most important result in the invasion of Peloponnesus by the
Dorians, must have caused great commotions and changes
throughout the whole Greek peninsula; and quite as much north
of the Corinthian isthmus as south of it. But in the part
which lies nearest to the isthmus--the branch peninsula of
Attica--the old inhabitants appear to have held their ground,
repelling invaders, and their country was affected only by an
influx of fugitives, flying from the conquered Peloponnesus.
The Attic people were more nearly akin to the expelled
Achaians and Ionians than to the conquering Dorians, although
a common brotherhood in the Hellenic race was recognized by
all of them. Whatever distinction there may have been before
between Achaians and Ionians now practically disappeared, and
the Ionic name became common to the whole branch of the Greek
people which derived itself from them. The important division
of the race through all its subsequent history was between
Dorians and Ionians. The Æolians constituted a third division,
of minor importance and of far less significance. The
distinction between Ionians and Dorians was a very real one,
in character no less than in traditions and name. The Ionians
were the superior Greeks on the intellectual side. It was
among them that the wonderful genius resided which produced
the greater marvels of art, literature and philosophy in Greek
civilization. It was among them, too, that the institutions of
political freedom were carried to their highest attainment.
Their chief city was Athens, and the splendor of its history
bears testimony to their unexampled genius. On the other hand,
the Dorians were less thoughtful, less imaginative, less broad
in judgment or feeling--less susceptible, it would seem, of a
high refinement of culture; but no less capable in practical
pursuits, no less vigorous in effective action, and sounder,
perhaps, in their moral constitution. Sparta, which stood at
the head of the Doric states, contributed almost nothing to
Greek literature, Greek thought, Greek art, or Greek commerce,
but exercised a great influence on Greek political history.
Other Doric states, especially Corinth, were foremost in
commercial and colonizing enterprise, and attained some
brilliancy of artistic civilization, but with moderate
originality.
Greeks and Phœnicians.
It was natural, as noted above, that the Greeks should be
induced at an early day to navigate the surrounding seas, and
to engage in trade with neighboring nations. They were not
original, it is supposed, in these ventures, but learned more
or less of ship-building and the art of navigation from an
older people, the Phœnicians, who dwelt on the coast of Syria
and Palestine, and whose chief cities were Sidon and Tyre. The
Phœnicians had extended their commerce widely through the
Mediterranean before the Greeks came into rivalry with them.
Their ships, and their merchants, and the wares they bartered,
were familiar in the Ægean when the Homeric poems were
composed.
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They seem to have been the teachers of the early Greeks in
many things. They gave them, with little doubt, the invention
of the alphabet, which they themselves had borrowed from
Egypt. They conveyed hints of art, which bore astonishing
fruits when planted in the fertile Hellenic imagination. They
carried from the East strange stories of gods and demigods,
which were woven into the mythology of the Greeks. They gave,
in fact, to Greek civilization, at its beginning, the greatest
impulse it received. But all that Hellas took from the outer
world it wrought into a new character, and put upon it the
stamp of its own unmistakable genius. In navigation and
commerce the Greeks of the coast-cities and the islands were
able, ere long, to compete on even terms with the Phœnicians,
and it happened, in no great space of time, that they had
driven the latter entirely from the Ægean and the Euxine seas.
Greek Colonies.
They had now occupied with colonies the coast of Asia Minor
and the islands on both their own coasts. The Ionian Greeks
were the principal colonizers of the Asiatic shore and of the
Cyclades. On the former and near it they founded twelve towns
of note, including Samos, Miletus, Ephesus, Chios, and Phocæa,
which are among the more famous cities of ancient times. Their
important island settlements in the Cyclades were Naxos,
Delos, Melos, and Paros. They possessed, likewise, the great
island of Eubœa, with its two wealthy cities of Chalcis and
Eretria. These, with Attica, constituted, in the main, the
Ionic portion of Hellas.
