This was the ruler of the land
When Athens was the land of fame:
This was the light that led the band
When earth was like a living flame;
The centre of earth’s noblest ring--
Of more than men the more than king.
--GEORGE CROLY.
Cimon was beyond dispute the ablest and most successful general of his
day: and his victories had shed a lustre on the arms of Athens, which
almost dimmed the glories of Marathon and Salamis. But while he was
gaining renown abroad, he had rivals at home, who were endeavouring
to supplant him in the affections of the people, and to establish a
system of domestic and foreign policy directly counter to his views,
and were preparing contests for him in which his military talents would
be of little avail. While Themistocles and Aristides were occupying the
political stage, an extraordinary genius had been ripening in obscurity,
and was only waiting for a favourable juncture to issue from the shade
into the broad day of public life. Xanthippus, the conqueror of Mycale,
had married Agariste, a descendant of the famous Clisthenes, and had left
two sons, Ariphron and Pericles. Of Ariphron little is known beside his
name: but Pericles, to an observing eye, gave early indications of a mind
formed for great things, and a will earnestly bent on them.
In his youth he had not rested satisfied with the ordinary Greek
education, but had applied himself, with an ardour which was not even
abated by the lapse of years, nor stifled by his public avocations, to
intellectual pursuits, which were then new at Athens, and confined to a
very narrow circle of inquisitive spirits. His birth and fortune afforded
him the means of familiar intercourse with all the men most eminent in
every kind of knowledge and art, who were already beginning to resort to
Athens as a common seat of learning. Thus, though Pythoclides taught him
to touch the cithara, he sought the elements of a higher kind of music
in the lessons of Damon, who was believed to have contributed mainly to
train him for his political career: himself no ordinary person; for he
was held up by the comic poets to public jealousy, as a secret favourer
of tyranny, and was driven from Athens by the process of ostracism. But
Pericles also entered with avidity into the abstrusest philosophical
speculations, and even took pleasure in the arid subtleties of the
Eleatic school, or at least in the ingenuity and the dialectic art with
which they were unfolded to him by Zeno. But his principal guide in such
researches, and the man who appears to have exercised the most powerful
and durable influence on his mind and character, was the philosopher
Anaxagoras, with whom he was long united in intimate friendship. Not only
his public and private deportment, and his habits of thought, but the
tone and style of his eloquence were believed to have been formed by his
intercourse with Anaxagoras. It was commonly supposed that this effect
was produced by the philosopher’s physical speculations, which, elevating
his disciple above the ignorant superstition of the vulgar, had imparted
to him the serene condescension and dignified language of a superior
being. But we should be loth to believe that it was the possession
of such physical secrets as Anaxagoras was able to communicate, that
inspired Pericles with his lofty conceptions, or that he was intoxicated
with the little taste of science which had weaned him from a few popular
prejudices. We should rather ascribe so deep an impression to the
distinguishing tenet of the Anaxagorean system, by which the philosopher
himself was supposed to have acquired the title of Mind.
It was undoubtedly not for the mere amusement of his leisure that
Pericles had enriched his mind with so many rare acquirements. All
of them were probably considered by him as instruments for the use
of the statesman: and even those which seemed most remote from all
practical purposes, may have contributed to the cultivation of that
natural eloquence, to which he owed so much of his influence. He left no
specimens of his oratory behind him, and we can only estimate it, like
many other fruits of Greek genius, by the effect it produced. The few
minute fragments preserved by Plutarch, which were recorded by earlier
authors because they had sunk deep in the mind of his hearers, seem to
indicate that he loved to concentrate his thoughts in a bold and vivid
image: as when he called Ægina the eyesore of Piræus, and said that he
descried war lowering from the Peloponnesus. But though signally gifted
and accomplished for political action, it was not without much hesitation
and apprehension that he entered on a field, where he saw ample room
indeed for the display of his powers, but also many enemies and great
dangers. The very superiority of which he could not but be conscious,
suggested a motive for alarm, as it might easily excite suspicion in the
people of views adverse to their freedom: and these fears were heightened
by some circumstances, trifling in themselves, but capable of awakening
or confirming a popular prejudice.
His personal appearance was graceful and majestic, notwithstanding
a remarkable disproportion in the length of his head, which became
a subject of inexhaustible pleasantry for the comic poets of this
day: but the old men who remembered Pisistratus, were struck by the
resemblance which they discovered between the tyrant and the young heir
of the Alemæonids, and not only in their features, but in the sweetness
of voice, and the volubility of utterance, with which both expressed
themselves. Still, after the ostracism of Themistocles, and the death of
Aristides, while Cimon was engaged in continual expeditions, Pericles
began to present himself more and more to the public eye, and was soon
the acknowledged chief of a powerful party, which openly aimed at
counteracting Cimon’s influence, and introducing opposite maxims into the
public counsels.
To some of the ancients indeed it appeared that the course of policy
adopted by Pericles was entirely determined by the spirit of emulation,
which induced him to take a different ground from that which he found
already occupied by Cimon: and that, as Cimon was at the head of the
aristocratical party which had been represented by Aristides, he
therefore placed himself in the front of that which had been led by
Themistocles. The difference between these parties, after the revolution
by which the ancestor of Pericles had undermined the power of the old
aristocracy, was for some time very faintly marked, and we have seen
that Aristides himself was the author of a very democratical measure,
which threw the first officers of the state open to all classes of the
citizens. The aristocracy had no hope of recovering what it had lost;
but, as the commonalty grew more enterprising, it became also more
intent on keeping all that it had retained, and on stopping all further
innovation at home. Abroad too, though it was no longer a question,
whether Athens should continue to be a great maritime power, or should
reduce her navy to the footing of the old _naucraries_, and though Cimon
himself had actively pursued the policy of Themistocles, there was room
for great difference of opinion as to the course which was to be followed
in her foreign relations. The aristocratical party wished, for their
own sake at least as much as for that of peace and justice, to preserve
the balance of power as steady as possible in Greece, and directed the
Athenian arms against the Persian empire with the greater energy, in the
hope of diverting them from intestine warfare. The democratical party had
other interests, and concurred only with that part of these views which
tended towards enriching and aggrandising the state.
It is difficult wholly to clear Pericles from the charge of having been
swayed by personal motives in the choice of his political system, as it
would be to establish it. But even if it were certain that his decision
was not the result of conviction, it might as fairly be attributed to
a hereditary prepossession in favour of the principles for which his
ancestors had contended, and which had probably been transmitted in his
family, as to his competition with Cimon, or to his fear of incurring
the suspicion that he aimed at a tyranny, or unconstitutional power;
a suspicion to which he was much more exposed in the station which
he actually filled. But if his personal character might seem better
adapted to an aristocratical than to a democratical party, it must also
render us unwilling to believe, that he devoted himself to the cause
of the commonalty merely that he might make it the instrument of his
own ambition. There seems to be much better ground for supposing that
he deliberately preferred the system which he adopted, as the most
consistent, if not alone reconcilable, with the prosperity and safety
of Athens: though his own agency in directing and controlling it might
be a prominent object in all his views. But he might well think that
the people had gone too far to remain stationary, even if there was any
reason why it should not seize the good which lay within its reach. Its
greatness had risen with the growth of the commonalty, and, it might
appear to him, could only be maintained and extended by the same means:
at home by a decided ascendency of the popular interest over that of the
old aristocracy, and every other class in the state; abroad by an equally
decided supremacy over the rest of Greece.
The contest between the parties seems for some time to have been carried
on, without much violence or animosity, and rather with a noble emulation
in the service of the public, than with assaults on one another. Cimon
had enriched his country with the spoil and ransom of the Persians; and
he had also greatly increased his private fortune. His disposition was
naturally inclined to liberality, and he made a munificent use of his
wealth.
