Part 52

_Plutarch, Cimon; Pericles._

ATHENS: B. C. 460-449. Disastrous expedition to Egypt. Attacks on the Peloponnesian Coast. Recall of Cimon. His last enterprise against the Persians. The disputed Peace of Cimon or Callias. Five years truce with Sparta.

"Inarus, king of some of the Libyan tribes on the western border of Egypt, had excited an insurrection there against the Persians [about 460 B. C.], and his authority was acknowledged throughout the greater part of the country. Artaxerxes sent his brother Achæmenes with a great army to quell this rebellion. An Athenian armament of 200 galleys was lying at the time off Cyprus, and Inarus sent to obtain its assistance. The Athenian commanders, whether following their own discretion, or after orders received from home, quitted Cyprus, and having joined with the insurgents, enabled them to defeat Achæmenes, who fell in the battle by the hand of Inarus. They then sailed up the Nile to Memphis, where a body of Persians, and some Egyptians, who still adhered to their cause were in possession of one quarter of the city, called White Castle. The rest was subject to Inarus, and there the Athenians stationed themselves, and besieged the Persians. … Artaxerxes sent a Persian, named Megabazus, to Sparta, with a sum of money, to be employed in bribing the principal Spartans to use their influence, so as to engage their countrymen in an expedition against Attica. Megabazus did not find the leading Spartans unwilling to receive his money; but they seem to have been unable to render him the service for which it was offered. Ithome still held out: and Sparta had probably not yet sufficiently either recovered her strength or restored internal tranquility, to venture on the proposed invasion. Some rumours of this negotiation may have reached Athens, and have quickened the energy with which Pericles now urged the completion of the long walls. … But among his opponents there was a faction who viewed the progress of this great work in a different light from Cimon, and saw in it, not the means of securing the independence of Athens, but a bulwark of the hated commonalty. They too would have gladly seen an invading army in Attica, which might assist them in destroying the work and its authors." This party was accused of sympathy with the Spartan expedition which came to the help of Doris against the Phocians in 457 B. C., and which defeated the Athenians at Tanagra (See GREECE: B. C. 458-456). In 455, "the Spartans were reminded that they were also liable to be attacked at home. An Athenian armament of 50 galleys, and, if we may trust Diadorus, with 4,000 heavy armed troops on board, sailed round Peloponnesus under Tolmides, burnt the Spartan arsenal at Gythium, took a town named Chalcis belonging to the Corinthians, and defeated the Sicyonians, who attempted to oppose the landing of the troops. But the most important advantage gained in the expedition was the capture of Naupactus, which belonged to the Ozolian Locrians, and now fell into the hands of the Athenians at a very seasonable juncture. The third Messenian war had just come to a close. The brave defenders of Ithome had obtained honourable terms. … The besieged were permitted to quit Peloponnesus with their families, on condition of being detained in slavery if they ever returned. Tolmides now settled the homeless wanderers in Naupactus. … But these successes were counterbalanced by a reverse which befell the arms of Athens this same year in another quarter. After the defeat of Achæmens, Artaxerxes, disappointed in his hopes of assistance from Sparta, … raised a great army, which he placed under the command of an abler general, Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus. Megabyzus defeated the insurgents and their allies, and forced the Greeks to evacuate Memphis, and to take refuge in an island of the Nile, named Prosopitis, which contained a town called Byblus, where he besieged them for 18 months. At length he resorted to the contrivance of turning the stream. … The Greek galleys were all left aground, and were fired by the Athenians themselves, that they might not fall into the enemy's hands. The Persians then marched into the island over the dry bed of the river: the Egyptians in dismay abandoned their allies, who were overpowered by numbers and almost all destroyed. … Inarus