meeting interfered--either prompted by the Phocians, or perhaps on their
own spontaneous impulse, out of regard to the temple--to punish the
Cirrhæans. After a war of ten years, the first sacred war in Greece,
this object was completely accomplished by a joint force of Thessalians
under Eurolychus, Sicyonians under Clisthenes, and Athenians under
Alemæon; the Athenian Solon being the person who originated and enforced
in the Amphictyonic council the proposition of interference. Cirrha
appears to have made a strenuous resistance until its supplies from the
sea were intercepted by the naval force of the Sicyonian Clisthenes.
Even after the town was taken, its inhabitants defended themselves for
some time on the heights of Cirphis. At length, however, they were
thoroughly subdued. Their town was destroyed or left to subsist merely
us a landing-place; while the whole adjoining plain was consecrated to
the Delphian god, whose domains thus touched the sea. Under this
sentence, pronounced by the religious fooling of Greece, and sanctified
by a solemn oath publicly sworn and inscribed at Delphi, the land was
condemned to remain untilled and implanted, without any species of human
care, and serving only for the pasturage of cattle. The latter
circumstance was convenient to the temple, inasmuch as it furnished
abundance of victims for the pilgrims who landed and came to
sacrifice--for without preliminary sacrifice no man could consult the
oracle; while the entire prohibition of tillage was the only means of
obviating the growth of another troublesome neighbor on the seaboard.
The ruin of Cirrha in this war is certain: though the necessity of a
harbor for visitors arriving by sea, led to the gradual revival of the
town upon a humbler scale of pretension. But the fate of Crissa is not
so clear, nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or left subsisting in
a position of inferiority with regard to Delphi. From this time forward,
however, the Delphian community appear as substantive and autonomous,
exercising in their own right the management of the temple; though we
shall find, on more than one occasion, that the Phocians contest this
right, and lay claim to the management of it for themselves--a remnant
of that early period when the oracle stood in the domain of the Phocian
Crissa. There seems, moreover, to have been a standing antipathy
between the Delphians and the Phocians.
The Sacred War emanating from a solemn Amphictyonic decree, carried on
jointly by troops of different states whom we do not know to have ever
before coöperated, and directed exclusively toward an object of common
interest--is in itself a fact of high importance, as manifesting a
decided growth of pan-Hellenic feeling. Sparta is not named as
interfering--a circumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both
her power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with the
Delphian oracle--while the Athenians appear as the chief movers, through
the greatest and best of their citizens. The credit of a large-minded
patriotism rests prominently upon them.
But if this sacred war itself is a proof that the pan-Hellenic spirit
was growing stronger, the positive result in which it ended reinforced
that spirit still farther. The spoils of Cirrha were employed by the
victorious allies in founding the Pythian games. The octennial festival
hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of the god, including no other
competition except in the harp and the pæan, was expanded into
comprehensive games on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only
of music, but also of gymnastics and chariots--celebrated, not at Delphi
itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Cirrha--and under the
direct superintendence of the Amphictyons themselves. I have already
mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such Athenians as gained
victories in the Olympic and Isthmian games, thereby indicating his
sense of the great value of the national games as a means of promoting
Hellenic intercommunion. It was the same feeling which instigated the
foundation of the new games on the Cirrhæan plain, in commemoration of
the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to
him. They were celebrated in the autumn, or first half of every third
Olympic year; the Amphictyons being the ostensible _Agonothets_ or
administrators, and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their
names. At the first Pythian ceremony (in B.C. 586), valuable rewards
were given to the different victors; at the second (B.C. 582), nothing
was conferred but wreaths of laurel--the rapidly attained celebrity of
the games being such as to render any further recompense superfluous.