The state of things had undergone a great change at Athens in favour of
the poorer class, since Solon had been obliged to interpose, to protect
them from the rigour of creditors, who first impoverished, and then
enslaved them. Since this time the aristocracy had found it expedient to
court the commonalty which it could no longer oppress, and to part with a
portion of its wealth for the sake of retaining its power. There were of
course then, as at all times, benevolent individuals, who only consulted
the dictates of a generous nature: but the contrast between the practice
which prevailed before and after the age of Solon, seems clearly to mark
the spurious origin of the ordinary beneficence. Yet Isocrates, when he
extols the bounty of the good old times, which prevented the pressure of
poverty from being ever felt, speaks of land granted at low rents, sums
of money advanced at low interest, and asserts that none of the citizens
were then in such indigence, as to depend on casual relief. Cimon’s
munificence therefore must have been remarkable, not only in its degree,
but in its kind: and was not the less that of a demagogue, because he
sought popularity, not merely for his own sake, but for that of his order
and his party.
Such was the light in which it was viewed by Pericles; and some of the
measures which most strongly marked his administration were adopted to
counteract its effects. He was not able to rival Cimon’s profusion, and
he even husbanded his private fortune with rigid economy, that he might
keep his probity in the management of public affairs free both from
temptation and suspicion. His friend Demonides is said first to have
suggested the thought of throwing Cimon’s liberality into the shade,
and rendering it superfluous, by proposing a similar application of the
public revenue. Pericles perhaps deemed it safer and more becoming, that
the people should supply the poorer citizens with the means of enjoyment
out of its own funds, than that they should depend on the bounty of
opulent individuals. He might think that the generation which had raised
their country to such a pitch of greatness, was entitled to reap the
fruits of the sacrifice which their fathers had made, in resigning the
produce of the mines of Laurium to the use of the state.
Very early therefore he signalised his appearance in the assembly by
becoming the author of a series of measures, all tending to provide for
the subsistence and gratification of the poorer class at the public
expense. But we must here observe, that, while he was courting the favour
of the multitude by these arts, he was no less studious to command its
respect. From his first entrance into public life, he devoted himself
with unremitting application to business; he was never to be seen out
of doors, but on the way between his house and the seat of council:
and, as if by way of contrast to Cimon’s convivial tastes, declined all
invitations to the entertainments of his acquaintance--once only during
the whole period he broke through this rule, to honour the wedding of
his relative Euryptolemus with his presence--and confined himself to
the society of a very select circle of intimate friends. He bestowed
the most assiduous attention on the preparation of his speeches, and so
little disguised it, that he used to say he never mounted the _bema_,
without praying that no inappropriate word might drop from his lips. The
impression thus produced was heightened by the calm majesty of his air
and carriage, and by the philosophical composure which he maintained
under all provocations.[45] And he was so careful to avoid the effect
which familiarity might have on the people, that he was sparing even
in his attendance at the assembly, and, reserving his own appearance
for great occasions, carried many of his measures through the agency
of his friends and partisans. Among them the person whose name is
most frequently associated with that of Pericles was Ephialtes, son of
Sophonides, a person not much less conspicuous for his rigid integrity
than Aristides himself, and who seems to have entered into the views of
Pericles with disinterested earnestness, and fearlessly to have borne the
brunt of the conflict with the opposite party.
Immediately after the conquest of Thasos an occasion occurred for the
two parties to measure their strength. As has been described, Cimon had
received instructions, before he brought home his victorious armament,
to attempt some further conquest on the mainland between the newly
conquered district and Macedonia. Plutarch says, that he was expected
to have invaded Macedonia, and to have added a large tract of it to the
dominions of Athens. Yet it does not clearly appear how the conquest
of Thasos afforded an opportunity of effecting this with greater ease:
nor is any motive suggested for such an attack on the territories of
Alexander. We might hence be inclined to suspect, that the expedition
which Cimon had neglected to undertake, though called for by the people’s
wishes, if not by their express orders, was to have been directed, not
against Macedonia, but against the Thracian tribes on its frontier,
who had so lately cut off their colonists on the Strymon: a blow which
the Athenians were naturally impatient to avenge, but which the king
of Macedonia might well be supposed to have witnessed without regret,
even if he did not instigate those who inflicted it. However this may
be, Cimon’s forbearance disappointed and irritated the people, and his
adversaries inflamed the popular indignation by ascribing his conduct
to the influence of Macedonian gold. This part of the charge at least
was undoubtedly groundless; and Pericles, though appointed by the people
one of Cimon’s accusers, when he was brought to trial for treason,
seems to have entered into the prosecution with reluctance. The danger
however was great, and Elpinice came to the house of Pericles to plead
with him for her brother. Pericles, playfully, though it would seem not
quite so delicately as our manners would require, reminded her that she
was past the age at which female intercession is most powerful; but
in effect he granted her request; for he kept back the thunder of his
eloquence, and only rose once, for form’s sake, to second the accusation.
Plutarch says that Cimon was acquitted; and there seems to be no reason
for doubting the fact, except a suspicion, that this was the trial to
which Demosthenes alludes, when he says that Cimon narrowly escaped with
his life, and was condemned to a penalty of fifty talents: a singular
repetition of his father’s destiny.
THE AREOPAGUS
This however was only a prelude to a more momentous struggle, which
involved the principles of the parties, and excited much stronger
feelings of mutual resentment. It appears to have been about this time
that Pericles resolved on attacking the aristocracy in its ancient and
revered stronghold, the Areopagus. We have seen that this body, at once
a council and a court of justice, was composed, according to Solon’s
regulation, of the ex-archons. Its character was little altered after the
archonship was filled by lot, so long as it was open to none but citizens
of the wealthiest class. But, by the innovation introduced by Aristides,
the poorest Athenian might gain admission to the Areopagus. Still the
change which this measure produced in its composition was probably for a
long time scarcely perceptible, and attended with no effect on its maxims
and proceedings. When Pericles made his attack on it, it was perhaps
as much as ever an aristocratical assembly. The greater part of the
members had come in under the old system, and most of those who followed
them probably belonged to the same class; for though in the eye of the
law the archonship had become open to all, it is not likely that many
of a lower station would immediately present themselves to take their
chance. But even if any such were successful, they could exert but little
influence on the general character of the council, which would act much
more powerfully on them. The poor man who took his seat among a number
of persons of superior rank, fortune, and education, would generally be
eager to adopt the tone and conform to the wishes of his colleagues;
and hence the prevailing spirit might continue for many generations
unaltered. This may be the main point which Isocrates had in view, when
he observed that the worst men, as soon as they entered the Areopagus,
seemed to change their nature. Pericles therefore had reason to consider
it as a formidable obstacle to his plans. He did not however attempt,
or perhaps desire, to abolish an institution so hallowed by tradition;
but he aimed at narrowing the range of its functions, so as to leave it
little more than an august name. Ephialtes was his principal coadjutor in
this undertaking, and by the prominent part which he took in it exposed
himself to the implacable enmity of the opposite party, which appears to
have set all its engines in motion to ward off the blow.
It is not certain whether this struggle had begun, or was only impending,
at the time of the embassy which came from Sparta to request the aid
of the Athenians against Ithome. But the two parties were no less at
variance on this subject than on the other. The aristocratical party
considered Sparta as its natural ally, and did not wish to see Athens
without a rival in Greece. Cimon was personally attached to Sparta,
possessed the confidence of the Spartans, and took every opportunity of
expressing the warmest admiration for their character and institutions;
and, to mark his respect for them, gave one of his sons the name of
Lacedæmonius. He himself was in some degree indebted to their patronage
for his political elevation, and had requited their favour by joining
with them in the persecution of Themistocles. When therefore Ephialtes
dissuaded the people from granting the request of the Spartans, and
exclaimed against the folly of raising a fallen antagonist, Cimon
urged them “not to permit Greece to be lamed, and Athens to lose her
yoke-fellow.” This advice prevailed, and Cimon was sent with a large
force to assist the Spartans at the siege of Ithome.
The first effect produced by the affront Sparta later gave to Athens,
was, as we have seen, a resolution to break off all connection with
Sparta, and, to make the rupture more glaring, they had entered into an
alliance with Sparta’s old rival, Argos.
