ; Aethiopian domina- tion, 112 ; Assyrian domination, 112; Psamtik liberates, 143; re- ceives Greek settlers, 143 ; Nebu- cadnezar's invasion, 144 ; astro- nomical science in, 149 tz. ; kings, eighth to sixth century, 150 ; under Aahmes, 187 ; conquered by Persia, 187, 188, 248 ; helped by Athens, 293 Egyptians of Aeschylus, 313 Eion, 267, 287, 337 Eirene, statue by Cephisodotus, 416 Elateia, 431 Eleans, Sparta and, 392 | Eleatic philosophy, and Socratic con- ception of the divine Will, 322 Electra of Sophocles, 318, 359 ; of Euripides, 318, 363-364 Electron coinage, 147, 462 Elephantine, xv, 320 Eleusinian Mysteries, 302, 311 Eleusis, 140 ; Hall of Mysteries at, 300, 302 Elgin, lyord, and Parthenon sculp- tures, 306 Elpinice, sister of Cimon, 296 Elymi, 118, 453 Embassy of Aeschines, 439 Empedocles, 137, 322-323 ; philo- sophy of, 323-324 Emporion, at the Peiraeus, 298 Epameinondas, 124, 394, 395, 396, 397» 398 Ephesus, temples of Artemis at, 182, 217, 452, 453 Ephetae, 134, 138 n. Ephialtes, Athenian politician, 292, 313 Ephialtes, traitor at Thermopylae, 261 Ephors, 90, 93 Epicharmus, 365 Epicurus, 369, 443 Epidamnus (Dyrrhachium), 130, 296, 327. 328 Epigoni, raze Thebes, 33 Epimenides, 137 Epipolae, 341 n., 342, 405 Epirus, the women of, 433 Eratosthenes, and ' prehistoric ' chro- nology, I Erechtheion, 31 n., 215 n., 300, 307, 455 Erechtheus, 31, 32, 455 Erechtheus, ' house ' of, 31 n., 306, 455 Eretria, 128, 129, 239 Eros of Praxiteles, 417, 418 Eryx, Mount, 453 Etruria, and Greek pottery, 473-474; metalwork of, 473 n. ' Etruscan ' pottery, 473 Etruscans, 29, 117 Euboea, revolt of, against Athens, 294 ; in Peloponnesian War, 343 Eubulus, 426, 428, 429 n. Eucleides, 442 Eugammon, 145 Eumenes, 447 Eumenides, 360 and n. Eumenides of Aeschylus, 312, 317, 318 489 INDEX Eunomia of TjttaevLS, i6o Eupatridae, 88, 134 EupoKs, 366 Euripides, xxi, 311 m., 325, 346, 357- 358, 366 ; estimate of his work, 361- 362 ; life, 362 ; works, 362-364 Euryalus, fort, 405 Eurybiadas, 264, 265 Eurymedon, Athenian admiral, 340, 34i> 352 Eurymedon, battle of, 288, 290, 297 Eurystheus, 75 Euxine, colonization of. and trade with, 1 1 5-1 16 Evagoras, 344, 393 Evans, Sir Arthur, excavations in Crete by, 18-22 Exhortations of Solon, 161, 162 FarnESK Bull, 419, 446 Fikellura ware, xiv, 473 Fire-bearing Prometheus of Aeschylus, 316 Four Hundred, council, 343 Fran9ois Vase, xiv, xxiv, 43, 475 Frogs of Aristophanes, 312 n., 314, 315 «., 368 Furies, Areopagus and the, 134 Gades, 117 Galatia, 447 Ganymede group, 443 Gargaphia, 270 Gela, 120, 311 Geleontes, 87 Gelo, 120, 256, 275, 276 Georgi, 88 Geraneia, passes of, 293 Gerusia, 92 Goethe, and the ' Homeric age,* 62 Golden Crown, controversy of the, 439, 440 Gorgias, 370, 437 Gorgo, 243 n. Greece, origin of the name, 35 n. Gyges, 147, 148 Gylippus, 341, 342 Hadria, 405 Hagia Triada, excavations at, 19 ; sarcophagus foimd at, 22 Halicarnassus, 320 ; Mausoleum of, 420 Hall of the Double Axes, 19 Hall of Mysteries, Eleusis, 300, 302 ' Hallstatt civilization,' 33 n., 34 Hamilcar, 275, 276, 404 490 Hannibal, general, 404 Hannibal the Great, 454 ' Harbour, The,' Athens, 297 Harmodius, 176 Harpagus, 186 Harpalus, 440 * Harpy tomb,' 224 Hatshepsut, Queen, 25 Hecabe, Queen, 8 Hecataeus, 192, 205, 319, 320 Hecatompedos, 302, 455 Helen of Zeuxis, 421, 454 Helena of Euripides, 364 Heliaea, 140 Hellanicus, 319, 320 Hellas, 35 ; becomes the general name for all lands inhabited by Greeks, 35 Hellen, 34, 74 Hellenes, Aryan origin, 4, 34 Hellenic script, 41 Hellenica of Xenophon, 400 Hellespont, Xerxes and, 250 Helots, 90, 94 Hera, Samian statue, 