necessary for defensive war against Persia, or even for the aggressive
war which was carried on in Asia Minor and Egypt. It also more than
sufficed for sending out the colonies which Athens founded in Italy and
elsewhere. The remainder of the fund was used in Athens, part of it in
building great structures and in producing splendid works of art, part
for purposes of fortification. The Piraeus, the port of Athens, was
surrounded by strong walls, and a double wall--the famous "Long
Walls"--was constructed from the city to the port, a distance of four
miles. These walls, some two hundred yards apart, left a grand highway
between, the channel of a steady traffic which flowed from the sea to
the city, and which for years enabled Athens to defy the cutting off its
resources by attack from without. Through this broad avenue not only
provisions and merchandise, but men in multitudes, made their way into
Athens, until that city became fuller of bustle, energy, political and
scholarly activity, and incessant industry than any of the other cities
of the ancient world.
In a city like this, free and equal as were its citizens, and democratic
as were its institutions, some men were sure to rise to the surface and
gain controlling influence. In the period in question there were two
such men, Cimon and Pericles, men of such eminence that we cannot pass
them by unconsidered. Cimon was the son of Miltiades, the hero of
Marathon, and became the leader of aristocratic Athens. Pericles was the
great-grandson of Cleisthenes, the democratic law-giver, and, though of
the most aristocratic descent, became the leader of the popular party of
his native city.
The struggle for precedence between these two men resembled that between
Themistocles and Aristides. Cimon was a strong advocate of an alliance
with Sparta, which Pericles opposed. He was brilliant as a soldier,
gained important victories against Persia, but was finally ostracized as
a result of his friendship for Sparta. He came back to Athens
afterwards, but his influence could not be regained.
It is, however, of Pericles that we desire particularly to
speak,--Pericles, who found Athens poor and made her magnificent, found
her weak and made her glorious. This celebrated statesman had not the
dashing qualities of his rival. He was by nature quiet but deep, serene
but profound, the most eloquent orator of his day, and one of the most
learned and able of men. He was dignified and composed in manner,
possessed of a self-possession which no interruption could destroy, and
gifted with a luminous intelligence that gave him a controlling
influence over the thoughtful and critical Athenians of his day.
Pericles was too wise and shrewd to keep himself constantly before the
people, or to haunt the assembly. He sedulously remained in the
background until he had something of importance to say, but he then
delivered his message with a skill, force, and animation that carried
all his hearers irresistibly away. His logic, wit, and sarcasm, his
clear voice, flashing eyes, and vigorous power of declamation, used only
when the occasion was important, gave him in time almost absolute
control in Athens, and had he sought to make himself a despot he might
have done so with a word; but happily he was honest and patriotic enough
to content himself with being the First Citizen of the State.
To make the people happy, and to keep Athens in a condition of serene
content, seem to have been leading aims with Pericles. He entertained
them with quickly succeeding theatrical and other entertainments, solemn
banquets, splendid shows and processions, and everything likely to add
to their enjoyment. Every year he sent out eighty galleys on a six
months' cruise, filled with citizens who were to learn the art of
maritime war, and who were paid for their services. The citizens were
likewise paid for attending the public assembly, and allowances were
made them for the time given to theatrical representations, so that it
has been said that Pericles converted the sober and thrifty Athenians
into an idle, pleasure-loving, and extravagant populace. At the same
time, that things might be kept quiet in Athens, the discontented
overflow of the people were sent out as colonists, to build up daughter
cities of Attica in many distant lands.
Thus it was that Athens developed from the quiet country town of the old
regime into the wealthiest, gayest, and most progressive of Grecian
cities, the capital of an empire, the centre of a great commerce, and
the home of a busy and thronging populace, among whom the ablest
artists, poets, and philosophers of that age of the world were included.
