In their religious policy the tyrants went far to democratize Greek
religion. The functions of monarchy had been largely religious; but,
while the king was necessarily a priest, he was not the only priest in
the community. There were special priesthoods, hereditary in particular
families, even in the monarchical period; and upon the fall of the
monarchy, while the priestly functions of the kings passed to republican
magistrates, the priesthoods which were in the exclusive possession of
the great families tended to become the important ones. Thus, before the
rise of tyranny, Greek religion is aristocratic. The cults recognized
by the state are the _sacra_ of noble clans. The religious prerogatives
of the nobles helped to confirm their political ones, and, as long as
religion retained its aristocratic character, it was impossible for
democracy to take root. The policy of the tyrants aimed at fostering
popular cults which had no associations with the old families, and at
establishing new festivals. The cult of the wine-god, Dionysus, was thus
fostered at Sicyon by Cleisthenes, and at Corinth by the Cypselids;
while at Athens a new festival of this deity, which so completely
overshadowed the older festival that it became known as the Great
Dionysia, probably owed its institution to Peisistratus. Another
festival, the Panathenaea, which had been instituted only a few years
before his rise to power, became under his rule, and thanks to his
policy, the chief national festival of the Athenian state. Everywhere,
again, we find the tyrants the patrons of literature. Pindar and
Bacchylides, Aeschylus and Simonides found a welcome at the court of
Hiero. Polycrates was the patron of Anacreon, Periander of Arion. To
Peisistratus has been attributed, possibly not without reason, the first
critical edition of the text of Homer, a work as important in the
literary history of Greece as was the issue of the Authorized Version of
the Bible in English history. If we would judge fairly of tyranny, and
of what it contributed to the development of Greece, we must remember
how many states there were in whose history the period of greatest power
coincides with the rule of a tyrant. This is unquestionably true of
Corinth and Sicyon, as well as of Syracuse in the 5th, and again in the
4th century; it is probably true of Samos and Miletus. In the case of
Athens it is only the splendour of the Great Age that blinds us to the
greatness of the results achieved by the policy of the Peisistratids.
The arts.
With the overthrow of this dynasty tyranny disappears from Greece proper
for more than a century. During the century and a half which had elapsed
since its first appearance the whole aspect of Greek life, and of the
Greek world, had changed. The development was as yet incomplete, but the
lines on which it was to proceed had been clearly marked out. Political
power was no longer the monopoly of a class. The struggle between the
"few" and the "many" had begun; in one state at least (Athens) the
victory of the "many" was assured. The first chapter in the history of
democracy was already written. In the art of war the two innovations
which were ultimately to establish the military supremacy of Greece,
hoplite tactics and the trireme, had already been introduced. Greek
literature was no longer synonymous with epic poetry. Some of its most
distinctive forms had not yet been evolved; indeed, it is only quite at
the end of the period that prose-writing begins; but both lyric and
elegiac poetry had been brought to perfection. In art, statuary was
still comparatively stiff and crude; but in other branches, in
architecture, in vase-painting and in coin-types, the aesthetic genius
of the race had asserted its pre-eminence. Philosophy, the supreme gift
of Greece to the modern world, had become a living power. Some of her
most original thinkers belong to the 6th century. Criticism had been
applied to everything in turn: to the gods, to conduct, and to the
conception of the universe. Before the Great Age begins, the claims of
intellectual as well as of political freedom had been vindicated. It was
not, however, in Greece proper that progress had been greatest. In the
next century the centre of gravity of Greek civilization shifts to the
western side of the Aegean; in the 6th century it must be looked for at
Miletus, rather than at Athens. In order to estimate how far the
development of Greece had advanced, or to appreciate the distinctive
features of Greek life at this period, we must study Ionia, rather than
Attica or the Peloponnese. Almost all that is greatest and most
characteristic is to be found on the eastern side of the Aegean. The
great names in the history of science and philosophy before the
beginning of the 5th century--Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes,
Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaximander, Hecataeus; names which are
representative of mathematics, astronomy, geography and metaphysics, are
all, without exception, Ionian. In poetry, too, the most famous names,
if not so exclusively Ionian, are connected either with the Asiatic
coast or with the Cyclades. Against Archilochus and Anacreon, Sappho
and Alcaeus, Greece has nothing better to set, after the age of Hesiod,
than Tyrtaeus and Theognis. Reference has already been made to the
greatness of the Ionians as navigators, as colonizers and as traders. In
wealth and in population, Miletus, at the epoch of the Persian conquest,
must have been far ahead of any city of European Greece. Sybaris, in
Magna Graecia, can have been its only rival outside Ionia. There were
two respects, however, in which the comparison was in favour of the
mother-country. In warfare, the superiority of the Spartan infantry was
unquestioned; in politics, the Greek states showed a greater power of
combination than the Ionian.
External relations.
Persian wars.
Finally, Ionia was the scene of the first conflicts with the Persian.
Here were decided the first stages of a struggle which was to determine
the place of Greece in the history of the world. The rise of Persia
under Cyrus was, as Herodotus saw, the turning-point of Greek history.
Hitherto the Greek had proved himself indispensable to the oriental
monarchies with which he had been brought into contact. In Egypt the
power of the Saite kings rested upon the support of their Greek
mercenaries. Amasis (569-525 B.C.), who is raised to the throne as the
leader of a reaction against the influence of the foreign garrison, ends
by showing greater favour to the Greek soldiery and the Greek traders
than all that were before him. With Lydia the relations were originally
hostile; the conquest of the Greek fringe is the constant aim of Lydian
policy. Greek influences, however, seem to have quickly permeated Lydia,
and to have penetrated to the court. Alyattes (610-560 B.C.) marries an
Ionian wife, and the succession is disputed between the son of this
marriage and Croesus, whose mother was a Carian. Croesus (560-546 B.C.)
secures the throne, only to become the lavish patron of Greek
sanctuaries and the ally of a Greek state. The history of Hellenism had
begun. It was the rise of Cyrus that closed the East to Greek enterprise
and Greek influences. In Persia we find the antithesis of all that is
characteristic of Greece--autocracy as opposed to liberty; a military
society organized on an aristocratic basis, to an industrial society,
animated by a democratic spirit; an army, whose strength lay in its
cavalry, to an army, in which the foot-soldier alone counted; a
morality, which assigned the chief place to veracity, to a morality
which subordinated it to other virtues; a religion, which ranks among
the great religions of the world, to a religion, which appeared to the
most spiritual minds among the Greeks themselves both immoral and
absurd. Between two such races there could be neither sympathy nor
mutual understanding. In the Great Age the Greek had learned to despise
the Persian, and the Persian to fear the Greek. In the 6th century it
was the Persian who despised, and the Greek who feared. The history of
the conflicts between the Ionian Greeks and the Persian empire affords a
striking example of the combination of intellectual strength and
political weakness in the character of a people. The causes of the
failure of the Ionians to offer a successful resistance to Persia, both
at the time of the conquest by Harpagus (546-545 B.C.) and in the Ionic
revolt (499-494 B.C.), are not far to seek. The centrifugal forces
always tended to prove the stronger in the Greek system, and nowhere
were they stronger than in Ionia. The tie of their tribal union proved
weaker, every time it was put to the test, than the political and
commercial interests of the individual states. A league of jealous
commercial rivals is certain not to stand the strain of a protracted
struggle against great odds. Against the advancing power of Lydia a
common resistance had not so much as been attempted. Miletus, the
greatest of the Ionian towns, had received aid from Chios alone. Against
Persia a common resistance was attempted. The Panionium, the centre of a
religious amphictyony, became for the moment the centre of a political
league. At the time of the Persian conquest Miletus held aloof. She
secured favourable terms for herself, and left the rest of Ionia to its
fate. In the later conflict, on the contrary, Miletus is the leader in
the revolt. The issue was determined, not as Herodotus represents it, by
the inherent indolence of the Ionian nature, but by the selfish policy
of the leading states. In the sea-fight at Lade (494 B.C.) the decisive
battle of the war, the Milesians and Chians fought with desperate
courage. The day was lost thanks to the treachery of the Samian and
Lesbian contingents.
