wealthy through commerce. There are only two places which in the earliest
times deserve to be noticed as commercial towns, namely, Corinth and
Crissa; after the destruction of Crissa, Aegina, though more as a country
of sailors, stepped into its place. These last two towns carried on
commerce chiefly by sea, while Corinth gave itself up more to traffic by
land. Its situation was most favourable for commerce, being distant, on
the one hand, twelve stadia from Lechaeon and the Corinthian Gulf, and,
on the other, forty stadia[18] from Cenchreae and the Saronic Gulf.
The place for the Isthmian games was in the neighbourhood of Corinth,
on the Isthmus, which is there forty stadia in breadth. But the most
important point at Corinth was Acrocorinthus, a rock which according to
Strabo, rose perpendicularly to the height of three and a-half stadia,
or 2,100 feet: this statement seems to be based upon actual measurement;
at present it is impossible to measure it on account of the jealousy of
the Turks. The rock is inaccessible on the side of the country, and
below it was situated the city of Corinth, in the form of a trapezium;
the town was about five miles in circumference, and one of the largest
cities of Greece: Athens was not larger. It was built on hills and in
the intervening valleys, and surrounded by a strong wall. Towards the
city Acrocorinthus was open, but there was only one gate communicating
with it. On the top of it a wall ran round its precipitous sides; and the
remains of these walls have even in our days been seen from a distance.
It was altogether impregnable, at least in the ancient mode of warfare;
it was taken once by famine, and twice by surprise. At present it is
no longer so strong, and on one side it can be reached by guns from a
neighbouring hill.
In the Homeric Catalogue, Corinth is called ἀφνειός; it was wealthy
even under the Bacchiads, and under Cypselus and his son; its commerce,
however, was at different times disturbed by the navy of Athens, and
this is one of the earliest examples of commercial jealousy. Corinth
was greater by its land commerce than as a maritime power; but still it
had a navy, and founded numerous and splendid colonies, as Syracuse,
Corcyra, Ambracia, Leucas, and a number of towns on the western coast of
Greece, partly with, and partly without the co-operation of Corcyra. But
the planting of these colonies belongs to the period of the Corinthian
aristocracy and tyrannis; during its democratic government, the city lost
its bold spirit of enterprise and its warlike character, just as was the
case at Florence. From the amount of contingents furnished by Corinth in
times of war, it is clear that it was populous, though not in proportion
to its extent. But the Corinthians never shewed themselves noble;
as early as the Persian wars they displayed malice and envy towards
Athens; and Plutarch is unjust in blaming Herodotus for speaking against
Corinth. The Corinthians were the chief instigators of the undertakings
against Athens, which afterwards they had reason to repent, when Sparta
exercised her power with an utter disregard of every one else; the
Corinthians then brought about a reaction to ruin Sparta, which, by
the wretched manner in which she had used her supremacy, brought upon
herself a heavy responsibility with her contemporaries no less than
with posterity. During the Macedonian period Corinth is mentioned only
as a wealthy commercial city; in the troublous times, when the Greeks
were involved in maritime wars, when Illyrians and Etruscans rendered
the sea about Malea and Taenarus (which were inhabited by the ancestors
of the Mainots) unsafe, and when the Cretans also carried on piracy,
people preferred going to Corinth, instead of sailing round Peloponnesus;
the continuity of the voyage was sacrificed, and the merchandise was
conveyed to Lechaeon, and thence to Corfu and Illyricum.[19] Corinth
thus became a principal staple of commerce. The different phases of the
commerce of the Corinthians may be traced _a priori_ from its historical
relations. Corinth rose and sank; the time of its highest prosperity
was that in which Athens, like modern Venice, was in a state of utter
decay, about Olymp. 180, in the reign of Antigonus Gonatas. All commerce
then became concentrated at Corinth, just as the whole commerce of the
Adriatic has in modern times become concentrated at Trieste. Though it
was under the supremacy of Macedonia, the city became very wealthy, and
was in comfortable circumstances. A Macedonian garrison was quartered in
Acrocorinthus. Corinth, however, was not only a commercial place, but
also had manufactures, which had been transferred thither from Athens,
on account of its more favourable situation. The χαλκὸς Κορινθιακὸς is
neither more nor less than works in bronze, which were made there with
particular elegance; its alleged origin at the burning of the city is a
silly story, as has long been universally acknowledged.