Here gathered the great writers of tragedy, beginning with AEschylus,
whose noble works were performed at the expense of the state in the
great open-air theatre of Dionysus. Here the comedians, the chief of
whom was Aristophanes, moved hosts of spectators to inextinguishable
laughter. Here the choicest lyric poets of Greece awoke admiration with
their unequalled songs, at their head the noble Pindar, the laureate of
the Olympic and Pythian games. Here the sophists and philosophers argued
and lectured, and Socrates walked like a king at the head of the
aristocracy of thought. Here the sculptors, headed by Phidias, filled
temples, porticos, colonnades, and public places with the most exquisite
creations in marble, and the painters with their marvellous
reproductions of nature. Here, indeed, seemed gathered all that was best
and worthiest in art, entertainment, and thought, and for half a century
and more Athens remained a city without a rival in the history of the
world.
_THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS._
During the period after the Persian war two great powers arose in
Greece, which were destined to come into close and virulent conflict.
These were the league of Delos, which developed into the empire of
Athens, and the Peloponnesian confederacy, under the leadership of
Sparta. The first of these was mainly an island empire, the second a
mainland league; the first a group of democratic, the second one of
aristocratic, states; the first a power with dominion over the seas, the
second a power whose strength lay in its army. Such were the two rival
confederacies into which Greece gradually divided, and between which
hostile sentiment grew stronger year after year.
It became apparent as the years went on that a struggle was coming for
supremacy in Greece. Outbreaks of active hostility between the rival
powers from time to time took place. At length the situation grew so
strained that a general conflict began, that devastating Peloponnesian
war which for nearly thirty years desolated Greece, and which ended in
the ruin of Athens, the home of poetry and art, and the supremacy of
Sparta, the native school of war. The first great conflict of the
Hellenic people, the Persian war, had made Greece powerful and
glorious. The second great conflict, the Peloponnesian war, brought
Greece to the verge of ruin, and destroyed that Athenian supremacy in
which lay the true path of progress for that fair land.
In 431 B.C. the war broke out. Sparta and her allies declared war
against Athens on the ground that that city was growing too great and
grasping, and an army marched from the Peloponnesus northward to invade
the Attic state. Meanwhile the Athenians, under the shrewd advice of
Pericles, adopted a wise policy. It was with her fleet that Athens had
defeated Persia, and her wise statesman advised that she should devote
herself to the dominion of the sea, and leave to Sparta that of the
land. Their walls would protect her people, their ships would bring them
food from afar, they were not a fair match for Sparta on land, and could
safely leave to that city of warriors the temporary dominion of Attic
soil.
This advice was taken. When the Spartan army came near Attica all its
people left their fields and homes and sought refuge, as once before,
within the walls of their capacious capital city. Over the Attic plain
marched the invaders, destroying the summer crops, burning the farmers'
homesteads, yet recoiling in helpless rage before those strong walls
behind which lay the whole population of the state. From the city, as we
know, long and high walls stretched away to the sea and invested the
seaport town of Piraeus, within whose harbor lay the powerful Athenian
fleet. And in the treasury of the city rested an abundant supply of
money,--the sinews of war,--with whose aid food and supplies could be
brought from over the seas. In vain, then, did Sparta ravage the fields
of Attica. The people of that desolated realm defied them from behind
their city walls.
When winter came the invaders retired and the farmers went back to their
fields. In the spring they ploughed and sowed as of yore, and watched in
hope the growing crops. But with the summer the Spartans came again, to
destroy their hopes of a harvest, and the country people once more fled
for safety to their great city's defiant walls.
It was a strange spectacle, that of a powerful invading army wreaking
their wrath year after year on deserted fields, and gnashing their teeth
in impotent rage before lofty and well-defended walls and ramparts,
behind which lay their foes, little the worse for all that their malice
could perform.
Athens felt secure, and laughed her enemy to scorn. Unhappily for her, a
new enemy was at hand, against whom the mightiest walls were of no
avail. Sparta gained an unthought-of ally, and death stalked at large in
the Athenian streets, silent and implacable, without clash of weapon or
shout of war, yet more fatal and merciless than would have been the
strongest army in the field.
Athens was crowded. The country people filled all available space. There
was little attention to drainage or sanitary regulations. An open
invitation was given to pestilence, and the invited enemy came. For some
years before the plague had been at its deadly work in Egypt and Libya,
and in parts of Persian Asia. Then it made its appearance in some of the
Grecian islands. Finally its wings of destruction were folded over
Athens, and it settled down in terrific form upon that devoted city.
