high character, intelligence, and competence, and give him cordial
and resolute support in the policy he advocated. The ecclesia was
accordingly a great "contest," or _agon_, of statesmen. The Athenians
believed in competition. A public contest, in which excellence might
be displayed and determined, was arranged to encourage effort in every
conceivable employment. To digress a little, there was a contest of
potters, as we learn from a gravestone on which an unknown affirms
by a mighty oath that he was adjudged the first of all the potters of
Attica. There were probably contests of painters and sculptors as well.
There were contests of horse-breeders--the chariot- and running-races;
contests of athletes of all ages in all kinds of physical exercises, of
torch-racers on foot and on horseback; there were contests between the
successive prytanies of the council, between detachments of cavalry,
and between regiments of foot; at each of many festivals there were
contests in singing of five choruses of boys and five choruses of men,
each fifty voices strong, so that a single festival called for the
training of five hundred singers annually and the production of ten new
musical compositions; there were contests of rhapsodists in reciting
Homer, contests of rhetoricians; above all contests of tragedians and
contests of comedians, each tragic contest demanding twelve new plays
annually and the participation of one hundred and eighty choral singers
and dancers, each comic contest involving six new plays yearly and one
hundred and forty-four choral singers and dancers. The rivalry which
produces Olympic records and superdreadnaughts nowadays, the Athenians
turned to advantage in art and music as well: with the result that the
taste and skill of the artisan as well as the sculptor and painter,
of the consumer as well as the producer, became well-nigh faultless;
that in the hundred years of the empire close to two thousand plays of
picked quality were written and staged in Athens, while during the
same time from five to six thousand new musical compositions were made
and presented. It is estimated that upwards of two thousand Athenians
had to memorize the words and practice the music and dance figures of a
lyric or dramatic chorus every year. Hence, a normal Athenian audience
must have been composed in large part of ex-performers, a fact which
students of Sophocles and Aristophanes would do well to bear constantly
in mind.
The reward of victory in an athletic or musical contest was the glory
and the prize. Great, indeed, was the reward which the victor in the
supreme contest, the struggle for political leadership in the ecclesia,
obtained. The man to whom the Athenians gave their confidence became
stronger than a king. "In form," says Thucydides, "their government
was a democracy: in reality it was the rule of their ablest citizen."
The man who was vanquished in a chariot-race might be the victor on
the next occasion. Not so the victim of a decisive political defeat.
His fate was ostracism. That is to say, he was exiled without dishonor
or loss of property for ten years. The way was thereby cleared for the
victor. By this strange device the Athenians saved themselves for over
two generations from the procrastination and uncertainty of distracted
counsels. It was ostracism which made possible the uncrowned kingship
of Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles; and when, after the death
of Pericles in 429 B.C., this institution failed them utterly, the
Athenians were pulled this way and that by rival leaders; till finally,
misled by Alcibiades and Cleophon, they were convicted by disaster of
being _un_sound judges of _foreign_ policy.
* * * * *
There is nothing that dies so hard as a well-nurtured delusion. In
the romantic-idealizing view of the Greeks which was long current,
the Athenians found leisure for art, literature, and philosophy by
having all their work done for them by their slaves.[25] By this means,
too, they were enabled to devote themselves freely to politics. If
this were so, the inference of Calhoun was a sound one, that seen "in
its true light" slavery was "the most safe and stable basis for free
institutions in the world." The "first lie" is that the Athenians of
the great age, whose dominant characteristic was their vibrant mental
and physical activity, were in any sense men of leisure. The few among
them who had slaves and other property to the extent of great wealth
had to make and manage their own investments. The majority of the
farmers had to till the land with their own hands. Many citizens--at
least one third of the whole, in all probability--had to earn their
living by selling their labor. This they could do easily in the
time of the empire. For during that period of rapid commercial and
industrial expansion the demand for labor was so great that the price
could be regulated only by the constant import of slaves and by a
steady stream of immigration from less prosperous parts of Greece.
Outside labor served the purpose in Athens which immigrant labor serves
in the United States to-day. With its growth grew the need that the
material prosperity which occasioned it should endure. The problem of
food-supply became progressively acute and the control of the sea was
soon seen to be an economic necessity. More than one half of the grain
sold on the Athenian market came ultimately from abroad, as did an
even larger proportion of the raw materials of Athenian industry. "The
Athenians are the only people in the Hellenic and barbarian world,"
wrote an Athenian aristocrat[26] in about 420 B.C., "who are able to
control an abundant supply of raw materials. For if a state is rich in
timber for shipbuilding, where will it find a market for it if not with
the masters of the sea? If another abounds in iron or bronze or linen
yarn, where will it find a market except with the sea-lord? Yet this is
the stock from which ships are made in Athens. One city yields timber
to her, another iron, a third bronze, a fourth linen yarn, a fifth wax,
and so on. Moreover, Athens prevents her rivals from transporting goods
to other countries than Attica by the threat of driving them from the
sea altogether."