After the Peloponnesian war, the Corinthians were opposed to Sparta for
wishing to introduce an oligarchical form of government among them. This
attempt of Sparta to make Corinth aristocratic was foolish, and could
not but fail, for the city was essentially democratic, and not the soil
in which an aristocracy could succeed. During the reign of Philip of
Macedonia, Corinth was one of those ill-disposed places which attacked
the Athenians in every possible way for the purpose of increasing its own
commerce by their ruin; but afterwards, during the Lamian war, it appears
vacillating, and receives a Macedonian garrison. It is surprising to
find that subsequently Corinth became a separate Macedonian principality
under Craterus, the step-brother of Antigonus Gonatas, and his son
Alexander.[20] Afterwards, Aratus, who took Acrocorinthus by surprise,
drew the city into the Achaean confederacy; and twenty years later he
delivered it up to the Macedonians as the price for the assistance
furnished him by Antigonus Doson against Cleomenes. It now remained for
twenty-four years in the hands of the Macedonians, until it was evacuated
according to the terms of the peace between Philip and the Romans. For
fifty years it was then at the head of the Achaean league, and this
was the period of its greatest wealth, for Athens was decayed, Aegina
annihilated, and all relations were changed. The life in Greece at that
time was quite different from what it had been in the age of Thucydides:
it was extremely prosaic, and every one was bent upon becoming rich by
commerce, and upon enjoying the good things of this life. Throughout its
existence Corinth had been distinguished for its manufactures, industry,
wealth, splendid buildings, and everything that riches can afford; and
its manufactures were no less celebrated than the English are at the
present day. But during the whole period that it was in the enjoyment
of republican institutions, that is, ever since the reign of Periander,
Corinth never produced a single man of genius, either as an author or
as an orator. Timoleon is, perhaps, the only eminent statesman that
was born at Corinth. We may observe, in general, that very few places
have a share in the literary glory of Greece. The arts of painting,
sculpture, and architecture flourished at Corinth, and treasures of art
were accumulated there in great numbers, which shows that these arts
may flourish, even where that is wanting which is the highest in man.
A beautiful dirge on Corinth by Antipater is contained in the Greek
Anthology.[21]
The destruction of Corinth is a painful event, and excites our horror,
although the Corinthians have no claim upon our affection: the barbarity
of Mummius was far worse than that of Alaric, its second destroyer. For a
period of one hundred years the city lay in ruins, until it was restored
by Julius Caesar; but the colony was one of freedmen, and for centuries
afterwards it remained a Latin town, of which many coins with Roman
names, and the inscription _Colonia Laus Iuli Corinthus_, have come down
to us. Pausanias says, that, although it was the centre of Greece, it
was yet a foreign city with a foreign population. It was, comparatively
speaking, a small place without any important buildings;[22] but, like
all Italian towns, it had a forum, and the temples all around the place,
which had been destroyed by the savage Mummius, lay in ruins. In the
middle ages, at the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Corinth was of
some importance as a manufacturing town; it was taken by Robert Guiscard
under the last despots of Peloponnesus. When in 1204 the peninsula came
into the hands of the Franks, it had sunk very low, and was sinking still
more during the repeated wars, ever since 1460, down to its conquest
by the Turks under Amurath II., until at length, ten years ago (1817),
even the village of Corinth (called Cordos by the Turks) was completely
reduced to ashes. Its two harbours are entirely filled up with sand, and
unfit for large vessels, so that the sources of the prosperity of Corinth
seem to be dried up for ever. At present, when ships sail to Europe,
they steer round Peloponnesus, and no one can think of Corinth as an
intermediate staple of commerce.
Julius Caesar, properly speaking, had restored Corinth only to gratify
his own feelings, but he ought to have peopled it with Greeks; it would,
however, have been impossible to make it a great city. Delos had taken
its place in commerce, the sea had become unsafe in parts, Greece was
desolate and deserted, commerce had altogether taken a different route,
the great commercial roads had taken other directions, and the chief
places were in Egypt, Syria, and on the Euxine; Alexandria and Italy were
now the central points; and it was impossible for Corinth to rise again.
Its whole prosperity now depended upon the productiveness of its olive
plantations, and even very recently a person might walk for hours among
olive trees, which grow there wild; but few parts of its territory are
fit for agriculture.