The causes of the successful resistance of the Greeks to the invasions
of their country, first by Datis and Artaphernes (490 B.C.), in the
reign of Darius, and then by Xerxes in person (480-479 B.C.), are more
complex. Their success was partly due to a moral cause. And this was
realized by the Greeks themselves. They felt (see Herod. vii. 104) that
the subjects of a despot are no match for the citizens of a free state,
who yield obedience to a law which is self-imposed. But the cause was
not solely a moral one. Nor was the result due to the numbers and
efficiency of the Athenian fleet, in the degree that the Athenians
claimed (see Herod. vii. 139). The truth is that the conditions, both
political and military, were far more favourable to the Greek defence in
Europe than they had been in Asia. At this crisis the centripetal forces
proved stronger than the centrifugal. The moral ascendancy of Sparta was
the determining factor. In Sparta the Greeks had a leader whom all were
ready to obey (Herod. viii. 2). But for her influence the forces of
disintegration would have made themselves felt as quickly as in Ionia.
Sparta was confronted with immense difficulties in conducting the
defence against Xerxes. The two chief naval powers, Athens and Aegina,
had to be reconciled after a long and exasperating warfare (see AEGINA).
After Thermopylae, the whole of northern Greece, with the exception of
Athens and a few minor states, was lost to the Greek cause. The supposed
interests of the Peloponnesians, who formed the greater part of the
national forces, conflicted with the supposed interests of the
Athenians. A more impartial view than was possible to the generation for
which Herodotus wrote suggests that Sparta performed her task with
intelligence and patriotism. The claims of Athens and Sparta were about
equally balanced. And in spite of her great superiority in numbers,[13]
the military conditions were far from favourable to Persia. A land so
mountainous as Greece is was unsuited to the operations of cavalry, the
most efficient arm of the service in the Persian Army, as in most
oriental ones. Ignorance of local conditions, combined with the
dangerous nature of the Greek coast, exposed their ships to the risk of
destruction; while the composite character of the fleet, and the
jealousies of its various contingents, tended to neutralize the
advantage of numbers. In courage and discipline, the flower of the
Persian infantry was probably little inferior to the Greek; in
equipment, they were no match for the Greek panoply. Lastly, Xerxes
laboured under a disadvantage, which may be illustrated by the
experience of the British army in the South African War--distance from
his base.
Systems of government.
5. _The Great Age (480-338 B.C.)._--The effects of the repulse of Persia
were momentous in their influence upon Greece. The effects upon
Elizabethan England of the defeat of the Spanish armada would afford
quite an inadequate parallel. It gave the Greeks a heightened sense,
both of their own national unity and of their superiority to the
barbarian, while at the same time it helped to create the material
conditions requisite alike for the artistic and political development of
the 5th century. Other cities besides Athens were adorned with the
proceeds of the spoils won from Persia, and Greek trade benefited both
from the reunion of Ionia with Greece, and from the suppression of
piracy in the Aegean and the Hellespont. Do these developments justify
us in giving to the period, which begins with the repulse of Xerxes, and
ends with the victory of Philip, the title of "the Great Age"? If the
title is justified in the case of the 5th century, should the 4th
century be excluded from the period? At first sight, the difference
between the 4th century and the 5th may seem greater than that which
exists between the 5th and the 6th. On the political side, the 5th
century is an age of growth, the 4th an age of decay; on the literary
side, the former is an age of poetry, the latter an age of prose. In
spite of these contrasts, there is a real unity in the period which
begins with the repulse of Xerxes and ends with the death of Alexander,
as compared with any preceding one. It is an age of maturity in
politics, in literature, and in art; and this is true of no earlier age.
Nor can we say that the 5th century is, in all these aspects of Greek
life, immature as compared with the 4th, or, on the other hand, that the
4th is decadent as compared with the 5th. On the political side,
maturity is, in one sense, reached in the earlier century. There is
nothing in the later century so great as the Athenian empire. In another
sense, maturity is not reached till the 4th century. It is only in the
later century that the tendency of the Greek constitutions to conform to
a common type, democracy, is (at least approximately) realized, and it
is only in this century that the principles upon which democracy is
based are carried to their logical conclusion. In literature, if we
confine our attention to poetry, we must pronounce the 5th century the
age of completed development; but in prose the case is different. The
style even of Thucydides is immature, as compared with that of Isocrates
and Plato. In philosophy, however high may be the estimate that is
formed of the genius of the earlier thinkers, it cannot be disputed that
in Plato and Aristotle we find a more mature stage of thought. In art,
architecture may perhaps be said to reach its zenith in the 5th,
sculpture in the 4th century. In its political aspect, the history of
the Great Age resolves itself into the history of two movements, the
imperial and the democratic. Hitherto Greece had meant, politically, an
aggregate of independent states, very numerous, and, as a rule, very
small. The principle of autonomy was to the Greek the most sacred of all
political principles; the passion for autonomy the most potent of
political factors. In the latter half of the 6th century Sparta had
succeeded in combining the majority of the Peloponnesian states into a
loose federal union; so loose, however, that it appears to have been
dormant in the intervals of peace. In the crisis of the Persian invasion
the Peloponnesian League was extended so as to include all the states
which had espoused the national cause. It looked on the morrow of
Plataea and Mycale (the two victories, won simultaneously, in 479 B.C.,
by Spartan commanders, by which the danger from Persia was finally
averted) as if a permanent basis for union might be found in the
hegemony of Sparta. The sense of a common peril and a common triumph
brought with it the need of a common union; it was Athens, however,
instead of Sparta, by whom the first conscious effort was made to
transcend the isolation of the Greek political system and to bring the
units into combination. The league thus founded (the Delian League,
established in 477 B.C.) was under the presidency of Athens, but it
included hardly any other state besides those that had conducted the
defence of Greece. It was formed, almost entirely, of the states which
had been liberated from Persian rule by the great victories of the war.
The Delian League, even in the form in which it was first established,
as a confederation of autonomous allies, marks an advance in political
conceptions upon the Peloponnesian League. Provision is made for an
annual revenue, for periodical meetings of the council, and for a
permanent executive. It is a real federation, though an imperfect one.
There were defects in its constitution which rendered it inevitable that
it should be transformed into an empire. Athens was from the first "the
predominant partner." The fleet was mainly Athenian, the commanders
entirely so; the assessment of the tribute was in Athenian hands; there
was no federal court appointed to determine questions at issue between
Athens and the other members; and, worst omission of all, the right of
secession was left undecided. By the middle of the century the Delian
League has become the Athenian empire. Henceforward the imperial idea,
in one form or another, dominates Greek politics. Athens failed to
extend her authority over the whole of Greece. Her empire was
overthrown; but the triumph of autonomy proved the triumph of
imperialism. The Spartan empire succeeds to the Athenian, and, when it
is finally shattered at Leuctra (371 B.C.), the hegemony of Thebes,
which is established on its ruins, is an empire in all but name. The
decay of Theban power paves the way for the rise of Macedon.
Thus throughout this period we can trace two forces contending for
mastery in the Greek political system. Two causes divide the allegiance
of the Greek world, the cause of empire and the cause of autonomy. The
formation of the confederacy of Delos did not involve the dissolution of
the alliance between Athens and Sparta. For seventeen years more Athens
retained her place in the league, "which had been established against
the Mede" under the presidency of Sparta in 480 B.C. (Thuc. i. 102). The
ascendancy of Cimon and the Philolaconian party at Athens was favourable
to a good understanding between the two states, and at Sparta in normal
times the balance inclined in favour of the party whose policy is best
described by the motto "quieta non movere."
The Peloponnesian Wars.
