Reaching the isle of Delos, he offered a sacrifice to Apollo in
gratitude for his escape, and there he, and the merry youths and maidens
with him, danced a dance called the Geranus, whose mazy twists and turns
imitated those of the Labyrinth.
But the faithless swain was not to escape punishment for his base
desertion of Ariadne. He had arranged with his father AEgeus that if he
escaped the Minotaur he would hoist white sails in the ship on his
return. If he failed, the ship would still wear the black canvas with
which she had set out on her errand of woe.
The aged king awaited the returning ship on a high rock that overlooked
the sea. At length it hove in sight, the sails appeared, but--they were
black. With broken heart the father cast himself from the rock into the
sea,--which ever since has been called, from his name, the AEgean Sea.
Theseus, absorbed perhaps in thoughts of the abandoned Ariadne, perhaps
of new adventures, had forgotten to make the promised change. And thus
was the deserted maiden avenged on the treacherous youth who owed to
her his life.
The ship--or what was believed to be the ship--of Theseus and the
hostages was carefully preserved at Athens, down to the time of the
Macedonian conquest, being constantly repaired with new timbers, till
little of the original ship remained. Every year it was sent to Delos
with envoys to sacrifice to Apollo. Before the ship left port the priest
of Apollo decorated her stern with garlands, and during her absence no
public act of impurity was permitted to take place in the city.
Therefore no one could be put to death, and Socrates, who was condemned
at this period of the year, was permitted to live for thirty days until
the return of the sacred ship.
There is another legend connected with this story worth telling.
Daedalus, the builder of the Labyrinth, at length fell under the
displeasure of Minos, and was confined within the windings of his own
edifice. He had no clue like Theseus, but he had resources in his
inventive skill. Making wings for himself and his son Icarus, the two
flew away from the Labyrinth and their foe. The father safely reached
Sicily; but the son, who refused to be governed by his father's wise
advice, flew so high in his ambitious folly that the sun melted the wax
of which his wings were made, and he fell into the sea near the island
of Samos. This from him was named the Icarian Sea.
There is a political as well as a legendary history of Theseus,--perhaps
one no more to be depended upon than the other. It is said that when he
became king he made Athens supreme over Attica, putting an end to the
separate powers of the tribes which had before prevailed. He is also
said to have abolished the monarchy, and replaced it by a government of
the people, whom he divided into the three classes of nobles,
husbandmen, and artisans. He died at length in the island of Scyrus,
where he fell or was thrown from the cliffs. Ages later, after the
Persian war, the Delphic oracle bade the Athenians to bring back the
bones of Theseus from Scyrus, and bury them splendidly in Attic soil.
Cimon, the son of Miltiades, found--or pretended to find--the hero's
tomb, and returned with the famous bones. They were buried in the heart
of Athens, and over them was erected the monument called the Theseium,
which became afterwards a place of sanctuary for slaves escaping from
cruel treatment and for all persons in peril. Theseus, who had been the
champion of the oppressed during life, thus became their refuge after
death.
_THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES._
Among the legendary tales of Greece, none of which are strictly, though
several are perhaps partly, historical, none--after that of Troy--was
more popular with the ancients than the story of the two sieges of
Thebes. This tale had probably in it an historical element, though
deeply overlaid with myth, and it was the greatest enterprise of Grecian
war, after that of Troy, during what is called the age of the Heroes.
And in it is included one of the most pathetic episodes in the story of
Greece, that of the sisterly affection and tragic fate of Antigone,
whose story gave rise to noble dramas by the tragedians AEschylus and
Sophocles, and is still a favorite with lovers of pathetic lore.
As a prelude to our story we must glance at the mythical history of
OEdipus, which, like that of his noble daughter, has been celebrated
in ancient drama. An oracle had declared that he should kill his father,
the king of Thebes. He was, in consequence, brought up in ignorance of
his parentage, yet this led to the accomplishment of the oracle, for as
a youth he, during a roadside squabble, killed his father not knowing
him. For this crime, which had been one of their own devising, the gods,
with their usual inconsistency, punished the land of Thebes; afflicting
that hapless country with a terrible monster called the Sphinx, which
had the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the body of a lion.
