Part 84

The government was that of an aristocratic republic under the form of a monarchy. There were two kings, whose powers were nominally those of high priests, judges, and leaders in war, but in the two latter capacities their functions were in time greatly restricted and almost superseded. The chief legislative and judicial and much of the executive, power lay with the Senate, or council of twenty-eight elders. No citizen could be a member of this body until he had become sixty years of age, and the office was held for life. The popular assembly, open to every Spartan citizen over thirty years old, really handed over its powers to a board of five commissioners, officers called Ephors (“overseers”), whom it annually elected. These high officials had a secret and irresponsible control over the executive power, both at home and abroad; and in military enterprises, where the kings were the nominal leaders, the two Ephors who accompanied the army exercised much influence. The whole body of Spartan citizens was an aristocracy, and among themselves entire political equality existed.

TRAINING OF THE SPARTAN CITIZEN

The object of the peculiar training of Spartan citizens, ascribed to Lycurgus, was the maintenance of Spartan supremacy over the subject population. It was necessary for safety that the small body of men, surrounded by enemies in their own land, should be ready at all points, against every attempt at opposition or rebellion, and against the outside world as well.

As every man had to be a soldier, and the citizen existed only for the state, the state took the Spartan citizen in hand at his birth, and regulated him almost from the cradle to the grave. From the age of seven the body was cultivated, and every means was used to give the instrument the finest temper, in a physical sense, and to bring it to the sharpest edge. Such training lasted till the sixtieth year of life, when the Spartan became qualified by age, if not by wisdom, for election to the Senate, or “assembly of old men,” above described.

The girls were trained in athletic exercises like those of the youths, and everything was done to produce vigorous and stern women, prepared to gladly see their sons die on the battle-field for Sparta.

The result of all was that the Spartans became a race of well-drilled and intrepid warriors, but a state distinguished in the history of Greece for the display of a domineering arrogance, a rapacity, and a corruption, which contributed not a little to its downfall. However, the Spartan institutions were very successful in giving the state security at home and success in war abroad. Sparta was free from domestic revolutions, and the spectacle it presented of constancy to fixed maxims of policy gave it a great ascendancy over the Hellenic mind.

EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS. THESEUS

The Athenians became by far the most famous, in political ascendancy and in artistic and intellectual eminence, of all the Ionian race, to which they belonged.

At first they were under kings like the other Hellenes; but about 1050 B. C. the title of king became changed to that of archon (“ruler”), though the office was still held for life, and continued in the same family. The archon was responsible for his acts to a general assembly of the people, in which, however, the nobles had the chief influence; and down to long after the time of the first Olympiad, Athens may be regarded as an oligarchic republic, in which the supreme office, the archonship, was confined to one family; and members of the chief court of justice, called Areopagus (lit. “hill of Ares,” the place of its assembly at Athens), were elected only from the noble houses.

IMPORTANCE OF THE OLYMPIADS IN GREEK CHRONOLOGY

We come, in the year 776 B. C., to the era when the chronology of Grecian history becomes consecutive, and dates are reckoned by Olympiads. These were the periods of four years each which elapsed between the successive celebrations of the Olympic games in honor of the Olympian Zeus (the chief Greek deity) in the plain of Olympia in Elis (in Peloponnesus). The First Olympiad began at midsummer, 776 B. C., the Second Olympiad at midsummer, 772 B. C., and so on--any event being dated by a particular year of a specified Olympiad.

THE UNPOPULAR LAWS OF DRACO

Down to the year 621 B. C. the people were still without a substantial share in the government, and popular discontent demanded a written code. Consequently Draco, one of the archons, drew up laws, the severity of which has become proverbial, and which were intended, by their rigor, to check the growth of the democracy that was clamoring for a change. The penalty of death was assigned to all offenses, great or small, to enable the nobles to get rid of dangerous leaders of the people; but such a system did not long continue.

Anarchy prevailed in Attica, owing to the various factions of the oligarchs, the democrats, and a middle party (the moderates).

SOLON REFORMS THE LAWS

A wise reformer was found in Solon, chosen as an archon in 594 B. C., and invested by his fellow citizens, for the special purpose of restoring tranquility, with unlimited power to change the laws. He was already distinguished as a poet and as a general in the war of Athens against her neighbor, Megara. His great object was to remove the oppressive and excessive power of the aristocracy without introducing pure democracy.

Solon began with the abolition of Draco’s code, but retained the penalty of death for murder. His celebrated disburdening ordinance for the relief of debtors won the complete confidence of the people. This had the immediate effect of mitigating the oppressions caused by the old laws of debt: in future neither the person, family, nor estate of the debtor might be pledged in security for the loan. A further democratic character was given at the outset to the constitution of Solon by the division of the people into four classes, according to property, which was now substituted for birth as a qualification for the higher offices of state.