The seeds of death found there fertile soil. Families were crowded
together in close cabins and temporary shelters, to which they had been
driven in multitudes from their ravaged fields. The plague first
appeared in mid-April in the Piraeus,--brought, perhaps, by
merchant-ships,--but soon spread to Athens, and as the heat of summer
came on the inhabitants of that thronged city fell victims to it in
appalling multitudes.
The plague, they called it. The disease seems to have been something
like the small-pox, though not quite the same. Its victims were seized
suddenly, suffered the greatest agonies, and most of them died on the
seventh or the ninth day. Even when the patients recovered, some had
lost their memory, others the use of their eyes, hands, feet, or some
other member of the body. No remedy could be found. The physicians died
as rapidly as their patients. As for the charms and incantations which
many used, we can scarcely imagine that they saved any lives. Some said
that their enemies had poisoned the water-cisterns, others that the gods
were angry, and vain processions were made to the temples, to implore
the mercy of the deities.
When nothing availed to stay the pestilence, Athens fell into deep
despondency and despair. The sick lost courage, and lay down inertly to
await death. Those who waited on the sick were themselves stricken
down, and so great grew the terror that the patients were deserted and
left to die alone. Fortunately the disease rarely attacked any one
twice, and those who had been sick and recovered became the only nurses
of the new victims of the disease.
So dread became the pestilence that the dead and the dying lay
everywhere, in houses and streets, and even in the temples; half-dead
sufferers gathered around the springs, tortured by violent thirst; the
very dogs that meddled with the corpses died of the disease; vultures
and other carrion birds avoided the city as if by instinct. Many bodies
were burnt or buried with unseemly haste, many doubtless left to fester
where they lay. Misery, terror, despair, overwhelmed all within the
walls, while the foe without drew back in equal terror, lest the
pestilence should leap the walls and assail them in their camps.
Nor have we yet told all. Other evils followed that of the plague. Law
was forgotten, morality ignored. Men hesitated not at crime or the
indulgence of evil passions, having no fear of punishment. Many gave
themselves up to riot and luxurious living, with the hope of snatching
an interval of enjoyment before yielding to death. The story we here
tell is no new one. It has been realized again and again in the flight
of the centuries, when pestilence has made its home in some crowded
city. Human nature is everywhere the same, and the bonds of law and
morality are loosened when death stalks abroad.
For two years this dread calamity continued to desolate Athens. Then,
after a period of a year and a half, it came again, and raged for
another year as furiously as before. The losses were frightful. Of the
armed men of the state nearly five thousand were swept away. Of the
poorer people the loss was beyond computation. Nothing the human enemy
was capable of could have done so much to ruin Athens as this frightful
visitation, and to the end of the war that city felt its weakening
effects.
But perhaps the greatest of the losses of Athens was the death of
Pericles. In him Athens lost its wisest man and ablest statesman. The
strong hand which had so long held the rudder of the state was gone, and
the subsequent misfortunes of Athens were due more to the loss of this
wise counsellor than to the efforts of her foes.
_THE ENVOYS OF LIFE AND DEATH._
Near the coast of Asia Minor lies the beautiful island of Lesbos, the
birthplace of the poets Sappho, Alcaeus, and Terpander, and of other
famous writers and sages of the past. Here were green valleys and
verdure-clad mountains, here charming rural scenes and richly-yielding
fields, here all that seems necessary to make life serene and happy. But
here also dwelt uneasy man, and hither came devastating war, bringing
with it the shadow of a frightful tragedy from which the people of
Lesbos barely escaped.
Lesbos was one of the islands that entered into alliance with Athens,
and formed part of the empire that arose from the league of Delos. In
428 B.C. this island, and its capital, Mitylene, revolted from Athens,
and struck for the freedom they had formerly enjoyed. Mitylene had never
become tributary to Athens. It was simply an ally; and it retained its
fleet, its walls, and its government; its only obligations being those
common to all members of the League.
Yet even these seemed to have been galling to the proud Mitylenians.
