Transcriber’s Note: As a result of editorial shortcomings in the original,
some reference letters in the text don’t have matching entries in the
reference-lists, and vice versa.
THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD
[Illustration: HERODOTUS]
THE HISTORIANS’
HISTORY
OF THE WORLD
A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages:
edited, with the assistance of a distinguished board of advisers
and contributors, by
HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.
[Illustration]
IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME III--GREECE TO THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
The Outlook Company
New York
The History Association
London
1904
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
_All rights reserved._
Press of J. J. Little & Co.
New York, U. S. A.
Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.
Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.
Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.
Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.
Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest.
Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.
Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College.
Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
Dr. John P. Peters, New York.
Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.
CONTENTS
VOLUME III
GREECE
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE SCOPE AND DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK HISTORY.
By Dr. Eduard Meyer 1
GREEK HISTORY IN OUTLINE 13
CHAPTER I
LAND AND PEOPLE 26
The land, 26. The name, 32. The origin of the Greeks, 33. Early
conditions and movements, 36.
CHAPTER II
THE MYCENÆAN AGE (_ca._ 1600-1000 B.C.) 40
Mycenæan civilisation, 40. The problem of Mycenæan chronology, 52.
The testimony of art, 54. The problem of the Mycenæan race, 56.
CHAPTER III
THE HEROIC AGE (1400-1200 B.C.) 66
The value of the myths, 67. The exploits of Perseus, 68. The
labours of Hercules, 69. The feats of Theseus, 71. The Seven
against Thebes, 72. The Argonauts, 73. The Trojan War, 76. The
town of Troy, 78. Paris and Helen, 79. The siege of Troy, 80.
Agamemnon’s sad home-coming, 81. Character and spirit of the
Heroic Age, 82. Geographical knowledge, 86. Navigation and
astronomy, 88. Commerce and the arts, 89. The graphic arts, 91.
The art of war, 92. Treatment of orphans, criminals, and slaves,
94. Manners and customs, 97.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRANSITION TO SECURE HISTORY (_ca._ 1200-800 B.C.) 99
Beloch’s view of the conventional primitive history, 99.
CHAPTER V
THE DORIANS (_ca._ 1100-1000 B.C.) 109
The migration in the view of Curtius, 115. Messenia, 117. Argos,
118. Arcadia, 121. Dorians in Crete, 124.
CHAPTER VI
SPARTA AND LYCURGUS (_ca._ 885 B.C.) 128
Plutarch’s account of Lycurgus, 129. The institutions of
Lycurgus, 131. Regulations regarding marriage and the conduct
of women, 133. The rearing of children, 135. The famed Laconic
discourse; Spartan discipline, 136. The senate; burial customs;
home-staying; the ambuscade, 138. Lycurgus’ subterfuge to
perpetuate his laws, 140. Effects of Lycurgus’ system, 141.
CHAPTER VII
THE MESSENIAN WARS OF SPARTA (_ca._ 764-580 B.C.) 143
First Messenian War, 144. The futile sacrifice of the daughter of
Aristodemus, 146. The hero Aristomenes and the Second Messenian
War, 147. The poet Tyrtæus, 149.
CHAPTER VIII
THE IONIANS (_ca._ 650-630 B.C.) 152
Origin and early history of Athens, 154. King Ægeus, 155.
Theseus, 158. Rise of popular liberty, 162. Draco, the lawgiver,
164.
CHAPTER IX
SOME CHARACTERISTIC INSTITUTIONS (884-590 B.C.) 167
The oracle at Delphi, 170. National festivals, 170. The Olympian
games, 172. Character of the games, 173. Monarchies and
oligarchies, 175. Tyrannies, 177. Democracies, 179.
CHAPTER X
THE SMALLER CITIES AND STATES 181
Arcadia, Ellis, and Achaia, 181. Argos, Ægina, and Epidaurus,
182. Sicyon and Megara, 184. Bœotia, Locris, Phocis, and Eubœa,
187. Thessaly, 189. Corinth under Periander, 191.
CHAPTER XI
CRETE AND THE COLONIES 194
Beloch’s account of Greek colonisation, 198.
CHAPTER XII
SOLON THE LAWGIVER (_ca._ 638-558 B.C.) 207
The life and laws of Solon according to Plutarch, 209. The law
concerning debts, 213. Class legislation, 215. Miscellaneous
laws; the rights of women, 216. Results of Solon’s legislation,
217. Solon’s journey and return; Pisistratus, 219. A modern view
of Solonian laws and constitution, 220.
CHAPTER XIII
PISISTRATUS THE TYRANT (550-527 B.C.) 222
The virtues of Pisistratus’ rule, 226.
CHAPTER XIV
DEMOCRACY ESTABLISHED AT ATHENS (514-490 B.C.) 231
Clisthenes, the reformer, 236. Ostracism, 245. The democracy
established, 251. Trouble with Thebes, 252.
CHAPTER XV
THE FIRST FOREIGN INVASION (506-490 B.C.) 261
The origin of animosity, 262. The Ionic revolt, 264. War with
Ægina, 267. The first invasion, 268. Battle of Marathon, 272.
On the courage of the Greeks, 277. If Darius had invaded Greece
earlier, 279.
CHAPTER XVI
MILTIADES AND THE ALLEGED FICKLENESS OF REPUBLICS (489 B.C.) 280
CHAPTER XVII
THE PLANS OF XERXES (485-480 B.C.) 285
Xerxes bridges the Hellespont, 295. How the host marched, 297.
The size of Xerxes’ army, 301.
CHAPTER XVIII
PROCEEDINGS IN GREECE FROM MARATHON TO THERMOPYLÆ (489-480 B.C.) 305
Themistocles and Aristides, 306. Congress at Corinth, 308. The
vale of Tempe, 313. Xerxes reviews his host, 314.
CHAPTER XIX
THERMOPYLÆ (480 B.C.) 320
The famous story as told by Herodotus, 320. Leonidas and his
allies, 321. Xerxes assails the pass, 323. The treachery of
Ephialtes, 323. The final assault, 325. Discrepant accounts of
the death of Leonidas, 327. After Thermopylæ, 327.
CHAPTER XX
THE BATTLES OF ARTEMISIUM AND SALAMIS (480 B.C.) 330
Battle of Artemisium, 331. Athens abandoned, 334. The fleet at
Salamis, 337. Xerxes at Delphi, 338. Athens taken, 339. Xerxes
inspects his fleet, 340. Schemes of Themistocles, 342. Battle of
Salamis, 345. The retreat of Xerxes, 348. The spoils of victory,
351. Syracusan victory over Carthage, 352.
CHAPTER XXI
FROM SALAMIS TO MYCALE (479 B.C.) 353
Mardonius makes overtures to Athens, 354. Mardonius moves on
Athens, 356. Athens appeals to Sparta, 357. Mardonius destroys
Athens and withdraws, 358. A preliminary skirmish, 360.
Preparations for the battle of Platæa, 362. Battle of Platæa,
366. Mardonius falls and the day is won, 370. After the battle,
371. The Greeks attack Thebes, 373. The flight of the Persian
remnant, 374. Contemporary affairs in Ionia, 374. Battle of
Mycale, 376. After Mycale, 377. A review of results, 379. A
glance forward, 379.
CHAPTER XXII
THE AFTERMATH OF THE WAR (478-468 B.C.) 382
Athens rebuilds her walls, 382. The new Athens, 384. The
misconduct of Pausanias, 386. Athens takes the leadership, 388.
The confederacy of Delos, 389. The treason of Pausanias, 391.
Political changes at Athens, 394. The downfall of Themistocles,
396.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE (479-462 B.C.) 402
The victories of Cimon, 408. Mitford’s view of the period, 409.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE RISE OF PERICLES (462-440 B.C.) 416
The Areopagus, 420. Cimon exiled, 423. The war with Corinth, 424.
The Long Walls, 425. Cimon recalled, 427. The Five-Years’ Truce,
430. The confederacy becomes an empire, 431. Commencement of
decline, 432. The greatness of Pericles, 435. A Greek federation
planned, 436.
CHAPTER XXV
ATHENS AT WAR (440-432 B.C.) 438
The Samian War, 438. The war with Corcyra, 439. The war with
Potidæa and Macedonia, 444.
CHAPTER XXVI
IMPERIAL ATHENS UNDER PERICLES (460-430 B.C.) 448
Judicial reforms of Pericles, 454. Rhetors and sophists, 459.
Phidias accused, 461. Aspasia at the bar, 462. Anaxagoras also
assailed, 463.
CHAPTER XXVII
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE AGE OF PERICLES (460-410 B.C.) 465
Cost of living and wages, 465. Schools, teachers, and books, 472.
The position of a wife in Athens, 473.
CHAPTER XXVIII
ART OF THE PERICLEAN AGE (460-410 B.C.) 477
Architecture, 477. Sculpture, 483. Painting, music, etc., 487.
The artists of the other cities of Hellas, 490.
CHAPTER XXIX
GREEK LITERATURE 492
Oratory and lyric poetry, 492. Tragedy, 497. Comedy, 504. The
glory of Athens, 505.
CHAPTER XXX
THE OUTBREAK OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (432-431 B.C.) 508
Our sources, 508. The origin of the war, 510. Preparations
for the conflict, 517. The surprise of Platæa, 522. Pericles’
reconcentration policy, 526. The first year’s ravage, 527.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE PLAGUE; AND THE DEATH OF PERICLES (431-429 B.C.) 535
The oration of Pericles, 535. Thucydides’ account of the plague,
539. Last public speech of Pericles, 545. The end and glory of
Pericles, 548. Wilhelm Oncken’s estimate of Pericles, 551.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (429-428 B.C.) 554
The Spartans and Thebans attack Platæa, 556. Part of the Platæans
escape; the rest capitulate, 557. Naval and other combats, 560.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE FOURTH TO THE TENTH YEARS--AND PEACE (428-421 B.C.) 566
The revolt of Mytilene, 566. Thucydides’ account of the revolt of
Corcyra, 570. Demosthenes and Sphacteria, 575. Further Athenian
successes, 579. A check to Athens; Brasidas becomes aggressive,
580. The banishment of Thucydides, 581. A truce declared; two
treaties of peace, 582.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE RISE OF ALCIBIADES (450-416 B.C.) 584
CHAPTER XXXV
THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION (481-413 B.C.) 591
Sicilian history, 591. The mutilation of the Hermæ, 596. The
fleet sails, 599. Alcibiades takes flight, 601. Nicias tries
strategy, 602. Spartan aid, 604. Alcibiades against Athens, 605.
Athenian reinforcements, 606. Athenian disaster, 608. Thucydides’
famous account of the final disasters, 610. Demosthenes
surrenders his detachment, 613. Nicias parleys, fights, and
surrenders, 614. The fate of the captives, 615.
CHAPTER XXXVI
CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (425-404 B.C.) 617
Athens after the Sicilian débâcle, 617. Alcibiades again to the
fore, 620. The overthrow of the democracy; the Four Hundred,
624. The revolt from the Four Hundred, 627. The triumphs of
Alcibiades, 630. Alcibiades in disfavour again, 633. Conon wins
at Arginusæ, 634. The trial of the generals, 636. Battle of
Ægospotami, 638. The fall of Athens, 640. A review of the war,
642. Grote’s estimate of the Athenian Empire, 644.
BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 647
PART IX
THE HISTORY OF GREECE
BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES
ARRIAN, JULIUS BELOCH, A. BŒCKH, JOHN B. BURY, GEORG BUSOLT,
H. F. CLINTON, GEORGE W. COX, ERNST CURTIUS, HERMANN
DIELS, DIODORUS SICULUS, JOHANN G. DROYSEN,
GEORGE GROTE, HERODOTUS, GUSTAV F.
HERTZBERG, ADOLF HOLM,
JUSTIN, JOHN P. MAHAFFY, EDUARD MEYER, WILLIAM MITFORD, ULRICH VON
WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORFF, KARL O. MÜLLER, CORNELIUS NEPOS,
PAUSANIAS, PLATO, PLUTARCH, QUINTUS CURTIUS,
HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN, STRABO, CONNOP
THIRLWALL, THUCYDIDES, XENOPHON
TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON
THE SCOPE AND DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK HISTORY
BY
EDUARD MEYER
A STUDY OF
THE EVOLUTION OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
BY
HERMANN DIELS
AND A CHARACTERISATION OF
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HELLENIC SPIRIT
BY
ULRICH VON WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORFF
WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM
CLAUDIUS ÆLIANUS, ANAXIMENES, APPIANUS ALEXANDRINUS, ARISTOBULUS,
ARISTOPHANES, ARISTOTLE, W. ASSMANN, W. BELOE, E. G. E. L.
BULWER-LYTTON, CALLISTHENES, CICERO, E. S. CREASY, CONSTANTINE
VII (PORYPHYROGENITUS), DEMOSTHENES, W. DRUMANN, VICTOR DURUY,
ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, EUGAMON, EURIPIDES, EUTROPIUS, G. H.
A. EWALD, J. L. F. F. FLATHE, E. A. FREEMAN, A. FURTWÄNGLER AND
LÖSCHKE, P. GARDNER, J. GILLIES, W. E. GLADSTONE, O. GOLDSMITH,
H. GOLL, J. DE LA GRAVIÈRE, G. B. GRUNDY, H. R. HALL, G. W. F.
HEGEL, W. HELBIG, D. G. HOGARTH, ISOCRATES, R. C. JEBB, JOSEPHUS,
F. C. R. KRUSE, P. H. LARCHER, W. M. LEAKE, E. LERMINIER, LIVY,
LYSIAS, J. C. F. MANSO, L. MÉNARD, H. H. MILMAN, J. A. R.
MUNRO, B. G. NIEBUHR, W. ONCKEN, L. A. PRÉVOST-PARADOL, GEORGE
PERROT AND CHARLES CHIPIEZ, PHILOSTEPHANUS, PIGORINI, PHOTIUS,
R. POHLMAN, POLYBIUS, J. POTTER, PTOLEMY LAGI, JAMES RENNEL,
W. RIDGEWAY, K. RITTER, C. ROLLIN, J. RUSKIN, F. C. SCHLOSSER,
W. SCHORN, C. SCHUCHARDT, S. SHARPE, G. SMITH, W. SMYTH, E.
VON STERN, THEOGNIS, THEOPOMPUS, L. A. THIERS, C. TSOUNTAS AND
J. IRVING MANATT, TYRTÆUS, W. H. WADDINGTON, G. WEBER, B. I.
WHEELER, F. A. WOLF, XANTHUS
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration]
THE SCOPE AND DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK HISTORY
WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK
BY DR. EDUARD MEYER
Professor of Ancient History in the University of Berlin
The history of Greek civilisation forms the centre of the history of
antiquity. In the East, advanced civilisations with settled states had
existed for thousands of years; and as the populations of Western Asia
and of Egypt gradually came into closer political relations, these
civilisations, in spite of all local differences in customs, religion,
and habits of thought, gradually grew together into a uniform sphere of
culture. This development reached its culmination in the rise of the
great Persian universal monarchy, the “kingdom of the lands,” _i.e._ “of
the world.” But from the very beginning these oriental civilisations
are so completely dominated by the effort to maintain what has been won
that all progress beyond this point is prevented. And although we can
distinguish an individual, active, and progressive intellectual movement
among many nations,--as in Egypt, among the Iranians and Indians, while
among the Babylonians and Phœnicians nothing of the sort is thus far
known,--nevertheless the forces that represent tradition are in the end
everywhere victorious over it and force it to bow to their yoke. Hence,
all oriental civilisations culminate in the creation of a theological
system which governs all the relations and the whole field of thought of
man, and is everywhere recognised as having existed from all eternity and
as being inviolable to all future time.
With the cessation of political life and the establishment of the
universal monarchy, the nationality and the distinctive civilisation
of the separate districts are restricted to religion, which has become
theology. The development of oriental civilisation then subsides in the
competition of these religions and the unavoidable coalescence consequent
thereupon. This is true even of that nation which experienced the richest
intellectual development, and did the most important work of all oriental
peoples--the Israelites. When the great political storms from which the
universal monarchy arose have spent their rage, Israel, the nation, has
developed into Judaism; and under the Persian rule and with the help of
the kingdom it organises itself as a church which seeks to put an end to
all free individual movement, upon which the greatness of ancient Israel
rests.
It was just the same with the ruling nation, the Persians, however
vigorous their entrance into history under Cyrus. The Persian kingdom
is, indeed, a civilised state, but the civilisations that it includes
lack the highest that a civilisation can offer: an energetic, independent
life, a combination of the firm institutions and permanent attainments
of the past with the free, progressive, and creative movement of
individuality. So the East, after the Persian period, was unable of its
own force to create anything new. It stagnated, and, had it not received
new elements from without, had it been left permanently to itself, would
perhaps in the course of centuries have altered its external form again
and again, but would hardly have produced anything new or have progressed
a step beyond what had already been attained.