A misunderstanding may easily arise in regard to the well _Pirene_: it
is not situated below the rock, but on the acropolis, though not on the
summit of it. At the foot of the rock there is another spring, which was
believed to be connected with Pirene by subterraneous passages.
Several small places in the territory of Corinth do not deserve the name
of towns. _Tenea_ was a hamlet which enjoyed the favour of the Romans
and was not destroyed, but even obtained a portion of the Corinthian
territory. _Lechaeon_ was connected with Corinth by means of two long
walls (σκέλη), but not so _Cenchreae_.
The fabulous tradition about SICYON, which by a strange accident has
been made a part of Greek history, ascribes to the kings of that city
a greater age than to those of any other people. This tradition became
incorporated with the tables of Africanus, from which it was taken by
Eusebius and Hieronymus, and has thus passed into modern works. These
alleged ages deserve absolutely no consideration; the very name of Sicyon
is of recent origin, and its ancient name Mecone occurs in Hesiod’s
Theogony: in the Homeric Catalogue it is already called Sicyon.
Even at an early period, Sicyon was a great and considerable town, and
furnished important contingents to the common expeditions, e.g., to
Plataeae. Its territory is one of the most fertile districts in the north
of Peloponnesus; it consists of low, pleasant hills which descend down to
the sea; it has neither plains nor rough mountains. It is particularly
distinguished for its olives, which were very highly valued by the
ancients; even now they are thought much of, though they have lost much
of their former excellence, for olive trees degenerate very easily, and
from this we see how even trees may change in a general catastrophe. The
acropolis of Sicyon was situated on a comparatively high hill; while
the city lay at a considerable distance from it in a plain towards the
sea, whence its situation was not naturally strong, but its walls and
fortifications protected it; hence its conquest by Demetrius Poliorcetes
after a long siege gained for him great honours. This conquest is spoken
of in Plautus’ “Miles Gloriosus,” which circumstance enables us to fix
the age of the Greek original, which must have been composed after Olymp.
122. After the conquest, Demetrius induced the inhabitants, who were
obliged to receive a Macedonian garrison, to settle on the top of the
hill.
Sicyon was celebrated for its school of painting. If we may form a
judgment of this school from the time at which it arose—for a trustworthy
history of the progress of art does not exist—it belongs to that period
when the skill and talent of individuals created a new era in art, but
when real art had already lost its free development; it was a learned
school, perhaps resembling that of Bologna in the time of the Caracci,
and flourished during the Macedonian period until the commencement of the
reign of Antigonus Gonatas; afterwards, in the time of Aratus, it was
already extinct, and we hear only of paintings of deceased masters.
Sicyon is also remarkable as a place which was at an early time, and for
a long period, governed by tyrants. Its first tyrants were Orthagoras
and his family; for when the ancient aristocracy fell in its struggles
with the democracy, the leaders of the democrats usurped the tyrannis.
In the time of Philip and Alexander, it likewise had several tyrants,
whose rule you may regard as an interlude, if you like. But it had also
military tyrants, as in the time of Demetrius Poliorcetes, when one
family established itself as such, until Aratus delivered the city.
Aratus himself is considered by Strabo in the light of a tyrant; but this
is unfair, if we consider the mild manner in which he managed affairs,
and the odium which attaches to the name, though it is not altogether
incorrect in as much as Aratus personally was actually more powerful
than the magistrates and the laws. At the time when the Achaean league
was broken up by the Romans, Sicyon too suffered very much; in the days
of Pausanias, however much he may try to conceal it, Sicyon was only a
village, though it still possessed some great buildings, but others lay
in ruins or had crumbled away. Afterwards, so far as I know, it is no
longer mentioned in history. At present the site of ancient Sicyon is
occupied by the village of Wasiliki.