232 ; statue by Polycleitus, 384 ; temple of, at Olympia, 449 ; temple of, at Samos, 454 Hera Lacinia, temple of, at Acragas, 451 ; temple of,nearCroton, 451, 454 Heracleidae, ' Return ' of, 75 Heracleitus, 205-207 ; Plato and the doctrines of, 409 Heracles, 75, 117, 423 ; and Olympic Games, 153 ; statue by Lysippus, 444 Heraion, Olympia, 449 Hermes, mutilation of the busts of, at Athens, 340 Hermes of Praxiteles, 417, 449 Hermocrates, 340 Hermodorus, 205 Herodotus, xxi ; on events in the rise of Persia, 182-191 ; his geography, 192-193 ; story of the Persian invasions, 234-273 ; at Thurii, 295, 320 ; life, 320 ; value as historian, 321 ; on the claim of Alexander I, 423 ; story of the Argive origin of Macedonian kings, 423-424 Herostratus, 452 Hesiod, date, 62, 102-103 ; and the ' heroic age,' 62 ; birthplace, 103 ; contest with Homer, 103 ; works, 103 ; compared with Homer, 104 ; the Erga, 103-107 ; the Theo- I gonia, 103, 104, 107, 316 INDEX Hiero I, 120, 231, 275, 277, 279, 280, 311,314.474 Hiero II, 408 Hieronymus, 408 Himera, 118, 146, 275, 276, 404, 408 Himilco, 404, 405 Hipparchus, 176, 177 Hippias, 176-178, 237, 239, 244, 423 Hippias, the Sophist, 371 Hippocrates, Athenian general, 337 Hippocrates, physician, 330 n., 470 Hippodamus, 295, 298 Hissarlik, Hill of, 5 Histiaeus, 191, 235 Hittite script, 8 Hittites, and ancient Troy, 8 Homer, transmutation of the gods in, 59 ; inconsistencies in, 61 n. ; possible date, 62 ; birthplace, 62- 63 ; nationaUty, 63 ; and Hesiod, 63 ; local of the poems, 63-64 ,* so-called tomb, 64 ; portrays age of the Achaean supremacy, 64- 70 ; social system in, 66-67 »* houses and palaces in, 67-68 ; art in, 68 ; affection and kinship in, 68 ; love in, 68-69 ; and the ' Shield of Achilles,' 70 ' Homeric age,' 60-71 ; authenticity of, 60-62 Hophra (Apries), 144, 145 Hopletes, 87 Horns, religious symbol, 49 Horse, introduction into Greece, 13 ; mto Egypt, 13 Hydarnes, 261 Hyksos, 25 Hymn to Apollo, 128 Hypnos, xxii Hypsipyle of Euripides, 311 Hyria, 27 Hysiae, 123 Hystaspes, i88 lAPYGiANS, Messapian, 27 lavones, 78 Ibycus, 187, 197-198 Ictinus, 297, 300, 302, 383, 453 Idol- worship, 218-221 Iliad, authenticity of, 61-62 Iliad, Little, 157 Ilium, 251 Illyria, ravaged by Philip II, 430 Illyrians, 80 Imbros, 242 ' Immortals,' at Thermopylae, 261 ; at Plataea, 271 Inachus, i Inaros, 293 Ion, 75. 87 Ion of Euripides, 362 Ionia, colonization of, 76 ; develop- ment of, 79, 128 ; revolt of, 191, 234 et seq. lonians, origin of, 75 ; migration of, 76, 78-80 ; Athenians related to, 78 Ionic Amphictiony, 79 Ionic order, 216, 217 Iphicrates, 397, 426 Iphigeneia in Aulis of Euripides, 362, 364 Iphigeneia in Tauris, 362, 363 «., 364 Iphitus, 123, 153 Iran, 184 Iron, in ancient Troy, 7 w. ; among Aegaean peoples, 30; Achaeans and, 30 ; Dorians and, 82 ; mentioned in Homer, 61 n. Isagoras, 178 Isocrates, xxiii, 394, 426, 428, 430, 437-439. 441. 443 Issa, 405 Isthmian Games, 156 Istone, 335 Italy, Greek colonies in, 121-123 ; Greek pottery in, 473, 474, 476 Ithome, Mount, siege of Messenians on, 292 J A SON of Pherae, 395, 423 Jeremiah, 144-145 Kai,i,irhoE, 175, 176 «. Kamares ware, xiii, 472 Kephtiu, 25-26 Khyan, 25 ' King's Peace,' 389, 393, 437 Knights of Aristophanes, 366 Knosos — see Cnossus Labotas, 91 Labrys, xi, xii, 49-50 Labyrinth of King Minos, 18, 19 ; Egyptian, 25 ; at Clusium, 29 n. Lacedaemon — see Sparta Lade, 237 ' Lady of Wild Creatures,' 52 Laios of Aeschylus, 314 Lamachus, 340 Lampsacus, 291, 325 Language, Aegaean, 37 ; Pelasgic, 37 Laocoon, statue, 419, 446 Larisa, 34 491 INDEX Lekythi, ix, xxiv, 476 Lemnos, 242, 