This strangely made-up creature proposed a riddle to the Thebans, whose
solution they were forced to try and give; and on every failure to give
the correct answer she seized and devoured the unhappy aspirant.
OEdipus arrived, in ignorance of the fact that he was the son of the
late king. He quickly solved the riddle of the Sphinx, whereupon that
monster committed suicide, and he was made king. He then married the
queen,--not knowing that she was his own mother.
[Illustration: OEDIPUS AND ANTIGONE.]
This celebrated riddle of the Sphinx was not a very difficult one. It
was as follows: "A being with four feet has two feet and three feet; but
its feet vary, and when it has most it is weakest."
The answer, as given by OEdipus, was "Man," who
"First as a babe four-footed creeps on his way,
Then, when full age cometh on, and the burden of years weighs full heavy,
Bending his shoulders and neck, as a third foot useth his staff."
When the truth became known--as truth was apt to become known when too
late in old stories--the queen, Jocasta, mad with anguish, hanged
herself, and OEdipus, in wild despair, put out his eyes. The gods who
had led him blindly into crime, now handed him over to punishment by the
Furies,--the ancient goddesses of vengeance, whose mission it was to
pursue the criminal with stinging whips.
The tragic events which followed arose from the curse of the afflicted
OEdipus. He had two sons, Polynikes and Eteocles, who twice offended
him without intention, and whom he, frenzied by his troubles, twice
bitterly cursed, praying to the gods that they might perish by each
other's hands. OEdipus afterwards obtained the pardon of the gods for
his involuntary crime, and died in exile, leaving Creon, the brother of
Jocasta, on the throne. But though he was dead, his curse kept alive,
and brought on new matter of dire moment.
It began its work in a quarrel between the two sons as to who should
succeed their uncle as king of Thebes. Polynikes was in the wrong, and
was forced to leave Thebes, while Eteocles remained. The exiled prince
sought the court of Adrastus, king of Argos, who gave him his daughter
in marriage, and agreed to assist in restoring him to his native
country.
Most of the Argive chiefs joined in the proposed expedition. But the
most distinguished of them all, Amphiaraues, opposed it as unjust and
against the will of the gods. He concealed himself, lest he should be
forced into the enterprise. But the other chiefs deemed his aid
indispensable, and bribed his wife, with a costly present, to reveal his
hiding-place. Amphiaraues was thus forced to join the expedition, but his
prophetic power taught him that it would end in disaster to all and
death to himself, and as a measure of revenge he commanded his son
Alkmaeon to kill the faithless woman who had betrayed him, and after his
death to organize a second expedition against Thebes.
Seven chiefs led the army, one to assail each of the seven celebrated
gates of Thebes. Onward they marched against that strong city, heedless
of the hostile portents which they met on their way. The Thebans also
sought the oracle of the gods, and were told that they should be
victorious, but only on the dread condition that Creon's son,
Menoeceus, should sacrifice himself to Mars. The devoted youth, on
learning that the safety of his country depended on his life, forthwith
killed himself before the city gates,--thus securing by innocent blood
the powerful aid of the god of war.
Long and strenuous was the contest that succeeded, each of the heroes
fiercely attacking the gate adjudged to him. But the gods were on the
side of the Thebans and every assault proved in vain. Parthenopaeus, one
of the seven, was killed by a stone, and another, Capaneus, while
furiously mounting the walls from a scaling-ladder, was slain by a
thunderbolt cast by Jupiter, and fell dead to the earth.
The assailants, terrified by this portent, drew back, and were pursued
by the Thebans, who issued from their gates. But the battle that was
about to take place on the open plain was stopped by Eteocles, who
proposed to settle it by a single combat with his brother Polynikes, the
victory to be given to the side whose champion succeeded in this mortal
duel. Polynikes, filled with hatred of his brother, eagerly accepted
this challenge. Adrastus, the leader of the assailing army, assented,
and the unholy combat began.