PHLIUS, situated between Sicyon and Argos[23], had, like Sicyon, arisen
out of the Argive kingdom. In the Homeric Catalogue it does not bear
this name, but is called Ἀραιθυρέη. The town was situated in a beautiful
valley between the ranges of hills which stretch from the north of
Arcadia to the Isthmus and the Onean and Geranian mountains, but are here
considerably extended. Phlius has no great reputation in the history of
Greece; it was less important than Sicyon, though it was an independent
place as early as the Persian wars. From Xenophon’s Hellenica, it is
evident that in his time Phlius was very populous, if we may judge from
the number of hoplites and of the emigrants during the disturbances. But
afterwards it sank and shared the general fate of Greece, so that perhaps
the great population in the time of Xenophon may have been accidental,
owing to the distracted state of Argos. The ethnic name is _Phliasius_,
for which Cicero in one of his letters writes _Phliuntius_; but when
reminded of the error by his friend, he apologises, by saying that he had
allowed himself to be misled by a false analogy.[24]
AEGINA, though not in Peloponnesus, belongs to it more than to any
other country out of Peloponnesus. According to the statement which
makes its circumference largest, it amounted only to 180 stadia, or
about twenty-two English miles; it is therefore probably much smaller
than it is generally drawn in our maps, and its importance is to us a
real mystery, seeing that as a maritime power it was not only equal
but superior to Athens. Yet the mystery may perhaps be solved. Hydra
and Spezzia are barren rocks, which Aegina is not; they are also
smaller than Aegina, and yet their maritime pursuits procured them a
population of several thousands; the soil of the small state of Ragusa
is rocky, and produces no more corn than is required for a few months,
and yet Ragusa as a republic kept many hundred ships, and even during
the present revolution it has had many ships, some of which were well
armed. When, however, we read of an Aeginetan fleet of from seventy to
eighty galleys, each of which required about 200 marines, we cannot
suppress our astonishment. Still more surprising is the statement of
Athenaeus, that the island once had 470,000 slaves, for which he refers
to no less an authority than Aristotle. There must be some error here,
or else Athenaeus had misunderstood Aristotle, for the statement is
absolutely impossible. The highest prosperity of Aegina belongs to a
period when slavery did not yet prevail very much in Greece; and at
other times, as I shall show presently, Aegina was by no means populous.
We may indeed well understand that the island, which at an early period
had a democratic form of government, may have had a navy more powerful
than that of Athens before the time of Themistocles, as Athens had so
long been governed by its great aristocratic landowners. During the
period between the Pisistratids and the Persian wars, the struggle
for the supremacy was carried on between Athens and Aegina with great
exasperation and varying success, until Themistocles decided it by
inducing Athens to apply all her energy to her navy, to make Phaleros a
good harbour, and to build an imposing fleet. During the period between
the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, the Athenians had the upper hand and
subdued the Aeginetans; at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, the
Athenians expelled the inhabitants of Aegina from their island, because
they did not trust them, and the Lacedaemonians gave up Cythera (Cerigo)
to them.[25] The fact that they maintained and supported themselves there
is a proof that their number was very small. After the Peloponnesian war
they were led back, but although Athens was so much reduced, Aegina never
recovered its former importance. During the first war between Philip and
the Romans, P. Sulpicius took Aegina, and reduced the whole population
to slavery, from which they were afterwards ransomed by the kindness of
their friends on the mainland.[26] Afterwards it fell into the hands of
the kings of Pergamus; but we do not know whether it remained under their
dominion until the overthrow of the Achaean confederacy. Aegina is one of
those places whose destruction Serv. Sulpicius laments in his consolatory
letter to Cicero. It seems to have been during such a devastation that
the temple of Zeus Hellenios perished, among the ruins of which were
found the celebrated Aegina marbles, which are at present in the museum
of Munich.
LACONIA.
Laconia was of different extent at different times. Laconia, in the reign
of Aristodemus and his sons, or the country such as it was originally at
the time of the Heracleid conquest, was very far from being as large as
the land afterwards bearing the same name; it was not even as large as
the Laconia in Strabo or Pausanias, but perhaps similar to what it was
during the Macedonian period, especially after the death of Nabis, when
the fate of Lacedaemon had been determined by the Achaeans. The Heracleid
Laconia, therefore, at the first distribution of the peninsula, could
hardly be compared with the Heracleid Argos.
As regards the origin of the kingdom of Sparta, the tradition that
Eurysthenes and Procles were twin-sons of Aristodemus, is altogether
mythical.[27] Any one familiar with the spirit of ancient legendary
history, can clearly see the process through which the narrative has
passed. Both Herodotus and a fragment of Alcaeus have preserved the
statement, that, according to the common tradition, Aristodemus himself
reigned at Sparta and died there. But later writers represent him as
having died before he arrived with the Heracleids in Peloponnesus, being
killed by Apollo at Pytho. The fact is, that as his name was not found
among those of the Doric chiefs, tradition made him the father of the
two kings, for as Argos had three, so Sparta had two kings corresponding
with the two highest among the phylae; and the two Spartan kings are
nothing but the heads of the two γένη of the Eurypontids and Agiads,
belonging to two different phylae; one of them is designated as the οἰκίη
ὑποδεεστέρη, because it belonged to the less noble phyle; whence we
cannot be surprised at their not being called Eurysthenids and Proclids.