But when Cyrus and Darius founded the Persian kingdom, the East no longer
stood alone. The nations and kingdoms of the East came into communication
with the coast of the Mediterranean very early--not later than the
beginning of the second millennium B.C.; and under their influence, about
1500 B.C., a civilisation arose among the Greeks bordering the Ægean. We
call it the Mycenæan, and in spite of its formal dependence upon the East
it could, in the field of art (where alone we have an exact knowledge of
it), take an independent and equal place beside the great civilisations
of the East.
How Greek civilisation continued to advance from step to step for many
centuries in the field of politics and society as well as in that of
the intellect; how it spread simultaneously over all the islands and
coasts of the Mediterranean, from Massalia on the coast of the Ligurians
and Cumæ in the land of the Oscans to the Crimea and the eastern coast
of the Black Sea, and in the south as far as Cyprus and Cilicia; how
Greek culture at the same time took root in much more remote districts,
especially in Asia Minor; and how under its influence an energetic
civilisation arose among the tribes of Italy, cannot be depicted here.
When the Persian kingdom was founded the Hellenes had developed from
a group of linguistically related tribes into a nation possessing a
completely independent culture whose equal the world had never yet seen,
a culture whose mainspring was that very political and intellectual
freedom of the individual which was completely lacking in the East.
Hence its character was purely human, its aim the complete and harmonious
development of man; and if for that very reason it always strove to
be moderate and to adapt itself to the moral and cosmical forces that
govern human life, nevertheless it could accomplish this only in free
subordination, by absorbing the moral commandment into its own will.
Therefore it did not permit the opposing theological tendencies to gain
control, strong as was their development in considerable districts of
Greece in the sixth century. At that very period, on the other hand, it
was stretching out to grasp the apples on the tree of knowledge; in the
most advanced regions of Hellas science and philosophy were opposing
theology. National as it was, this culture lacked but one thing: the
political unity of the nation, the co-ordination of all its powers in the
vigorous organism of a great state.
The instinct of freedom itself, upon which the greatness of this
civilisation rested, favoured by the geographical conformation of the
Greek soil, had caused a constantly increasing political disunion, which
saw in the complete and unlimited autonomy of every individual community,
even of the tiniest of the hundreds of city states into which Hellas
was divided, the highest ideal of liberty, the only fit existence for
a Hellene. And, internally, every one of these dwarf states was eaten
by the canker of political and social contrasts which could not be
permanently suppressed by any attempt to introduce a just political order
founded upon a codified law and a written constitution--whether the ideal
were the rule of the “best,” the rule of the whole, _i.e._ of the actual
masses, or that of a mixed constitution. The smaller the city and its
territory, the more apt were these attempts to become bloody revolutions.
Lively as was the public spirit, clearly as the justice of the demand for
subordination to law was recognised, every individual and every party
interpreted it according to its own conception and its own judgment, and
at all times there were not a few who were ready to seize for themselves
all that the moment offered.
To be sure, manifold and successful attempts to found a greater political
power were brought about by the advancing growth of industry and culture,
as well as by the development of the citizen army of hoplites, which had
a firm tactical structure and was well schooled in the art of war. In
the Peloponnesus Sparta brought the whole south under the rule of its
citizens and not only effected the union of almost the whole peninsula
into a league, but established its right, as the first military power of
Hellas, to leadership in all common affairs.
In middle Greece, Thebes succeeded in uniting Bœotia into a federal
state, while its neighbour Athens, which had maintained the unity of
the Attic district since the beginning of history, began to annex the
neighbouring districts of Megara, Bœotia, and Eubœa, and laid the
foundation of a colonial power, as Corinth had formerly done. In the
north the Thessalians acquired leadership over all surrounding tribes.
In the west, in Sicily, usurpers had founded larger monarchical unified
states, especially in Syracuse and Agrigentum.
But all these combinations were after all only of very limited extent and
by no means firmly united; on the contrary, the weaker communities felt
even the loosest kind of federation, to say nothing of dependence, as
an oppressive fetter which impaired the ideal of the individual destiny
of the autonomous state, and which at least one party,--generally the
one that happened to be out of power,--felt justified in bursting at the
first opportunity.
However, as things lay, the nation found itself forced, with this sort
of constitution, to take up the struggle for its political independence.
The Greeks of Asia Minor, formerly subjects of the kings of Sardis, had
become subjects of the Persian kingdom under Cyrus; the free Hellenes had
the most varied relations with the latter, and more than once gave him
occasion to intervene in their affairs. The Persian kingdom, which under
Darius no longer attempted conquests that were not necessary for the
maintenance of its own existence, took no advantage of these provocations
until the revolt of the Greeks of Asia Minor, supported by Athens, made
war inevitable.
After the first attempt had failed Xerxes repeated it on the greatest
scale. Against the Hellenic nation, whose alien character was everywhere
a hindrance in its path, the Orient arose in the east and the west for a
decisive struggle; the Phœnician city of Carthage, the great sea power of
the west, was in alliance with the Persian kingdom. Only the minority of
the Hellenes joined in the defence; in the west the princes of Syracuse
and Agrigentum, in the east Sparta and the Peloponnesian league, Athens,
the cities of Eubœa and a few smaller powers. But in both fields of
operation the Hellenes won a complete victory; the Carthaginians were
defeated on the Himera, in the east Themistocles broke the base of the
Persian position by destroying their sea power with the Athenian fleet
that he had created, and on the battle-field of Platæa the Persian land
forces were defeated by the superiority of the Greek armies of hoplites.
Thus the Hellenes had won the leading position in the world. For the
moment there was no other power that could oppose them by land or
sea; the Asiatic king never again ventured an attack on Greece. Her
absolute military superiority was founded upon the national character,
the energetic public spirit, the voluntary subordination to law and
discipline and the capacity for conceiving and realising great political
ideas. The Hellenes could gain and assert permanently the ascendency over
the entire Mediterranean world, and impress upon it for all time the
stamp of their nationality, provided only that they were united and saw
the way to gather together all their resources into a single firmly knit
great power.
But the Greeks were not able to meet this first and most urgent demand;
though the days of particularism were irrevocably past, the idea which
was so inseparably bound up with the very nature of Hellenism still
exerted a powerful influence. As the individual communities were no
longer able to maintain an independent existence, they gathered about the
two powers that had gained the leadership, and each of which was striving
for supremacy: the patriarchal military state of Sparta and the new
progressive great power of Athens.
With the victory over the East it had been decided that the individuality
of Hellenic culture, the intellectual liberty which gives free play to
all vigorous powers in both material and intellectual life, had asserted
itself; the future lay only along this way. Mighty was the advance that
in all fields carried Greece along with gigantic strides; after only a
few decades the time before the Persian wars seemed like a remote and
long past antiquity.
But mighty as were the advancing strides of the nation in trade
and industry, in wealth and all the luxury of civilisation, in
art and science, all these attainments finally became factors of
political disintegration. They furthered the unlimited development of
individualism, which in custom and law and political life recognises no
other rule than its own ego and its claims. The ideal world of the time
of the sophists and the politics of an Alcibiades and a Lysander are the
results of this development.
Athens perceived the political tasks that were set for the Hellenic
people and ventured an attempt to perform them. They could be
accomplished only by admitting the new ideas into the programme of
democracy, by the foundation and extension of sea power, by an aggressive
policy which aimed more and more at the subjection of the Greek world
under the hegemony of one city. In consequence all opposing elements
were forced under the banner of Sparta, which adopted the programme of
conservatism and particularism, in order to strengthen its resistance,
and restrict and, if possible, overcome its rival.
The conflict was inevitable, though both sides were reluctant to
enter upon it; twenty years after the battle of Salamis it broke out.
The fact that Athens was trying at the same time to continue the war
against Persia and wrest Cyprus and Egypt from it gave her opponents the
advantage; she had far overestimated her strength. After a struggle of
eleven years (460-449 B.C.) Athens found herself compelled to make peace
with Persia and free the Greek mainland, only retaining absolute control
over the sea.
Under the rule of Pericles she consolidated her power, and the ideals
that lived in her were embodied in splendid creations. She proved
herself equal, in spite of all internal instability and crises, to a
second attack of her Greek opponents (431-421 B.C.). But it again became
evident that the radical democracy, which was now at the helm, had no
grasp of the realities of the political situation; for the second time
it stretched out its hand for the hegemony over all Hellas, in unnatural
alliance with Alcibiades, the conscienceless, ambitious man who was
aiming at the crown of Athens and Hellas.
Mighty indeed was the plan to subdue the Western world, Sicily first of
all; then with doubled power first to crush the opponents at home and
then gain the supremacy over the whole Mediterranean world. But what a
united Hellas might have accomplished was far beyond the resources of
Athens, even if the democrats had not overthrown their dangerous ally at
the first opportunity, and thus lamed the undertaking at the outset.
The catastrophe of the Athenians before Syracuse (413 B.C.) is the
turning-point of Greek history. All the opponents of Athens united, and
the Persian king, who saw that the hour had come to regain his former
power without a struggle, made an alliance with them. Only through
his subsidies was it possible for Sparta and her allies to reduce
Athens--until she lay prostrate. And the gain fell to Persia alone,
however feeble the kingdom had meanwhile become internally. Sparta,
after overthrowing the despotism of Lysander, made an honest attempt
to reorganise the Greek world after the conservative programme, and to
fulfil the task laid upon the nation in the contest with Persia. But
she only furnished her opponents at home, and particularism, which now
immediately turned against its former ally, an occasion for a fresh
uprising, which Sparta could master only by forming a new alliance with
Persia. After the peace of 386 the king of Asia utters the decisive word
even in the affairs of the Greek mother-country.
Here dissolution is going rapidly forward. Every power that has once more
for a short time possessed some importance in Greece succumbs to it in
turn; first Sparta, then Thebes and Athens. The attempts to establish
permanent and assured conditions by local unions in small districts, as
in Chalcidice under Olynthus, in Bœotia and Arcadia, were never able to
hold out more than a short time. It was useless to look longer for the
fulfilment of the national destiny. Feeble as the Persian kingdom was
internally, every revolt against it, to say nothing of an attempt to make
conquests and acquire a new field of colonisation in Asia,--the programme
that Isocrates repeatedly urged upon the nation,--was made impossible
by internal strife. Prosperity was ruined, the energy of the nation was
exhausted in the wild feuds of brigands, the most desolate conditions
prevailed in all communities. Greek history ends in chaos, in a hopeless
struggle of all against all.
In this same period, to be sure, the positive, constructive criticism of
Socrates and his school rose in opposition to the negative tendencies of
sophistry; and made the attempt to put an end to the political misery,
to create by a proper education the true citizen who looks only to the
common welfare in place of the ignorant citizen of the existing states,
who was governed only by self-interest. These efforts resulted in the
development of science and the preservation for all future time of the
highest achievements of the intellectual life of Hellas, but they could
not produce an internal transformation of men and states, whose earthly
life does not lie within the sphere of the problems of theoretical
perception, but in that of the problems of will and power. So at the same
time that Greek culture has reached the highest point of its development,
prepared to become the culture of the world, the Greek nation is
condemned to complete impotence.
For the development in the West, different as was its course, led to no
other result. In the fifth century Greece controlled almost all Sicily
except the western point, the whole south of Italy up to Tarentum, Elea
and Posidonia and the coast of Campania. Nowhere was an enemy to be seen
that might have become dangerous. The Carthaginians were repulsed, and
the power of the Etruscans, who in the sixth century had striven for
the hegemony in Italy, decayed, partly from internal weakness, partly
in consequence of the revolt of their subjects, especially the Romans
and the Sabines. The Cumæans under Aristodemus with the Sabines as their
allies defeated Aruns, the son of Porsena of Clusium, at Aricia about 500
B.C., and in the year 474 the Etruscan sea power suffered defeat at Cumæ
from the fleet of Hiero of Syracuse.
The cities of western Greece stood then as if founded for all eternity;
they were adorned with splendid buildings, the gayest and most luxurious
life developed in their streets; and they had leisure enough, after the
Greek manner, to dissipate their energies, which were not claimed by
external enemies, in internal strife and in struggles for the hegemony.
Only the bold attempts which Phocæa made in the sixth century to turn
the western basin of the Mediterranean likewise into a Greek sea, to
get a firm footing in Corsica and southern Spain, had succumbed to the
resistance of the Carthaginians, who were in alliance with the Etruscans.
Only in the north, on the coast of Liguria from the Alps to the
Pyrenees, Massalia maintained its independence. Southern Spain, Gades,
and the coast of the land of Tarshish (Tartessus) were occupied by the
Carthaginians about the middle of the fifth century; and the Greeks and
all foreign mariners in general were cut off from the navigation of the
ocean, as well as from the coasts of North Africa and Sardinia.
In the fourth century the political situation is totally changed in
both east and west. The Greeks are reduced to the defensive and lose
one position after the other. A few years after the destruction of the
Athenian expedition the Carthaginians stretched out their hands for
Sicily; in the years 409 and 406 they take and destroy Selinus, Himera,
and Agrigentum; in the wars of the following years every other Greek city
of the island except Syracuse was temporarily occupied and plundered by
them.
In Italy after the middle of the fifth century a new people made their
entrance into history, the Sabellian (Oscan) mountain tribes. From the
valleys of the Abruzzi and the Samnitic Apennines they pressed forward
towards the rich plains of the coast, and the land of civilisation with
its inhabitants succumbed to them almost everywhere. To be sure, the
Sabines under Rome defended themselves against the Æquians and Volscians,
and so did the Apulians in the east against the Frentanians and Pentrians
of Samnium. But the Etruscans of Capua and Nola and the Greeks of Cumæ
were overcome (438 and 421 B.C.) by the Sabellian Campanians, and Naples
alone in this district was able to preserve its independence. In the
south the Lucanians advanced farther and farther, took Posidonia (Pæstum)
in 400 B.C., Pyxus, Laos, and harassed the Greek cities of the east coast
and the south.
From between these hostile powers, the Carthaginians and the Sabellians,
an energetic ruler, Dionysius of Syracuse (405-367 B.C.), once more
rescued Hellenism. In great battles, with heavy losses to be sure, and
only by the employment of the military power of the Oscans, of Campanian
mercenary troops and of the Lucanians, he succeeded in setting up once
more a powerful Greek kingdom, including two-thirds of Sicily, the south
of Italy as far as Crotona and Terina; he held Carthage in restraint,
scourged the Etruscans in the western sea, and at the same time occupied
a number of important points on the Adriatic, Lissus and Pharos in
Illyria, several Apulian towns, Ancona, and Hadria at the mouth of the
Po in Italy. Dionysius had covered his rear by a close alliance with
Sparta, which not only insured him against any republican uprising,
but made possible an uninterrupted recruiting of mercenaries from the
Peloponnesus. In return Dionysius supported the Spartans in carrying
through the Kings’ Peace and against their enemies elsewhere.
The kingdom of Dionysius seemed to rest on a firm and permanent
foundation. Had it continued to exist the whole course of the world’s
history would have been different; Hellenism could have maintained its
position in the West, which might even have received again a Greek
impress instead of becoming Italic and Roman.
But the kingdom of Dionysius was in the most direct opposition to all
that Greek political theory demanded; it was a despotic state which
made the free self-government of communities an empty form in the
capital Syracuse, and in the subject territories, for the most part,
simply abolished the city-state, the _polis_. The necessity of a strong
government that would protect Hellenism in the West against its external
enemies was indeed recognised by the discerning, but internally it seemed
possible to relax and to effect a more ideal political formation.
Under the successor of the old despot, Dionysius II, Plato’s pupil, Dion,
and Plato himself, made an attempt at reform, first with the ruler’s
support, and then in opposition to him. The result was, that the west
Grecian kingdom was shattered (357-353 B.C.), while the establishment of
the ideal state was not successful; instead anarchy appeared again, and
the struggle of all against all. Only the enemies of the nation gained.
In Sicily, to be sure, Timoleon (345-337) was able to establish a certain
degree of order; he overthrew the tyrants, repulsed the Carthaginians,
restored the cities and gave them a modified democratic constitution.
But the federation of these republics had no permanence. On the death
of Timoleon the internal and external strife began anew, and the final
verdict was uttered by the governor of the Carthaginian province.
In Italy, on the other hand, the majority of the Greek cities were
conquered by the Lucanians or the newly risen Bruttians. On the west
coast only Naples and Elea were left, in the south Rhegium; in the east
Locri, Crotona, and Thurii had great difficulty in defending themselves
against the Bruttians. Tarentum alone (upon which Heraclea and Metapontum
were dependent) possessed a considerable power, owing to its incomparable
situation on a sea-girt peninsula and to the trade and wealth which
furnished it the means again and again to enlist Greek chieftains and
mercenaries in its service for the struggle against its enemies.