300 I^enaia, 175 Leochares, 443, 448 Leonidas, xviii, 244 ; at Thermo- pylae, 260-263 Leontini, 118, 339 lyeotychidas, 244, 273, 285 Lesbos, 128, 288, 426 Lesche, Cnidian, 301 Leucas, 130 ieucippus, 369 Leuctra, 389, 395, 423 Lion Gate, at Mycenae, 10, 216 n. Long Walls, Athens, 297, 344 Loosing of Prometheus of Aeschylus, 316 Lucumones, 474 Lyceum, Athens, 443 Lycia, annexed by Mausolus, 427 * Lycian Sarcophagus,' 445 n. Lycian writing, 40 Lycians, Aryan origin of, 7 Lycius, 382 Lycomedes, 287 Lycurgus, 91, 92, 93 «., 123 Lydia, 146-150 Lydians, Aryan origin of, 7 Lygdamis, 320 Lysander, 344, 345, 388, 389, 392 and n. Lysias, xxi, 295, 320, 345 w., 377, 394 Lysicrates, monument of, 216 Lysippus, 443-445, 446 Lysistrata of Aristophanes, 368 Macedonia, during Persian supre- macy, 190 ; Theban supremacy, 397, 422 ; rises into power, 422 ; relationship to Hellas, 423 ; early inhabitants, 423 ; development of the nation, 423 ; claim of the royal line to Hellenic descent, 423 ; sways Hellas, 434 Maeonians, 147 Magi, 185 Magna Graecia, 121-123 Magnes, 366 Magnesia, 291 Mago, 405 Malchus, 274 Mandrocles, 421 Mantineia, battles at, 338, 398 ; razed by Sparta, 393 ; rebuilt, 396 ; sides with Sparta, 398 Marathon, battle of, 239-243 492 Mardonius, 237-238, 248, 249, 254, 264, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272 n. Margites, 158 Marsyas, statue, xix, xx, 304, 307, 309 Masistes, 254 Masistius, 270, 272 n. Massagetae, 187 Massalia, 122 Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, 420, 443 Mausolus, 420, 422, 427 Medea of Buripides, 362, 363 n. Media, kings of, in eighth to sixth century, 150 Megabates, 236 Megabazus, 191, 235, 424 Megacles, archon, 136 Megacles, subject of Pindar's ode, xviii, 280 Megalopolis, 396, 453 Megara, 116, 118 ; under tyrannies, 1 31-132 ; Theognis and, 195- 196; Treasure-house of , at Delphi, 214 n. ', Athenian protectorate over, 293 ; revolts against Athens, 294 ; Athens surrenders claims upon, 294 ; in Peloponnesian War, 328, 336 Megara, Hyblaean, 118 Megistias, 261 n. ' Meidias ' vase, xx Melesias, 295 Melos, 338-339, 448 Memphis, captured by Greeks, 293 Mena, 24 Mernmadae, 147 Messene, 125 n., 396 Messenian wars, 124-126 Messenians, siege on Mount Ithome, 292 ; in Peloponnesian War, 335, 336 ; expelled from Naupactus, 392 ; return of, 396 Metalwork, Mycenaean, 16 ; Etruscan, 473 n. Metapontion, 122, 210 Methone, 427 Metiochus, 242 Micciades, 224 Micon, xvii Midas, 147 ; Gardens of, 424 Miletus, 202, 237, 296 Milo, 210 Miltiades, the elder, 174 Miltiades, the younger, xvii, 174, 191, 289, 307 ; at Marathon, 240, 242 ; death of, 244 ; and Lemnos, 242, 300 INDEX Mimnermus, i6o Minoa, 24 Minoan civilization — see Cretan civilization, &c. Minos the Cretan, 2, 18, 23, 24, 25 Minos, son of Zeus, 23, 56 Minos, the Throne of, 19 Minotaur myth, 22, 23 Mnesicles, 301 ' Mourners, the,' 445 Munychia, 297 Mycale, battle of, 272-273 Mycale, Mount, 79 Mycenae, excavations at, 9-12 ; decline, and destruction, 9-10, 27 ; tombs at, 10-12 ; intercourse with Egypt, 26-27 Mycenaean pottery, 7, 471, 472, 473 ; dress, 12, 14-15 Myrcinus, 235 Myron, xix, xx, 226, 304, 309, 382 Mysians, Aryan origin of, 7 My son, 133 ' Mythical' age, i, 2 Mytilene, 128, 332, 333, 334 Myus, 291 Nabonid, 1 86 Naucraries, 88 Naucratis, 143 Naupactus, 75, 292, 392 Naxos, 118, 288 Neapolis, 405 Nebucadkezar, 144 Necho, 143-144, 451 Nemean Games, 156 Neoptolemus, 433 Nereid Monument, 385 Nericon, 130 Nesiotes, 230 Nicandra, xv Nicias, 334, 336, 338, 340, 341, 342 Nicias, Peace of, 326, 338, 367 Nicomedes, 417 Nike of Paeonius, 309, 336-337, 448 Nike