Never was a more furious combat than that between the hostile brothers.
Each was exasperated to bitter hatred of the other, and they fought with
a violence and desperation that could end only in the death of one of
the combatants. As it proved, the curse of OEdipus was in the keeping
of the gods, and both fell dead,--the fate for which their aged father
had prayed. But the duel had decided nothing, and the two armies renewed
the battle.
And now death and bloodshed ran riot; men fell by hundreds; deeds of
heroic valor were achieved on either side; feats of individual daring
were displayed like those which Homer sings in the story of Troy. But
the battle ended in the defeat of the assailants. Of the seven leaders
only two survived, and one of these, Amphiaraues, was about to suffer the
fate he had foretold, when Jupiter rescued him from death by a miracle.
The earth opened beneath him, and he, with his chariot and horses, was
received unhurt into her bosom. Rendered immortal by the king of the
gods, he was afterwards worshipped as a god himself.
Adrastus, the only remaining chief, was forced to fly, and was preserved
by the matchless speed of his horse. He reached Argos in safety, but
brought with him nothing but "his garment of woe and his black-maned
steed."
Thus ended, in defeat and disaster to the assailants, the first of the
celebrated sieges of Thebes. It was followed by a tragic episode which
remains to be told, that of the sisterly fidelity of Antigone and her
sorrowful fate. Her story, which the dramatists have made immortal, is
thus told in the legend.
After the repulse of his foes, King Creon caused the body of Eteocles
to be buried with the highest honors; but that of Polynikes was cast
outside the gates as the corpse of a traitor, and death was threatened
to any one who should dare to give it burial. This cruel edict, which no
one else ventured to ignore, was set aside by Antigone, the sister of
Polynikes. This brave maiden, with warm filial affection, had
accompanied her blind father during his exile to Attica, and was now
returned to Thebes to perform another holy duty. Funeral rites were held
by the Greeks to be essential to the repose of the dead, and Antigone,
despite Creon's edict, determined that her brother's body should not be
left to the dogs and vultures. Her sister, though in sympathy with her
purpose, proved too timid to help her. No other assistance was to be
had. But not deterred by this, she determined to perform the act alone,
and to bury the body with her own hands.
In this act of holy devotion Antigone succeeded; Polynikes was buried.
But the sentinels whom Creon had posted detected her in the act, and she
was seized and dragged before the tribunal of the tyrant. Here she
defended her action with an earnestness and dignity that should have
gained her release, but Creon was inflexible in his anger. She had set
at naught his edict, and should suffer the penalty for her crime. He
condemned her to be buried alive.
Sophocles, the dramatist, puts noble words into the mouth of Antigone.
This is her protest against the tyranny of the king:
"No ordinance of man shall override
The settled laws of Nature and of God;
Not written these in pages of a book,
Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;
We know not whence they are; but this we know,
That they from all eternity have been,
And shall to all eternity endure."
And when asked by Creon why she had dared disobey the laws, she nobly
replied,--
"Not through fear
Of any man's resolve was I prepared
Before the gods to bear the penalty
Of sinning against these. That I should die
I knew (how should I not?) though thy decree
Had never spoken. And before my time
If I shall die, I reckon this a gain;
For whoso lives, as I, in many woes,
How can it be but he shall gain by death?"
At the king's command the unhappy maiden was taken from his presence and
thrust into a sepulchre, where she was condemned to perish in hunger and
loneliness. But Antigone was not without her advocate. She had a
lover,--almost the only one in Greek literature. Haemon, the son of
Creon, to whom her hand had been promised in marriage, and who loved her
dearly, appeared before his father and earnestly interceded for her
life. Not on the plea of his love,--such a plea would have had no weight
with a Greek tribunal,--but on those of mercy and justice. His plea was
vain; Creon was obdurate: the unhappy lover left his presence and sought
Antigone's living tomb, where he slew himself at the feet of his love,
already dead. His mother, on learning of his fatal act, also killed
herself by her own hand, and Creon was left alone to suffer the
consequences of his unnatural act.
