CHAPTER V.
The Persian Generals enter Europe.--Invasion of Naxos, Carystus,
Eretria.--The Athenians Demand the Aid of Sparta.--The Result of their
Mission and the Adventure of their Messenger.--The Persians advance to
Marathon.--The Plain Described.--Division of Opinion in the Athenian
Camp.--The Advice of Miltiades prevails.--The Dream of Hippias.--The
Battle of Marathon.
I. On the Cilician coast the Persian armament encamped--thence, in a
fleet of six hundred triremes, it sailed to Samos (B. C. 490)--passed
through the midst of the clustering Cyclades, and along that part of
the Aegaean Sea called "the Icarian," from the legendary fate of the
son of Daedalus--invaded Naxos--burnt her town and temples, and
sparing the sacred Delos, in which the Median Datis reverenced the
traditionary birthplace of two deities analogous to those most
honoured in the Persian creed [274]--awed into subjection the various
isles, until it arrived at Euboea, divided but by a strait from
Attica, and containing the city of the Eretrians. The fleet first
assailed Carystus, whose generous citizens refused both to aid against
their neighbours, and to give hostages for their conduct. Closely
besieged, and their lands wasted, they were compelled, however, to
surrender to the Persians. Thence the victorious armament passed to
Eretria. The Athenians had sent to the relief of that city the four
thousand colonists whom they had established in the island--but fear,
jealousy, division, were within the walls. Ruin seemed certain, and a
chief of the Eretrians urged the colonists to quit a city which they
were unable to save. They complied with the advice, and reached
Attica in safety. Eretria, however, withstood a siege of six days; on
the seventh the city was betrayed to the barbarians by two of that
fatal oligarchical party, who in every Grecian city seem to have
considered no enemy so detestable as the majority of their own
citizens; the place was pillaged--the temples burnt--the inhabitants
enslaved. Here the Persians rested for a few days ere they embarked
for Attica.
II. Unsupported and alone, the Athenians were not dismayed. A swift-
footed messenger was despatched to Sparta, to implore its prompt
assistance. On the day after his departure from Athens, he reached
his destination, went straight to the assembled magistrates, and thus
addressed them:
"Men of Lacedaemon, the Athenians supplicate your aid; suffer not the
most ancient of the Grecian cities to be enslaved by the barbarian.
Already Eretria is subjected to their yoke, and all Greece is
diminished by the loss of that illustrious city."
The resource the Athenians had so much right to expect failed them.
The Spartans, indeed, resolved to assist Athens, but not until
assistance would have come too late. They declared that their
religion forbade them to commence a march till the moon was at her
full, and this was only the ninth day of the month [275]. With this
unsatisfying reply, the messenger returned to Athens. But, employed
in this arduous enterprise--his imagination inflamed by the greatness
of the danger--and its workings yet more kindled by the loneliness of
his adventure and the mountain stillness of the places through which
he passed, the Athenian messenger related, on his return, a vision
less probably the creation of his invention than of his excited fancy.
Passing over the Mount Parthenius, amid whose wild recesses gloomed
the antique grove dedicated to Telephus, the son of Hercules [276],
the Athenian heard a voice call to him aloud, and started to behold
that mystic god to whom, above the rest of earth, were dedicated the
hills and woods of Arcady--the Pelasgic Pan. The god bade him "ask at
Athens why the Athenians forgot his worship--he who loved them well--
and might yet assist them at their need."
Such was the tale of the messenger. The lively credulities of the
people believed its truth, and in calmer times dedicated a temple to
the deity, venerated him with annual sacrifices, and the race of
torches.
III. While the Athenians listened to the dreams of this poetical
superstition, the mighty thousands of the Mede and Persian landed on
the Attic coast, and, conducted by Hippias among their leaders,
marched to the plain of Marathon, which the traveller still beholds
stretching wide and level, amid hills and marshes, at the distance of
only ten miles from the gates of Athens. Along the shore the plain
extends to the length of six miles--inland it exceeds two. He who
surveys it now looks over a dreary waste, whose meager and arid
herbage is relieved but by the scanty foliage of unfrequent shrubs or
pear-trees, and a few dwarf pines drooping towards the sea. Here and
there may be seen the grazing buffalo, or the peasant bending at his
plough:--a distant roof, a ruined chapel, are not sufficient evidences
of the living to interpose between the imagination of the spectator
and the dead. Such is the present Marathon--we are summoned back to
the past.
IV. It will be remembered that the Athenians were divided into ten
tribes at the instigation of Clisthenes. Each of these tribes
nominated a general; there were therefore ten leaders to the Athenian
army. Among them was Miltiades, who had succeeded in ingratiating
himself with the Athenian people, and obtained from their suffrages a
command. [277]
Aided by a thousand men from Plataea, then on terms of intimate
friendship with the Athenians, the little army marched from the city,
and advanced to the entrance of the plain of Marathon. Here they
arrayed themselves in martial order, near the temple of Hercules, to
the east of the hills that guard the upper part of the valley. Thus
encamped, and in sight of the gigantic power of the enemy, darkening
the long expanse that skirts the sea, divisions broke out among the
leaders;--some contended that a battle was by no means to be risked
with such inferior forces--others, on the contrary, were for giving
immediate battle. Of this latter advice was Miltiades--he was
supported by a man already of high repute, though now first presented
to our notice, and afterward destined to act a great and splendid part
in the drama of his times. Aristides was one of the generals of the
army [278], and strenuously co-operated with Miltiades in the policy
of immediate battle.
Despite, however, the military renown of the one, and the civil
eminence of the other, the opposite and more tame opinion seemed
likely to prevail, when Miltiades suddenly thus addressed the
Polemarch Callimachus. That magistrate, the third of the nine
archons, was held by virtue of his office equal in dignity to the
military leaders, and to him was confided the privilege of a casting
vote.
"On you, Callimachus," said the chief of the Chersonese, "on you it
rests, whether Athens shall be enslaved, or whether from age to age
your country, freed by your voice, shall retain in yours a name dearer
to her even than those of Aristogiton and Harmodius [279]. Never
since the foundation of Athens was she placed in so imminent a peril.
If she succumb to the Mede, she is rendered again to the tyranny of
Hippias--but if she conquer, she may rise to the first eminence among
the states of Greece. How this may be accomplished, and how upon your
decision rests the event, I will at once explain. The sentiments of
our leaders are divided--these are for instant engagement, those for
procrastination. Depend upon it, if we delay, some sedition, some
tumult will break out among the Athenians, and may draw a part of them
to favour the Medes; but if we engage at once, and before a single
dissension takes from us a single man, we may, if the gods give us
equal fortune, obtain the victory. Consider the alternative--our
decision depends on you."
V. The arguments of Miltiades convinced Callimachus, who knew well
the many divisions of the city, the strength which Hippias and the
Pisistratidae still probably possessed within its walls, and who could
not but allow that a superior force becomes ever more fearful the more
deliberately it is regarded. He interposed his authority. It was
decided to give battle. Each general commanded in turn his single
day. When it came to the turn of Aristides, he gave up his right to
Miltiades, showing his colleagues that it was no disgrace to submit to
the profound experience of another. The example once set was
universally followed, and Miltiades was thus left in absolute and
undivided command. But that able and keen-sighted chief, fearing
perhaps that if he took from another his day of command, jealousy
might damp the ardour of the general thus deprived, and, as it were,
degraded, waited till his own appointed day before he commenced the
attack.
VI. On the night before Hippias conducted the barbarians to the
plains of Marathon, he is said to have dreamed a dream. He thought he
was with his mother! In the fondness of human hopes he interpreted
the vision favourably, and flattered himself that he should regain his
authority, and die in his own house of old age. The morning now
arrived (B. C. 490) that was to attest the veracity of his
interpretation.
VII. To the left of the Athenians was a low chain of hills, clothed
with trees (and which furnished them timber to break the charge of the
Persian horse)--to their right a torrent;--their front was long, for,
to render it more imposing in extent, and to prevent being outflanked
by the Persian numbers, the centre ranks were left weak and shallow,
but on either wing the troops were drawn up more solidly and strong.
Callimachus, the polemarch, commanded the right wing--the Plataeans
formed the left. They had few, if any, horsemen or archers. The
details which we possess of their arms and military array, if not in
this, in other engagements of the same period, will complete the
picture. We may behold them clad in bright armour, well proof and
tempered, which covered breast and back--the greaves, so often
mentioned by Homer, were still retained--their helmets were wrought
and crested, the cones mostly painted in glowing colours, and the
plumage of feathers or horse-hair rich and waving, in proportion to
the rank of the wearer. Broad, sturdy, and richly ornamented were
their bucklers--the pride and darling of their arms, the loss of which
was the loss of honour; their spears were ponderous, thick, and long--
a chief mark of contradistinction from the slight shaft of Persia--
and, with their short broadsword, constituted their main weapons of
offence. No Greek army marched to battle without vows, and sacrifice,
and prayer--and now, in the stillness of the pause, the soothsayers
examined the entrails of the victims--they were propitious, and
Callimachus solemnly vowed to Diana a victim for the slaughter of
every foe. Loud broke the trumpets [280]--the standards wrought with
the sacred bird of Athens were raised on high [281];--it was the
signal of battle--and the Athenians rushed with an impetuous vehemence
upon the Persian power. "The first Greeks of whom I have heard," says
the simple Halicarnassean, "who ever ran to attack a foe--the first,
too, who ever beheld without dismay the garb and armour of the Medes;
for hitherto in Greece the very name of Mede had excited terror."
VIII. When the Persian army, with its numerous horse, animal as well
as man protected by plates of mail [283]--its expert bowmen--its lines
and deep files of turbaned soldiers, gorgeous with many a blazing
standard,--headed by leaders well hardened, despite their gay garbs
and adorned breastplates, in many a more even field;--when, I say,
this force beheld the Athenians rushing towards them, they considered
them, thus few, and destitute alike of cavalry and archers [284], as
madmen hurrying to destruction. But it was evidently not without
deliberate calculation that Miltiades had so commenced the attack.
The warlike experience of his guerilla life had taught him to know the
foe against whom he fought. To volunteer the assault was to forestall
and cripple the charge of the Persian horse--besides, the long lances,
the heavy arms, the hand-to-hand valour of the Greeks, must have been
no light encounter to the more weakly mailed and less formidably-armed
infantry of the East. Accustomed themselves to give the charge, it
was a novelty and a disadvantage to receive it. Long, fierce, and
stubborn was the battle. The centre wing of the barbarians, composed
of the Sacians and the pure Persian race, at length pressed hard upon
the shallow centre of the Greeks, drove them back into the country,
and, eager with pursuit, left their own wings to the charge of
Callimachus on the one side and the Plataean forces on the other. The
brave polemarch, after the most signal feats of valour, fell fighting
in the field; but his troops, undismayed, smote on with spear and
sword. The barbarians retreated backward to the sea, where swamps and
marshes encumbered their movements, and here (though the Athenians did
not pursue them far) the greater portion were slain, hemmed in by the
morasses, and probably ridden down by their own disordered cavalry.
Meanwhile, the two tribes that had formed the centre, one of which was
commanded by Aristides [285], retrieved themselves with a mighty
effort, and the two wings, having routed their antagonists, now
inclining towards each other, intercepted the barbarian centre, which,
thus attacked, front and rear (large trees felled and scattered over
the plain obstructing the movements of their cavalry), was defeated
with prodigious slaughter. Evening came on [286]:--confused and
disorderly, the Persians now only thought of flight: the whole army
retired to their ships, hard chased by the Grecian victors, who, amid
the carnage, fired the fleet. Cynaegirus, brother to Aeschylus, the
tragic poet (himself highly distinguished for his feats that day),
seized one of the vessels by the poop: his hand was severed by an axe;
he died gloriously of his wounds. But to none did the fortunes of
that field open a more illustrious career than to a youth of the tribe
Leontis, in whom, though probably then but a simple soldier in the
ranks, was first made manifest the nature and the genius destined to
command. The name of that youth was Themistocles [287]. Seven
vessels were captured--six thousand four hundred of the barbarians
fell in the field--the Athenians and their brave ally lost only one
hundred and ninety-two; but among them perished many of their bravest
nobles. It was a superstition not uncharacteristic of that
imaginative people, and evincing how greatly their ardour was aroused,
that many of them (according to Plutarch) fancied they beheld the
gigantic shade of their ancestral Theseus, completely armed, and
bearing down before them upon the foe.
