The condition of Achaia during this period of the Roman dominion, from
B.C. 172 to 152, was peculiar and is very obscure. The government was
in a very sad condition; Callicrates and Andronidas tyrannised over the
Achæans, although they had no followers, and although the people were so
enraged against the former that he was publicly hissed, and everybody
shunned him. “He is a man who stands forth branded in every respect with
everlasting infamy; he was never invited by a Greek either to dinner or
to a wedding;” but still it was impossible to change the direction he
gave to the state. “He was regarded as a demon, whose existence could
not be controlled.” No consideration was shown towards foreign powers;
it was a state of utter inactivity and leisure, but at the same time
of material prosperity. Commerce and agriculture were thriving, as is
mentioned several times by Polybius; the taxes were not very heavy, the
laws were suited to the circumstances, and hence it was a period of
general material well-being. But at the same time, it is evident that the
number of regular marriages decreased immensely, and consequently that
of persons who were born citizens also; it was just the same as towards
the end of the Roman Republic and under the Roman emperors, when people
generally lived in concubinage. It was a deplorable condition.
There was not a trace of intellectual life; literature no longer existed,
except that a few philosophers still lived at Athens. Poetry was confined
to little poems, and was cultivated in Asia more than in Peloponnesus;
the new comedy had entirely died away. In spite of the material
prosperity, nothing was done for the arts and for monuments. The Achæans
preserved the Greek name until the end, but the Romans need not have been
jealous of them. There were still some places to be subdued to complete
the supremacy of Rome, as Carthage, for example; and so long as that
city existed, the Romans turned their eyes towards those who might be an
obstacle to their subduing those places.
[Sidenote: [156-150 B.C.]]
At the middle of the second century B.C., Achaia embraced the whole of
Peloponnesus; it must have extended its dominion even beyond it, for not
to mention Megara, which had belonged to it before, it now also comprised
Pleuron and Calydon, which were originally Ætolian towns, but are called
both Ætolian and Achæan. In general people had become accustomed to the
Achæan League; Sparta alone bore the connection reluctantly.
The disputes which, in the end, led to the fatal war, arose out of the
intrigues of Menalcidas, a Lacedæmonian, who even rose to the dignity
of strategus. This Menalcidas, with a remarkable versatility in his
wickedness, jumped from one party to another. The quarrels between the
Achæans and Lacedæmonians are said to have arisen from his villainy and
that of Diæus of Megalopolis, on the occasion of a quarrel between Athens
and Oropus.
[Illustration: THE LAST DAYS OF CORINTH]
The town of Oropus, of which, ever since the Peloponnesian War, the
Athenians had wanted to take possession, which was often subdued by
them, but each time taken from them again, had, according to Pausanias,
been assigned to them by Philip after the Macedonian War, that is,
he had made the town tributary to Athens. The Athenians, it is said,
plundered the town, because they were suffering from severe poverty--but
they had probably imposed too heavy taxes upon the Oropians, and levied
them too rigorously, so that the Oropians applied to the Romans for
redress. A great quantity of existing Athenian tetradrachmæ still
attests the poverty prevailing at that time in Athens, for they consist
of copper only covered over with a thin coat of silver. The Athenians
were then compelled to pay to the Oropians one hundred talents as an
indemnification; but they contrived to become reconciled with them, and
induced them not to exact the money, to return to their former relation,
and admit a garrison into their town. The conduct of this garrison,
however, induced the Oropians to demand its withdrawal. As the Athenians
refused, the Oropians applied to the Achæans, and bribed Menalcidas, who
happened to be strategus, with ten talents; Menalcidas again prevailed
upon Callicrates to persuade the popular assembly to compel Athens to
pay the one hundred talents. But the Athenians were beforehand with
them: they completely plundered Oropus, and Menalcidas also exacted the
promised sum with the greatest insolence, while he himself refused to pay
to Callicrates the sum he had promised him. The latter charged him with
high treason, and Menalcidas retaliated. The former repaired to Rome, and
Menalcidas is said to have saved his life only by bribing Diæus, who was
strategus.