himself was betrayed into the hands of the Persians and put to death. … Egypt … was again reduced under the Persian yoke, except a part of the Delta, where another pretender, named Amyrtæus, who assumed the title of king … maintained himself for several years against the power of the Persian monarchy. But the misfortune of the Athenians did not end with the destruction of the great fleet and army which had been first employed in the war. They had sent a squadron of 50 galleys to the relief of their countrymen, which, arriving before the news of the recent disaster had reached them, entered the Mendesian branch of the Nile. They were here surprised by a combined attack of the Persian land force and a Phoenician fleet, and but few escaped to bear the mournful tidings to Athens. Yet even after this calamity we find the Athenians, not suing for peace, but bent on extending their power, and annoying their enemies." Early in 454 they sent an expedition into Thessaly, to restore a ruler named Orestes, who had been driven out. "But the superiority of the Thessalians in cavalry checked all their operations in the field; they failed in an attempt upon Pharsalus, and were at length forced to retire without having accomplished any of their ends. It was perhaps to soothe the public disappointment that Pericles shortly afterwards embarked at Pegæ with 1,000 men, and, coasting the south side of the Corinthian gulf made a descent on the territory of Sicyon, and routed the Sicyon force sent to oppose his landing. {160} He then … laid siege to the town of Œniadæ. … This attempt, however, proved unsuccessful; and the general result of the campaign seems not to have been on the whole advantageous or encouraging. … It seems to have been not long after the events which have been just related that Cimon was recalled from his exile; and the decree for that purpose was moved by Pericles himself;—a fact which seems to intimate that some change had taken place in the relations or the temper of parties at Athens. … The three years next following Cimon's return, as we have fixed its date [B. C. 454 or 453], passed, happily for his contemporaries, without affording any matter for the historian; and this pause was followed by a five years' truce [with Sparta], in the course of which Cimon embarked in his last expedition, and died near the scene of his ancient glory. The pretender Amyrtæus had solicited succour from the Athenians. … Cimon was appointed to the command of a fleet of 200 galleys, with which he sailed to Cyprus, and sent a squadron of 60 to the assistance of Amyrtæus, while he himself with the rest laid siege to Citium. Here he was carried off by illness, or the consequences of a wound; and the armament was soon after compelled, by want of provisions, to raise the siege. But Cymon's spirit still animated his countrymen, who, when they had sailed away with his remains, fell in with a great fleet of Phoenician and Cilician galleys, near the Cyprian Salamis, and, having completely defeated them, followed up their naval victory with another which they gained on shore, either over the troops which had landed from the enemy's ships, or over a land force by which they were supported. After this they were joined by the squadron which had been sent to Egypt, and which returned, it would appear, without having achieved any material object, and all sailed home (B. C. 449). In after-times Cimon's military renown was enhanced by the report of a peace [sometimes called the Peace of Cimon, and sometimes the Peace of Callias], which his victories had compelled the Persian king to conclude on terms most humiliating to the monarchy. Within less than a century after his death it was, if not commonly believed, confidently asserted, that by this treaty, negotiated, as it was supposed, by Callias, son of Hipponicus, the Persians had agreed to abandon at least the military occupation of Asia Minor, to the distance of three days journey on foot, or one on horseback, from the coast, or, according to another account, the whole peninsula west of the Halys, and to abstain from passing the mouth of the Bosphorus and the Chelidonian islands, on the coast of Lycia, or the town of Phaselis, into the Western Sea. The mere silence of Thucydides on so important a transaction would be enough to render the whole account extremely suspicious."