It was as Plato wrote to the Syracusans in the year 352 B.C. If matters
go on in this way, no end can be foreseen “until the whole population,
supporters of tyrants and democrats, alike, has been destroyed, the
Greek language has disappeared from Sicily and the island fallen under
the power and rule of the Phœnicians or Oscans” (_Epist._ 8, 353 e).
In a century the prophecy was fulfilled. But its range extends a great
deal farther than Plato dreamed; it is the fate not only of the western
Greeks, but of the whole Hellenic nation, that he foretells here.
The Greek states were not equal to the task of maintaining the position
of their nation as a world-power and gaining control of the world for
their civilisation. When they had completely failed, a half-Greek
neighbouring people, the Macedonians, attempted to carry out this
mission. The impotence of the Greek world gave King Philip (359-336)
the opportunity, which he seized with the greatest skill and energy, of
establishing a strong Macedonian kingdom, including all Thrace as far
as the Danube, extending on the west to the Ionian Sea, and finally,
on the basis of a general peace, of uniting the Hellenic world of the
mother-country in a firm league under Macedonian hegemony (337 B.C.).
Philip adopted the national programme of the Hellenes proposed by
Isocrates and began war in Asia against the Persians (336 B.C.). His
youthful son Alexander then carried it out on a far greater scale than
his father had ever intended. His aim was to subdue the whole known
world, the οικουμένη, simultaneously to Macedonian rule and Hellenic
civilisation. Moreover, as the descendant of Hercules and Achilles, as
king of Macedonia and leader of the Hellenic league, imbued by education
with Hellenic culture, the triumphs of which he had enthusiastically
absorbed, he felt himself called as none other to this work. Darius III,
after the victory of Issus (November 333 B.C.), offered him the surrender
of Western Asia as far as the Euphrates; and the interests of his native
state and also,--we must not fail to note,--the true interests of
Hellenic culture would have been far better served by such self-restraint
than by the ways that Alexander followed.
But he would go farther, out into the immeasurable; the attraction to
the infinite, to the comprehension and mastery of the universe, both
intellectual and material, that lies in the nature of the yet inchoate
uniform world-culture, finds its most vivid expression in its champion.
When, indeed, he would advance farther and farther, from the Punjab
to the Ganges and to the ends of the world, his instrument, his army,
failed him; he had to turn back. But the Persian kingdom, Asia as far as
the Indus, he conquered, brought permanently under Macedonian rule, and
laid the foundation for its Hellenisation. With this, however, only the
smaller portion of his mission was fulfilled. The East everywhere offered
further tasks which had in part been undertaken by the Persian kingdom at
the height of its power under Darius I--the exploration of Arabia, of the
Indian Ocean, and of the Caspian Sea, the subjugation of the predatory
nomads of the great steppe that extends from the Danube through southern
Russia and Turania as far as the Jaxartes.
It was of far more importance that Hellenism had a task in the West like
that in the East; to save the Greeks of Italy and Sicily, to overcome the
Carthaginians and the tribes of Italy, to turn the whole Mediterranean
into a Greek sea, was just as urgently necessary as the conquest of
Western Asia. It was the aim that Alcibiades had set himself and on which
Athens had gone to wreck.
In the same years in which the Macedonian king was conquering the
Persians, his brother-in-law, Alexander of Epirus, at the request of
Tarentum, had devoted himself to this task. After some success at the
beginning he had been overcome by the Lucanians and Bruttians and the
opposition of Hellenic particularism (334-331 B.C.).
Now the Macedonian king made preparations to take up this work also and
thus complete his conquest of the world. That the resources of Macedonia
were inadequate for this purpose was perfectly clear to him. Since he had
rejected the proposals of Darius he had employed the conquered Asiatics
in the government of his empire, and above all had endeavoured to form an
auxiliary force to his army out of the people that had previously ruled
Asia. In his naïve overvaluation of education, due to the Socratic belief
in the omnipotence of the intellect, he thought he could make Macedonians
out of the young Persians. But as ruler of the world he must no longer
bear the fetters which the usage of his people and the terms of the
Hellenic league put upon him. He must stand above all men and peoples,
his will must be law to them, like the commandment of the gods. The march
to Ammon (331 B.C.), which at the time enjoyed the highest regard in the
Greek world, inaugurated this departure. This elevation of the kingship
to divinity was not an outgrowth of oriental views, although it resembles
them, but of political necessity and of the loftiest ideas of Greek
culture--of the teaching of Greek philosophy, common to all Socratic
schools, of the unlimited sovereignty of the true sage, whose judgment no
commandment can fetter; he is no other than the true king.
Henceforth this view is inseparable from the idea of kingship among all
occidental nations down to our own times. It returns in the absolute
monarchy that Cæsar wished to found at Rome and which then gradually
develops out of the principate of Augustus, until Diocletian and
Constantine bring it to perfection; it returns, only apparently modified
by Christian views, in the absolute monarchy of modern times, in kingship
by the grace of God as well as in the universal monarchy of Napoleon, and
in the divine foundation of the autocracy of the Czar.
But Alexander was not able to bring his state to completion. In the midst
of his plans, in the full vigour of youth, just as a boundless future
seemed to lie before him, he was carried off by death at Babylon, on the
thirteenth of June, 323 B.C., in the thirty-third year of his age.
With the death of Alexander his plans were buried. He left no heir who
could have held the empire together; his generals fought for the spoils.
The result of the mighty struggles of the period of the Diadochi, which
covers almost fifty years (323-277 B.C.), is, that the Macedonian empire
is divided into three great powers; the kingdom of the Lagidæ, who from
the seaport of Alexandria on the extreme western border of Egypt control
the eastern Mediterranean with all its coasts, and the valley of the
Nile; the kingdom of the Seleucidæ, who strive in continual wars to hold
Asia together; and the kingdom of the Antigonidæ, who obtained possession
of Macedonia, depopulated by the conquest of the world and again by
the fearful Celtic invasion (280), and who, when they wish to assert
themselves as a great power, must attempt to acquire an ascendency in
some form or other over Greece and the Ægean Sea.
Of these three powers the kingdom of the Lagidæ is most firmly welded
together, being in full possession of all the resources that trade and
sea power, money and politics, afford. To re-establish the universal
monarchy was never its aim, even when circumstances seemed to tempt
to it. But as long as strong rulers wear the crown it always stands
on the offensive against the other two; it harasses them continually,
hinders them at every step from consolidating, wrests from the Seleucidæ
almost all the coast towns of Palestine and Phœnicia as far as Thrace,
temporarily gains control of the islands of the Ægean, and supports every
hostile movement that is made in Greece against Macedonia. The Greek
mother-country is thus continually forced anew into the struggle, the
play of intrigue between the court of Alexandria and the Macedonian state
never gives it an opportunity to become settled. All revolts of the Greek
world received the support of Alexandria; the uprising of Athens and
Sparta in the war of Chremonides (264), the attempt of Aratus to give the
Peloponnesus an independent organisation by means of the Achæan league
(beginning in 252), and finally the uprising of Sparta under Cleomenes.
The aim of giving the Greek world an independent form was never attained;
finally, when at the end of the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes (221) the
kingdom of the Lagidæ withdraws and lets Cleomenes fall, the peninsula
comes anew under the supremacy of the Macedonians, whom Aratus the
“liberator” had himself brought back to the citadel of Corinth. But
neither can the Macedonian king attain the full power that Philip and
Alexander had possessed a century earlier; in particular, its resources
are insufficient, even in alliance with the Achæans, to overthrow the
warlike, piratical Ætolian state, which is constantly increasing in
power. So Greece never gets out of these hopeless conditions; on the
contrary, indeed, through the emigration of the population to the Asiatic
colonies, through the decay of a vigorous peasant population which began
as early as in the fourth century, through the economic decline of
commerce and industry caused by the shifting of the centre of gravity to
the east, its situation becomes more and more wretched and the population
constantly diminishes. It can never attain peace of itself, but only
through an energetic and ruthlessly despotic foreign rule.
In the East, on the contrary, an active and hopeful life developed. The
great kings of the Lagidæan kingdom, the first three Ptolemies, fully
appreciated the importance of intellectual life to the position of
their kingdom in the world. All that Greek culture offered they tried
to attract to Alexandria, and they managed to win for their capital the
leading position in literature and science. But in other respects the
kingdom of the Lagidæ is by no means the state in which the life of the
new time reaches its full development. However much, in opposition to the
Greek world, in conflict with Macedonia, they coquette with the Hellenic
idea of liberty, within their own jurisdiction they cannot endure the
independence and the free constitution of the Greek _polis_, and their
subjects are by no means initiated into the new world-culture, but are
kept in complete subjugation, sharply distinguished from the ruling
classes, the Macedonians and Greeks, to whom also no freedom of political
movement whatever is granted.[1]
The development in Asia follows a very different course. Here, through
the activity of the great founders of cities, Antigonus, Lysimachus,
Seleucus I, and Antiochus I, one Greek city arises after another, from
the Hellespont through Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Media,
as far as Bactria and India; and from them grow the great centres of
culture, full of independent life, by which the Asiatic population is
introduced to the modern world-civilisation and becomes Hellenised.
Antigonus deliberately supported the independence of the cities within
the great organic body of the kingdom, thus following on the lines of the
Hellenic league under Philip and Alexander. By the pressure of political
necessity and the fact that they could maintain their power only by
winning the attachment and fidelity of their subjects, the Seleucidæ were
forced into the same ways. And side by side with the great kingdom the
political struggle creates a great number of powers of the second rank,
in part pure Greek communities, like Rhodes, Chios, Cyzicus, Byzantium,
Heraclea, in part newly formed states of Greek origin, like the kingdom
of Pergamus and later the Bactrian kingdom, in part fragments of the old
Persian kingdom, like Bithynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia, Atropatene,
and not much later the Parthian kingdom. Among these states the eastern
retain their oriental character, while the western are forced to pass
more and more into the culture of Hellenism.
Destructive as were the effects of the continual wars, and especially
of the raids of the Celtic hordes in Asia Minor, nevertheless there
pulsates here a fresh, progressive life, to which the future seems to
belong. To be sure, there is no lack of counter disturbance; beneath the
surface of Hellenism, the native population that is absorbed into the
Greek life everywhere preserves its own character, not through active
resistance, but through the passivity of its nature. When the orientals
become Hellenised, Hellenism itself begins at the same time to take on an
oriental impress.
But in this there lies no danger as yet. Hellenism everywhere retains
the upper hand and seems to come nearer and nearer to the goal of its
mission for the world. In all fields of intellectual life the cultured
classes have undisputed control and can look down with absolute contempt
on the currents that move the masses far beneath them; the exponents of
philosophical enlightenment may imagine they have completely dominated
them. When the great ideas upon which Hellenism is based have been
created by the classical period and new ones can no longer be placed
beside them, the new time sets to work to perfect what it has inherited.
The third century is the culmination of ancient science.
However, this whole civilisation lacks one thing, and that is a state
of natural growth. Of all the states that developed out of Alexander’s
empire, the kingdom of the Antigonidæ in Macedonia was the only one that
had a national basis; and therefore, in spite of the scantiness of its
resources, it was also the most capable of resistance of them all. All
others, on the contrary, were purely artificial political combinations,
lacking that innate necessity vital to the full power of a state. They
might have been altogether different, or they might not have been at
all. The separation of state and nationality, which is the result of
the development of the ancient East, exists in them also; they are not
supported by the population, which, by the contingencies of political
development, is for the moment included in them, and their subjects, so
far as the individual man or community is not bound to them by personal
advantage, have no further interest in their existence. To be sure, had
they maintained their existence for centuries, the power of custom might
have sufficed to give them a firmer constitution, such as many later
similar political formations have acquired and such as the Austrian
monarchy possesses to-day; and as a matter of fact we find the loyalty
of subjects to the reigning dynasty already quite strongly developed in
the kingdom of the Seleucidæ. But a national state can never arise on
the basis of a universal, denationalised civilisation, and the unity
is consequently only political, based only upon the dynasty and its
political successes. Therefore, except in Macedonia, none of these states
can, even in the struggle for existence, set in motion the full national
force supplied by internal unity.
The resources at the command of the Macedonio-Hellenic states were
consumed in the struggle with one another; nothing was left for the great
task that was set them in the West. The remains of Greek nationality,
still maintaining their existence here, looked in vain for a deliverer
to come from the East. An attempt made by the Spartan prince Cleonymus,
in response to the appeal of Tarentum, to take up the struggle in Italy
against the Lucanians and Romans, failed miserably through the incapacity
of its leader (303-302 B.C.). In Sicily, to be sure, the gifted general
and statesman Agathocles (317-289) had once more established, amid
streams of blood, and by mighty and ruthless battles against both
internal enemies and rivals and against Carthage, a strong Greek kingdom
that reached even to Italy and the Ionian Sea. But he was never able to
attain the position taken by Dionysius, and at his death his kingdom
goes to pieces. At this point also the rôle of the Sicilian Greeks in
the history of the world is played out; they disappear from the number
of independent powers capable of maintaining themselves by their own
resources.
FOOTNOTES
[1] It is altogether wrong to regard the kingdom of the Lagidæ as the
typical state of Hellenism. Through the mass of material that the
Egyptian papyri afford a further shifting in its favour is threatened,
which must certainly lead to a very incorrect conception of the whole of
antiquity. It is frequently quite overlooked that we have to do here only
with documents from a province of the kingdom of the Lagidæ (later of
Rome) which had a quite peculiar constitution, and that these documents
therefore show by no means typical, but in every respect exceptional,
conditions. The investigators who have made this material accessible
deserve great gratitude, but it must never be overlooked that even a
small fragment of similar documents from Asia would have infinitely
greater value for the interpretation of the whole history of antiquity
and specially that of Hellenism.
[Illustration: GREEK CITY SEALS]
GREEK HISTORY IN OUTLINE
A PRELIMINARY SURVEY, COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS
AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY
It is unnecessary in the summary of a country whose chief events are so
accurately dated and so fully understood as in the case of Greece, to
amplify the chronology. A synoptical view of these events will, however,
prove useful. Questions of origins and of earliest history are obscure
here as elsewhere. As to the earliest dates, it may be well to quote the
dictum of Prof. Flinders Petrie, who, after commenting on the discovery
in Greece, of pottery marked with the names of early Egyptian kings,
states that “the grand age of prehistoric Greece, which can well compare
with the art of classical Greece, began about 1600 B.C., was at its
highest point about 1400 B.C. and became decadent about 1200 B.C., before
its overthrow by the Dorian invasion.” The earlier phase of civilisation
in the Ægean may therefore date from the third millennium B.C.
2000-1000. Later phase of civilisation in the Ægean (the Mycenæan Age).
The Achæans and other Greeks spread themselves over Greece. Ionians
settle in Asia Minor. The Pelopidæ reign at Mycenæ. =Agamemnon=, king
of Mycenæ, commands the Greek forces at Troy. 1184. Fall of Troy
(traditional date). 1124. First migration. Northern warriors drive out
the population of Thessaly and occupy the country, causing many Achæans
to migrate to the Peloponnesus. 1104. Dorian invasion. The Peloponnesus
gradually brought under the Dorian sway. Dorian colonies sent out to
Crete, Rhodes, and Asia Minor. Argos head of a Dorian hexapolis. 885.
=Lycurgus= said to have given laws to Sparta. About this time (perhaps
much earlier) Phœnician alphabet imported into Greece. 776. The first
Olympic year. 750. First Messenian war.
PERIOD OF GREEK COLONISATION (750-550 B.C.)
683. Athens ruled by nine archons. 632. Attempt of Cylon to make himself
supreme at Athens. 621. Draconian code drawn up. 611. Anaximander of
Miletus, the constructor of the first map, born. End of seventh century.
Second Messenian war. Spartans conquer the country. The Ephors win almost
all the kingly power. =Cypselus= and his son =Periander= tyrants of
Corinth. 600. The poets Alcæus and Sappho flourish at Lesbos. 594-593.
=Solon= archon at Athens. 590-589. Sacred war of the Amphictyonic
league against Crissa. =Clisthenes= tyrant of Sicyon. 585. Pythian
games reorganised. Date of first Pythiad. 570. =Pisistratus= polemarch
at Athens. Athenians conquer Salamis and Nisæa. 561. Pisistratus makes
himself supreme in Athens. He is twice exiled. 559-556. =Miltiades=
tyrant of the Thracian Chersonesus. 556. Chilon’s reforms in Sparta.
549-548. Mycenæ and Tiryns go over to Sparta.
ATHENS UNDER THE TYRANTS (540-510 B.C.)
540. Pisistratus tyrant of Athens. 530. Pythagoras goes to Croton.
527. Pisistratus dies and is succeeded by his sons, =Hippias= and
=Hipparchus=. Homeric poems collected. 514. Hipparchus slain by Harmodius
and Aristogiton. 510. A Spartan army under Cleomenes blockades Hippias
and forces him to quit Athens.
THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY
Clisthenes and Isagoras contend for the chief power in Athens. 507.
Isagoras calls in =Cleomenes= who invades Attica. The Athenians overcome
the Spartans, and Clisthenes, who had left Athens, returns. =Clisthenes=
reforms the Athenian democracy. 506. Spartans, Bœotians, and Chalcidians
allied against Athens. The Athenians allied with Platæa. Chalcidian
territory annexed by Athens. Nearly the whole Peloponnesus forms a
league under the hegemony of Sparta. Rivalry between Athens and Ægina.
504. The Athenians refuse to restore Hippias on the Persian demand. 498.
Athens and Eretria send ships to aid the Milesians against the Persians.
496. Sophocles born at Athens. 494. Naval battle off Lade, the decisive
struggle of the Ionian war, won by the Persians. Battle of Sepeia. The
Spartans defeat the Argives. 493. =Themistocles=, archon at Athens,
fortifies the Piræus.
PERIOD OF THE PERSIAN WARS (492-479 B.C.)
492. Quarrel between the Spartan kings. King =Demaratus= flees to the
Persian court, and King Cleomenes seizes hostages from Ægina. Thrace
and Macedonia subdued by the Persians. 490. The Persians subdue Naxos
and other islands, and destroy Eretria before landing in Attica. Battle
of Marathon; the Greeks under Miltiades defeat the Persians, the latter
losing six thousand men; the Persian fleet sets sail for Asia. 489.
Miltiades’ expedition against Paros. Miltiades tried, and fined. His
death. 487. War between Athens and Ægina. Themistocles begins to equip an
Athenian fleet. 483. Aristides ostracised. 481. Xerxes musters an army to
invade Greece. Greek congress at Corinth. 480. Xerxes at the Hellespont.
The northern Greeks submit to Xerxes. The Greek army is defeated at the
pass of Thermopylæ and =Leonidas=, the Spartan king, is slain. Battle
of Artemisium. The Greek fleet retreats. Athens being evacuated, Xerxes
occupies it. Battle of Salamis and complete victory of the Greeks.
Retreat of Xerxes. The Greeks fail to follow up their victory. 479.
Mardonius invades Bœotia; occupies Athens. Retreat of Mardonius. Battle
of Platæa. Mardonius defeated and slain. Retreat of the Persian army.
Battle of Mycale and defeat of the Persian fleet.
POST-BELLUM RECONSTRUCTION (479-463 B.C.)
478. Athenians under Xanthippus capture Sestus in the Chersonesus.
Confederacy of Delos. 477. Athenian walls rebuilt. Piræus fortified.
Themistocles’ law providing for the annual increase of the navy.
Pausanias conquers Byzantium. He enters into treacherous relations
with the Persians. 476. The Spartans endeavour to reorganise the
Amphictyonic league. Their attempts defeated by Themistocles. 474. The
poet Pindar flourishes. 473. Scyros conquered by the Athenian, Cimon.
Argos defeated by the Spartans at the battle of Tegea. 472. Themistocles
ostracised. _Persæ_ of Æschylus performed. 471. The Arcadian league
against Sparta crushed at the battle of Dipæa. 470-469. Naxos secedes
from the confederacy of Delos, and is compelled to return. 470. Socrates
born. 468. Cimon defeats the Persians at the Eurymedon. Argos recovers
Tiryns. 465-463. Thasos revolts and is reduced by the fleet under Cimon.
464. Sparta stirred by terrible earthquake and a revolt of the helots.
The Third Messenian war. 463-462. Cimon persuades Athens to send help
to the Spartans, but the latter refuse the assistance. They are afraid
of Athens’ revolutionary spirit. This incident puts an end to Cimon’s
Laconian policy. It is the triumph of Ephialtes and his party.
THE AGE OF PERICLES (463-431 B.C.)
463-461. Triumph of democracy at Athens under Ephialtes and Pericles.
The Areopagus deprived of its powers. Cimon protests against the changes
effected in his absence. He is ostracised, and Athens forms a connection
with Argos, which captures and destroys Mycenæ. 460-459. Megara secedes
from the Peloponnesian league to Athens. A fleet, sent by Athens to
aid the Egyptian revolt against Persia, captures Memphis. 459. Ithome
captured by the Spartans. 459-458. Athens at war with the northern states
of the Peloponnesus. Athenian victories of Halieis, Cecryphalea, and
Ægina. 458. Long walls of Athens completed. 457. Spartan expedition to
Bœotia. Victory of Tanagra over the Athenians. Truce between Athens and
Sparta. Battle of Œnophyta and conquest of Bœotia by the Athenians. The
Phocians and Locrians make alliance with Athens. 456. Ægina surrenders
to the Athenians. 454. Greek contingent in Egypt capitulates to the
Persians; the Athenian fleet destroyed at the mouth of the Nile. 454-453.
Treasury of the confederacy of Delos transferred from the island to
Athens. 453. Pericles besieges Sicyon and Œniadæ without success. Achaia
passes under the Athenian dominion. 452-451. Five years’ truce between
Athens and the Peloponnesus. 450-449. Cimon leads an expedition against
Cyprus. Death of Cimon. The fleet on its way home wins the battle of
Salamis in Cyprus. 448. Peace of Callias concluded with Persia. Sacred
war. The Phocians withdraw from the Athenian alliance. 447. Bœotia lost
to Athens by the battle of Coronea. 447-446. Revolt of Eubœa and Megara
from the Delian confederacy. Eubœa is subdued and annexed. Pericles
plants colonies in the Thracian Chersonesus, Eubœa, Naxos, etc. 446-445.
Thirty Years’ Peace between Athens and Sparta. 444. Aristophanes born.
442. Thucydides opposes Pericles; is ostracised, leaving Pericles without
a rival in Athens, where he governs for fifteen years with absolute
power. Sophocles’ _Antigone_ produced. 440-439. Pericles subdues Samos.
Corcyræans defeat Corinthians in a sea-fight. 433. Corcyra concludes
alliance with Athens. Battle of Sybota between Corcyra and Corinth. King
=Perdiccas= of Macedonia incites the revolt of Chalcidice against Athens.
432. “Megarian decree,” passed at Athens, excludes Megarians from all
Athenian markets. Battle of Potidæa. Athenians defeat the Corinthians.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 B.C.)
431. Sparta decides on war with Athens on the grounds of her having
broken the Thirty Years’ Peace. Peloponnesian War. First period called
the “Attic War.” Platæa surprised by Thebans. Thebans taken and executed
in spite of a promise for their release. King =Archidamus= of Sparta
invades Attica. The population crowd into Athens. Athens annexes Ægina.
The fleet takes several important places. 430. The plague in Athens.
Trial of Pericles for misappropriation of public money. Potidæa taken by
the Athenians and the inhabitants expelled. 429. =Archidamus= besieges
Platæa. Phormion, the Athenian, wins the victory of Naupactus. Death of
Pericles. Rivalry between contending parties under Nicias and Cleon. 428.
=Archidamus= invades Attica. Mytilene revolts and is blockaded by the
Athenians. 427. Fourth invasion of Attica by the Spartans. Surrender of
Mytilene. The Mytilenæan ringleaders executed. Surrender of Platæa to the
Peloponnesians. Oligarchs in Corcyra conspire to overthrow the democrats.
Civil war and naval engagement. Terrible slaughter. Athenian expedition
to Sicily under Laches. Birth of Plato. 426. Athenians under Demosthenes
defeated in Ætolia. Battle of Olpæ. Peloponnesians and Ambracians
defeated by Demosthenes. Purification of Delos by the Athenians. The
Delian festival revived under Athenian superintendence. 425. Athens
increases the amount of tribute to be paid by the confederacy. The
episode of Pylos, leading, after a long struggle, to the capture of
Lacedæmonian forces in Sphacteria. 424. Defeat of Hippocrates at Delium.
Thucydides, the historian, banished for not succouring Amphipolis in
time. Brasidas takes towns of Chalcidice. 423. Truce between Athens
and Sparta. Scione in Chalcidice revolts to Sparta and an Athenian
expedition under Cleon is sent against it, notwithstanding the truce.
422. Battle of Amphipolis won by Brasidas, but both he and Cleon are
slain. 421. Peace of Nicias ends the first period of the Peloponnesian
War. Mutual restoration of conquests. Scione is taken and all the male
inhabitants put to death. 420. Second period of the Peloponnesian War.
Alcibiades becomes the chief opponent of Nicias. Expedition against
Epidaurus. 418. Nicias recovers his power in Athens. The Spartans invade
Argolis. Athenians take Orchomenus, but are defeated by the Spartans.
Battle of Mantinea. Hyperbolus attempts to obtain the ostracism of
Nicias. The decree is passed against himself, being the last instance
of ostracism. Argive oligarchy overthrows the democratic government. A
counter revolution restores the democrats. Athens concludes alliance
with Argos. 416. Melos conquered by the Athenians. The Sicilian city
of Segesta appeals to Athens for help against Selinus. Nicias opposes
the sending of assistance, but is overruled and sent with Alcibiades in
command of a Sicilian expedition. 415. Mysterious mutilation of the Hermæ
statues regarded as an evil omen. Alcibiades accused of a plot. His trial
postponed. The expedition sails. Fall of Alcibiades; his escape. 414.
Siege of Syracuse. The Spartan Gylippus arrives with ships. 413. Nicias
appeals for help to Athens and a second expedition is voted. Syracusans
worsted in a sea battle. Syracusans capture an Athenian treasure fleet,
and win a battle in the harbour of Syracuse. Arrival of the second
Athenian expedition and its total defeat. The Athenians retreat by land.
The rear guard is forced to surrender and the relics of the main body are
captured after the defeat of the Asinarus. Tribute of the confederacy
abolished and replaced by an import and export duty. 412. Third period
of the Peloponnesian War, called the Decelean or Ionian War. The allies
of Athens take advantage of her misfortunes to revolt. Sparta makes a
treaty with Persia. Athens wins several naval successes. 411. “Revolution
of the Four Hundred.” The fleet and army at Samos place themselves under
the leadership of Alcibiades. Spartans defeat the Athenian fleet at
Eretria. Fall of the Four Hundred and partial restoration of Athenian
democracy. Battle of Cynossema won by the Athenians. Alcibiades defeats
the Peloponnesians at Abydos. 410. Battle of Cyzicus won by Alcibiades.
Complete restoration of Athenian democracy. 408. Alcibiades conquers
Byzantium. 407. Cyrus, viceroy of Sardis, furnishes the Spartan Lysander
with money to raise the pay of the Spartan navy. Lysander begins to set
up the oligarchical government of the decarchies in the cities conquered
by him. Battle of Notium. Athenians defeated. Alcibiades’ downfall.
406. Battle of Arginusæ. Peloponnesians defeated by the Athenians. The
victorious generals are blamed for not rescuing their wounded, and are
illegally condemned and executed. The Spartans make overtures for peace,
which are rejected. 405. Battle of Ægospotami. Most of the Athenian ships
are taken and all the prisoners are put to death. The Athenian empire
passes to Sparta. Lysander subdues the Hellespont and Thrace, and lays
siege to Athens. 404. Surrender of Athens.
SPARTAN SUPREMACY AND PERSIAN INFLUENCE
Return to Athens of exiles of the oligarchical party. Athens under the
Thirty. Thrasybulus and other exiles gain Phyle. Theramenes opposes the
violent rule of the Thirty and is put to death. 403. Battle of Munychia.
Thrasybulus defeats the army of the Thirty. Death of Critias. The
Thirty are deposed and replaced by the Ten. The Spartans under Lysander
come to the aid of the Ten, but the intervention of the Spartan king,
=Pausanias=, brings about the restoration of the Attic democracy. 401.
Cyrus’ campaign and the battle of Cunaxa. Retreat of the Ten Thousand
Greeks under Xenophon. 400. Spartan invasion of the Persian dominions.
399. Spartans under Dercyllidas occupy the Troad. Elis conquered and
dismembered by the Spartans. Socrates put to death for denying the
Athenian gods. 398. =Agesilaus= becomes king of Sparta. 397. Cinadon’s
conspiracy. 396. Agesilaus invades Phrygia. 395. Agesilaus wins the
victory of Sardis. Revolt of Rhodes. The Spartans invade Bœotia and
are repelled with the assistance of the Athenians. Thebes, Athens,
Argos, and Corinth allied against Sparta. 394. Agesilaus returns from
Asia Minor. Battle of Nemea won by the Spartans. Battle of Cnidus. The
Persian fleet under Conon destroys the Spartan fleet. Agesilaus wins the
battle of Coronea and retreats from Bœotia. 393. Pharnabazus destroys
the Spartan dominion in the eastern Ægean, and supplies Conon with funds
to restore the long walls of Athens. Beginning of the “Corinthian War.”
392. Federation of Corinth and Argos. Fighting between the Spartans and
the allies on the Isthmus of Corinth. Both sides send embassies to the
Persians. 391. The Spartans begin fresh wars in Asia. 389. Successes of
Thrasybulus in the northern Ægean. 388. Spartans dispute the supremacy
of Athens on the Hellespont and are defeated at Cremaste. 387. Peace of
Antalcidas between Persia and Sparta. Athens is compelled to accede.
386. Dissolution of the union of Corinth and Argos. Sparta compels
the Mantineans to break down their city walls and separate into small
villages. 384-382. The city of Olynthus, having united the Chalcidian
towns under her hegemony and increased her territory at the expense of
Macedonia, makes alliance with Athens and Thebes. Sparta sends help to
the towns which refuse to join. 384. Aristotle born. 382. Spartans seize
the citadel of Thebes. 380. _Panegyric_ of Isocrates, a plea for Greek
unity. 381-379. Sparta forces Phlius to submit to her dictation. 379.
Chalcidian league compelled by Sparta to dissolve. The power of Sparta at
its height. Rising of Thebes under Pelopidas against Sparta. Sphodrias,
the Spartan, invades Athenian territory. The Spartans decline to punish
the aggression.
RISE OF THEBES (378-359 B.C.)
378. Athens makes alliance with Thebes. 378-377. Formation by the
Athenians of a new maritime confederacy. 378-376. Three unsuccessful
Spartan expeditions into Bœotia. 376. Great maritime victory of the
Athenian Chabrias at Naxos. Successes of Timotheus of Athens in the
Ionian Sea. 374. Brief peace between Sparta and Athens. 374-373.
Corcyra unsuccessfully invested by the Spartans. 371. Peace of Callias,
guaranteeing the independence of each individual Greek city. Thebes
not included in the Peace. Jason of Pheræ, despot of Thessaly. Battle
of Leuctra. Epaminondas of Thebes defeats the Spartans. Revolutionary
outbreaks in Peloponnesus. 370. Arcadian union and restoration of
Mantinea. Foundation of Megalopolis. Epaminondas and Pelopidas invade
Laconia. 369. Messene restored by the Thebans as a menace to Sparta.
Alliance between Sparta and Athens. The Thebans conquer Sicyon. Pelopidas
sent to deliver the Thessalian cities from the rivals, Alexander of
Macedon and Alexander of Pheræ. 368. The Spartans win the “tearless
victory” of Midea over the Arcadians. Death of =Alexander II= of Macedon.
Succession of his brother =Perdiccas= secured by Athenian intervention.
Pelopidas captured by Alexander of Pheræ. 367. Epaminondas rescues
him. Pelopidas obtains a Persian decree settling disputed questions in
Peloponnesus. The decree disregarded in Greece. 366. The Thebans conquer
Achaia, but fail to keep it. Athens makes alliance with Arcadia. 365.
Athenians conquer and colonise Samos, and acquire Sestus and Crithote.
=Perdiccas III= of Macedon assassinates the regent. Timotheus takes
Potidæa and Torone for Athens. Elis invaded by the Arcadians. 364.
Creation of a Bœotian navy encourages the allies of Athens to revolt.
Battle of Cynoscephalæ. Alexander of Pheræ, defeated by the Bœotians
and their Thessalian allies. Pelopidas falls in the battle. Orchomenus
destroyed by the Thebans. Elis invaded by the Arcadians. Spartan
operations fail. Battle in the Altis during the Olympic games. The
Arcadians appropriate the sacred Olympian treasure. Praxiteles, the
sculptor, flourished. 362. Unsuccessful attack on Sparta by Epaminondas.
Battle of Mantinea and death of Epaminondas. 361. Agesilaus of Sparta
goes to Egypt as a leader of mercenaries. Battle of Peparethus. Alexander
of Pheræ defeats the Athenian fleet. He attacks the Piræus. 360. The
Thracian Chersonesus lost to Athens.
PHILIP OF MACEDONIA (359-336 B.C.)