The demands put upon the time of Athenian citizens by the state were
enormous, but not such as to cripple economic production. A comparison
with modern conditions will make this clear. A little less frequently
than once a week the ecclesia met, but the attendance was generally
less than one tenth of those qualified. That represents a suspension of
work roughly equivalent to our Saturday afternoons and legal holidays.
A little oftener than once a week a contest or other public festival
occurred, and to these there was, it seems, a pretty general resort.
They correspond to our fair-days and Sundays. Preparation for the
contests was, perhaps, not more destructive of money-earning time than
are our collegiate and university courses. During their nineteenth
and twentieth years young Athenians of the upper third trained for
the army; but it was not till a century after Pericles's death that
universal military service for a similar period was made compulsory--as
in modern Europe. We may assume that at least two years of every
citizen's life was required for deliberative and administrative work;
and, having regard to the imperial service, we may, perhaps, advance
this requirement to three. That is an enormous enlargement of modern
demands. The same ratio would give the United States two million and a
half or three million public employees, exclusive of postmasters and
postal clerks, tax-collectors, and day laborers of every description.
But a bald comparison of this sort is misleading. Athens regularly
employed a committee of ten to do one man's work, with the result
that all of them were free to give nine tenths of their time to their
private business. The council during the year and the jury courts at
its expiry were there to insure the state that, even if his colleagues
would let him, any particular official did not neglect his public
duties. Nor was the Athenian practice wildly extravagant so long as
the magistrate received, not a living salary, but an indemnity equal
only to a common workman's daily wage. The Athenians employed four
hundred or even two thousand jurors where we employ twelve; but they
had neither high salaried judges nor exacting lawyers to pay, since the
judicial system worked without either. The juryman's fee, moreover,
was a meagre indemnity, comparable to the old-age pension paid in the
progressive countries of modern Europe.
The payment of indemnities for service in the council, the
magistracies, the jury courts, and for attendance in the theatre,
music-hall, and stadion, was a Periclean innovation. He did not intend
to create a class of salaried officials; nor yet to make an advance
toward communism. His ideal was political, not economic, equality--to
enable all, irrespective of wealth or station, to use the opportunities
and face the obligations which democracy brought in its train. Like
all the great democratic leaders who preceded him, he was a nobleman
by birth and breeding, and, like them, he did not doubt for a moment
that the culture which ennobled the life of his class would dignify and
uplift that of the masses also. To give the workingman the political
insight and knowledge of the Eupatrids; to lend to him the grace and
elasticity of movement which physical culture gave them; to fill his
memory with the noble thoughts set in melodious and stirring words
which they got from their intimacy with great poetry; to inspire in
him, though a mere artisan, an artist's taste and fervor for formal
beauty--that was to bless him with more than leisure. It was to unite
the whole people in a community of high ideas and emotions. It was
to make them a nation of noblemen. We do not wonder much that in the
furtherance of this cause the men of large wealth in Athens volunteered
to assume in turn financial and personal responsibility for the support
of the theatre, the opera-house, the stadion, and the gymnasia. It was
a heavy burden, but, in the absence of a regular property or income
tax, generosity became at once a duty and a wise precaution.
* * * * *
A nation of noblemen is a luxury for which somebody has to pay. Athens,
in Pericles's memorable phrase, was "the school of Hellas." It was
right, he thought, that the Hellenes should sacrifice something for
their education. He had tried to make them all contributory allies of
Athens, but had failed in the attempt. As a good schoolmaster he was
determined, none the less, to hold those "well in hand" whom he had
under his care.
