chapter 13-15.

_W. W. Lloyd, The Age of Pericles, chapter 64 (volume 2)._

_L. Whibley, Political Parties in Athens during the Peloponnesian War._

_W. Wachsmuth, History Antiquities of the Greeks, sections 62-64 (volume 2)._

ATHENS: B. C. 429-421. After Pericles. The rise of the Demagogues.

"When Pericles rose to power it would have been possible to frame a Pan-Hellenic union, in which Sparta and Athens would have been the leading states; and such a dualism would have been the best guarantee for the rights of the smaller cities. When he died there was no policy left but war with Sparta, and conquest in the West. And not only so, but there was no politician who could adjust the relations of domestic war and foreign conquest. The Athenians passed from one to the other, as they were addressed by Cleon or Alcibiades. We cannot wonder that the men who lived in those days of trouble spoke bitterly of Pericles, holding him accountable for the miseries which fell upon Athens. Other statesmen had bequeathed good laws, as Solon and Clisthenes, or the memory of great achievements, as Themistocles or Cimon, but the only changes which Pericles had introduced were thought, not without reason, to be changes for the worse; and he left his country involved in a ruinous war.".

_E. Abbott, Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens, pages 362-363._

{172}

"The moral change which had ... befallen the Attic community had, it is true, even during the lifetime of Pericles, manifested itself by means of sufficiently clear premonitory signs; but Pericles had, notwithstanding, up to the days of his last illness, remained the centre of the state; the people had again and again returned to him, and by subordinating themselves to the personal authority of Pericles had succeeded in recovering the demeanor which befitted them. But now the voice was hushed, which had been able to sway the unruly citizens, even against their will. No other authority was in existence--no aristocracy, no official class, no board of experienced statesmen--nothing, in fact, to which the citizens might have looked for guidance and control. The multitude had recovered absolute independence, and in proportion as, in the interval, readiness of speech and sophistic versatility had spread in Athens, the number had increased of those who now put themselves forward as popular speakers and leaders. But as, among all these, none was capable of leading the multitude after the fashion of Pericles, another method of leading the people, another kind of demagogy, sprung into existence. Pericles stood above the multitude. ... His successors were obliged to adopt other means; in order to acquire influence, they took advantage not so much of the strong as of the weak points in the character of the citizens, and achieved popularity by flattering their inclinations, and endeavoring to satisfy the cravings of their baser nature. ... Now for the first time, men belonging to the lower class of citizens thrust themselves forward to play a part in politics,--men of the trading and artisan class, the culture and wealth of which had so vigorously increased at Athens. ... The office of general frequently became a post of martyrdom; and the bravest men felt that the prospect of being called to account as to their campaigns by cowardly demagogues, before a capricious multitude, disturbed the straightforward joyousness of their activity, and threw obstacles in the way of their successes. ... On the orators' tribune the contrast was more striking. Here the first prominent successor of Pericles was a certain Eucrates, a rude and uneducated man, who was ridiculed on the comic stage as the 'boar' or 'bear of Melite' (the name of the district to which he belonged), a dealer in tow and mill-owner, who only for a short space of time took the lead in the popular assembly. His place was taken by Lysicles, who had acquired wealth by the cattle-trade. ... It was not until after Lysicles, that the demagogues attained to power who had first made themselves a name by their opposition against Pericles, and, among them, Cleon was the first who was able to maintain his authority for a longer period of time; so that it is in his proceedings during the ensuing years of the war that the whole character of the new demagogy first thoroughly manifests itself."