Aristodemus is merely a mythical name, signifying that his descendants
are the noblest among their people. The conquerors of Sparta, on their
arrival, are said to have found Tisamenus, the son of Orestes. Those
who looked upon this tradition as a piece of genuine history, felt that
it was difficult to see, how the son of Orestes had come from Mycenae
to Sparta; and the ancients extricated themselves by the story, that
Orestes, succeeded to the throne of Menelaus by marrying Hermione—a
story which is unknown to the author of the first part of the Odyssey,
for he speaks of Megapenthes, a son of Menelaus, which again is only
an expression of the general idea, that the house of Menelaus ended in
sorrow. There can be no doubt that the most ancient form of the tradition
is this, that Temenus, the Doric king of Argos, possessed the same
supremacy over the sons of Aristodemus at Sparta, and over Cresphontes
in Messene, as had in former times been exercised by the king of Mycenae
over the whole of Achaean Peloponnesus. But Spartan pride, at an early
time, endeavoured to cast this humiliating tradition into the shade.
Hence also the statement that Cresphontes drew lots, as to whether he
should obtain Laconia or Messene, Argos being altogether out of the
question.
It is only from a fragment of Ephorus in Strabo, that we know anything
about the feudal principalities of the Dorians in Laconia. This piece
of information once hung upon a thread, and was nearly destroyed by a
mutilation of the passage in the manuscript from which all the others are
derived; if the book were lost, or but a little more mutilated, we should
know absolutely nothing about this feudal system—so much our knowledge
of the most important circumstances often depends upon a mere accident.
Hence it is quite legitimate, in case of such information being wanting,
to supply the deficiency with rational boldness, in accordance with the
general principles of historical development. Now, according to Ephorus,
the Dorian kings divided Laconia into six principalities. The first was
Sparta, where they themselves exercised the supremacy over the other
principalities, just as the Capetingian kings of Paris and Orleans, who
ruled over the country as far as Orleans (Isle de France) as a distinct
principality, and were recognised as kings in the rest of France, but in
such a manner that their vassals again, within their own territories,
were true princes or kings. In regard to the other principalities, Strabo
(p. 424, D)[28] says, that _Amyclae_, at a distance of about five miles
from Sparta, was given to the Achaean who, by his faithless counsel, had
induced the Achaean king of the time to capitulate and quit his country;
he is elsewhere called Philonomus.[29] The text of Strabo is here much
mutilated; there is one line of which the greater part is legible, and
of the next only a few words. I am convinced, however, that I have
discovered the meaning, namely, that the remaining four kingdoms were
_Las_, _Helos_, _Aepys_, and _Pherae_, the two last of which subsequently
belonged to Messene.[30] These five states then stood to Sparta in the
relation of isopolity, and their citizens might exercise the Spartan
franchise; but the sovereignty in all foreign relations belonged to
Sparta, so that the Spartan conquest at that time imposed no heavy yoke
upon the feudal principalities. This relation was altered by Agis I.[31]
The Spartan Dorians broke through the relation of these isopolite states
in such a manner as boldly to deprive them of their rights, to depose
the kings, and reduce the inhabitants to the condition of περίοικοι, in
which they remained indeed free, but became dependent and lost the right
of exercising the Spartan franchise. The people of Helos refused to
submit to these terms, in consequence of which their town was destroyed
by the Spartans.[32] The Homeric Catalogue mentions some other places
in Laconia, as _Bryseae_ and _Messe_, of which afterwards not a trace
occurs, and which may have been destroyed at that time. Many towns
probably perished before the Spartans were masters of one-fourth of the
whole country.
The geographical relations of Laconia are likewise extremely obscure;
but I have very little doubt that if a person were without bias and
carefully to distinguish the different periods, he might arrive at more
satisfactory results than have as yet been gained.
The name LACEDAEMON was, in antiquity, not applied to the city but to the
country, especially the valley of the Eurotas. In the Catalogue, it is
clearly distinguished from Sparta.
Οἳ δ’ εἶχον κοίλην Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσαν
Φᾶρίν τε Σπάρτην τε—