The story goes on to relate that Adrastus, with the disconsolate mothers
of the fallen chieftains, sought the hero Theseus at Athens, and begged
his aid in procuring the privilege of interment for the slain warriors
whose bodies lay on the plain of Thebes. The Thebans persisting in their
refusal to permit burial, Theseus at length led an army against them,
defeated them in the field, and forced them to consent that their fallen
foes should be interred, that last privilege of the dead which was
deemed so essential by all pious Greeks. The tomb of the chieftains was
shown near Eleusis within late historical times.
But the Thebans were to suffer another reverse. The sons of the slain
chieftains raised an army, which they placed under the leadership of
Adrastus, and demanded to be led against Thebes. Alkmaeon, the son of
Amphiaraues, who had been commanded to revenge him, played the most
prominent part in the succeeding war. As this new expedition marched,
the gods, which had opposed the former with hostile signs, now showed
their approval with favorable portents. Adherents joined them on their
march. At the river Glisas they were met by a Theban army, and a battle
was fought, which ended in a complete victory over the Theban foe. A
prophet now declared to the Thebans that the gods were against them, and
advised them to surrender the city. This they did, flying themselves,
with their wives and children, to the country of the Illyrians, and
leaving their city empty to the triumphant foe. The Epigoni, as the
youthful victors were called, marched in at the head of their forces,
took possession, and placed Thersander, the son of Polynikes, on the
throne. And thus ends the famous old legend of the two sieges of Thebes.
_LYCURGUS AND THE SPARTAN LAWS._
Of the many nations between which the small peninsula of Greece was
divided, much the most interesting were those whose chief cities were
Athens and Sparta. These are the states with whose doings history is
full, and without which the history of ancient Greece would be little
more interesting to us than the history of ancient China and Japan. No
two cities could have been more opposite in character and institutions
than these, and they were rivals of each other for the dominant power
through centuries of Grecian history. In Athens freedom of thought and
freedom of action prevailed. Such complete political equality of the
citizens has scarcely been known elsewhere upon the earth, and the
intellectual activity of these citizens stands unequalled. In Sparta
freedom of thought and action were both suppressed to a degree rarely
known, the most rigid institutions existed, and the only activity was a
warlike one. All thought and all education had war for their object, and
the state and city became a compact military machine. This condition was
the result of a remarkable code of laws by which Sparta was governed,
the most peculiar and surprising code which any nation has ever
possessed. It is this code, and Lycurgus, to whom Sparta owed it, with
which we are now concerned.
First, who was Lycurgus and in what age did he live? Neither of these
questions can be closely answered. Though his laws are historical, his
biography is legendary. He is believed to have lived somewhere about 800
or 900 B.C., that age of legend and fable in which Homer lived, and what
we know about him is little more to be trusted than what we know about
the great poet. The Greeks had stories of their celebrated men of this
remote age, but they were stories with which imagination often had more
to do than fact, and though we may enjoy them, it is never quite safe to
believe them.
As for the very uncertain personage named Lycurgus, we are told by
Herodotus, the Greek historian, that when he was born the Spartans were
the most lawless of the Greeks. Every man was a law unto himself, and
confusion, tumult, and injustice everywhere prevailed. Lycurgus, a noble
Spartan, sad at heart for the misery of his country, applied to the
oracle at Delphi, and received instructions as to how he should act to
bring about a better state of affairs.
Plutarch, who tells so many charming stories about the ancient Greeks
and Romans, gives us the following account. According to him the brother
of Lycurgus was king of Sparta. When he died Lycurgus was offered the
throne, but he declined the honor and made his infant nephew, Charilaus,
king. Then he left Sparta, and travelled through Crete, Ionia, Egypt,
and several more remote countries, everywhere studying the laws and
customs which he found prevailing. In Ionia he obtained a copy of the
poems of Homer, and is said by some to have met and conversed with Homer
himself. If, as is supposed, the Greeks of that age had not the art of
writing, he must have carried this copy in his memory.