Athens was then at war with Sparta. It seemed a good time to throw off
all bonds, and the political leaders of the Lesbians declared
themselves absolved from all allegiance to the league.
The news greatly disturbed the Athenians. They had their hands full of
war. But Mitylene had asked aid from Sparta, and unless brought under
subjection to Athens it would become an ally of her enemy. No time was
therefore to be lost. A fleet was sent in haste to the revolted city,
hoping to take it by surprise. This failing, the city was blockaded by
sea and land, and the siege kept up until starvation threatened the
people within the walls. Until now hope of Spartan aid had been
entertained. But the Spartans came not, the provisions were gone, death
or surrender became inevitable, and the city was given up. About a
thousand prisoners were sent to Athens, and Mitylene was held till the
pleasure of its conquerors should be known.
This pleasure was a tragic one. The Athenians were deeply incensed
against Mitylene, and full of thirst for revenge. Their anger was
increased by the violent speeches of Cleon, a new political leader who
had recently risen from among the ranks of trade, and whose virulent
tongue gave him controlling influence over the Athenians at that period
of public wrath. When the fate of Mitylene and its people was considered
by the Athenian assembly this demagogue took the lead in the discussion,
wrought the people up to the most violent passion by his acrimonious
tongue, and proposed that the whole male population of the conquered
city should be put to death, and the women and children sold as slaves.
This frightful sentence was in accord with the feeling of the assembly.
They voted death to all Mitylenians old enough to bear arms, and a
trireme was sent to Lesbos, bearing orders to the Athenian admiral to
carry this tragical decision into effect.
Slaughter like this would to-day expose its authors to the universal
execration of mankind. In those days it was not uncommon, and the
quality of mercy was sadly wanting in the human heart. Yet such cruelty
was hardly in accord with the advanced civilization of Athens, and when
the members of the assembly descended to the streets, and their anger
somewhat cooled, it began to appear to them that they had sent forth a
decree of frightful cruelty. Even the captain and seamen of the trireme
that was sent with the order to Mitylene left the port with heavy
hearts, and would have gladly welcomed a recall. But the assembly of
Athens was the ruling power and from its decision there was no appeal.
Though it was illegal, the friends of Mitylene called a fresh meeting of
the assembly for the next day. In this they were supported by the
people, whose feeling had quickly and greatly changed. Yet at this new
meeting it appeared at first as if Cleon would again win a fatal
verdict, so vigorously did he again seek to stir up the public wrath.
Diodotus, his opponent, followed with a strong appeal for mercy, and
while willing that the leaders of the revolt, who had been sent to
Athens, should be put to death, argued strongly in favor of pardoning
the rest. When at length the assembly voted, mercy prevailed, but by so
small a majority that for a time the decision was in doubt.
And now came a vital question. The trireme bearing the fatal order had
left port twenty-four hours before. It was now far at sea, carrying its
message of cold-blooded slaughter. Could it possibly be overtaken and
the message of mercy made to fly more swiftly across the sea than that
of death? As may well be imagined, no time was lost. A second trireme
was got ready with all haste, and amply provisioned by the envoys from
Mitylene then in Athens, those envoys promising large rewards to the
crew if they should arrive in time.
The offers of reward were not needed. The seamen were as eager as those
of the former trireme had been despondent. Across the sea rushed the
trireme, with such speed as trireme never made before nor since. By good
fortune the sea was calm; no storm arose to thwart the rowers' good
intent; not for an instant were their oars relaxed; they took turns for
short intervals of rest, while barley meal, steeped in wine and oil, was
served to them for refreshment upon their seats.
Yet they strove against fearful odds. A start of twenty-four hours, upon
so brief a journey, was almost fatal. Fortunately, the rowers of the
first trireme had no spirit for their work. They were as slow and
dilatory as the others were eager and persistent. And thus time moved
slowly on, and the fate of Mitylene hung desperately in the balance. An
hour more or less in this vital journey would make or mar a frightful
episode in the history of mankind.