The Dorians occupied the islands of Rhodes and Cos, and
founded on the coast of Asia Minor the cities of Halicarnassus
and Cnidus. The important Æolian colonies in Asia were Smyrna
(acquired later by the Ionians), Temnos, Larissa, and Cyme. Of
the islands they occupied Lesbos and Tenedos.
From these settlements on neighboring coasts and islands the
vigorous Greeks pushed on to more distant fields. It is
probable that their colonies were in Cyprus and Crete before
the eighth century, B. C. In the seventh century B. C., during
a time of confusion and weakness in Egypt, they had entered
that country as allies or as mercenaries of the kings, and had
founded a city, Naucratis, which became an important agent in
the exchange of arts and ideas, as well as of merchandise,
between the Nile and the Ægean. Within a few years past the
site of Naucratis has been uncovered by explorers, and much
has been brought to light that was obscure in Greek and
Egyptian history before. Within the same seventh century,
Cyrene and Barca had been built on the African coast, farther
west. Even a century before that time, the Corinthians had
taken possession of Corcyra (modern Corfu), and they, with the
men of Chalcis and Megara, had been actively founding cities
that grew great and rich, in Sicily and in southern Italy,
which latter acquired the name of "Magna Græcia" (Great
Greece). At a not much later time they had pressed northwards
to the Euxine or Black Sea, and had scattered settlements
along the Thracian and Macedonian coast, including one
(Byzantium) on the Bosphorus, which became, after a thousand
years had passed, the imperial city of Constantinople. About
597 B. C., the Phocæans had planted a colony at Massalia, in
southern Gaul, from which sprang the great city known in
modern times as Marseilles. And much of all this had been
done, by Ionians and Dorians together, before Athens (in which
Attica now centered itself, and which loomed finally greater
in glory than the whole Hellenic world besides) had made a
known mark in history.
Rise of Athens.
At first there had been kings in Athens, and legends had
gathered about their names which give modern historians a
ground-work for critical guessing, and scarcely more. Then the
king disappeared and a magistrate called Archon took his
place, who held office for only ten years. The archons are
believed to have been chosen first from the old royal family
alone; but after a time the office was thrown open to all
noble families. This was the aristocratic stage of political
evolution in the city-state. The next step was taken in 683 B.
C. (which is said to be the beginning of authentic Athenian
chronology) when nine archons were created, in place of the
one, and their term of office was reduced to a single year.
Fifty years later, about 621 B. C., the people of Athens
obtained their first code of written law, ascribed to one
Draco, and described as a code of much severity. But it gave
certainty to law, for the first time, and was the first great
protective measure secured by the people. In 612 B. C. a noble
named Kylon attempted to overthrow the aristocratic government
and establish a tyranny under himself, but he failed.
Legislation of Solon.
Then there came forward in public life another noble, who was
one of the wisest men and purest patriots of any country or
age, and who made an attempt of quite another kind. This was
Solon, the famous lawgiver, who became archon in 594 B. C. The
political state of Athens at that time has been described for
us in an ancient Greek treatise lately discovered, and which
is believed to be one of the hitherto lost writings of
Aristotle. "Not only," says the author of this treatise, "was
the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect,
but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were in
absolute slavery to the rich. ... The whole country was in the
hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their
rent, they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their
children with them. Their persons were mortgaged to their
creditors." Solon saw that this was a state of things not to
be endured by such a people as the Athenians, and he exerted
himself to change it. He obtained authority to frame a new
constitution and a new code of laws for the state. In the
latter, he provided measures for relieving the oppressed class
of debtors. In the former, he did not create a democratic
government, but he greatly increased the political powers of
the people. He classified them according to their wealth,
defining four classes, the citizens in each of which had
certain political duties and privileges measured to them by
the extent of their property and income. But the whole body of
citizens, in their general assembly (the Ecclesia), were given
the important right of choosing the annual archons, whom they
must select, however, from the ranks of the wealthiest class.
At the same time, Solon enlarged the powers of the old
aristocratic senate--the Areopagus--giving it a supervision of
the execution of the laws and a censorship of the morals of
the people.
