Athens the stately-walled, magnificent!--PINDAR.
[Sidenote: [460-430 B.C.]]
The judicial alterations effected at Athens by Pericles and Ephialtes,
described in a preceding chapter, gave to a large proportion of
the citizens direct jury functions and an active interest in the
constitution, such as they had never before enjoyed; the change being
at once a mark of previous growth of democratical sentiment during the
past, and a cause of its further development during the future. The
Athenian people were at this time ready for any personal exertion. The
naval service especially was prosecuted with a degree of assiduity which
brought about continual improvement in skill and efficiency; while
the poorer citizens, of whom it chiefly consisted, were more exact in
obedience and discipline than any of the more opulent persons from
whom the infantry or the cavalry were drawn. The maritime multitude,
in addition to self-confidence and courage, acquired by this laborious
training an increased skill, which placed the Athenian navy every year
more and more above the rest of Greece: and the perfection of this force
became the more indispensable as the Athenian empire was now again
confined to the sea and seaport towns; the reverses immediately preceding
the Thirty Years’ Truce having broken up all Athenian land ascendency
over Megara, Bœotia, and the other continental territories adjoining to
Attica.
[Illustration: RESTORATION OF THE PARTHENON]
Instead of trying to cherish or restore the feelings of equal alliance,
Pericles formally disclaimed it. He maintained that Athens owed to her
subject allies no account of the money received from them, so long as she
performed her contract by keeping away the Persian enemy, and maintaining
the safety of the Ægean waters. This was, as he represented, the
obligation which Athens had undertaken; and provided it were faithfully
discharged, the allies had no right to ask questions or institute
control. That it was faithfully discharged no one could deny: no ship
of war except those of Athens and her allies was ever seen between the
eastern and western shores of the Ægean. An Athenian fleet of sixty
triremes was kept on duty in these waters, chiefly manned by Athenian
citizens, and beneficial as well from the protection afforded to commerce
as for keeping the seamen in constant pay and training. And such was the
effective superintendence maintained, that in the disastrous period
preceding the Thirty Years’ Truce, when Athens lost Megara and Bœotia,
and with difficulty recovered Eubœa, none of her numerous maritime
subjects took the opportunity to revolt.
The total of these distinct tributary cities is said to have amounted
to one thousand, according to a verse of Aristophanes, which cannot be
under the truth, though it may well be, and probably is, greatly above
the truth. The total annual tribute collected at the beginning of the
Peloponnesian War, and probably also for the years preceding it, is
given by Thucydides at about six hundred talents [£120,000 or $600,000].
Of the sums paid by particular states, however, we have little or no
information. It was placed under the superintendence of the Hellenotamiæ;
originally officers of the confederacy, but now removed from Delos to
Athens, and acting altogether as an Athenian treasury-board. The sum
total of the Athenian revenue, from all sources, including this tribute,
at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War is stated by Xenophon at one
thousand talents: customs, harbour, and market-dues, receipt from the
silver mines at Laurium, rents of public property, fines from judicial
sentences, a tax per head upon slaves, the annual payment made by each
metic, etc., may have made up a larger sum than four hundred talents;
which sum, added to the six hundred talents from tribute, would make the
total named by Xenophon. But a verse of Aristophanes, during the ninth
year of the Peloponnesian War, B.C. 422, gives the general total of
that time as “nearly two thousand talents”: this is in all probability
much above the truth, though we may reasonably imagine that the amount
of tribute money levied upon the allies had been augmented during the
interval. Whatever may have been the actual magnitude of the Athenian
budget, however, prior to the Peloponnesian War, we know that during the
larger part of the administration of Pericles, the revenue including
tribute, was so managed as to leave a large annual surplus; insomuch
that a treasure of coined money was accumulated in the Acropolis during
the years preceding the Peloponnesian War--which treasure when at its
maximum reached the great sum of ninety-seven hundred talents [£1,940,000
or $9,700,000], and was still at six thousand talents, after a serious
drain for various purposes, at the moment when that war began. This
system of public economy, constantly laying by a considerable sum year
after year--in which Athens stood alone, since none of the Peloponnesian
states had any public reserve whatever--goes far of itself to vindicate
Pericles from the charge of having wasted the public money in mischievous
distributions for the purpose of obtaining popularity; and also to
exonerate the Athenian demos from that reproach of a greedy appetite for
living by the public purse which it is common to advance against them.
After the death of Cimon, no further expeditions were undertaken against
the Persians, and even for some years before his death, not much appears
to have been done. The tribute money thus remained unexpended, and kept
in reserve, as the presidential duties of Athens prescribed, against
future attack, which might at any time be renewed.
Though we do not know the exact amount of the other sources of Athenian
revenue, however, we know that tribute received from allies was the
largest item in it. And altogether the exercise of empire abroad became
a prominent feature in Athenian life, and a necessity to Athenian
sentiment, not less than democracy at home. Athens was no longer, as she
had been once, a single city, with Attica for her territory: she was a
capital or imperial city--a despot-city, was the expression used by her
enemies, and even sometimes by her own citizens--with many dependencies
attached to her, and bound to follow her orders. Such was the manner in
which not merely Pericles and the other leading statesmen, but even
the humblest Athenian citizen, conceived the dignity of Athens; and the
sentiment was one which carried with it both personal pride and stimulus
to patriotism.
To establish Athenian interests in the dependent territories, was one
important object in the eyes of Pericles, and while he discountenanced
all distant and rash enterprises, such as invasion of Egypt or Cyprus,
he planted out many cleruchies and colonies of Athenian citizens
intermingled with allies, on islands and parts of the coast. He
conducted one thousand citizens to the Thracian Chersonese, five hundred
to Naxos, and two hundred and fifty to Andros. In the Chersonese, he
further repelled the barbarous Thracian invaders from without, and even
undertook the labour of carrying a wall of defence across the isthmus,
which connected the peninsula with Thrace; since the barbarous Thracian
tribes, though expelled some time before by Cimon, had still continued
to renew their incursions from time to time. Ever since the occupation
of the elder Miltiades, about eighty years before, there had been in
this peninsula many Athenian proprietors, apparently intermingled
with half-civilised Thracians: the settlers now acquired both greater
numerical strength and better protection, though it does not appear that
the cross-wall was permanently maintained. The maritime expeditions of
Pericles even extended into the Euxine Sea, as far as the important Greek
city of Sinope, then governed by a despot named Timesileus, against whom
a large proportion of the citizens were in active discontent.