_E. Curtius, History of Greece, volume 3, chapter 2._

"The characters of the military commander and the political leader were gradually separated. The first germs of this division we find in the days of Kimôn and Periklês. Kimôn was no mean politician; but his real genius clearly called him to warfare with the Barbarian. Periklês was an able and successful general; but in him the military character was quite subordinate to that of the political leader. It was a wise compromise which entrusted Kimôn with the defence of the state abroad and Periklês with its management at home. After Periklês the separation widened. We nowhere hear of Dêmosthenes and Phormiôn as political leaders; and even in Nikias the political is subordinate to the military character. Kleôn, on the other hand, was a politician but not a soldier. But the old notion of combining military and political position was not quite lost. It was still deemed that he who proposed a warlike expedition should himself, if it were needful, be able to conduct it. Kleôn in an evil hour was tempted to take on himself military functions; he was forced into command against Sphaktêria; by the able and loyal help of Dêmosthenês he acquitted himself with honour. But his head was turned by success; he aspired to independent command; he measured himself against the mighty Brasidas; and the fatal battle of Amphipolis was the result. It now became clear that the Demagogue and the General must commonly be two distinct persons. The versatile genius of Alkibiadês again united the two characters; but he left no successor. ... A Demagogue then was simply an influential speaker of popular politics. Dêmosthenês is commonly distinguished as an orator, while Kleôn is branded as a Demagogue; but the position of the one was the same as the position of the other. The only question is as to the wisdom and honesty of the advice given either by Kleôn or by Dêmosthenês."

_E. A. Freeman, Historical Essays, 2d ser., pages 138-140._

ATHENS: B. C. 429-427. Fate of Platæa. Phormio's Victories. Revolt of Lesbos. Siege of Mitylene. Cleon's bloody decree and its reversal.

See GREECE: B. C. 429-427.

ATHENS: B. C. 425. Seizure of Pylus by Demosthenes, the general. Spartans entrapped and captured at Sphacteria. Peace pleaded for and refused.

See GREECE: B. C. 425.

ATHENS: B. C. 424-406. Socrates as soldier and citizen. The trial of the Generals.