So perished the hopes of the unfortunate Hippias; obscure and
inglorious in his last hour, the exiled prince fell confounded amid
the general slaughter. [288]
IX. Despite the capture of some vessels, and the conflagration of
others, the Persians still retained a considerable fleet, and,
succeeding in boarding their Eretrian plunder (which they had left on
the Euboean Isle), they passed thence the promontory of Sunium, with
the intention of circumventing the Athenians, and arriving at Athens
before them--a design which it was supposed they were induced to form
by the treachery of some one suspected, without sufficient proof, to
belong to the house of the Alcmaeonids, who held up a shield as a
signal to the Persians while they were under sail [289]. But the
Athenians were under a prompt and vigilant commander, and while the
barbarian fleet doubled the Cape of Sunium, they reached their city,
and effectually prevented the designs of the foe. Aristides, with the
tribe under his command, was left on the field to guard the prisoners
and the booty, and his scrupulous honesty was evinced by his jealous
care over the scattered and uncounted treasure [290]. The painter of
the nobler schools might find perhaps few subjects worthier of his art
than Aristides watching at night amid the torches of his men over the
plains of Marathon, in sight of the blue Aegean, no longer crowded
with the barbarian masts;--and the white columns of the temple of
Hercules, beside which the Athenians had pitched their camp.
The Persian fleet anchored off Phalerum, the Athenian harbour, and
remaining there, menacing but inactive, a short time, sailed back to
Asia.
X. The moon had passed her full, when two thousand Spartans arrived
at Athens: the battle was over and the victory won; but so great was
their desire to see the bodies of the formidable Medes, that they
proceeded to Marathon, and, returning to Athens, swelled the triumph
of her citizens by their applause and congratulations.
XI. The marble which the Persians had brought with them, in order to
erect as a trophy of the victory they anticipated, was, at a
subsequent period, wrought by Phidias into a statue of Nemesis. A
picture of the battle, representing Miltiades in the foremost place,
and solemnly preserved in public, was deemed no inadequate reward to
that great captain; and yet, conspicuous above the level plain of
Marathon, rises a long barrow, fifteen feet in height, the supposed
sepulchre of the Athenian heroes. Still does a romantic legend, not
unfamiliar with our traditions of the north, give a supernatural
terror to the spot. Nightly along the plain are yet heard by
superstition the neighings of chargers and the rushing shadows of
spectral war [291]. And still, throughout the civilized world
(civilized how much by the arts and lore of Athens!) men of every
clime, of every political persuasion, feel as Greeks at the name of
Marathon. Later fields have presented the spectacle of an equal
valour, and almost the same disparities of slaughter; but never, in
the annals of earth, were united so closely in our applause,
admiration for the heroism of the victors, and sympathy for the
holiness of their cause. It was the first great victory of OPINION!
and its fruits were reaped, not by Athens only, but by all Greece
then, as by all time thereafter, in a mighty and imperishable
harvest,--the invisible not less than the actual force of despotism
was broken. Nor was it only that the dread which had hung upon the
Median name was dispelled--nor that free states were taught their pre-
eminence over the unwieldy empires which the Persian conquerors had
destroyed,--a greater lesson was taught to Greece, when she discovered
that the monarch of Asia could not force upon a petty state the
fashion of its government, or the selection of its rulers. The defeat
of Hippias was of no less value than that of Darius; and the same blow
which struck down the foreign invader smote also the hopes of domestic
tyrants.
One successful battle for liberty quickens and exalts that proud and
emulous spirit from which are called forth the civilization and the
arts that liberty should produce, more rapidly than centuries of
repose. To Athens the victory of Marathon was a second Solon.
FOOTNOTES.
[1] In their passage through the press I have, however, had many
opportunities to consult and refer to Mr. Thirlwall's able and careful
work.
[2] The passage in Aristotle (Meteorol., l. I, c. 14), in which,
speaking of the ancient Hellas (the country about Dodona and the river
Achelous), the author says it was inhabited by a people (along with
the Helli, or Selli) then called Graeci, now Hellenes (tote men
Graikoi, nun de Hellaenes) is well known. The Greek chronicle on the
Arundel marbles asserts, that the Greeks were called Graeci before
they were called Hellenes; in fact, Graeci was most probably once a
name for the Pelasgi, or for a powerful, perhaps predominant, tribe of
the Pelasgi widely extended along the western coast--by them the name
was borne into Italy, and (used indiscriminately with that of Pelasgi)
gave the Latin appellation to the Hellenic or Grecian people.
[3] Modern travellers, in their eloquent lamentations over the now
niggard waters of these immortal streams, appear to forget that Strabo
expressly informs us that the Cephisus flowed in the manner of a
torrent, and failed altogether in the summer. "Much the same," he
adds, "was the Ilissus." A deficiency of water was always a principal
grievance in Attica, as we may learn from the laws of Solon relative
to wells.
[4] Platon. Timaeus. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. i., p. 5.
[5] According to some they were from India, to others from Egypt, to
others again from Phoenicia. They have been systematized into
Bactrians, and Scythians, and Philistines--into Goths, and into Celts;
and tracked by investigations as ingenious as they are futile, beyond
the banks of the Danube to their settlements in the Peloponnese. No
erudition and no speculation can, however, succeed in proving their
existence in any part of the world prior to their appearance in
Greece.
[6] Sophoc. Ajax, 1251.
[7] All those words (in the Latin) which make the foundation of a
language, expressive of the wants or simple relations of life, are
almost literally Greek--such as pater, frater, aratrum, bos, ager,
etc. For the derivation of the Latin from the Aeolic dialect of
Greece, see "Scheid's Prolegomena to Lennep's Etymologicon Linguae
Grecae."
[8] The Leleges, Dryopes, and most of the other hordes prevalent in
Greece, with the Pelasgi, I consider, with Mr. Clinton, but as tribes
belonging to the great Pelasgic family. One tribe would evidently
become more civilized than the rest, in proportion to the social state
of the lands through which it migrated--its reception of strangers
from the more advanced East--or according as the circumstances of the
soil in which it fixed its abode stimulated it to industry, or forced
it to invention. The tradition relative to Pelasgus, that while it
asserts him to have been the first that dwelt in Arcadia, declares
also that he first taught men to build huts, wear garments of skins,
and exchange the yet less nutritious food of herbs and roots for the
sweet and palatable acorns of the "fagus," justly puzzled Pausanias.
Such traditions, if they prove any thing, which I more than doubt,
tend to prove that the tribe personified by the word "Pelasgus,"
migrated into that very Arcadia alleged to have been their aboriginal
home, and taught their own rude arts to the yet less cultivated
population they found there.
[9] See Isaiah xxiii.
[10] The received account of the agricultural skill of the Pelasgi is
tolerably well supported. Dionysius tells us that the Aboriginals
having assigned to those Pelasgi, whom the oracle sent from Dodona
into Italy, the marshy and unprofitable land called Velia, they soon
drained the fen:--their love of husbandry contributed, no doubt, to
form the peculiar character of their civilization and religion.
[11] Solinus and Pliny state that the Pelasgi first brought letters
into Italy. Long the leading race of Italy, their power declined,
according to Dionysius, two generations before the Trojan war.
[12] Paus. Arcad., c. xxxviii. In a previous chapter (II.) that
accomplished antiquary observes, that it appeared to him that Cecrops
and Lycaon (son of Pelasgus and founder of Lycosura) were
contemporaries. By the strong and exaggerating expression of
Pausanias quoted in the text, we must suppose, not that he considered
Lycosura the first town of the earth, but the first walled and
fortified city. The sons of Lycaon were great builders of cities, and
in their time rapid strides in civilization appear by tradition to
have been made in the Peloponnesus. The Pelasgic architecture is
often confounded with the Cyclopean. The Pelasgic masonry is
polygonal, each stone fitting into the other without cement; that
called the Cyclopean, and described by Pausanias, is utterly
different, being composed by immense blocks of stone, with small
pebbles inserted in the interstices. (See Gell's Topography of Rome
and its Vicinity.) By some antiquaries, who have not made the mistake
of confounding these distinct orders of architecture, the Cyclopean
has been deemed more ancient than the Pelasgic,--but this also is an
error. Lycosura was walled by the Pelasgians between four and five
centuries prior to the introduction of the Cyclopean masonry--in the
building of the city of Tiryns. Sir William Gell maintains the
possibility of tracing the walls of Lycosura near the place now called
Surias To Kastro.
[13] The expulsion of the Hyksos, which was not accomplished by one
sudden, but by repeated revolutions, caused many migrations; among
others, according to the Egyptians, that of Danaus.
[14] The Egyptian monarchs, in a later age, employed the Phoenicians
in long and adventurous maritime undertakings. At a comparatively
recent date, Neco, king of Egypt, despatched certain Phoenicians on no
less an enterprise than that of the circumnavigation of Africa.
[Herod., iv., 12. Rennell., Geog. of Herod.] That monarch was indeed
fitted for great designs. The Mediterranean and the Red Sea already
received his fleets, and he had attempted to unite them by a canal
which would have rendered Africa an island. [Herod., ii., 158, 159.
Heeren., Phoenicians, c. iii. See also Diodorus.]
[15] The general habits of a people can in no age preclude exceptions
in individuals. Indian rajahs do not usually travel, but we had an
Indian rajah for some years in the Regent's Park; the Chinese are not
in the habit of visiting England, but a short time ago some Chinese
were in London. Grant that Phoenicians had intercourse with Egypt and
with Greece, and nothing can be less improbable than that a Phoenician
vessel may have contained some Egyptian adventurers. They might
certainly be men of low rank and desperate fortunes--they might be
fugitives from the law--but they might not the less have seemed
princes and sages to a horde of Pelasgic savages.
[16] The authorities in favour of the Egyptian origin of Cecrops
are.--Diod., lib. i.; Theopomp.; Schol. Aristoph.; Plot.; Suidas.
Plato speaks of the ancient connexion between Sais and Athens. Solon
finds the names of Erechtheus and Cecrops in Egypt, according to the
same authority, I grant a doubtful one (Plat. Critias.) The best
positive authority of which I am aware in favour of the contrary
supposition that Cecrops was indigenous, is Apollodorus.
[17] To enter into all the arguments that have been urged on either
side relative to Cecrops would occupy about two hundred pages of this
work, and still leave the question in dispute. Perhaps two hundred
pages might be devoted to subjects more generally instructive.
[18] So, in the Peruvian traditions, the apparition of two persons of
majestic form and graceful garments, appearing alone and unarmed on
the margin of the Lake Titiaca, sufficed to reclaim a naked and
wretched horde from their savage life, to inculcate the elements of
the social union, and to collect a people in establishing a throne.
[19] "Like the Greeks," says Herodotus (book ii., c. 112), "the
Egyptians confine themselves to one wife." Latterly, this among the
Greeks, though a common, was not an invariable, restraint; but more on
this hereafter.
[20] Hobhouse's Travels, Letter 23.
[21] It is by no means probable that this city, despite its fortress,
was walled like Lycosura.
[22] At least Strabo assigns Boeotia to the government of Cecrops.
But I confess, that so far from his incorporating Boeotia with Attica,
I think that traditions relative to his immediate successors appear to
indicate that Attica itself continued to retain independent tribes--
soon ripening, if not already advanced, to independent states.
[23] Herod., ii., c. i.
[24] Ibid., ii., c. liii.