Lamachus was left with thirteen Athenian triremes to assist in expelling
the despot, who was driven into exile with his friends: the properties
of these exiles were confiscated, and assigned to the maintenance of six
hundred Athenian citizens, admitted to equal fellowship and residence
with the Sinopians. We may presume that on this occasion Sinope became a
member of the Athenian tributary alliance, if it had not been so before:
but we do not know whether Cotyora and Trapezus, dependencies of Sinope
further eastward, which the ten thousand Greeks found on their retreat
fifty years afterwards, existed in the time of Pericles or not. Moreover,
the numerous and well-equipped Athenian fleet, under the command of
Pericles, produced an imposing effect upon the barbarous princes and
tribes along the coast, contributing certainly to the security of Grecian
trade, and probably to the acquisition of new dependent allies.
It was by successive proceedings of this sort that many detachments of
Athenian citizens became settled in various portions of the maritime
empire of the city--some rich, investing their property in the islands as
more secure (from the incontestable superiority of Athens at sea) even
than Attica, which since the loss of the Megarid could not be guarded
against a Peloponnesian land invasion--others poor, and hiring themselves
out as labourers. The islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, as well as
the territory of Histiæa, on the north of Eubœa, were completely occupied
by Athenian proprietors and citizens: other places were partially so
occupied. And it was doubtless advantageous to the islanders to associate
themselves with Athenians in trading enterprises, since they thereby
obtained a better chance of the protection of the Athenian fleet. It
seems that Athens passed regulations occasionally for the commerce of
her dependent allies, as we see by the fact that, shortly before the
Peloponnesian War, she excluded the Megarians from all their ports. The
commercial relations between Piræus and the Ægean reached their maximum
during the interval immediately preceding the Peloponnesian War. Nor were
these relations confined to the country east and north of Attica: they
reached also the western regions. The most important settlements founded
by Athens during this period were, Amphipolis in Thrace and Thurii in
Italy. Amphipolis was planted by a colony of Athenians and other Greeks,
under the conduct of the Athenian Agnon, in 437 B.C. It was situated near
the river Strymon in Thrace, on the eastern bank, and at the spot where
the Strymon resumes its river-course after emerging from the lake above.
The colony of Thurii on the coast of the Gulf of Tarentum in Italy,
near the site and on the territory of the ancient Sybaris, was founded
by Athens about seven years earlier than Amphipolis, not long after the
conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce with Sparta, 443 B.C.
The fourteen years between the Thirty Years’ Truce and the breaking out
of the Peloponnesian War, are a period of full maritime empire on the
part of Athens--partially indeed resisted, but never with success. They
are a period of peace with all cities extraneous to her own empire; and
of splendid decorations to the city itself, emanating from the genius of
Phidias and others, in sculpture as well as in architecture. Since the
death of Cimon, Pericles had become, gradually but entirely, the first
citizen in the commonwealth. His qualities told for more, the longer they
were known, and even the disastrous reverses which preceded the Thirty
Years’ Truce had not overthrown him, since he had protested against that
expedition of Tolmides into Bœotia out of which they first arose. But if
the personal influence of Pericles had increased, the party opposed to
him seems also to have become stronger than before; and to have acquired
a leader in many respects more effective than Cimon--Thucydides, son of
Melesias.
The new chief was a relative of Cimon, but of a character and talents
more analogous to those of Pericles: a statesman and orator rather than
a general, though competent to both functions if occasion demanded, as
every leading man in those days was required to be. Under Thucydides,
the political and parliamentary opposition against Pericles assumed a
constant character and organisation such as Cimon, with his exclusively
military aptitudes, had never been able to establish. The aristocratical
party in the commonwealth--the “honourable and respectable” citizens, as
we find them styled, adopting their own nomenclature--now imposed upon
themselves the obligation of undeviating regularity in their attendance
on the public assembly, sitting together in a particular section, so as
to be conspicuously parted from the demos. In this manner, their applause
and dissent, their mutual encouragement to each other, their distribution
of parts to different speakers, was made more conducive to the party
purposes than it had been before when these distinguished persons were
intermingled with the mass of citizens. Thucydides himself was eminent as
a speaker, inferior only to Pericles--perhaps hardly inferior even to him.
Such an opposition made to Pericles, in all the full license which a
democratical constitution permitted, must have been both efficient and
embarrassing. But the pointed severance of the aristocratical chiefs,
which Thucydides, son of Melesias, introduced, contributed probably at
once to rally the democratical majority round Pericles, and to exasperate
the bitterness of party conflict. As far as we can make out the grounds
of the opposition, it turned partly upon the pacific policy of Pericles
towards the Persians, partly upon his expenditure for home ornament.
Thucydides contended that Athens was disgraced in the eyes of the
Greeks by having drawn the confederate treasure from Delos to her own
Acropolis, under pretence of greater security--and then employing it,
not in prosecuting war against the Persians, but in beautifying Athens
by new temples and costly statues. To this Pericles replied that Athens
had undertaken the obligation, in consideration of the tribute-money, to
protect her allies and keep off from them every foreign enemy,--that she
had accomplished this object completely at the present, and retained a
reserve sufficient to guarantee the like security for the future,--that
under such circumstances she owed no account to her allies of the
expenditure of the surplus, but was at liberty to employ it for purposes
useful and honourable to the city. In this point of view it was an object
of great public importance to render Athens imposing in the eyes both
of the allies and of Hellas generally, by improved fortifications,--by
accumulated embellishment, sculptural and architectural,--and by
religious festivals, frequent, splendid, musical, and poetical.