In the end, however, the opposition of the two contending forces proved
too strong for Spartan neutrality. The fall of Cimon (461 B.C.) was
followed by the so-called "First Peloponnesian War," a conflict between
Athens and her maritime rivals, Corinth and Aegina, into which Sparta
was ultimately drawn. Thucydides regards the hostilities of these years
(460-454 B.C.), which were resumed for a few months in 446 B.C., on the
expiration of the Five Years' Truce, as preliminary to those of the
great Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). The real question at issue was
in both cases the same. The tie that united the opponents of Athens was
found in a common hostility to the imperial idea. It is a complete
misapprehension to regard the Peloponnesian War as a mere duel between
two rival claimants for empire. The ultimatum presented by Sparta on the
eve of the war demanded the restoration of autonomy to the subjects of
Athens. There is no reason for doubting her sincerity in presenting it
in this form. It would, however, be an equal misapprehension to regard
the war as merely a struggle between the cause of empire and the cause
of autonomy. Corresponding to this fundamental contrast there are other
contrasts, constitutional, racial and military. The military interest of
the war is largely due to the fact that Athens was a sea power and
Sparta a land one. As the war went on, the constitutional aspect tended
to become more marked. At first there were democracies on the side of
Sparta, and oligarchies on the side of Athens. In the last stage of the
war, when Lysander's influence was supreme, we see the forces of
oligarchy everywhere united and organized for the destruction of
democracy. In its origin the war was certainly not due to the rivalry of
Dorian and Ionian. This racial, or tribal, contrast counted for more in
the politics of Sicily than of Greece; and, though the two great
branches of the Greek race were represented respectively by the leaders
of the two sides, the allies on neither side belonged exclusively to the
one branch or the other. Still, it remains true that the Dorian states
were, as a rule, on the Spartan side, and the Ionian states, as a rule,
on the Athenian--a division of sentiment which must have helped to widen
the breach, and to intensify the animosities.
The Athenian empire.
As a political experiment the Athenian empire possesses a unique
interest. It represents the first attempt to fuse the principles of
imperialism and democracy. It is at once the first empire in history
possessed and administered by a sovereign people, and the first which
sought to establish a common system of democratic institutions amongst
its subjects.[14] It was an experiment that failed, partly owing to the
inherent strength of the oligarchic cause, partly owing to the exclusive
character of ancient citizenship. The Athenians themselves recognized
that their empire depended for its existence upon the solidarity of
democratic interests (see Thuc. iii. 47; Pseudo-Xenophon, _de Rep. Ath._
i. 14, iii. 10). An understanding existed between the democratic leaders
in the subject-states and the democratic party at Athens. Charges were
easily trumped up against obnoxious oligarchs, and conviction as easily
obtained in the Athenian courts of law. Such a system forced the
oligarchs into an attitude of opposition. How much this opposition
counted for was realized when the Sicilian disaster (413 B.C.) gave the
subjects their chance to revolt. The organization of the oligarchical
party throughout the empire, which was effected by Lysander in the last
stage of the war, contributed to the overthrow of Athenian ascendancy
hardly less than the subsidies of Persia. Had Athens aimed at
establishing a community of interest between herself and her subjects,
based upon a common citizenship, her empire might have endured. It would
have been a policy akin to that which secured the permanence of the
Roman empire. And it was a policy which found advocates when the day for
it was past (see Aristophanes, _Lysistrata_, 574 ff.; cf. the grant of
citizenship to the Samians after Aegospotami, _C.I.A._ iv. 2, 1b). But
the policy pursued by Athens in the plenitude of her power was the
reverse of the policy pursued by Rome in her treatment of the franchise.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the fate of the empire was
sealed by the law of Pericles (451 B.C.), by which the franchise was
restricted to those who could establish Athenian descent on both sides.
It was not merely that the process of amalgamation through intermarriage
was abruptly checked; what was more serious was that a hard and fast
line was drawn, once and for all, between the small body of privileged
rulers and the great mass of unprivileged subjects. Maine (_Early
Institutions_, lecture 13) has classed the Athenian empire with those of
the familiar Oriental type, which attempt nothing beyond the raising of
taxes and the levying of troops. The Athenian empire cannot, indeed, be
classed with the Roman, or with the British rule in India; it does not,
therefore, deserve to be classed with the empires of Cyrus or of Jenghiz
Khan. Though the basis of its organization, like that of the Persian
empire under Darius, was financial, it attempted, and secured, objects
beyond the mere payment of tribute and the supply of ships. If Athens
did not introduce a common religion, or a common system of education, or
a common citizenship, she did introduce a common type of political
institutions, and a common jurisdiction.[15] She went some way, too, in
the direction of establishing a common system of coins, and of weights
and measures. A common language was there already. In a word, the
Athenian empire marks a definite stage of political evolution.
The mature democracy.
The other great political movement of the age was the progress of
democracy. Before the Persian invasion democracy was a rare phenomenon
in Greek politics. Where it was found it existed in an undeveloped form,
and its tenure of power was precarious. By the beginning of the
Peloponnesian War it had become the prevalent form of government. The
great majority of Greek states had adopted democratic constitutions.
Both in the Athenian sphere of influence and in the colonial world
outside that sphere, democracy was all but the only form of constitution
known. It was only in Greece proper that oligarchy held its own. In the
Peloponnese it could count a majority of the states; in northern Greece
at least a half of them. The spread of democratic institutions was
arrested by the victory of Sparta in the East, and the rise of Dionysius
in the West. There was a moment at the end of the 5th century when it
looked as if democracy was a lost cause. Even Athens was for a brief
period under the rule of the Thirty (404-403 B.C.). In the regions which
had formed the empire of Athens the decarchies set up by Lysander were
soon overthrown, and democracies restored in most cases, but oligarchy
continued to be the prevalent form in Greece proper until Leuctra (371
B.C.), and in Sicily tyranny had a still longer tenure of power. By the
end of the Great Age oligarchy has almost disappeared from the Greek
world, except in the sphere of Persian influence. The Spartan monarchy
still survives; a few Peloponnesian states still maintain the rule of
the few; here and there in Greece itself we meet with a revival of the
_tyrannis_; but, with these exceptions, democracy is everywhere the only
type of constitution. And democracy has developed as well as spread. At
the end of the 5th century the constitution of Cleisthenes, which was a
democracy in the view of his contemporaries, had come to be regarded as
an aristocracy (Aristot. _Ath. Pol._ 29. 3). We can trace a similar
change of sentiment in Sicily. As compared with the extreme form of
constitution adopted at Syracuse after the defeat of the Athenian
expedition, the democracies established two generations earlier, on the
fall of the _tyrannis_, appeared oligarchical. The changes by which the
character of the Greek democracies was revolutionized were four in
number: the substitution of sortition for election, the abolition of a
property qualification, the payment of officials and the rise of a class
of professional politicians. In the democracy of Cleisthenes no payment
was given for service, whether as a magistrate, a juror or a member of
the Boule. The higher magistracies were filled by election, and they
were held almost exclusively by the members of the great Athenian
families. For the highest office of all, the archonship, none but
_Pentacosiomedimni_ (the first of the four Solonian classes) were
eligible. The introduction of pay and the removal of the property
qualification formed part of the reforms of Pericles. Sortition had been
instituted for election a generation earlier (487 B.C.).[16] What is
perhaps the most important of all these changes, the rise of the
demagogues, belongs to the era of the Peloponnesian War. From the time
of Cleisthenes to the outbreak of the war every statesman of note at
Athens, with the exception of Themistocles (and, perhaps, of Ephialtes),
is of aristocratic birth. Down to the fall of Cimon the course of
Athenian politics is to a great extent determined by the alliances and
antipathies of the great clans. With the Peloponnesian War a new epoch
begins. The chief office, the _strategia_, is still, as a rule, held by
men of rank. But leadership in the Ecclesia has passed to men of a
different class. The demagogues were not necessarily poor men. Cleon was
a wealthy man; Eucrates, Lysicles and Hyperbolus were, at any rate,
tradesmen rather than artisans. The first "labour member" proper is
Cleophon (411-404 B.C.), a lyre-maker. They belonged, however, not to
the land-owning, but to the industrial classes; they were distinguished
from the older race of party-leaders by a vulgar accent, and by a
violence of gesture in public speaking, and they found their supporters
among the population of the city and its port, the Peiraeus, rather than
among the farmers of the country districts. In the 4th century the
demagogues, though under another name, that of orators, have acquired
entire control of the Ecclesia. It is an age of professionalism, and the
professional soldier has his counterpart in the professional politician.
Down to the death of Pericles the party-leader had always held office as
Strategus. His rival, Thucydides, son of Melesias, forms a solitary
exception to this statement. In the 4th century the divorce between the
general and the statesman is complete. The generals are professional
soldiers, who aspire to no political influence in the state, and the
statesmen devote themselves exclusively to politics, a career for which
they have prepared themselves by a professional training in oratory or
administrative work. The ruin of agriculture during the war had reduced
the old families to insignificance. Birth counts for less than nothing
as a political asset in the age of Demosthenes.