of Samothrace, 448 Nike, the first statue of, 223-224 Niobe group, 445-446 Nisaea, 293, 336, 337 Odeion, 300, 301 ; of Herodes, xxiv, 301 Odyssey, authenticity, 61-62 ; con- fusion in, 61 ; B^rard's theory, 61 n. ', Nausicaa's alleged author- ship of, 64 portrays the Achaean world, 64-65 ; religion in, 65 ; funeral ceremonies in, 66 Oedipus, 33 Oedipus of Aeschylus, 314 Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles, 360 Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, 360 Olympia, temple of Zeus at, 308, 309, 456 . Olympiads, commencement of, 153 w. Olympias, 433, 434 Olympic Games, and Greek chrono- logy, 123 ; foundation and de- velopment, 153-155 ; abolition, 155 ; Alexander I at, 423, 424 Olympieion, Acragas, 120, 217, 450, 451 Olympieion, Athens, xxiv, 216, 456 Olynthus, 268, 426, 428 Onatas, 221, 232, 417 Onomacritus, 66 «., 248 Onomarchus, 427, 429 Oresieia of Aeschylus, 293, 311, 317 Orestes, and AeoUc migration, 76 ; and the Areopagus, 134 Ormuzd, 185 Orphic teachings, value of, 282 Ortygia, 341 and n., 405 Ostracism, 181 Paches, 333, 334 Paeonius, 308, 337 Paestum (Poseidonia), founded, 121 ; temples at, 215, 216 n., 454 Pagasae, 77 Painting, 421 Palermo, 275, 476 n. Palladium, at Troy, 221 Pamphyli, and Pamphylia, 82 Panathenaic festival, 175, 305, 476 Panegyric of Isocrates, 394, 437-438 Panormus, 275 Paralus, son of Pericles, 331 w. Parmenides, 208, 321, 322 Parmenio, 433 Paros, 244, 419 Parrhasius, 421 Partheniae, 122 Parthenon, 215 and n., 216 n., 217, 297» 300. 302-307, 454 ; the metopes, 304 ; the frieze, 304-305 ; the pediments, 305-307 Parysatis, 389, 392 Pasargadae, 193 Pausanias, king, 344, 345, 388 Pausanias, regent, 244, 269, 284-285, 290 493 INDEX Peace of Antalcidas, 389, 393, 437 Peace of Callias, 394 Peace of Philocrates, 430 Peace of Aristophanes, 367 Peiraeus, 289, 295, 297, 298 Peisander, 392 Peisistratus, 142, 424, 455, 456 ; the tyranny of, 173-176 Pelasgians, 29-31 Pelasgic language, 37 Pelasgion, 31 Pella, 320, 424 n., 429 Pelopidae, 8, 75 Pelopidas, 394, 395, 397. 422 Peloponnesian War, 326-345 Pelops, and the Olympic Games, 153 Pentelic marble, 303 Penthelids, 128 Perdiccas I, 424 ; II, 337, 424 ; III, 424. 425 Pergamon, altar of Zeus at, 419, 447 ; and sculpture, 446, 447 Periander, 129, 1 30-131, 133, 449 Fericles, xviii, xxi, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 300, 301, 302, 308, 325, 326, 329, 330, 331, 346, 347. 436 Pericles the younger, 331 w. Perinthus, 431 Perioeci, 90 Peripatetics, 443 Perpherees, 192 Persae of Aeschylus, 195, 314 Perseid dynasty, 75 Persepolis, 193-194 Persia, rise of, 1 81-189 ; under Darius, 189 ; invades Scythia, 189-192 ; invades Greece, 237- 273 ; takes Athens, 264, 269 ; defeat on the Eurymedon, 288 ; truce with Athens, 294 ; in Pelo- ponnesian War, 342, 343 ; defeats Sparta, and helps Athens, 392- 393 ; and Peace of Antalcidas, 393 ; favours Thebes, 397 Persians, ancient religion of, 184- 185 ; character, 185-186 ; as iconoclasts, 229 Persians of Aeschylus, 310 «, Petrie, Dr. Flinders, and art-periods, 17 ». Phaedo, 378 Phaedo of Plato, 377 Phaedrus of Plato, 211 Phaenarete, mother of Socrates, 379 Phalanthus, 122 494 Phalanx, of Thebans at Delion, 337 ; of Epameinondas, 395 ; Mace- donian, 425 ; the old, 425 Phalaris, 120, 274 Phaleron, 297 ' Phaleron ' ware, xiv, 473 Phaon, 168 Phamabazus, 343 n., 391, 392 Phayllus, 429 Pheidias, xvii, xviii, xix, 226, 298, 302, 304, 305, 306, 307-309, 331, 383, 385, 417. 