The manner in which out of this unrelated quarrel the disputes between
the Achæans and Lacedæmonians arose is not clear. But they gave rise
to a war, and a wretched war it was. Diæus, with an army of the Achæan
confederates, entered Laconia, demanding the condemnation of the
recalcitrants. A Spartan senator proposed, that the twenty-four whose
condemnation was demanded by Diæus, should of their own accord go into
exile. This was done, and according to a preconcerted plan, all were
condemned to death. But these exiles were kindly received by the Roman
senate, and Diæus and Callicrates were sent to Rome to counteract their
influence. The latter died on his journey, having apparently somewhat
changed his conduct during the latter part of his life. Diæus and
Menalcidas vehemently disputed before the senate, which simply commanded
them to return and wait, until a Roman embassy should bring over a
decisive answer. The Achæans, however, did not wait, and Damocritus, who
had in the meantime succeeded Diæus as strategus, invaded Laconia, before
the Roman ambassadors arrived, defeated the enemy, and advanced as far
as Sparta. He had no intention to pursue them farther, and the Achæans
accordingly accused and condemned him, thinking that he had been bribed;
and he went into exile. This happened probably in 150 B.C.; and Diæus now
became strategus in the place of Damocritus.
In the meantime the great drama throughout the world came to a crisis.
The Romans had undertaken the destruction of Carthage, but did not find
it so easy as they had imagined. In the provinces, the most contemptible
side of the character of the Romans was seen; they were beheld as
plunderers and oppressors; it was known that they were hated by all the
world, and it was expected that a general insurrection would break out,
extending from Spain to the extreme East. And it was believed that Rome
could not stand against it. It is possible that the nations may have
heard of the internal decay of Rome, of the ferment of Italy, and of the
discontent of the allies.
[Sidenote: [149-146 B.C.]]
Under these circumstances, an insurrection first broke out in Macedonia.
The Romans had torn that country asunder in four parts, as Napoleon
wanted to divide Poland into three states--an attempt which proved fatal
to him. The Romans in Macedonia had not left together those masses which,
in language and origin, as well as geographically, were united; but with
a diabolic and calculating policy they had torn the country to pieces,
and it was divided in such a manner as to have as little connection as
possible, one tribe being mixed up with others. All the respectable
people of Macedonia, under the pretext of their being hostages, had been
carried away with their families into Italy, where they amalgamated with
the inhabitants and disappeared. In this manner all persons of mark had
been removed. Moreover, the _commercium_ and _connubium_ among those
four provinces had been abolished, so that no Macedonian was allowed to
possess land in two different provinces, every one being confined to his
own district. But still Macedonia was in a condition of great prosperity,
especially in consequence of its mines and commerce, as we must infer
from the immense quantity of Macedonian money of that period, which has
come down to us. The limbs which had been torn asunder, longed to be
reunited as one whole.
THE MACEDONIAN INSURRECTION
At this time there appeared among them a man of about forty years,
calling himself Philip, and declaring himself to be a son of Perseus,
and to have escaped from his father’s misfortunes. It is possible that
he was a pseudo-Philip, that his real name was Andriscus, and that he
was a native of Thrace: there were several such impostors at that time.
Philip defeated the Romans, and in a very short time made himself master
of all Macedonia, which recognised him. He even penetrated into Thessaly,
where he gained advantages, and successfully maintained himself against
the untrained troops of the Romans. All sided with him; but the Achæans
very inconsistently sent auxiliaries to the Romans, although at the time
all nations were harbouring designs of revolt, but the Achæans thought
that they were not yet ripe for it. The Achæan auxiliaries came very
opportunely to the Romans; it was only through these, who were commanded
by a Roman legate, that they succeeded in defending Thessaly, and with
their assistance they repelled the Macedonians, until Metellus came
with the Roman legion. He defeated this Philip, whom the Romans call
Andriscus, in several battles. Macedonia now became a Roman province,
under the absolute power of an imperator; the senate coolly ordered
them to dismiss from the confederacy not only Lacedæmon, but all the
other places which had not belonged to Achaia at the time when the
Achæans concluded the treaty with Rome in the first (or more correctly
the second) Macedonian War. C. Aurelius Orestes, together with other
ambassadors, brought these orders to Corinth, whither he summoned the
allies of the Achæans.