This turn of events was extremely agreeable to the democratical party at
Athens, not only in itself, on account of the assistance which they might
hope to receive from Argos, but because it immediately afforded them a
great advantage in their conflict with their domestic adversaries, and
in particular furnished them with new arms against Cimon. He instantly
became obnoxious, both as the avowed friend of Sparta, and as the
author and leader of the expedition which had drawn so rude an insult
on his countrymen. The attack on the authority of the Areopagus was now
prosecuted with greater vigour, and Cimon had little influence left
to exert in its behalf. Yet his party seems not by any means to have
remained passive, but to have put forth all its strength in a last effort
to save its citadel: and it was supported by an auxiliary which had in
its possession some very powerful engines to wield in its defence.
[Sidenote: [525-456 B.C.]]
This was the poet Æschylus, who was attached to it by his character
and his early associations. Himself a Eupatrid, perhaps connected with
the priestly families of Eleusis, his deme, if not his birth-place,
he gloried in the laurels which he had won at Marathon, above all the
honours earned by his sword and by his pen, though he had also fought at
Salamis, and had founded a new era of dramatic poetry. He was an admirer
of Aristides, whose character he had painted in one of his tragedies,
under the name of an ancient hero, with a truth which was immediately
recognised by the audience.
[Illustration: ÆSCHYLUS]
The contest with Persia, which was the subject of one of his great
works, probably appeared to him the legitimate object for the energies
of Greece. Beside this general disposition to side with Cimon’s party,
against Pericles, the whole train of his poetical and religious feelings
was nourished by a study of the mythical and religious traditions of
Greek antiquity. In his tragedy, entitled the _Eumenides_, he exhibits
the mythical origin of the court and council of Areopagus, in the form
which best suited his purpose, tracing it to the cause first pleaded
there between the Argive matricide Orestes, who pledges his country to
eternal alliance with Athens, and the “dread goddesses,” who sought
vengeance for the blood which he had shed. The poet brings these terrible
beings on the stage, as well as the tutelary goddess of the city, who
herself institutes the tribunal, “to last throughout all ages,” and
exhorts her people to preserve it as the glory and safeguard of the city;
and the spectators are led to consider the continuance of the blessings
which the pacified avengers promise to the land, as depending on the
permanence of the institution which had succeeded to their function.[b]
Owing to a misunderstanding as to the date of this tragedy, it was long
believed that Æschylus wrote it in reproof of Pericles for diminishing
the power of the Areopagus. When it became certain that the play was not
produced till 458, a new light was thrown on the affair, showing Æschylus
as a defender of the merely judicial function of the Areopagus, for
Pericles and Ephialtes left the Areopagus its judicial dignity and merely
removed its political weight, as will be more fully shown in a later
chapter. Æschylus therefore appears as one in no sense protesting, but
rather as showing the true origin and strictly judicial function of the
Areopagus, and approving Ephialtes who carried the day and reduced its
pretensions.[a]
CIMON EXILED
[Sidenote: [461-460 _B.C._]]
This triumph of Pericles and his party over the Areopagus seems to have
been immediately followed by the ostracism of Cimon, which took place
about two years after the return of the Athenians from Messenia: and it
is therefore not improbable that his exile may have been not so much an
effect of popular resentment, as a measure of precaution, which may have
appeared necessary even to the moderate men of both parties, for the
establishment of public tranquillity.[b]
The new character which Athens had assumed, as a competitor for landed
alliances not less than for maritime ascendency, came opportunely for the
protection of the neighbouring town of Megara. It appears that Corinth,
perhaps instigated like Argos by the helplessness of the Lacedæmonians,
had been making border encroachments--on the one side upon Cleonæ, on the
other side upon Megara: on which ground the latter, probably despairing
of protection from Lacedæmon, renounced the Lacedæmonian connection, and
obtained permission to enrol herself as an ally of Athens. This was an
acquisition of signal value to the Athenians, since it both opened to
them the whole range of territory across the outer Isthmus of Corinth
to the interior of the Crissæan gulf, on which the Megarian port of
Pegæ was situated, and placed them in possession of the passes of Mount
Geranea, so that they could arrest the march of a Peloponnesian army
over the isthmus, and protect Attica from invasion. It was moreover of
great importance in its effects on Grecian politics: for it was counted
as a wrong by Lacedæmon, gave deadly offence to the Corinthians, and
lighted up the flames of war between them and Athens; their allies the
Epidaurians and Æginetans taking their part. Though Athens had not yet
been guilty of unjust encroachment against any Peloponnesian state, her
ambition and energy had inspired universal awe; while the maritime states
in the neighbourhood, such as Corinth, Epidaurus, and Ægina, saw these
terror-striking qualities threatening them at their own doors, through
her alliance with Argos and Megara. Moreover, it is probable that the
ancient feud between the Athenians and Æginetans, though dormant since a
little before the Persian invasion, had never been appeased or forgotten:
so that the Æginetans, dwelling within sight of Piræus, were at once best
able to appreciate, and most likely to dread, the enormous maritime power
now possessed by Athens. Pericles was wont to call Ægina the eyesore of
Piræus: but we may be sure that Piræus, grown into a vast fortified port
within the existing generation, was in a much stronger degree the eyesore
of Ægina.
The Athenians were at this time actively engaged in prosecuting the war
against Persia, having a fleet of no less than two hundred sail, equipped
by or from the confederacy collectively, now serving in Cyprus and on
the Phœnician coast. Moreover the revolt of the Egyptians under Inarus
(about 460 B.C.) opened to them new means of action against the Great
King. Their fleet, by invitation of the rebels, sailed up the Nile to
Memphis, where there seemed at first a good prospect of throwing off the
Persian dominion. Yet in spite of so great an abstraction from their
disposable force, their military operations near home were conducted with
unabated vigour: and the inscription which remains--a commemoration of
their citizens of the Erechthid tribe who were slain in one and the same
year in Cyprus, Egypt, Phœnicia, the Halieis, Ægina, and Megara--brings
forcibly before us that remarkable energy which astonished and even
alarmed their contemporaries.
[Sidenote: [460-458 B.C.]]
Their first proceedings at Megara were of a nature altogether novel, in
the existing condition of Greece. It was necessary for the Athenians
to protect their new ally against the superiority of the Peloponnesian
land-force, and to insure a constant communication with it by sea. But
the city (like most of the ancient Hellenic towns) was situated on a hill
at some distance from the sea, separated from its port Nisæa by a space
of nearly one mile. One of the earliest proceedings of the Athenians was
to build two lines of wall, near and parallel to each other, connecting
the city with Nisæa; so that the two thus formed one continuous fortress,
wherein a standing Athenian garrison was maintained, with the constant
means of succour from Athens in case of need. These “Long Walls,” though
afterwards copied in other places and on a larger scale, were at that
juncture an ingenious invention, and were erected for the purpose of
extending the maritime arm of Athens to an inland city.
THE WAR WITH CORINTH
The first operations of Corinth however were not directed against Megara.
The Athenians, having undertaken a landing in the territory of the
Halieis (the population of the southern Argolic peninsula, bordering
on Trœzen and Hermione), were defeated on land by the Corinthian and
Epidaurian forces: possibly it may have been in this expedition that
they acquired possession of Trœzen, which we find afterwards in their
dependance, without knowing when it became so. But in a sea-fight which
took place off the island of Cecryphaleia (between Ægina and the Argolic
peninsula) the Athenians gained the victory. After this victory and
defeat--neither of them apparently very decisive--the Æginetans began to
take a more energetic part in the war, and brought out their full naval
force together with that of their allies--Corinthians, Epidaurians, and
other Peloponnesians: while Athens equipped a fleet of corresponding
magnitude, summoning her allies also; though we do not know the actual
numbers on either side.