The city-state.
But great as are the contrasts which have been pointed out between the
earlier and the later democracy, those that distinguish the ancient
conception of democracy from the modern are of a still more essential
nature. The differences that distinguish the democracies of ancient
Greece from those of the modern world have their origin, to a great
extent, in the difference between a city-state and a nation-state. Many
of the most famous Greek states had an area of a few square miles; the
largest of them was no larger than an English county. Political theory
put the limit of the citizen-body at 10,000. Though this number was
exceeded in a few cases, it is doubtful if any state, except Athens,
ever counted more than 20,000 citizens. In the nation-states of modern
times, democratic government is possible only under the form of a
representative system; in the city-state representative government was
unnecessary, and therefore unknown. In the ancient type of democracy a
popular chamber has no existence. The Ecclesia is not a chamber in any
sense of the term; it is an assembly of the whole people, which every
citizen is entitled to attend, and in which every one is equally
entitled to vote and speak. The question raised in modern political
science, as to whether sovereignty resides in the electors or their
representatives, has thus neither place nor meaning in ancient theory.
In the same way, one of the most familiar results of modern analysis,
the distinction between the executive and the legislative, finds no
recognition in the Greek writers. In a direct system of government there
can be no executive in the proper sense. Executive functions are
discharged by the ecclesia, to whose decision the details of
administration may be referred. The position of the strategi, the chief
officials in the Athenian democracy of the 5th century, was in no sense
comparable to that of a modern cabinet. Hence the individual citizen in
an ancient democracy was concerned in, and responsible for, the actual
work of government to a degree that is inconceivable in a modern state.
Thus participation in the administrative and judicial business of the
state is made by Aristotle the differentia of the citizen ([Greek:
polites estin ho metechon kriseos kai arches], Aristot. _Politics_, p.
1275 a 20). A large proportion of the citizens of Athens, in addition to
frequent service in the courts of law, must in the course of their lives
have held a magistracy, great or small, or have acted for a year or two
as members of the Boule.[17] It must be remembered that there was
nothing corresponding to a permanent civil service in the ancient state.
Much of the work of a government office would have been transacted by
the Athenian Boule. It must be remembered, too, that political and
administrative questions of great importance came before the popular
courts of law. Hence it follows that the ordinary citizen of an ancient
democracy, in the course of his service in the Boule or the law-courts,
acquired an interest in political questions, and a grasp of
administrative work, which none but a select few can hope to acquire
under the conditions of the modern system. Where there existed neither a
popular chamber nor a distinct executive, there was no opportunity for
the growth of a party-system. There were, of course, political parties
at Athens and elsewhere--oligarchs and democrats, conservatives and
radicals, a peace-party and a war-party, according to the burning
question of the day. There was, however, nothing equivalent to a general
election, to a cabinet (or to that collective responsibility which is of
the essence of a cabinet), or to the government and the opposition.
Party organization, therefore, and a party system, in the proper sense,
were never developed. Whatever may have been the evils incident to the
ancient form of democracy, the "boss," the caucus and the spoils-system
were not among them.
Position of women.
Besides these differences, which, directly or indirectly, result from
the difference of scale, there are others, hardly less profound, which
are not connected with the size of the city-state. Perhaps the most
striking contrast between the democracies of ancient and of modern times
is to be found in their attitude towards privilege. Ancient democracy
implies privilege; modern democracy implies its destruction. In the more
fully developed democracies of the modern world (e.g. in the United
States, or in Australia), the privilege of class is unknown; in some of
them (e.g. New Zealand, Australia, Norway) even the privilege of sex has
been abolished. Ancient democracy was bound up with privilege as much as
oligarchy was. The transition from the latter to the former was effected
by enlarging the area of privilege and by altering its basis. In an
oligarchical state citizenship might be confined to 10% of the free
population; under a democracy 50% might enjoy it. In the former case the
qualification might be wealth or land; in the latter case it might be,
as it was at Athens, birth, i.e. descent, on both sides, from a citizen
family. But, in both cases alike, the distinction between a privileged
and an unprivileged body of free-born residents is fundamental. To the
unprivileged class belonged, not only foreigners temporarily resident
([Greek: xenoi]) and aliens permanently domiciled ([Greek: metoikoi]),
but also those native-born inhabitants of the state who were of foreign
extraction, on one side or the other.[18] The privileges attaching to
citizenship included, in addition to eligibility for office and a vote
in the assembly, such private rights as that of owning land or a house,
or of contracting a marriage with one of citizen status. The citizen,
too, was alone the recipient of all the various forms of pay (e.g. for
attendance in the assembly, for service in the Boule or the law-courts,
or for the celebration of the great festivals) which are so conspicuous
a feature in the developed democracy of the 4th century. The _metoeci_
could not even plead in a court of law in person, but only through a
patron ([Greek: prostates]). It is intelligible that privileges so great
should be jealously guarded. In the democracies of the modern world
naturalization is easy; in those of ancient Greece admission to the
franchise was rarely accorded. In modern times, again, we are accustomed
to connect democracy with the emancipation of women. It is true that
only a few democratic constitutions grant them the suffrage; but though,
as a rule, they are denied public rights, the growth of popular
government has been almost everywhere accompanied by an extension of
their private rights, and by the removal of the restrictions imposed by
law, custom or public opinion upon their freedom of action. In ancient
Greece the democracies were as illiberal in their policy as the
oligarchies. Women of the respectable class were condemned to
comparative seclusion. They enjoyed far less freedom in 4th-century
Athens than in the Homeric Age. It is not in any of the democracies, but
in conservative Sparta, that they possess privilege and exercise
influence.
Slavery.
The most fundamental of all the contrasts between democracy in its
ancient and in its modern form remains to be stated. The ancient state
was inseparable from slavery. In this respect there was no difference
between democracy and the other forms of government. No inconsistency
was felt, therefore, between this institution and the democratic
principle. Modern political theory has been profoundly affected by the
conception of the dignity of labour; ancient political theory tended to
regard labour as a disqualification for the exercise of political
rights. Where slavery exists, the taint of it will inevitably cling to
all labour that can be performed by the slave. In ancient Athens (which
may be taken as typical of the Greek democracies) unskilled labour was
almost entirely slave-labour, and skilled labour was largely so. The
arts and crafts were, to some extent, exercised by citizens, but to a
less extent in the 4th than in the 6th century. They were, however,
chiefly left to aliens or slaves. The citizen-body of Athens in the age
of Demosthenes has been stigmatized as consisting in great measure of
salaried paupers. There is, doubtless, an exaggeration in this. It is,
however, true, both that the system of state-pay went a long way towards
supplying the simple wants of a southern population, and that a large
proportion of the citizens had time to spare for the service of the
state. Had the life of the lower class of citizens been absorbed in a
round of mechanical labours, as fully as is the life of our industrial
classes, the working of an ancient democracy would have been impossible.
In justice to the ancient democracies it must be conceded that, while
popular government carried with it neither the enfranchisement of the
alien nor the emancipation of the slave, the rights secured to both
classes were more considerable in the democratic states than elsewhere.
The lot of the slave, as well as that of the alien, was a peculiarly
favourable one at Athens. The pseudo-Xenophon in the 5th century (_De
rep. Ath._ 1. 10-12) and Plato in the 4th (_Republic_, p. 563 B), prove
that the spirit of liberty, with which Athenian life was permeated, was
not without its influence upon the position of these classes. When we
read that critics complained of the opulence of slaves, and of the
liberties they took, and when we are told that the slave could not be
distinguished from the poorer class of citizens either by his dress or
his look, we begin to realize the difference between the slavery of
ancient Athens and the system as it was worked on the Roman _latifundia_
or the plantations of the New World.
The Spartan empire.