[25] That all the Pelasgi--scattered throughout Greece, divided among
themselves--frequently at war with each other, and certainly in no
habits of peaceful communication--each tribe of different modes of
life, and different degrees of civilization, should have concurred in
giving no names to their gods, and then have equally concurred in
receiving names from Egypt, is an assertion so preposterous, that it
carries with it its own contradiction. Many of the mistakes relative
to the Pelasgi appear to have arisen from supposing the common name
implied a common and united tribe, and not a vast and dispersed
people, subdivided into innumerable families, and diversified by
innumerable influences.
[26] The connexion of Ceres with Isis was a subsequent innovation.
[27] Orcos was the personification of an oath, or the sanctity of an
oath.
[28] Naith in the Doric dialect.
[29] If Onca, or Onga, was the name of the Phoenician goddess!--In
the "Seven against Thebes," the chorus invoke Minerva under the name
of Onca--and there can be no doubt that the Grecian Minerva is
sometimes called Onca; but it is not clear to me that the Phoenicians
had a deity of that name--nor can I agree with those who insist upon
reading Onca for Siga in Pausanias (lib. ix., chap. 12), where he says
Siga was the name of the Phoenician Minerva. The Phoenicians
evidently had a deity correspondent with the Greek Minerva; but that
it was named Onca, or Onga, is by no means satisfactorily proved; and
the Scholiast, on Pindar, derives the epithet as applies to Minerva
from a Boeotian village.
[30] De Mundo, c. 7.
[31] The Egyptians supposed three principles: 1st. One benevolent and
universal Spirit. 2d. Matter coeval with eternity. 3d. Nature
opposing the good of the universal Spirit. We find these principles
in a variety of shapes typified through their deities. Besides their
types of nature, as the Egyptians adopted hero gods, typical fables
were invented to conceal their humanity, to excuse their errors, or to
dignify their achievements.
[32] See Heeren's Political History of Greece, in which this point is
luminously argued.
[33] Besides, it is not the character of emigrants from a people
accustomed to castes, to propagate those castes superior to then own,
of which they have exported no representatives. Suppose none of that
privileged and noble order, called the priests, to have accompanied
the Egyptian migrators, those migrators would never have dreamed of
instituting that order in their new settlement any more than a colony
of the warrior caste in India would establish out of their own order a
spurious and fictitious caste of Bramins.
[34] When, in a later age, Karmath, the impostor of the East, sough
to undermine Mahometanism, his most successful policy was in declaring
its commands to be allegories.
[35] Herodotus (b. ii, c. 53) observes, that it is to Hesiod and
Homer the Greeks owe their theogony; that they gave the gods their
titles, fixed their ranks, and described their shapes. And although
this cannot be believed literally, in some respects it may
metaphorically. Doubtless the poets took their descriptions from
popular traditions; but they made those traditions immortal. Jupiter
could never become symbolical to a people who had once pictured to
themselves the nod and curls of the Jupiter of Homer.
[36] Cicero de Natura Deorum, b. ii.--Most of the philosophical
interpretations of the Greek mythology were the offspring of the
Alexandrine schools. It is to the honour of Aristarchus that he
combated a theory that very much resembles the philosophy that would
convert the youthful readers of Mother Bunch into the inventors of
allegorical morality.
[37] But the worship can be traced to a much earlier date than that
the most plausibly ascribed to the Persian Zoroaster.
[38] So Epimenides of Crete is said to have spent forty-five years in
a cavern, and Minos descends into the sacred cave of Jupiter to
receive from him the elements of law. The awe attached to woods and
caverns, it may be observed, is to be found in the Northern as well as
Eastern superstitions. And there is scarcely a nation on the earth in
which we do not find the ancient superstition has especially attached
itself to the cavern and the forest, peopling them with peculiar
demons. Darkness, silence, and solitude are priests that eternally
speak to the senses; and few of the most skeptical of us have been
lost in thick woods, or entered lonely caverns, without acknowledging
their influence upon the imagination: "Ipsa silentia," says
beautifully the elder Pliny, "ipsa silentia adoramus." The effect of
streams and fountains upon the mind seems more unusual and surprising.
Yet, to a people unacquainted with physics, waters imbued with mineral
properties, or exhaling mephitic vapours, may well appear possessed of
a something preternatural. Accordingly, at this day, among many
savage tribes we find that such springs are regarded with veneration
and awe. The people of Fiji, in the South Seas, have a well which
they imagine the passage to the next world, they even believe that you
may see in its waters the spectral images of things rolling on to
eternity. Fountains no less than groves, were objects of veneration
with our Saxon ancestors.--See Meginhard, Wilkins, etc.
[39] 2 Kings xvi., 4.
[40] Of the three graces, Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia, the
Spartans originally worshipped but one--(Aglaia, splendour) under the
name of Phaenna, brightness: they rejected the other two, whose names
signify Joy and Pleasure, and adopted a substitute in one whose name
was Sound (Cletha,)--a very common substitute nowadays!
[41] The Persian creed, derived from Zoroaster, resembled the most to
that of Christianity. It inculcated the resurrection of the dead, the
universal triumph of Ormuzd, the Principle of Light--the destruction
of the reign of Ahrimanes, the Evil Principle.
[42] Wherever Egyptian, or indeed Grecian colonies migrated, nothing
was more natural than that, where they found a coincidence of scene,
they should establish a coincidence of name. In Epirus were also the
Acheron and Cocytus; and Campania contains the whole topography of the
Virgilian Hades.
[43] See sect. xxi., p. 77.
[44] Fire was everywhere in the East a sacred symbol--though it
cannot be implicitly believed that the Vulcan or Hephaistus of the
Greeks has his prototype or original in the Egyptian Phta or Phtas.
The Persian philosophy made fire a symbol of the Divine intelligence--
the Persian credulity, like the Grecian, converted the symbol into the
god (Max. Tyr., Dissert. 38; Herod., lib. 3, c. 16). The Jews
themselves connected the element with their true Deity. It is in fire
that Jehovah reveals himself. A sacred flame was burnt unceasingly in
the temples of Israel, and grave the punishment attached to the
neglect which suffered its extinction.--(Maimonides, Tract. vi.)
[45] The Anaglyph expressed the secret writings of the Egyptians,
known only to the priests. The hieroglyph was known generally to the
educated.
[46] In Gaul, Cesar finds some tribes more civilized than the rest,
cultivating the science of sacrifice, and possessed of the dark
philosophy of superstitious mysteries; but in certain other and more
uncivilized tribes only the elements and the heavenly luminaries (quos
cernunt et quorum opibus aperte juvantur) were worshipped, and the
lore of sacrifice was unstudied. With the Pelasgi as with the Gauls,
I believe that such distinctions might have been found simultaneously
in different tribes.
[47] The arrival of Ceres in Attica is referred to the time of
Pandion by Apollodorus.
[48] When Lobeck desires to fix the date of this religious union at
so recent an epoch as the time of Solon, in consequence of a solitary
passage in Herodotus, in which Solon, conversing with Croesus, speaks
of hostilities between the Athenians and Eleusinians, he seems to me
to fail in sufficient ground for the assumption. The rite might have
been instituted in consequence of a far earlier feud and league--even
that traditionally recorded in the Mythic age of Erechtheus and
Eumolpus, but could not entirely put an end to the struggles of
Eleusis for independence, or prevent the outbreak of occasional
jealousy and dissension.
[49] Kneph, the Agatho demon, or Good Spirit of Egypt, had his symbol
in the serpent. It was precisely because sacred with the rest of the
world that the serpent would be an object of abhorrence with the Jews.
But by a curious remnant of oriental superstition, the early
Christians often represented the Messiah by the serpent--and the
emblem of Satan became that of the Saviour.
[50] Lib. ii., c. 52, 4.
[51] And this opinion is confirmed by Dionysius and Strabo, who
consider the Dodona oracle originally Pelasgic.
[52] Also Pelasgic, according to Strabo.
[53] "The Americans did not long suppose the efficacy of conjuration
to be confined to one subject--they had recourse to it in every
situation of danger or distress.------From this weakness proceeded
likewise the faith of the Americans in dreams, their observation of
omens, their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries of
animals, all which they supposed to be indications of future events."
--Robertson's History of America, book iv.
Might not any one imagine that he were reading the character of the
ancient Greeks? This is not the only point of resemblance between the
Americans (when discovered by the Spaniards) and the Greeks in their
early history; but the resemblance is merely that of a civilization in
some respects equally advanced.
[54] The notion of Democritus of Abdera, respecting the origin of
dreams and divination, may not he uninteresting to the reader, partly
from something vast and terrible in the fantasy, partly as a proof of
the strange, incongruous, bewildered chaos of thought, from which at
last broke the light of the Grecian philosophy. He introduced the
hypothesis of images (eidola,), emanating as it were from external
objects, which impress our sense, and whose influence creates
sensation and thought. Dreams and divination he referred to the
impressions communicated by images of gigantic and vast stature, which
inhabited the air and encompassed the world. Yet this philosopher is
the original of Epicurus, and Epicurus is the original of the modern
Utilitarians!
[55] Isaiah lxvi. I.
[56] This Lucian acknowledges unawares, when, in deriding the popular
religion, he says that a youth who reads of the gods in Homer or
Hesiod, and finds their various immoralities so highly renowned, would
feel no little surprise when he entered the world, to discover that
these very actions of the gods were condemned and punished by mankind.
[57] Ovid. Metam., lib. ix.
[58] So the celebrated preamble to the laws for the Locrians of Italy
(which, though not written by Zaleucus, was, at all events, composed
by a Greek) declares that men must hold their souls clear from every
vice; that the gods did not accept the offerings of the wicked, but
found pleasure only in the just and beneficent actions of the good.--
See Diod. Siculus, lib. 8.
[59] A Mainote hearing the Druses praised for their valour, said,
with some philosophy, "They would fear death more if they believed in
an hereafter!"
[60] In the time of Socrates, we may suspect, from a passage in
Plato's Phaedo, that the vulgar were skeptical of the immortality of
the soul, and it may be reasonably doubted whether the views of
Socrates and his divine disciple were ever very popularly embraced.
[61] It is always by connecting the divine shape with the human that
we exalt our creations--so, in later times, the saints, the Virgin,
and the Christ, awoke the genius of Italian art.
[62] See note [54].
[63] In the later age of philosophy I shall have occasion to return to
the subject. And in the Appendix, with which I propose to complete
the work, I may indulge in some conjectures relative to the Corybantes
Curetes, Teichines, etc.
[64] Herodotus (I. vi., c. 137) speaks of a remote time when the
Athenians had no slaves. As we have the authority of Thucydides for
the superior repose which Attica enjoyed as compared with the rest of
Greece--so (her population never having been conquered) slavery in
Attica was probably of later date than elsewhere, and we may doubt
whether in that favoured land the slaves were taken from any
considerable part of the aboriginal race. I say considerable part,
for crime or debt would have reduced some to servitude. The assertion
of Herodotus that the Ionians were indigenous (and not conquerors as
Mueller pretends), is very strongly corroborated by the absence in
Attica of a class of serfs like the Penestae of Thessaly and the
Helots of Laconia. A race of conquerors would certainly have produced
a class of serfs.
[65] Or else the land (properly speaking) would remain with the
slaves, as it did with the Messenians an Helots--but certain
proportions of the produce would be the due of the conquerors.
[66] Immigration has not hitherto been duly considered as one of the
original sources of slavery.
[67] In a horde of savages never having held communication or
intercourse with other tribes, there would indeed be men who, by a
superiority of physical force, would obtain an ascendency over the
rest; but these would not bequeath to their descendants distinct
privileges. Exactly because physical power raised the father into
rank--the want of physical power would merge his children among the
herd. Strength and activity cannot be hereditary. With individuals
of a tribe as yet attaching value only to a swift foot or a strong
arm, hereditary privilege is impossible. But if one such barbarous
tribe conquer another less hardy, and inhabit the new settlement,--
then indeed commences an aristocracy--for amid communities, though not
among individuals, hereditary physical powers can obtain. One man may
not leave his muscles to his son; but one tribe of more powerful
conformation than another would generally contrive to transmit that
advantage collectively to their posterity. The sense of superiority
effected by conquest soon produces too its moral effects--elevating
the spirit of the one tribe, depressing that of the other, from
generation to generation. Those who have denied in conquest or
colonization the origin of hereditary aristocracy, appear to me to
have founded their reasonings upon the imperfectness of their
knowledge of the savage states to which they refer for illustration.