In the great naval battle which ensued off the island of Ægina, the
superiority of the new nautical tactics acquired by twenty years’
practice of the Athenians since the Persian War--over the old Hellenic
ships and seamen, as shown in those states where at the time of the
battle of Marathon the maritime strength of Greece had resided--was
demonstrated by a victory most complete and decisive. The Peloponnesian
and Dorian seamen had as yet had no experience of the improved seacraft
of Athens, and when we find how much they were disconcerted with it even
twenty-eight years afterwards at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
War, we shall not wonder at its destructive effect upon them in this
early battle. The maritime power of Ægina was irrecoverably ruined. The
Athenians captured seventy ships of war, landed a large force upon the
island, and commenced the siege of the city by land as well as by sea.
If the Lacedæmonians had not been occupied at home by the blockade of
Ithome, they would have been probably induced to invade Attica as a
diversion to the Æginetans; especially as the Persian Megabazus came
to Sparta at this time on the part of Artaxerxes to prevail upon them
to do so, in order that the Athenians might be constrained to retire
from Egypt. This Persian brought with him a large sum of money, but
was nevertheless obliged to return without effecting his mission. The
Corinthians and Epidaurians, however, while they carried to Ægina a
reinforcement of three hundred hoplites, did their best to aid her
further by an attack upon Megara; which place, it was supposed, the
Athenians could not possibly relieve without withdrawing their forces
from Ægina, inasmuch as so many of their men were at the same time
serving in Egypt. But the Athenians showed themselves equal to all these
three exigencies at one and the same time--to the great disappointment of
their enemies. Myronides marched from Athens to Megara at the head of the
citizens in the two extremes of military age, old and young; these being
the only troops at home. He fought the Corinthians near the town, gaining
a slight, but debatable advantage, which he commemorated by a trophy,
as soon as the Corinthians had returned home. But the latter, when they
arrived at home, were so much reproached by their own old citizens, for
not having vanquished the refuse of the Athenian military force, that
they returned back at the end of twelve days and erected a trophy on
their side, laying claim to a victory in the past battle. The Athenians,
marching out of Megara, attacked them a second time, and gained on this
occasion a decisive victory. The defeated Corinthians were still more
unfortunate in their retreat; for a body of them, missing their road,
became entangled in a space of private ground enclosed on every side by
a deep ditch and having only one narrow entrance. Myronides, detecting
this fatal mistake, planted his hoplites at the entrance to prevent their
escape, and then surrounded the enclosure with his light-armed troops,
who with their missile weapons slew all the Corinthian hoplites, without
possibility either of flight or resistance. The bulk of the Corinthian
army effected their retreat, but the destruction of this detachment was a
sad blow to the city.
THE LONG WALLS
[Sidenote: [458 B.C.]]
Splendid as the success of the Athenians had been during this year, both
on land and at sea, it was easy for them to foresee that the power of
their enemies would presently be augmented by the Lacedæmonians taking
the field. Partly on this account--partly also from the more energetic
phase of democracy, and the long-sighted views of Pericles, which were
now becoming ascendant in the city--the Athenians began the stupendous
undertaking of connecting Athens with the sea by means of long walls. The
idea of this measure had doubtless been first suggested by the recent
erection of long walls, though for so much smaller a distance, between
Megara and Nisæa: for without such an intermediate stepping-stone, the
project of a wall forty stadia (about 4½ English miles) to join Athens
with Piræus, and another wall of thirty-five stadia (nearly 4 English
miles) to join it with Phalerum, would have appeared extravagant even
to the sanguine temper of Athenians--as it certainly would have seemed
a few years earlier to Themistocles himself. Coming as an immediate
sequel of great recent victories, and while Ægina, the great Dorian naval
power, was prostrate and under blockade, it excited the utmost alarm
among the Peloponnesians--being regarded as the second great stride, at
once conspicuous and of lasting effect, in Athenian ambition, next to
the fortification of Piræus. But besides this feeling in the bosom of
enemies, the measure was also interwoven with the formidable contention
of political parties then going on at Athens. Cimon had been recently
ostracised; and the democratical movement pressed by Pericles and
Ephialtes (of which more presently) was in its full tide of success; yet
not without a violent and unprincipled opposition on the part of those
who supported the existing constitution.
Now the Long Walls formed a part of the foreign policy of Pericles,
continuing on a gigantic scale the plans of Themistocles when he first
schemed the Piræus. They were framed to render Athens capable of
carrying on war against any superiority of land attack, and of bidding
defiance to the united force of Peloponnesus. But though thus calculated
for contingencies which a long-sighted man might see gathering in the
distance, the new walls were, almost on the same grounds, obnoxious to a
considerable number of Athenians: to the party recently headed by Cimon,
which was attached to the Lacedæmonian connection, and desired above all
things to maintain peace at home, reserving the energies of the state
for anti-Persian enterprise: to many landed proprietors in Attica, whom
they seemed to threaten with approaching invasion and destruction of
their territorial possessions: to the rich men and aristocrats of Athens,
averse to a still closer contact and amalgamation with the maritime
multitude in Piræus: lastly, perhaps, to a certain vein of old Attic
feeling, which might look upon the junction of Athens with the separate
demes of Piræus and Phalerum as effacing the special associations
connected with the holy rock of Athene. When to all these grounds of
opposition we add the expense and trouble of the undertaking itself,
the interference with private property, the peculiar violence of party
which happened then to be raging, and the absence of a large proportion
of military citizens in Egypt, we shall hardly be surprised to find that
the projected long walls brought on a risk of the most serious character
both for Athens and her democracy. If any further proof were wanting of
the vast importance of these long walls, in the eyes both of friends and
of enemies, we might find it in the fact that their destruction was the
prominent mark of Athenian humiliation after the battle of Ægospotami,
and their restoration the immediate boon of Pharnabazus and Conon after
the victory of Cnidus.
[Sidenote: [457 B.C.]]
Under the influence of the alarm now spread by the proceedings of Athens,
the Lacedæmonians were prevailed upon to undertake an expedition out
of Peloponnesus, although the helots in Ithome were not yet reduced to
surrender. Their force consisted of fifteen hundred troops of their own,
and ten thousand of their various allies, under the regent Nicomedes. The
ostensible motive, or the pretence, for this march, was the protection
of the little territory of Doris against the Phocians, who had recently
invaded it and taken one of its three towns. The mere approach of so
large a force immediately compelled the Phocians to relinquish their
conquest, but it was soon seen that this was only a small part of
the objects of Sparta, and that her main purpose, under instigation
of the Corinthians, was, to arrest the aggrandisement of Athens. It
could not escape the penetration of Corinth, that the Athenians might
presently either enlist or constrain the towns of Bœotia into their
alliance, as they had recently acquired Megara, in addition to their
previous ally Platæa: for the Bœotian federation was at this time much
disorganised, and Thebes, its chief, had never recovered her ascendency
since the discredit of her support lent to the Persian invasion. To
strengthen Thebes and to render her ascendency effective over the
Bœotian cities, was the best way of providing a neighbour at once
powerful and hostile to the Athenians, so as to prevent their further
aggrandisement by land: it was the same policy as Epaminondas pursued
eighty years afterwards, in organising Arcadia and Messene against
Sparta. Accordingly the Peloponnesian force was now employed partly in
enlarging and strengthening the fortifications of Thebes herself, partly
in constraining the other Bœotian cities into effective obedience to
her supremacy; probably by placing their governments in the hands of
citizens of known oligarchical politics, and perhaps banishing suspected
opponents. To this scheme the Thebans lent themselves with earnestness;
promising to keep down for the future their border neighbours, so as to
spare the necessity of armies coming from Sparta.