359. Death of =Perdiccas III= of Macedon. =Philip= seizes the government
as guardian for his nephew, =Amyntas=. 358. Brilliant victories of Philip
over the Pæonians and Illyrians. 357. Thracian Chersonesus and Eubœa
recovered by Athens. Philip takes Amphipolis. Revolt of Athenian allies,
Chios, Cos, and Rhodes. 356. Battle of Embata lost by the Athenians.
Philip founds Philippi, takes Pydna and Potidæa, defeats the Illyrians
and sets to work to organise his kingdom on a military basis. Birth of
Alexander the Great. 355. Peace between Athens and her revolted allies.
The Athenians abandon their schemes of a naval empire. Outbreak of the
“Sacred war” against the Phocians who had seized the Delphic temple.
354. Battle of Neon. The Phocians defeated. Demosthenes begins his
political activity. Phocian successes under Onomarchus. 353. Methone
taken by Philip of Macedon. Philip and the Thessalian league opposed
to Onomarchus and the tyrants of Pheræ. Onomarchus drives Philip from
Thessaly. Philip crushes the Phocians in Magnesia and makes himself
master of Thessaly. Phocis saved from him by help from Athens. 352. War
in the Peloponnesus. Spartan schemes of aggression frustrated. Thrace
subdued by Philip. 351. Demosthenes delivers his _First Philippic_. 349.
Philip begins war against Olynthus which makes alliance with Athens.
Athenian attempt to recover Eubœa fails. 348. Philip destroys Olynthus
and the Chalcidian towns. 347. Death of Plato. 346. Peace of Philocrates
between Philip and Athens. Phocis subdued by Philip. Philip presides at
the Pythian games. Philip becomes archon of Thessaly. Demosthenes accuses
Æschines of accepting bribes from Philip. 344. Demosthenes delivers
_The Second Philippic_. 343. Megara, Chalcis, Ambracia, Acarnania,
Achaia, and Corcyra ally themselves with Athens. 342-341. Philip annexes
Thrace. He founds Philippopolis. 341. Demosthenes’ _Third Philippic_.
340. Diplomatic breach between Athens and Philip. 339. Perinthus and
Byzantium unsuccessfully besieged by Philip. Philip’s campaign on the
Danube. 338. The Amphictyonic league declares a “holy war” against
Amphissa, and requests the aid of Philip. Philip destroys Amphissa and
conquers Naupactus. Philip occupies Elatea. Athens makes alliance with
Thebes. Battle of Chæronea. Philip defeats the Athenians and Thebans. The
hegemony of Greece passes to Macedon. Philip invades the Peloponnesus
which, with the exception of Sparta, acknowledges his supremacy. Philip
establishes a Greek confederacy under the Macedonian hegemony. Lycurgus
appointed to control the public revenues in Athens. 336. Attalus and
Parmenion open the Macedonian war in Æolis.
THE AGE OF ALEXANDER (336-323 B.C.)
Murder of Philip and succession of =Alexander the Great=. Alexander
compels the Hellenes to recognise his hegemony. 335. Alexander conducts
a successful campaign on the Danube and defeats the Illyrians at Pelium.
Thebes revolts against him and is destroyed. 334. Alexander sets out for
Asia. Battle of the Granicus. Alexander defeats the Persians. Lydia,
Miletus, Caria, Halicarnassus, Lycia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia subdued.
333. Alexander goes to Gordium and cuts the Gordian knot. Death of his
chief opponent, the Persian general, Memnon. Submission of Paphlagonia
and Cilicia. Battle of Issus. Alexander puts the army of Darius to
flight. Sidon and Byblos submit. 332. Tyre besieged and taken. He
slaughters the inhabitants and marches southward, storming Gaza. Egypt
conquered. He founds Alexandria. 331. Battle of Arbela and defeat of the
Great King. Babylon opens its gates to Alexander. He enters Susa. The
Spartans rise and are defeated at Megalopolis. 330. Alexander occupies
Persepolis. Alexander in Ecbatana, in Parthia, and on the Caspian.
Philotas is accused of conspiring against Alexander’s life and is
executed. His father, the general Parmenion, put to death on suspicion.
Judicial contest between Demosthenes and Æschines ends in the latter’s
quitting Athens. Part of Gedrosia (Beluchistan) submits to Alexander.
329. Arachosia conquered. 328. Alexander conquers Bactria and Sogdiana.
327. Alexander quells the rebellion of Sogdiana and Bactria. Clitus
killed by Alexander at a banquet. Alexander marries the Sogdian Roxane.
Callisthenes, the historian, is put to death under pretext of complicity
in the conspiracy of the pages to assassinate Alexander. Beginning of the
Indian war. 326. Alexander in the Punjab; he crosses the Indus, and is
victorious at the Hydaspes. At the Hyphasis the army refuses to advance
further. Alexander builds a fleet and sails to the mouth of the Indus.
325. Conquest of the Lower Punjab. March through Gedrosia (Mekran in
Beluchistan) and Carmania. Nearchus makes a voyage of discovery in the
Indian Ocean. 324. Alexander in Susa. He punishes treasonable conduct of
officials during his absence. Alexander’s veterans discharged at Opis.
Harpalus deposits at Athens the money stolen from Alexander. The trial
respecting misappropriation of this money ends in Demosthenes being
forced to quit Athens. Alexander’s last campaign against the Kossæans.
323. Alexander returns to Babylon and reorganises his army for the
conquest of Arabia. Death of Alexander.
THE POST-ALEXANDRIAN EPOCH
323. At Alexander’s death his young half-brother, =Philip Arrhidæus=,
succeeded to his empire, while there are expectations of a posthumous
heir by Roxane. The young Alexander is born. =Perdiccas= is made regent
over the Asiatic dominions, while =Antipater= and =Craterus= take the
joint regency of the West. The Greeks, with Athens at their head, attempt
to throw off the Macedonian yoke as soon as Alexander is dead, and
the Lamian war breaks out (323-322). But one by one the states yield
to Antipater and Craterus. The direct government of the dominions in
Europe, Africa, and Western Asia is divided among Alexander’s generals.
Thirty-four shared in the allotment; the most important are: =Ptolemy
Lagus=, in Egypt and Cyrenaica; =Antigonus=, in Phrygia, Pamphylia,
and Lycia; =Eumenes=, the secretary of Alexander, in Paphlagonia and
Cappadocia; =Cassander=, in Caria; =Leonnatus=, in Hellespontine Phrygia;
=Menander=, in Lydia; and =Lysimachus=, in Thrace and the Euxine
districts. Perdiccas aims to marry Alexander’s sister, Cleopatra, as
a means of becoming absolute master of the empire. The other generals
league themselves against him, and (321) Perdiccas is murdered by his
soldiers while proceeding against Ptolemy. Antipater replaces him as
regent, and redivides the empire; =Seleucus= is given Babylonia to rule
over. Antipater dies 319, and the son =Cassander= and =Polysperchon=
become regents. In 317 and 316, Cassander conquers Greece and Macedonia.
Antigonus, with the help of Cassander, attacks and defeats Eumenes, who
is betrayed by his own forces in 316. Antigonus now has ambitions to
control the whole empire, and in 315 the terrible war of the Diadochi,
between him and the other generals, begins. Antigonus and his son,
=Demetrius Poliorcetes=, call themselves kings. Seleucus, Lysimachus,
Cassander, and others do the same. Demetrius seizes Athens in 307. At
the end of the struggle every member of Alexander’s family is dead, the
majority put to death. In 301, at the battle of Ipsus, Antigonus falls,
and Demetrius takes to flight. Cassander dies 296, and the succession
is contested by his two sons, =Philip IV= and =Antipater=. Demetrius
takes the opportunity of this quarrel to seize the European dominions. He
prepares to invade Asia, and the other successors of the empire, together
with King =Pyrrhus= of Epirus, league against him. In 287 Pyrrhus invades
Macedonia, and Demetrius’ army deserts him. Pyrrhus is welcomed as king,
and he gives Lysimachus the eastern part of Macedonia to rule over.
Demetrius renews the struggle with Pyrrhus, and at his death, in 283, his
son, =Antigonus Gonatas=, carries it on. In 282 Lysimachus is attacked
by Seleucus Nicator, and is defeated and killed on the plain of Corus in
281. =Ptolemy Ceraunus= murders Seleucus, and seizes the European kingdom
of Lysimachus. In 280 Pyrrhus goes to Tarentum to make war on the Romans.
THE ACHÆAN AND ÆTOLIAN LEAGUES
The Achæan towns of Patræ, Dyme, Tritæa, and Pharæ expel their Macedonian
garrisons and join in a confederacy. 279. The Celts descend on the
Balkan countries and on Macedonia. Death of Ptolemy Ceraunus. 278. Celts
under Brennus approach Greece. Struggle between Celts and Hellenes
round Thermopylæ. Brennus defeated at Delphi. Celts driven back.
Ætolian Confederacy becomes the most important representative of Greek
independence. 277. =Antigonus= king of Macedonia. He founds the dynasty
of the Antigonids. Pyrrhus conquers Sicily. 276. The Achæan town Ægium
expels its garrison and joins Patræ, etc., in the Achæan Confederacy.
274. Pyrrhus returns to Epirus. 273. Pyrrhus expels Antigonus from
Macedon. 272. Pyrrhus besieges Sparta, which successfully resists him.
He turns against Argos, where he is killed. Antigonus recovers his
supremacy in Greece. The Greek cities fight for their independence. 265.
The Macedonians defeat the Egyptian fleet at Cos. Antigonus recovers his
position in the Peloponnesus. 263. Chremonidean war. 263-262. Antigonus
takes Athens. End of the independent political importance of Athens.
255. The Long Walls of Athens broken down. 249. Aratus frees Sicyon from
its tyrant Nicocles, and brings the town over to the Achæan League. 245.
Aratus becomes president of the Achæan League. =Agis IV= becomes king of
Sparta and attempts to introduce reforms. 242. Aratus conquers Corinth.
Megara, Trœzen, and Epidaurus join the Achæans. 241. Agis IV executed.
239. =Demetrius=, king of Macedon. Alliance between the Achæans and
Ætolians. 238-5. Extinction of the Epirote Æacids; federative republic
in Epirus. 235. =Cleomenes III=, king of Sparta. 234. Lydiades abdicates
from his tyranny and brings Megalopolis over to the Achæan League. 231.
Illyrian corsairs ravage the western coasts of Greece and defy the Achæan
and Ætolian fleets. 229. The greater part of Argolis included in the
Achæan League. =Antigonus Doson=, regent of Macedon. Athens frees herself
from the Macedonian dominion. The Romans defeat the Illyrian corsairs.
228. Athens makes alliance with Rome. The Achæan League at the height of
its power. 227. Beginning of the Spartan war against the Achæan League.
226. Cleomenes III effects fundamental reforms in Sparta. 224. Battle at
Dyme. Cleomenes defeats the Achæan League. 223. Aratus calls in the aid
of Macedon. Egypt deserts the Achæans and becomes the ally of Sparta.
Achæans, Bœotians, Phocians, Thessalians, Epirotes, and Acarnanians form,
under the leadership of Macedon, an alliance against Sparta. 222. Battle
of Sellasia. Defeat of the Spartans. Antigonus Doson restores the Spartan
oligarchy. 220. =Philip V= king of Macedon. War of Philip and his Greek
allies, including the Achæan League, against the Ætolians supported by
Sparta. 219. =Lycurgus= (last king of Sparta). 217. Peace of Naupactus.
The destructive war against the Ætolians ended in dread of a Carthaginian
invasion. Philip V becomes protector of all the Hellenes.
THE ROMAN CONQUEST (216-146 B.C.)
216. Philip concludes an alliance with Hannibal and provokes the first
Macedonian war with Rome. 214. Battle near the mouth of the Aous. The
Romans surprise Philip and defeat him. Ætolians, Eleans, Messenians,
and Illyrians accept Roman protection. 213. Aratus poisoned at Philip’s
instigation. 211. Sparta goes over to Rome. Savage wars of the Grecian
cities against one another. 208. Philopœmen becomes general of the
Achæan League, and revives its military power. 205. Philip makes peace
with Rome, ceding the country of the Parthenians and several Illyrian
districts to Rome. Philip carries on war in Rhodes, Thrace, and Mysia,
and sends auxiliaries to Carthage. 200. Second Macedonian war declared by
Rome. Romans under Sulpicius invade Macedonia. 199. Romans kept inactive
by mutiny in the army. 198. Defeat of Philip by Flamininus. Achæans and
Spartans join the Romans. 197. Battle of Cynoscephalæ and destruction of
the Macedonian phalanx. Philip accepts humiliating terms and renounces
his supremacy over the Greeks. 194. Flamininus returns to Rome. The
Ætolians, dissatisfied, pillage Sparta, which joins the Achæan League.
=Antiochus III= of Syria comes to the aid of the Ætolians. 191. Battle of
Thermopylæ. Antiochus defeated by the Romans. 190. Battle of Magnesia.
Romans defeat Antiochus. Submission of the Ætolians. 183. Messene revolts
from the Achæan League. 179. Callicrates succeeds Philopœmen as general
of the Achæan League. Death of Philip V and accession of =Perseus=, who
conciliates the Greeks, and makes alliances with Syria, Rhodes, etc. 169.
Attempted assassination of Eumenes of Pergamum on his return from Rome.
168. Third Macedonian war declared by the Romans. Romans are unsuccessful
at first, but the battle of Pydna is won by Paulus Æmilius, the
Macedonians losing twenty thousand men. Flight and subsequent surrender
of Perseus. 150. Death of Callicrates. 152. Andriscus lays claim to the
throne of Macedon. 148. Andriscus defeated at Pydna and taken to Rome.
146. Macedon made a Roman province. Romans support Sparta in her attempt
to withdraw from the Achæan League. Corinthians take up arms, and are
joined by the Bœotians and by Chalcis. Battle of Scarphe and victory of
the Romans under Metellus. Corinth is taken by Mummius; its art treasures
are sent to Rome, and the city delivered up to pillage. Achæan and
Bœotian leagues dissolved.
THE EGYPTIAN KINGDOM OF THE PTOLEMIES OR LAGIDÆ (323-30 B.C.)
In 323 =Ptolemy I=, son of Lagus, receives the government of Egypt and
Cyrenaica in the division of Alexander’s Empire. He rules at Alexandria.
In 321 he allies himself with Antipater against the ambitious Perdiccas.
He joins the alliance against Antigonus in 315. 306. He assumes the
title of king. 304. He assists the Rhodians to repel Demetrius, and
wins the surname of Soter (Saviour). 285. He abdicates in favour of his
son, =Ptolemy (II) Philadelphus=, and dies two years later. Ptolemy
II reigns almost in undisturbed peace. About 266 he annexes Phœnicia
and Cœle-Syria. He is famous as a great patron of commerce, science,
literature, and art, and raises the Alexandrian Museum and Library to
importance. On his death in 247, his son, =Ptolemy (III) Euergetes=,
reunites Cyrenaica, of which his father’s half-brother, Magas, had
declared himself king on the death of Ptolemy I. In 245 he invades
Syria, to avenge his sister Berenice, the wife of Antiochus II, slain
by Laodice. He also marches to and captures Babylon, but is recalled to
Egypt by a revolt in 243. In 222 he is succeeded by his son, =Ptolemy
(IV) Philopator=. In 217 this king defeats Antiochus the Great at Raphia,
recovering Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria, which has been wrested from him.
=Ptolemy (V) Epiphanes= began his reign in 205 or 204. Antiochus the
Great invades Egypt, and the Romans intervene. Ptolemy marries Cleopatra,
daughter of Antiochus. He dies by poison in 181. His son, =Ptolemy (VI)
Philometor=, succeeds, with =Cleopatra= as regent until her death in 174.
Then the ministers make war on Antiochus Epiphanes, who captures Ptolemy
in 170. The king’s brother, =Ptolemy (VII) Euergetes= or =Physcon=, then
proclaims himself king, and reigns jointly with his brother after the
latter’s release. In 164 Ptolemy VII expels Ptolemy VI, but is compelled
to recall him at the demand of Rome. Ptolemy VII returns to Cyrenaica,
which he holds as a separate kingdom until his brother’s death, 146, when
he returns to Egypt, slays the legitimate heir, and rules as sole king.
The people of Alexandria expel him in 130, but he manages to get back in
127. Dies 117. His son, =Ptolemy (VIII) Philometor= or =Lathyrus=, shares
the throne with his mother, =Cleopatra III=. In 107 his mother expels
him, and puts her favourite son, =Ptolemy (IX) Alexander=, on the throne.
Ptolemy VIII keeps his power in Cyprus, and on his mother’s death the
Egyptians recall him and banish his brother. The wars with the Seleucid
princes are kept up. =Berenice III=, the daughter of Ptolemy VIII,
succeeds him in 81. Her stepson, =Ptolemy X= or =Alexander II=, son of
Ptolemy Alexander, comes from Rome as Sulla’s candidate, and marries her.