[68] Accordingly we find in the earliest records of Greek history--in
the stories of the heroic and the Homeric age--that the king possessed
but little authority except in matters of war: he was in every sense
of the word a limited monarch, and the Greeks boasted that they had
never known the unqualified despotism of the East. The more, indeed,
we descend from the patriarchal times; the more we shall find that
colonists established in their settlements those aristocratic
institutions which are the earliest barriers against despotism.
Colonies are always the first teachers of free institutions. There is
no nation probably more attached to monarchy than the English, yet I
believe that if, according to the ancient polity, the English were to
migrate into different parts, and establish, in colonizing, their own
independent forms of government; there would scarcely be a single such
colony not republican!
[69] In Attica, immigration, not conquest, must have led to the
institution of aristocracy. Thucydides observes, that owing to the
repose in Attica (the barren soil of which presented no temptation to
the conqueror), the more powerful families expelled from the other
parts of Greece, betook themselves for security and refuge to Athens.
And from some of these foreigners many of the noblest families in the
historical time traced their descent. Before the arrival of these
Grecian strangers, Phoenician or Egyptian settlers had probably
introduced an aristocratic class.
[70] Modern inquirers pretend to discover the Egyptian features in
the effigy of Minerva on the earliest Athenian coins. Even the golden
grasshopper, with which the Athenians decorated their hair, and which
was considered by their vanity as a symbol of their descent from the
soil, has been construed into an Egyptian ornament--a symbol of the
initiated.--(Horapoll. Hierogl., lib. ii., c. 55.) "They are the only
Grecian people," says Diodorus, "who swear by Isis, and their manners
are very conformable to those of the Egyptians; and so much truth was
there at one time (when what was Egyptian became the fashion) in this
remark, that they were reproached by the comic writer that their city
was Egypt and not Athens." But it is evident that all such
resemblance as could have been derived from a handful of Egyptians,
previous to the age of Theseus, was utterly obliterated before the age
of Solon. Even if we accord to the tale of Cecrops all implicit
faith, the Atticans would still remain a Pelasgic population, of which
a few early institutions--a few benefits of elementary civilization--
and, it may be, a few of the nobler families, were probably of
Egyptian origin.
[71] It has been asserted by some that there is evidence in ancient
Attica of the existence of castes similar to those in Egypt and the
farther East. But this assertion has been so ably refuted that I do
not deem it necessary to enter at much length into the discussion. It
will be sufficient to observe that the assumption is founded upon the
existence of four tribes in Attica, the names of which etymological
erudition has sought to reduce to titles denoting the different
professions of warriors, husbandmen, labourers, and (the last much
more disputable and much more disputed) priests. In the first place,
it has been cogently remarked by Mr. Clinton (F. H., vol. i., p. 54),
that this institution of castes has been very inconsistently
attributed to the Greek Ion,--not (as, if Egyptian, it would have
been) to the Egyptian Cecrops. 2dly, If rightly referred to Ion, who
did not long precede the heroic age, how comes it that in that age a
spirit the most opposite to that of castes universally prevailed--as
all the best authenticated enactments of Theseus abundantly prove?
Could institutions calculated to be the most permanent that
legislation ever effected, and which in India have resisted every
innovation of time, every revolution of war, have vanished from Attica
in the course of a few generations? 3dly, It is to be observed, that
previous to the divisions referred to Ion, we find the same number of
four tribes under wholly different names;--under Cecrops, under
Cranaus, under Ericthonius or Erectheus, they received successive
changes of appellations, none of which denoted professions, but were
moulded either from the distinctions of the land they inhabited, or
the names of deities they adored. If remodelled by Ion to correspond
with distinct professions and occupations (and where is that social
state which does not form different classes--a formation widely
opposite to that of different castes?) cultivated by the majority of
the members of each tribe, the name given to each tribe might be but a
general title by no means applicable to every individual, and
certainly not implying hereditary and indelible distinctions. 4thly,
In corroboration of this latter argument, there is not a single
evidence--a single tradition, that such divisions ever were
hereditary. 5thly, In the time of Solon and the Pisistratida we find
the four Ionic tribes unchanged, but without any features analogous to
those of the Oriental castes.--(Clinton, F. H., vol. i., p. 55.)
6thly, I shall add what I have before intimated (see note [33]), that
I do not think it the character of a people accustomed to castes to
establish castes mock and spurious in any country which a few of them
might visit or colonize. Nay, it is clearly and essentially contrary
to such a character to imagine that a handful of wandering Egyptians,
even supposing (which is absurd) that their party contained members of
each different caste observed by their countrymen, would have
incorporated with such scanty specimens of each caste any of the
barbarous natives--they would leave all the natives to a caste by
themselves. And an Egyptian hierophant would as little have thought
of associating with himself a Pelasgic priest, as a Bramin would dream
of making a Bramin caste out of a set of Christian clergymen. But if
no Egyptian hierophant accompanied the immigrators, doubly ridiculous
is it to suppose that the latter would have raised any of their own
body, to whom such a change of caste would be impious, and still less
any of the despised savages, to a rank the most honoured and the most
reverent which Egyptian notions of dignity could confer. Even the
very lowest Egyptians would not touch any thing a Grecian knife had
polluted--the very rigidity with which caste was preserved in Egypt
would forbid the propagation of castes among barbarians so much below
the very lowest caste they could introduce. So far, therefore, from
Egyptian adventurers introducing such an institution among the general
population, their own spirit of caste must rapidly have died away as
intermarriage with the natives, absence from their countrymen, and the
active life of an uncivilized home, mixed them up with the blood, the
pursuits, and the habits of their new associates. Lastly, If these
arguments (which might be easily multiplied) do not suffice, I say it
is not for me more completely to destroy, but for those of a contrary
opinion more completely to substantiate, an hypothesis so utterly at
variance with the Athenian character--the acknowledged data of
Athenian history; and which would assert the existence of institutions
the most difficult to establish;--when established, the most difficult
to modify, much more to efface.
[72] The Thessali were Pelasgic.
[73] Thucyd., lib. i.
[74] Homer--so nice a discriminator that he dwells upon the barbarous
tongue even of the Carians--never seems to intimate any distinction
between the language and race of the Pelasgi and Hellenes, yet he
wrote in an age when the struggle was still unconcluded, and when
traces of any marked difference must have been sufficiently obvious to
detect--sufficiently interesting to notice.
[75] Strabo, viii.
[76] Pausan., viii.
[77] With all my respect for the deep learning and acute ingenuity of
Mueller, it is impossible not to protest against the spirit in which
much of the History of the Dorians is conceived--a spirit than which
nothing can be more dangerous to sound historical inquiry. A vague
tradition, a doubtful line, suffice the daring author for proof of a
foreign conquest, or evidence of a religious revolution. There are
German writers who seem to imagine that the new school of history is
built on the maxim of denying what is, and explaining what is not?
Ion is never recorded as supplanting, or even succeeding, an Attic
king. He might have introduced the worship of Apollo; but, as Mr.
Clinton rightly observes, that worship never superseded the worship of
Minerva, who still remained the tutelary divinity of the city.
However vague the traditions respecting Ion, they all tend to prove an
alliance with the Athenians, viz., precisely the reverse of a conquest
of them.
[78] That connexion which existed throughout Greece, sometimes pure,
sometimes perverted, was especially and originally Doric.
[79] Prideaux on the Marbles. The Iones are included in this
confederacy; they could not, then, have taken their name from the
Hellenic Ion, for Ion was not born at the time of Amphictyon. The
name Amphictyon is, however, but a type of the thing amphictyony, or
association. Leagues of this kind were probably very common over
Greece, springing almost simultaneously out of the circumstances
common to numerous tribes, kindred with each other, yet often at
variance and feud. A common language led them to establish, by a
mutual adoption of tutelary deities, a common religious ceremony,
which remained in force after political considerations died away. I
take the Amphictyonic league to be one of the proofs of the affinity
of language between the Pelasgi and Hellenes. It was evidently made
while the Pelasgi were yet powerful and unsubdued by Hellenic
influences, and as evidently it could not have been made if the
Pelasgi and Hellenes were not perfectly intelligible to each other.
Mr. Clinton (F. H., vol. i., 66), assigns a more recent date than has
generally been received to the great Amphictyonic league, placing it
between the sixtieth and the eightieth year from the fall of Troy.
His reason for not dating it before the former year is, that until
then the Thessali (one of the twelve nations) did not occupy Thessaly.
But, it may be observed consistently with the reasonings of that great
authority, first, that the Thessali are not included in the lists of
the league given by Harpocratio and Libanius; and, secondly, that even
granting that the great Amphictyonic assembly of twelve nations did
not commence at an earlier period, yet that that more celebrated
amphictyony might have been preceded by other and less effectual
attempts at association, agreeably to the legends of the genealogy.
And this Mr. Clinton himself implies.
[80] Strabo, lib. ix.
[81] Mueller's Dorians, vol. i.
[82] Probably chosen in rotation from the different cities.
[83] Even the bieromnemons (or deputies intrusted with religious
cares) must have been as a class very inferior in ability to the
pylagorae; for the first were chosen by lot, the last by careful
selection. And thus we learn, in effect, that while the hieromnemon
had the higher grade of dignity, the pylagoras did the greater share
of business.
[84] Milton, Hist. of Eng., book i.
[85] No man of rank among the old northern pirates was deemed
honourable if not a pirate, gloriam sibi acquirens, as the Vatzdaela
hath it.
[86] Most probably more than one prince. Greece has three
well accredited pretenders to the name and attributes even of the
Grecian Hercules.
[87] Herodotus marks the difference between the Egyptian and Grecian
deity, and speaks of a temple erected by the Phoenicians to Hercules,
when they built Thasus, five hundred years before the son of
Amphitryon was known to the Greeks. The historian commends such of
the Greeks as erected two temples to the divinity of that name,
worshipping in the one as to a god, but in the other observing only
the rites as to a hero.-B. ii., c. 13, 14.
[88] Plot. in Vit. Thes.--Apollod., l. 3. This story is often
borrowed by the Spanish romance-writers, to whom Plutarch was a
copious fountain of legendary fable.
[89] Plut. in Vit. Thes.
[90] Mr. Mueller's ingenious supposition, that the tribute was in
fact a religious ceremony, and that the voyage of Theseus had
originally no other meaning than the landings at Naxos and Delos, is
certainly credible, but not a whit more so than, and certainly not so
simple as, the ancient accounts in Plutarch; as with mythological, so
with historical legends, it is better to take the plain and popular
interpretation whenever it seems conformable to the manners of the
times, than to construe the story by newly-invented allegories. It is
very singular that that is the plan which every writer on the early
chronicles of France and England would adopt,--and yet which so few
writers agree to*****[three illegible words in the print copy]*****
the obscure records of the Greeks.
[91] Plutarch cites Clidemus in support of another version of the
tale, somewhat less probable, viz., that, by the death of Minos and
his son Deucalion, Ariadne became possessed of the throne, and that
she remitted the tribute.
[92] Thucydides, b. ii., c. 15.
[93] But many Athenians preferred to a much later age the custom of
living without the walls--scattered over the country.--(Thucyd., lib.
ii., 15.) We must suppose it was with them as with the moderns--the
rich and the great generally preferred the capital, but there were
many exceptions.
[94] For other instances in which the same word is employed by Homer,
see Clinton's Fast Hell., vol. i., introduction, ix.
[95] Paus., l. i., c. 19; l. ii., c. 18.
[96] Paus., l. vii., c. 25. An oracle of Dodona had forewarned the
Athenians of the necessity of sparing the suppliants.
