As Athens had Draco and Solon as its great lawgivers, so Sparta found in
Lycurgus her lawgiver. His institutions gave a permanent cast to the
Spartan character, and were not abolished until the last ages of Greece.
The system of Lycurgus, meanwhile, had made Sparta a thoroughly military
state, and in two great wars (743-723 and 685-668 B. C.) it conquered
its neighbors on the west, the Messenians, reducing them to the
condition of the Helots, and appropriating their land. By this and by
successful war against its northern neighbors, the people of Argos,
Sparta acquired the supremacy and became the leading Dorian state of
Peloponnesus and of the Grecian world. These two great states of Greece,
Athens and Sparta, now were (about 500 B. C.) with the rest of Greece to
encounter Persia; and Europe, with united Greece for her champion and
representative, was to triumph over the older civilization and prowess
of Asia.
III. PERIOD OF PERSIAN WARS AND MILITARY GLORY.--To this age the
Greeks ever after looked back with pride, and from its history
orators of every nation have drawn their favorite examples of valor
and patriotism. The Persian invasion called forth the highest
energies of the people, and gave an astonishing impulse to Grecian
mind. The design of subjugating Greece originated in the ambition of
Darius the Persian king, the second in succession from Cyrus the
Great. He found a pretext and occasion for the attempt in a revolt
of his Greek subjects in Asia Minor, in which Sardis, the capital of
Lydia, was pillaged and burned. The war was carried on by three
successive kings, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, but on neither of
them did it confer any glory; while the battles of Marathon,
Thermopylæ, Salamis, Mycale, and Platæa, secured immortal honor to
the Greeks. A succession of splendid names adorns the history of
Athens during this period. Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides,
Cimon, and Pericles, acted distinguished parts in the brilliant
scene. Sparta also justly gloried in the self-sacrifice of Leonidas
and his three hundred brave companions. The period of the Persian
war was the age of the highest elevation of the national character
of the Greeks. Before it, there existed little union comparatively
between the different states, and it was not till Athens had alone
and successfully resisted the strength of Persia at the battle of
Marathon, that other states were aroused to effort against the
common enemy. In the confederation which followed, Sparta was the
nominal head, but the talents, which actually controlled the public
affairs, were found in the statesmen of Athens. To Athens,
therefore, the supremacy was necessarily transferred, and before the
close of the war this state stood, as it were, the mistress of
Greece.
Persia at this time was the chief power of the world, and, by the
conquest of the Lydian kingdom, had become master of the Greek cities on
the coast of Asia Minor. In 500 B. C. a general revolt of these Ionian
cities took place, and the Athenians sent a force of ships and soldiers
to help their kinsmen. The united Ionians and Athenians took and burned
Sardis, the capital of Lydia, in 499, but, after a six years’ struggle,
the power of Darius conquered the whole seaboard of Ionia, and left
Persia free to punish the Athenians for interfering between the great
Eastern empire and her revolted subjects. In 490 B. C. a great Persian
force, under Datis and Artaphernes, was sent across the Ægean, and the
fleet landed the Persian army near Marathon, on the east coast of
Attica, with a view to an advance upon Athens.