The queen is at once murdered, by her husband’s order, and the people put
him to death, 80. The legitimate line is now extinct. An illegitimate son
of Ptolemy Lathyrus, =Ptolemy (XI) Neus Dionysus= or =Auletes=, takes
Egypt; and a younger brother, Cyprus. Weary of taxation, the Alexandrians
expel Auletes in 58, but the Romans restore him in 55. His son, =Ptolemy
XII=, and his daughter, =Cleopatra=, succeed him in joint reign in 51.
In 48 Ptolemy expels his sister, who flees to Syria, and attempts to
recover Egypt by force of arms. Cæsar effects her restoration in 48, and
the civil war with Pompey results. Ptolemy is defeated on the Nile, and
drowned. Cleopatra’s career after this belongs to Roman history, _q.v._
Unwilling to appear in Octavian’s triumph after Actium, she kills herself
in some unknown way, 30 B.C.
THE SELEUCID KINGDOM OF SYRIA (312-65 B.C.)
=Seleucus (I) Nicator= receives the satrapy of Babylon from Antipater.
He founds his kingdom in 312. He extends his conquests into Central Asia
and India, assuming the title of king about 306. He takes part against
Antigonus in the battle of Ipsus, 301. After this a part of Asia Minor
is added to his dominions, and the Syrian kingdom is formed. He defeats
Lysimachus on the plain of Corus in 281 and is assassinated by Ptolemy
Ceraunus in 280. He is the builder of the capital cities of Seleucia
and Antioch. His son =Antiochus (I) Soter= succeeds. He gives up all
claim to Macedonia on the marriage of Seleucus’ daughter, Phila, to
Antigonus Gonatas. Dies 261, his son =Antiochus (II) Theos= succeeding.
In this reign the kingdom is greatly weakened by the revolt of Parthia
and Bactria, leading to the establishment of the Parthian empire by
Arsaces about 250. He also involves himself in a ruinous war with Ptolemy
Philadelphus, concluding with the peace of 250. He is killed, 246,
and succeeded by his son =Seleucus (II) Callinicus= who wars with the
Parthians and Egyptians until his death in 226. =Seleucus (III) Ceraunus=
after a short reign of three years is succeeded by his brother =Antiochus
(III) the Great=, the most famous of the Seleucidæ. 223. Alexander and
Molon the rebellious brothers of the king are subdued. Antiochus goes
to war with Ptolemy Philopator and is beaten at Raphia, 217, losing
Cœle-Syria and Phœnicia. 214. Achæus the governor of Asia Minor rebels,
and is defeated and killed. 212. Antiochus begins an attempt to regain
Parthia and Bactria, but in 205 is compelled to acknowledge their
independence. Continued warfare with Egypt. Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria
regained by battle of Paneas in 198, but these territories are given
back to Egypt when Ptolemy Epiphanes marries Cleopatra, daughter of
Antiochus. 196. The Thracian Chersonesus taken from Macedonia. 192-189.
War with the Romans, who demand restoration of the Thracian and Egyptian
provinces. 190. Battle of Magnesia; great defeat of Antiochus by the
Romans. 187. Antiochus killed by his subjects as he attempts to rob the
temple of Elymais to pay the Romans. His son =Seleucus (IV) Philopator=
succeeds. Before his death, in 175, Seleucus satisfies the Roman claims.
His successor is his brother =Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes=. Armenia, lost
by Antiochus III, is reconquered, also Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria, 171-168.
Antiochus attempts to stamp out the Jewish religion, giving rise to
the Maccabæan rebellion in 167. =Antiochus (V) Eupator= succeeds his
father in 164. Lysias is regent, as the king is only nine years old.
A peace with the Jews is concluded and then Antiochus is killed, 162,
by =Demetrius (I) Soter=, son of Seleucus Philopator, who seizes the
throne. The Maccabæans hold their own against this king. Alexander Balas,
a pretended son of Antiochus Epiphanes, organises an insurrection. He
invades Syria, and Demetrius is killed, 150, in battle. =Alexander Balas=
usurps the throne. =Demetrius (II) Nicator=, son of Demetrius I, contests
the throne but not with much success. Balas wars with Ptolemy Philopator
and is killed, 145. A war of succession begins between Demetrius Nicator
and Balas’ young son =Antiochus VI=. The latter is supported by the Jews.
Antiochus VI is slain by =Tryphon=, the general of Alexander Balas, in
142. Tryphon rules until 139, when he is put to death by =Antiochus (VII)
Sidetes=. Meanwhile one faction recognises Demetrius Nicator as king. He
marries Cleopatra, an Egyptian princess, goes to war with the Parthians,
is captured, and Antiochus Sidetes takes his place for ten years.
Sidetes wages war with the Parthians, and is killed in battle, 128.
Demetrius Nicator now resumes his rule, but owing to his misgovernment
is assassinated at the instigation of Cleopatra, in 125. The eldest son,
=Seleucus V=, is put to death the same year by Cleopatra, and the second
son, =Antiochus (VII) Grypus=, takes the throne. He expels Alexander
Zabina, a usurper. Civil war breaks out between =Antiochus= and his
half-brother, =Antiochus (IX) Cyzicenus=, who in 112 compels a division
of the kingdom, taking Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria as his share. Antiochus
VIII is assassinated, 96. Antiochus IX is killed in 95 by =Seleucus
(VI) Epiphanes=, son of Grypus, who rules only one year. =Antiochus (X)
Eusebes=, son of Antiochus IX, follows. His claims are contested by the
sons of Grypus, =Philip=, =Demetrius (III) Eucærus=, and =Antiochus
(XI) Epiphanes=. The latter is drowned fleeing from Eusebes and the
other two rule over the whole of Syria. In 88 Demetrius is captured by
the Parthians and another brother =Antiochus (XII) Dionysius=, shares
the rule with Philip. He is killed in a war with the Arabians. Civil
strife has now reached such a state that the Syrians invite =Tigranes= of
Armenia to put an end to it. He conquers Syria in 83, and rules it until
69, when, after his defeat by Lucullus, =Antiochus (XIII) Asiaticus=, son
of Antiochus Eusebes, regains the throne. He is deposed, 65, by Pompey,
and Syria becomes a Roman province.
THE SICILIAN TYRANTS (570-210 B.C.)
The government of the Greek colonies in Sicily is originally
oligarchical, but the rule soon gets into the hands of despots or
tyrants, who hold uncontrolled power. 570-554. =Phalaris=, tyrant of
Agrigentum or Acrargas, brings that city to be the most powerful in the
island. About 500, =Cleander= obtains possession of Gela. His brother
=Hippocrates= succeeds, and is followed by =Gelo=, who makes himself
master of Syracuse. 488. =Theron= is tyrant of Agrigentum, and, 481,
expels =Terillus= from Himera. Terillus appeals to the Carthaginians
who besiege Himera, 480. Gelo aids Theron and defeats Hamilcar. 478.
Gelo succeeded by his brother =Hiero I=, an oppressive ruler. 472.
=Thrasydæus= succeeds Theron in Agrigentum, but is expelled by Hiero.
467. =Thrasybulus= succeeds Hiero, but is driven from Sicily by the
people, 466. The fall of Thrasybulus is the signal for great internal
dissensions, settled, 461, by a congress, which restores peace and
prosperity for half a century, interrupted only by a quickly suppressed
revolt of the Sicels in 451. 409. Hannibal, grandson of Hamilcar,
attempts the conquest of Sicily. 405. =Dionysius= attains to despotic
power in Syracuse. 383. After constant war the limits of Greek and
Carthaginian power in Sicily are fixed. 367. =Dion= succeeds Dionysius;
after an oppressive rule he is murdered, 353. A period of confusion
follows. The younger =Dionysius= and =Hicetas= hold power against each
other. The latter calls in the Carthaginians, and Timoleon comes from
Corinth, defeats Hicetas, and restores Greek liberty in 343. Democratic
government is also reinstated in other parts of Sicily. 340. Defeat of
Hasdrubal and Hamilcar at the Crimisus puts an end to all fear from
Carthage. 317. =Agathocles= establishes a despotism in Syracuse. His
reign is oppressive and disastrous for Sicily. 310. Defeat of Agathocles
by Hamilcar at Ecnomus. Agathocles goes to Africa to carry on the
war; meanwhile Hamilcar gets possession of a large part of Sicily.
Agathocles makes peace with Carthage, and perpetrates a fearful massacre
of his opponents. 289. Death of Agathocles. =Hicetas= becomes tyrant
of Syracuse. Agrigentum, under =Phintias=, attains to great power. The
Carthaginians now begin to be predominant in the island. 278. Pyrrhus
lands in Sicily to aid the Greeks, but returns to Italy, 276. =Hiero II=
is chosen general by the Syracusans. He fights the Mamertines. 270. Hiero
assumes title of king. He allies with Carthage to expel the Mamertines.
The Romans espouse the latter’s cause, and the First Punic War is begun,
264. 263. Hiero makes peace with Rome. 241. Battle off the Ægetan
Islands. The whole island, except the territory of Hiero, becomes a Roman
province. 215. =Hieronymus=, grandson and successor of Hiero, breaks the
treaty with Rome in the Second Punic War, and is assassinated. Marcellus
is sent to Syracuse. 212. Syracuse falls into his hands. 210. Agrigentum
captured. Roman conquest completed.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE
The character of every people is more or less closely connected with
that of its land. The station which the Greeks filled among nations, the
part which they acted, and the works which they accomplished, depended
in a great measure on the position which they occupied on the face of
the globe. The manner and degree in which the nature of the country
affected the bodily and mental frame, and the social institutions of its
inhabitants, may not be so easily determined; but its physical aspect
is certainly not less important in a historical point of view, than
it is striking and interesting in itself. An attentive survey of the
geographical site of Greece, of its general divisions, and of the most
prominent points on its surface, is an indispensable preparation for
the study of its history. In the following sketch nothing more will be
attempted, than to guide the reader’s eye over an accurate map of the
country, and to direct his attention to some of those indelible features,
which have survived all the revolutions by which it has been desolated.
THE LAND
The land which its sons called Hellas, and for which we have adopted
the Roman name Greece,[2] lies on the southeast verge of Europe, and in
length extends no further than from the thirty-sixth to the fortieth
degree of latitude. It is distinguished among European countries by
the same character which distinguishes Europe itself from the other
continents--the great range of its coast compared with the extent of its
surface; so that while in the latter respect it is considerably less than
Portugal, in the former it exceeds the whole Pyrenean peninsula. The
great eastern limb which projects from the main trunk of the continent
of Europe grows more and more finely articulated as it advances towards
the south, and terminates in the peninsula of Peloponnesus, the smaller
half of Greece, which bears some resemblance to an outspread palm.
Its southern extremity is at a nearly equal distance from the two
neighbouring continents: it fronts one of the most beautiful and fertile
regions of Africa, and is separated from the nearest point of Asia by
the southern outlet of the Ægean Sea--the sea, by the Greeks familiarly
called their own, which, after being contracted into a narrow stream by
the approach of the opposite shores at the Hellespont, suddenly finds
its liberty in an ample basin as they recede towards the east and the
west, and at length, escaping between Cape Malea and Crete, confounds its
waters with the broader main of the Mediterranean. Over that part of this
sea which washes the coast of Greece, a chain of islands, beginning from
the southern headland of Attica, Cape Sunium, first girds Delos with an
irregular belt, the Cyclades, and then, in a waving line, links itself
to a scattered group (the Sporades) which borders the Asiatic coast.
Southward of these the interval between the two continents is broken by
the larger islands Crete and Rhodes. The sea which divides Greece from
Italy is contracted, between the Iapygian peninsula and the coast of
Epirus, into a channel only thirty geographical miles in breadth; and the
Italian coast may be seen not only from the mountains of Corcyra, but
from the low headland of the Ceraunian hills.
Thus on two sides Greece is bounded by a narrow sea; but towards the
north its limits were never precisely defined. The word Hellas did not
convey to the Greeks the notion of a certain geographical surface,
determined by natural or conventional boundaries: it denoted the country
of the Hellenes, and was variously applied according to the different
views entertained of the people which was entitled to that name. The
original Hellas was included in the territory of a little tribe in the
south of Thessaly. When these Hellenes had imparted their name to other
tribes, with which they were allied by a community of language and
manners, Hellas might properly be said to extend as far as these national
features prevailed. On the east, Greece was commonly held to terminate
with Mount Homole at the mouth of the Peneus; the more scrupulous,
however, excluded even Thessaly from the honour of the Hellenic name,
while Strabo,[f] with consistent laxity, admitted Macedonia. But from
Ambracia to the mouth of the Peneus, when these were taken as the extreme
northern points, it was still impossible to draw a precise line of
demarcation; for the same reason which justified the exclusion of Epirus
applied, perhaps much more forcibly, to the mountaineers in the interior
of Ætolia, whose barbarous origin, or utter degeneracy, was proved by
their savage manners, and a language which Thucydides[g] describes as
unintelligible. When the Ætolians bade the last Philip withdraw from
Hellas, the Macedonian king could justly retort, by asking where they
would fix its boundaries, and by reminding them that of their own body a
very small part was within the pale from which they wished to exclude him.
The northern part of Greece is traversed in its whole length by a range
of mountains, the Greek Apennines. This ridge first takes the name of
Pindus, where it intersects the northern boundary of Greece, at a point
where an ancient route still affords the least difficult passage from
Epirus into Thessaly. From Pindus two huge arms stretch towards the
eastern sea, and enclose the vale of Thessaly, the largest and richest
plain in Greece: on the north the Cambunian hills, after making a bend
towards the south, terminate in the loftier heights of Olympus, which
are scarcely ever entirely free from snow; the opposite and lower chain
of Othrys parting, with its eastern extremity, the Malian from the
Pagasæan Gulf, sinks gently towards the coast. A fourth rampart, which
runs parallel to Pindus, is formed by the range which includes the
celebrated heights of Pelion and Ossa; the first a broad and nearly even
ridge, the other towering into a steep conical peak, the neighbour and
rival of Olympus, with which, in the songs of the country, it is said
to dispute the pre-eminence in the depth and duration of its snows. The
mountain barrier with which Thessaly is thus encompassed is broken only
at the northeast corner, by a deep and narrow cleft, which parts Ossa
from Olympus: the defile so renowned in poetry as the vale, in history as
the pass, of Tempe. The imagination of the ancient poets and declaimers
delighted to dwell on the natural beauties of this romantic glen, and on
the sanctity of the site, from which Apollo had transplanted his laurel
to Delphi.
From other points of view, the same spot no less forcibly claims the
attention of the historian. It is the only pass through which an army
can invade Thessaly from the north, without scaling the high and rugged
ridges of its northern frontier. The whole glen is something less than
five miles long, and opens gradually to the east into a spacious plain,
stretching to the shore of the Thermaic Gulf. On each side the rocks rise
precipitously from the bed of the Peneus, and in some places only leave
room between them for the stream; and the road, which at the narrowest
point is cut in the rock, might in the opinion of the ancients be
defended by ten men against a host.
On the eastern side of the ridge which stretches from Tempe to the Gulf
of Pagasæ, a narrow strip of land, called Magnesia, is intercepted
between the mountains and the sea, broken by lofty headlands and the beds
of torrents, and exposed without a harbour to the fury of the northeast
gales.
South of this gulf the coast is again deeply indented by that of Malis,
into which the Sperchius, rising from Mount Tymphrestus, a continuation
of Pindus, winds through a long narrow vale, which, though considered
as a part of Thessaly, forms a separate region, widely distinguished
from the rest by its physical features. It is intercepted between Othrys
and Œta, a huge rugged pile, which, stretching from Pindus to the sea
at Thermopylæ, forms the inner barrier of Greece, as the Cambunian
range is the outer, to which it corresponds in direction, and is nearly
equal in height. To the south of Thessaly and between it and Bœotia
lie the countries of Doris and Phocis. Doris is small and obscure, but
interesting as the foster-mother of a race of conquerors who became the
masters of Greece. Phocis is somewhat larger than Doris, and separates it
from Bœotia.
The peculiar conformation of the principal Bœotian valleys, the barriers
opposed to the escape of the streams, and the consequent accumulation of
the rich deposits brought down from the surrounding mountains, may be
considered as a main cause of the extraordinary fertility of the land.
The vale of the Cephissus especially, with its periodical inundations,
exhibits a resemblance, on a small scale, to the banks of the Nile--a
resemblance which some of the ancients observed in the peculiar character
of its vegetation. The profusion in which the ordinary gifts of nature
were spread over the face of Bœotia, the abundant returns of its grain,
the richness of its pastures, the materials of luxury furnished by its
woods and waters, are chiefly remarkable, in a historical point of view,
from the unfavourable effect they produced on the character of the
race, which finally established itself in this envied territory. It was
this cause, more than the dampness and thickness of their atmosphere,
that depressed the intellectual and moral energies of the Bœotians, and
justified the ridicule which their temperate and witty neighbours so
freely poured on their proverbial failing.