[97] Herod. (lib. v., 76) cites this expedition of the Dorians for
the establishment of a colony at Megara as that of their first
incursion into Attica,
[98] Suidas. One cannot but be curious as to the motives and policy
of a person, virtuous as a man, but so relentless as a lawgiver.
Although Draco was himself a noble, it is difficult to suppose that
laws so stern and impartial would not operate rather against the more
insolent and encroaching class than against the more subordinate ones.
The attempt shows a very unwholesome state of society, and went far to
produce the democratic action which Solon represented rather than
created.
[99] Hume utters a sentiment exactly the reverse: "To expect," says
he, in his Essay on the rise of Arts and Sciences, "that the arts and
sciences should take their first rise in a monarchy, is to expect a
contradiction;" and he holds, in a subsequent part of the same essay,
that though republics originate the arts and sciences, they may be
transferred to a monarchy. Yet this sentiment is utterly at variance
with the fact; in the despotic monarchies of the East were the
elements of the arts and sciences; it was to republics they were
transferred, and republics perfected them. Hume, indeed, is often the
most incautious and uncritical of all writers. What can we think of
an author who asserts that a refined taste succeeds best in
monarchies, and then refers to the indecencies of Horace and Ovid as
an example of the reverse in a republic--as if Ovid and Horace had not
lived under a monarchy! and throughout the whole of this theory he is
as thoroughly in the wrong. By refined taste he signifies an
avoidance of immodesty of style. Beaumont and Fletcher, Rochester,
Dean Swift, wrote under monarchies--their pruriencies are not excelled
by any republican authors of ancient times. What ancient authors
equal in indelicacy the French romances from the time of the Regent of
Orleans to Louis XVI.? By all accounts, the despotism of China is the
very sink of indecencies, whether in pictures or books. Still more,
what can we think of a writer who says, that "the ancients have not
left us one piece of pleasantry that is excellent, unless one may
except the Banquet of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Lucian?" What!
has he forgotten Aristophanes? Has he forgotten Plautus! No--but
their pleasantry is not excellent to his taste; and he tacitly agrees
with Horace in censuring the "coarse railleries and cold jests" of the
Great Original of Moliere!
[100] Which forbade the concentration of power necessary to great
conquests. Phoenicia was not one state, it was a confederacy of
states; so, for the same reason, Greece, admirably calculated to
resist, was ill fitted to invade.
[101] For the dates of these migrations, see Fast. Hell., vol. i.
[102] To a much later period in the progress of this work I reserve a
somewhat elaborate view of the history of Sicily.
[103] Pausanias, in corroboration of this fact, observes, that
Periboea, the daughter of Alcathous, was sent with Theseus with
tribute into Crete.
[104] When, according to Pausanias, it changed its manners and its
language.
[105] In length fifty-two geographical miles, and about twenty-eight
to thirty-two broad.
[106] A council of five presided over the business of the oracle,
composed of families who traced their descent from Deucalion.
[107] Great grandson to Antiochus, son of Hercules.--Pausanias, l. 2,
c. 4.
[108] But at Argos, at least, the name, though not the substance, of
the kingly government was extant as late as the Persian war.
[109] Those who meant to take part in the athletic exercises were
required to attend at Olympia thirty days previous to the games, for
preparation and practice.
[110] It would appear by some Etruscan vases found at Veii, that the
Etruscans practised all the Greek games--leaping, running, cudgel-
playing, etc., and were not restricted, as Niebuhr supposes, to boxing
and chariot-races.
[111] It however diminishes the real honour of the chariot-race, that
the owner of horses usually won by proxy.
[112] The indecorum of attending contests where the combatants were
unclothed, was a sufficient reason for the exclusion of females. The
priestess of Ceres, the mighty mother, was accustomed to regard all
such indecorums as symbolical, and had therefore refined away any
remarkable indelicacy.
[113] Plut. in Alex. When one of the combatants with the cestus
killed his antagonist by running the ends of his fingers through his
ribs, he was ignominiously expelled the stadium. The cestus itself
made of thongs of leather, was evidently meant not to increase the
severity of the blow, but for the prevention of foul play by the
antagonists laying hold of each other, or using the open hand. I
believe that the iron bands and leaden plummets were Roman inventions,
and unknown at least till the later Olympic games. Even in the
pancratium, the fiercest of all the contests--for it seems to have
united wrestling with boxing (a struggle of physical strength, without
the precise and formal laws of the boxing and wrestling matches), it
was forbidden to kill an enemy, to injure his eyes, or to use the
teeth.
[114] Even to the foot-race, in which many of the competitors were of
the lowest rank, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedon, was not admitted
till he had proved an Argive descent. He was an unsuccessful
competitor.
[115] Herodotus relates an anecdote, that the Eleans sent deputies to
Egypt, vaunting the glories of the Olympic games, and inquiring if the
Egyptians could suggest any improvement. The Egyptians asked if the
citizens of Elis were allowed to contend, and, on hearing that they
were, declared it was impossible they should not favour their own
countrymen, and consequently that the games must lead to injustice--a
suspicion not verified.
[116] Cic. Quaest. Tusc., II, 17.
[117] Nero (when the glory had left the spot) drove a chariot of ten
horses in Olympia, out of which he had the misfortune to tumble. He
obtained other prizes in other Grecian games, and even contended with
the heralds as a crier. The vanity of Nero was astonishing, but so
was that of most of his successors. The Roman emperors were the
sublimest coxcombs in history. In men born to stations which are
beyond ambition, all aspirations run to seed.
[118] Plut. in Sympos.
[119] It does not appear that at Elis there were any of the actual
contests in music and song which made the character of the Pythian
games. But still it was a common exhibition for the cultivation of
every art. Sophist, and historian, and orator, poet and painter found
their mart in the Olympic fair.
[120] Plut. in vita Them.
[121] Pausanias, lib. v.
[122] When Phidias was asked on what idea he should form his statue,
he answered by quoting the well-known verses of Homer, on the curls
and nod of the thunder god.
[123] I am of course aware that the popular story that Herodotus read
portions of his history at Olympia has been disputed--but I own I
think it has been disputed with very indifferent success against the
testimony of competent authorities, corroborated by the general
practice of the time.
[124] We find, indeed, that the Messenians continued to struggle
against their conquerors, and that about the time of the battle of
Marathon they broke out into a resistance sometimes called the third
war.--Plato, Leg. III.
[125] Suppose Vortigern to have been expelled by the Britons, and to
have implored the assistance of the Saxons to reinstate him in his
throne, the Return of Vortigern would have been a highly popular name
for the invasion of the Saxons. So, if the Russians, after Waterloo,
had parcelled out France, and fixed a Cossack settlement in her
"violet vales," the destruction of the French would have been still
urbanely entitled "The Return of the Bourbons."
[126] According to Herodotus, the Spartan tradition assigned the
throne to Aristodemus himself, and the regal power was not divided
till after his death.
[127] He wrote or transcribed them, is the expression of Plutarch,
which I do not literally translate, because this touches upon very
disputed ground.
[128] "Sometimes the states," says Plutarch, "veered to democracy--
sometimes to arbitrary power;" that is, at one time the nobles invoked
the people against the king; but if the people presumed too far, they
supported the king against the people. If we imagine a confederacy of
Highland chiefs even a century or two ago--give them a nominal king--
consider their pride and their jealousy--see them impatient of
authority in one above them, yet despotic to those below--quarrelling
with each other--united only by clanship, never by citizenship;--and
place them in a half-conquered country, surrounded by hostile
neighbours and mutinous slaves--we may then form, perhaps, some idea
of the state of Sparta previous to the legislation of Lycurgus.
[129] When we are told that the object of Lycurgus was to root out
the luxury and effeminacy existent in Sparta, a moment's reflection
tells us that effeminacy and luxury could not have existed. A tribe
of fierce warriors, in a city unfortified--shut in by rocks--harassed
by constant war--gaining city after city from foes more civilized,
stubborn to bear, and slow to yield--maintaining a perilous yoke over
the far more numerous races they had subdued--what leisure, what
occasion had such men to become effeminate and luxurious?
[130] See Mueller's Dorians, vol. ii., p. 12 (Translation).
[131] In the same passage Aristotle, with that wonderful sympathy in
opinion between himself and the political philosophers of our own day,
condemns the principle of seeking and canvassing for suffrages.
[132] In this was preserved the form of royalty in the heroic times.
Aristotle well remarks, that in the council Agamemnon bears reproach
and insult, but in the field he becomes armed with authority over life
itself--"Death is in his hand."
[133] Whereas the modern republics of Italy rank among the causes
which prevented their assuming a widely conquering character, their
extreme jealousy of their commanders, often wisely ridiculed by the
great Italian historians; so that a baggage-cart could scarcely move,
or a cannon be planted, without an order from the senate!
[134] Mueller rightly observes, that though the ephoralty was a
common Dorian magistrature, "yet, considered as an office, opposed to
the king and council, it is not for that reason less peculiar to the
Spartans; and in no Doric, nor even in any Grecian state is there any
thing which exactly corresponds with it."
[135] They rebuked Archidamus for having married too small a wife.
See Mueller's Dorians, vol. ii. (Translation), p. 124, and the
authorities he quotes.
[136] Aristot. Pol., lib. ii., c. 9.
[137] Idem.
[138] These remarks on the democratic and representative nature of
the ephoralty are only to be applied to it in connexion with the
Spartan people. It must be remembered that the ephors represented the
will of that dominant class, and not of the Laconians or Perioeci, who
made the bulk of the non-enslaved population; and the democracy of
their constitution was therefore but the democracy of an oligarchy.
[139] Machiavel (Discourses on the first Decade of Livy, b. i., c.
vi.), attributes the duration of the Spartan government to two main
causes--first, the fewness of the body to be governed, allowing
fewness in the governors; and secondly, the prevention of all the
changes and corruption which the admission of strangers would have
occasioned. He proceeds then to show that for the long duration of a
constitution the people should be few in number, and all popular
impulse and innovation checked; yet that, for the splendour and
greatness of a state, not only population should be encouraged, but
even political ferment and agitation be leniently regarded. Sparta is
his model for duration, republican Rome for progress and empire. "To
my judgment," the Florentine concludes, "I prefer the latter, and for
the strife and emulation between the nobles and the people, they are
to be regarded indeed as inconveniences, but necessary to a state that
would rise to the Roman grandeur."
[140] Plut. de Musica.
[141] At Corinth they were abolished by Periander as favourable to an
aristocracy, according to Aristotle; but a better reason might be that
they were dangerous to tyranny.
[142] "Yet, although goods were appropriated, their uses," says
Aristotle, "were freely communicated,--a Spartan could use the horses,
the slaves, the dogs, and carriages of another." If this were to be
taken literally, it is difficult to see how a Spartan could be poor.
We must either imagine that different times are confounded, or that
limitations with which we are unacquainted were made in this system of
borrowing.
[143] See, throughout the Grecian history, the Helots collecting the
plunder of the battle-field, hiding it from the gripe of their lords,
and selling gold at the price of brass!
[144] Aristotle, who is exceedingly severe on the Spartan ladies,
says very shrewdly, that the men were trained to submission to a civil
by a military system, while the women were left untamed. A Spartan
hero was thus made to be henpecked. Yet, with all the alleged
severity of the Dorian morals, these sturdy matrons rather discarded
the graces than avoided the frailties of their softer contemporaries.
Plato [Plat. de legibus, lib. i. and lib. vi.] and Aristotle [Aristot.
Repub., lib. ii.] give very unfavourable testimonials of their
chastity. Plutarch, the blind panegyrist of Sparta, observes with
amusing composure, that the Spartan husbands were permitted to lend
their wives to each other; and Polybius (in a fragment of the 12th
book) [Fragm. Vatican., tom. ii., p. 384.] informs us that it was an
old-fashioned and common custom in Sparta for three or four brothers
to share one wife. The poor husbands!--no doubt the lady was a match
for them all! So much for those gentle creatures whom that grave
German professor, M. Mueller, holds up to our admiration and despair.
