Remarks on the Effects of War.--State of Athens.--Interference of
Sparta with respect to the Fortifications of Athens.--Dexterous
Conduct of Themistocles.--The New Harbour of the Piraeus.--Proposition
of the Spartans in the Amphictyonic Council defeated by Themistocles.
--Allied Fleet at Cyprus and Byzantium.--Pausanias.--Alteration in his
Character.--His ambitious Views and Treason.--The Revolt of the
Ionians from the Spartan Command.--Pausanias recalled.--Dorcis
replaces him.--The Athenians rise to the Head of the Ionian League.--
Delos made the Senate and Treasury of the Allies.--Able and prudent
Management of Aristides.--Cimon succeeds to the Command of the Fleet.
--Character of Cimon.--Eion besieged.--Scyros colonized by Atticans.--
Supposed Discovery of the Bones of Theseus.--Declining Power of
Themistocles.--Democratic Change in the Constitution.--Themistocles
ostracised.--Death of Aristides.
I. It is to the imperishable honour of the French philosophers of the
last century, that, above all the earlier teachers of mankind, they
advocated those profound and permanent interests of the human race
which are inseparably connected with a love of PEACE; that they
stripped the image of WAR of the delusive glory which it took, in the
primitive ages of society, from the passions of savages and the
enthusiasm of poets, and turned our contemplation from the fame of the
individual hero to the wrongs of the butchered millions. But their
zeal for that HUMANITY, which those free and bold thinkers were the
first to make the vital principle of a philosophical school, led them
into partial and hasty views, too indiscriminately embraced by their
disciples; and, in condemning the evils, they forgot the advantages of
war. The misfortunes of one generation are often necessary to the
prosperity of another. The stream of blood fertilizes the earth over
which it flows, and war has been at once the scourge and the civilizer
of the world: sometimes it enlightens the invader, sometimes the
invaded; and forces into sudden and brilliant action the arts and the
virtues that are stimulated by the invention of necessity--matured by
the energy of distress. What adversity is to individuals, war often
is to nations: uncertain in its consequences, it is true that, with
some, it subdues and crushes, but with others it braces and exalts.
Nor are the greater and more illustrious elements of character in men
or in states ever called prominently forth, without something of that
bitter and sharp experience which hardens the more robust properties
of the mind, which refines the more subtle and sagacious. Even when
these--the armed revolutions of the world--are most terrible in their
results--destroying the greatness and the liberties of one people--
they serve, sooner or later, to produce a counteracting rise and
progress in the fortunes of another; as the sea here advances, there
recedes, swallowing up the fertilities of this shore to increase the
territories of that; and fulfilling, in its awful and appalling
agency, that mandate of human destinies which ordains all things to be
changed and nothing to be destroyed. Without the invasion of Persia,
Greece might have left no annals, and the modern world might search in
vain for inspirations from the ancient.
II. When the deluge of the Persian arms rolled back to its Eastern
bed, and the world was once more comparatively at rest, the continent
of Greece rose visibly and majestically above the rest of the
civilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains, the infant state of Rome
was silently and obscurely struggling into strength against the
neighbouring and petty states in which the old Etrurian civilization
was rapidly passing to decay. The genius of Gaul and Germany, yet
unredeemed from barbarism, lay scarce known, save where colonized by
Greeks, in the gloom of its woods and wastes. The pride of Carthage
had been broken by a signal defeat in Sicily; and Gelo, the able and
astute tyrant of Syracuse, maintained in a Grecian colony the
splendour of the Grecian name.
The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy of the world, was
permanently checked and crippled; the strength of generations had been
wasted, and the immense extent of the empire only served yet more to
sustain the general peace, from the exhaustion of its forces. The
defeat of Xerxes paralyzed the East.
Thus Greece was left secure, and at liberty to enjoy the tranquillity
it had acquired, and to direct to the arts of peace the novel and
amazing energies which had been prompted by the dangers and exalted by
the victories of war.
III. The Athenians, now returned to their city, saw before them the
arduous task of rebuilding its ruins and restoring its wasted lands.