418, 447, 456 Pheidon, and the Olympic Games, 124 Pherenikus, 280 Phigaleia, temple of Apollo at, 216, 217,300,453 Philip II of Macedon, 397, 422, 424, 425, 426, 427 ; and Demosthenes, 428, 429, 430, 431, 432 ; and Athens, 429-430 ; aggressive movements, 430-431 ; Isocrates and, 430, 439 ; and Chaeroneia, 431-432 ; invades Asia, 433 ; and Olympias, 433 ; assassination, 434 ; and Stageiros, 443 ; coinage of, 463 Philippeion, 443 Philippi, 425, 426 Philistines, 26 n. Philocrates, 429 and n. ; Peace of, 430 Philoctetes of Sophocles, 360-361 Philolaus, 210 Philomelus, 427, 429 Philosophy, Ionic school, 201 ; ^le- atic school, 201, 207, 321, 322 ; Pythagorean, 201, 21 1-2 14 ; Greek, how far indebted to Oriental philosophy, 203-204 ; Platonic, 207, 409-412 ; of Socrates, 208, 322, 409-410 ; of the Sophists, 322, 369, 370-371 ; of Empedocles, 323- 324 ; of Anaxagoras, 324-325 ; of Democritus, 369-370 ; Academic school, 442 ; Megaric (Dialectic) school, 442 ; Cyrenaic school, 442 ; Cynic school, 443 ; Stoicism, 443 ; of Aristotle (Peripatetic school), 443 Phocaeans, found Massalia, 122 ; colo- nize Corsica, 123 ; found Blea, 123 Phocion, 426, 428, 429 w., 431, 434, 436-437. 438 Phocis, conflict with Thebes, 427, 429 ; Athens and, 429 ; ravaged by Philip II, 429 ; Amphictionic Coun- cil and, 430, 431 INDEX Phoenician script, 41 Phoenicians, visit Spain, 61 «., 108 ; and Africa, 61 n. ; in the Dark Age, 108-110; colonies and trade, 108- iio ; origin of the name, 108 ; found Carthage, 109 ; introduce alphabet into Greece, 41, 109 ; as craftsmen, 109 ; as pictured in Odyssey, 109 Phoenissae of Euripides, 364 Phoenissae of Phrynichus, 195 Phrygia, 147 Phryne, 417, 418 Phrynichus, 195, 310 Phthiotis, 34, 35 Phyle, 345 Pillar, religious S5nnbol, 50 Pindar, 199, 200, 278-282, 435 ; quality of his poetry, 281 Pittacus, 128, 133 *TTaf35av^5ameof, 269-272, 273, 311, 424 ; in Peloponnesian War, 329, 332-333 Plato, xxi ; on fables, 2 ; version of ' Return of Heracleidae,' 75 ; and the Spartan social constitution, 93 ; and Pythagorean philosophy, 211 ; on Parmenides, 321 ; and Anaxagoras, 325 ; on Pericles, 331 ; on Aristophanes, 365, 367 ; and the Clouds of Aristophanes, 367 ; and Democritus, 369 ; on the Sophists, 371-373 ; and Dionysius of Syracuse, 406 ; second and third visits to Syracuse, 406 ; life, 408 ; philosophy, 409-412 ; on ideal Beauty, 410 ; doctrine of Remini- scence, 410 ; doctrine of Ideas, 410-41 1 ; Ideal theory, 412 ; ex- tracts from his Dialogues, 412-416 ; and Socrates, 442 Pleistarchus, 244 Plemmyrion, 341 and n. Plutarch, on Pericles, 331 Plutus of Aristophanes, 368 Polybius, 454 Polycleitus, 226, 384-385, 444 Polycrates, 187, 454 Polygnotus, xvii, 243, 301, 383, 421 Polyzalus. 231, 277 Poseidon, and tutelage of Athens, 32 ; temple of, at Poseidonia, 454 ; and temple on Sunion, 457 Poseidonia (Paestum), 121 ; temples at, 215, 216 n., 454 Potidaea, 268 ; in Peloponnesian War, 328, 332 ; Socrates at, 375 ; captured by Philip II, 426 Potter's wheel, introduction of, 472 n. Pottery, * Cnossus Palace 'style, xiii; primitive black, 6, 471 ; ' Myce- naean,' 7, 471, 472, 473 ; at Cnossus, 19 ; Cretan, in Egypt, 24, 25, 26; Cretan, in Palestine, 26 «. ; ' Dipy- lon,' 98-101, 473 ; Early Minoan, 472 ; beginnings of wheel - made, 472 ; Middle Minoan, 472 ; Kamdres ware, xiii, 472 ; I^ate Minoan, xiii, 472 ; the' Dark Age,' 472 ; ' Hissarlik' type, xiii, 472 n.; ' Phaleron,' xiv, 473 '> ' proto-Corinthian, ' 473 ; ' Fikel- lura,' 473 ; ' old Corinthian,' xiv, 473 ; the classic age of, 473 ; ' Etrus- can,' 473 ; commerce in, between Greece and Italy, 473-474 ; decora- tion and painting on, 471-476 Pratinas, 195 Praxiteles, 416-419, 445, 447 Prometheus, the fable of, 316 Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, 311, 315 Propylaea, 300-301 Protagoras, 370 Proteus of Aeschylus, 317 Proxenus, 390, 391 Psammis, 144 Psamtik I, 131, 143, 473 n.; II, xv, 144 ; III, 188 Psyttaleia, xviii, 265, 266 Pteria, 8 Ptolemy Alorites, 397, 422, 424 Pulosathu, 26, 29 Pydna, 426 Pylos, 335, 336, 338 Pythagoras, xvii, 137, 208-214 Pythian Games, 156, 157 ; Philip II and, 430 Pytho, 427 Ramses II, xv, 8 ; III, 26 Religion, the bull in Cretan, 20, 23, 56 ; the old, 43-60 ; crude, dis- appears, 45 ; in Homer, 46-47, 57, 59 ; the new, inspired by northern invaders, 48 ; the first idols, 49 ; an-iconic ritual, 49-51 ; trans- mutation of the gods, 58-59 ; con- nexion with sculpture, 218-219 ; idol- worship, 218-221 Republic of Plato, 375[«. Rhegium, 123 Rhesus of Euripides, 362 Rhodes, 298, 426, 439, 472 ; Colossus of, 444, 446 ; and sculpture, 446 495 INDEX Richter, Ohnefalsch, researches in Cyprus, III Sack of I lion, 157 Sacred War, first, 157 ; second; 427 ; third, 427, 429 Sacred Way, at Delphi, 157 Sacrifice, human, in Crete, 23 Sadyattes, 148 Sages, the Seven, 133-134 Sais, 143 Salamis, xviii, 140, 344 ; battle of, 146, 266-267, 311 .* Aeschylus' de- scription in the Persae, 315 Samos, 187 ; Heraion at, 217, 454 ; in Confederacy of Delos, 288, 295- 296 ; revolt of, 296 ; in Pelopon- nesian War, 343 Samothrace, 448 Sappho, 168-171 Sardis, 147, 183, 236, 294, 343 Sassanidae, 194 Satyr of Praxiteles, xxii, 417, 418 Scaean Gate, 6 Scamander, 251 Schliemann, Dr., excavations at site of ancient Troy, 5-9 ; at Mycenae, 9-12 Schliemann, Mrs., excavations at Mycenae, 11 n. Schwerzek, reconstruction of pedi- ments of Parthenon, xix, 306 Scione, 338 Scironian Way, 264 Scopas, 416, 419-421, 443 Script, Cretan or Minoan, 38-39 ; lyycian, 40 ; Hittite, 40 ; Phoeni- cian, 41 Sculpture, connexion with religion, 218-219, 446 ; origins of Greek, 219-220 ; development of, 222- 226 ; the Peloponnesian ' athletic^ school, 225-226 ; colour in, 232, 303 ; Aeginetan school, 232 ; in- fluence of Athenian style, 382- 386 ; portraiture in, 383, 446 ; the ' Canon ' of Polycleitus, 384 ; in the fourth century, 416; Hellen- istic school, 446-448 ; tendency to personification and to the colossal, 446 Scyllias, 259 Scyllis, 223 Scyros, 287, 311 Scythia, invasion by Darius, 189-191 Scythians, 143, 148 Seals, Cretan, 51, 53 496 Selesta, 120; temple at, 215, 453; in Peloponnesian War, 340; appeals to Carthage, 404, 453 Seisachtheia, 140 Selinus, xvii, 118, 120 ; temples at, 118, 120, 450-451 ; early sculpture at, 226-227 ; Empedocles and the pestilence at, 323 ; and Segesta, 340, 404, 453 Semnai, 134 Semonides, or Simonides, 165 Sestos, 273, 285 n. Seti, 144 Seven against Thebes, 33 Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus, 314 Shepherd Kings, 13, 25 Sheshenk (orShishak), 112 Shield of Achilles, 70-71 Shields, Mycenaean, 12-13 I Homeric, Sicily, colonization of, 118, 120; Carthaginians in, 274-276 ; racial conflict in, 274 n. ; Athenian ex- peditions to, 326, 339-342 ; and the drama, 365 ; coinage of, 463 ; early pottery in, 472 Sicinnus, 268 Sicyon, under tyrannies, 132 ; and sculpture, 225, 444 Silphion, 146 Simmias, 378 Simonides of Ceos, 199-200, 261 n., 279. 