The physical means to this end was the control of the sea. The
advantages of sea power in warfare, in enabling the holder of it to
circumscribe according to his convenience the area of military action,
as well as in facilitating mobilization, transport, and communications,
were not perceived for the first time by the English Admiralty, much
less by Clausewitz and Captain Mahan. They are stated in the clearest
terms by a contemporary of Pericles.[27] Here is what he says: "The
subjects of a power which is dominant by land have it open to them to
form contingents from several small states and to muster in force to
battle. But with the subjects of a naval power it is different. As far
as they are groups of islands (and the whole world, we may remark in
passing, is now simply a magnified Ægean Archipelago) it is impossible
for their states to meet together for united action, for the sea lies
between them, and the dominant power is master of the sea. And even if
it were possible for them to assemble in some single island unobserved,
they would only do so to perish of famine. And as to the states subject
to Athens which are not islanders, but situated on the continent, the
larger are held in check by need and the small ones absolutely by fear,
since there is no state in existence which does not depend upon imports
and exports and these she will forfeit, if she does not lend a willing
ear to those who are masters of the sea. In the next place, a power
dominant by sea can do certain things which a land power is debarred
from doing; as, for instance, ravage the territory of a superior, since
it is always possible to coast along to some point, where either there
is no hostile force to deal with or merely a small body; and in case
of an advance in force on the part of the enemy they can take to their
ships and sail away. Such a performance is attended by less difficulty
than that experienced by the army marching along the seaboard to the
rescue. Again, it is open to a power so dominating by sea to leave its
own territory and sail off on as long a voyage as you please. Whereas
the land power cannot place more than a few days' journey between
itself and its own territory, for marches are slow affairs; and it is
not possible for an army on the march to have food supplies to last
for any great length of time. Such an army must either march through
friendly territory or it must force a way by victory in battle. The
voyager meanwhile has it in his power to disembark at any point where
he finds himself in superior force; or, at the worst, to coast by
until he reaches either a friendly district or an enemy too weak to
resist. Again, those diseases to which the fruits of the earth are
liable as visitations from heaven fall severely on a land power, but
are scarcely felt by the naval power, for such sicknesses do not visit
the whole earth everywhere at once.... There is just one thing which
the Athenians lack. Supposing they were the inhabitants of an island,
and were still, as now, rulers of the sea, they would have had it in
their power to work whatever mischief they liked and suffer no evil in
return."
At all costs Athens must retain control of the sea. That meant to keep
the fleet constantly in fighting trim. In the effort the Athenians
made the most heroic financial and personal sacrifices, demonstrating
clearly that popular government need not be self-indulgent. Neither the
aristocracy in England nor Napoleon in France was as hard a taskmaster
of the people as the majority which ruled in Athens. Between 410 and
402 B.C.--a time of great economic distress--a well-to-do citizen was
called upon to expend twenty thousand franks--which are perhaps equal
in purchasing power to as many dollars--on what we may call national
education and entertainment. His taxes on the account of the fleet
amounted in the same years to double as much, or forty-three thousand
franks. Great as was the burden of the rich, that of the commons was
conceded by their adversaries to have been still greater. "In the
first place," writes an aristocrat in about 420 B.C.,[28] "it is only
just that the poorer classes and the 'people' of Athens should have
the advantage over the men of birth and wealth, seeing that it is the
people who man the fleet and put round the city her girdle of power.
The steersman, the boatswain, the lieutenant, the look-out-man at
the prow, the shipwright--these are the people who engird the city
with power far rather than her heavy infantry and men of birth and
quality." Plutarch[29] tells us that on a peace footing Athens kept a
fleet of sixty ships on the sea for eight months of every year. To man
such a squadron 10,200 rowers, 480 officers, and 600 marines would be
required. In other words, one quarter of all the citizens of Athens
would have lived on their battleships for three quarters of every year.
We might believe this report, if it were not contradicted by Aristotle,
who in a place, where exaggeration, not reduction, is suspected,[30]
makes the fleet of Athens, which was constantly in service in time of
war, consist only of twenty guard-ships. Hence one twelfth and not
one quarter of all the Athenians were on active naval duty during the
sailing season of almost every year. In addition, two thousand men were
drafted yearly by lot to serve in garrisons throughout the empire; so
that, if these are added to the seven hundred (?) imperial magistrates,
and the five hundred guards of the arsenals, nearly another one twelfth
of the citizens was involved.
This computation takes no account of the demands of naval warfare. In
the Athenian dockyards lay ready for action four hundred battleships,
from which the requisite number was selected for each particular
expedition. If two hundred and fifty vessels were mobilized, as
occasionally happened, nearly fifty thousand additional sailors were
required. With the use of every possible citizen Athens could not
produce such a number. She commonly did her utmost and called upon the
allies for the rest.
It is true that tribute was collected from the allies to enable Athens
to build the ships and pay the sailors; but it is also true that, in
addition, huge sums were contributed for mobilization expenses by rich
Athenians and were advanced for heavy war expenses by the Athenian
treasury. And Athens gave freely not only of her money but also of her
blood. The death roll of one of the ten corps into which the Athenians
were divided for army and navy purposes is extant for the year 459
B.C. "Of the Erechtheid _phyle_," it runs, "these are they who died
in the war, in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, at Halieis, in Ægina,
at Megara, in the same year";[31] and one hundred and seventy-two
names follow. It was not the year of a great battle, or of an Athenian
disaster, yet in it the death rate must have been nearly twice as great
as the birth rate; so costly in lives was the empire to its lords in
war-time.