Such was the answer made by Pericles in defence of his policy against
the opposition headed by Thucydides. And considering the ground of the
debate on both sides, the answer was perfectly satisfactory. For when we
look at the very large sum which Pericles continually kept in reserve in
the treasury, no one could reasonably complain that his expenditure for
ornamental purposes was carried so far as to encroach upon the exigencies
of defence. What Thucydides and his partisans appear to have urged, was
that this common fund should still continue to be spent in aggressive
warfare against the Persian king, in Egypt and elsewhere--conformably to
the projects pursued by Cimon during his life. But Pericles was right in
contending that such outlay would have been simply wasteful; of no use
either to Athens or her allies, though risking all the chances of distant
defeat, such as had been experienced a few years before in Egypt.
So bitter however was the opposition made by Thucydides and his party to
this projected expenditure--so violent and pointed did the scission of
aristocrats and democrats become--that the dispute came after no long
time to that ultimate appeal which the Athenian constitution provided
for the case of two opposite and nearly equal party-leaders--a vote of
ostracism. Of the particular details which preceded this ostracism, we
are not informed; but we see clearly that the general position was such
as the ostracism was intended to meet. Probably the vote was proposed by
the party of Thucydides, in order to procure the banishment of Pericles,
the more powerful person of the two and the most likely to excite popular
jealousy. The challenge was accepted by Pericles and his friends, and the
result of the voting was such that an adequate legal majority condemned
Thucydides to ostracism. And it seems that the majority must have been
very decisive, for the party of Thucydides was completely broken by it:
and we hear of no other single individual equally formidable, as a leader
of opposition, throughout all the remaining life of Pericles.
The ostracism of Thucydides apparently took place about two years after
the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce (443-442 B.C.), and it is to
the period immediately following, that the great Periclean works belong.
The southern wall of the Acropolis had been built out of the spoils
brought by Cimon from his Persian expeditions; but the third of the Long
Walls connecting Athens with the harbour was the proposition of Pericles,
at what precise time we do not know. The Long Walls originally completed
(not long after the battle of Tanagra, as has already been stated)
were two, one from Athens to Piræus, another from Athens to Phalerum:
the space between them was broad, and if in the hands of an enemy, the
communication with Piræus would be interrupted. Accordingly, Pericles now
induced the people to construct a third or intermediate wall, running
parallel with the first wall to Piræus, and within a short distance
(seemingly near one furlong) from it: so that the communication between
the city and the port was placed beyond all possible interruption, even
assuming an enemy to have got within the Phaleric wall. It was seemingly
about this time, too, that the splendid docks and arsenal in Piræus,
alleged by Isocrates to have cost one thousand talents [£200,000 or
$1,000,000] were constructed; while the town itself of Piræus was laid
out anew with straight streets intersecting at right angles. Apparently
this was something new in Greece--the towns generally, and Athens itself
in particular, having been built without any symmetry, or width, or
continuity of streets: and Hippodamus the Milesian, a man of considerable
attainments in the physical philosophy of the age, derived much renown as
the earliest town architect, for having laid out the Piræus on a regular
plan. The market-place, or one of them at least, permanently bore his
name--the Hippodamian agora. At a time when so many great architects
were displaying their genius in the construction of temples, we are not
surprised to hear that the structure of towns began to be regularised
also. Moreover we are told that the new colonial town of Thurii, to which
Hippodamus went as a settler, was also constructed in the same systematic
form as to straight and wide streets.
The new scheme upon which the Piræus was laid out, was not without its
value as one visible proof of the naval grandeur of Athens. But the
buildings in Athens and on the Acropolis formed the real glory of the
Periclean age. A new theatre, termed the Odeon, was constructed for
musical and poetical representations at the great Panathenaic solemnity;
next, the splendid temple of Athene, called the Parthenon, with all its
masterpieces of decorative sculpture, friezes, and reliefs; lastly,
the costly portals erected to adorn the entrance of the Acropolis, on
the western side of the hill, through which the solemn processions on
festival days were conducted. It appears that the Odeon and the Parthenon
were both finished between 445 and 437 B.C.: the Propylæa somewhat
later, between 437 and 431 B.C., in which latter year the Peloponnesian
War began. Progress was also made in restoring or reconstructing the
Erechtheion, or ancient temple of Athene Polias, the patron goddess
of the city--which had been burnt in the invasion of Xerxes. But the
breaking out of the Peloponnesian War seems to have prevented the
completion of this, as well as of the great temple of Demeter, at
Eleusis, for the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries--that of Athene,
at Sunium--and that of Nemesis at Rhamnus. Nor was the sculpture less
memorable than the architecture; three statues of Athene, all by the
hand of Phidias, decorated the Acropolis, one colossal, forty-seven feet
high, of ivory, in the Parthenon, a second of bronze, called the Lemnian
Athene, a third of colossal magnitude, also in bronze, called Athene
Promachos, placed between the Propylæa, and the Parthenon, and visible
from afar off, even to the navigator approaching Piræus by sea.
It is not, of course, to Pericles that the renown of these splendid
productions of art belongs; but the great sculptors and architects, by
whom they were conceived and executed, belonged to that same period of
expanding and stimulating Athenian democracy, which likewise called forth
creative genius in oratory, in dramatic poetry, and in philosophical
speculation.
Considering these prodigious achievements in the field of art only as
they bear upon Athenian and Grecian history, they are phenomena of
extraordinary importance. When we learn the profound impression which
they produced upon Grecian spectators of a later age, we may judge how
immense was the effect upon that generation which saw them both begun
and finished. In the year 480 B.C., Athens was ruined by the occupation
of Xerxes: since that period, the Greeks had seen, first, the rebuilding
and fortifying of the city on an enlarged scale; next, the addition of
Piræus with its docks and magazines; thirdly, the junction of the two by
the Long Walls, thus including the most numerous concentrated population,
wealth, arms, ships, etc., in Greece; lastly, the rapid creation of
so many new miracles of art--the sculptures of Phidias as well as the
paintings of the Thasian painter Polygnotus, in the temple of Theseus,
and in the portico called Pœcile.[b]
Plutarch says: “That which was the chief delight of the Athenians and
the wonder of strangers, and which alone serves for a proof that the
boasted power and opulence of ancient Greece is not an idle tale, was
the magnificence of the temples and public edifices. Works were raised
of an astonishing magnitude, and inimitable beauty and perfection, every
architect striving to surpass the magnificence of the design with the
elegance of the execution; yet still the most wonderful circumstance was
the expedition with which they were completed. Phidias was appointed by
Pericles superintendent of all the public edifices.”[f]
It thus appears that the gigantic strides by which Athens had reached her
maritime empire were now immediately succeeded by a series of works which
stamped her as the imperial city of Greece, gave to her an appearance
of power even greater than the reality, and especially put to shame the
old-fashioned simplicity of Sparta. The cost was doubtless prodigious,
and could only have been borne at a time when there was a large treasure
in the Acropolis, as well as a considerable tribute annually coming
in: if we may trust a computation which seems to rest on plausible
grounds, it cannot have been much less than three thousand talents in the
aggregate [£600,000 or $3,000,000].