3" Sipylus, Mount, ' Niobe ' image at, 221 «. Siris, 122 Smerdis, 188 Smilis, 222 n., 232 Smyrna, 76, 149 ' Social War,* 426-427 Socrates, xxi, 308, 321, 322, 325, ^ I 332 n., 337, 345 n., 370 and n. ; on the Sophists, 371-373 ; life, 373-378 ; intellectual methods, 378-379 ; his dialectic, 379-380 ; object of his philosophy, 380- 382 ; his definition of true philo- sophy, 381 ; on ideal Beauty, 410; and Isocrates, 437 ; Plato and, 442 Solon, 133, 139-142 ; as poet, 160- 163; and Peisistratus, 173 ; and Croesus, 183 Sophists, 322 ; Socrates on, 370-373 Sophocles, xxi, 12 n., 317 n., 356, 357 ; in Samian war, 296 ; and development of Attic drama, 310 ; and Aeschylus, 311, 358; extent INDEX of bis work, 311 n. ; and Sicilian expedition, 340; life, 358; work, 358-361; compared with Aeschylus, 361 Sparta, founded by Dorians, 82, 89 ; social system, 90, 93-94 ; form of rule, 91, 92 ; constitution, 91-93 ; Taras founded by, 122 ; and the Messenian wars, 124-126 ; inter- venes in Athenian affairs, 177, 178 ; and Marathon, 240, 241 ; and Plataea, 269, 271, 272 ; and the revolt of Thasos, 288 ; revolt of Messenians, 292 ; breaks with Athens, 293 ; re-establishes Boeo- tian league, 294 ; routs Athens at Tanagra, 294 ; truce with Athens, 294 ; in Peloponnesian War, 326- 345 ; her supremacy, 388-395 ; and the rise of Thebes into power, 395-399 ; and second Sacred War, 427 ; and third Sacred War, 427, 429 ; Philip II and, 432 Spartans, ' discipline ' of, 94 ; educa- tion, 94-95 ; brevity in speech, 95 ; and nudity, 95 ; lack of art instinct, 96 ; and music, 96-97 ; dislike of fortifications, 271 ; character, contrasted with that of Athenians, 285-286 Spartiatae, 90 Sphacteria, 332, 335-33^ Sphinx of Aeschylus, 314 Spintheros, 450 Stadion, 154 Stageiros, 337, 443 Stelae, 385-386 Stenyclarus, 292 Stesichorus, 166-167 Stoa Poikile, 301 Stoicism, 443 Stone Age, Cretan civilization extends to, 18 ' Strangford ' shield, xviii, xxi Strategoi, 295 Strongylion, 383 Suez Canal, antiquity of, 144 Sun-god, statue by Lysippus, 444 Simion, temples on, 300, 457 Suppliants of Aeschylus, 313 Susarion, 365 Sybaris, 121, 210, 295, 474 Sybota, battle near, 328, 335 Syracuse, 118, 274-275, 277, 278 ; Athenian expeditions against, 339-342 ; rise into power under Dionysius I, 405 ; under Diony- sius II, 406; under. Timoleon, 407-408 ; taken by Romans, 408 ; coinage of, 462 Syssitia, 92 n., 94 Tanagra, battle of, 294 ' Tauten,' statues, 228-229, 230 Taras, 122, 124, 474 Tarshish (Tartessus), 108, 117 ' Tataia's flask,' 42-43, 471 Tegea, 419 Tegeans, at Salamis, 271 Teleclus, 90 Telegoneia, 145, 157 Temenus, 423 Temesa (Tempsa), 122,473 n. ' Temple of the Winds,' 216 Temple, primitive, 214 ; develop- ment, 215 Temples, 449-457 Ten Ages of Solon, 162 Ten Thousand, march of the„39i Tenians, at Salamis, 266 Teos, 198, 202 Terillus, 274, 275 Terina, 122 Terpander, 96, 97 Teucer, iii Thai's, 194 Th ales, 133, 149, 201-20^ Thaletas, 137 Thasos, 288 Theagenes, 131 Thebans, at Thermopylae, 260 ; at Plataea, 2> i ; at Delion, 337 Thebes, foundation by Cadmus, i, 32-33 ; in pre-Dorian times, 32- 33 ; Kpigoni and, 33 ; captured by Achaeans, 33 ; head of Boeotian league, 294 ; in Peloponnesian War, 337 ; joins league against Sparta, 392 ; Cadmeia seized by Spartans, 393 ; rise into power, 394 ; allied with Athens, 394 ; and Peace of Cal- lias, 394 ; her supremacy, 395-398 ; decline after Mantineia, 398, 422 ; conflict with Phocis, 427, 429 ; joins Athens against Philip II, 431 ; at Chaeroneia, 431-432 ; Phihp's severity against, 432 ; destroyed by Alexander the Great, 435 ; rebuilt, 436 Themistocles, xvii, xviii, 243, 246- 247, 258, 263, 264, 265, 268, 287, 289-291, 312, 329 Theognis, 133, 195-196 Theogonia of Hesiod, 103, 104, 1 07, 316 2 1 497 INDEX Theopompus, 125 Theoric Fund, 428 Theramenes, 344, 345 Thermae, 469 Thermopylae, xvii, 200, 257, 427, 429 ; the battle, 259-263 Thero, 274, 275, 277, 278, 280 Thersilion, 396 Theseion, xviii, 32 n., 215, 287, 300, 304, 455-456 Theseus, 32, 287, 311, 456 