THE ACHÆAN WAR
This very unjust and insolent demand threw the Achæans into a state of
frenzy; even before Orestes had finished his speech, the council hastened
to the market-place, calling upon the people to assemble, and it cannot
excite wonder, though it is a proof of the utter want of common sense
among the Achæans, that they fell upon the Roman ambassadors, and
insultingly drove them out of the theatre. All the Lacedæmonians who
happened to be in the city were arrested. After this the Achæans again
marched into Laconia, where Menalcidas had, in the meantime, made away
with himself, because he had broken a truce which he had been ordered to
observe by the Romans.
At this time the Macedonian insurrection was not yet quelled, and fortune
was still undecided. Metellus had not yet come over. Simultaneously the
Third Punic War was going on; the Spaniards and Iberians were stirring;
Masinissa’s family was suspected, and in short the Romans were pressed on
all sides. Their cunning policy therefore was mildness: they said that
they were willing to pardon the Achæans, if they would but acknowledge
their guilt, and apologise. But almost the whole nation was now in a
state of intoxication, “according to the words of Scripture, that God
makes the nations intoxicated for their own destruction.” Critolaus the
strategus, played the part of a hero, and inflamed the minds of the
people--especially of the populace, which was already in commotion at
Corinth. When the Roman ambassadors commenced speaking no one listened to
them; they were obliged to stop, and as the tumult became too great, they
went away. Critolaus, and still more, Diæus, now goaded the Achæans into
the madness of declaring war against the Romans, and marching towards
Thermopylæ. The war was decreed nominally against the Lacedæmonians, but
in reality against the Romans.
We have only very scanty information about the course of this war; but
the _Excerpts_ of Porphyrogenitus from Polybius[c] will throw light upon
it. “Posterity can form no conception,” says Polybius, “of the madness
with which the war was carried on; it was as if men rushed into it for
the purpose of perishing.”
Critolaus assembled a considerable army. The Bœotians, headed by the
Thebans under the wretched Pytheas, and the Chalcidians, were the only
Greeks that sided with the Achæans; the Ætolians and the other nations
were neutral; the Lacedæmonians, on the other hand, were hostile towards
the Achæans, for which reason all of the Achæans could not leave
their country. The allied army advanced as far as Heraclea near Mount
Œta, and laid siege to that town in order to protect Thermopylæ. But
everything was there managed so senselessly, that when Metellus, who
on being informed of this, without waiting for orders, had broken in
from Macedonia with the rapidity of lightning, came to its relief, the
Achæans under Diæus and Critolaus hastily fled back through the pass of
Thermopylæ.
Metellus overtook them near Scarphe, attacked and defeated them
so completely that within a few hours the Achæan army was utterly
annihilated; many were slain, many were taken prisoners, and many
dispersed in flight. Diæus fled, Critolaus was not to be found, having
perhaps perished in a marsh. The whole army was scattered. An Arcadian
contingent of one thousand men, which arrived too late, was carried away
by the flight of the others, and a few days later, in the neighbourhood
of Chæronea, it was partly taken and partly cut to pieces by the Romans.
The Achæans fled in disorder into Peloponnesus. In Bœotia all the people,
quitting the towns, took refuge in the mountains; Thebes was deserted;
many made away with themselves from despair, and many implored the
Romans to kill them, declaring themselves to be the authors of all the
misfortunes.
Diæus succeeded Critolaus in the command of the army; he was a person of
the utmost incapacity, and formidable only to those who obeyed him. He
had recourse to the most extreme measures; he decreed that all judicial
trials for debts should be stopped, all imprisoned debtors should be set
free, and that no debt should become due before the close of the war--a
sad decree for the wealthy, but it made him popular among the rabble.
Twelve thousand slaves were to be manumitted and armed (they are called
παράτροφοι--_i.e._, milk-brothers, the children of female slaves or
nurses); and heavy war contributions were levied. Four thousand men were
sent to Megara to defend that place, and Diæus himself assembled the
army on the isthmus. When Metellus appeared, those four thousand soon
evacuated Megara, and all the forces were concentrated on the isthmus
close to the walls of Corinth.
[Sidenote: [146 B.C.]]