The vicissitudes of the war had produced many silent and internal as
well as exterior changes. Many great fortunes had been broken; and
the ancient spirit of the aristocracy had received no inconsiderable
shock in the power of new families; the fame of the baseborn and
democratic Themistocles, and the victories which a whole people had
participated, broke up much of the prescriptive and venerable sanctity
attached to ancestral names and to particular families. This was
salutary to the spirit of enterprise in all classes. The ambition of
the great was excited to restore, by some active means, their broken
fortunes and decaying influence--the energies of the humbler ranks,
already aroused by their new importance, were stimulated to maintain
and to increase it. It was the very crisis in which a new direction
might be given to the habits and the character of a whole people; and
to seize all the advantages of that crisis, fate, in Themistocles, had
allotted to Athens a man whose qualities were not only pre-eminently
great in themselves, but peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of
the time. And, as I have elsewhere remarked, it is indeed the nature
and prerogative of free states to concentrate the popular will into
something of the unity of despotism, by producing, one after another,
a series of representatives of the wants and exigences of the hour--
each leading his generation, but only while he sympathizes with its
will; and either baffling or succeeded by his rivals, not in
proportion as he excels or he is outshone in genius, but as he gives
or ceases to give to the widest range of the legislative power the
most concentrated force of the executive; thus uniting the desires of
the greatest number under the administration of the narrowest possible
control; the constitution popular--the government absolute, but,
responsible.
IV. In the great events of the late campaign, we have lost sight of
the hero of Salamis [116]. But the Persian war was no sooner ended
than we find Themistocles the most prominent citizen of Athens--a
sufficient proof that his popularity had not yet diminished, and that
his absence from Plataea was owing to no popular caprice or party
triumph.
V. In the sweeping revenge of Mardonius, even private houses had been
destroyed, excepting those which had served as lodgments for the
Persian nobles [117]. Little of the internal city, less of the
outward walls was spared. As soon as the barbarians had quitted their
territory, the citizens flocked back with their slaves and families
from the various places of refuge; and the first care was to rebuild
the city. They were already employed upon this necessary task, when
ambassadors arrived from Sparta, whose vigilant government, ever
jealous of a rival, beheld with no unreasonable alarm the increasing
navy and the growing fame of a people hitherto undeniably inferior to
the power of Lacedaemon. And the fear that was secretly cherished by
that imperious nation was yet more anxiously nursed by the subordinate
allies [118]. Actuated by their own and the general apprehensions,
the Spartans therefore now requested the Athenians to desist from the
erection of their walls. Nor was it without a certain grace, and a
plausible excuse, that the government of a city, itself unwalled,
inveighed against the policy of walls for Athens. The Spartan
ambassadors urged that fortified towns would become strongholds to
the barbarian, should he again invade them; and the walls of Athens
might be no less useful to him than he had found the ramparts of
Thebes. The Peloponnesus, they asserted, was the legitimate retreat
and the certain resource of all; and, unwilling to appear exclusively
jealous of Athens, they requested the Athenians not only to desist
from their own fortifications, but to join with them in razing every
fortification without the limit of the Peloponnesus.
It required not a genius so penetrating as that of Themistocles to
divine at once the motive of the demand, and the danger of a
peremptory refusal. He persuaded the Athenians to reply that they
would send ambassadors to debate the affair; and dismissed the
Spartans without further explanation. Themistocles next recommended
to the senate [119] that he himself might be one of the ambassadors
sent to Sparta, and that those associated with him in the mission (for
it was not the custom of Greece to vest embassies in individuals)
should be detained at Athens until the walls were carried to a height
sufficient, at least, for ordinary defence. He urged his countrymen
to suspend for this great task the completion of all private edifices
--nay, to spare no building, private or public, from which materials
might be adequately selected. The whole population, slaves, women,
and children, were to assist in the labour.
VI. This counsel adopted, he sketched an outline of the conduct he
himself intended to pursue, and departed for Sparta. His colleagues,
no less important than Aristides, and Abronychus, a distinguished
officer in the late war, were to follow at the time agreed on.