Thesmophoriazusae of Aristophanes, 368 Thesmothetae, 135 Thespiae, 418 Thespis, 175, 309, 366 Thessalians, 8i ; and Persian inva- sion, 255 Thessaly, 255, 285 ; rises into power, 394-395 ; under the Theban su- premacy, 397 ; in Hellenic politics, 423 ; occupied by Phocis, 427 ; occupied by Philip II, 430 Thimbron, 391 ' Thirty Tyrants,' council, 344, 345 Thirty Years' Peace, 294, 328 Thrace, Persia and, 190, 191 ; in Peloponnesian War, 337, 338 ; Philip II and, 425, 428, 431 Thrasybulus, Athenian, 345, 388 Thrasybulus of Miletus, 128, 130, 202 Thrasybulus of Syracuse, 278 Thucydides, son of Melesias, 295, 301, 302 Thucydides, son of Olorus, xxi ; his History, 284, 345-346 ; and Herodotus, 320 ; and the Pelo- ponnesian War, 327-335* 337-339 ; estimate of his work, 346 ; compared with Herodotus, 346- 347 ; extracts from the History, 347-355 > on Athenian dress, 461 Thurii, 210 n., 295, 298, 320 Thyrea, 329 Tigranes, 273 Timaeus, historian of Sicily, 323 Timaeus of I^ocri, 211 Timaeus of Plato, 211 Timarchus, 429 n., 439 Timoleon, 404, 407, 436 Timotheus, Athenian general, 394, 397» 426, 427 Timotheus of Miletus, 96 Tisamenus^ 75 Tissaphernes, 342, 343 n., 389, 390, 391, 392 ' Tomb of the Satrap,' 445 n. 498 Tombstones, 385-386 Trachiniae of Sophocles, 359 Tragedy, development of, as shown in the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and J^uripides, 355-357 ; origin of, 365 Tree, sacred, 51 Triptolemus of Sophocles, 358 Tnttyes, Ionian, 88; Athenian, 180 Troezen, 336 Trojan War, a possible cause of the, 77 Troy, fall of, in.; excavations on site of, X, 5-7 ; chronology of the successive cities, 72-73 Turusha, 29 Tuscany, Greek pottery found in, 473. 474 Tutmes, 25 Tyche, 341 n., 405 Tyrannicides, statue, 230 Tyrannies, how instituted, 86-87 127 ; development of, 87 ' Tyrannos,' 86-87, 127 w. Tyre, 108-109 Tyrrhenians — see Tyrseni Tyrseni, 29, 117, 147, 277, 474 Tyrtaeus, 126, 159-160 Vaphio cups, 16-18, 21 Varvakeion, Athens, statuette found near, xx Vase-painting, early, 471-472 ; ' Dark Age ' of, 472 ; classic age of, 473, 474-476 ; ' new and beautiful style,* 476 ; decline, 476 Venus Brycina, 120 Venus Victrix, 420 ' Victory ' of Paeonius, 336-337 Vulci, X, xvi, xxiv, 473 ' Warrior Vase,' xi, 13, 21 Wasps of Aristophanes, 367 Woh's Prolegomena and the ' Homeric age,' 62 Women in Parliament of Aristophanes, 368 Writing, not known in ' prehistoric ' Greece, 38 ; known in early Crete, 38 ; earliest mention in Greek litera- ture, 40 ; I^ycian, 40 ; introduction into Greece, 41-42 Xanthippus, father of Pericles, xviii, 247, 289 Xanthippus, son of Pericles, 331 «. Xenophanes, 123, 196-197 ; philo- sophy of, 207-208, 321, 323, 324 INDEX Xenophon, 375, 378 ; and the Ten Thousand, 391 ; life and workvS, 399-400 ; extracts from the Ana- basis, 400-403 Xerxes, Hall of, 194 ; birth of, 248 ; succeeds his father, 248 ; invades Greece, 249-273 ; and Thermopy- lae, 261-262 ; and Salamis, 266- 267 ; Pausanias and, 285 ; death of, 290 ; and the Branchidae, 452 ; and temple of Artemis, Bphesus, 452 Zai^eucus, 127 Zancle, 118 Zea, 297 Zeno of Cyprus, 443 Zeno, Kleatic philosopher, 208, 321, 322 Zethus, 32 Zeugites, 135 Zeus, northern origin, 54, 58 ; birthplace of, 55 ; tomb of, 55 ; identified with Bull-god, 56 ; the Homeric, 69 ; temple of, at Olympia, 215 and n., 308, 456 ; statue of, by Pheidias, at Olym- pia, 230, 307-308, 456 ; statue of, by £ysippus, 444 Zeus Cretagenes, xii, 23, 54, 55 Zeus Lykaios, 92 Zeuxis, 421, 424, 451, 454 (>>^ \TTT 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. 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