[145] In Homer the condition of the slave seems, everywhere, tempered
by the kindness and indulgence of the master.
[146] Three of the equals always attended the king's person in war.
[147] The institution of the ephors has been, with probability,
referred to this epoch--chosen at first as the viceroys in the absence
of the kings.
[148] Pausanias, Messenics.
[149] See Mueller's Dorians, vol. i., p. 172, and Clinton's Fast.
Hell. vol. i., p. 183.
[150] For the dates here given of the second Messenian war see Fast.
Hell., vol. i., 190, and Appendix 2.
[151] Now called Messina.
[152] In Phocis were no less than twenty-two states (poleis); in
Boeotia, fourteen; in Achaia, ten. The ancient political theorists
held no community too small for independence, provided the numbers
sufficed for its defence. We find from Plato that a society of five
thousand freemen capable of bearing arms was deemed powerful enough to
constitute an independent state. One great cause of the ascendency of
Athens and Sparta was, that each of those cities had from an early
period swept away the petty independent states in their several
territories of Attica and Laconia.
[153] Machiavel (Discor., lib. i., c. ii.).
[154] Lib. iv., c. 13.
[155] Aristotle cites among the advantages of wealth, that of being
enabled to train horses. Wherever the nobility could establish among
themselves a cavalry, the constitution was oligarchical. Yet, even in
states which did not maintain a cavalry (as Athens previous to the
constitution of Solon), an oligarchy was the first form of government
that rose above the ruins of monarchy.
[156] One principal method of increasing the popular action was by
incorporating the neighbouring villages or wards in one municipality
with the capital. By this the people gained both in number and in
union.
[157] Sometimes in ancient Greece there arose a species of lawful
tyrants, under the name of Aesymnetes. These were voluntarily chosen
by the people, sometimes for life, sometimes for a limited period, and
generally for the accomplishment of some particular object. Thus was
Pittacus of Mitylene elected to conduct the war against the exiles.
With the accomplishment of the object he abdicated his power. But the
appointment of Aesymnetes can hardly be called a regular form of
government. They soon became obsolete--the mere creatures of
occasion. While they lasted, they bore a strong resemblance to the
Roman dictators--a resemblance remarked by Dionysius, who quotes
Theophrastus as agreeing with Aristotle in his account of the
Aesymnetes.
[158] For, as the great Florentine has well observed, "To found well
a government, one man is the best--once established, the care and
execution of the laws should be transferred to many."--(Machiavel.
Discor., lib. i., c. 9.) And thus a tyranny builds the edifice, which
the republic hastens to inhabit.
[159] That of Orthagoras and his sons in Sicyon. "Of all
governments," says Aristotle, "that of an oligarchy, or of a tyrant,
is the least permanent." A quotation that cannot be too often pressed
on the memory of those reasoners who insist so much on the brief
duration of the ancient republics.
[160] Besides the representation necessary to confederacies--such as
the Amphictyonic League, etc., a representative system was adopted at
Mantinea, where the officers were named by deputies chosen by the
people. "This form of democracy," says Aristotle, "existed among the
shepherds and husbandmen of Arcadia;" and was probably not uncommon
with the ancient Pelasgians. But the myrioi of Arcadia had not the
legislative power.
[161] "Then to the lute's soft voice prolong the night,
Music, the banquet's most refined delight."
Pope's Odyssey, book xxi., 473.
It is stronger in the original--
Moltae kai phormingi tu gar t'anathaemata daitos.
[162] Iliad, book ix., Pope's translation, line 250.
[163] Heyne, F. Clinton, etc.
[164] Pope's translation, b. iv., line 75, etc.
[165] At least this passage is sufficient to refute the arguments of
Mr. Mitford, and men more learned than that historian, who, in taking
for their premises as an indisputable fact the extraordinary
assumption, that Homer never once has alluded to the return of the
Heraclidae, arrive at a conclusion very illogical, even if the
premises were true, viz., that therefore Homer preceded the date of
that great revolution.
[166] I own that this seems to me the most probable way of accounting
for the singular and otherwise disproportioned importance attached by
the ancient poets to that episode in the Trojan war, which relates to
the feud of Achilles and Agamemnon. As the first recorded enmity
between the great Achaeans and the warriors of Phthiotis, it would
have a solemn and historical interest both to the conquering Dorians
and the defeated Achaeans, flattering to the national vanity of either
people.
[167] I adopt the analysis of the anti-Homer arguments so clearly
given by Mr. Coleridge in his eloquent Introduction to the Study of
the Greek Poets. Homer, p. 39.
[168] en spanei biblon, are the words of Herodotus. Leaves and the
bark of trees were also used from a very remote period previous to the
common use of the papyrus, and when we are told that leaves would not
suffice for works of any length or duration, it must not be forgotten
that in a much later age it was upon leaves (and mutton bones) that
the Koran was transcribed. The rudest materials are sufficient for
the preservation of what men deem it their interest to preserve!
[169] See Clinton's F. H., vol. i., p. 145.
[170] Critics, indeed, discover some pretended gaps and
interpolations; but these, if conceded, are no proof against the unity
of Homer; the wonder is, that there should be so few of such
interpolations, considering the barbarous age which intervened between
their composition and the time in which they were first carefully
edited and collected. With more force it is urged against the
argument in favour of the unity of Homer, derived from the unity of
the style and character, that there are passages which modern critics
agree to be additions to the original poems, made centuries afterward,
and yet unsuspected by the ancients; and that in these additions--such
as the last books of the Iliad, with many others less important--the
Homeric unity of style and character is still sustained. We may
answer, however, that, in the first place, we have a right to be
skeptical as to these discoveries--many of them rest on very
insufficient critical grounds; in the second place, if we grant them,
it is one thing whether a forged addition be introduced into a poem,
and another thing whether the poem be all additions; in the third
place, we may observe, that successful imitations of the style and
characters of an author, however great, may be made many centuries
afterward with tolerable ease, and by a very inferior genius,
although, at the time he wrote or sung, it is not easy to suppose that
half a dozen or more poets shared his spirit or style. It is a very
common scholastic trick to imitate, nowadays, and with considerable
felicity, the style of the greatest writers, ancient and modern. But
the unity of Homer does not depend on the question whether imitative
forgeries were introduced into a great poem, but whether a multitude
of great poets combined in one school on one subject. An ingenious
student of Shakspeare, or the elder dramatists, might impose upon the
public credulity a new scene, or even a new play, as belonging to
Shakspeare, but would that be any proof that a company of Shakspeares
combined in the production of Macbeth? I own, by-the-way, that I am a
little doubtful as to our acumen in ascertaining what is Homeric and
what is not, seeing that Schlegel, after devoting half a life to
Shakspeare (whose works are composed in a living language, the
authenticity of each of which works a living nation can attest),
nevertheless attributes to that poet a catalogue of plays of which
Shakspeare is perfectly innocent!--but, to be sure, Steevens does the
same!
[171] That Pisistratus or his son, assisted by the poets of his day,
did more than collect, arrange, and amend poems already in high
repute, we have not only no authority to suppose, but much evidence to
contradict. Of the true services of Pisistratus to Homer, more
hereafter.
[172] "The descent of Theseus with Pirithous into hell," etc.--Paus.,
ix., c. 31.
[173] Especially if with the Boeotians we are to consider the most
poetical passage (the introductory lines to the muses) a spurious
interpolation.
[174] A herdsman.
[175] I cannot omit a tradition recorded by Pausanias. A leaden
table near the fountain was shown by the Boeotians as that on which
the "Works and Days" was written. The poems of Hesiod certainly do
not appear so adapted to recital as perusal. Yet, by the most
plausible chronology, they were only composed about one hundred years
after those of Homer!
[176] The Aones, Hyantes, and other tribes, which I consider part of
the great Pelasgic family, were expelled from Boeotia by Thracian
hordes. [They afterward returned in the time of the Dorian
emigration.] Some of the population must, however, have remained--the
peasantry of the land; and in Hesiod we probably possess the national
poetry, and arrive at the national religion, of the old Pelasgi.
[177] Welcker.
[178] The deadly signs which are traced by Praetus on the tablets of
which Bellerophon was the bearer, and which are referred to in the
Iliad, are generally supposed by the learned to have been pictorial,
and, as it were, hieroglyphical figures; my own belief, and the
easiest interpretation of the passage, is, that they were alphabetical
characters--in a word, writing, not painting.
[179] Pausanias, lib. i., c. 27, speaks of a wooden statue in the
Temple of Pohas, in Athens, said to have been the gift of Cecrops;
and, with far more claim to belief, in the previous chapter he tells
us that the most holy of all the images was a statue of Minerva,
which, by the common consent of all the towns before incorporated in
one city, was dedicated in the citadel, or polis. Tradition,
therefore, carried the date of this statue beyond the time of Theseus.
Plutarch also informs us that Theseus himself, when he ordained divine
honours to be paid to Ariadne, ordered two little statues to be made
of her--one of silver and one of brass.
[180] All that Homer calls the work of Vulcan, such as the dogs in
the palace of Alcinous, etc., we may suppose to be the work of
foreigners. A poet could scarcely attribute to the gods a work that
his audience knew an artificer in their own city had made!
[181] See Odyssey, book vii.
[182] The effect of the arts, habits, and manners of a foreign
country is immeasurably more important upon us if we visit that
country, than if we merely receive visits from its natives. For
example, the number of French emigrants who crowded our shores at the
time of the French revolution very slightly influenced English
customs, etc. But the effect of the French upon us when, after the
peace, our own countrymen flocked to France, was immense.
[183] Herod., lib. ii., c. 178.
[184] Grecian architecture seems to have been more free from
obligation to any technical secrets of Egyptian art than Grecian
statuary or painting. For, in the first place, it is more than
doubtful whether the Doric order was not invented in European Greece
long prior to the reign of Psammetichus [The earliest known temple at
Corinth is supposed by Col. Leake to bear date B. C. 800, about one
hundred and thirty years before the reign of Psammetichus in Egypt.];
and, in the second place, it is evident that the first hints and
rudiments both of the Doric and the Ionic order were borrowed, not
from buildings of the massive and perennial materials of Egyptian
architecture, but from wooden edifices; growing into perfection as
stone and marble were introduced, and the greater difficulty and
expense of the workmanship insensibly imposed severer thought and more
elaborate rules upon the architect. But I cannot agree with Mueller
and others, that because the first hints of the Doric order were taken
from wooden buildings, therefore the first invention was necessarily
with the Dorians, since many of the Asiatic cities were built chiefly
of wood. It seems to me most probable that Asia gave the first
notions of these beautiful forms, and that the Greeks carried them to
perfection before the Asiatics, not only from their keen perception of
the graceful, but because they earlier made a general use of stone.
We learn from Herodotus that the gorgeous Sardis was built chiefly of
wood, at a time when the marble of Paros was a common material of the
Grecian temples.
[185] Thales was one of the seven wise men, B. C. 586, when
Pherecydes of Syrus, the first prose writer, was about fourteen years
old. Mr. Clinton fixes the acme of Pherecydes about B. C. 572.
Cadmus of Miletus flourished B. C. 530.
[186] To this solution of the question, why literature should
generally commence with attempts at philosophy, may he added another:
--When written first breaks upon oral communication, the reading
public must necessarily be extremely confined. In many early nations,
that reading public would be composed of the caste of priests; in this
case philosophy would be cramped by superstition. In Greece, there
being no caste of priests, philosophy embraced those studious minds
addicted to a species of inquiry which rejected the poetical form, as
well as the poetical spirit. It may be observed, that the more
limited the reading public, the more abstruse are generally prose
compositions; as readers increase, literature goes back to the fashion
of oral communication; for if the reciter addressed the multitude in
the earlier age, so the writer addresses a multitude in the later;
literature, therefore, commences with poetical fiction, and usually
terminates with prose fiction. It was so in the ancient world--it
will he so with England and France. The harvest of novels is, I fear,
a sign of the approaching exhaustion of the soil.