[Illustration: GREEK WATER VESSEL
(Berlin Museum)]
Metellus now appeared before Corinth. Animated by a feeling of humanity
he wished to spare the city; such a magnificent ancient city was indeed
something venerable to many a Roman, and the idea of destroying it was
terrible to Metellus. It is also possible that he grudged the consul
Mummius, who was already advancing in quick marches, the honour of
bringing the war to a close. Once more Metellus sent some Greeks to the
Achæan army, according, according to Roman notions, fair terms, if they
would but lay down their arms, and requesting them to put confidence in
him. What else could he have done? But Diæus, who knew that his life was
forfeited, goaded the poor people to madness. The Achæans, believing that
Metellus had offered peace from a feeling of weakness, nearly killed
the ambassadors, and Diæus did not set them free until a ransom of ten
thousand drachmæ was paid; this is a characteristic feature of the man
who showed his avarice to the very last minute. The hypostrategus, who
was favourable to the Romans, was tortured.
In the meantime Mummius arrived and took the place of Metellus. He had
no such feelings towards the Achæans as his predecessor, who returned to
Rome. Mummius now had an army of twenty-three thousand foot and three
thousand horse, while the Achæans had only fourteen thousand foot and a
few hundred horse. The Achæans were encamped on the isthmus in a strong
position, but this was of no avail. The Romans had a fleet furnished by
their allies, while the Greeks had no ships, and the Roman fleet cruised
along the whole coast of Peloponnesus, landing everywhere, and ravaging
the country with the most fearful cruelty. What Themistocles had said
to the Peloponnesians, when they wanted to fortify themselves on the
isthmus, now came to pass; the contingents, especially those of the
Eleans, dispersed in all directions in order to protect their own towns,
without being able to do so.
A somewhat favourable engagement, in which they defeated a detachment of
the Romans, which had ventured too far and was not duly supported, made
the Achæans completely mad, and being thus encouraged they thoughtlessly
attacked the Roman army. But their small advantage was immediately
neutralised by a fatal blow; for in a great and decisive battle, the
Achæans were so completely routed, that they were not even able to throw
themselves into Corinth. The cavalry fled immediately; the infantry
maintained its ground better, but in the end all fled in different
directions into the mountains, and Diæus to Megalopolis, where he first
murdered his wife and then took poison. All the population of Corinth
deserted the city and took refuge in the mountains, as the Romans had
done on the arrival of the Gauls, and were hunted by the Romans like wild
beasts.[b]
THE DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH
Mummius had not expected so easy a conquest, and, though informed that
the gates were open, suspecting some stratagem, suffered an entire
day to pass before he marched into the city. Though no resistance was
offered, all the men found within the walls were put to the sword; the
women and children were reserved for sale; and when all its treasures
had been carried away, on a signal given by blast of the trumpet the
city was consigned to the flames. So it is said the senate had expressly
decreed. But vengeance for the insults offered to the Roman envoys was
probably more the pretext than the motive for this cruelty. It was at
least no less a crime in the eyes of the Roman soldiers that Corinth was
the richest city of Greece. Scarcely any other was adorned with so many
precious works of art. Mummius himself had as little eye for them as any
of his men, who made dice-boards of the finest masterpieces of painting;
but he knew that such things were highly valued by others, and he
therefore preserved those which were accounted the choicest to embellish
his triumph.
Before the arrival of the ten commissioners, who were sent in the autumn
to regulate the state of Greece, he made a circuit in Peloponnesus to
inflict punishment on the cities and persons that had taken an active
share in the war. The walls of all such towns were dismantled, and their
whole population disarmed. The adherents of Diæus were sentenced to
death or exile, and their property confiscated; and the Achæans--that
is, the cities which had contributed to the war--were condemned to pay
two hundred talents [£40,000 or $200,000] to Sparta. The greater part
of the Corinthian territory was annexed to Sicyon. Mummius afterwards
marched northward to deal like retribution among the insurgents of Bœotia
and Eubœa. He razed Thebes and Chalcis--or at least their walls--to the
ground; condemned the Bœotians and Eubœans--or more probably those cities
alone--to pay one hundred talents to Heraclea, which they had helped to
besiege; and at Chalcis he shed so much blood of the principal citizens,
that Polybius himself can only reconcile his conduct with the supposed
mildness of his character by the suggestion that he was urged by his
council to unwonted severity.
It remained for the ten commissioners, according to the instructions
of the senate, to fix the future condition of the conquered nation.