"Socrates was born very shortly before the year 469 B. C. His father, Sophroniscus, was a sculptor, his mother, Phænarete, a midwife. Nothing definite is known of his moral and intellectual development. There is no specific record of him at all until he served at the siege of Potidæa (432 B. C.-429 B. C.) when he was nearly forty years old. All that we can say is that his youth and manhood were passed in the most splendid period of Athenian or Greek history. ... As a boy he received the usual Athenian liberal education, in music and gymnastic, an education, that is to say, mental and physical. He was fond of quoting from the existing Greek literature, and he seems to have been familiar with it, especially with Homer. He is represented by Xenophon as repeating Prodieus' fable of the choice of Heracles at length. He says that he was in the habit of studying with his friends 'the treasures which the wise men of old have left us in their books:' collections, that is, of the short and pithy sayings of the seven sages, such as 'know thyself'; a saying, it may be noticed, which lay at the root of his whole teaching. And he had some knowledge of mathematics, and of science, as it existed in those days. He understood something of astronomy and of advanced geometry; and he was acquainted with certain, at any rate, of the theories of his predecessors in philosophy, the Physical or Cosmical philosophers, such as Heraclitus and Parmenides, and, especially, with those of Anaxagoras. {173} But there is no trustworthy evidence which enables us to go beyond the bare fact that he had such knowledge. ... All then that we can say of the first forty years of Socrates' life consists of general statements like these. During these years there is no specific record of him. Between 432 B. C. and 429 B. C. he served as a common soldier at the siege of Potidæa, an Athenian dependency which had revolted, and surpassed everyone in his powers of enduring hunger, thirst, and cold, and all the hardships of a severe Thracian winter. At this siege we hear of him for the first time in connection with Alcibiades, whose life he saved in a skirmish, and to whom he eagerly relinquished the prize of valour. In 431 B. C. the Peloponnesian War broke out, and in 424 B. C. the Athenians were disastrously defeated and routed by the Thebans at the battle of Delium. Socrates and Laches were among the few who did not yield to panic. They retreated together steadily, and the resolute bearing of Socrates was conspicuous to friend and foe alike. Had all the Athenians behaved as he did, says Laches, in the dialogue of that name, the defeat would have been a victory. Socrates fought bravely a third time at the battle of Amphipolis [422 B. C.] against the Peloponnesian forces, in which the commanders on both sides, Cleon and Brasidas, were killed: but there is no record of his specific services on that occasion. About the same time that Socrates was displaying conspicuous courage in the cause of Athens at Delium and Amphipolis, Aristophanes was holding him up to hatred, contempt, and ridicule in the comedy of the Clouds [13. C. 423]. ... The Clouds is his protest against the immorality of free thought and the Sophists. He chose Socrates for his central figure, chiefly, no doubt, on account of Socrates' well-known and strange personal appearance. The grotesque ugliness, and flat nose, and prominent eyes, and Silenus-like face, and shabby dress, might be seen every day in the streets, and were familiar to every Athenian. Aristophanes cared little--probably he did not take the trouble to find out--that Socrates' whole life was spent in fighting against the Sophists. It was enough for him that Socrates did not accept the traditional beliefs, and was a good centre-piece for a comedy. ... The Clouds, it is needless to say, is a gross and absurd libel from beginning to end: but Aristophanes hit the popular conception. The charges which he made in 423 B. C. stuck to Socrates to the end of his life. They are exactly the charges made by popular prejudice, against which Socrates defends himself in the first ten chapters of the Apology, and which he says have been so long 'in the air.' He formulates them as follows: 'Socrates is an evil doer who busies himself with investigating things beneath the earth and in the sky, and who makes the worse appear the better reason, and who teaches others these same things.' ... For sixteen years after the battle of Amphipolis we hear nothing of Socrates. The next events in his life, of which there is a specific record, are those narrated by himself in the twentieth chapter of the Apology. They illustrate, as he meant them to illustrate, his invincible moral courage. ... In 406 B. C. the Athenian fleet defeated the Lacedæmonians at the battle of Arginusæ, so called from some small islands off the south-east point of Lesbos. After the battle the Athenian commanders omitted to recover the bodies of their dead, and to save the living from off their disabled enemies. The Athenians at home, on hearing of this, were furious. The due performance of funeral rites was a very sacred duty with the Greeks; and many citizens mourned for friends and relatives who had been left to drown. The commanders were immediately recalled, and an assembly was held in which they were accused of neglect of duty. They defended themselves by saying that they had ordered certain inferior officers (amongst others, their accuser Theramenes) to perform the duty, but that a storm had come on which had rendered the performance impossible. The debate was adjourned, and it was resolved that the Senate should decide in what way the commanders should be tried. The Senate resolved that the Athenian people, having heard the accusation and the defence, should proceed to vote forthwith for the acquittal or condemnation of the eight commanders collectively. The resolution was grossly unjust, and it was illegal. It substituted a popular vote for a fair and formal trial. ... Socrates was at that time a member of the Senate, the only office that he ever filled. The Senate was composed of five hundred citizens, elected by lot, fifty from each of the ten tribes, and holding office for one year. The members of each tribe held the Prytany, that is, were responsible for the conduct of business, for thirty-five days at a time, and ten out of the fifty were proedri or presidents every seven days in succession. Every bill or motion was examined by the proedri before it was submitted to the Assembly, to see if it were in accordance with law; if it was not, it was quashed: one of the proedri presided over the Senate and the Assembly each day, and for one day only: he was called the Epistates: it was his duty to put the question to the vote. In short he was the speaker. ... On the day on which it was proposed to take a collective vote on the acquittal or condemnation of the eight commanders, Socrates was Epistates. The proposal was, as we have seen, illegal: but the people were furious against the accused, and it was a very popular one. Some of the proedri opposed it before it was submitted to the Assembly, on the ground of its illegality; but they were silenced by threats and subsided. Socrates alone refused to give way. He would not put a question which he knew to be illegal, to the vote. Threats of suspension and arrest, the clamour of an angry people, the fear of imprisonment or death, could not move him. ... But his authority lasted only for a day; the proceedings were adjourned, a more pliant Epistates succeeded him, and the generals were condemned and executed."

_F. J. Church, Introduction to Trial and Death of Socrates, pages 9-23._

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 406.