[187] See chapter i.
[188] Instead of Periander of Corinth, is (by Plato, and therefore)
more popularly, but less justly, ranked Myson of Chene.
[189] Attributed also to Thales; Stob. Serm.
[190] Aristotle relates (Pol., lib. i.) a singular anecdote of the
means whereby this philosopher acquired wealth. His skill in
meteorology made him foresee that there would be one season an
extraordinary crop of olives. He hired during the previous winter all
the oil-presses in Chios and Miletus, employing his scanty fortune in
advances to the several proprietors. When the approaching season
showed the ripening crops, every man wished to provide olive-presses
as quickly as possible; and Thales, having them all, let them at a
high price. His monopoly made his fortune, and he showed to his
friends, says Aristotle, that it was very easy for philosophers to be
rich if they desire it, though such is not their principal desire;--
philosophy does not find the same facilities nowadays.
[191] Thus Homer is cited in proof of the progenital humidity,
"'Okeanos hosper ginesis pantos tet ktai;"
The Bryant race of speculators would attack us at once with "the
spirit moving on the face of the waters." It was not an uncommon
opinion in Greece that chaos was first water settling into slime, and
then into earth; and there are good but not sufficient reasons to
attribute a similar, and of course earlier, notion to the Phoenicians,
and still more perhaps to the Indians.
[192] Plut. de Plac. Phil.
[193] Ap. Stob. Serm.
[194] Laert.
[195] According to Clinton's chronology, viz., one year after the
legislation of Draco. This emendation of dates formerly received
throws considerable light upon the causes of the conspiracy, which
perhaps took its strength from the unpopularity and failure of Draco's
laws. Following the very faulty chronology which pervades his whole
work, Mr. Mitford makes the attempt of Cylon precede the legislation
of Draco.
[196] A cap.
[197] The expedition against Salamis under Solon preceded the arrival
of Epimenides at Athens, which was in 596. The legislation of Solon
was B. C. 594--the first tyranny of Pisistratus B. C. 560: viz.,
thirty-four years after Solon's legislation, and at least thirty-seven
years after Solon's expedition to Salamis. But Pisistratus lived
thirty-three years after his first usurpation, so that, if he had
acted in the first expedition to Salamis, he would have lived to an
age little short of one hundred, and been considerably past eighty at
the time of his third most brilliant and most energetic government!
The most probable date for the birth of Pisistratus is that assigned
by Mr. Clinton, about B. C. 595, somewhat subsequent to Solon's
expedition to Salamis, and only about a year prior to Solon's
legislation. According to this date, Pisistratus would have been
about sixty-eight at the time of his death. The error of Plutarch
evidently arose from his confounding two wars with Megara for Salamis,
attended with similar results--the first led by Solon, the second by
Pisistratus. I am the more surprised that Mr. Thirlwall should have
fallen into the error of making Pisistratus contemporary with Solon in
this affair, because he would fix the date of the recovery of Salamis
at B. C. 604 (see note to Thirlwall's Greece, p. 25, vol. ii.), and
would suppose Solon to be about thirty-two at that time (viz., twenty-
six years old in 612 B. C.). (See Thirlwall, vol. ii., p. 23, note.)
Now, as Pisistratus could not have been well less than twenty-one, to
have taken so prominent a share as that ascribed to him by Plutarch and
his modern followers, in the expedition, he must, according to such
hypothesis, have been only eleven years younger than Solon, have
perpetrated his first tyranny just before Solon died of old age, and
married a second wife when he was near eighty! Had this been the
case, the relations of the lady could not reasonably have been angry
that the marriage was not consummated!
[198] We cannot suppose, as the careless and confused Plutarch would
imply, that the people, or popular assembly, reversed the decree; the
government was not then democratic, but popular assemblies existed,
which, in extraordinary cases--especially, perhaps, in the case of
war--it was necessary to propitiate, and customary to appeal to. I
make no doubt that it was with the countenance and consent of the
archons that Solon made his address to the people, preparing them to
receive the repeal of the decree, which, without their approbation, it
might be unsafe to propose.
[199] As the quotation from Homer is extremely equivocal, merely
stating that Ajax joined the ships that he led from Salamis with those
of the Athenians, one cannot but suppose, that if Solon had really
taken the trouble to forge a verse, he would have had the common sense
to forge one much more decidedly in favour of his argument.
[200] Fifty-seven, according to Pliny.
[201] Plut. in Vit. Sol.
[202] Arist. Pol., lib. ii., c. 8.
[203] This regulation is probably of later date than the time of
Solon. To Pisistratus is referred a law for disabled citizens, though
its suggestion is ascribed to Solon. It was, however, a law that
evidently grew out of the principles of Solon.
[204] A tribe contained three phratries, or fraternities--a phratry
contained three genes or clans--a genos or clan was composed of thirty
heads of families. As the population, both in the aggregate and in
these divisions, must have been exposed to constant fluctuations, the
aforesaid numbers were most probably what we may describe as a fiction
in law, as Boeckh (Pol. Econ. of Athens, vol. i., p. 47, English
translation) observes, "in the same manner that the Romans called the
captain a centurion, even if he commanded sixty men, so a family might
have been called a triakas (i.e., a thirtiad), although it contained
fifty or more persons." It has been conjectured indeed by some, that
from a class not included in these families, vacancies in the
phratries were filled up; but this seems to be a less probable
supposition than that which I have stated above. If the numbers in
Pollux were taken from a census in the time of Solon, the four tribes
at that time contained three hundred and sixty families, each family
consisting of thirty persons; this would give a total population of
ten thousand eight hundred free citizens. It was not long before that
population nearly doubled itself, but the titles of the subdivisions
remained the same. I reserve for an appendix a more detailed and
critical view of the vehement but tedious disputes of the learned on
the complicated subject of the Athenian tribes and families.
[205] Boeckh (Pub. Econ. of Athens, book iv., chap. v.) contends,
from a law preserved by Demosthenes, that the number of measures for
the zeugitae was only one hundred and fifty. But his argument,
derived from the analogy of the sum to be given to an heiress by her
nearest relation, if he refused to marry her, is by no means
convincing enough to induce us to reject the proportion of two hundred
measures, "preserved (as Boeckh confesses) by all writers," especially
as in the time of Demosthenes. Boeckh himself, in a subsequent
passage, rightly observes, that the names of zeugitae, etc., could
only apply to new classes introduced in the place of those instituted
by Solon.
[206] With respect to the value of "a measure" in that time, it was
estimated at a drachma, and a drachma was the price of a sheep.
[207] The law against idleness is attributable rather to Pisistratus
than Solon.
[208] Athenaeus, lib. xiv.
[209] Plutarch de Gloria Athen. I do not in this sketch entirely
confine myself to Solon's regulations respecting the areopagus.
[210] The number of the areopagites depending upon the number of the
archons, was necessarily fluctuating and uncertain. An archon was not
necessarily admitted to the areopagus. He previously underwent a
rigorous and severe examination of the manner in which he had
discharged the duties of his office, and was liable to expulsion upon
proofs of immorality or unworthiness.
[211] Some modern writers have contended that at the time of Solon
the members of the council were not chosen by lot; their arguments are
not to me very satisfactory. But if merely a delegation of the
Eupatrids, as such writers suppose, the council would be still more
vicious in its constitution.
[212] Pollux.
[213] Aeschines in Timarch.
[214] Each member was paid (as in England once, as in America at this
day) a moderate sum (one drachma) for his maintenance, and at the
termination of his trust, peculiar integrity was rewarded with money
from the public treasury.
[215] When there were ten tribes, each tribe presided thirty-five
days, or five weeks; when the number was afterward increased to
twelve, the period of the presidency was one month.
[216] Atimos means rather unhonoured than dishonoured. He to whom,
in its milder degree, the word was applied, was rather withdrawn (as
it were) from honour than branded with disgrace. By rapid degrees,
however, the word ceased to convey its original meaning; it was
applied to offences so ordinary and common, that it sunk into a mere
legal term.
[217] The more heinous of the triple offences, termed eisangelia.
[218] This was a subsequent law; an obolus, or one penny farthing,
was the first payment; it was afterward increased to three oboli, or
threepence three farthings.
[219] Sometimes, also, the assembly was held in the Pnyx, afterward
so celebrated: latterly, also (especially in bad weather), in the
temple of Bacchus;--on extraordinary occasions, in whatever place was
deemed most convenient or capacious.
[220] Plato de Legibus.
[221] Plutarch assures us that Solon issued a decree that his laws
were to remain in force a hundred years: an assertion which modern
writers have rejected as incompatible with their constant revision.
It was not, however, so contradictory a decree as it seems at first
glance--for one of the laws not to be altered was this power of
amending and revising the laws. And, therefore, the enactment in
dispute would only imply that the constitution was not to be altered
except through the constitutional channel which Solon had appointed.
[222] See Fast. Hell., vol. ii., 276.
[223] Including, as I before observed, that law which provided for
any constitutional change in a constitutional manner.
[224] "Et Croesum quem vox justi facunda Solonis
Respicere ad longae jussit spatia ultima vitae."
Juv., Sat. x., s. 273.
The story of the interview and conversation between Croesus and Solon
is supported by so many concurrent authorities, that we cannot but
feel grateful to the modern learning, which has removed the only
objection to it in an apparent contradiction of dates. If, as
contended for by Larcher, still more ably by Wesseling, and since by
Mr. Clinton, we agree that Croesus reigned jointly with his father
Alyattes, the difficulty vanishes at once.
[225] Plutarch gives two accounts of the recovery of Salamis by
Solon; one of them, which is also preferred by Aelian (var. c. xix.,
lib. vii.), I have adopted and described in my narrative of that
expedition: the second I now give, but refer to Pisistratus, not
Solon: in support of which opinion I am indebted to Mr. Clinton for
the suggestion of two authorities. Aeneas Tacticus, in his Treatise
on Sieges, chap. iv., and Frontinus de Stratagem., lib. iv., cap.
vii.--Justin also favours the claim of Pisistratus to this stratagem,
lib. xi., c. viii.
[226] The most sanguine hope indeed that Cicero seems to have formed
with respect to the conduct of Cesar, was that he might deserve the
title of the Pisistratus of Rome.
[227] If we may, in this anecdote, accord to Plutarch (de Vit. Sol.)
and Aelian (Var. lib. viii., c. xvi.) a belief which I see no reason
for withholding.
[228] His own verses, rather than the narrative of Plutarch, are the
evidence of Solon's conduct on the usurpation of Pisistratus.
[229] This historian fixes the date of Solon's visit to Croesus and
to Cyprus (on which island he asserts him to have died), not during
his absence of ten years, but during the final exile for which he
contends.
[230] Herod., l. i., c. 49.
[231] The procession of the goddess of Reason in the first French
revolution solves the difficulty that perplexed Herodotus.
[232] Mr. Mitford considers this story as below the credit of
history. He gives no sufficient reason against its reception, and
would doubtless have been less skeptical had he known more of the
social habits of that time, or possessed more intimate acquaintance
with human nature generally.
[233] Upon which points, of men and money, Mr. Mitford, who is
anxious to redeem the character of Pisistratus from the stain of
tyranny, is dishonestly prevaricating. Quoting Herodotus, who
especially insists upon these undue sources of aid, in the following
words--'Errixose taen tyrannida, epikouroisi te polloisi kai
chraematon synodoisi, ton men, autothen, ton de, apo Strumanos potamou
synionton: this candid historian merely says, "A particular interest
with the ruling parties in several neighbouring states, especially
Thebes and Argos, and a wise and liberal use of a very great private
property, were the resources in which besides he mostly relied." Why
he thus slurs over the fact of the auxiliary forces will easily be
perceived. He wishes us to understand that the third tyranny of
Pisistratus, being wholesome, was also acceptable to the Athenians,
and not, as it in a great measure was, supported by borrowed treasure
and foreign swords.