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"These changes did not constitute Democracy,--a form of
government then unknown, and for which there was as yet no
word in the Greek language. But they initiated the democratic
spirit. ... Athens, thus fairly started on her
way,--emancipated from the discipline of aristocratic
school-masters, and growing into an age of manly liberty and
self-restraint,--came eventually nearer to the ideal of 'the
good life' [Aristotle's phrase] than any other State in
Hellas."
(W. W. Fowler.)
Tyranny of Pisistratus.
But before the Athenians reached their nearness to this "good
life," they had to pass under the yoke of a "tyrant,"
Pisistratus, who won the favor of the poorer people, and, with
their help, established himself in the Acropolis (560 B. C.)
with a foreign guard to maintain his power. Twice driven out,
he was twice restored, and reigned quite justly and prudently,
on the whole, until his death in 527 B. C. He was succeeded by
his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus; but the latter was
killed in 514, and Hippias was expelled by the Spartans in 510
B. C.; after which there was no tyranny in Athens.
The Democratic Republic.
On the fall of the Pisistratidæ, a majority of the noble or
privileged class struggled hard to regain their old
ascendancy; but one of their number, Cleisthenes, took the
side of the people and helped them to establish a democratic
constitution. He caused the ancient tribal division of the
citizens to be abolished, and substituted a division which
mixed the members of clans and broke up or weakened the
clannish influence in politics. He enlarged Solon's senate or
council and divided it into committees, and he brought the
"ecclesia," or popular assembly, into a more active exercise
of its powers. He also introduced the custom of ostracism,
which permitted the citizens of Athens to banish by their vote
any man whom they thought dangerous to the state. The
constitution of Cleisthenes was the final foundation of the
Athenian democratic republic. Monarchical and aristocratic
Sparta resented the popular change, and undertook to restore
the oligarchy by force of arms; but the roused democracy of
Athens defended its newly won liberties with vigor and
success.
The Persian Wars.
Not Athens only, but all Greece, was now about to be put to a
test which proved the remarkable quality of both, and formed
the beginning of their great career. The Ionian cities of Asia
Minor had recently been twice conquered, first by Crœsus, King
of Lydia, and then by Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian
empire, who had overthrown Crœsus (B. C. 547), and taken his
dominions. The Persians oppressed them, and in 500 B. C. they
rose in revolt. Athens and Eretria sent help to them, while
Sparta refused. The revolt was suppressed, and Darius, the
king of Persia, planned vengeance upon the Athenians and
Eretrians for the aid they had given to it. He sent an
expedition against them in 493 B. C., which was mostly
destroyed by a storm. In 490 B. C. he sent a second powerful
army and fleet, which took Eretria and razed it to the ground.
The great Persian army then marched upon Athens, and was met at
Marathon by a small Athenian force of 9,000 men. The little
city of Platæa sent 1,000 more to stand with them in the
desperate encounter. They had no other aid in the fight, and
the Persians were a great unnumbered host. But Miltiades, the
Greek general that day, planned his battle-charge so well that
he routed the Asiatic host and lost but 192 men. The Persians
abandoned their attempt and returned to their wrathful king.
One citizen of Athens, Themistocles, had sagacity enough to
foresee that the "Great King," as he was known, would not rest
submissive under his defeat; and with difficulty he persuaded
his fellow citizens to prepare themselves for future conflicts
by building a fleet and by fortifying their harbors, thus making
themselves powerful at sea. The wisdom of his counsels was
proved in 480 B. C., when Xerxes, the successor of Darius, led
an army of prodigious size into Greece, crossing the
Hellespont by a bridge of boats. This time, Sparta, Corinth,
and several of the lesser states, rallied with Athens to the
defence of the common country; but Thebes and Argos showed
friendship to the Persians, and none of the important
island-colonies contributed any help. Athens was the brain and
right arm of the war, notwithstanding the accustomed
leadership of Sparta in military affairs.