On his return home from this long journey Lycurgus found his country in
a worse state than before. Sparta, it may be well here to say, had
always two kings; but it found, as might have been expected, that two
kings were worse than one, and that this odd device in government never
worked well. At any rate, Lycurgus found that law had nearly vanished,
and that disorder had taken its place. He now consulted the oracle at
Delphi, and was told that the gods would support him in what he proposed
to do.
Coming back to Sparta, he secretly gathered a body-guard of thirty armed
men from among the noblest citizens, and then presented himself in the
Agora, or place of public assembly, announcing that he had come to end
the disorders of his native land. King Charilaus at first heard of this
with terror, but on learning what his uncle intended, he offered his
support. Most of the leading men of Sparta did the same. Lycurgus was to
them a descendant of the great hero Hercules, he was the most learned
and travelled of their people, and the reforms he proposed were sadly
needed in that unhappy land.
These reforms were of two kinds. He desired to reform both the
government and society. We shall deal first with the new government
which he instituted. The two kings were left unchanged. But under them
was formed a senate of twenty-eight members, to whom the kings were
joined, making thirty in all. The people also were given their
assemblies, but they could not debate any subject, all the power they
had was to accept or reject what the senate had decreed. At a later date
five men, called ephors, were selected from the people, into whose hands
fell nearly all the civil power, so that the kings had little more to do
than to command the army and lead it to war. The kings, however, were at
the head of the religious establishment of the country, and were
respected by the people as descendants of the gods.
The government of Sparta thus became an aristocracy or oligarchy. The
ephors came from the people, and were appointed in their interest, but
they came to rule the state so completely that neither the kings, the
senate, nor the assembly had much voice in the government. Such was the
outgrowth of the governmental institutions of Lycurgus.
It is the civil laws made by Lycurgus, however, which are of most
interest, and in which Sparta differed from all other states. The people
of Laconia, the country of which Sparta was the capital, were composed
of two classes. That country had originally been conquered by the
Spartans, and the ancient inhabitants, who were known as Helots, were
held as slaves by their Spartan conquerors. They tilled the ground to
raise food for the citizens, who were all soldiers, and whose whole life
and thought were given to keeping the Helots in slavery and to warlike
activity. That they might make the better soldiers, Lycurgus formed laws
to do away with all luxury and inequality of conditions, and to train up
the young under a rigid system of discipline to the use of weapons and
the arts of war. The Helots, also, were often employed as light-armed
soldiers, and there was always danger that they might revolt against
their oppressors, a fact which made constant discipline and vigilance
necessary to the Spartan citizens.
Lycurgus found great inequality in the state. A few owned all the land,
and the remainder were poor. The rich lived in luxury; the poor were
reduced to misery and want. He divided the whole territory of Sparta
into nine thousand equal lots, one of which was given to each citizen.
The territory of the remainder of Laconia was divided into thirty
thousand equal lots, one of which was given to each Perioecus. (The
Perioeci were the freemen of the country outside of the Spartan city
and district, and did not possess the full rights of citizenship.)
This measure served to equalize wealth. But further to prevent luxury,
Lycurgus banished all gold and silver from the country, and forced the
people to use iron money,--each piece so heavy that none would care to
carry it. He also forbade the citizens to have anything to do with
commerce or industry. They were to be soldiers only, and the Helots were
to supply them with food. As for commerce, since no other state would
accept their iron money, they had to depend on themselves for
everything they needed. The industries of Laconia were kept strictly at
home.
To these provisions Lycurgus added another of remarkable character. No
one was allowed to take his meals at home. Public tables were provided,
at which all must eat, every citizen being forced to belong to some
special public mess. Each had to supply his quota of food, such as
barley, wine, cheese, and figs from his land, game obtained by hunting,
or the meat of the animals killed for sacrifices. At these tables all
shared alike. The kings and the humblest citizens were on an equality.
No distinction was permitted except to those who had rendered some
signal service to the state.