[234] Who, according to Plutarch, first appeared at the return of
Solon; but the proper date for his exhibitions is ascertained (Fast.
Hell., vol. ii., p. 11) several years after Solon's death.
[235] These two wars, divided by so great an interval of time,--the
one terminated by Periander of Corinth, the other undertaken by
Pisistratus,--are, with the usual blundering of Mr. Mitford, jumbled
together into the same event. He places Alcaeus in the war following
the conquest of Sigeum by Pisistratus. Poor Alcaeus! the poet
flourished Olym. 42 (611 B. C.); the third tyranny of Pisistratus may
date somewhere about 537 B. C., so that Alcaeus, had he been alive in
the time ascribed by Mr. Mitford to his warlike exhibitions, would
have been (supposing him to be born twenty-six years before the date
of his celebrity in 611) just a hundred years old--a fitting age to
commence the warrior! The fact is, Mr. Mitford adopted the rather
confused account of Herodotus, without taking the ordinary pains to
ascertain dates, which to every one else the very names of Periander
and Alcaeus would have suggested.
[236] For the reader will presently observe the share taken by
Croesus in the affairs of this Miltiades during his government in the
Chersonesus; now Croesus was conquered by Cyrus about B. C. 546--it
must, therefore, have been before that period. But the third tyranny
of Pisistratus appears to have commenced nine years afterward, viz.,
B. C. 537. The second tyranny probably commenced only two years
before the fall of the Lydian monarchy, and seems to have lasted only
a year, and during that period Croesus no longer exercised over the
cities of the coast the influence he exerted with the people of
Lampsacus on behalf of Miltiades; the departure of Miltiades, son of
Cypselus, must therefore have been in the first tyranny, in the
interval 560 B. C.--554 B. C., and probably at the very commencement
of the reign--viz., about 550 B. C.
[237] In the East, the master of the family still sits before the
door to receive visiters or transact business.
[238] Thucydides, b. vi., c. 54. The dialogue of Hipparchus,
ascribed to Plato, gives a different story, but much of the same
nature. In matters of history, we cannot doubt which is the best
authority, Thucydides or Plato,--especially an apocryphal Plato.
[239] Although it is probable that the patriotism of Aristogiton and
Harmodius "the beloved" has been elevated in after times beyond its
real standard, yet Mr. Mitford is not justified in saying that it was
private revenge, and not any political motive, that induced them to
conspire the death of Hippias and Hipparchus. Had it been so, why
strike at Hippias at all?--why attempt to make him the first and
principal victim?--why assail Hipparchus (against whom only they had a
private revenge) suddenly, by accident, and from the impulse of the
moment, after the failure of their design on the tyrant himself, with
whom they had no quarrel? It is most probable that, as in other
attempts at revolution, that of Masaniello--that of Rienzi--public
patriotism was not created--it was stimulated and made passion by
private resentment.
[240] Mr. Mitford has most curiously translated this passage thus:
"Aristogiton escaped the attending guards, but, being taken by the
people (!!!) was not mildly treated. So Thucydides has expressed
himself." Now Thucydides says quite the reverse: he says that, owing
to the crowd of the people, the guard could not at first seize him.
How did Mr. Mitford make this strange blunder? The most charitable
supposition is, that, not reading the Greek, he was misled by an error
of punctuation in the Latin version.
[241] "Qui cum per tormenta conscios caedis nominare cogeretur," etc.
(Justin., lib. ii., chap. ix.) This author differs from the elder
writers as to the precise cause of the conspiracy.
[242] Herodotus says they were both Gephyraeans by descent; a race,
according to him, originally Phoenician.--Herod. b. v., c. 57.
[243] Mr. Mitford too hastily and broadly asserts the whole story of
Leaena to be a fable: if, as we may gather from Pausanias, the statue
of the lioness existed in his time, we may pause before we deny all
authenticity to a tradition far from inconsonant with the manners of
the time or the heroism of the sex.
[244] Thucyd., b. vi., c. 59.
[245] Herodotus, b. vi., c. 103. In all probability, the same
jealousy that murdered the father dismissed the son. Hippias was far
too acute and too fearful not to perceive the rising talents and
daring temper of Miltiades. By-the-way, will it be believed that
Mitford, in is anxiety to prove Hippias and Hipparchus the most
admirable persons possible, not only veils the unnatural passions of
the last, but is utterly silent about the murder of Cimon, which is
ascribed to the sons of Pisistratus by Herodotus, in the strongest and
gravest terms.--Mr. Thirlwall (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii., p. 223)
erroneously attributes the assassination of Cimon to Pisistratus
himself.
[246] Suidas. Laertius iv., 13, etc. Others, as Ammonius and
Simplicius ad Aristotelem, derive the name of Cynics given to these
philosophers from the ridicule attached to their manners.
[247] Whose ardour appears to have been soon damped. They lost but
forty men, and then retired at once to Thessaly. This reminds us of
the wars between the Italian republics, in which the loss of a single
horseman was considered no trifling misfortune. The value of the
steed and the rank of the horseman (always above the vulgar) made the
cavalry of Greece easily discouraged by what appears to us an
inconsiderable slaughter.
[248] Aelian. V. Hist. xiii., 24.
[249] Wachsm, l. i., p. 273. Others contend for a later date to this
most important change; but, on the whole, it seems a necessary
consequence of the innovations of Clisthenes, which were all modelled
upon the one great system of breaking down the influence of the
aristocracy. In the speech of Otanes (Herod., lib. iii., c. 80), it
is curious to observe how much the vote by lot was identified with a
republican form of government.
[250] See Sharon Turner, vol. i., book i.
[251] Herod., b. i., c. xxvi.
[252] Ctesias. Mr. Thirlwall, in my judgment, very properly contents
himself with recording the ultimate destination of Croesus as we find
it in Ctesias, to the rejection of the beautiful romance of Herodotus.
Justin observes that Croesus was so beloved among the Grecian cities,
that, had Cyrus exercised any cruelty against him, the Persian hero
would have drawn upon himself a war with Greece.
[253] After his fall, Croesus is said by Herodotus to have reproached
the Pythian with those treacherous oracles that conduced to the loss
of his throne, and to have demanded if the gods of Greece were usually
delusive and ungrateful. True to that dark article of Grecian faith
which punished remote generations for ancestral crimes, the Pythian
replied, that Croesus had been fated to expiate in his own person the
crimes of Gyges, the murderer of his master;--that, for the rest, the
declarations of the oracle had been verified; the mighty empire,
denounced by the divine voice, had been destroyed, for it was his own,
and the mule, Cyrus, was presiding over the Lydian realm: a mule might
the Persian hero justly be entitled, since his parents were of
different ranks and nations. His father a low-born Persian--his
mother a Median princess. Herodotus assures us that Croesus was
content with the explanation--if so, the god of song was more
fortunate than the earthly poets he inspires, who have indeed often,
imitating his example, sacrificed their friends to a play upon words,
without being so easily able to satisfy their victims.
[254] Herod., l. v., c. 74.
[255] If colonists they can properly be called--they retained their
connexion with Athens, and all their rights of franchise.
[256] Herod., l. v., c. 78.
[257] Mr. Mitford, constantly endeavouring to pervert the simple
honesty of Herodotus to a sanction of despotic governments, carefully
slurs over this remarkable passage.
[258] Pausanias, b. iii., c. 5 and 6.
[259] Mr. Mitford, always unduly partial to the Spartan policy,
styles Cleomenes "a man violent in his temper, but of considerable
abilities." There is no evidence of his abilities. His restlessness
and ferocity made him assume a prominent part which he was never
adequate to fulfil: he was, at best, a cunning madman.
[260] Why, if discovered so long since by Cleomenes, were they
concealed till now? The Spartan prince, afterward detected in bribing
the oracle itself, perhaps forged these oracular predictions.
[261] Herod., b. v. c. 91.
[262] What is the language of Mr. Mitford at this treason? "We have
seen," says that historian, "the democracy of Athens itself setting
the example (among the states of old Greece) of soliciting Persian
protection. Will, then, the liberal spirit of patriotism and equal
government justify the prejudices of Athenian faction (!!!) and doom
Hippias to peculiar execration, because, at length, he also, with many
of his fellow-citizens, despairing of other means for ever returning
to their native country, applied to Artaphernes at Sardis?" It is
difficult to know which to admire most, the stupidity or dishonesty of
this passage. The Athenian democracy applied to Persia for relief
against the unjust invasion of their city and liberties by a foreign
force; Hippias applied to Persia, not only to interfere in the
domestic affairs of a free state, but to reduce that state, his native
city, to the subjection of the satrap. Is there any parallel between
these cases? If not, what dulness in instituting it! But the
dishonesty is equal to the dulness. Herodotus, the only author Mr.
Mitford here follows, expressly declares (I. v., c. 96) that Hippias
sought to induce Artaphernes to subject Athens to the sway of the
satrap and his master, Darius; yet Mr. Mitford says not a syllable of
this, leaving his reader to suppose that Hippias merely sought to be
restored to his country through the intercession of the satrap.
[263] Herod., l. v., c. 96.
[264] Aulus Gellius, who relates this anecdote with more detail than
Herodotus, asserts that the slave himself was ignorant of the
characters written on his scull, that Histiaeus selected a domestic
who had a disease in his eyes--shaved him, punctured the skin, and
sending him to Miletus when the hair was grown, assured the credulous
patient that Aristagoras would complete the cure by shaving him a
second time. According to this story we must rather admire the
simplicity of the slave than the ingenuity of Histiaeus.
[265] Rather a hyperbolical expression--the total number of free
Athenians did not exceed twenty thousand.
[266] The Paeonians.
[267] Hecataeus, the historian of Miletus, opposed the retreat to
Myrcinus, advising his countrymen rather to fortify themselves in the
Isle of Leros, and await the occasion to return to Miletus. This
early writer seems to have been one of those sagacious men who rarely
obtain their proper influence in public affairs, because they address
the reason in opposition to the passions of those they desire to lead.
Unsuccessful in this proposition, Hecataeus had equally failed on two
former occasions;--first, when he attempted to dissuade the Milesians
from the revolt of Aristagoras: secondly, when, finding them bent upon
it, he advised them to appropriate the sacred treasures in the temple
at Branchidae to the maintenance of a naval force. On each occasion
his advice failed precisely because given without prejudice or
passion. The successful adviser must appear to sympathize even with
the errors of his audience.
[268] The humane Darius--whose virtues were his own, his faults of
his station--treated the son of Miltiades with kindness and respect,
married him to a Persian woman, and endowed him with an estate. It
was the habitual policy of that great king to attach to his dominions
the valour and the intellect of the Greeks.
[269] Pausanias says, that Talthybius afterward razed the house of
Miltiades, because that chief instigated the Athenians to the
execution of the Persian envoys.
[270] Demaratus had not only prevented the marriage of Leotychides
with a maiden named Percalos, but, by a mixture of violence and
artifice, married her himself. Thus, even among the sober and
unloving Spartans, woman could still be the author of revolutions.
[271] The national pride of the Spartans would not, however, allow
that their king was the object of the anger of the gods, and
ascribing his excesses to his madness, accounted for the last
by a habit of excessive drinking which he had acquired from the
Scythians
[272] Herod., l. 6, c. 94.
[273] Ibid., l. 6, c. 107.
[274] The sun and moon.
[275] In his attack upon Herodotus, Plutarch asserts that the
Spartans did make numerous military excursions at the beginning of the
month; if this be true, so far from excusing the Spartans, it only
corroborates the natural suspicion that they acted in accordance, not
with superstition, but with their usual calculating and selfish policy
--ever as slow to act in the defence of other states as prompt to
assert the independence of their own.
[276] Paus., l. 8, c. 5.
[277] The exact number of the Athenians is certainly doubtful.
Herodotus does not specify it. Justin estimates the number of
citizens at ten thousand, besides a thousand Plataeans: Nepos at ten
thousand in all; Pausanias at nine thousand. But this total,
furnished by authorities so equivocal, seems incredibly small. The
free p