It had been anticipated that the fall of Athens would mean the triumph
of the principle of autonomy. If Athens had surrendered within a year or
so of the Sicilian catastrophe, this anticipation would probably have
been fulfilled. It was the last phase of the struggle (412-404 B.C.)
that rendered a Spartan empire inevitable. The oligarchical governments
established by Lysander recognized that their tenure of power was
dependent upon Spartan support, while Lysander himself, to whose genius,
as a political organizer not less than as a commander, the triumph of
Sparta was due, was unwilling to see his work undone. The Athenian
empire had never included the greater part of Greece proper; since the
Thirty Years' Peace its possessions on the mainland, outside the
boundaries of Attica, were limited to Naupactus and Plataea. Sparta, on
the other hand, attempted the control of the entire Greek world east of
the Adriatic. Athens had been compelled to acknowledge a dual system;
Sparta sought to establish uniformity. The attempt failed from the
first. Within a year of the surrender of Athens, Thebes and Corinth had
drifted into an attitude of opposition, while Argos remained hostile. It
was not long before the policy of Lysander succeeded in uniting against
Sparta the very forces upon which she had relied when she entered on the
Peloponnesian War. The Corinthian War (394-387 B.C.) was brought about
by the alliance of all the second-class powers--Thebes, Athens, Corinth,
Argos--against the one first-class power, Sparta. Though Sparta emerged
successful from the war, it was with the loss of her maritime empire,
and at the cost of recognizing the principle of autonomy as the basis of
the Greek political system. It was already evident, thus early in the
century, that the centrifugal forces were to prove stronger than the
centripetal. Two further causes may be indicated which help to explain
the failure of the Spartan empire. In the first place Spartan sea-power
was an artificial creation. History seems to show that it is idle for a
state to aspire to naval supremacy unless it possesses a great
commercial marine. Athens had possessed such a marine; her naval
supremacy was due not to the mere size of her fleet, but to the numbers
and skill of her seafaring population. Sparta had no commerce. She could
build fleets more easily than she could man them. A single defeat (at
Cnidus, 391 B.C.) sufficed for the ruin of her sea-power. The second
cause is to be found in the financial weakness of the Spartan state. The
Spartan treasury had been temporarily enriched by the spoils of the
Peloponnesian War, but neither during that war, nor afterwards, did
Sparta succeed in developing any scientific financial system. Athens was
the only state which either possessed a large annual revenue or
accumulated a considerable reserve. Under the conditions of Greek
warfare, fleets were more expensive than armies. Not only was money
needed for the building and maintenance of the ships, but the sailor
must be paid, while the soldier served for nothing. Hence the power with
the longest purse could both build the largest fleet and attract the
most skilful seamen.
Theban hegemony.
The battle of Leuctra transferred the hegemony from Sparta to Thebes,
but the attempt to unite Greece under the leadership of Thebes was from
the first doomed to failure. The conditions were less favourable to
Thebes than they had been to Athens or Sparta. Thebes was even more
exclusively a land-power than Sparta. She had no revenue comparable to
that of Athens in the preceding century. Unlike Athens and Sparta, she
had not the advantage of being identified with a political cause. As the
enemy of Athens in the 5th century, she was on the side of oligarchy; as
the rival of Sparta in the 4th, she was on the side of democracy; but in
her bid for primacy she could not appeal, as Athens and Sparta could,
to a great political tradition, nor had she behind her, as they had, the
moral force of a great political principle. Her position, too, in
Boeotia itself was insecure. The rise of Athens was in great measure the
result of the _synoecism_ ([Greek: sunoikismos)] of Attica. All
inhabitants of Attica were Athenians. But "Boeotian" and "Theban" were
not synonymous terms. The Boeotian league was an imperfect form of
union, as compared with the Athenian state, and the claim of Thebes to
the presidency of the league was, at best, sullenly acquiesced in by the
other towns. The destruction of some of the most famous of the Boeotian
cities, however necessary it may have been in order to unite the
country, was a measure which at once impaired the resources of Thebes
and outraged Greek sentiment. It has been often held that the failure of
Theban policy was due to the death of Epaminondas (at the battle of
Mantinea, 362 B.C.). For this view there is no justification. His policy
had proved a failure before his death. Where it harmonized with the
spirit of the age, the spirit of dissidence, it succeeded; where it
attempted to run counter to it, it failed. It succeeded in destroying
the supremacy of Sparta in the Peloponnese; it failed to unite the
Peloponnese on a new basis. It failed still more significantly to unite
Greece north of the Isthmus. It left Greece weaker and more divided than
it found it (see the concluding words of Xenophon's _Hellenics_). It
would be difficult to overestimate the importance of his policy as a
destructive force; as a constructive force it effected nothing.[19] The
Peloponnesian system which Epaminondas overthrew had lasted two hundred
years. Under Spartan leadership the Peloponnese had enjoyed almost
complete immunity from invasion and comparative immunity from _stasis_
(faction). The claim that Isocrates makes for Sparta is probably
well-founded (_Archidamus_, 64-69; during the period of Spartan
ascendency the Peloponnesians were [Greek: eudaimonestatoi ton
Hellenon]). Peloponnesian sentiment had been one of the chief factors in
Greek politics; to it, indeed, in no small degree was due the victory
over Persia. The Theban victory at Leuctra destroyed the unity, and with
it the peace and the prosperity, of the Peloponnese. It inaugurated a
period of misery, the natural result of _stasis_ and invasion, to which
no parallel can be found in the earlier history (See Isocrates,
_Archidamus_, 65, 66; the Peloponnesians were [Greek: omalismenoi tais
sumphopais]). It destroyed, too, the Peloponnesian sentiment of
hostility to the invader. The bulk of the army that defeated Mardonius
at Plataea came from the Peloponnese; at Chaeronea no Peloponnesian
state was represented.
The rise of Macedon.
The question remains, Why did the city-state fail to save Greece from
conquest by Macedon? Was this result due to the inherent weakness either
of the city-state itself, or of one particular form of it, democracy? It
is clear, in any case, that the triumph of Macedon was the effect of
causes which had long been at work. If neither Philip nor Alexander had
appeared on the scene, Greece might have maintained her independence for
another generation or two; but, when invasion came, it would have found
her weaker and more distracted, and the conquerors might easily have
been less imbued with the Greek spirit, and less sympathetic towards
Greek ideals, than the great Macedonian and his son. These causes are to
be found in the tendencies of the age, political, economic and moral. Of
the two movements which characterized the Great Age in its political
aspect, the imperial and the democratic, the one failed and the other
succeeded. The failure and the success were equally fatal to the chances
of Greece in the conflict with Macedon. By the middle of the 4th century
Greek politics had come to be dominated by the theory of the balance of
power. This theory, enunciated in its coarsest form by Demosthenes (_Pro
Megalopolit._ 4 [Greek: sumpherei te polei kai Lakedaimonious astheneis
einai kai Thebaious]; cf. _in Aristocrat._ 102, 103), had shaped the
foreign policy of Athens since the end of the Peloponnesian War. As long
as Sparta was the stronger, Athens inclined to a Theban alliance; after
Leuctra she tended in the direction of a Spartan one. At the epoch of
Philip's accession the forces were everywhere nicely balanced. The
Peloponnese was fairly equally divided between the Theban and the
Spartan interests, and central Greece was similarly divided between the
Theban and the Athenian. Farther north we get an Athenian party opposed
to an Olynthian in Chalcidice, and a republican party, dependent upon
the support of Thebes, opposed to that of the tyrants in Thessaly. It is
easy to see that the political conditions of Greece, both in the north
and in the south, invited interference from without. And the triumph of
democracy in its extreme form was ruinous to the military efficiency of
Greece. On the one side there was a monarchical state, in which all
powers, civil as well as military, were concentrated in the hands of a
single ruler; on the other, a constitutional system, in which a complete
separation had been effected between the responsibility of the statesman
and that of the commander.[20]
It could not be doubtful with which side victory would rest. Meanwhile,
the economic conditions were steadily growing worse. The cause which
Aristotle assigns for the decay of the Spartan state--a declining
population (see _Politics_, p. 1270 a [Greek: apoleto e polis ton
Lakedaimonion dia ten oliganthropian])--might be extended to the Greek
world generally. The loss of population was partly the result of war and
_stasis_--Isocrates speaks of the number of political exiles from the
various states as enormous[21]--but it was also due to a declining
birth-rate, and to the exposure of infants. Aristotle, while condemning
exposure, sanctions the procuring of abortion (_Politics_, 1335 b). It
is probable that both ante-natal and post-natal infanticide were rife
everywhere, except among the more backward communities. A people which
has condemned itself to racial suicide can have little chance when
pitted against a nation in which healthier instincts prevail. The
materials for forming a trustworthy estimate of the population of Greece
at any given epoch are not available; there is enough evidence, however,
to prove that the military population of the leading Greek states at the
era of the battle of Chaeronea (338 B.C.) fell far short of what it had
been at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. The decline in
population had been accompanied by a decline in wealth, both public and
private; and while revenues had shrunk, expenditure had grown. It was a
century of warfare; and warfare had become enormously more expensive,
partly through the increased employment of mercenaries, partly through
the enhanced cost of material. The power of the purse had made itself
felt even in the 5th century; Persian gold had helped to decide the
issue of the great war. In the politics of the 4th century the power of
the purse becomes the determining factor. The public finance of the
ancient world was singularly simple in character, and the expedients for
raising a revenue were comparatively few. The distinction between direct
and indirect taxation was recognized in practice, but states as a rule
were reluctant to submit to the former system. The revenue of Athens in
the 5th century was mainly derived from the tribute paid by her
subjects; it was only in time of war that a direct tax was levied upon
the citizen-body.[22] In the age of Demosthenes the revenue derived from
the Athenian Confederacy was insignificant. The whole burden of the
expenses of a war fell upon the 1200 richest citizens, who were subject
to direct taxation in the dual form of the _Trierarchy_ and the
_Eisphora_ (property-tax). The revenue thus raised was wholly
insufficient for an effort on a great scale; yet the revenues of Athens
at this period must have exceeded those of any other state.
