Part 10

Confirmed in his authority by his triumphant refutation of the slanders of his enemies, Pericles adopted the wisest measures for the public defense against the invasion which was threatened by the Peloponnesians. Unwilling to risk a battle with the Spartans, who were esteemed not less invincible by land than the Athenians were by sea, he caused the inhabitants of Attica to transport their cattle to Eubœa and the neighboring islands, and to retire with as much of their other property as they could take with them, within the walls of Athens. By this provident care, the city was stored with provision sufficient for the support of the multitudes which now crowded it; but greater difficulty was found in furnishing proper accommodation for so vast a population. Many found lodgings in the temples and other public edifices, or in the turrets on the city walls, while great numbers were obliged to construct for themselves temporary abodes in the vacant space within the long walls extending between the city and the port of Piræus.

The memorable contest of twenty-seven years’ duration, called ‘the Peloponnesian War,’ now commenced (431 B. C.). The Spartan king, Archidamus, entered Attica at the head of a large army of the confederates, and meeting with no opposition, proceeded along its eastern coast, burning the towns, and laying waste the country in his course. When the Athenians saw the enemy ravaging the country almost up to their gates, it required all the authority of Pericles to keep them within their fortifications. While the confederates were wasting Attica with fire and sword, the Athenian and Corcyrean fleets were, by the direction of Pericles, avenging the injury by ravaging the almost defenseless coasts of the Peloponnesus. This, together with a scarcity of provisions, soon induced Archidamus to lead his army homewards. He retired by the western coast, continuing the work of devastation as he went along.

Early in the summer of the following year, the confederates returned to Attica, which they were again permitted to ravage at their pleasure, as Pericles still adhered to his cautious policy of confining his efforts to the defense of the capital. But an enemy far more terrible than the Peloponnesians attacked the unfortunate Athenians. A pestilence, supposed to have originated in Ethiopia, and which had gradually spread over Egypt and the western parts of Asia, broke out in the town of Piræus, the inhabitants of which at first supposed their wells to have been poisoned. The disease rapidly advanced into Athens, where it carried off a great number of persons. It is described as having been a species of infectious fever, accompanied with many painful symptoms, and followed, in those who survived the first stages of the disease, by ulcerations of the bowels and limbs.

Historians mention, as a proof of the singular virulence of this pestilence, that the birds of prey refused to touch the unburied bodies of its victims, and that the dogs which fed upon the poisonous relics perished.

The mortality was dreadful, and was of course greatly increased by the overcrowded state of the city. The prayers of the devout, and the skill of the physicians, were found equally unavailing to stop the progress of the disease; and the miserable Athenians, reduced to despair, believed themselves to be forgotten or hated by their gods. The sick were in many cases left unattended, and the bodies of the dead allowed to lie unburied, while those whom the plague had not yet reached, openly sat at defiance all laws, human and divine, and rushed into every excess of criminal indulgence.

Pericles was in the meantime engaged, with a fleet of 150 ships, in wasting with fire and sword the shores of Peloponnesus. At his return to Athens, finding that the enemy had hastily retired from Attica, through fear of the contagion of the plague, he despatched the fleet to the coast of Chalcidice, to assist the Athenian land forces who were still engaged in the siege of Potidæa――an unfortunate measure, productive of no other result than the communication of the pestilence to the besieging army, by which the majority of the troops were speedily swept away. Maddened by their sufferings, the Athenians now became loud in their murmurs against Pericles, whom they accused of having brought upon them at least a portion of their calamities, by involving them in the Peloponnesian war. An assembly of the people was held, in which Pericles entered upon a justification of his conduct and exhorted them to courage and perseverance in defense of their independence. The hardships to which they had been exposed by the war, were, he observed, only such as he had in former addresses prepared them to expect; and as for the pestilence, it was a calamity which no human prudence could either have foreseen or averted. He reminded them that they still possessed a fleet which that of no potentate on earth could equal or cope with, and that, after the present evil should have passed away, their navy might yet enable them to acquire universal empire. ‘What we suffer from the gods,’ continued he, ‘we should bear with patience; what from our enemies, with manly firmness; and such were the maxims of our forefathers. From unshaken fortitude in misfortune has arisen the present power of this commonwealth, together with that glory which, if our empire, according to the lot of all earthly things, decay, shall still survive to all posterity.’