Arrived in the Laconian capital, Themistocles demanded no public
audience, avoided all occasions of opening the questions in dispute,
and screened the policy of delay beneath the excuse that his
colleagues were not yet arrived--that he was incompetent to treat
without their counsel and concurrence--and that doubtless they would
speedily appear in Sparta.
When we consider the shortness of the distance between the states, the
communications the Spartans would receive from the neighbouring
Aeginetans, more jealous than themselves, and the astute and
proverbial sagacity of the Spartan council--it is impossible to
believe that, for so long a period as, with the greatest expedition,
must have elapsed from the departure of Themistocles to the necessary
progress in the fortifications, the ephors could have been ignorant of
the preparations at Athens or the designs of Themistocles. I fear,
therefore, that we must believe, with Theopompus [120], that
Themistocles, the most expert briber of his time, heightened that
esteem which Thucydides assures us the Spartans bore him, by private
and pecuniary negotiations with the ephors. At length, however, such
decided and unequivocal intelligence of the progress of the walls
arrived at Sparta, that the ephors could no longer feel or affect
incredulity.
Themistocles met the remonstrances of the Spartans by an appearance of
candour mingled with disdain. "Why," said he, "give credit to these
idle rumours? Send to Athens some messengers of your own, in whom you
can confide; let them inspect matters with their own eyes, and report
to you accordingly."
The ephors (not unreluctantly, if the assertion of Theopompus may be
credited) yielded to so plausible a suggestion, and in the mean while
the crafty Athenian despatched a secret messenger to Athens, urging
the government to detain the Spartan ambassadors with as little
semblance of design as possible, and by no means to allow their
departure until the safe return of their own mission to Sparta. For
it was by no means improbable that, without such hostages, even the
ephors, however powerful and however influenced, might not be enabled,
when the Spartans generally were made acquainted with the deceit
practised upon them, to prevent the arrest of the Athenian delegates.
[121]
At length the walls, continued night and day with incredible zeal and
toil, were sufficiently completed; and disguise, no longer possible,
was no longer useful. Themistocles demanded the audience he had
hitherto deferred, and boldly avowed that Athens was now so far
fortified as to protect its citizens. "In future," he added,
haughtily, "when Sparta or our other confederates send ambassadors to
Athens, let them address us as a people well versed in our own
interests and the interests of our common Greece. When we deserted
Athens for our ships, we required and obtained no Lacedaemonian
succours to support our native valour; in all subsequent measures, to
whom have we shown ourselves inferior, whether in the council or the
field? At present we have judged it expedient to fortify our city,
rendering it thus more secure for ourselves and our allies. Nor would
it be possible, with a strength inferior to that of any rival power,
adequately to preserve and equally to adjust the balance of the
liberties of Greece." [122]
Contending for this equality, he argued that either all the cities in
the Lacedaemonian league should be dismantled of their fortresses, or
that it should be conceded, that in erecting fortresses for herself
Athens had rightly acted.
VII. The profound and passionless policy of Sparta forbade all
outward signs of unavailing and unreasonable resentment. The
Spartans, therefore, replied with seeming courtesy, that "in their
embassy they had not sought to dictate, but to advise--that their
object was the common good;" and they accompanied their excuses with
professions of friendship for Athens, and panegyrics on the Athenian
valour in the recent war. But the anger they forbore to show only
rankled the more bitterly within. [123]
The ambassadors of either state returned home; and thus the mingled
firmness and craft of Themistocles, so well suited to the people with
whom he had to deal, preserved his country from the present jealousies
of a yet more deadly and implacable foe than the Persian king, and
laid the foundation of that claim of equality with the most eminent
state of Greece, which he hastened to strengthen and enlarge.
The ardour of the Athenians in their work of fortification had spared
no material which had the recommendation of strength. The walls
everywhere presented, and long continued to exhibit, an evidence of
the haste in which they were built. Motley and rough hewn, and
uncouthly piled, they recalled, age after age, to the traveller the
name of the ablest statesman and the most heroic days of Athens.