It is to moral causes, however, rather than to political or economic
ones, that the failure of Greece in the conflict with Macedon is
attributed by the most famous Greek statesmen of that age. Demosthenes
is never weary of insisting upon the decay of patriotism among the
citizens and upon the decay of probity among their leaders. Venality had
always been the besetting sin of Greek statesmen. Pericles' boast as to
his own incorruptibility (Thuc. ii. 60) is significant as to the
reputation of his contemporaries. In the age of Demosthenes the level of
public life in this respect had sunk at least as low as that which
prevails in many states of the modern world (see Demosth. _On the
Crown_, 61 [Greek: para tois Hellesin, oi tisin all' apasin omoios phora
prooton kai dorodokon sunebe]; cf. SS 295, 296). Corruption was
certainly not confined to the Macedonian party. The best that can be
said in defence of the patriots, as well as of their opponents, is that
they honestly believed that the policy which they were bribed to
advocate was the best for their country's interests. The evidence for
the general decay of patriotism among the mass of the citizens is less
conclusive. The battle of Megalopolis (331 B.C.), in which the Spartan
soldiery "went down in a blaze of glory," proves that the spirit of the
Lacedemonian state remained unchanged. But at Athens it seemed to
contemporary observers--to Isocrates equally with Demosthenes--that the
spirit of the great days was extinct (see Isocr. _On the Peace_, 47,
48). It cannot, of course, be denied that public opinion was obstinately
opposed to the diversion of the Theoric Fund to the purposes of the war
with Philip. It was not till the year before Chaeronea that Demosthenes
succeeded in persuading the assembly to devote the entire surplus to the
expenses of the war.[23] Nor can it be denied that mercenaries were far
more largely employed in the 4th century than in the 5th. In justice,
however, to the Athenians of the Demosthenic era, it should be
remembered that the burden of direct taxation was rarely imposed, and
was reluctantly endured, in the previous century. It must also be
remembered that, even in the 4th century, the Athenian citizen was ready
to take the field, provided that it was not a question of a distant
expedition or of prolonged service.[24] For distant expeditions, or for
prolonged service, a citizen-militia is unsuited. The substitution of a
professional force for an unprofessional one is to be explained, partly
by the change in the character of Greek warfare, and partly by the
operation of the laws of supply and demand. There had been a time when
warfare meant a brief campaign in the summer months against a
neighbouring state. It had come to mean prolonged operations against a
distant enemy.[25] Athens was at war, e.g. with Philip, for eleven years
continuously (357-346 B.C.). If winter campaigns in Thrace were
unpopular at this epoch, they had been hardly less unpopular in the
epoch of the Peloponnesian War. In the days of her greatness, too,
Athens had freely employed mercenaries, but it was in the navy rather
than the army. In the age of Pericles the supply of mercenary rowers was
abundant, the supply of mercenary troops inconsiderable. In the age of
Demosthenes incessant warfare and ceaseless revolution had filled Greece
with crowds of homeless adventurers. The supply helped to create the
demand. The mercenary was as cheap as the citizen-soldier, and much more
effective. On the whole, then, it may be inferred that it is a mistake
to regard the prevalence of the mercenary system as the expression of a
declining patriotism. It would be nearer the mark to treat the
transition from the voluntary to the professional system as cause rather
than effect: as one among the causes which contributed to the decay of
public spirit in the Greek world.
Federal government.
6. _From Alexander to the Roman Conquest (336-146 B.C.)._--In the
history of Greece proper during this period the interest is mainly
constitutional. It may be called the age of federation. Federation,
indeed, was no novelty in Greece. Federal unions had existed in
Thessaly, in Boeotia and elsewhere, and the Boeotian league can be
traced back at least to the 6th century. Two newly-founded federations,
the Chalcidian and the Arcadian, play no inconsiderable part in the
politics of the 4th century. But it is not till the 3rd century that
federation attains to its full development in Greece, and becomes the
normal type of polity. The two great leagues of this period are the
Aetolian and the Achaean. Both had existed in the 4th century, but the
latter, which had been dissolved shortly before the beginning of the 3rd
century, becomes important only after its restoration in 280 B.C., about
which date the former, too, first begins to attract notice. The interest
of federalism lies in the fact that it marks an advance beyond the
conception of the city-state. It is an attempt to solve the problem
which the Athenian empire failed to solve, the reconciliation of the
claims of local autonomy with those of national union. The federal
leagues of the 3rd century possess a further interest for the modern
world, in that there can be traced in their constitutions a nearer
approach to a representative system than is found elsewhere in Greek
experience. A genuine representative system, it is true, was never
developed in any Greek polity. What we find in the leagues is a sort of
compromise between the principle of a primary assembly and the principle
of a representative chamber. In both leagues the nominal sovereign was a
primary assembly, in which every individual citizen had the right to
vote. In both of them, however, the real power lay with a council
([Greek: Boule]) composed of members representative of each of the
component states.[26]
Alexander's empire.
The real interest of this period, however, is to be looked for elsewhere
than in Greece itself. Alexander's career is one of the turning-points
in history. He is one of the few to whom it has been given to modify the
whole future of the human race. He originated two forces which have
profoundly affected the development of civilization. He created
Hellenism, and he created for the western world the monarchical ideal.
Greece had produced personal rulers of ability, or even of genius; but
to the greatest of these, to Peisistratus, to Dionysius, even to Jason
of Pherae, there clung the fatal taint of illegitimacy. As yet no ruler
had succeeded in making the person of the monarch respectable. Alexander
made it sacred. From him is derived, for the West, that "divinity that
doth hedge a king." And in creating Hellenism he created, for the first
time, a common type of civilization, with a common language, literature
and art, as well as a common form of political organization. In Asia
Minor he was content to reinforce the existing Hellenic elements (cf.
the case of Side, Arrian, _Anabasis_, i. 26. 4). In the rest of the East
his instrument of hellenization was the _polis_. He is said to have
founded no less than seventy cities, destined to become centres of Greek
influence; and the great majority of these were in lands in which
city-life was almost unknown. In this respect his example was emulated
by his successors. The eastern provinces were soon lost, though Greek
influences lingered on even in Bactria and across the Indus. It was only
the regions lying to the west of the Euphrates that were effectively
hellenized, and the permanence of this result was largely due to the
policy of Rome. But after all deductions have been made, the great fact
remains that for many centuries after Alexander's death Greek was the
language of literature and religion, of commerce and of administration
throughout the Nearer East. Alexander had created a universal empire as
well as a universal culture. His empire perished at his death, but its
central idea survived--that of the municipal freedom of the Greek
_polis_ within the framework of an imperial system. Hellenistic
civilization may appear degenerate when compared with Hellenic; when
compared with the civilizations which it superseded in non-Hellenic
lands, it marks an unquestionable advance. (For the history of Greek
civilization in the East, see HELLENISM.) Greece left her mark upon the
civilization of the West as well as upon that of the East, but the
process by which her influence was diffused was essentially different.