{174}

ATHENS: B. C. 421. End of the first period of the Peloponnesian War. The Peace of Nicias.

"The first stage of the Peloponnesian war came to an end just ten years after the invasion of Attica by Archidamus in 431 B. C. Its results had been almost purely negative; a vast quantity of blood and treasure had been wasted on each side, but to no great purpose. The Athenian naval power was unimpaired, and the confederacy of Delos, though shaken by the successful revolt of Amphipolis and the Thraceward towns, was still left subsisting. On the other hand, the attempts of Athens to accomplish anything on land had entirely failed, and the defensive policy of Pericles had been so far justified. Well would it have been for Athens if her citizens had taken the lesson to heart, and contented themselves with having escaped so easily from the greatest war they had ever known."

_C. W. C. Oman, History of Greece, page 341._

"The treaty called since ancient times the Peace of Nicias ... put an end to the war between the two Greek confederations of states, after it had lasted for rather more than ten years, viz., from the attack of the Bœotians upon Platææ, Ol. lxxxvii. 1 (beginning of April B. C. 431) to Ol. lxxxix. 3 (towards the middle of April B. C. 421). The war was for this reason known under the name of the Ten Years' War, while the Peloponnesians called it the Attic War. Its end constituted a triumph for Athens; for all the plans of the enemies who had attacked her had come to naught; Sparta had been unable to fulfil a single one of the promises with which she had entered upon the war, and was ultimately forced to acknowledge the dominion of Athens in its whole extent,--notwithstanding all the mistakes and misgivings, notwithstanding all the calamities attributable, or not, to the Athenians themselves: the resources of offence and defence which the city owed to Pericles had therefore proved their excellence, and all the fury of her opponents had wasted itself against her in vain. Sparta herself was satisfied with the advantages which the peace offered to her own city and citizens; but great was the discontent among her confederates, particularly among the secondary states, who had originally occasioned the war and obliged Sparta to take part in it. Even after the conclusion of the peace, it was impossible to induce Thebes and Corinth to accede to it. The result of the war to Sparta was therefore the dissolution of the confederation at whose head she had begun the war; she felt herself thereby placed in so dangerously isolated a position, that she was obliged to fall back upon Athens in self-defence against her own confederates. Accordingly the Peace of Nicias was in the course of the same year converted into a fifty years' alliance, under the terms of which Sparta and Athens contracted the obligation of mutual assistance against any hostile attack."

_E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 4, chapter 2 (volume 3)._

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 424-421.

ATHENS: B. C. 421-418. New combinations. Conflicting alliances with Sparta and the Argive Confederacy. Rising influence of Alcibiades. War in Argos and Arcadia. Battle of Mantinea.

See GREECE: B. C. 421-418.

ATHENS: B. C. 416. Siege and conquest of Melos. Massacre of the inhabitants.

See GREECE: B. C. 416.

ATHENS: B. C. 415. The expedition against Syracuse. Mutilation of the Hermæ (Hermai).

