Chapter 31

artists, and musicians about them, for their own pleasure and for the diversion of the populace. Occasionally they gave the people employment in the erection of costly buildings. They formed alliances with one another and with foreign kings. Not unfrequently they practiced violence and extortion. The _oligarchies_ sought to dethrone them. Their overthrow often had for its result the introduction of popular sovereignty. Among the most noted tyrants were Periander of Corinth (625-585 B.C.), _Pittacus_ in Lesbos (589-579 B.C.), and _Polycrates_ in Samos (535-522 B.C.).

The PISISTRATIDS.--The government of Athens, framed by Solon, was in effect a "timocracy," or rule of the rich. At the head of the popular party stood _Pisistratus_, a rich nobleman of high descent. He succeeded, by means of his armed guard, in making himself master of the citadel. Twice driven out of the city, he at length returned (538 B.C.), and gained permanent control by force of arms. He managed his government with shrewdness and energy. Industry and trade flourished. He decorated Athens with buildings and statues. Religious festivals he caused to be celebrated with splendor. He ruled under the legal forms by having _archons_ chosen to suit him. He died 527 B.C. _Hippias_, his son, governed with mildness until his younger brother and colleague in power, _Hipparchus_, was slain by the two friends, _Harmodius_ and _Aristogiton_. Then he gave the rein to revengeful passion, and laid upon the people burdensome taxes. _Hippias_ was driven out of the city by the _Alcmaeonidae_ and other exiled nobles, assisted by the Spartan king, _Cleomenes_ (510 B.C.). He fled to Asia Minor in order to secure Persian help.

THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.--Clisthenes, a brilliant man, the head of the Alcmaeonid family, connected himself with the popular party, and introduced such changes in the constitution as to render him the founder of the Athenian Democracy. The power of the archons was reduced. All of the free inhabitants of Attica were admitted to citizenship. New tribes, ten in number, each comprising ten _denes_, or hamlets, with their adjacent districts, superseded the old tribes. A _council of five hundred_, fifty from each tribe, supplanted Solon's council of four hundred. The courts of law were newly organized. The _Ostracism_ was introduced; that is, the prerogative of the popular assembly to decree by secret ballot, without trial, the banishment of a person who should be deemed to be dangerous to the public weal. Certain officers were designated by lot. Ten _Strategi_, one from each tribe, by turns, took the place of the _archon polemarchus_ in command of the army.

EFFECT OF DEMOCRACY.--Under this system of free government, the energy of the Athenian people was developed with amazing rapidity. The spirit of patriotism, of zeal for the honor and welfare of Athens, rose to a high pitch. The power and resources of the city increased in a proportionate degree. Culture kept pace with prosperity.

LYRICAL POETRY.--In the eighth century, when monarchy was declining, and the tendency to democracy began to manifest itself, a new style of poetry, different from the epic, arose. The narrative poems of minstrels were heard at the great religious festivals. But there was a craving for the expression of individual feeling. Hence, lyrical poetry re-appeared, not in the shape of religious songs, as in the old time, but in a form to touch all the chords of sentiment. Two new types of verse appeared,--the _Elegiac_ and the _Iambic_. At first the elegy was probably a lament for the dead. It was accompanied by the soft music of the Lydian flute. The instruments which the Greeks had used were string-instruments. The early Greek elegies related to a variety of themes,--as war, love, preceptive wisdom. The iambic meter was first used in satire. Its earliest master of distinction was _Arckilochus_ of Paros (670 B.C.). It was employed, however, in fables, and elsewhere when pointed or intense expression was craved. The earliest of the Greek elegists, _Callinus_ and _Tyrtaus_, composed war-songs. _Mimnermus, Solon, Theognis, Simonides_ of _Ceos_, are among the most famous elegists. Music developed in connection with lyric poetry. The Greeks at first used the four-stringed lyre. Terpander made an epoch (660 B.C.) by adding three strings. _Olympus_ and _Thaletas_ made further improvements. Greek lyric poetry flourished, especially from 670 to 440 B.C. The Aeolian lyrists of _Lesbos_ founded a school of their own. The two great representatives are _Alcaus_, who sang of war and of love, and _Sappho_, who sang of love. "Probably no poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter of passion in exquisitely subtle harmonies of form and sound." _Anacreon_, an Ionian, resembled in his style the Aeolian lyrists. He was most often referred to by the ancients as the poet of sensuous feeling of every sort. The _Dorian_ lyric poetry was mostly choral and historic in its topics. Greek lyric poetry reaches the climax in _Simonides_ and _Pindar_. The latter was a Boeotian, but of Dorian descent. _Simonides_ was tender and polished; _Pindar_, fervid and sublime The extant works of Pindar are the _Epinicia_, or odes of victory.

HISTORICAL WRITING.--This age witnesses the beginnings of historical writing. But the _logographers_, as they were called, only wrote prose epics. They told the story of the foundation of families and cities, reconciling as best they could the myths, so far as they clashed with one another.