The eloquent harangue of Pericles diminished, but did not remove, the alarm and irritation of the Athenians, and they not only dismissed him from all his offices, but imposed upon him a heavy fine. Meanwhile domestic afflictions were combining with political anxieties and mortifications to oppress the mind of this eminent man, for the members of his family were one by one perishing by the plague. Still, however, he bore himself up with a fortitude which was witnessed with admiration by all around him; but at the funeral of the last of his children, his firmness at length gave way; and while he was, according to the custom of the country, placing a garland of flowers on the head of the corpse, he burst into loud lamentations, and shed a torrent of tears. It was not long till his mutable countrymen repented of their harshness towards him, and reinvested him with his civil and military authority. He soon after followed his children to the grave, falling, like them, a victim to the prevailing pestilence (429 B. C.). The concurrent testimony of the ancient writers assigns to Pericles the first place among Grecian statesmen for wisdom and eloquence. Though ambitious of power, he was temperate in its exercise; and it is creditable to his memory, that, in an age and country so little scrupulous in the shedding of blood, his long administration was as merciful and mild as it was vigorous and effective. When constrained to make war, the constant study of this eminent statesman was, how to overcome his enemies with the least possible destruction of life, as well on their side as on his own. It is related that, when he was lying at the point of death, and while those who surrounded him were recounting his great actions, he suddenly interrupted them by expressing his surprise that they should bestow so much praise on achievements in which he had been rivaled by many others, while they omitted to mention what he considered his highest and peculiar honor――namely, _that no act of his had ever caused any Athenian to put on mourning_.

After the death of Pericles, the war was continued, without interruption, for seven years longer, but with no very decisive advantage to either side. During this period the Athenian councils were chiefly directed by a coarse-minded and unprincipled demagogue named Cleon, who was at last killed in battle under the walls of Amphipolis, a Macedonian city, of which the possession was disputed by the Athenians and Lacedæmonians. Cleon was succeeded in the direction of public affairs by Nicias, the leader of the aristocratic party, a man of virtuous but unenterprising character, and a military officer of moderate abilities. Under his auspices a peace for fifty years, commonly known by the name of the ‘Peace of Nicias,’ was concluded in the tenth year of the war (421 B. C.). It was not long, however, till the contest was resumed. Offended that its allies had given up a contest undertaken for the assertion of its alleged rights, Corinth refused to be a party to the treaty of peace, and entered into a new quadruple alliance with Argos, Elis, and Mantinæa, a city of Arcadia; the ostensible object of which confederation was the defense of the Peloponnesian states against the aggressions of Athens and Sparta. This end seemed not difficult of attainment, as fresh distrust had arisen between the two last-mentioned republics, on account of the reluctance felt and manifested by both to give up certain places which they had bound themselves by treaty mutually to surrender. The jealousies thus excited were fanned into a violent flame by the artful measures of Alcibiades, a young Athenian, who now began to rise into political power, and whose genius and character subsequently exercised a strong influence upon the affairs of Athens.

ALCIBIADES. Alcibiades was the son of Clinias, an Athenian of high rank. Endowed with uncommon beauty of person, and talents of the very highest order, he was unfortunately deficient in that unbending integrity which is an essential element of every character truly great, and his violent passions sometimes impelled him to act in a manner which has brought disgrace on his memory. While still very young, Alcibiades served in the Athenian army, and became the companion and pupil of Socrates, one of the wisest and most virtuous of the Grecian sages. Having rendered some service to his country in a protracted and useless war with Lacedæmon, and being possessed of a talent for addressing the passions of the multitude, Alcibiades, as others had done before him, became the undisputed head of public affairs in Athens. But this preëminence was not of long continuance. An opinion arose among the people that he designed to subvert the constitution, and his fall was as quick as his promotion. Many of his friends were put to death, and he, while absent on an expedition, deprived of his authority. Being thus left without a public director of affairs, Athens, as usual, was torn by internal discords: the aristocratic faction succeeded in overthowing the democratic government (411 B. C.), and establishing a council of 400 individuals to administer the affairs of state, with the power of convoking an assembly of 5000 of the principal citizens for advice and assistance in any emergency. These 400 tyrants, as they were popularly called, were no sooner invested with authority, than they annihilated every remaining portion of the free institutions of Athens. They behaved with the greatest insolence and severity towards the people, and endeavored to confirm and perpetuate their usurped power, by raising a body of mercenary troops in the islands of the Ægean, for the purpose of overawing and enslaving their fellow-citizens. The Athenian army was at this period in the island of Samos, whither it had retired after an expedition against the revolted cities of Asia Minor. When intelligence arrived of the revolution in Athens, and the tyrannical proceedings of the oligarchical faction, the soldiers indignantly refused to obey the new government, and sent an invitation to Alcibiades to return among them, and assist in reëstablishing the democratic constitution. He obeyed the call; and as soon as he arrived in Samos, the troops elected him their general. He then sent a message to Athens, commanding the 400 tyrants to divest themselves immediately of their unconstitutional authority, if they wished to avoid deposition and death at his hands.