Fortune proved to be on the side of mercy. The envoys of life were in
time; but barely in time. Those who bore the message of death had
reached port and placed their dread order in the hands of the Athenian
commander, and he was already taking steps for the fearful massacre,
when the second trireme dashed into the waters of that island harbor,
and the cheers of exultation of its rowers met the ears of the
imperilled populace.
So near was Mitylene to destruction that the breaking of an oar would
have been enough to doom six thousand men to death. So near as this was
Athens to winning the execration of mankind, by the perpetration of an
enormity which barbarians might safely have performed, but for which
Athens could never have been forgiven. The thousand prisoners sent to
Athens--the leading spirits of the revolt--were, it is true, put to
death, but this merciless cruelty, as it would be deemed to-day, has
been condoned in view of the far greater slaughter of the innocent from
which Athens so narrowly escaped.
_THE DEFENCE OF PLATAEA._
At the foot of Mount Cithaeron, one of the most beautiful of the
mountains of Greece, winds the small river Asopus, and between, on a
slope of the mountain, may to-day be seen the ruins of Plataea, one of
the most memorable of the cities of ancient Greece. This city had its
day of glory and its day of woe. Here, in the year 479 B.C., was fought
that famous battle which drove the Persians forever from Greece. And
here Pausanias declared that the territory on which the battle was
fought should forever be sacred ground to all of Grecian birth. Forever
is seldom a very long period in human history. In this case it lasted
just fifty years.
War had broken out between Sparta and its allies and Athens and its
dominion, and all Greece was in turmoil. Of the two leading cities of
Boeotia, Thebes was an ally of the Lacedaemonians, Plataea of the
Athenians. The war broke out by an attack of the Thebans upon Plataea.
Two years afterwards, in the year 429 B.C., Archidamus, the Spartan
king, led his whole force against this ally of Athens. In his army
marched the Thebans, men of a city but two hours' journey from Plataea,
and citizens of the same state, yet its bitterest foes. The Plataeans
were summoned to surrender, to consent to remain neutral, or to leave
their city and go where they would; all of which alternatives they
declined. Thereupon the Spartan force invested the city, and prepared to
take it by dint of arms. And thus Sparta kept the pledge of Plataean
sacredness made by her king Pausanias half a century before.
Plataea was a small place, probably not very strongly fortified, and
contained a garrison of only four hundred and eighty men, of whom eighty
were Athenians. Fortunately, all the women and children had been sent to
Athens, the only women remaining in the town being about a hundred
slaves, who served as cooks. Around this small place gathered the entire
army of Sparta and her allies, a force against which it seemed as if the
few defenders could not hold out a week. But these faithful few were
brave and resolute, and for a year and more they defied every effort of
their foes.
The story of this siege is of interest as showing how the ancients
assailed a fortified town. Defences which in our times would not stand a
day, in those times took months and years to overcome. The army of
Sparta, defied by the brave garrison, at first took steps to enclose the
town. If the defenders would not let them in, they would not let the
defenders out. They laid waste the cultivated land, cut down the
fruit-trees, and used these to build a strong palisade around the entire
city, with the determination that not a Plataean should escape. This
done, they began to erect a great mound of wood, stones, and earth
against the city wall, forming an inclined plane up which they proposed
to rush and take the city by assault. The sides of this mound were
enclosed by cross-beams of wood, so as to hold its materials in place.
For seventy days and nights the whole army worked busily at this sloping
mound, and at the end of this time it had reached nearly the height of
the wall. But the Plataeans had not been idle while their foes were thus
at work. They raised the height of their old wall at this point by an
additional wall of wood, backed up by brickwork, which they tore down
houses to obtain. In front of this they suspended hides, so as to
prevent fire-bearing arrows from setting the wood on fire. Then they
made a hole through the lower part of the town wall, and through it
pulled the earth from the bottom of the mound, so that the top fell in.
The besiegers now let down quantities of stiff clay rolled up in wattled
reeds, which could not be thus pulled away. Yet their mound continued to
sink, in spite of the new materials they heaped on top, and they could
not tell why. In fact, the Plataeans had dug an underground passage from
within the town, and through this carried away the foundations of the
mound. And thus for more than two months the besiegers built and the
garrison destroyed their works.