A quarrel having broken out in Sicily, between the cities of Segesta and Selinous, "the latter obtained aid from Syracuse. Upon this, Segesta, having vainly sought help from Carthage, appealed to Athens, where the exiled Sicilians were numerous. Alkibiades had been one of the most urgent for the attack upon Melos, and he did not lose the present opportunity to incite the Athenians to an enterprise of much greater importance, and where he hoped to be in command. ... All men's minds were filled with ambitious hopes. Everywhere, says Plutarch, were to be seen young men in the gymnasia, old men in workshops and public places of meeting, drawing the map of Sicily, talking about the sea that surrounds it, the goodness of its harbors, its position opposite Africa. Established there, it would be easy to cross over and subjugate Carthage, and extend their sway as far as the Pillars of Hercules. The rich did not approve of this rashness, but feared if they opposed it that the opposite faction would accuse them of wishing to avoid the service and costs of arming galleys. Nikias had more courage; even after the Athenians had appointed him general, with Alkibiades and Lamachos, he spoke publicly against the enterprise, showed the imprudence of going in search of new subjects when those they already had were at the moment in a state of revolt, as in Chalkidike, or only waited for a disaster to break the chain which bound them to Athens. He ended by reproaching Alkibiades for plunging the republic, to gratify his personal ambition, into a foreign war of the greatest danger. ... One of the demagogues, however, replied that he would put an end to all this hesitation, and he proposed and secured the passage of a decree giving the generals full power to use all the resources of the city in preparing for the expedition (March 24, 415 B. C.) Nikias was completely in the right. The expedition to Sicily was impolitic and foolish. In the Ægæan Sea lay the empire of Athens, and there only it could lie, within reach, close at hand. Every acquisition westward of the Peloponnesos was a source of weakness. Syracuse, even if conquered, would not long remain subject. Whatever might be the result of the expedition, it was sure to be disastrous in the end. ... An event which took place shortly before the departure of the fleet (8-9 June) threw terror into the city: one morning the hermai throughout the city were seen to have been mutilated. ... 'These Hermæ, or half-statues of the god Hermês, were blocks of marble about the height of the human figure. The upper part was cut into a head, face, neck and bust; the lower part was left as a quadrangular pillar, broad at the base, without arms, body, or legs, but with the significant mark of the male sex in front. They were distributed in great numbers throughout Athens, and always in the most conspicuous situations; standing beside the outer doors of private houses as well as of temples, near the most frequented porticos, at the intersection of cross ways, in the public agora. ... The religious feelings of the Greeks considered the god to be planted or domiciled where his statue stood, so that the companionship, sympathy, and guardianship of Hermês became associated with most of the manifestations of conjunct life at Athens,--political, social, commercial, or gymnastic.' ... To all pious minds the city seemed menaced with great misfortunes unless the anger of Heaven should be appeased by a sufficient expiation. {175} While Alkibiades had many partisans, he had also violent enemies. Not long before this time Hyperbolos, a contemptible man, had almost succeeded in obtaining his banishment; and he had escaped this danger only by uniting his party with that of Nikias, and causing the demagogue himself to suffer ostracism. The affair of the hermai appeared to his adversaries a favourable occasion to repeat the attempt made by Hyperbolos, and we have good reason to believe in a political machination, seeing this same populace applaud, a few months later, the impious audacity of Aristophanes in his comedy of The Birds. An inquiry was set on foot, and certain metoikoi and slaves, without making any deposition as to the hermai, recalled to mind that before this time some of these statues had been broken by young men after a night of carousal and intoxication, thus indirectly attacking Alkibiades. Others in set terms accused him of having at a banquet parodied the Eleusinian Mysteries; and men took advantage of the superstitious terrors of the people to awake their political anxieties. It was repeated that the breakers of sacred statues, the profaners of mysteries, would respect the government even less than they had respected the gods, and it was whispered that not one of these crimes had been committed without the participation of Alkibiades; and in proof of this men spoke of the truly aristocratic license of his life. Was he indeed the author of this sacrilegious freak? To believe him capable of it would not be to calumniate him. Or, on the other hand, was it a scheme planned to do him injury? Although proofs are lacking, it is certain that among the rich, upon whom rested the heavy burden of the naval expenses, a plot had been formed to destroy the power of Alkibiades, and perhaps to prevent the sailing of the fleet. The demagogues, who had intoxicated the people with hope, were for the expedition; but the popularity of Alkibiades was obnoxious to them: a compromise was made between the two factions, as is often done in times when public morality is enfeebled, and Alkibiades found himself threatened on all sides. ... Urging as a pretext the dangers of delay in sending off the expedition, they obtained a decree that Alkibiades should embark at once; and that the question of his guilt or innocence should be postponed until after his return. It was now the middle of summer. The day appointed for departure, the whole city, citizens and foreigners, went out to Peiraieus at daybreak. ... At that moment the view was clearer as to the doubts and dangers, and also the distance of the expedition; but all eyes were drawn to the immense preparations that had been made, and confidence and pride consoled those who were about to part."

_V. Duruy, History of the Greek People,