In the East Hellenism came in the train of the conqueror, and Rome was
content to build upon the foundations laid by Alexander. In the West
Greek influences were diffused by the Roman conquest of Greece. It was
through the ascendancy which Greek literature, philosophy and art
acquired over the Roman mind that Greek culture penetrated to the
nations of western Europe. The civilization of the East remained Greek.
The civilization of the West became and remained Latin, but it was a
Latin civilization that was saturated with Greek influences. The
ultimate division, both of the empire and the church, into two halves,
finds its explanation in this original difference of culture.
ANCIENT AUTHORITIES.--(I.) For the earliest periods of Greek history,
the so-called Minoan and Mycenaean, the evidence is purely
archaeological. It is sufficient here to refer to the article AEGEAN
CIVILIZATION. For the next period, the Heroic or Homeric Age, the
evidence is derived from the poems of Homer. In any estimate of the
value of these poems as historical evidence, much will depend upon the
view taken of the authorship, age and unity of the poems. For a full
discussion of these questions see HOMER. It cannot be questioned that
the poems are evidence for the existence of a period in the history of
the Greek race, which differed from later periods in political and
social, military and economic conditions. But here agreement ends. If,
as is generally held by German critics, the poems are not earlier than
the 9th century, if they contain large interpolations of considerably
later date and if they are Ionian in origin, the authority of the poems
becomes comparatively slight. The existence of different strata in the
poems will imply the existence of inconsistencies and contradictions in
the evidence; nor will the evidence be that of a contemporary. It will
also follow that the picture of the heroic age contained in the poems is
an idealized one. The more extreme critics, e.g. Beloch, deny that the
poems are evidence even for the existence of a pre-Dorian epoch. If, on
the other hand, the poems are assigned to the 11th or 12th century, to a
Peloponnesian writer, and to a period anterior to the Dorian Invasion
and the colonization of Asia Minor (this is the view of the late Dr D.
B. Munro), the evidence becomes that of a contemporary, and the
authority of the poems for the distribution of races and tribes in the
Heroic Age, as well as for the social and political conditions of the
poet's time, would be conclusive. Homer recognizes no Dorians in Greece,
except in Crete (see _Odyssey_, xix. 177), and no Greek colonies in Asia
Minor. Only two explanations are possible. Either there is deliberate
archaism in the poems, or else they are earlier in date than the Dorian
Invasion and the colonization of Asia Minor.
Herodotus.
II. For the period that extends from the end of the Heroic Age to the
end of the Peloponnesian War[27] the two principal authorities are
Herodotus and Thucydides. Not only have the other historical works which
treated of this period perished (those at least whose date is earlier
than the Christian era), but their authority was secondary and their
material chiefly derived from these two writers. In one respect then
this period of Greek history stands alone. Indeed, it might be said,
with hardly an exaggeration, that there is nothing like it elsewhere in
history. Almost our sole authorities are two writers of unique genius,
and they are writers whose works have come down to us intact. For the
period which ends with the repulse of the Persian invasion our authority
is Herodotus. For the period which extends from 478 to 411 we are
dependent upon Thucydides'. In each case, however, a distinction must be
drawn. The Persian Wars form the proper subject of Herodotus's work; the
Peloponnesian War is the subject of Thucydides. The interval between the
two wars is merely sketched by Thucydides; while of the period anterior
to the conflicts of the Greek with the Persian, Herodotus does not
attempt either a complete or a continuous narrative. His references to
it are episodical and accidental. Hence our knowledge of the Persian
Wars and of the Peloponnesian War is widely different in character from
our knowledge of the rest of this period. In the history of these wars
the _lacunae_ are few; in the rest of the history they are alike
frequent and serious. In the history, therefore, of the Persian and
Peloponnesian Wars little is to be learnt from the secondary sources.
Elsewhere, especially in the interval between the two wars, they become
relatively important.
In estimating the authority of Herodotus (q.v.) we must be careful to
distinguish between the invasion of Xerxes and all that is earlier.
Herodotus's work was published soon after 430 B.C., i.e. about half a
century after the invasion. Much of his information was gathered in the
course of the preceding twenty years. Although his evidence is not that
of an eye-witness, he had had opportunities of meeting those who had
themselves played a part in the war, on one side or the other (e.g.
Thersander of Orchomenos, ix. 16). In any case, we are dealing with a
tradition which is little more than a generation old, and the events to
which the tradition relates, the incidents of the struggle against
Xerxes, were of a nature to impress themselves indelibly upon the minds
of contemporaries. Where, on the other hand, he is treating of the
period anterior to the invasion of Xerxes, he is dependent upon a
tradition which is never less than two generations old, and is sometimes
centuries old. His informants were, at best, the sons or grandsons of
the actors in the wars (e.g. Archias the Spartan, iii. 55). Moreover,
the invasion of Xerxes, entailing, as it did, the destruction of cities
and sanctuaries, especially of Athens and its temples, marks a dividing
line in Greek history. It was not merely that evidence perished and
records were destroyed. What in reference to tradition is even more
important, a new consciousness of power was awakened, new interests were
aroused, and new questions and problems came to the front. The former
things had passed away; all things were become new. A generation that is
occupied with making history on a great scale is not likely to busy
itself with the history of the past. Consequently, the earlier
traditions became faint and obscured, and the history difficult to
reconstruct. As we trace back the conflict between Greece and Persia to
its beginnings and antecedents, we are conscious that the tradition
becomes less trustworthy as we pass back from one stage to another. The
tradition of the expedition of Datis and Artaphernes is less credible in
its details than that of the expedition of Xerxes, but it is at once
fuller and more credible than the tradition of the Ionian revolt. When
we get back to the Scythian expedition, we can discover but few grains
of historical truth.
Much recent criticism of Herodotus has been directed against his
veracity as a traveller. With this we are not here concerned. The
criticism of him as an historian begins with Thucydides. Among the
references of the latter writer to his predecessor are the following
passages: i. 21; i. 22 _ad fin._; i. 20 _ad fin._ (cf. Herod. ix. 53,
and vi. 57 _ad fin._); iii. 62 S 4 (cf. Herod. ix. 87); ii. 2 SS 1 and 3
(cf. Herod. vii. 233); ii. 8 S 3 (cf. Herod. vi. 98). Perhaps the two
clearest examples of this criticism are to be found in Thucydides'
correction of Herodotus's account of the Cylonian conspiracy (Thuc. i.
126, cf. Herod. v. 71) and in his appreciation of the character of
Themistocles--a veiled protest against the slanderous tales accepted by
Herodotus (i. 138). In Plutarch's tract "On the Malignity of Herodotus"
there is much that is suggestive, although his general standpoint, viz.
that Herodotus was in duty bound to suppress all that was discreditable
to the valour or patriotism of the Greeks, is not that of the modern
critic. It must be conceded to Plutarch that he makes good his charge of
bias in Herodotus's attitude towards certain of the Greek states. The
question, however, may fairly be asked, how far this bias is personal to
the author, or how far it is due to the character of the sources from
which his information was derived. He cannot, indeed, altogether be
acquitted of personal bias. His work is, to some extent, intended as an
_apologia_ for the Athenian empire. In answer to the charge that Athens
was guilty of robbing other Greek states of their freedom, Herodotus
seeks to show, firstly, that it was to Athens that the Greek world, as a
whole, owed its freedom from Persia, and secondly, that the subjects of
Athens, the Ionian Greeks, were unworthy to be free. This leads him to
be unjust both to the services of Sparta and to the qualities of the
Ionian race. For his estimate of the debt due to Athens see vii. 139.