The Sicyonian despot, Clisthenes himself, once the leader in the
conquest of Cirrha, gained the prize at the chariot-race of the second
Pythia. We find other great personages in Greece frequently mentioned as
competitors, and the games long maintained a dignity second only to the
Olympic, over which indeed they had some advantages; first, that they
were not abused for the purpose of promoting petty jealousies and
antipathies of any administering state, as the Olympic games were
perverted by the Eleans on more than one occasion; next, that they
comprised music and poetry as well as bodily display. From the
circumstances attending their foundation, the Pythian games deserved,
even more than the Olympic, the title bestowed on them by
Demosthenes--"the common _Agon_ of the Greeks."
The Olympic and Pythian games continued always to be the most venerated
solemnities in Greece. Yet the Nemea and Isthmia acquired a celebrity
not much inferior; the Olympic prize counting for the highest of all.
Both the Nemea and Isthmia were distinguished from the other two
festivals by occurring not once in four years, but once in two years;
the former in the second and fourth years of each Olympiad, the latter
in the first and third years. To both is assigned, according to Greek
custom, an origin connected with the interesting persons and
circumstances of legendary antiquity; but our historical knowledge of
both begins with the sixth century B.C. The first historical Nemead is
presented as belonging to Olympiad B.C. 52 or 53 (572-568), a few years
subsequent to the Sacred War above mentioned and to the origin of the
Pythia. The festival was celebrated in honor of the Nemean Zeus, in the
valley of Nemea between Philus and Cleonæ. The Cleonæans themselves were
originally its presidents, until, some period after B.C. 460, the
Argians deprived them of that honor and assumed the honors of
administration to themselves. The Nemean games had their Hellanodicæ to
superintend, to keep order, and to distribute the prizes, as well as the
Olympic.
Respecting the Isthmian festival, our first historical information is a
little earlier, for it has already been stated that Solon conferred a
premium upon every Athenian citizen who gained a prize at that festival
as well as at the Olympian--in or after B.C. 594. It was celebrated by
the Corinthians at their isthmus, in honor of Poseidon, and if we may
draw any inference from the legends respecting its foundation, which is
ascribed sometimes to Theseus, the Athenians appear to have identified
it with the antiquities of their own state.
We thus perceive that the interval between B.C. 600-560, exhibits the
first historical manifestation of the Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea--the
first expansion of all the three from local into pan-Hellenic festivals.
To the Olympic games, for some time the only great centre of union among
all the widely dispersed Greeks, are now added three other sacred
_Agones_ of the like public, open, national character; constituting
visible marks, as well as tutelary bonds, of collective Hellenism, and
insuring to every Greek who went to compete in the matches, a safe and
inviolate transit even through hostile Hellenic states. These four, all
in or near Peloponnesus, and one of which occurred in each year, formed
the period or cycle of sacred games, and those who had gained prizes at
all the four received the enviable designation of Periodonices. The
honors paid to Olympic victors, on their return to their native city,
were prodigious even in the sixth century B.C., and became even more
extravagant afterward. We may remark that in the Olympic games alone,
the oldest as well as the most illustrious of the four, the musical and
intellectual element was wanting. All the three more recent _Agones_
included crowns for exercises of music and poetry, along with
gymnastics, chariots, and horses.
It was not only in the distinguishing national stamp set upon these
four great festivals, that the gradual increase of Hellenic family
feeling exhibited itself, during the course of this earliest period of
Grecian history. Pursuant to the same tendencies, religious festivals
in all the considerable towns gradually became more and more open and
accessible, attracting guests as well as competitors from beyond the
border. The comparative dignity of the city, as well as the honor
rendered to the presiding god, were measured by the numbers, admiration,
and envy, of the frequenting visitors. There is no positive evidence
indeed of such expansion in the Attic festivals earlier than the reign
of Pisistratus, who first added the quadrennial or greater Panathenæ
to the ancient annual or lesser Panathenæa. Nor can we trace the steps
of progress in regard to Thebes, Orchomenus, Thespiæ, Megara, Sicyon,
Pellene, Ægina, Argos, etc., but we find full reason for believing that
such was the general reality. Of the Olympic or Isthmian victors whom
Pindar and Simonides celebrated, many derived a portion of their
renown from previous victories acquired at several of these local
contests--victories sometimes so numerous as to prove how widespread
the habit of reciprocal frequentation had become: though we find, even
in the third century B.C., treaties of alliance between different cities
in which it is thought necessary to confer such mutual right by express
stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or
musical competitors, by prizes of great value. Timæus even asserted,
as a proof of the overweening pride of Croton and Sybaris, that these
cities tried to supplant the preëminence of the Olympic games by
instituting games of their own with the richest prizes to be celebrated
at the same time--a statement in itself not worthy of credit, yet
nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry known to prevail among
the Grecian cities in procuring for themselves splendid and crowded
games. At the time when the Homeric hymn to Demeter was composed, the
worship of that goddess seems to have been purely local at Eleusis. But
before the Persian war, the festival celebrated by the Athenians every
year, in honor of the Eleusinian Demeter, admitted Greeks of all cities
to be initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them.