A council of state, or senate, called the Boule (council) was chosen annually by lot, to prepare measures for submission to the popular assembly, or Ecclesia, in which the citizens of the fourth or lowest class (who could hold no state office) had the right of voting. The Ecclesia included all classes of the citizens, who there legislated, elected the magistrates, decided on peace or war, and other matters sent down to it from the Boule.

For the courts of justice below the Areopagus, a body of six thousand jurors was to be annually selected by lot from the popular assembly, and the causes were tried by divisions of the whole body.

Solon was also the author of many laws which regulated private life and rights, public amusements, slavery, marriage, and other matters. Among his miscellaneous enactments may be noted that which legalized the export of olive oil only, that which obliged the father to teach his son a trade, that which penalized a citizen for remaining neutral on the outbreak of civil strife, and that which empowered a man who died childless to dispose of his property by will.

SOLON’S CONSTITUTION OVERTHROWN BY PISISTRATUS

During Solon’s absence on a tour of travel a renewal of factions followed and their struggles ended in the seizure of power by Pisistratus, in the year 560 B. C. He was one of the class of rulers called “Tyrants” by the Greeks, who held power in Greek states during this and the preceding century.

The Greek Tyrants were aristocratic adventurers who took advantage of their position and of special circumstances to make themselves masters of the government in their respective states.

It is to Pisistratus, however, that the world owes the preservation in their present form of the poems of Homer, which he caused to be collected and edited in a complete written text. He was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, as joint rulers; but the severity of Hippias (after the murder of Hipparchus) caused his expulsion by the people, and the end of the despotism at Athens, 510 B. C.

ATHENS A PURE DEMOCRACY UNDER CLEISTHENES

The government at Athens now (507 B. C.) became a pure democracy, under the auspices of Cleisthenes. At the head of the popular party he effected important changes in the constitution. The public offices of power were thrown open to all the citizens, the whole people was divided into ten tribes or wards, and the senate (Boule) now consisted of five hundred members, fifty from each ward or tribe.

POLITICAL OSTRACISM.--Cleisthenes introduced the ostracism (from ostrakon, the oyster-shell, on which the vote was written), by which the citizens could banish for ten years, by a majority of votes, any citizen whose removal from the state might seem desirable. This device was intended to secure a fair trial for the new constitution by checking the power of individuals who might be dangerous to popular liberties, and by putting a stop to quarrels between rival politicians.

Athens had at last secured a government of the thoroughly democratic type, and from this time began to assume a new and ever-growing importance in Greece, and was soon regarded as the chief of the Ionian States. The people, through the Ecclesia, became thoroughly versed in public affairs, and practically, as well as legally, supreme in the state.

GROWTH AND IMPORTANCE OF SPARTA

As Athens had Draco and Solon as its great lawgivers, so Sparta found in Lycurgus her lawgiver. His institutions gave a permanent cast to the Spartan character, and were not abolished until the last ages of Greece. The system of Lycurgus, meanwhile, had made Sparta a thoroughly military state, and in two great wars (743-723 and 685-668 B. C.) it conquered its neighbors on the west, the Messenians, reducing them to the condition of the Helots, and appropriating their land. By this and by successful war against its northern neighbors, the people of Argos, Sparta acquired the supremacy and became the leading Dorian state of Peloponnesus and of the Grecian world. These two great states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, now were (about 500 B. C.) with the rest of Greece to encounter Persia; and Europe, with united Greece for her champion and representative, was to triumph over the older civilization and prowess of Asia.

III. PERIOD OF PERSIAN WARS AND MILITARY GLORY.--To this age the Greeks ever after looked back with pride, and from its history orators of every nation have drawn their favorite examples of valor and patriotism. The Persian invasion called forth the highest energies of the people, and gave an astonishing impulse to Grecian mind. The design of subjugating Greece originated in the ambition of Darius the Persian king, the second in succession from Cyrus the Great. He found a pretext and occasion for the attempt in a revolt of his Greek subjects in Asia Minor, in which Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was pillaged and burned. The war was carried on by three successive kings, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, but on neither of them did it confer any glory; while the battles of Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, Mycale, and Platæa, secured immortal honor to the Greeks. A succession of splendid names adorns the history of Athens during this period. Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, acted distinguished parts in the brilliant scene. Sparta also justly gloried in the self-sacrifice of Leonidas and his three hundred brave companions. The period of the Persian war was the age of the highest elevation of the national character of the Greeks. Before it, there existed little union comparatively between the different states, and it was not till Athens had alone and successfully resisted the strength of Persia at the battle of Marathon, that other states were aroused to effort against the common enemy. In the confederation which followed, Sparta was the nominal head, but the talents, which actually controlled the public affairs, were found in the statesmen of Athens. To Athens, therefore, the supremacy was necessarily transferred, and before the close of the war this state stood, as it were, the mistress of Greece.