For bias against the Ionians see especially iv. 142 (cf. Thuc. vi. 77);
cf. also i. 143 and 146, vi. 12-14 (Lade), vi. 112 _ad fin._ A striking
example of his prejudice in favour of Athens is furnished by vi. 91. At
a moment when Greece rang with the crime of Athens in expelling the
Aeginetans from their Island, he ventures to trace in their expulsion
the vengeance of heaven for an act of sacrilege nearly sixty years
earlier (see AEGINA). As a rule, however, the bias apparent in his
narrative is due to the sources from which it is derived. Writing at
Athens, in the first years of the Peloponnesian War, he can hardly help
seeing the past through an Athenian medium. It was inevitable that much
of what he heard should come to him from Athenian informants, and should
be coloured by Athenian prejudices. We may thus explain the leniency
which he shows towards Argos and Thessaly, the old allies of Athens, in
marked contrast to his treatment of Thebes, Corinth and Aegina, her
deadliest foes. For Argos cf. vii. 152; Thessaly, vii. 172-174; Thebes,
vii. 132, vii. 233, ix. 87; Corinth (especially the Corinthian general
Adeimantus, whose son Aristeus was the most active enemy of Athens at
the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War), vii. 5, vii. 21, viii. 29 and
61, vii. 94; Aegina, ix. 78-80 and 85. In his intimacy with members of
the great Alcmaeonid house we probably have the explanation of his
depreciation of the services of Themistocles, as well as of his defence
of the family from the charges brought against it in connexion with
Cylon and with the incident of the shield shown on Pentelicus at the
time of Marathon (v. 71, vi. 121-124). His failure to do justice to the
Cypselid tyrants of Corinth (v. 92), and to the Spartan king Cleomenes,
is to be accounted for by the nature of his sources--in the former case,
the tradition of the Corinthian oligarchy; in the latter, accounts,
partly derived from the family of the exiled king Demaratus and partly
representative of the view of the ephorate. Much of the earlier history
is cast in a religious mould, e.g. the story of the Mermnad kings of
Lydia in book i., or of the fortunes of the colony of Cyrene (iv.
145-167). In such cases we cannot fail to recognize the influence of the
Delphic priesthood. Grote has pointed out that the moralizing tendency
observable in Herodotus is partly to be explained by the fact that much
of his information was gathered from priests and at temples, and that it
was given in explanation of votive offerings, or of the fulfilment of
oracles. Hence the determination of the sources of his narrative has
become one of the principal tasks of Herodotean criticism. In addition
to the current tradition of Athens, the family tradition of the
Alcmaeonidae, and the stories to be heard at Delphi and other
sanctuaries, there may be indicated the Spartan tradition, in the form
in which it existed in the middle of the 5th century; that of his native
Halicarnassus, to which is due the prominence of its queen Artemisia;
the traditions of the Ionian cities, especially of Samos and Miletus
(important both for the history of the Mermnadae and for the Ionian
Revolt); and those current in Sicily and Magna Graecia, which were
learned during his residence at Thurii (Sybaris and Croton, v. 44, 45;
Syracuse and Gela, vii. 153-167). Among his more special sources we can
point to the descendants of Demaratus, who still held, at the beginning
of the 4th century, the principality in the Troad which had been granted
to their ancestor by Darius (Xen. _Hell._ iii. i. 6), and to the family
of the Persian general Artabazus, in which the satrapy of Dascylium
(Phrygia) was hereditary in the 5th century.[28] His use of written
material is more difficult to determine. It is generally agreed that the
list of Persian satrapies, with their respective assessments of tribute
(iii. 89-97), the description of the royal road from Sardis to Susa (v.
52-54), and of the march of Xerxes, together with the list of the
contingents that took part in the expedition (vii. 26-131), are all
derived from documentary and authoritative sources. From previous
writers (e.g. Dionysius of Miletus, Hecataeus, Charon of Lampsacus and
Xanthus the Lydian) it is probable that he has borrowed little, though
the fragments are too scanty to permit of adequate comparison. His
references to monuments, dedicatory offerings, inscriptions and oracles
are frequent.
The chief defects of Herodotus are his failure to grasp the principles
of historical criticism, to understand the nature of military
operations, and to appreciate the importance of chronology. In place of
historical criticism we find a crude rationalism (e.g. ii. 45, vii. 129,
viii. 8). Having no conception of the distinction between occasion and
cause, he is content to find the explanation of great historical
movements in trivial incidents or personal motives. An example of this
is furnished by his account of the Ionian revolt, in which he fails to
discover the real causes either of the movement or of its result.
Indeed, it is clear that he regarded criticism as no part of his task as
an historian. In vii. 152 he states the principles which have guided
him--[Greek: ego de opheilo legein ta legomena, peithesthai ge men ou
pantapasi opheilo, kai moi touto to epos echeto es panta logon]. In
obedience to this principle he again and again gives two or more
versions of a story. We are thus frequently enabled to arrive at the
truth by a comparison of the discrepant traditions. It would have been
fortunate if all ancient writers who lacked the critical genius of
Thucydides had been content to adopt the practice of Herodotus. His
accounts of battles are always unsatisfactory. The great battles,
Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea, present a series of
problems. This result is partly due to the character of the traditions
which he follows--traditions which were to some extent inconsistent or
contradictory, and were derived from different sources; it is, however,
in great measure due to his inability to think out a strategical
combination or a tactical movement. It is not too much to say that the
battle of Plataea, as described by Herodotus, is wholly unintelligible.
Most serious of all his deficiencies is his careless chronology. Even in
the case of the 5th century, the data which he affords are inadequate or
ambiguous. The interval between the Scythian expedition and the Ionian
revolt is described by so vague an expression as [Greek: meta de ou
pollon chronon anesis kakon en] (v. 28). In the history of the revolt
itself, though he gives us the interval between its outbreak and the
fall of Miletus ([Greek: ekto etei], vi. 18), he does not give us the
interval between this and the battle of Lade, nor does he indicate with
sufficient precision the years to which the successive phases of the
movement belong. Throughout the work professed synchronisms too often
prove to be mere literary devices for facilitating a transition from one
subject to another (cf. e.g. v. 81 with 89, 90; or vi. 51 with 87 and
94). In the 6th century, as Grote pointed out, a whole generation, or
more, disappears in his historical perspective (cf. i. 30, vi. 125, v.
94, iii. 47, 48, v. 113 contrasted with v. 104 and iv. 162). The
attempts to reconstruct the chronology of this century upon the basis of
the data afforded by Herodotus (e.g. by Beloch, _Rheinisches Museum_,
xlv., 1890, pp. 465-473) have completely failed.
In spite of all such defects Herodotus is an author, not only of
unrivalled literary charm, but of the utmost value to the historian. If
much remains uncertain or obscure, even in the history of the Persian
Wars, it is chiefly to motives or policy, to topography or strategy, to
dates or numbers, that uncertainty attaches. It is to these that a sober
criticism will confine itself.
Thucydides.
Thucydides is at once the father of contemporary history and the father
of historical criticism. From a comparison of i. 1, i. 22 and v. 26, we
may gather both the principles to which he adhered in the composition of
his work and the conditions under which it was composed. It is seldom
that the circumstances of an historical writer have been so favourable
for the accomplishment of his task. Thucydides was a contemporary of the
Twenty-Seven Years' War in the fullest sense of the term. He had reached
manhood at its outbreak, and he survived its close by at least
half-a-dozen years. And he was more than a mere contemporary. As a man
of high birth, a member of the Periclean circle, and the holder of the
chief political office in the Athenian state, the _strategia_, he was
not only familiar with the business of administration and the conduct of
military operations, but he possessed in addition a personal knowledge
of those who played the principal part in the political life of the age.
His exile in the year 424 afforded him opportunities of visiting the
scenes of distant operations (e.g. Sicily) and of coming in contact with
the actors on the other side. He himself tells us that he spared no
pains to obtain the best information available in each case. He also
tells us that he began collecting materials for his work from the very
beginning of the war. Indeed, it is probable that much of books i.-v. 24
was written soon after the Peace of Nicias (421), just as it is possible
that the history of the Sicilian Expedition (books vi. and vii.) was
originally intended to form a separate work. To the view, however, which
has obtained wide support in recent years, that books i.-v. 22 and books
vi. and vii. were separately published, the rest of book v. and book
viii. being little more than a rough draught, composed after the author
had adopted the theory of a single war of twenty-seven years' duration,
of which the Sicilian Expedition and the operations of the years 431-421
formed integral parts, there seem to the present writer to be
insuperable objections. The work, as a whole, appears to have been
composed in the first years of the 4th century, after his return from
exile in 404, when the material already in existence must have been
revised and largely recast. There are exceedingly few passages, such as
iv. 48. 5, which appear to have been overlooked in the process of
revision. It can hardly be questioned that the impression left upon the
reader's mind is that the point of view of the author, in all the books
alike, is that of one writing after the fall of Athens.