All Greece, as far as Macedonia and Epirus, was constituted a Roman
province: and Achaia enjoyed the melancholy distinction of giving its
name to the whole. But the senate’s jealousy was not satisfied with the
formal establishment of its sovereignty; it had also decreed a series of
regulations tending as much as possible to restrict every kind of union
and intercourse among the Greeks, and to reduce them to the lowest stage
of weakness and degradation. All federal assemblies, all democratical
polities, were abolished, and the government of each city committed to
a magistracy, for which a certain amount of property was required as a
qualification. No one might acquire land in any part of the province but
that in which his franchise lay. The details of this outline, and all
temporary measures for the settlement of the country, were left to the
discretion of Mummius and the Ten; and Polybius, who appears to have
arrived in Greece soon after the fall of Corinth, was now able in some
degree to alleviate the calamity which he had found it impossible to
avert; and perhaps it would not have been equally in his power to render
such services to his countrymen if he had been previously less alienated,
at least in appearance, from the national cause. As the intimate friend
of the conqueror of Carthage, he was treated with the highest respect
and confidence; and he employed his influence so as to win the esteem
and gratitude of his fellow-citizens. Mummius himself, when sated with
bloodshed and rapine, showed a disposition to conciliate the vanquished.
Before his departure, though he had removed the statue of the Isthmian
Poseidon, to dedicate it--in gross violation of religious propriety--in
the temple of Jupiter at Rome, he repaired the damage which had been done
to the public buildings on the Isthmus, adorned the temples of Olympia
and Delphi, and made a circuit round the principal Greek cities to
receive tokens of their gratitude.
The political institutions were of course, according to the senate’s
decree, strictly oligarchical. And in this respect no alteration seems
ever to have been granted by the Roman government. But in some other
points the rigour of its original regulations was a few years afterward
greatly relaxed. The fines imposed on the Achæans, and on the Bœotians
and Eubœans, were remitted; the restraints on intercourse and commerce
were withdrawn; and the federal unions which had been abolished were
revived. The Romans in their official language seem to have described
this renewal of the old forms as a restoration of liberty to Greece. But
even if the monument in which this sounding phrase appears to be applied
to it, did not itself illustrate the vigilance with which the exercise
of political freedom was checked by the provincial government, we might
be sure that these revived confederations answered no other purpose than
that of affording an occasion for some periodical festivals, and some
empty titles, soothing perhaps to the feelings of the people, but without
the slightest effect on their welfare. The end of the Achæan War was the
last stage of the lingering process by which Rome enclosed her victim in
the coils of her insidious diplomacy, covered it with the slime of her
sycophants and hirelings, crushed it when it began to struggle, and then
calmly preyed upon its vitals.
GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS
[Sidenote: [146 B.C.-540 A.D.]]
We have brought the political history of ancient Greece down to a point
which may be fitly regarded as its close; since in the changes which
afterwards befell the country the people remained nearly passive. The
events of the Mithridatic War--in which the Achæans and Lacedæmonians,
and all Bœotia, except Thespiæ, are said to have declared themselves
against Rome, and the royal army in Greece received a reinforcement of
Lacedæmonian and Achæan troops--might serve to indicate that the national
spirit was not wholly extinct, or that the Roman dominion was felt to be
intolerably oppressive. But Athens certainly no more deserved Sulla’s
bloody vengeance for the resistance into which she was forced by the
tyranny of Athenion, than for the credulity with which she had listened
to his lying promises.
No historical fact is more clearly ascertained than that from this epoch
the nation was continually wasting away. Strabo,[e] who visited Greece
but a little more than a century later (B.C. 29), found desolation
everywhere prevailing. Beside his special enumeration of ruined towns
and deserted sites, and his emphatic silence as to the present, while
he explores the faint vestiges or doubtful traditions of the past, the
description of almost every region furnishes occasion for some general
remark illustrating the melancholy truth. Messenia was for the most part
deserted, and the population of Laconia very scanty in comparison with
its ancient condition; for beside Sparta it contained but thirty small
towns in the room of the hundred for which it had once been celebrated.
Of Arcadia it was not worth while to say much, on account of its utter
decay. There was scarcely any part of the land in tillage, but vast
sheep-walks, and abundant pasture for herds of cattle, especially horses;
and so the solitude of Ætolia and Acarnania had become no less favourable
to the rearing of horses than Thessaly. Both Acarnania and Ætolia--he
repeats elsewhere--are now utterly worn out and exhausted; as are many of
the other nations. Of the towns of Doris scarcely a trace was left; the
case was the same with the Ænianes. Thebes had sunk to an insignificant
village; and the other Bœotian cities in proportion--that is, as he
elsewhere explains himself, they were reduced to ruins and names, all but
Tanagra and Thespiæ, which, compared with the others, were tolerably well
preserved.