But there was also a further design, yet more important, in contemplation
by the Spartans and Corinthians. The oligarchical opposition at Athens
was so bitterly hostile to the Long Walls, to Pericles, and to the
democratical movement, that several of them opened a secret negotiation
with the Peloponnesian leaders; inviting them into Attica, and entreating
their aid in an internal rising for the purpose not only of putting
a stop to the Long Walls, but also of subverting the democracy. The
Peloponnesian army, while prosecuting its operations in Bœotia, waited
in hopes of seeing the Athenian malcontents in arms, encamping at
Tanagra on the very borders of Attica for the purpose of immediate
co-operation with them. The juncture was undoubtedly one of much hazard
for Athens, especially as the ostracised Cimon and his remaining friends
in the city were suspected of being implicated in the conspiracy. But
the Athenian leaders, aware of the Lacedæmonian operations in Bœotia,
knew also what was meant by the presence of the army on their immediate
borders--and took decisive measures to avert the danger. Having obtained
a reinforcement of one thousand Argeians and some Thessalian horse, they
marched out to Tanagra, with the full Athenian force then at home; which
must of course have consisted chiefly of the old and the young, the same
who had fought under Myronides at Megara; for the blockade of Ægina was
still going on.
Near Tanagra a bloody battle took place between the two armies, wherein
the Lacedæmonians were victorious, chiefly from the desertion of the
Thessalian horse who passed over to them in the very heat of the
engagement. But though the advantage was on their side, it was not
sufficiently decisive to favour the contemplated rising in Attica. Nor
did the Peloponnesians gain anything by it except an undisturbed retreat
over the high lands of Geranea, after having partially ravaged the
Megarid.
CIMON RECALLED
Though the battle of Tanagra was a defeat, yet there were circumstances
connected with it which rendered its effects highly beneficial to
Athens. The ostracised Cimon presented himself on the field, as soon
as the army had passed over the boundaries of Attica, requesting to
be allowed to occupy his station as a hoplite and fight in the ranks
of his tribe--the Œneis. But such was the belief, entertained by the
members of the senate and by his political enemies present, that he was
an accomplice in the conspiracy known to be on foot, that permission
was refused and he was forced to retire. In departing he conjured his
personal friends, Euthippus (of the deme Anaphlystus) and others, to
behave in such a manner as might wipe away the stain resting upon his
fidelity, and in part also upon theirs. His friends retained his panoply
and assigned to it the station in the ranks which he would himself have
occupied: they then entered the engagement with desperate resolution and
one hundred of them fell side by side in their ranks. Pericles, on his
part, who was present among the hoplites of his own tribe the Acamantii,
aware of this application and repulse of Cimon, thought it incumbent
upon him to display not merely his ordinary personal courage, but an
unusual recklessness of life and safety, though it happened that he
escaped unwounded. All these incidents brought about a generous sympathy
and spirit of compromise among the contending parties at Athens; while
the unshaken patriotism of Cimon and his friends discountenanced and
disarmed those conspirators who had entered into correspondence with the
enemy, at the same time that it roused a repentant admiration towards
the ostracised leader himself. Such was the happy working of this new
sentiment that a decree was shortly proposed and carried--proposed too
by Pericles himself--to abridge the ten years of Cimon’s ostracism, and
permit his immediate return.
We may recollect that under circumstances partly analogous, Themistocles
had himself proposed the restoration of his rival Aristides from
ostracism, a little before the battle of Salamis: and in both cases, the
suspension of enmity between the two leaders was partly the sign, partly
also the auxiliary cause, of reconciliation and renewed fraternity among
the general body of citizens. It was a moment analogous to that salutary
impulse of compromise, and harmony of parties, which followed the
extinction of the oligarchy of Four Hundred, forty-six years afterwards,
and on which Thucydides dwells emphatically as the salvation of Athens in
her distress--a moment rare in free communities generally, not less than
among the jealous competitors for political ascendency at Athens.
So powerful was this burst of fresh patriotism and unanimity after the
battle of Tanagra, which produced the recall of Cimon and appears to have
overlaid the pre-existing conspiracy, that the Athenians were quickly
in a condition to wipe off the stain of their defeat. It was on the
sixty-second day after the battle that they undertook an aggressive march
under Myronides into Bœotia: the extreme precision of this date (being
the single case throughout the summary of events between the Persian and
Peloponnesian Wars wherein Thucydides is thus precise) marks how strong
an impression it made upon the memory of the Athenians. At the battle of
Œnophyta, engaged against the aggregate Theban and Bœotian forces, or,
if Diodorus is to be trusted, in two battles, of which that of Œnophyta
was the last, Myronides was completely victorious. The Athenians became
masters of Thebes as well as of the remaining Bœotian towns; reversing
all the arrangements recently made by Sparta, establishing democratical
governments, and forcing the aristocratical leaders, favourable to Theban
ascendency and Lacedæmonian connection, to become exiles. Nor was it only
Bœotia which the Athenians thus acquired; Phocis and Locris were both
successively added to the list of their dependent allies, the former
being in the main friendly to Athens and not disinclined to the change,
while the latter were so decidedly hostile that one hundred of their
chiefs were detained and sent to Athens as hostages. The Athenians thus
extended their influence, maintained through internal party-management,
backed by the dread of interference from without in case of need, from
the borders of the Corinthian territory, including both Megara and Pegæ,
to the strait of Thermopylæ.
[Sidenote: [457-456 B.C.]]
These important acquisitions were soon crowned by the completion of the
Long Walls and the conquest of Ægina. That island, doubtless starved out
by its protracted blockade, was forced to capitulate on condition of
destroying its fortifications, surrendering all its ships of war, and
submitting to annual tribute as a dependent ally of Athens. The reduction
of this once powerful maritime city marked Athens as mistress of the
sea on the Peloponnesian coast not less than on the Ægean. Her admiral
Tolmides displayed her strength by sailing round Peloponnesus, and
even by the insult of burning the Lacedæmonian ports of Methone and of
Gythium. He took Chalcis, a possession of the Corinthians, and Naupactus
belonging to the Ozolian Locrians, near the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf,
disembarked troops near Sicyon, with some advantage in a battle against
opponents from that town, and either gained or forced into the Athenian
alliance not only Zacynthus and Cephallenia, but also some of the towns
of Achaia; for we afterwards find these latter attached to Athens without
knowing when the connection began. During the ensuing year the Athenians
renewed their attack upon Sicyon, with a force of one thousand hoplites
under Pericles himself, sailing from the Megarian harbour of Pegæ in the
Crissæan Gulf. This eminent man, however, gained no greater advantage
than Tolmides, defeating the Sicyonian forces in the field and driving
them within their walls. He afterwards made an expedition into Acarnania,
taking the Achæan allies in addition to his own forces, but miscarried
in his attack on Œniadæ and accomplished nothing. Nor were the Athenians
more successful in a march undertaken this same year against Thessaly,
for the purpose of restoring Orestes, one of the exiled princes or nobles
of Pharsalus. Though they took with them an imposing force, including
their Bœotian and Phocian allies, the powerful Thessalian cavalry forced
them to keep in a compact body and confined them to the ground actually
occupied by their hoplites; while all their attempts against the city
failed, and their hopes of internal rising were disappointed.
Had the Athenians succeeded in Thessaly, they would have acquired to
their alliance nearly the whole of extra-Peloponnesian Greece. But
even without Thessaly their power was prodigious, and had now attained
a maximum height from which it never varied except to decline. As a
counter-balancing loss against so many successes, we have to reckon
their ruinous defeat in Egypt, after a war of six years against the
Persians (460-455 B.C.). At first they had gained brilliant advantages,
in conjunction with the insurgent prince Inarus; expelling the Persians
from all Memphis except that strongest part called the White Fortress.
And such was the alarm of the Persian king Artaxerxes at the presence
of the Athenians in Egypt, that he sent Megabazus with a large sum of
money to Sparta, in order to induce the Lacedæmonians to invade Attica.