Eubœa, that large and important island, which at a very early period
attracted the Phœnicians by its copper mines, and in later times became
almost indispensable to the subsistence of Athens, though it covers the
whole eastern coast of Locris and Bœotia, is more closely connected with
the latter of these countries. The channel of the Euripus which parts
it from the mainland, between Aulis and Chalcis, is but a few paces in
width, and is broken by a rocky islet, which now forms the middle pier of
a bridge.
A wild and rugged, though not a lofty, range of mountains, bearing the
name of Cithæron on the west, of Parnes towards the east, divides Bœotia
from Attica. Lower ridges, branching off to the south, and sending out
arms towards the east, mark the limits of the principal districts which
compose this little country, the least proportioned in extent of any
on the face of the earth to its fame and its importance in the history
of mankind. The most extensive of the Attic plains, though it is by no
means a uniform level, but is broken by a number of low hills, is that
in which Athens itself lies at the foot of a precipitous rock, and in
which, according to the Attic legend, the olive, still its most valuable
production, first sprang up.
Attica is, on the whole, a meagre land, wanting the fatness of the
Bœotian plains, and the freshness of the Bœotian streams. The waters of
its principal river, the Cephisus, are expended in irrigating a part of
the plain of Athens, and the Ilissus, though no less renowned, is a mere
brook, which is sometimes swollen into a torrent. It could scarcely boast
of more than two or three fertile tracts, and its principal riches lay in
the heart of its mountains, in the silver of Laurium, and the marble of
Pentelicus. It might also reckon among its peculiar advantages the purity
of its air, the fragrance of its shrubs, and the fineness of its fruits.
But in its most flourishing period its produce was never sufficient to
supply the wants of its inhabitants, and their industry was constantly
urged to improve their ground to the utmost. Traces are still visible
of the laborious cultivation which was carried by means of artificial
terraces, up the sides of their barest mountains. After all, they were
compelled to look to the sea even for subsistence. Attica would have been
little but for the position which it occupied, as the southeast foreland
of Greece, with valleys opening on the coast, and ports inviting the
commerce of Asia. From the top of its hills the eye surveys the whole
circle of the islands, which form its maritime suburbs, and seem to point
out its historical destination.
The isthmus connecting Attica with the Peloponnesus is not level. The
roots of the Onean Mountains are continued along the eastern coast in a
line of low cliffs, till they meet another range, which seems to have
borne the same name, at the opposite extremity of the isthmus. This is
an important feature in the face of the country: the isthmus at its
narrowest part, between the inlets of Schœnus and Lechæum, is only
between three and four miles broad; and along this line, hence called
the Diolcus, or Draughtway, vessels were often transported from sea to
sea, to avoid the delay and danger which attended the circumnavigation
of the Peloponnesus. Yet it seems not to have been before the Macedonian
period, that the narrowness of the intervening space suggested the
project of uniting the two seas by means of a canal. It was entertained
for a time by Demetrius Poliorcetes; but he is said to have been deterred
by the reports of his engineers, who were persuaded that the surface of
the Corinthian Gulf was so much higher than the Saronic, that a channel
cut between them would be useless from the rapidity of the current, and
might even endanger the safety of Ægina and the neighbouring isles.
Three centuries later, the dictator Cæsar formed the same plan, and was
perhaps only prevented from accomplishing it by his untimely death.
The above-mentioned inequality of the ground would always render this
undertaking very laborious and expensive. But the work was of a nature
rather to shock than to interest genuine Greek feelings: it seems to
have been viewed as an audacious Titanian effort of barbarian power;
and when Nero actually began it, having opened the trench with his own
hands, the belief of the country people may probably have concurred with
the aversion of the Prætorian workmen, to raise the rumour of howling
spectres, and springs of blood, by which they are said to have been
interrupted.
The face of the Peloponnesus presents outlines somewhat more intricate
than those of northern Greece. At first sight the whole land appears one
pile of mountains, which, toward the northwest, where it reaches its
greatest height, forms a compact mass, pressing close upon the Gulf of
Corinth. On the western coast it recedes farther from the sea; towards
the centre is pierced more and more by little hollows; and on the south
and east is broken by three great gulfs, and the valleys opening into
them, which suggested to the ancients the form of a plane leaf, to
illustrate that of the peninsula. On closer inspection, the highest
summits of this pile, with their connecting ridges, may be observed to
form an irregular ring, which separates the central region, Arcadia, from
the rest.
The other great divisions of the Peloponnesus are Argolis, Laconia,
Messenia, Elis, and Achaia. Argolis, when the name is taken in its
largest sense, as the part of the Peloponnesus which is bounded on the
land side by Arcadia, Achaia, and Laconia, comprehends several districts,
which, during the period of the independence of Greece, were never
united under one government, but were considered, for the purpose of
description, as one region by the later geographers. It begins on the
western side with the little territory of Sicyon, which, beside some
inland valleys, shared with Corinth a small maritime plain, which was
proverbial among the ancients for its luxuriant fertility. The dominions
of Corinth, which also extended beyond the isthmus, meeting those of
Megara a little south of the Scironian rocks, occupied a considerable
portion of Argolis. The two cities, Sicyon and Corinth, were similarly
situated--both commanding important passes into the interior of the
peninsula. The lofty and precipitous rock, called the Acrocorinthus,
on which stood the citadel of Corinth, though, being commanded by a
neighbouring height, it is of no great value for the purposes of modern
warfare, was in ancient times an impregnable fortress, and a point of the
highest importance.
The plain of Argos, which is bounded on three sides by lofty mountains,
but open to the sea, is, for Greece, and especially for the Peloponnesus,
of considerable extent, being ten or twelve miles in length, and four or
five in width. But the western side is lower than the eastern, and is
watered by a number of streams, in which the upper side is singularly
deficient. In very ancient times the lower level was injured by excess
of moisture, as it is at this day: and hence, perhaps, Argos, which lay
on the western side, notwithstanding its advantageous position, and the
strength of its citadel, flourished less, for a time, than Mycenæ and
Tiryns, which were situate to the east, where the plain is now barren
through drought.
A long valley, running southward to the sea, and the mountains which
border it on three sides, composed the territory of Laconia. It is
to the middle region, the heart of Laconia, that most of the ancient
epithets and descriptions relating to the general character of the
country properly apply. The vale of Sparta is Homer’s “hollow Lacedæmon,”
which Euripides further described as girt with mountains, rugged, and
difficult of entrance for a hostile power. The epithet “hollow” fitly
represents the aspect of a valley enclosed by the lofty cliffs in which
the mountains here abruptly terminate on each side of the Eurotas. The
character which the poet ascribes to Laconia,--that it is a country
difficult of access to an enemy,--is one which most properly belongs
to it, and is of great historical importance. On the northern and the
eastern sides there are only two natural passes by which the plain of
Sparta can be invaded.
At the northern foot of the Taygetus Mountains begins the Messenian
plain, which, like the basin of the Eurotas below Sparta, is divided into
two distinct districts, by a ridge which crosses nearly its whole width
from the eastern side. The upper of these districts, which is separated
from Arcadia by a part of the Lycæan chain, and is bounded towards the
west by the ridge of Ithome, the scene of ever memorable struggles, was
the plain of Stenyclarus, a tract not peculiarly rich, but very important
for the protection and command of the country, as the principal passes,
not only from the north, but from the east and west fall into it. The
lower part of the Messenian plain, which spreads round the head of the
gulf, was a region celebrated in poetry and history for its exuberant
fertility; sometimes designated by the title of Macaria, or the Blessed,
watered by many streams, among the rest by the clear and full Pamisus.
It was, no doubt, of this delightful vale, that Euripides meant to be
understood, when, contrasting Messenia with Laconia, he described the
excellence of the Messenian soil as too great for words to reach.
The rich pastures on the banks of the Elean Peneus were celebrated in the
earliest legends; and an ancient channel, which is still seen stretching
across them to the sea, may be the same into which Hercules was believed
to have turned the river, to cleanse the stable of Augeas.
When the necessary deduction has been made for the inequalities of its
surface, Greece may perhaps be properly considered as a land, on the
whole, not less rich than beautiful. And it probably had a better claim
to this character in the days of its youthful freshness and vigour. Its
productions were various as its aspect: and if other regions were more
fertile in grain, and more favourable to the cultivation of the vine, few
surpassed it in the growth of the olive, and of other valuable fruits.
Its hills afforded abundant pastures: its waters and forests teemed
with life. In the precious metals it was perhaps fortunately poor; the
silver mines of Laurium were a singular exception; but the Peloponnesian
Mountains, especially in Laconia and Argolis, as well as those of
Eubœa, contained rich veins of iron and copper, as well as precious
quarries. The marble of Pentelicus was nearly equalled in fineness by
that of the isle of Paros, and that of Carystus in Eubœa. The Grecian
woods still excite the admiration of travellers, as they did in the
days of Pausanias,[h] by trees of extraordinary size. Even the hills of
Attica are said to have been once clothed with forests; and the present
scantiness of its streams may be owed in a great measure to the loss of
the shade which once sheltered them. Herodotus[i] observes, that, of all
countries in the world, Greece enjoyed the most happily tempered seasons.
But it seems difficult to speak generally of the climate of a country,
in which each district has its own, determined by an infinite variety of
local circumstances. Both in northern Greece and the Peloponnesus the
snow remains long on the higher ridges; and even in Attica the winters
are often severe. On the other hand, the heat of the summer is tempered,
in exposed situations, by the strong breezes from the northwest (the
etesian winds), which prevail during that season in the Grecian seas; and
it is possible that Herodotus may have had their refreshing influence
chiefly in view.
Though no traces of volcanic eruptions appear to have been discovered in
Greece, history is full of the effects produced there by volcanic agency;
and permanent indications of its physical character were scattered over
its surface, in the hot springs of Thermopylæ, Trœzen, Ædepsus, and
other places. The sea between the Peloponnesus and Crete has been, down
to modern times, the scene of surprising changes wrought by the same
forces; and not long before the Christian era, a new hill was thrown up
on the coast near Trœzen, no less suddenly than the islands near Thera
were raised out of the sea. Earthquakes, accompanied by the rending of
mountains, the sinking of land into the sea, by temporary inundations,
and other disasters, have in all ages been familiar to Greece, more
especially to the Peloponnesus. And hence some attention seems to be due
to the numerous legends and traditions which describe convulsions of
the same kind as occurring still more frequently, and with still more
important consequences, in a period preceding connected history; and
which may be thought to point to a state of elemental warfare, which must
have subsided before the region which was its theatre could have been
fitted for the habitation of man. Such an origin we might be inclined
to assign to that class of legends which related to struggles between
Poseidon and other deities for the possession of several districts; as
his contests with Athene (Minerva) for Athens and Trœzen; with the same
goddess, or with Hera (Juno) for Argos--where he was said, according to
one account, to have dried up the springs, and according to another,
to have laid the plain under water; with Apollo for the isthmus of
Corinth.[b]
THE NAME
It is a singular anomaly that a people who habitually called themselves
Hellenes should be known to all the world beside as Greeks. This name
was derived from the Graians, a small and obscure group. The Romans,
chancing to come first in contact with this tribe, gave the name Greek
to the whole people. In the course of time it became so fixed in the
usage of other nations that it could never be shaken off. Such a change
of a proper name was very unusual in antiquity. The almost invariable
custom was, when it became necessary to use a proper name from a foreign
language, to transcribe it as literally as might be with only such minor
changes as a difference in the genius of the language made necessary.
Thus the Greeks in speaking of their Persian enemies pronounced and wrote
such words as “Cyrus” and “Darius” in as close imitation as possible of
the native pronunciation of those names, and the Egyptians in turn, in
accepting the domination of the Macedonian Ptolemies, spelled and no
doubt pronounced the names of their conquerors with as little alteration
as was possible in a language which made scant use of vowels. It was
indeed this fact of transliteration rather than translation of foreign
proper names which, as we have seen, furnished the clew to the nineteenth
century scholars in their investigations of the hieroglyphics of Egypt
and the cuneiform writing of Asia. Had not the engraver of the Rosetta
stone spelled the word Ptolemy closely as the Greeks spelled it, Dr.
Young, perhaps, never would have found the key to the interpretation of
the hieroglyphics. And had not the eighty or ninety proper names of the
great inscription at Behistun been interpreted by the same signs in the
three different forms of writing that make up that inscription, it may
well be doubted whether we should even now have any clear knowledge of
the cuneiform character of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Indeed, so
universal was this custom of retaining proper names in their original
form that the failure of the Romans to apply to the Greeks the name which
they themselves employed seems very extraordinary indeed. The custom
which they thus inaugurated, however, has not been without imitators
in modern times, as witness the translation “Angleterre” by which the
French designate England, and the even stranger use by the same nation
of the word “Allemagne” to designate the land which its residents term
“Deutschland” and which in English is spoken of as Germany.
Had the classical writings of Greece been more extensively read
throughout Europe in the Middle Ages it is probable that the Roman name
Greece would have been discarded in modern usage, and the name Hellas
restored to its proper position. An effort to effect this change has
indeed been made more recently by many classical scholars, and it is by
no means unusual to meet the terms “Hellas” and “Hellenes” in modern
books of almost every European language; but to make the substitution in
the popular mind after the word Greece has been so closely linked with so
wide a chain of associate ideas for so many generations would be utterly
impossible, at least in our generation.
THE ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS
But whether known as Hellas or as Greece, the tiny peninsula designated
by these names was inhabited by a people which by common consent was
by far the most interesting of antiquity. It has been said that they
constituted a race rather than a nation, for the most patent fact about
them, to any one who gives even casual attention to their history, was
that they lacked the political unity which lies at the foundation of true
national existence. Yet the pride of race to a certain extent made up for
this deficiency, and if the Greeks recognised no single ruler and were
never bound together into a single state, they felt more keenly perhaps
than any other nation that has lived at any other period of the world’s
history--unless perhaps an exception be made of the modern Frenchman--the
binding force of racial affinities and the full meaning of the old adage
that blood is thicker than water.
All this of course implies that the Greeks were one race in the narrow
sense of the term, sprung in relatively recent time from a single stock.
Such was undoubtedly the fact, and the division into Ionians, Dorians,
and various lesser branches, on which the historian naturally lays much
stress, must be understood always as implying only a minor and later
differentiation. One will hear much of the various dialects of the
different Greek states, but one must not forget that these dialects
represent only minor variations of speech which as compared with the
fundamental unity of the language as a whole might almost be disregarded.
To be a Greek was to be born of Greek parents, to the use of the Greek
language as a mother tongue; for the most part, following the national
custom, it was to eschew every other language and to look out upon all
peoples who spoke another tongue as “barbarians”--people of an alien
birth and an alien genius.
But whence came this people of the parent stock whose descendants made
up the historic Greek race? No one knows. The Greeks themselves hardly
dared to ask the question, and we are utterly without data for answering
it if asked. Their traditions implied a migration from some unknown
land to Greece, since those traditions told of a non-Hellenic people
who inhabited the land before them. Yet in contradiction of this idea
the Greek mind clung always to autocthony. Like most other nations, and
in far greater measure than perhaps any other, the Hellenes loved their
home--almost worshipped it. To be a Greek and yet to have no association
with the mountains and valleys and estuaries and islands of Greece seems
a contradiction of terms. True, a major part of the population at a
later day lived in distant colonies as widely separated as Asia Minor
and Italy, but even here they thought of themselves only as more or
less temporary invaders from the parent seat, and even kept up their
association with it by considering all lands which Greeks colonised as a
part of “Greater Greece.”
That the Greeks are of Aryan stock is of course made perfectly clear
by their language. Some interesting conclusions as to the time when
they branched from the parent stock are gained by philologists through
observation of words which manifestly have the same root and meaning in
the different Aryan languages. Thus, for example, the fact that such
words as Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Son, Daughter, and the like,
are clearly of the same root in Sanskrit and Greek as well as in Latin
and the Germanic speech, shows that a certain relatively advanced stage
of family life had been attained while the primitive Aryans still formed
but a single race. Again the resemblance between the Greek and the
Latin languages goes to show that the people whose descendants became
Greeks and Romans clung together till a relatively late period, after
the splitting up of the primitive race had begun. Yet on the other hand
the differences between the Greek and the Latin prove that the two races
using these languages had been separated long before either of them is
ushered into history.