It has been usual in modern times to attribute this decline of population
to the loss of independence, to the withering influence of a foreign
yoke--in a word, to Roman misrule. And it would be bold and probably
an error, to assert, that it was wholly unconnected with the nature of
the government to which Greece was subject as a Roman province. It is
too well known what that government was--how seldom it was uprightly
administered, how easily, even in the purest hands, it became the
instrument of oppression. The ordinary burdens were heavy. The fisherman
of Gyaros, who was sent ambassador to Augustus, to complain that a tax of
150 drachmæ was laid upon his island which could hardly pay two-thirds
of that sum, afforded but a specimen of a common grievance. Greece was
not exempt from those abuses which provoked the massacre of the Romans
in Asia at the outbreak of the Mithridatic War. And even if we had no
express information on the subject, we might have concluded that it did
not escape the still more oppressive arbitrary exactions of corrupt
magistrates, and their greedy officers. “Who does not know,” Cicero asks,
“that the Achæans pay a large sum yearly to L. Piso?” It was notorious
that he had received one hundred talents from them, beside plunder and
extortion of other kinds. The picture which Cicero draws of the evils
inflicted by L. Piso upon Greece is no doubt rhetorically overcharged;
but it is one of utter impoverishment, exhaustion, and ruin. And here
we may remark that the privileges of the free cities included in the
province afforded no security against the rapacity and oppression of a
Piso or a Verres. The Lacedæmonians, Strabo observes, were peculiarly
favoured, and remained free, paying nothing but voluntary offerings.
But these were among the most burdensome imposts; and so Athens, which
enjoyed the like immunity, was nevertheless, according to Cicero’s
phrase, torn to pieces by Piso. To this it must be added that the
oligarchical institutions everywhere established--and even Athens was
forced so to qualify her democracy that little more than the name seems
to have been left--tended to promote the accumulation of property in few
hands; as we read that the whole island of Cephallenia was subject to C.
Antonius as his private estate.
Nevertheless it seems certain, that when these are represented as the
main causes of the decline of population in Greece, which followed the
loss of her independence, their importance has been greatly exaggerated,
while others much more efficacious have been overlooked or disparaged.
For on the one hand it is clear that this decline did not begin at that
epoch, but had been going on for many generations before. A comparison
of the forces brought into the field to meet the Celtic invasion by
the states of northern Greece with those which they furnished in the
Persian War, would be sufficient to prove the fact with regard to
them; the evil lay deeper than the ravages of war. And we have now the
evidence of Polybius, that in the period either immediately preceding, or
immediately subsequent to the establishment of the Roman government--a
period which he describes as one of concord and comparative prosperity,
when the wounds which had been inflicted on the peninsula were beginning
to heal--even then the population was rapidly shrinking, through causes
quite independent of any external agency, and intimately connected with
the moral character and habits of the society itself.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE ERECHTHEUM, ATHENS]
The evil was not that the stream of population was violently absorbed,
but that it flowed feebly, because there was an influence at work which
tended to dry up the fountain-head. Marriages were rare and unfruitful
through the prevalence of indifference or aversion toward the duties and
enjoyments of domestic life. The historian traces this unhealthy state
of feeling to a taste for luxury and ostentation. But this explanation,
which could only apply to the wealthy, seems by no means adequate to
the result. The real cause struck deeper, and was much more widely
spread. Described in general terms, it was a want of reverence for the
order of nature, for the natural revelation of the will of God; and the
sanction of infanticide was by no means the most destructive, or the most
loathsome form in which it manifested itself. This was the cancer which
had been for many generations eating into the life of Greece.