PHILOSOPHY: THE IONIAN SCHOOL.--The Greeks were the first to investigate rationally the causes of things, and to try to comprehend the world as a complete system. The earliest phase of this movement was on the side of physics, or natural philosophy. _Homer_ and _Hesiod_ had accounted for the operations of nature by referring them to the direct personal action of different divinities. The earliest philosophers brought in the conception of some kind of matter as the foundation and source of all things. The _Ionian School_ led the way in this direction. _Thales_ of Miletus (about 600 B.C.) made this primary substance to be _water_. _Anaximander_ (611-? B.C.) made all things spring out of a primitive stuff, without definite qualities, and without bounds. He taught that the earth is round, invented the sun-dial, engraved a map on a brass tablet, and made some astronomical calculations. _Anaximenes_ (first half, 6th C.) derived all things from _air_, which he made to be eternal and infinite.

THE ELEATIC SCHOOL.--The _Eleatic School_ conceived of the world as one in substance, and held that the natural phenomena which we behold, in all their variety and change, are unreal. _Xenophanes_ (who flourished from 572 to 478 B.C.) asserted this. _Parmenides_ (504-460 B.C.) taught that succession, change, the manifold forms of things, are only _relative_; that is, are only our way of regarding the one universal essence. _Zeno_ sought to vindicate this theory logically by disproving the possibility of motion.

OTHER PHILOSOPHERS.--Another set of philosophers attempted definitely to explain the appearances of things, the changing phenomena, which had been called unreal. _Heraclitus_ made the world to be nothing but these: There is no substratum of things: there is only an endless flux, a cycle. All things begin and end in fire, the symbol of what is real. _Empedocles_ ascribed all things to fire, air, earth, and water, which are wrought into different bodies by "love" and "hate;" or, as we should say, attraction and repulsion. _Democritus_ was the founder of the _Atomists_, who made all things spring out of the motions and combinations of primitive atoms. _Anaxagoras_ brought in intelligence, or reason, as giving the start to the development of matter,--this principle doing nothing more, however, and being inherent in matter itself.

PYTHAGORAS.--A different spirit in philosophy belonged to _Pythagoras_ (580-500 B.C.), who was born in Samos, traveled extensively, and settled in Croton, in southern Italy. His theory was, that the inner substance of all things is number. Discipline of character was a prime object. Pythagoras was sparing in his diet, promoted an earnest culture, in which music was prominent, and gave rise to a mystical school, in which moral reform and religious fueling were connected with an ascetic method of living.

COLONIES.--It was during the era of the oligarchies and tyrannies that the colonizing spirit was most active among the Greeks. Most of the colonies were established between 800 and 550 B.C. Their names alone would make a very long catalogue. They were of two classes: first, _independent communities_, connected, however, with the parent city by close ties of friendship; and secondly, _kleruchies_, which were of the nature of garrisons, where the settlers retained their former rights as citizens, and the mother city its full authority over them. In _Sicily_, on the eastern side, were the Ionian communities,--Naxos, Catana, etc. _Syracuse_ (founded by Corinth 734 B.C.), _Gela_, and _Agrigentum_, which were among the chief Dorian settlements, lay on the south-eastern and south-western coasts. The oldest Greek town in _Italy_ was _Cumae_ (not far from Naples), said to have been founded in 1050 B.C. _Tarentum_ (Dorian), _Sybaris_, and _Croton_ (Aeolic) were settled in the latter part of the eighth century. _Locri_ (Aeolic) and _Rhegium_ (Ionic) were on the south. The south-western portion of Italy was termed _Magna Graecia_. _Massilia_ (Marseilles) was founded by the Phocaean Ionians (about 600 B.C.). In the western Mediterranean the Greeks were hindered from making their settlements as numerous as they would have done, by the fact that Carthage and her colonies stood in the way. _Cyrene_, on the coast of Africa, was a Dorian colony (630 B.C.), planted from _Thera_, an earlier Spartan settlement. _Cyrene_ founded _Barca_. _Corcyra_ was colonized by Corinth (about 700 B.C.). Along the coast of Epirus were other Corinthian and Corcyrasan settlements. Chalcis planted towns in the peninsula of Chalcidice, and from thence to _Selymbria_ (or Byzantium), which was founded by Megara (657 B.C.). The northern shores of the Ægean and the Propontis, and the whole coast of the Euxine were strewn with Greek settlements. The Greek towns, especially _Miletus_, on the western coast of Asia Minor, themselves sent out colonies,--as _Cyzicus_ and _Sinope_, south of the Propontis and the Euxine. The foregoing statements give only a general idea of the wide extent of Greek colonization.

An exhaustive statement of the Greek colonies is given in Rawlinson's _Manual of Ancient History_, p. 148 _seq_. See also Abbott, _A History of Greece_, I. 333 _seq_.

PERIOD II. THE FLOURISHING ERA OF GREECE.