The expenditure of so large a sum was, of course, a source of revenue and
of great private gain to all manner of contractors, tradesmen, merchants,
artisans of various descriptions, etc., concerned in it: in one way or
another, it distributed itself over a large portion of the whole city.
And it appears that the materials employed for much of the work were
designedly of the most costly description, as being most consistent
with the reverence due to the gods: marble was rejected as too common
for the statue of Athene, and ivory employed in its place; while the
gold with which it was surrounded weighed not less than forty talents
[£8000 or $40,000]. A large expenditure for such purposes, considered as
pious towards the gods, was at the same time imposing in reference to
Grecian feeling, which regarded with admiration every variety of public
show and magnificence, and repaid with grateful deference the rich men
who indulged in it. Pericles knew well that the visible splendour of
the city, so new to all his contemporaries, would cause her great power
to appear greater still, and would thus procure for her a real, though
unacknowledged influence--perhaps even an ascendency--over all cities of
the Grecian name. And it is certain that even among those who most hated
and feared her, at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, there prevailed
a powerful sentiment of involuntary deference.
JUDICIAL REFORMS OF PERICLES
Before Ephialtes advanced his main proposition for abridging the
competence of the senate of Areopagus, he appears to have been
strenuous in repressing the practical abuse of magisterial authority,
by accusations brought against the magistrates at the period of their
regular accountability. After repeated efforts to check the practical
abuse of these magisterial powers, Ephialtes and Pericles were at last
conducted to the proposition of cutting them down permanently, and
introducing an altered system.
It was now that Pericles and Ephialtes carried their important scheme
of judicial reform. The senate of Areopagus was deprived of its
discretionary censorial power, as well as of all its judicial competence,
except that which related to homicide. The individual magistrates, as
well as the senate of Five Hundred, were also stripped of their judicial
attributes (except the power of imposing a small fine), which were
transferred to the newly created panels of salaried dicasts, lotted off
in ten divisions from the aggregate Heliæa. Ephialtes first brought
down the laws of Solon from the Acropolis to the neighbourhood of the
market-place, where the dicasteries sat--a visible proof that the
judicature was now popularised.
In the representation of many authors, the full bearing of this great
constitutional change is very inadequately conceived. What we are
commonly told is, that Pericles was the first to assign a salary to
these numerous dicasteries at Athens. He bribed the people with the
public money (says Plutarch), in order to make head against Cimon, who
bribed them out of his own private purse; as if the pay were the main
feature in the case, and as if all which Pericles did was, to make
himself popular by paying the dicasts for judicial service which they
had before rendered gratuitously. The truth is, that this numerous
army of dicasts, distributed into ten regiments and summoned to act
systematically throughout the year, was now for the first time organised:
the commencement of their pay is also the commencement of their regular
judicial action. What Pericles really did was, to sever for the first
time from the administrative competence of the magistrates that judicial
authority which had originally gone along with it. The great men who had
been accustomed to hold these offices were lowered both in influence
and authority: while on the other hand a new life, habit, and sense of
power, sprung up among the poorer citizens. A plaintiff having cause of
civil action, or an accuser invoking punishment against citizens guilty
of injury either to himself or to the state, had still to address himself
to one or other of the archons, but it was only with a view of ultimately
arriving before the dicastery by whom the cause was to be tried.
While the magistrates individually were thus restricted to simple
administration, they experienced still more serious loss of power in
their capacity of members of the Areopagus, after the year of archonship
was expired. Instead of their previous unmeasured range of supervision
and interference, they were now deprived of all judicial sanction beyond
that small power of fining which was still left both to individual
magistrates, and to the senate of Five Hundred. But the cognisance of
homicide was still expressly reserved to them--for the procedure, in
this latter case religious not less than judicial, was so thoroughly
consecrated by ancient feeling, that no reformer could venture to disturb
or remove it.
It was upon this same ground probably that the stationary party defended
all the prerogatives of the senate of Areopagus--denouncing the
curtailments proposed by Ephialtes as impious and guilty innovations. How
extreme their resentment became, when these reforms were carried,--and
how fierce was the collision of political parties at this moment,--we may
judge by the result. The enemies of Ephialtes caused him to be privately
assassinated, by the hand of a Bœotian of Tanagra named Aristodicus.
Such a crime--rare in the political annals of Athens, for we come to no
known instance of it afterwards until the oligarchy of the Four Hundred
in 411 B.C.--marks at once the gravity of the change now introduced, the
fierceness of the opposition offered, and the unscrupulous character of
the conservative party. Cimon was in exile and had no share in the deed.
Doubtless the assassination of Ephialtes produced an effect unfavourable
in every way to the party who procured it. The popular party in their
resentment must have become still more attached to the judicial reforms
just assured to them, while the hands of Pericles, the superior leader
left behind and now acting singly, must have been materially strengthened.
It is from this point that the administration of that great man may
be said to date: he was now the leading adviser (we might almost say
Prime Minister) of the Athenian people. His first years were marked by
a series of brilliant successes--already mentioned--the acquisition of
Megara as an ally, and the victorious war against Corinth and Ægina. But
when he proposed the great and valuable improvement of the Long Walls,
thus making one city of Athens and Piræus, the same oligarchical party,
which had opposed his judicial changes and assassinated Ephialtes,
again stood forward in vehement resistance. Finding direct opposition
unavailing, they did not scruple to enter into treasonable correspondence
with Sparta--invoking the aid of a foreign force for the overthrow of
the democracy: so odious had it become in their eyes, since the recent
innovations. How serious was the hazard incurred by Athens, near the
time of the battle of Tanagra, has been already recounted; together with
the rapid and unexpected reconciliation of parties after that battle,
principally owing to the generous patriotism of Cimon and his immediate
friends. Cimon was restored from ostracism on this occasion, before
his full time had expired; while the rivalry between him and Pericles
henceforward becomes mitigated, or even converted into a compromise,
whereby the internal affairs of the city were left to the one, and the
conduct of foreign expeditions to the other. The successes of Athens
during the ensuing ten years were more brilliant than ever, and she
attained the maximum of her power: which doubtless had a material effect
in imparting stability to the democracy as well as to the administration
of Pericles--and enabled both the one and the other to stand the shock
of those great public reverses, which deprived the Athenians of their
dependent landed alliances, in the interval between the defeat of Coronea
and the Thirty Years’ Truce.