It was thus that the simplicity and strict local application of the
primitive religious festival among the greater states in Greece
gradually expanded, on certain great occasions periodically recurring,
into an elaborate and regulated series of exhibitions not merely
admitting, but soliciting, the fraternal presence of all Hellenic
spectators. In this respect Sparta seems to have formed an exception to
the remaining states. Her festivals were for herself alone, and her
general rudeness toward other Greeks was not materially softened even at
the Carneia and Hyacinthia, or Gymnopædiæ. On the other hand, the Attic
Dionysia were gradually exalted, from their original rude spontaneous
outburst of village feeling in thankfulness to the god, followed by
song, dance and revelry of various kinds, into costly and diversified
performances, first by a trained chorus, next by actors superadded to
it.
And the dramatic compositions thus produced, as they embodied the
perfection of Grecian art, so they were eminently calculated to invite a
pan-Hellenic audience and to encourage the sentiment of Hellenic unity.
The dramatic literature of Athens however belongs properly to a later
period. Previous to the year B.C. 560, we see only those commencements
of innovation which drew upon Thespis the rebuke of Solon; who however
himself contributed to impart to the Panathenaic festival a more solemn
and attractive character by checking the license of the rhapsodes and
insuring to those present a full orderly recital of the _Iliad_.
The sacred games and festivals took hold of the Greek mind by so great a
variety of feelings as to counterbalance in a high degree the political
disseverance, and to keep alive among their widespread cities, in the
midst of constant jealousy and frequent quarrel, a feeling of
brotherhood and congenial sentiment such as must otherwise have died
away. The Theors, or sacred envoys who came to Olympia or Delphi from so
many different points, all sacrificed to the same god and at the same
altar, witnessed the same sports, and contributed by their donatives to
enrich or adorn one respective scene. Moreover the festival afforded
opportunity for a sort of fair, including much traffic amid so large a
mass of spectators; and besides the exhibitions of the games themselves,
there were recitations and lectures in a spacious council-room for those
who chose to listen to them, by poets, rhapsodes, philosophers and
historians--among which last the history of Herodotus is said to have
been publicly read by its author. Of the wealthy and great men in the
various cities, many contended simply for the chariot-victories and
horse-victories. But there were others whose ambition was of a character
more strictly personal, and who stripped naked as runners, wrestlers,
boxers, or pancratiasts, having gone through the extreme fatigue of a
complete previous training. Cylon, whose unfortunate attempt to usurp
the scepter at Athens has been recounted, had gained the prize in the
Olympic stadium; Alexander son of Amyntas, the prince of Macedon, had
run for it; the great family of the Diagoridæ at Rhodes, who furnished
magistrates and generals to their native city, supplied a still greater
number of successful boxers and pancratiasts at Olympia, while other
instances also occur of generals named by various cities from the list
of successful Olympic gymnasts; and the odes of Pindar, always dearly
purchased, attest how many of the great and wealthy were found in that
list. The perfect popularity and equality of persons at these great
games, is a feature not less remarkable than the exact adherence to
predetermined rule, and the self-imposed submission of the immense crowd
to a handful of servants armed with sticks, who executed the orders of
the Elean Hellanodice. The ground upon which the ceremony took place,
and even the territory of the administering state, was protected by a
"Truce of God" during the month of the festival, the commencement of
which was formally announced by heralds sent round to the different
states. Treaties of peace between different cities were often formally
commemorated by pillars there erected, and the general impression of the
scene suggested nothing but ideas of peace and brotherhood among Greeks.