Persia at this time was the chief power of the world, and, by the conquest of the Lydian kingdom, had become master of the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. In 500 B. C. a general revolt of these Ionian cities took place, and the Athenians sent a force of ships and soldiers to help their kinsmen. The united Ionians and Athenians took and burned Sardis, the capital of Lydia, in 499, but, after a six years’ struggle, the power of Darius conquered the whole seaboard of Ionia, and left Persia free to punish the Athenians for interfering between the great Eastern empire and her revolted subjects. In 490 B. C. a great Persian force, under Datis and Artaphernes, was sent across the Ægean, and the fleet landed the Persian army near Marathon, on the east coast of Attica, with a view to an advance upon Athens.

THE FAMOUS BATTLE OF MARATHON

The first and most important battle of the Persian War, and one of the most momentous in history, was that of Marathon. At the plain of Marathon, near Athens, a small Athenian force of about ten thousand men (with the help of six hundred men from Platæa), under the famous general Miltiades, routed a Persian army of perhaps one hundred and ten thousand, in 490 B. C. This memorable battle, resulting as it did in the defeat of the power which had conquered the greater part of the known world, first taught the Greeks their own strength and gave Athens a position in Greece which it had never yet held. The leading men in Athens at this time were Themistocles and Aristides.

The death of Darius, in 485 B. C., prevented him from renewing the Persian attack on Greek liberties, and the task was bequeathed to his son Xerxes. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes took place ten years after the battle of Marathon with an immense force by sea and land (two million five hundred thousand men according to Herodotus).

STAND OF THE THREE HUNDRED AT THERMOPYLAE

Then was fought the memorable battle of Thermopylæ (gates of the hot springs, from hot springs situated there), in which the Spartan Leonidas with a mere handful of men held the whole Persian army at bay in the narrow pass of Thermopylæ; but, a way around the pass being shown the Persians by a treacherous Greek, they were able to attack Leonidas in the rear. Part of the Greek forces retreated on learning of this movement of the Persians, but Leonidas with three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians refused to retreat, and, advancing against the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, sold their lives as dearly as possible.

This little remnant of the Greeks, armed only with a few swords, stood a butt for the arrows, the javelins, and the stones of the enemy, which at length overwhelmed them. Where they fell they were afterwards buried.

GREEK VICTORY AT SALAMIS

Xerxes, having taken the pass of Thermopylæ, moved towards Athens, when the inhabitants had fled, taking refuge in their ships, according to their interpretation of a decree of the oracle that they must seek safety in their “wooden walls.” The Persians burned Athens, and the fate of Greece was then decided by the naval battle of Salamis (480 B. C.), which resulted in a complete victory for the Greeks.

The battle of Salamis, with the battles of Platæa and Mycale, in the next year, decided the war, and the Persians were driven out of Greece forever, and finally, after several years, were driven wholly out of Europe. The arbitrary rule of an irresponsible despot was overcome by the spirit of voluntary obedience to law, the freedom of Greece was maintained, and the future civilization of Europe was secured.

IV. AGE OF PERICLES AND GREEK LUXURY.--This period includes the portion from the close of the Persian war to the Supremacy of Philip, B. C. 337. At the beginning of this period the general affairs of Greece were in a highly prosperous condition, and Athens was unrivaled in wealth and magnificence under the influence of Pericles. But a spirit of luxurious refinement soon took the place of the disinterested patriotism of the preceding age, and the manners of all classes became signally marked by corruption and licentiousness. The events of most prominent interest were: (1) the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta; (2) the accusation of Socrates, disgraceful to the city and all concerned; (3) the expedition of Cyrus the Younger which involved the Greeks in another war with Persia; (4) the successive downfall of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and the rise of Macedon.

The half-century following the battle of Salamis (480-430 B. C.) forms the most brilliant period of Athenian history, and one of the greatest eras in the history of the world.

ATHENS UNDER CIMON

After the fall of the great Athenian Themistocles,--who was banished by ostracism in 469 B. C., at the instance of the aristocratic party,--the rich, able, and popular Cimon, son of Miltiades, the victor at Marathon, was at the head of affairs. In 466 B. C. he gained a great victory, by land and sea, over the Persians, at the mouth of the river Eurymedon, in Pamphylia, on the south coast of Asia Minor. A part of the value of the plunder taken was devoted to the adornment of the city of Athens, which Themistocles had rebuilt and fortified. Cimon spent large sums of his own on the city, and under his direction the defenses of the famous Acropolis (the citadel of Athens) were completed. In 461 B. C. the democratic party at Athens banished Cimon by the ostracism, and the illustrious Pericles, for some years his rival, came to the front.