There, at frequent intervals, would he survey stones wrought in the
rude fashion of former times--ornaments borrowed from the antique
edifices demolished by the Mede--and frieze and column plucked from
dismantled sepulchres; so that even the dead contributed from their
tombs to the defence of Athens.
VIII. Encouraged by the new popularity and honours which followed the
success of his mission, Themistocles now began to consummate the vast
schemes he had formed, not only for the aggrandizement of his country,
but for the change in the manners of the citizens. All that is left
to us of this wonderful man proves that, if excelled by others in
austere virtue or in dazzling accomplishment, he stands unrivalled for
the profound and far-sighted nature of his policy. He seems, unlike
most of his brilliant countrymen, to have been little influenced by
the sallies of impulse or the miserable expediencies of faction--his
schemes denote a mind acting on gigantic systems; and it is
astonishing with what virtuous motives and with what prophetic art he
worked through petty and (individually considered) dishonest means to
grand and permanent results. He stands out to the gaze of time, the
model of what a great and fortunate statesman should be, so long as
mankind have evil passions as well as lofty virtues, and the state
that he seeks to serve is surrounded by powerful and restless foes,
whom it is necessary to overreach where it is dangerous to offend.
In the year previous to the Persian war, Themistocles had filled the
office of archon [124], and had already in that year planned the
construction of a harbour in the ancient deme of Piraeus [125], for
the convenience of the fleet which Athens had formed. Late events had
frustrated the continuance of the labour, and Themistocles now
resolved to renew and complete it, probably on a larger and more
elaborate scale.
The port of Phalerun had hitherto been the main harbour of Athens--one
wholly inadequate to the new navy she had acquired; another inlet,
Munychia, was yet more inconvenient. But equally at hand was the
capacious, though neglected port of Piraeus, so formed by nature as to
permit of a perfect fortification against a hostile fleet. Of
Piraeus, therefore, Themistocles now designed to construct the most
ample and the most advantageous harbour throughout all Greece. He
looked upon this task as the foundation of his favourite and most
ambitious project, viz., the securing to Athens the sovereignty of the
sea. [126]
The completion of the port--the increased navy which the construction
of the new harbour would induce--the fame already acquired by Athens
in maritime warfare, encouraging attention to naval discipline and
tactics--proffered a splendid opening to the ambition of a people at
once enterprising and commercial. Themistocles hoped that the results
of his policy would enable the Athenians to gain over their own
offspring, the Ionian colonies, and by their means to deliver from the
Persian yoke, and permanently attach to the Athenian interest, all the
Asiatic Greeks. Extending his views, he beheld the various insular
states united to Athens by a vast maritime power, severing themselves
from Lacedaemon, and following the lead of the Attican republic. He
saw his native city thus supplanting, by a naval force, the long-won
pre-eminence and iron supremacy of Sparta upon land, and so extending
her own empire, while she sapped secretly and judiciously the
authority of the most formidable of her rivals.
IX. But in the execution of these grand designs Themistocles could
not but anticipate considerable difficulties: first, in the jealousy
of the Spartans; and, secondly, in the popular and long-rooted
prejudices of the Athenians themselves. Hitherto they had discouraged
maritime affairs, and their more popular leaders had directed
attention to agricultural pursuits. We may suppose, too, that the
mountaineers, or agricultural party, not the least powerful, would
resist so great advantages to the faction of the coastmen, if
acquainted with all the results which the new policy would produce.
Nor could so experienced a leader of mankind be insensible of those
often not insalutary consequences of a free state in the changing
humours of a wide democracy--their impatience at pecuniary demands--
their quick and sometimes uncharitable apprehensions of the motives of
their advisers. On all accounts it was necessary, therefore, to act
with as much caution as the task would admit--rendering the design
invidious neither to foreign nor to domestic jealousies. Themistocles
seemed to have steered his course through every difficulty with his
usual address. Stripping the account of Diodorus [127] of its
improbable details, it appears credible at least that Themistocles
secured, in the first instance, the co-operation of Xanthippus and
Aristides, the heads of the great parties generally opposed to his
measures, and that he won the democracy to consent that the outline of
his schemes should not be submitted to the popular assembly, but to
the council of Five Hundred. It is perfectly clear, however, that, as
soon as the plan was carried into active operation, the Athenians
could not, as Diodorus would lead us to suppose, have been kept in
ignorance of its nature; and all of the tale of Diodorus to which we
can lend our belief is, that the people permitted the Five Hundred to
examine the project, and that the popular assembly ratified the
approbation of that senate without inquiring the reasons upon which it
was founded.