Along with the important judicial revolution brought about by Pericles,
were introduced other changes belonging to the same scheme and system.
Thus a general power of supervision both over the magistrates and over
the public assembly, was vested in seven magistrates, now named for the
first time, called nomophylaces, or law-guardians, and doubtless changed
every year. These nomophylaces sat alongside of the Proedri or presidents
both in the senate and in the public assembly, and were charged with the
duty of interposing whenever any step was taken or any proposition made
contrary to the existing laws: they were also empowered to constrain the
magistrates to act according to law.
Another important change, which we may with probability refer to
Pericles, is the institution of the _nomothetæ_. These men were in point
of fact dicasts, members of the six thousand citizens annually sworn in
that capacity. But they were not, like the dicasts for trying causes,
distributed into panels or regiments known by a particular letter and
acting together throughout the entire year: they were lotted off to sit
together only on special occasion and as the necessity arose. According
to the reform now introduced, the ecclesia or public assembly, even with
the sanction of the senate of Five Hundred, became incompetent either
to pass a new law or to repeal a law already in existence; it could only
enact a psephism--that is, properly speaking, a decree applicable only
to a particular case; though the word was used at Athens in a very large
sense, sometimes comprehending decrees of general as well as permanent
application. In reference to laws, a peculiar judicial procedure was
established. The _thesmothetæ_ were directed annually to examine the
existing laws, noting any contradictions or double laws on the same
matter; and in the first prytany (tenth part) of the Attic year, on the
eleventh day, an ecclesia was held, in which the first business was to go
through the laws _seriatim_, and submit them for approval or rejection;
first beginning with the laws relating to the senate, next coming to
those of more general import, especially such as determined the functions
and competence of the magistrates. If any law was condemned by the vote
of the public assembly, or if any citizen had a new law to propose,
the third assembly of the prytany was employed, previous to any other
business, in the appointment of nomothetæ and in the provision of means
to pay their salary.
The effect of this institution was to place the making or repealing of
laws under the same solemnities and guarantees as the trying of causes or
accusations in judicature.
As an additional security both to the public assembly and the nomothetæ
against being entrapped into decisions contrary to existing law,
another remarkable provision has yet to be mentioned--a provision
probably introduced by Pericles at the same time as the formalities
of law-making by means of specially delegated nomothetæ. This was the
_Graphe Paranomon_--indictment for informality or illegality--which
might be brought on certain grounds against the proposer of any law or
any psephism, and rendered him liable to punishment by the dicastery. He
was required in bringing forward his new measure to take care that it
should not be in contradiction with any pre-existing law--or if there
were any such contradiction, to give formal notice of it, to propose the
repeal of that which existed, and to write up publicly beforehand what
his proposition was--in order that there might never be two contradictory
laws at the same time in operation, nor any illegal decree passed either
by the senate or by the public assembly. If he neglected this precaution,
he was liable to prosecution under the Graphe Paranomon, which any
Athenian citizen might bring against him before the dicastery, through
the intervention and under the presidency of the thesmothetæ.
That this indictment, as one of the most direct vents for such enmity,
was largely applied and abused at Athens, is certain. But though it
probably deterred unpractised citizens from originating new propositions,
it did not produce the same effect upon those orators who made politics
a regular business, and who could therefore both calculate the temper
of the people, and reckon upon support from a certain knot of friends.
Aristophon, towards the close of his political life, made it a boast that
he had been thus indicted and acquitted seventy-five times. Probably
the worst effect which it produced was that of encouraging the vein
of personality and bitterness which pervades so large a proportion of
Attic oratory, even in its most illustrious manifestations; turning
deliberative into judicial eloquence, and interweaving the discussion of
a law or decree along with a declamatory harangue against the character
of its mover. We may at the same time add that the Graphe Paranomon was
often the most convenient way of getting a law or a psephism repealed, so
that it was used even when the annual period had passed over, and when
the mover was therefore out of danger, the indictment being then brought
only against the law or decree.
Such were the great constitutional innovations of Pericles and
Ephialtes,--changes full of practical results,--the transformation, as
well as the complement, of that democratical system which Clisthenes
had begun and to which the tide of Athenian feeling had been gradually
mounting up during the preceding twenty years. The entire force of these
changes is generally not perceived, because the popular dicasteries and
the nomothetæ are so often represented as institutions of Solon, and as
merely supplied with pay by Pericles. This erroneous supposition prevents
all clear view of the growth of the Athenian democracy by throwing back
its last elaborations to the period of its early and imperfect start.
To strip the magistrates of all their judicial power, except that of
imposing a small fine, and the Areopagus of all its jurisdiction except
in cases of homicide--providing popular, numerous, and salaried dicasts
to decide all the judicial business at Athens as well as to repeal and
enact laws--this was the consummation of the Athenian democracy. No
serious constitutional alteration (excepting the temporary interruptions
of the Four Hundred and the Thirty) was afterwards made until the days
of Macedonian interference. As Pericles made it, so it remained in the
days of Demosthenes--though with a sensible change in the character, and
abatement in the energies, of the people, rich as well as poor.