The first encounter was at Thermopylæ, where Leonidas and his
300 Spartans defended the narrow pass, and died in their place
when the Persians found a way across the mountain to surround
them. But on that same day the Persian fleet was beaten at
Artemisium. Xerxes marched on Athens, however, found the city
deserted, and destroyed it. His fleet had followed him, and
was still stronger than the naval force of the Greeks.
Themistocles forced a battle, against the will of the
Peloponnesian captains, and practically destroyed the Persian
fleet. This most memorable battle of Salamis was decisive of
the war, and decisive of the independence of Greece. Xerxes,
in a panic, hastened back into Asia, leaving one of his
generals, Mardonius, with 300,000 men, to pursue the war. But
Mardonius was routed and his host annihilated, at Platæa, the
next year, while the Persian fleet was again defeated on the
same day at Mycale.
The Golden Age of Athens.
The war had been glorious for the Athenians, and all could see
that Greece had been saved by their spirit and their
intelligence much more than by the valor of Sparta and the
other states. But they were in a woful condition, with their
city destroyed and their families without homes. Wasting no
time in lamentations, they rebuilt the town, stretched its
walls to a wider circuit, and fortified it more strongly than
before, under the lead of the sagacious Themistocles. Their
neighbors were meanly jealous, and Sparta made attempts to
interfere with the building of the walls; but Themistocles
baffled them cunningly, and the new Athens rose proudly out of
the ashes of the old.
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The Ionian islands and towns of Asia Minor (which had broken
the Persian yoke) now recognized the superiority and
leadership of Athens, and a league was formed among them,
which held the meetings of its deputies and kept its treasury
in the temple of Apollo on the sacred island of Delos; for
which reason it was called the Confederacy of Delos, or the
Delian League. The Peloponnesian states formed a looser rival
league under the headship of Sparta. The Confederacy of Delos
was in sympathy with popular governments and popular parties
everywhere, while the Spartans and their following favored
oligarchies and aristocratic parties. There were many
occasions for hostility between the two.
The Athenians, at the head of their Confederacy, were strong,
until they impaired their power by using it in tyrannical
ways. Many lesser states in the league were foolish enough to
commute in money payments the contribution of ships and men
which they had pledged themselves to make to the common naval
force. This gave Athens the power to use that force
despotically, as her own, and she did not scruple to exercise
the power. The Confederacy was soon a name; the states forming
it were no longer allies of Athens, but her subjects; she
ruled them as the sovereign of an Empire, and her rule was
neither generous nor just. Thereby the double tie of kinship
and of interest which might have bound the whole circle of
Ionian states to her fortunes and herself was destroyed by her
own acts. Provoking the hatred of her allies and challenging
the jealous fear of her rivals, Athens had many enemies.
At the same time, a dangerous change in the character of her
democratic institutions was begun, produced especially by the
institution of popular jury-courts, before which prosecutions
of every kind were tried, the citizens who constituted the
courts acting as jury and judge at once. This gave them a
valuable training, without doubt, and helped greatly to raise
the common standard of intelligence among the Athenians so
high; but it did unquestionably tend also to demoralizations
that were ruinous in the end. The jury service, which was
slightly paid, fell more and more to an unworthy class, made
up of idlers or intriguers. Party feeling and popular passions
gained an increasing influence over the juries, and demagogues
acquired an increasing skill in making use of them.
But these evils were scarcely more than in their seed during
the great period of "Athenian Empire," as it is sometimes
called, and everything within its bounds was suffused with the
shining splendor of that matchless half-century. The genius of
this little Ionic state was stimulated to amazing achievements
in every intellectual field. Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Aristophanes, within a single generation, crowded Athenian
literature with the masterpieces of classic drama. Pheidias
and his companions crowned the Acropolis and filled the city
with works that have been the models in art for all ages
since. Socrates began the quizzing which turned philosophy
into honest truth-seeking paths, and Plato listened to him and
was instructed for his mission. Thucydides watched events with
sagacious young eyes, and prepared his pen for the chronicling
of them; while Herodotus, pausing at Athens from his wide
travels, matured the knowledge he had gathered up and
perfected it for his final work. Over all of them came
Pericles to preside and rule, not as a master, or "tyrant,"
but as leader, guide, patron, princely republican,--statesman
and politician in one.