This message reached Athens at a time of the greatest confusion and alarm. The 400 tyrants had quarreled among themselves, and were about to appeal to the sword: the island of Eubœa, from which Athens had for some time been principally supplied with provisions, had revolted, and the fleet which had been sent to reduce it had been destroyed by the Lacedæmonians, so that the coasts of Attica, and the port of Athens itself, were now without defense. In these distressing circumstances, the people, roused to desperation, rose upon their oppressors, overturned the government of the 400, after an existence of only a few months, and reëstablished their ancient institutions. Alcibiades was now recalled; but before revisiting Athens, he was desirous of performing some brilliant military exploit, which might obliterate the recollection of his late connection with the Spartans, and give his return an air of triumph. He accordingly joined the Athenian fleet, then stationed at the entrance of the Hellespont, and soon obtained several important victories over the Lacedæmonians, both by sea and land. He then returned to Athens, where he was received with transports of joy. Chaplets of flowers were showered upon his head, and amidst the most enthusiastic acclamations he proceeded to the place of assembly, where he addressed the people in a speech of such eloquence and power, that at its conclusion a crown of gold was placed upon his brow, and he was invested with the supreme command of the Athenian forces, both naval and military. His forfeited property was restored, and the priests were directed to revoke the curses which had formerly been pronounced upon him.

This popularity of Alcibiades was not of long continuance. Many of the dependencies of Athens being in a state of insurrection, he assumed the command of an armament intended for their reduction. But circumstances arose which obliged him to leave the fleet for a short time in charge of one of his officers, named Antiochus, who, in despite of express orders to the contrary, gave battle to the Lacedæmonians during the absence of the commander-in-chief, and was defeated. When intelligence of this action reached Athens, a violent clamor was raised against Alcibiades: he was accused of having neglected his duty, and received a second dismissal from all his offices. On hearing of this, he quitted the fleet, and retiring to a fortress he had built in the Chersonesus of Thrace, he collected around him a band of military adventurers, with whose assistance he carried on a predatory warfare against the neighboring Thracian tribes.

Alcibiades did not long survive his second disgrace with his countrymen. Finding his Thracian residence insecure, on account of the increasing power of his Lacedæmonian enemies, he crossed the Hellespont, and settled in Bithynia, a country on the Asiatic side of the Propontis. Being there attacked and plundered by the Thracians, he proceeded into Phrygia, and placed himself under the protection of Pharnabasus, the Persian satrap of that province. But even thither the unfortunate chief was followed by the unrelenting hatred of the Lacedæmonians, by whose directions he was privately and foully assassinated. Thus perished, about the fortieth year of his age (403 B. C.), one of the ablest men that Greece ever produced. Distinguished alike as a warrior, an orator, and a statesman, and in his nature noble and generous, Alcibiades would have been truly worthy of our admiration if he had possessed probity; but his want of principle, and his unruly passions, led him to commit many grievous errors, which contributed not a little to produce or aggravate those calamities which latterly overtook him.

DECLINE OF ATHENIAN INDEPENDENCE.

With Alcibiades perished the last of the great men who possessed the power to sway the wild democracy, or, properly speaking, the mob of Athens. From the period of his death till the subjugation of the country, the Athenian people were at the mercy of contending factions, and without a single settled principle of government. During this brief period of their history, in which a kind of popular democracy had attained the command of affairs, happened the trial and condemnation of Socrates, an eminent teacher of morals, and a man guiltless of every offense but that of disgracing, by his illustrious merit, the vices and follies of his cotemporaries. On the false charge of corrupting the morals of the pupils who listened to his admirable expositions, and of denying the religion of his country, he was, to the eternal disgrace of the Athenians, compelled to die by drinking poison, a fate which he submitted to with a magnanimity which has rendered his name for ever celebrated. This odious transaction occurred in the year 400 B. C.

After the death of this great man, the political independence of Athens drew to its termination――a circumstance which cannot excite the least surprise, when we reflect on the turbulence of its citizens, their persecution of virtue and talent, and their unhappy distrust of any settled form of government. Their ruin was finally accomplished by their uncontrollable thirst for war, and can create no emotions of pity or regret in the reader of their distracted history. The Lacedæmonians, under the command of an able officer named Lysander, attacked and totally destroyed the Athenian fleet. By this means having obtained the undisputed command of the sea, Lysander easily reduced those cities on the coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor, and those islands of the Ægean, which still acknowledged the supremacy of Athens. Having thus stripped that once lordly state of all its dependencies, he proceeded to blockade the city of Athens itself. The Athenians made a heroic defense; but after a lengthened siege, during which they suffered all the horrors of famine, they were obliged to surrender on such conditions as their enemies thought fit to impose (404 B. C.). The Spartans demanded that the fortifications of Piræus, and the long walls which connected it with the city, should be demolished; that the Athenians should relinquish all pretensions to authority over their former tributaries, recall the exiled partisans of the 400 tyrants, acknowledge the supremacy of Sparta, and follow its commanders in time of war; and finally, that they should adopt such a political constitution as should meet the approbation of the Lacedæmonians.