How little the vices of the Roman government had to do with the decrease
of population in Greece, becomes still more apparent as we follow its
course through the history of the empire. The change from republican to
monarchical institutions was in general beneficial to the provinces,
and especially to Greece, which was not only exempt from the danger of
arbitrary oppression, but was distinguished by many marks of imperial
favour. Within the space of a few years, about the beginning of this
period, three new colonies animated the south coast of the Corinthian
Gulf. Pompey planted a settlement of pirates in the solitude of Dyme. His
great rival restored Corinth, and, if he had lived longer, would perhaps
have opened a canal through the Isthmus. Though the commerce, which at
the fall of Corinth had been diverted to Delos, and afterwards dispersed
by the Mithridatic War, may not have wholly returned into its ancient
channel, still there can be no question that the advantages of this
restoration were very largely felt throughout Greece. Augustus founded
another populous Roman colony at Patræ, which enjoyed the privileges of
a free city. Nicopolis indeed was rather designed as a monument of his
victory, than to promote the prosperity of Greece: for it was peopled
from the decayed towns of the adjacent regions, and the effect was to
turn Acarnania and Ætolia into a wilderness.
Athens too had soon repaired the loss it suffered through Sulla’s
massacre, though Piræus did not rise out of its ruins. But the Athenian
population was recruited, as it had long been, by the lavish grant or
cheap sale of the franchise. It was like the galley of Theseus, retaining
nothing but the name and semblance of the old Athenian people, without
any real natural identity of race; so that it was no exaggeration, when
Piso called it a jumble of divers nations. The poverty indeed of the
city, which had been a main cause of its unfortunate accession to the
side of Mithridates, still continued, and was but slightly relieved by
the bounty of benefactors like Pomponius and Herodes Atticus, or even by
the growing influx of wealthy strangers who came to pursue rhetorical or
philosophical studies there.
While its splendour was increased by the magnificent structures added to
it by Hadrian and Herodes, perhaps the larger part of the freemen was
never quite secure of their daily meal. Still the good will of the early
emperors was unequivocally manifested. They seem always to have lent
a favourable ear to the complaints and petitions of the province, and
Nero went so far as to reward the Greeks for their skilful flattery of
his musical talents by an entire and general exemption from provincial
government, which may have compensated for the presents he exacted from
them. The Greeks, it is said, abused their new privileges by discord and
tumults, and Vespasian restored the proconsular administration, and above
all the tribute--which was perhaps his real motive--with the remark that
they had forgotten the use of liberty. But it is evident that on the
whole, from the reign of Augustus to that of Trajan, the increase of the
population was not checked by oppression or by any calamity. Yet at the
end of this period we find Plutarch declaring, that Greece had shared
more largely than any other country in the general failure of population
which had been caused by the wars and civil conflicts of former times
over almost all the world, so that it could then hardly furnish three
thousand heavy-armed soldiers--the number raised by Megara alone for the
Persian War; and his assertion is confirmed by the pictures drawn by
another contemporary witness.
In times when the present was so void and cheerless, the future so dark
and hopeless, it was natural that men should seek consolation in the
past, even though it had been less full, than was the case among the
Greeks, of power and beauty, prosperity and glory. Nor was it necessary
then to evoke its images by learned toil out of the dust of libraries
or archives. The whole land was covered with its monuments in the most
faultless productions of human genius and art. There was no region so
desolate, no corner so secluded, as to be destitute of them. Even the
rapacity of the Romans could not exhaust these treasures. Though Mummius
was said to have filled Italy with the sculptures which he carried away,
it is probable that in the immense multitude which remained, their
absence, in point of number, might be scarcely perceived. If Nero robbed
Delphi of five hundred statues, there might still be more than two
thousand left there.
The expressive silence of these memorials was interpreted by legends
which lived in the mind and the heart of the people; and so long as any
inhabitants remained in a place, a guide was to be found thoroughly
versed in this traditional lore. The town of Panopeus at the northern
foot of Parnassus, though celebrated by Homer as a royal residence,
had been reduced, when it was visited by Pausanias,[f] to a miserable
assemblage of huts, in which the traveller could find nothing to deserve
the name of a city, as it contained neither an archive, nor a gymnasium,
nor a theatre, nor a market-place, nor a fountain; but the people
remembered that they were not of Phocian, but of Phlegyan origin: they
could show the grave which covered the vast bulk of the great Tityus,
and the remnants of the clay out of which Prometheus had moulded the
human race. Relics of like antiquity were at the same period reverently
treasured in most parts of Greece. The memory of the past was still more
effectually preserved by a great variety of festivals, games, public
sacrifices, and other religious solemnities. After the extinction of
the national independence, the battle of Platæa did not cease to be
commemorated by the Feast of Liberty; as notwithstanding the absence
of all political interests, the forms of deliberation were kept up in
the Amphictyonic, the Achæan, Phocian, and Bœotian councils. The heroes
both of the mythical and the historical age were still honoured with
anniversary rites--Aratus and Demosthenes, and the slain at Marathon, no
less than Ajax and Achilles, Temenus, Phoroneus, and Melampus.