This envoy however failed, and an augmented Persian force, being sent
to Egypt under Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus, drove the Athenians and their
allies, after an obstinate struggle, out of Memphis into the island
of the Nile called Prosopitis. Here they were blocked up for eighteen
months, until at length Megabyzus turned the arm of the river, laid the
channel dry, and stormed the island by land. A very few Athenians escaped
by land to Cyrene: the rest were either slain or made captive, and Inarus
himself was crucified. And the calamity of Athens was farther aggravated
by the arrival of fifty fresh Athenian ships, which, coming after the
defeat, but without being aware of it, sailed into the Mendesian branch
of the Nile, and thus fell unawares into the power of the Persians and
Phœnicians, very few either of the ships or men escaping. The whole
of Egypt became again subject to the Persians, except Amyrtæus, who
contrived by retiring into the inaccessible fens still to maintain his
independence. One of the largest armaments ever sent forth by Athens and
her confederacy was thus utterly ruined.
It was about the time of the destruction of the Athenian army in
Egypt, and of the circumnavigation of Peloponnesus by Tolmides, that
the internal war, carried on by the Lacedæmonians against the helots
or Messenians at Ithome, ended. These besieged men, no longer able to
stand out against a protracted blockade, were forced to abandon this
last fortress of ancient Messenian independence, stipulating for a
safe retreat from the Peloponnesus with their wives and families; with
the proviso that if any one of them ever returned to Peloponnesus, he
should become the slave of the first person who seized him. They were
established by Tolmides at Naupactus (recently taken by the Athenians
from the Ozolian Locrians), where they will be found rendering good
service to Athens in the following wars.
THE FIVE-YEARS’ TRUCE
[Sidenote: [455-448 B.C.]]
After the victory of Tanagra, the Lacedæmonians made no further
expeditions out of Peloponnesus for several succeeding years, not even to
prevent Bœotia and Phocis from being absorbed into the Athenian alliance.
The reason of this remissness lay, partly, in their general character;
partly, in the continuance of the siege of Ithome, which occupied them
at home; but still more perhaps, in the fact that the Athenians, masters
of the Megarid, were in occupation of the road over the high lands of
Geranea, and could therefore obstruct the march of any army out from
Peloponnesus. Even after the surrender of Ithome, the Lacedæmonians
remained inactive for three years, after which time a formal truce was
concluded with Athens by the Peloponnesians generally, for five years
longer. This truce was concluded in a great degree through the influence
of Cimon, who was eager to resume effective operations against the
Persians; while it was not less suitable to the political interest of
Pericles that his most distinguished rival should be absent on foreign
service, so as not to interfere with his influence at home. Accordingly
Cimon, having equipped a fleet of two hundred triremes from Athens and
her confederates, set sail for Cyprus, from whence he despatched sixty
ships to Egypt, at the request of the insurgent prince Amyrtæus, who was
still maintaining himself against the Persians amidst the fens--while
with the remaining armament he laid siege to Citium. In the prosecution
of this siege, he died either of disease or of a wound. The armament,
under his successor Anaxicrates, became so embarrassed for want of
provisions that they abandoned the undertaking altogether, and went to
fight the Phœnician and Cilician fleet near Salamis in Cyprus. They were
here victorious, first on sea and afterwards on land, though probably not
on the same day, as at the Eurymedon; after which they returned home,
followed by the sixty ships which had gone to Egypt for the purpose of
aiding Amyrtæus.
From this time forward no further operations were undertaken by Athens
and her confederacy against the Persians. And it appears that a
convention was concluded between them, whereby the Great King on his part
promised two things: To leave free, undisturbed, and untaxed, the Asiatic
maritime Greeks, not sending troops within a given distance of the coast:
To refrain from sending any ships of war either westward of Phaselis
(others place the boundary at the Chelidonean islands, rather more to the
westward) or within the Cyanean rocks at the confluence of the Thracian
Bosporus with the Euxine. On their side the Athenians agreed to leave him
in undisturbed possession of Cyprus and Egypt. This was called the Peace
of Callias.
We may believe in the reality of this treaty between Athens and Persia,
improperly called the Cimonian Treaty: improperly, since not only was it
concluded after the death of Cimon, but the Athenian victories by which
it was immediately brought on, were gained after his death. Nay more--the
probability is, that if Cimon had lived, it would not have been concluded
at all. For his interest as well as his glory led him to prosecute the
war against Persia, since he was no match for his rival Pericles either
as a statesman or as an orator, and could only maintain his popularity
by the same means whereby he had earned it--victories and plunder at
the cost of the Persians. His death ensured more complete ascendency to
Pericles whose policy and character were of a cast altogether opposite.
THE CONFEDERACY BECOMES AN EMPIRE
Athens was now at peace both abroad and at home, under the administration
of Pericles, with a great empire, a great fleet, and a great accumulated
treasure. The common fund collected from the contributions of the
confederates, and originally deposited at Delos, had before this time
been transferred to the Acropolis at Athens. At what precise time such
transfer took place, we cannot state: nor are we enabled to assign
the successive stages whereby the confederacy, chiefly with the free
will of its own members, became transformed from a body of armed and
active warriors under the guidance of Athens, into disarmed and passive
tribute-payers defended by the military force of Athens: from allies
free, meeting at Delos, and self-determining into subjects isolated,
sending their annual tribute, and awaiting Athenian orders. But it would
appear that the change had been made before this time. Some of the more
resolute of the allies had tried to secede, but Athens had coerced them
by force, and reduced them to the condition of tribute-payers without
ships or defence; and Chios, Lesbos, and Samos were now the only allies
free and armed on the original footing. Every successive change of an
armed ally into a tributary, every subjugation of a seceder, tended of
course to cut down the numbers, and enfeeble the authority of the Delian
synod; and, what was still worse, it materially altered the reciprocal
relation and feelings both of Athens and her allies--exalting the former
into something like a despot, and degrading the latter into mere passive
subjects.
Of course the palpable manifestation of the change must have been
the transfer of the confederate fund from Delos to Athens. The only
circumstance which we know respecting this transfer is, that it was
proposed by the Samians--the second power in the confederacy, inferior
only to Athens, and least of all likely to favour any job or sinister
purpose of the Athenians.
Such transition, arising spontaneously out of the character and
circumstances of the confederates themselves, was thus materially
forwarded by the acquisitions of Athens extraneous to the confederacy.
She was now not merely the first maritime state in Greece, but perhaps
equal to Sparta even in land-power, possessing in her alliance
Megara, Bœotia, Phocis, Locris, together with Achaia and Trœzen in
the Peloponnesus. Large as this aggregate already was, both at sea
and on land, yet the magnitude of the annual tribute, and still more
the character of the Athenians themselves, superior to all Greeks in
that combination of energy and discipline which is the grand cause of
progress, threatened still further increase. Occupying the Megarian
harbour of Pegæ, the Athenians had full means of naval action on both
sides of the Corinthian isthmus: but what was of still greater importance
to them, by their possession of the Megarid and of the high lands of
Geranea, they could restrain any land-force from marching out of the
Peloponnesus, and were thus (considering besides their mastery at sea)
completely unassailable in Attica. Ever since the repulse of Xerxes,
Athens had been advancing in an uninterrupted course of power and
prosperity at home, as well as of victory and ascendency abroad--to which
there was no exception except the ruinous enterprise in Egypt.
[Sidenote: [448-446 B.C.]]
Looking at the position of Greece therefore about 448 B.C.--after the
conclusion of five years’ truce between the Peloponnesians and Athens,
and of the so-called Cimonian Peace between Persia and Athens--a
discerning Greek might well calculate upon further aggrandisement of this
imperial state as the tendency of the age; and accustomed as every Greek
was to the conception of separate town-autonomy as essential to a freeman
and a citizen, such prospect could not but inspire terror and aversion.