Thus sank the power of Athens, which had so long been the leading state of Greece, and thus terminated the Peloponnesian war, in which the Grecian communities had been so long engaged, to little other purpose than to waste the strength, and exhaust the resources, of their common country.

CONDITION OF ATHENS. During the age preceding its fall, Athens, as already mentioned, had been greatly beautified and enlarged by Pericles. At the same time, the comparative simplicity of manners which formerly prevailed was exchanged for luxurious habits. This alteration has been thus described by Gillies in his ‘History of Ancient Greece:’――‘In the course of a few years, the success of Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, had tripled the revenues, and increased in a far greater proportion the dominions of the republic. The Athenian galleys commanded the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean; their merchantmen had engrossed the traffic of the adjacent countries; the magazines of Athens abounded with wood, metal, ebony, ivory, and all the materials of the useful as well as of the agreeable arts; they imported the luxuries of Italy, Sicily, Cyprus, Lydia, Pontus, and Peloponnesus; experience had improved their skill in working the silver mines of Mount Laurium; they had lately opened the valuable marble veins in Mount Pentelicus; the honey of Hymettus became important in domestic use and foreign traffic; the culture of their olives (oil being long their staple commodity, and the only production of Attica which Solon allowed them to export) must have improved with the general improvement of the country in arts and agriculture, especially under the active administration of Pericles, who liberally let loose the public treasure to encourage every species of industry.

‘But if that minister promoted the love of action, he found it necessary at least to comply with, if not to excite, the extreme passion for pleasure which then began to distinguish his countrymen. The people of Athens, successful in every enterprise against their foreign as well as domestic enemies, seemed entitled to reap the fruits of their dangers and victories. For the space of at least twelve years preceding the war of Peloponnesus, their city afforded a perpetual scene of triumph and festivity. Dramatic entertainments, to which they were passionately addicted, were no longer performed in slight, unadorned edifices, but in stone or marble theatres, erected at great expense, and embellished with the most precious productions of nature and of art. The treasury was opened, not only to supply the decorations of this favorite amusement, but to enable the poorer citizens to enjoy it, without incurring any private expense; and thus, at the cost of the state, or rather of its tributary allies and colonies, to feast and delight their ears and fancy with the combined charms of music and poetry. The pleasure of the eye was peculiarly consulted and gratified in the architecture of theatres and other ornamental buildings; for as Themistocles had strengthened, Pericles adorned, his native city; and unless the concurring testimony of antiquity was illustrated in the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, and other existing remains worthy to be immortal, it would be difficult to believe that in the space of a few years there could have been created those numerous, yet inestimable wonders of art, those temples, theatres, statues, altars, baths, gymnasia, and porticoes, which, in the language of ancient panegyric, rendered Athens the eye and light of Greece.

‘Pericles was blamed for thus decking one favorite city, like a vain voluptuous harlot, at the expense of plundered provinces; but it would have been fortunate for the Athenians if their extorted wealth had not been employed in more perishing, as well as more criminal, luxury. The pomp of religious solemnities, which were twice as numerous and costly in Athens as in any other city of Greece――the extravagance of entertainments and banquets, which on such occasions always followed the sacrifices――exhausted the resources, without augmenting the glory, of the republic. Instead of the bread, herbs, and simple fare recommended by the laws of Solon, the Athenians, soon after the eightieth Olympiad, availed themselves of their extensive commerce to import the delicacies of distant countries, which were prepared with all the refinements of cookery. The wines of Cyprus were cooled with snow in summer; in winter, the most delightful flowers adorned the tables and persons of the wealthy Athenians. Nor was it sufficient to be crowned with roses, unless they were likewise anointed with the most precious perfumes. Parasites, dancers, and buffoons, were a usual appendage of every entertainment. Among the weaker sex, the passion for delicate birds, distinguished by their voice or plumage, was carried to such excess, as merited the name of madness. The bodies of such youths as were not peculiarly addicted to hunting and horses, which began to be a prevailing taste, were corrupted by a lewd style of living; while their minds were still more polluted by the licentious philosophy of the sophists. It is unnecessary to crowd the picture, since it may be observed, in one word, that the vices and extravagances which are supposed to characterize the declining ages of Greece and Rome, took root in Athens during the administration of Pericles, the most splendid and most prosperous in the Grecian annals.’