In appreciating the practical working of these numerous dicasteries at
Athens, in comparison with such justice as might have been expected from
individual magistrates, we have to consider: first, that personal and
pecuniary corruption seems to have been a common vice among the leading
men of Athens and Sparta, when acting individually or in boards of a
few members, and not uncommon even with the kings of Sparta; next, that
in the Grecian cities generally, as we know even from the oligarchical
Xenophon (he particularly excepts Sparta), the rich and great men
were not only insubordinate to the magistrates, but made a parade of
showing that they cared nothing about them. We know also from the same
unsuspected source, that while the poorer Athenian citizens who served on
shipboard were distinguished for the strictest discipline, the hoplites
or middling burghers who formed the infantry were less obedient, and the
rich citizens who served on horseback the most disobedient of all.
To make rich criminals amenable to justice has been found so difficult
everywhere, until a recent period of history, that we should be surprised
if it were otherwise in Greece. When we follow the reckless demeanour of
rich men like Critias, Alcibiades, and Midias, even under the full-grown
democracy of Athens, we may be sure that their predecessors under the
Clisthenean constitution would have been often too formidable to be
punished or kept down by an individual archon of ordinary firmness, even
assuming him to be upright and well-intentioned. Now the dicasteries
established by Pericles were inaccessible both to corruption and
intimidation: their number, their secret suffrage, and the impossibility
of knowing beforehand what individuals would sit in any particular cause,
prevented both the one and the other. And besides that the magnitude of
their number, extravagant according to our ideas of judicial business,
was essential to this tutelary effect--it served further to render
the trial solemn and the verdict imposing on the minds of parties and
spectators, as we may see by the fact that, in important causes the
dicastery was doubled or tripled. Nor was it possible by any other means
than numbers to give dignity to an assembly of citizens, of whom many
were poor, some old, and all were despised individually by rich accused
persons who were brought before them--as Aristophanes and Xenophon
give us plainly to understand. If we except the strict and peculiar
educational discipline of Sparta, these numerous dicasteries afforded
the only organ which Grecian politics could devise, for getting redress
against powerful criminals, public as well as private, and for obtaining
a sincere and uncorrupt verdict.
Taking the general working of the dicasteries, we shall find that they
are nothing but jury-trial applied on a scale broad, systematic, unaided,
and uncontrolled, beyond all other historical experience--and that they
therefore exhibit in exaggerated proportions both the excellences and the
defects characteristic of the jury system, as compared with decision by
trained and professional judges. All the encomiums, which it is customary
to pronounce upon jury-trial, will be found predicable of the Athenian
dicasteries in a still greater degree; all the reproaches, which can be
addressed on good ground to the dicasteries, will apply to modern juries
also, though in a less degree.
RHETORS AND SOPHISTS
The first establishment of the dicasteries is nearly coincident with the
great improvement of Attic tragedy in passing from Æschylus to Sophocles.
The same development of the national genius, now preparing splendid
manifestations both in tragic and comic poetry, was called with redoubled
force into the path of oratory, by the new judicial system. A certain
power of speech now became necessary, not merely for those who intended
to take a prominent part in politics, but also for private citizens to
vindicate their rights or repel accusations, in a court of justice. It
was an accomplishment of the greatest practical utility, even apart from
ambitious purposes; hardly less so than the use of arms or the practice
of the gymnasium. Accordingly, the teachers of grammar and rhetoric,
and the composers of written speeches to be delivered by others, now
began to multiply and to acquire an unprecedented importance--as well at
Athens as under the contemporary democracy of Syracuse, in which also
some form of popular judicature was established. Style and speech began
to be reduced to a system, and so communicated; not always happily, for
several of the early rhetors adopted an artificial, ornate, and conceited
manner, from which Attic good taste afterwards liberated itself. But the
very character of a teacher of rhetoric as an art--a man giving precepts
and putting himself forward in show-lectures as a model for others, is a
feature first belonging to the Periclean age, and indicates a new demand
in the minds of the citizens.
We begin to hear, in the generation now growing up, of the rhetor and the
sophist, as persons of influence and celebrity. These two names denoted
persons of similar moral and intellectual endowments, or often indeed the
same person, considered in different points of view; either as professing
to improve the moral character, or as communicating power and facility
of expression, or as suggesting premises for persuasion, illustrations
on the commonplaces of morals and politics, argumentative abundance on
matters of ordinary experience, dialectical subtlety in confuting an
opponent, etc. Antiphon of the deme Rhamnus in Attica, Thrasymachus of
Chalcedon, Tisias of Syracuse, Gorgias of Leontini, Protagoras of Abdera,
Prodicus of Ceos, Theodorus of Byzantium, Hippias of Elis, Zeno of Elea,
were among the first who distinguished themselves in these departments of
teaching. Antiphon was the author of the earliest composed speech really
spoken in a dicastery and preserved down to the later critics. These
men were mostly not citizens of Athens, though many of them belonged to
towns comprehended in the Athenian empire, at a time when important
judicial causes belonging to these towns were often carried up to be
tried at Athens--while all of them looked to that city as a central point
of action and distinction. The term “sophist,” which Herodotus applies
with sincere respect to men of distinguished wisdom such as Solon,
Anacharsis, Pythagoras, etc., now came to be applied to these teachers of
virtue, rhetoric, conversation, and disputation; many of whom professed
acquaintance with the whole circle of human science, physical as well as
moral (then narrow enough), so far as was necessary to talk about any
portion of it plausibly, and to answer any question proposed to them.
Though they passed from one town to another, partly in the capacity of
envoys from their fellow-citizens, partly as exhibiting their talents
to numerous hearers, with much renown and large gain--they appear
to have been viewed with jealousy and dislike by a large portion of
the public. For at a time when every citizen pleaded his own cause
before the dicastery, they imparted, to those who were rich enough to
purchase it, a peculiar skill in the common weapons, which made them
like fencing-masters or professional swordsmen amidst a society of
untrained duellists. Moreover Socrates--himself a product of the same
age, a disputant on the same subjects, and bearing the same name of a
sophist--but despising political and judicial practice, and looking
to the production of intellectual stimulus and moral impressions upon
his hearers--Socrates or rather Plato, speaking through the person of
Socrates--carried on throughout his life a constant polemical warfare
against the sophists and rhetors in that negative vein in which he was
unrivalled. And as the works of these latter have not remained, it is
chiefly from the observations of their opponents that we know them; so
that they are in a situation such as that in which Socrates himself would
have been if we had been compelled to judge of him only from the _Clouds_
of Aristophanes, or from those unfavourable impressions respecting his
character which we know, even from the _Apologia_ of Plato and Xenophon,
to have been generally prevalent at Athens.