The Peloponnesian War.
The period of the ascendancy of Pericles was the "golden age"
of Athenian prosperity and power, both material and
intellectual. The beginning of the end of it was reached a
little before he died, when the long-threatened war between
Athens and the Peloponnesian league, led by Sparta, broke out
(B. C. 431). If Athens had then possessed the good will of the
cities of her own league, and if her citizens had retained
their old sobriety and intelligence, she might have triumphed
in the war; for she was all powerful at sea and fortified
almost invincibly against attacks by land. But the subject
states, called allies, were hostile, for the most part, and
helped the enemy by their revolts, while the death of Pericles
(B. C. 429) let loose on the people a swarm of demagogues who
flattered and deluded them, and baffled the wiser and more
honest, whose counsels and leadership might have given her
success.
The fatal folly of the long war was an expedition against the
distant city of Syracuse (B. C. 415-413), into which the
Athenians were enticed by the restless and unscrupulous
ambition of Alcibiades. The entire force sent to Sicily
perished there, and the strength and spirit of Athens were
ruinously sapped by the fearful calamity. She maintained the
war, however, until 404 B. C., when, having lost her fleet in
the decisive battle of Ægospotami, and being helplessly
blockaded by sea and land, the city was surrendered to the
Spartan general Lysander. Her walls and fortifications were
then destroyed and her democratic government was overthrown,
giving place to an oligarchy known as the "thirty tyrants."
The democracy soon suppressed the thirty tyrants and regained
control, and Athens, in time, rose somewhat from her deep
humiliation, but never again to much political power in
Greece. In intellect and cultivation, the superiority of the
Attic state was still maintained, and its greatest productions
in philosophy and eloquence were yet to be given to the world.
Spartan and Theban Ascendancy.
After the fall of Athens, Sparta was dominant in the whole of
Greece for thirty years and more, exercising her power more
oppressively than Athens had done. Then Thebes, which had been
treacherously seized and garrisoned by the Spartans, threw off
their yoke (B. C. 379) and led a rising, under her great and
high-souled citizen, Epaminondas, which resulted in bringing
Thebes to the head of Greek affairs. But the Theban ascendancy
was short-lived, and ended with the death of Epaminondas in
362 B. C.
Macedonian Supremacy.
Meantime, while the city-states of Hellas proper had been
wounding and weakening one another by their jealousies and
wars, the semi-Greek kingdom of Macedonia, to the north of
them, in their own peninsula, had been acquiring their
civilization and growing strong. And now there appeared upon
its throne a very able king, Philip, who took advantage of
their divisions, interfered in their affairs, and finally made
a practical conquest of the whole peninsula, by his victory at
the battle of Chæronea (B. C. 338). At Athens, the great
orator Demosthenes had exerted himself for years to rouse
resistance to Philip. If his eloquence failed then, it has
served the world immortally since, by delighting and
instructing mankind.
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King Philip was succeeded by his famous son, Alexander the
Great, who led an army of Macedonians and Greeks into Asia (B.
C. 334), overthrew the already crumbling Persian power,
pursued his conquests through Afghanistan to India, and won a
great empire which he did not live to rule. When he died (B.
C. 323), his generals divided the empire among them and fought
with one another for many years. But the general result was
the spreading of the civilization and language of the Greeks,
and the establishing of their intellectual influence, in
Egypt, in Syria, in Asia Minor, and beyond.
In Greece itself, a state of disturbance and of political
confusion and weakness prevailed for another century. There
was promise of something better, in the formation, by several
of the Peloponnesian states, of a confederacy called the
Achaian League, which might possibly have federated and
nationalized the whole of Hellas in the end; but the Romans,
at this juncture, turned their conquering arms eastward, and
in three successive wars, between 211 and 146 B. C., they
extinguished the Macedonian kingdom, and annexed it, with the
whole peninsula, to the dominions of their wonderful republic.
The Romans.