The sympathy of the Peloponnesians for the islanders and ultra-maritime
states, who constituted the original confederacy of Athens, was not
considerable. But when the Dorian island of Ægina was subjugated also,
and passed into the condition of a defenceless tributary, they felt the
blow sorely on every ground. The ancient celebrity, and eminent service
rendered at the battle of Salamis, of this memorable island, had not been
able to protect it; while those great Æginetan families, whose victories
at the sacred festival-games Pindar celebrates in a large proportion
of his odes, would spread the language of complaint and indignation
throughout their numerous “guests” in every Hellenic city. Of course,
the same anti-Athenian feeling would pervade those Peloponnesian states
which had been engaged in actual hostility with Athens--Corinth, Sicyon,
Epidaurus, etc., as well as Sparta, the once-recognised head of Hellas,
but now tacitly degraded from her pre-eminence, baffled in her projects
respecting Bœotia, and exposed to the burning of her port at Gythium
without being able even to retaliate upon Attica. Putting all those
circumstances together, we may comprehend the powerful feeling of dislike
and apprehension now diffused so widely over Greece against the upstart
despot-city; whose ascendency, newly acquired, maintained by superior
force, and not recognised as legitimate, threatened nevertheless still
further increase. Sixteen years hence, this same sentiment will be found
exploding into the Peloponnesian War. But it became rooted in the Greek
mind during the period which we have now reached, when Athens was much
more formidable than she had come to be at the commencement of that war:
nor shall we thoroughly appreciate the ideas of that later period, unless
we take them as handed down from the earlier date of the five years’
truce (about 451-446 B.C.).
COMMENCEMENT OF DECLINE
Formidable as the Athenian empire both really was and appeared to be,
however, this widespread feeling of antipathy proved still stronger, so
that instead of the threatened increase, the empire underwent a most
material diminution. This did not arise from the attack of open enemies;
for during the five years’ truce, Sparta undertook only one movement,
and that not against Attica: she sent troops to Delphi, in an expedition
dignified with the name of the Sacred War--expelled the Phocians, who had
assumed to themselves the management of the temple--and restored it to
the native Delphians. To this the Athenians made no direct opposition,
but as soon as the Lacedæmonians were gone, they themselves marched
thither and placed the temple again in the hands of the Phocians, who
were then their allies. The Delphians were members of the Phocian league,
and there was a dispute of old standing as to the administration of
the temple--whether it belonged to them separately or to the Phocians
collectively. The favour of those who administered it counted as an
element of considerable moment in Grecian politics; the sympathies
of the leading Delphians led them to embrace the side of Sparta, but
the Athenians now hoped to counteract this tendency by means of their
preponderance in Phocis. We are not told that the Lacedæmonians took any
ulterior step in consequence of their views being frustrated by Athens--a
significant evidence of the politics of that day.
[Sidenote: [447 B.C.]]
The blow which brought down the Athenian empire from this its greatest
exaltation was struck by the subjects themselves. The Athenian ascendency
over Bœotia, Phocis, Locris, and Eubœa, was maintained, not by means
of garrisons, but through domestic parties favourable to Athens, and a
suitable form of government--just in the same way as Sparta maintained
her influence over her Peloponnesian allies. After the victory of
Œnophyta, the Athenians had broken up the governments in the Bœotian
cities established by Sparta before the battle of Tanagra, and converted
them into democracies at Thebes and elsewhere. Many of the previous
leading men had thus been sent into exile; and as the same process had
taken place in Phocis and Locris, there was at this time a considerable
aggregate body of exiles, Bœotian, Phocian, Locrian, Eubœan, Æginetan,
etc., all bitterly hostile to Athens, and ready to join in any attack
upon her power. We learn further that the democracy established at
Thebes after the battle of Œnophyta was ill conducted and disorderly,
which circumstance laid open Bœotia still further to the schemes of
assailants on the watch for every weak point. These various exiles, all
joining their forces and concerting measures with their partisans in the
interior, succeeded in mastering Orchomenos, Chæronea, and some other
less important places in Bœotia.
The Athenian general Tolmides marched to expel them, with one thousand
Athenian hoplites and an auxiliary body of allies. It appears that this
march was undertaken in haste and rashness. The hoplites of Tolmides
principally youthful volunteers and belonging to the best families
of Athens, disdained the enemy too much to await a larger and more
commanding force: nor would the people listen even to Pericles, when he
admonished them that the march would be full of hazard, and adjured them
not to attempt it without greater numbers as well as greater caution.
Fatally indeed were his predictions justified. Though Tolmides was
successful in his first enterprise--the recapture of Chæronea, wherein he
placed a garrison--yet in his march, probably incautious and disorderly,
when departing from that place, he was surprised and attacked unawares,
near Coronea, by the united body of exiles and their partisans.
No defeat in Grecian history was ever more complete or ruinous. Tolmides
himself was slain, together with many of the Athenian hoplites, while
a large number of them were taken prisoners. In order to recover these
prisoners, who belonged to the best families in the city, the Athenians
submitted to a convention whereby they agreed to evacuate Bœotia
altogether: in all the cities of that country the exiles were restored,
the democratical government overthrown, and Bœotia was transformed from
an ally of Athens into her bitter enemy. Long indeed did the fatal issue
of this action dwell in the memory of the Athenians, and inspire them
with an apprehension of Bœotian superiority in heavy armour on land. But
if the hoplites under Tolmides had been all slain on the field, their
death would probably have been avenged and Bœotia would not have been
lost--whereas in the case of living citizens, the Athenians deemed no
sacrifice too great to redeem them. We shall discover hereafter in the
Lacedæmonians a feeling very similar, respecting their brethren captured
at Sphacteria.
[Sidenote: [447-445 B.C.]]
The calamitous consequences of this defeat came upon Athens in thick
and rapid succession. The united exiles, having carried their point
in Bœotia, proceeded to expel the philo-Athenian government both from
Phocis and Locris, and to carry the flame of revolt into Eubœa. To this
important island Pericles himself proceeded forthwith, at the head of
a powerful force; but before he had time to complete the reconquest,
he was summoned home by news of a still more formidable character. The
Megarians had revolted from Athens. By a conspiracy previously planned,
a division of hoplites from Corinth, Sicyon, and Epidaurus, was already
admitted as garrison into their city: the Athenian soldiers who kept
watch over the Long Walls had been overpowered and slain, except a few
who escaped into the fortified port of Nisæa. As if to make the Athenians
at once sensible how seriously this disaster affected them, by throwing
open the road over Geranea, Plistoanax, king of Sparta, was announced as
already on his march for an invasion of Attica. He did in truth conduct
an army, of mixed Lacedæmonians and Peloponnesian allies, into Attica,
as far as the neighbourhood of Eleusis and the Thriasian plain. He was a
very young man, so that a Spartan of mature years, Cleandridas, had been
attached to him by the ephors as adjutant and counsellor. Pericles, it
is said, persuaded both the one and the other, by means of large bribes,
to evacuate Attica without advancing to Athens. We may fairly doubt
whether they had force enough to adventure so far into the interior, and
we shall hereafter observe the great precautions with which Archidamus
thought it necessary to conduct his invasion, during the first year of
the Peloponnesian War, though at the head of a more commanding force.
Nevertheless, on their return, the Lacedæmonians, believing that they
might have achieved it, found both of them guilty of corruption. Both
were banished: Cleandridas never came back, and Plistoanax himself lived
for a long time in sanctuary near the temple of Athene at Tegea, until
at length he procured his restoration by tampering with the Pythian
priestess, and by bringing her bought admonitions to act upon the
authorities at Sparta.
So soon as the Lacedæmonians had retired from Attica, Pericles returned
with his forces to Eubœa, and reconquered the island completely.
With that caution which always distinguished him as a military man,
so opposite to the fatal rashness of Tolmides, he took with him an
overwhelming force of fifty triremes and five thousand hoplites. He
admitted most of the Eubœan towns to surrender, altering the government
of Chalcis by the expulsion of the wealthy oligarchy called the
_hippobotæ_. But the inhabitants of Histiæa at the north of the island,
who had taken an Athenian merchantman and massacred all the crew, were
more severely dealt with, the free population being all or in great part
expelled, and the land distributed among Athenian cleruchs or out-settled
citizens.
[Sidenote: [445-440 B.C.]]