This is not the opportunity, however, for trying to distinguish the good
from the evil in the working of the sophists and rhetors. At present
it is enough that they were the natural product of the age; supplying
those wants, and answering to that stimulus, which arose partly from
the deliberations of the ecclesia, but still more from the contentions
before the dicastery--in which latter a far greater number of citizens
took active part, with or without their own consent. The public and
frequent dicasteries constituted by Pericles opened to the Athenian mind
precisely that career of improvement which was best suited to its natural
aptitude. They were essential to the development of that demand out of
which grew not only Grecian oratory, but also, as secondary products, the
speculative moral and political philosophy, and the didactic analysis of
rhetoric and grammar, which long survived after Grecian creative genius
had passed away. And it was one of the first measures of the oligarchy
of Thirty, to forbid by an express law, any teaching of the art of
speaking. Aristophanes derides the Athenians for their love of talk and
controversy, as if it had enfeebled their military energy; but in his
time, most undoubtedly, that reproach was not true--nor did it become
true, even in part, until the crushing misfortunes which marked the
close of the Peloponnesian War. During the course of that war, restless
and energetic action was the characteristic of Athens even in a greater
degree than oratory or political discussion, though before the time of
Demosthenes a material alteration had taken place.
The establishment of these paid dicasteries at Athens was thus one of
the most important and prolific events in all Grecian history. The
pay helped to furnish a maintenance for old citizens, past the age of
military service. Elderly men were the best persons for such a service,
and were preferred for judicial purposes both at Sparta and, as it seems,
in heroic Greece. Nevertheless, we need not suppose that all the dicasts
were either old or poor, though a considerable proportion of them were
so, and though Aristophanes selects these qualities as among the most
suitable subjects for his ridicule. Pericles has been often censured for
this institution, as if he had been the first to insure pay to dicasts
who before served for nothing, and had thus introduced poor citizens into
courts previously composed of citizens above poverty. But in the first
place, this supposition is not correct in point of fact, inasmuch as
there were no such constant dicasteries previously acting without pay;
next, if it had been true, the habitual exclusion of the poor citizens
would have nullified the popular working of these bodies, and would have
prevented them from answering any longer to the reigning sentiment at
Athens. Nor could it be deemed unreasonable to assign a regular pay to
those who thus rendered regular service. It was indeed an essential item
in the whole scheme and purpose, so that the suppression of the pay of
itself seems to have suspended the dicasteries, while the oligarchy of
Four Hundred was established--and it can only be discussed in that light.
As the fact stands, we may suppose that the six thousand heliasts who
filled the dicasteries were composed of the middling and poorer citizens
indiscriminately; though there was nothing to exclude the richer, if they
chose to serve.[b]
PHIDIAS ACCUSED
The public works which were undertaken through the advice of Pericles
were executed under his inspection; the choice of the artists employed
and of the plans adopted, was probably entrusted in a great measure to
his judgment; and the large sums expended on them passed through his
hands. This was an office which it was scarcely possible to exercise at
Athens without either exciting suspicion or giving a handle for calumny.
We find that Cratinus in one of his comedies threw out some hints as to
the tardiness with which Pericles carried on the third of the Long Walls
which he had persuaded the people to begin. “He had been long professing
to go on with it, but in fact did not stir a step.” Whether the motives
to which this delay was imputed were such as to call his integrity into
question, does not appear; but in time his enemies ventured openly to
attack him on this ground. Yet the first blow was not aimed directly at
himself, but was intended to wound him through the side of a friend.
Phidias, whose genius was the ruling principle which animated and
controlled every design for the ornament of the city, had been brought,
as well by conformity of taste as by the nature of his engagement, into
an intimate relation with Pericles. To ruin Phidias was one of the
readiest means both of hurting the feelings and of shaking the credit
of Pericles. If Phidias could be convicted of a fraud on the public, it
would seem an unavoidable inference that Pericles had shared the profit.
The ivory statue of the goddess in the Parthenon, which was enriched
with massy ornaments of pure gold, appeared to offer a groundwork for
a charge which could not easily be refuted. To give it the greater
weight, a man named Menon, who had been employed by Phidias in some of
the details of the work, was induced to seat himself in the agora with
the ensigns of a suppliant, and to implore pardon of the people as the
condition of revealing an offence in which he had been an accomplice
with Phidias. He accused Phidias of having embezzled a part of the gold
which he had received from the treasury. But this charge immediately
fell to the ground through a contrivance which Pericles had adopted for
a different end. The golden ornaments had been fixed on the statue in
such a manner, that they could be taken off without doing it any injury,
and thus afforded the means of ascertaining their exact weight. Pericles
challenged the accusers of Phidias to use this opportunity of verifying
their charge; but they shrank from the application of this decisive test.
Though however they were thus baffled in this part of their attempt,
they were not abashed or deterred; for they had discovered another
ground, which gave them a surer hold on the public mind. Some keen eye
had observed two figures among those with which Phidias had represented
the battle between Theseus and the Amazons on the shield of the goddess,
in which it detected the portraits of the artist himself, as a bald old
man, and that of Pericles in all the comeliness of his graceful person.
To the religious feelings of the Athenians this mode of perpetuating the
memory of individuals, by connecting their portraits with an object of
public worship, appeared to violate the sanctity of the place; and it was
probably also viewed as an arrogant intrusion, no less offensive to the
majesty of the commonwealth. It seems as if Menon’s evidence was required
even to support this charge. Phidias was committed to prison, and died
there. The informer, who was a foreigner, was rewarded with certain
immunities; and, as one who in the service of the state had provoked a
powerful enemy, was placed by a formal decree under the protection of the
Ten Generals.
ASPASIA AT THE BAR
This success emboldened the enemies of Pericles to proceed. They had
not indeed established any of their accusations; but they had sounded
the disposition of the people, and found that it might be inspired with
distrust and jealousy of its powerful minister, or that it was not
unwilling to see him humbled. They seem now to have concerted a plan for
attacking him, both directly and indirectly, in several quarters at once;
and they began with a person in whose safety he felt as much concern as
in his own, and who could not be ruined without involving him in the like
calamity.