And I may remark that the impression of the games as belonging to all
Greeks, and to none but Greeks, was stronger and clearer during the
interval between B.C. 600-300 than it came to be afterward. For the
Macedonian conquests had the effect of diluting and corrupting
Hellenism, by spreading an exterior varnish of Hellenic tastes and
manners over a wide area of incongruous foreigners who were incapable of
the real elevation of the Hellenic character; so that although in later
times the games continued undiminished both in attraction and in number
of visitors, the spirit of pan-Hellenic communion which had once
animated the scene was gone forever.
SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION
B.C. 594
GEORGE GROTE
Lycurgus, the reputed Spartan lawgiver, is credited with the
construction, about B.C. 800, of the earliest Grecian commonwealth
founded upon a specific code of laws. These laws had mainly a
military basis, and through obedience to them the Spartans became a
people of great hardiness, accustomed to self-discipline, famous
for their prowess and endurance in war, and for sternness of
individual and social virtues.
In Athens there were no written laws until the time of Draco, B.C.
621, the government before that period having been long in the
hands of an oligarchy. In the year above named Draco was archon,
and to him was intrusted the work of framing a legal code,
conditions under the oligarchic rule having become intolerable to
the people at large. The chief features of Draco's legislation had
reference to the punishment of crime, and so extreme were the
severities of the system and so cruel the penalties it prescribed
that in later times it was declared to have been written in blood.
The Draconian laws remained in force until superseded by the great
system of Solon, whose advent as the new lawgiver was brought about
mainly through the conspiracy of Cylon, twelve years after the
legislation of Draco. Affairs in Athens were in a deplorable state
of confusion and violence, the revolt of the poor against the power
and privilege of the rich leading to dangerous dissensions and
collisions. Solon, who enjoyed a universal reputation for wisdom
and uprightness, was called upon by the oligarchy, which again held
rule, to assume what was, in fact, almost absolute power. The
character of his legislation and its influence upon the course of
Greek history have been set forth by many authors, and the
following account is perhaps the best that has appeared in modern
literature.
Solon, son of Execestides, was a Eupatrid of middling fortune, but of
the purest heroic blood, belonging to the _gens_ or family of the
Codrids and Neleids, and tracing his origin to the god Poseidon. His
father is said to have diminished his substance by prodigality, which
compelled Solon in his earlier years to have recourse to trade, and in
this pursuit he visited many parts of Greece and Asia. He was thus
enabled to enlarge the sphere of his observation, and to provide
material for thought as well as for composition. His poetical talents
displayed themselves at a very early age, first on light, afterward on
serious subjects. It will be recollected that there was at that time no
Greek prose writing, and that the acquisitions as well as the effusions
of an intellectual man, even in their simplest form, adjusted themselves
not to the limitations of the period and the semicolon, but to those of
the hexameter and pentameter. Nor, in point of fact, do the verses of
Solon aspire to any higher effect than we are accustomed to associate
with an earnest, touching, and admonitory prose composition. The advice
and appeals which he frequently addressed to his countrymen were
delivered in this easy metre, doubtless far less difficult than the
elaborate prose of subsequent writers or speakers, such as Thucydides,
Isocrates, or Demosthenes. His poetry and his reputation became known
throughout many parts of Greece, so that he was classed along with
Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mitylene, Periander of
Corinth, Cleobulus of Lindus, Cheilon of Lacedæmon--altogether forming
the constellation afterward renowned as the seven wise men.