Yet the reconquest of Eubœa was far from restoring Athens to the position
which she had occupied before the fatal engagement of Coronea. Her
land-empire was irretrievably gone, together with her recently acquired
influence over the Delphian oracle; and she reverted to her former
condition of an exclusively maritime potentate. Moreover, the precarious
hold which she possessed over unwilling allies had been demonstrated in a
manner likely to encourage similar attempts among her maritime subjects;
attempts which would now be seconded by Peloponnesian armies invading
Attica. The fear of such a combination of embarrassments, and especially
of an irresistible enemy carrying ruin over the flourishing territory
round Eleusis and Athens, was at this moment predominant in the Athenian
mind. We shall find Pericles, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War
fourteen years afterwards, exhausting all his persuasive force, and not
succeeding without great difficulty, in prevailing upon his countrymen
to endure the hardship of invasion--even in defence of their maritime
empire, and when events had been gradually so ripening as to render
the prospect of war familiar, if not inevitable. But the late series
of misfortunes had burst upon them so rapidly and unexpectedly, as to
discourage even Athenian confidence, and to render the prospect of
continued war full of gloom and danger. The prudence of Pericles would
doubtless counsel the surrender of their remaining landed possessions or
alliances, which had now become unprofitable, in order to purchase peace;
but we may be sure that nothing short of extreme temporary despondency
could have induced the Athenian assembly to listen to such advice,
and to accept the inglorious peace which followed. A truce for thirty
years was concluded with Sparta and her allies, in the beginning of 445
B.C., whereby Athens surrendered Nisæa, Pegæ, Achaia, and Trœzen--thus
abandoning the Peloponnesus altogether, and leaving the Megarians (with
their full territory and their two ports) to be included among the
Peloponnesian allies of Sparta.
It was to the Megarians, especially, that the altered position of Athens
after this truce was owing: it was their secession from Attica and
junction with the Peloponnesians, which laid open Attica to invasion.
Hence arose the deadly hatred on the part of the Athenians towards
Megara, manifested during the ensuing years--a sentiment the more
natural, as Megara had spontaneously sought the alliance of Athens a
few years before as a protection against the Corinthians, and had then
afterwards, without any known ill-usage on the part of Athens, broken
off from the alliance and become her enemy, with the fatal consequence
of rendering her vulnerable on the land-side. Under such circumstances
we shall not be surprised to find the antipathy of the Athenians against
Megara strongly pronounced, insomuch that the system of exclusion which
they adopted against her was among the most prominent causes of the
Peloponnesian War.[d]
THE GREATNESS OF PERICLES
Athens now rested six years, unengaged in any hostilities; a longer
interval of perfect peace than she had before known in above forty years
elapsed since she rose from her ashes after the Persian invasion. It is
a wonderful and singular phenomenon in the history of mankind, little
accounted for by anything recorded by ancient, or imagined by modern
writers, that, during this period of turbulence, in a commonwealth whose
whole population in free subjects amounted scarcely to thirty thousand
families, art, science, fine taste, and politeness should have risen
to that perfection which has made Athens the mistress of the world
through all succeeding ages. Some sciences indeed have been carried
higher in modern times, and art has put forth new branches, of which
some have given new helps to science: but Athens, in that age, reached
a perfection of taste that no country has since surpassed; but on the
contrary all have looked up to, as a polar star, by which, after sinking
in the deepest barbarism, taste has been guided in its restoration to
splendour, and the observation of which will probably ever be the surest
preservative against its future corruption and decay.
One great point of the policy of Pericles was to keep the people
always either amused or employed. During peace an exercising squadron
of sixty trireme galleys was sent out for eight months in every year.
Nor was this without a further use than merely engaging the attention
of the people, and maintaining the navy in vigour. He sometimes took
the command in person: and, sailing among the distant dependencies of
the empire, settled disputes between them, and confirmed the power
and extended the influence of Athens. The Ægean and the Propontis did
not bound his voyages: he penetrated into the Euxine; and finding the
distant Grecian settlement of Sinope divided between Timesileus, who
affected the tyranny, and an opposing party, he left there Lamachus with
thirteen ships, and a land-force with whose assistance to the popular
side the tyrant and those of his faction were expelled. The justice of
what followed may indeed appear questionable. Their houses and property,
apportioned into six hundred lots, were offered to so many Athenian
citizens; and volunteers were not wanting to accept the offer, and settle
at Sinope. To disburden the government at home, by providing advantageous
establishments, in distant parts, for the poor and discontented among
the sovereign citizens of Athens, was a policy more than once resorted
to by Pericles. It was during his administration, in the year, according
to Diodorus, in which the Thirty Years’ Truce was concluded, that the
deputation came from the Thessalian adventurers who had been expelled
by the Crotoniats from their attempted establishment in the deserted
territory of Sybaris, in consequence of which, under his patronage, the
colony was settled with which the historian Herodotus then, and afterward
the orator Lysias, passing to Thurii, both established themselves there.
A GREEK FEDERATION PLANNED
Plutarch has attributed to Pericles a noble project, unnoticed by any
earlier extant author, but worthy of his capacious mind, and otherwise
also bearing some characters of authenticity and truth. It was no less
than to unite all Greece under one great federal government, of which
Athens should be the capital. But the immediate and direct avowal of such
a purpose would be likely to raise jealousies so numerous and extensive
as to form insuperable obstacles to the execution. The religion of the
nation was that alone in which the Grecian people universally claimed
a clear common interest; and even in this every town and almost every
family claimed something peculiar to itself. In the vehemence of public
alarm, during the Persian invasion, vows had been, in some places, made
to the gods for sacrifices, to an extent beyond what the votaries, when
blessed with deliverance beyond hope, were able to perform; and some
temples, destroyed by the invaders, were not yet restored; probably
because the means of those in whose territories they had stood were
deficient. Taking these circumstances then for his ground, Pericles
proposed that a congress of deputies from every republic of the nation
should be assembled at Athens, for the purpose first of inquiring
concerning vows for the safety of Greece yet unperformed, and temples,
injured by the barbarians, not yet restored; and then of proceeding to
concert measures for the lasting security of navigation in the Grecian
seas, and for the preservation of peace by land also between all the
states composing the Greek nation. The naval question, but still more the
ruin which, in the Persian invasion, had befallen northern Greece, and
especially Attica, while Peloponnesus had felt nothing of its evils, gave
pretensions for Athens to take the lead in the business. On the motion
of Pericles, a decree of the Athenian people directed the appointment of
ministers to invite every Grecian state to send its deputies. Plutarch,
rarely attentive to political information, has not at all indicated what
attention was shown, or what participation proposed, for Lacedæmon. His
prejudices indeed we find very generally adverse to the Lacedæmonian
government, and favouring the Athenian democracy. But, judging from the
friendship which, according to the authentic information of Thucydides,
subsisted between Pericles and Archidamus, king of Lacedæmon, through
life, it is little likely that, in putting forward the project for the
peace of Greece, Pericles would have proposed anything derogatory to the
just weight and dignity of Sparta; which indeed would have been, with
peace the pretence, only putting forward a project of contest.
Pericles, when he formed his coalition with Cimon, seems to have entered
heartily into the enlarged views of that great man; and, with the hope
that, through their coalition, both the oligarchical and the democratical
powers in Athens might be held justly balanced, had early in view to
establish the peace of Greece on a union between Athens and Lacedæmon.
It is however evident, from the narrative of Thucydides, that Archidamus
rarely could direct the measures of the Lacedæmonian government. On a
view of all information, then, it may seem probable that the project of
Pericles was concerted with Archidamus; and that the opposition of those
in Lacedæmon, of an adverse faction concurred with opposition from those
in Athens, who apprehended injury to their interests from a new coalition
with the aristocratical party, to compel the great projector to abandon
his magnificent and beneficent purpose.[f]
FOOTNOTES
[45] Plutarch tells a story--characteristic if not true--of a rude fellow
who, after railing at Pericles all day, as he was transacting business in
public, followed him after dusk with abusive language to his door, when
Pericles ordered one of his servants to take a light, and conduct the man
home.
[Illustration: RUINS OF HALIARTUS]
[Illustration]