PERICLES AND HIS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS

Pericles began to be distinguished in Athenian politics about 470 B. C. as leader of the democratic party.

In the constitution of Athens a wide scope was given for the development of great political characters, because the system not only allowed the display of a man’s powers, but summoned every man to use those powers for the general welfare. At the same time, no member of the community could obtain influence unless he had the means of satisfying the intellect, taste, and judgment, as well as the excitable and volatile feelings, of a highly cultivated people.

Such a man was Pericles. From the force of his personality, and his majestic oratory, he was called “the Zeus of the human Pantheon of Athens.” For over thirty years (461 to 429 B. C.) this great man swayed the policy of Athens. Pericles was at once a statesman, a general, a man of learning, and a patron of the fine arts. He recovered for Athens (445 B. C.) the revolted island of Eubœa; he was the friend of the famous sculptor Phidias, and in his age the great dramatic compositions of Sophocles were presented on the Athenian stage. To him Athens owed the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, left unfinished at his death, the Propylæa, the Odeum, and numberless other public and sacred edifices; he also liberally encouraged music and the drama; and during his rule industry and commerce were in so flourishing a condition that prosperity was universal in Attica.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

The supremacy over the other states of Greece which Athens attained after the Persian War, and maintained during the Age of Pericles, with her constant prosperity and unparalleled growth, raised up jealousy and hatred against her, and during that brilliant period were sown the seeds of a civil warfare which was destined to destroy the power and splendor of Greece. After the death of Pericles, Athens had trusted to unworthy demagogues, of whom the most notorious was Cleon.

The other leading state of Greece was Sparta, and there was a general gravitation in the different cities to these two centers of Grecian life, those in which democratic sentiments prevailed looking to Athens for leadership, the rest (those in which the aristocratic or oligarchical element prevailed) regarding themselves as the natural allies of Sparta. The conflict between these two opposing principles, democracy and oligarchy, broke out in 431 B. C., and is known as the Peloponnesian War. Athens was the stronger by sea, Sparta by land.

CHIEF LEADERS IN THE WAR

The chief generals on the Athenian side were Demosthenes (not the great orator of a later time) and Nicias; the Spartan chief was the famous Brasidas, who had much success against the Athenian colonies on the coast of Thrace. The brilliant Alcibiades began to display his powers as a statesman at Athens. In 422 B. C. a battle near Amphipolis, on the coast of Thrace, ended in the defeat of the Athenians, and the deaths of Cleon and of Brasidas, the latter an irreparable loss to Sparta. In the place of Cleon, the mild Nicias became one of the leading statesmen at Athens, and his efforts resulted in a truce between Athens and Sparta, in 421 B. C.

SECOND PERIOD OF WAR

Questions as to keeping the truce, and the mutual distrust and jealousy between these states increased their antagonism. Athens, now mistress of the sea, had the ambition, under the incitement of the great Alcibiades, to acquire complete sway in the Mediterranean.

Perhaps the most important and decisive event of the war was an attack made (415 B. C.) by Athens upon Syracuse in Sicily, when the Spartans helped the Syracusans, and which resulted in the total failure of the expedition (413 B. C.), and great damage to the power of Athens. The Athenians had sent a more powerful armament against Sicily than had ever before been turned out in the history of Greece. The consequences of the defeat of this force were felt all over Greece, the enemies of Athens were stimulated to much greater activity, and thought that the fate of that city was sealed.

THIRD AND LAST PERIOD

Henceforward Athens could only fight for her life as an independent state. In 412 B. C. many of her subject states revolted, including the wealthy Miletus, on the coast of Asia Minor, and the islands of Chios and Rhodes. Sparta formed an alliance with Persia, and used Eastern gold to furnish ships and mercenaries against Athens. Alcibiades, having quarreled with the Spartans, rejoined his country, and conducted her war, in some of its closing years, with brilliant success. In 411 B. C. a revolution took place in Athens which really swept away the democratic constitution of Solon, and substituted an oligarchical faction in power.

DOWNFALL OF ATHENS

The war was chiefly carried on in Asia Minor, where Alcibiades and others defeated the Spartans and their allies by land and sea; but in 405 B. C. the tide of success for Athens turned again, and the Athenian fleet was captured by the Spartan admiral Lysander, at Ægospotami, in the Hellespont, the Athenian galleys being seized, by surprise, on the beach. In 404 B. C. Athens, blockaded by the Spartans both by land and sea, surrendered to Lysander after a four months’ siege, and the war ended in the downfall of Athens, and the formal abolition of the great Athenian democracy.

RESULT OF PELOPONNESIAN WAR