The first particular event in respect to which Solon appears as an
active politician, is the possession of the island of Salamis, then
disputed between Megara and Athens. Megara was at that time able to
contest with Athens, and for some time to contest with success, the
occupation of this important island--a remarkable fact, which perhaps
may be explained by supposing that the inhabitants of Athens and its
neighborhood carried on the struggle with only partial aid from the rest
of Attica. However this may be, it appears that the Megarians had
actually established themselves in Salamis, at the time when Solon began
his political career, and that the Athenians had experienced so much
loss in the struggle as to have formally prohibited any citizen from
ever submitting a proposition for its reconquest. Stung with this
dishonorable abnegation, Solon counterfeited a state of ecstatic
excitement, rushed into the agora, and there on the stone usually
occupied by the official herald, pronounced to the surrounding crowd a
short elegiac poem which he had previously composed on the subject of
Salamis. Enforcing upon them the disgrace of abandoning the island, he
wrought so powerfully upon their feelings that they rescinded the
prohibitory law. "Rather (he exclaimed) would I forfeit my native city
and become a citizen of Pholegandrus, than be still named an Athenian,
branded with the shame of surrendered Salamis!" The Athenians again
entered into the war, and conferred upon him the command of it--partly,
as we are told, at the instigation of Pisistratus, though the latter
must have been at this time (B.C. 600-594) a very young man, or rather a
boy.
The stories in Plutarch, as to the way in which Salamis was recovered,
are contradictory as well as apocryphal, ascribing to Solon various
stratagems to deceive the Megarian occupiers. Unfortunately no authority
is given for any of them. According to that which seems the most
plausible, he was directed by the Delphian god first to propitiate the
local heroes of the island; and he accordingly crossed over to it by
night, for the purpose of sacrificing to the heroes Periphemus and
Cychreus on the Salaminian shore. Five hundred Athenian volunteers were
then levied for the attack of the island, under the stipulation that if
they were victorious they should hold it in property and citizenship.
They were safely landed on an outlying promontory, while Solon, having
been fortunate enough to seize a ship which the Megarians had sent to
watch the proceedings, manned it with Athenians and sailed straight
toward the city of Salamis, to which the Athenians who had landed also
directed their march. The Megarians marched out from the city to repel
the latter, and during the heat of the engagement Solon, with his
Megarian ship and Athenian crew, sailed directly to the city. The
Megarians, interpreting this as the return of their own crew, permitted
the ship to approach without resistance, and the city was thus taken by
surprise. Permission having been given to the Megarians to quit the
island, Solon took possession of it for the Athenians, erecting a temple
to Enyalius, the god of war, on Cape Sciradium, near the city of
Salamis.
The citizens of Megara, however, made various efforts for the recovery
of so valuable a possession, so that a war ensued long as well as
disastrous to both parties. At last it was agreed between them to refer
the dispute to the arbitration of Sparta, and five Spartans were
appointed to decide it--Critolaidas, Amompharetus, Hypsechidas,
Anaxilas, and Cleomenes. The verdict in favor of Athens was founded on
evidence which it is somewhat curious to trace. Both parties attempted
to show that the dead bodies buried in the island conformed to their own
peculiar mode of interment, and both parties are said to have cited
verses from the catalogue of the _Iliad_--each accusing the other of
error or interpolation. But the Athenians had the advantage on two
points: first, there were oracles from Delphi, wherein Salamis was
mentioned with the epithet Ionian; next Philæus and Eurysaces, sons of
the Telamonian Ajax, the great hero of the island, had accepted the
citizenship of Athens, made over Salamis to the Athenians, and
transferred their own residences to Brauron and Melite in Attica, where
the _deme_, or _gens_, Philaidæ still worshipped Philæus as its
eponymous ancestor. Such a title was held sufficient, and Salamis was
adjudged by the five Spartans to Attica, with which it ever afterward
remained incorporated until the days of Macedonian supremacy. Two
centuries and a half later, when the orator Æschines argued the Athenian
right to Amphipolis against Philip of Macedon, the legendary elements of
the title were indeed put forward, but more in the way of preface or
introduction to the substantial political grounds. But in the year 600
B.C. the authority of the legend was more deep-seated and operative, and
adequate by itself to determine a favorable verdict.