From which direction the parent stock of the Greeks came into the land
that was to be their future abiding place has long been a moot point with
scholars, and is yet undetermined. So long as the original cradle of the
Aryans was held to be central Asia, it was the unavoidable conclusion
that the Aryans of Europe, including the Greeks, had come originally from
the East. But when the theory was introduced that the real cradle of the
primitive Aryan was not Asia but northwestern Europe all certainty from
_a priori_ considerations vanished, for it seemed at least as plausible
that the parent Greeks might have dropped aside from the main swarm on
its eastern journey to invade Asia as that they should have oscillated
back to Greece after that invasion had been established. And more
recently the question is still further complicated by the “Mediterranean
Race” theory, which includes the Greeks as descendants of a hypothetical
stock whose cradle was neither Asia nor Europe, but equatorial Africa.[a]
Some of the latest accounts of Greek origin are stated by Professor Bury
who says:
“It is in the lands of Thessaly and Epirus that we first dimly descry
the Greeks busy at the task for which destiny had chosen them, of
creating and shaping the thought and civilisation of Europe. The oak
wood of Dodona in Epirus is the earliest sanctuary, whereof we have any
knowledge, of their supreme god, Zeus, the dweller of the sky. Thessaly
has associations which still appeal intimately to men of European birth.
The first Greek settlers in Thessaly were the Achæans; and in the plain
of Argos, and in the mountains which gird it about, they fashioned
legends which were to sink deeply into the imagination of Europe. We know
that when the Greek conquerors came down to the coast of the Ægean they
found a material civilisation more advanced than their own; and it was
so chanced that we know more of this civilisation than we know of the
conquerors before they came under its influence.
“In Greece as in the other two great peninsulas of the Mediterranean, we
find, before the invader of Aryan speech entered in and took possession,
a white folk not speaking an Aryan tongue. Corresponding to the Iberians
in Spain and Gaul, to the Ligurians in Italy, we find in Greece a race
which was also spread over the islands of the Ægean and along the coast
of Asia Minor. The men of this primeval race gave to many a hill and
rock the name which was to abide with it forever. Corinth and Tiryns,
Parnassus and Olympus, Arne and Larissa, are names which the Greeks
received from the peoples whom they dispossessed. But this Ægean race,
as we may call it for want of a common name, had developed, before the
coming of the Greek, a civilisation of which we have only very lately
come to know. This civilisation went hand in hand with an active trade,
which in the third millennium spread its influence far beyond the borders
of the Ægean, as far at least as the Danube and the Nile, and received in
return gifts from all quarters of the world. The Ægean peoples therefore
plied a busy trade by sea, and their maritime intercourse with the
African continent can be traced back to even earlier times, since at the
very beginning of Egyptian history we find in Egypt obsidian, which can
have come only from the Ægean isles. The most notable remains of this
civilisation have been found at Troy, in the little island of Amorgos,
and in the great island of Crete.
“The conquest of the Greek peninsula by the Greeks lies a long way behind
recorded history, and the Greeks themselves, when they began to reflect
on their own past, had completely forgotten what their remote ancestors
had done ages and ages before.
“The invaders spoke an Aryan speech, but it does not follow that they all
came of Aryan stock. There was, indeed, an Aryan element among them, and
some of them were descendants of men of Aryan race who had originally
taught them their language and brought them some Aryan institutions and
Aryan deities. But the infusion of the Aryan blood was probably small;
and in describing the Greeks, as well as any other of the races who speak
sister tongues, we must be careful to call them men of Aryan speech, and
not men of Aryan stock.[c]”
Perhaps the very latest view of sterling authority is that of Professor
William Ridgeway,[d] who, after marshalling a vast amount of argument
and induction based upon the extant and newly discovered relics of early
Grecian civilisations, sums up his theories briefly and definitely. He
accepts the existence of a “Pelasgian” race, which many have scouted,
and credits it with the art-work and commerce revealed at Mycenæ
and elsewhere and called “Mycenæan.” This was a dark-skinned (or
melanochroöus) race which “had dwelt in Greece from a remote antiquity
and had at all times, in spite of conquests, remained a chief element in
the population of all Greece, whilst in Arcadia and Attica it had never
been subjugated.” The Mycenæan civilisation had its origin, he believes,
in the mainland of Greece and spread thence outwards to the isles of the
Ægean, Crete, Egypt, and north to the Euxine. This Mycenæan era differs
widely from the Homeric,--as in the treatment of the dead, and in the use
of metals,--and preceded the Homeric by a great distance, the Mycenæan
period belonging to the Bronze Age, the Homeric to the Iron Age.
The Homeric people were not melanochroöus, but xanthochroöus (fair and
blond), and were evidently a conquering race--the Achæans. These Achæans,
according to Greek tradition, came from Epirus, and indeed a study of
the relics and “the culture of the early Iron Age of Bosnia, Carniola,
Styria, Salzburg, and upper Italy revealed armour, weapons, and ornaments
exactly corresponding to those described in Homer. Moreover we found that
a fair-haired race greater in stature than the melanochroöus Ægean people
had there been domiciled for long ages, and that fresh bodies of tall,
fair-haired people from the shores of the northern ocean continually
through the ages had kept pressing down into the southern peninsulas.
From this it followed that the Achæans of Homer were one of these bodies
of Celts, who had made their way down into Greece and had become masters
of the indigenous race.”
The history of the round shield, the use of buckles and brooches, the
custom of cremating the dead, and the distribution of iron in Europe,
Asia, and Africa, seem to Professor Ridgeway to point still more sharply
to a theory that these features of Greek civilisation previously existed
in central Europe and were brought thence into Greece. A study of the
dialect in which the Homeric poems are written indicates that the
language and metre belonged to the earlier race, the Pelasgians, whom the
Achæans conquered. The earliest Greeks spoke an Aryan or Indo-Germanic
language of which the Arcadian dialect was the purest remnant, since
the Achæans and Dorians never conquered Arcadia. The introduction
of labialism into the Greek, Ridgeway believes to be a proof of the
Celtic origin of the invaders who accepted, as conquerors usually do,
the language of the conquered and yet modified it. “Labialism” is the
changing of a hard consonant as “k” into a lip-consonant as “p”--as the
older Greek word for horse was “hikkos,” which became “hippos.” The
result, then, of Ridgeway’s erudite research is his belief that “the
Achæans were a Celtic tribe who made their way into Greece,” and for this
theory he asserts that “archæology, tradition, and language are all in
harmony.”
The original source of this migration,--for it was rather migration
than an invasion,--seems to have been in the northwest of the Balkan
peninsula. Some extraordinary pressure must have been brought to bear on
the Greeks by the Illyrians who may themselves have been forced out of
their own homes by some unrecorded power. At the same time the people
then living in Macedonia and Thrace were dispossessed and shoved into
Phrygia and the regions of Troy in Asia Minor. The possession of Greece
by the Greeks was doubtless very gradual and the Peloponnesus was the
last to be visited, possibly by boat across the Corinthian Gulf. In some
places the new-comers were doubtless compelled to fight, elsewhere they
drifted in almost unnoticed and gradually asserted a sway. The new-comers
imposed their speech eventually on the older people, but as usual they
must have been themselves largely influenced by the older civilisation in
the matter of customs and conditions.[a]
EARLY CONDITIONS AND MOVEMENTS
In the Pelasgic period we find the ancient Greeks in a primitive, but
not really barbaric condition. There are settled peoples engaged in
agriculture, as well as half nomadic pastoral tribes. The latter form,
for a long time, a very unstable element of the population, ever ready
under pressure of circumstances to leave their old homes and fight for
new ones, bearing disturbance and anarchy into the civilised districts.
The life of these peasants and shepherds was very simple and patriarchal.
The ox and the horse were known to them, and drew their wagons and their
ploughs; the principal source of their wealth consisted in great herds
of swine, sheep, and cattle. Fishermen already navigated the numerous
arms of the seas that indented the land. Public life had perfectly
patriarchal forms. “Kings” were to be found everywhere as ruling heads
of the numerous small tribes. Religion appeared essentially as a cult
of the mighty forces of nature. The deities were worshipped without
temples and images, and were appealed to with prayers, with both bloody
and bloodless sacrifices,--at the head Zeus, the god of the sky; at his
side Dione, the goddess of earth, who, however, was early replaced by
the figure of Hera; Demeter, the earth mother, the patron of agriculture
and of settled life; Hestia, the patron of the hearth fire and the altar
fire; Hermes, the swift messenger of heaven, driver of the clouds and
guardian of the herds; Poseidon, the god of the waters; and the chthonic
[_i.e._ subterranean] divinity Aidoneus or Hades. The art of prophecy was
developed early; the oracle of Dodona in Epirus was universally known.
We know not how long the ancient Greeks remained in the quiet Pelasgic
conditions. But we can distinguish the causes that produced the internal
movement and mighty ferment, from which the chivalrous nation of the
Achæans finally came. Most important were the influences of the highly
developed civilisation of the Orient upon the youthful, gifted Greek
nation. The Phœnicians were the principal bearers of this influence. They
had occupied many of the islands of the Ægean, and had planted colonies
even on the mainland, as at Thebes and Acrocorinthus. The merchants
exchanged the products of Phœnician and Babylonian industry for wool,
hides, and slaves. They worked the copper mines of Cyprus and Argolis and
the gold mines of Thasos and Thrace, but obtained even greater wealth
from the purple shellfish of the Grecian waters.
For about a century the Phœnicians exerted a strong pressure on the
coasts of Greece, and they left considerable traces in Grecian mythology
and civilisation. The gifted Greeks, who in all periods of their history
were quick to profit by foreign example, were deeply impressed by the
superior civilisation of the Phœnicians. The activity and skill of
the men of Sidon in navigation and fortification had a very permanent
effect. For a long time the Greeks made the Phœnicians their masters in
architecture, mining, and engineering; later they received from them the
alphabet and the Babylonian system of weights and measures. The industry
and the artistic skill of the Greeks also began to practice on the models
brought into the land by the Sidonians.
Internal dissensions, raids of the rude pastoral tribes upon the settled
peoples of the lowlands and the coast, and feuds between the nomads
themselves, were, doubtless, also a powerful factor in the transition
from the peaceful patriarchism of Pelasgic times to the more stirring
and warlike period that followed. The necessity of protecting person
and property from bold raiders by sea and land led to the erection of
fortresses, massive walls of rough stones piled upon one another and held
together only by the law of gravity. The best example of such “Cyclopean”
remains is the well-preserved citadel of Tiryns in Argolis. Here on a
hill only fifty feet high, the top of which is nine hundred feet long
and three hundred feet wide, a wall without towers follows the edge of
the rock. With an apparent thickness of twenty-five feet the real wall,
as it appears to-day, cannot be estimated at more than fifteen feet.
On each side of this run covered passages or galleries. By degrees the
Greeks learned from Phœnician models to construct these fortresses better
and finally to make real citadels of them. Little city communities were
gradually formed at the foot of the hill, but until far into the Hellenic
period the upper city, the “acropolis” remained the more important. Here
were the sanctuaries and the council chamber, the residence of the king
and often also the houses of the nobility.
The military nobility, the ancient Greek chivalry, also originated
in pre-historic times. In the storms of the new time the patriarchal
chieftains developed into powerful military princes who everywhere forced
the “Pelasgian” peasant to keep his sling or his sword, his lance or
his javelin, always at hand. A class of lords also arose, consisting of
families that supported themselves rather by the trade of arms than by
the pursuit of agriculture. This new nobility, which gradually grew to
great numerical strength, held a very important position down to the days
of democracy.
This transition period was subsequently called by the Hellenes the
Heroic Age. The myths and legends which the memory of the Greek tribes
and their poets preserved of this period have a varied character. On
the one hand, heroic figures are repeatedly developed from the local
names or the surnames of divinities, or the mythical history of a god is
transferred to a human being. On the other hand, this imaginative people
loved to concentrate its historical recollections and to load the deeds
and experiences of whole tribes and epochs upon one or another heroic
personality, whose cycle of legends in the course of further development
underwent new colourings and extensions through the mixture of fresh
elements. This is the way in which the legends of Hercules and Theseus,
of the Argonauts and the “Seven against Thebes” grew up. The most
glorious poetical illumination is cast upon the alleged greatest deed of
pre-Hellenic times, the ten years’ war waged by nearly the whole body of
Achæan heroes against the Teucrian Troy or Ilion.
The warlike, chivalrous-romantic nation of poetry and legendary history
at the close of the pre-Hellenic period we are accustomed to call the
Achæans. It seems to us safe to accept the theory that the name Achæans
means “the noble, excellent,” and belongs to the entire “hero-nation,”
not to a single tribe after which the Greeks as a whole were afterwards
called.
At least a few important remains of the tribal and state relations of
this age passed over into the Hellenic period. The Dorians were at this
time an insignificant mountain race in the mountains on the northern
edge of the beautiful basin of northeastern Greece, which had not yet
received the name of Thessaly, while the principal part was played there
by the Lapithæ on Mount Ossa and the lower Peneus, the Bœotians in the
southwest of the Peneus district, and especially the Minyæ, with one
branch at Iolcus on the gulf of Pagasæ and another in the western part
of the basin of the Copaïs, where they were in constant rivalry with the
Cadmeans of Thebes. The Ionic race was spread over the northern coast of
the Peloponnesus on the Gulf of Corinth, over a portion of the eastern
coast of this peninsula on the Gulf of Saron, and over Megaris and
Attica. Among the Ionic cantons Attica had already attained considerable
importance. Here the so-called Theseus, or rather a family of warlike
chieftains descended from the Ionic tribal hero Theseus, had succeeded in
uniting the four different portions of this district.
Of greater importance than any of these in the pre-Doric period were
the feudal states of the Peloponnesus. The strongest among these was
the royal house of the Atridæ, upon whose glory terrible legends cast
a dark and bloody shadow. From their capital at Mycenæ they ruled over
the whole of Argolis; chieftains in Tiryns, in Argos and on the coast
of the peninsula of Parnon acknowledged their authority. The remains of
the citadel of this royal family are still preserved. The hill on which
this citadel stood is surmounted by a small circular wall, and lower
down is surrounded by a mighty wall which everywhere follows the edge of
the cliff, and which in some places is built of rough layers of massive
stones, elsewhere of carefully fitted polygonal blocks, but also for
considerable stretches of rectangular blocks, in horizontal courses.
On the southwestern side is the principal gate, the famous Gate of the
Lions, which takes its name from the oldest extant remains of sculpture
in Greece. In the triangular gap in the wall above the lintel an enormous
slab of yellow limestone is fitted; it is divided in the middle by a
perpendicular column, on either side of which stands a lioness. In this
acropolis Schliemann found graves with human remains, with vessels of
clay, alabaster, and gold, ornaments of rock-crystal, copper, silver,
gold, and ivory.
Near the Gate of the Lions begin the walls of the lower city, which
stood on the ridge extending from the western declivity of the citadel
to the south. In this lower city are a number of remarkable subterranean
buildings, sepulchres and treasure houses of the ancient monarchs.
The best preserved and largest of these is the noteworthy round
building known as the “treasure house of Atreus” (also as the “grave of
Agamemnon”), which is especially interesting on account of its _tholos_,
or interior circular vault.
So in a large part of the Greek world a not inconsiderable degree
of civilisation had already begun to flourish. War, to be sure, was
governed, even down to the period of the highest culture, by a “martial
law” that recognised no right of the vanquished, delivered conquered
cities to the flames, and gave the person and the family of the captured
enemy to the victor as booty. The battle itself however, was conducted
according to certain mutually recognised chivalrous forms. The Greek
knights, rushing into battle in their chariots, hurled their terrible
javelins at the enemy, but made less use of the sword, and still less of
the bow, sought single combat with a foe of equal birth, and as a rule
avoided slaughtering the common soldier. The development of a class of
slaves in consequence of the incessant feuds was of great influence in
determining the whole future character of the later Hellenic states.
On the other hand, it is worthy of note that the ancient cruelty and
bloodthirsty savagery disappeared more and more, although breaking out
frightfully on occasion when the heat of Greek passion burst through all
restraint. But murder and even simple homicide, as they are recorded
with traces of blood in the older legendary history, ceased to be daily
occurrences.
Tradition shows traces of a beautiful moral idealism. The tenderest
friendship, respect of the Greek youth for age, conjugal loyalty of the
women, ardent love of family, and the highest degree of receptivity for
the good and the noble shine forth from the traditions of the Achæans
with a charm that warms the heart.
The beginnings of common religious assemblages, or Amphictyons, also
appear to belong to this time. So Greek life had already a quite complex
structure when a last echo of the ancient movement of peoples on the
Illyrian-Greek peninsula once more produced a general upheaval in all the
lands between Olympus and Malea, between the Ionian Sea and the mountains
of the coast of Asia Minor, after which Greece on either side of the
Ægean Sea had acquired the ethnographic physiognomy that it retained
until the invasion of the Slavs and Bulgarians.[e]
FOOTNOTES
[2] [The Latin Græcus was, however, derived from the old Greek name
Γραϊκός.]
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