* * * * *
On three specific points and on one general ground, contemporaries
both within and without Athens assailed the treatment accorded by
the Periclean democracy to its subjects. In no instance, however, is
the charge of misbehavior established conclusively, though in this
matter, as in so many others in the history of Greece, our judgment is
dependent upon the point at which we transfer our sympathy from the
city-states, which were the bearers of culture in the Greek Middle
Ages, to the whole people, for whose progress and independence urban
particularism was finally fatal. "Surely Hellas is insulted with a
dire insult," declared the opponents of Pericles,[32] "and manifestly
subjected to tyranny when she sees that, with her own enforced
contributions for the war, we are gilding and bedizening our city,
which, for all the world like a wanton woman, adds to her wardrobe
precious stones and costly statues and temples worth their millions."
To this accusation the proper retort was, not that having provided
adequate protection against Persia, Athens was free to spend the money
contributed by the subjects in any way she pleased; for the logical
inference was then that the contributions were excessive. Pericles
may not have cared to be logical, but he could not ignore forms. Had
he been able to show, as has been claimed recently, that he used for
building purposes only the sixtieth of the tribute, which had been
dedicated as the first fruits to Athena, he would never have been
attacked at all. Evidently, he spent on Athenian public works much
larger sums derived indirectly from the tribute, for which course
the defense actually made seems to have been that the money was due
Athens for losses sustained during the invasion of Xerxes and for sums
advanced to the war fund during the continuance of the struggle with
Persia. In any case the tribute paid was a mere bagatelle as compared
with what the subjects saved through having no fleets of their own to
maintain.
The charge is more serious that in order to enjoy "the steady receipt
of salaries throughout the year derived from the court fees"; to
"manage the affairs of the subjects while seated at home without the
expense of naval expeditions"; to "preserve the partisans of democracy
and ruin its opponents"; to boost the business of hotel keepers and
such ilk in Athens, and to win for the common citizens the flattery
and consideration that would be shown otherwise only to generals and
ambassadors, the Athenians "compelled the allies to voyage to Athens
in order to have their cases tried." For it seems clear that the law
courts at Athens were usually so clogged with litigation that the gain
in having a model code of law and in escaping the fierce partisanship
of the local tribunals was largely neutralized by the added expense
and humiliation. The real justification of the practice was that it
obviated the necessity of sending out naval expeditions.
In the third place Athens took from the allies lands and settled them
with impecunious Athenians; but in payment therefor reductions of
tribute were given. On the other hand, thousands from the allied cities
migrated to Athens, and, while not escaping military or financial
service, or obtaining Athenian citizenship, they were cordially
welcomed, and enjoyed to the full the commercial and industrial
advantages of the metropolis. Again, Athenians often found it less
profitable to invest capital in Attic land, which was exposed to
hostile attack, than in lands on the islands of the empire, which the
fleet protected. Hence there were many Attic farmers in the subject
territory, their right to own foreign real estate being secured by
commercial treaties. There was accordingly economic give and take, the
military preponderance of Athens being, however, responsible for the
result that the Athenians abroad were often policemen, the allies in
Athens, hostages.
In all three instances of alleged misbehavior, it must be admitted that
the defense offered by the Athenian apologists simply added insult to
injury in the view of a majority of the subjects. But for them Athens,
arrogant or conciliatory, malefactor or benefactor, was always a
foreign governor to be gotten rid of at any cost. Such uncompromising
sentiments time alone could alter, and to secure the benefits of time
Pericles endeavored to avoid an Hellenic war. His policy of peace after
446 B.C. was, therefore, the sound policy of an imperialist.
The general ground on which contemporaries criticized the Athenian
régime was that under it every assistance was given by the state to
the least cultivated portion of the inhabitants both of Athens and of
its four hundred and twenty subject cities, at the expense of the most
intelligent and cultivated elements; that the highest goal of endeavor
was moral and intellectual mediocrity. There may be some truth in this
contention. The case would be more conclusive, however, if the tendency
of the critics to identify intelligence with wealth and cultivation
with birth were less obvious. If the point be granted, we must accept
the opinion of those historians who affirm that Athens was great in
this age despite, and not because of, its democracy. Personally, I do
not believe that this was so. I cannot admit that extirpation of the
best was practiced in an age in which ideas were created and forms were
perfected for their literary and artistic expression which have been
the wonder and despair of the men of the highest cultivation from that
day to this. Does it not seem like irony that a régime is charged with
promoting mediocrity under which rose Sophocles, Herodotus, Phidias,
Pericles, Euripides, Hippocrates, Socrates, and Thucydides? Much more
important than the leveling tendency of the democracy was the facility
it afforded for men of ability both to rise to the top and to find
there a sympathetic and critical audience. So much for democracy.
The empire stands approved by the fact that the sharpest accusation
now made against the democracy is that it failed to make the empire
enduring. On this point the last word--unless it be that no political
order has ever been enduring, and that those which have lasted
the longest have been generally of the least worth--was said by
Thucydides[33] over twenty-three hundred years ago, and I present in
conclusion his masterly account of the circumstances which led to the
downfall of the Athenian Empire:--