This was the celebrated Aspasia, who had long attracted almost as
much of the public attention at Athens as Pericles himself. She was a
native of Miletus, which was early and long renowned as a school for
the cultivation of female graces. She had come, it would seem, as an
adventurer to Athens, and by the combined charms of her person, manners,
and conversation, won the affections and the esteem of Pericles. Her
station had freed her from the restraints which custom laid on the
education of the Athenian matron: and she had enriched her mind with
accomplishments which were rare even among the men. Her acquaintance with
Pericles seems to have begun while he was still united to a lady of high
birth, before the wife of the wealthy Hipponicus. We can hardly doubt
that it was Aspasia who first disturbed this union, though it is said to
have been dissolved by mutual consent. But after parting from his wife,
who had borne him two sons, Pericles attached himself to Aspasia by the
most intimate relation which the laws permitted him to contract with
a foreign woman; and she acquired an ascendency over him, which soon
became notorious, and furnished the comic poets with an inexhaustible
fund of ridicule, and his enemies with a ground for serious charges. On
the stage she was the Hera of the Athenian Zeus, the Omphale, or the
Dejanira of an enslaved or a faithless Hercules. The Samian War was
ascribed to her interposition on behalf of her birthplace; and rumours
were set afloat which represented her as ministering to the vices of
Pericles by the most odious and degrading of offices. There was perhaps
as little foundation for this report, as for a similar one in which
Phidias was implicated; though among all the imputations brought against
Pericles this is that which it is the most difficult clearly to refute.
But we are inclined to believe that it may have arisen from the peculiar
nature of Aspasia’s private circles, which, with a bold neglect of
established usage, were composed not only of the most intelligent and
accomplished men to be found at Athens, but also of matrons, who it is
said were brought by their husbands, to listen to her conversation; which
must have been highly instructive as well as brilliant, since Plato
did not hesitate to describe her as the preceptress of Socrates, and
to assert that she both formed the rhetoric of Pericles, and composed
one of his most admired harangues. The innovation which drew women of
free birth, and good condition, into her company for such a purpose,
must, even where the truth was understood, have surprised and offended
many; and it was liable to the grossest misconstruction. And if her
female friends were sometimes seen watching the progress of the works of
Phidias, it was easy, through his intimacy with Pericles, to connect this
fact with a calumny of the same kind.
There was another rumour still more dangerous, which grew out of the
character of the persons who were admitted to the society of Pericles and
Aspasia. Athens had become a place of resort for learned and ingenious
men of all pursuits. None were more welcome at the house of Pericles
than such as were distinguished by philosophical studies, and especially
by the profession of new speculative tenets. He himself was never weary
of discussing such subjects; and Aspasia was undoubtedly able to bear
her part in this, as well as in any other kind of conversation. The
mere presence of Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, and other celebrated
men, who were known to hold doctrines very remote from the religious
conceptions of the vulgar, was sufficient to make a circle in which they
were familiar pass for a school of impiety. Such were the materials
out of which the comic poet Hermippus, laying aside the mask, framed a
criminal prosecution against Aspasia. His indictment included two heads:
an offence against religion, and that of corrupting Athenian women to
gratify the passions of Pericles.
ANAXAGORAS ALSO ASSAILED
This cause seems to have been still pending, when one Diopithes procured
a decree, by which persons who denied the being of the gods, or taught
doctrines concerning the celestial bodies which were inconsistent with
religion, were made liable to a certain criminal process. This stroke
was aimed immediately at Anaxagoras--whose physical speculations had
become famous, and were thought to rob the greatest of the heavenly
beings of their inherent deity--but indirectly at his disciple and
patron Pericles. When the discussion of this decree, and the prosecution
commenced against Aspasia, had disposed the people to listen to other
less probable charges, the main attack was opened, and the accusation
which in the affair of Phidias had been silenced by the force of truth,
was revived in another form. A decree was passed on the motion of one
Dracontides, directing Pericles to give in his accounts to the Prytanis,
to be submitted to a trial, which was to be conducted with extraordinary
solemnity; for it was to be held in the citadel, and the jurors were
to take the balls with which each signified his verdict, from the top
of an altar. But this part of the decree was afterwards modified by an
amendment moved by Agnon, which ordered the cause to be tried in the
ordinary way, but by a body of fifteen hundred jurors. The uncertainty of
the party which managed these proceedings, and their distrust as to the
evidence which they should be able to procure, seem to be strongly marked
by a clause in this decree, which provided that the offence imputed to
Pericles might be described either as embezzlement, or by a more general
name, as coming under the head of public wrong.
Yet all these machinations failed at least of reaching their main object.
The issue of those which were directed against Anaxagoras cannot be
exactly ascertained through the discrepancy of the accounts given of it.
According to some authors he was tried, and condemned either to a fine
and banishment or to death; but in the latter case made his escape from
prison. According to others he was defended by Pericles, and acquitted.
Plutarch says that Pericles, fearing the event of a trial, induced him to
withdraw from Athens; and it seems to have been admitted on all hands,
that he ended his long life in quiet and honour at Lampsacus. The danger
which threatened Aspasia was also averted; but it seems that Pericles,
who pleaded her cause, found need for his most strenuous exertions, and
that in her behalf he descended to tears and entreaties, which no similar
emergency of his own could ever draw from him. It was indeed probably
a trial more of his personal influence than of his eloquence; and his
success, hardly as it was won, may have induced his adversaries to drop
the proceedings instituted against himself, or at least to postpone
them to a fitter season. After weathering this storm he seems to have
recovered his former high and firm position, which to the end of his life
was never again endangered, except by one very transient gust of popular
displeasure. He felt strong enough to resist the wishes, and to rebuke
the impatience of the people. Yet it was a persuasion so widely spread
among the ancients as to have lasted even to modern times, that his dread
of the persecution which hung over him, and his consciousness that his
expenditure of the public money would not bear a scrutiny, were at least
among the motives which induced him to kindle the war which put an end to
the Thirty Years’ Truce.[c]
[Illustration: GREEK TERRA-COTTA HEADS
(In the British Museum)]
[Illustration: GREEK COINS]