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 17 (volume 3)._

Mr. Grote accepts the Peace of Cimon as an historical fact; Professor Curtius rejects it.

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 45 (volume 5)._

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

ATHENS: B. C. 458-456. War for Megara with Corinth and Ægina. Victories of Myronides. Siege and conquest of Ægina. Collision with the Spartans in Bœotia. Defeat at Tanagra. Overthrow of the Thebans. Recovered Ascendency.

See GREECE: B. C. 458-456.

ATHENS: B. C. 449-445. Hostile revolution in Bœotia. Defeat at Coroneia. Revolt of Eubœa and Megara. The thirty years' truce. Territorial losses. Spartan recognition of the Delian Confederacy.

See GREECE: B. C. 449-445.

ATHENS: B. C. 445-431. Supremacy of Pericles and the popular arts by which he attained it. The splendor of Athens and grandeur of the Athenian Empire under his rule.

"The conclusion of peace left the Athenians to their confederacy and their internal politics. … After the death of Cimon the oligarchical party at Athens had been led by Thucydides, the son of Melesias, a man of high character and a kinsman of Cimon. … Hitherto the members had sat here or there in the assembly as they pleased; now they were combined into a single body, and sat in a special place. Such a consolidation was doubtless needed if the party was to hold its own against Pericles, who was rapidly carrying all before him. For years past he had provided a subsistence for many of the poorer citizens by means of his numerous colonies—no fewer than 5,000 Athenians must have been sent out to the 'cleruchies' in the interval between 453 B. C. and 444 B. C. The new system of juries [See DICASTERIA] had also been established on the fall of the Areopagus, and the jurymen were paid—a second source of income to the poor. Such measures were beyond anything that the private liberality of Cimon—splendid as it was—could achieve; and on Cimon's death no other aristocrat came forward to aid his party with his purse. Pericles did not stop here. Since the cessation of the war with Persia there had been fewer drafts on the public purse, and the contributions of the allies were accumulating in the public treasury. A scrupulous man would have regarded the surplus as the money of the allies. … Pericles took another view. He plainly told the Athenians that so long as the city fulfilled the contract made with the allied cities, and kept Persian vessels from their shores, the surplus was at the disposal of Athens. Acting on this principle, he devoted a part of it to the embellishment of the city. With the aid of Pheidias, the sculptor, and Ictinus, the architect, a new temple began to rise on the Acropolis in honour of Athena—the celebrated Parthenon or 'Virgin's Chamber' [See PARTHENON]. … Other public buildings were also begun about this time. Athens was in fact a vast workshop, in which employment was found for a great number of citizens. Nor was this all. … For eight months of the year 60 ships were kept at sea with crews on board, in order that there might be an ample supply of practical seamen. … Thus by direct or indirect means Pericles made the state the paymaster of a vast number of citizens, and the state was practically himself, with these paid citizens at his back. At the same time the public festivals of the city were enlarged and adorned with new splendour. … That all might attend the theatre in which the plays were acted, Pericles provided that every citizen should receive from the state a sum sufficient to pay the charge demanded from the spectators by the lessee [See DIOBOLY]. We may look on these measures as the arts of a demagogue. … Or we may say that Pericles was able to gratify his passion for art at the expense of the Athenians and their allies. {161} Neither of these views is altogether untenable; and both are far from including the whole truth. Pericles … was, if we please to say it, a demagogue and a connoisseur. But he was something more. Looking at the whole evidence before us with impartial eyes, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that he cherished aspirations worthy of a great statesman. He sincerely desired that every Athenian should owe to his city the blessing of an education in all that was beautiful, and the opportunity of a happy and useful life. … The oligarchs determined to pull down Pericles, if it were possible. … They proposed, in the winter of 445 B. C., that there should be an ostracism in the city. The people agreed, and the usual arrangements were made. But when the day came for decision, in the spring of 444 B. C., the sentence fell, not on Pericles, but on Thucydides. The sentence left no doubt about the feeling of the Athenian people, and it was accepted as final. Thucydides disappeared from Athens, and for the next fifteen years Pericles was master of the city. … While Athens was active, organizing her confederacy and securing her communication with the north, the Peloponnesians had allowed the years to pass in apathy and inattention. At length they awoke to a sense of the situation. It was clear that Athens had abandoned all idea of war with Persia, and that the confederacy of Delos was transformed into an Athenian empire, of whose forces the great city was absolutely mistress. And meanwhile in visible greatness Athens had become far the first city in Greece."

_E. Abbott, Pericles, chapters 10-11_.