The religion of the Greeks, which was so intimately associated with
almost all their social pleasures and their most important affairs, had
never lost its hold on the great body of the nation. We hear much of the
change wrought in the state of religious feeling by the speculations
of the sophists, and the later kindred philosophical schools, by the
frequent examples of sacrilegious violence, by the progress of luxury,
and the growing corruption of manners. But the effect seems to have
been confined to a not very large circle of the higher classes. With
the common people paganism continued, probably as long as it subsisted
at all, to be not a mere hereditary usage, but a personal, living,
breathing, and active faith. In the age of the Antonines the Attic
husbandmen still believed in the potent agency of their hero Marathon,
as the Arcadian herdsmen fancied that they could hear the piping of Pan
on the top of Mænalus. The national misfortunes, as they led the Greeks
to cling the more fondly to their recollections of the past, tended to
strengthen the influence of the old religion, and rendered them the less
disposed to admit a new faith which shocked their patriotic pride and
dispelled many pleasing illusions, while it ran counter to all their
tastes and habits, and deprived them of their principal enjoyments.
Accordingly, it seems that Christianity, notwithstanding the consolations
it offered for all that it took away, made very slow progress beyond the
cities in which it was first planted; and its ascendency was not firmly
established long before the beginning of a period in which a series of
new calamities threatened the very existence of the nation.
The result of the Persian invasion in the mind of the victorious
people had been a feeling of exulting self-confidence, which fostered
the development of all its powers and resources. The terror of the
Celtic inroad was followed by a sense of security earned in a great
measure by an honourable struggle. Far different was the impression
left by the irruption of Alaric, when Greece was at length delivered
from his presence. The progress of the barbarians had been stopped by
no resistance before they reached the utmost limits of the land. They
retreated indeed before Stilicho, but not broken or discomfited, carrying
off all their booty to take undisturbed possession of another, not a
distant province. It was long indeed before the Greeks experienced
a repetition of this calamity, but henceforth they lived in the
consciousness that they were continually exposed to it. They neither
had strength to defend themselves, nor could rely on their rulers for
protection.
The safety of Greece was one of the last objects which occupied the
attention of the court of Constantinople. In the utter uncertainty how
soon a fresh invader might tread in the steps of Alaric, every rumour
of the movements of the hordes which successively crossed the Danube,
might well spread alarm, even in the remotest corners of Peloponnesus.
The direction which they might take could be as little calculated
as the course of lightning. Who could have foreseen that Attila and
Theodoric would be diverted from their career to fall upon other
prey--that Genseric after his repulse before Tænarus would not renew his
invasion--that the Bulgarians would be so long detained by the plunder
of the northern provinces? In the reign of Justinian the advances of the
barbarians became more and more threatening, and in the year 540 northern
Greece was again devastated by a mixed swarm of Huns and other equally
ferocious spoilers, chiefly of the Slavonic race.
The strengthened fortifications of the Isthmus indeed withstood this
flood, though they could not shelter the Peloponnesians from the
earthquakes and the pestilence, which during this unhappy period were
constantly wasting the scanty remains of the Hellenic population which
had escaped or survived the inroads of the barbarians. Justinian’s
enormous line of fortresses revealed the imminence of the danger,
but could not long avert it. In the course of the seventh and eighth
centuries the worst forebodings were realised; after many transient
incursions the country was permanently occupied by Slavonic settlers.
The extent of the transformation which ensued is most clearly proved
by the number of the new names which succeeded to those of the ancient
geography. But it is also described by historians in terms which have
suggested the belief that the native population was utterly swept away,
and that the modern Greeks are the descendants of barbarous tribes which
subsequently became subject to the empire, and received the language and
religion which they have since retained from Byzantine missionaries and
Anatolian colonists; and such is the obscurity which hangs over the final
destiny of the most renowned nation of the earth, that it is much easier
to show the weakness of the grounds on which this hypothesis has been
reared, than to prove that it is very wide of the truth.[d]
[Illustration]