"A rapid glance will suffice to show the eminence which Athens had attained over the other states of Greece. She was the head of the Ionian League—the mistress of the Grecian seas; with Sparta, the sole rival that could cope with her armies and arrest her ambition, she had obtained a peace; Corinth was Humbled—Ægina ruined—Megara had shrunk into her dependency and garrison. The states of Bœotia had received their very constitution from the hands of an Athenian general—the democracies planted by Athens served to make liberty itself subservient to her will, and involved in her safety. She had remedied the sterility of her own soil by securing the rich pastures of the neighbouring Eubœa. She had added the gold of Thasos to the silver of Laurion, and established a footing in Thessaly which was at once a fortress against the Asiatic arms and a mart for Asiatic commerce. The fairest lands of the opposite coast—the most powerful islands of the Grecian seas—contributed to her treasury, or were almost legally subjected to her revenge. … In all Greece, Myronides was perhaps the ablest general—Pericles … was undoubtedly the most highly educated, cautious and commanding statesman. … In actual possession of the tribute of her allies, Athens acquired a new right to its collection and its management, and while she devoted some of the treasures to the maintenance of her strength, she began early to uphold the prerogative of appropriating a part to the enhancement of her splendour. … It was now [about B. C. 444] resolved to make Athens also the seat and centre of the judicial authority. The subject-allies were compelled, if not on minor, at least on all important cases, resort to Athenian courts of law for justice. And thus Athens became, as it were, the metropolis of the allies. … Before the Persian war, and even scarcely before the time of Cimon, Athens cannot be said to have eclipsed her neighbours in the arts and sciences. She became the centre and capital of the most polished communities of Greece, and she drew into a focus all the Grecian intellect; she obtained from her dependents the wealth to administer the arts, which universal traffic and intercourse taught her to appreciate; and thus the Odeon, and the Parthenon, and the Propylæa arose. During the same administration, the fortifications were completed, and a third wall, parallel and near to that uniting Piræus with Athens, consummated the works of Themistocles and Cimon, and preserved the communication between the two-fold city, even should the outer walls fall into the hands of an enemy."

_E. G. Bulwer-Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall, book 4, chapter 5, book 5, chapter 2._

ALSO IN: _W. W. Lloyd, The Age of Pericles,_

_Plutarch, Pericles_.

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429. The Age of Pericles: Art.

"The Greeks … were industrious, commercial, sensitive to physical and moral beauty, eager for discussion and controversy; they were proud of their humanity, and happy in the possession of their poets, their historians, their orators and artists. It is singular, in the history of nations, to meet with a people distinguished at once by mercantile aptitude, and by an exquisite feeling and sympathy for works of art; to see the vanity of wealth compatible with a nice discernment for the true principles of taste; to behold a nation, inconstant in ideas; inconceivably fickle in prejudices, worshipping a man one day and proscribing him the next, yet at the same time progressing with unheard-of rapidity; within the space of a few years traversing all systems of philosophy, all forms of government, laying the foundations of all sciences, making war on all its neighbors, yet, in the midst of this chaos of ideas, systems, and passions, developing art steadily and with calm intelligence, giving to it novelty, originality, and beauty, while preserving it pure from the aberrations and caprices of what we now call fashion. At the time of the battle of Salamis, 480 B. C., Athens had been destroyed, its territory ravaged, and the Athenians had nothing left but their ships; yet so great was the activity of this commercial but artistic people, that, only twenty years afterwards, they had built the Parthenon."

_E. E. Viollet-le-Duc, Discourses on Architecture, page 65._

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429. The Age of Pericles: Domestic life. The Athenian house.

"For any one coming from Asia it seemed as if in entering Athens he was coming into an ant's nest. Possessing, at the epoch of its greatest power, the three ports of Munychia, Phalerum and the Piræus, it covered a district whose circumference measured two hundred stadia (twenty-four miles). But it was around the Acropolis that the houses were crowded together and the population always in activity. There wagons were passing to and fro, filled with merchandise from the ports or conveying it thither. The streets and public places in which people passed their lives presented a busy and noisy scene. Strangers, who came to buy or to sell, were continually entering or leaving the shops and places of manufacture, and slaves were carrying messages or burdens. {162} Women as well as men were to be seen in the streets, going to the markets, the public games and the meetings of corporate bodies. From the earliest hours of the day large numbers of peasants might be seen bringing in vegetables, fruit and poultry, and crying their wares in the streets. Houses of the higher class occupied the second zone; they generally possessed a garden and sometimes outbuildings of considerable extent. Around them were to be seen clients and parasites, waiting for the hour when the master should make his appearance; and whiling away the time discussing the news of the day, repeating the rumours, true or false, that were current in the city; getting the slaves to talk, and laughing among themselves at the strangers that happened to be passing, or addressing them with a view to make fun of their accent, garb or dress. The house of Chremylus, recently built in that second zone, was a subject of remark for all the idlers. Chremylus, who had lately become wealthy by means of commerce, and of certain transactions of more or less creditable character in the colonies, was an object of envy and criticism to most people, and of admiration for some who did justice to his intelligence and energy. He enjoyed a certain degree of influence in the public assemblies—thanks to his liberality; while he took care to secure the good graces of the archons and to enrich the temples."

[Image] Plan Of Athenian House.