X. The next care of Themistocles was to anticipate the jealousy of
Sparta, and forestall her interference. According to Diodorus, he
despatched, therefore, ambassadors to Lacedaemon, representing the
advantages of forming a port which might be the common shelter of
Greece should the barbarian renew his incursions; but it is so obvious
that Themistocles could hardly disclose to Sparta the very project he
at first concealed from the Athenians, that while we may allow the
fact that Themistocles treated with the Spartans, we must give him
credit, at least, for more crafty diplomacy than that ascribed to him
by Diodorus [128]. But whatever the pretexts with which he sought to
amuse or beguile the Spartan government, they appear at least to have
been successful. And the customary indifference of the Spartans
towards maritime affairs was strengthened at this peculiar time by
engrossing anxieties as to the conduct of Pausanias. Thus
Themistocles, safe alike from foreign and from civil obstacles,
pursued with activity the execution of his schemes. The Piraeus was
fortified by walls of amazing thickness, so as to admit two carts
abreast. Within, the entire structure was composed of solid masonry,
hewn square, so that each stone fitted exactly, and was further
strengthened on the outside by cramps of iron. The walls were never
carried above half the height originally proposed. But the whole was
so arranged as to form a fortress against assault, too fondly deemed
impregnable, and to be adequately manned by the smallest possible
number of citizens; so that the main force might, in time of danger,
be spared to the fleet.
Thus Themistocles created a sea-fortress more important than the city
itself, conformably to the advice he frequently gave to the Athenians,
that, if hard pressed by land, they should retire to this arsenal, and
rely, against all hostilities, on their naval force. [129]
The new port, which soon bore the ambitious title of the Lower City,
was placed under the directions of Hippodamus, a Milesian, who,
according to Aristotle [130], was the first author who, without any
knowledge of practical affairs, wrote upon the theory of government.
Temples [131], a market-place, even a theatre, distinguished and
enriched the new town. And the population that filled it were not
long before they contracted and established a character for themselves
different in many traits and attributes from the citizens of the
ancient Athens--more bold, wayward, innovating, and tumultuous.
But if Sparta deemed it prudent, at present, to avoid a direct
assumption of influence over Athens, her scheming councils were no
less bent, though by indirect and plausible means, to the extension of
her own power. To use the simile applied to one of her own chiefs,
where the lion's skin fell short, she sought to eke it by the fox's.
At the assembly of the Amphictyons, the Lacedaemonian delegates moved
that all those states who had not joined in the anti-Persic
confederacy should be expelled the council. Under this popular and
patriotic proposition was sagaciously concealed the increase of the
Spartan authority; for had the Thessalians, Argives, and Thebans
(voices ever counter to the Lacedaemonians) been expelled the
assembly, the Lacedaemonian party would have secured the preponderance
of votes, and the absolute dictation of that ancient council. [132]
But Themistocles, who seemed endowed with a Spartan sagacity for the
foiling the Spartan interests, resisted the proposition by arguments
no less popular. He represented to the delegates that it was unjust
to punish states for the errors of their leaders--that only thirty-one
cities had contributed to the burden of the war, and many of those
inconsiderable--that it was equally dangerous and absurd to exclude
from the general Grecian councils the great proportion of the Grecian
states.
The arguments of Themistocles prevailed, but his success stimulated
yet more sharply against him the rancour of the Lacedaemonians; and,
unable to resist him abroad, they thenceforth resolved to undermine
his authority at home.
XI. While, his danger invisible, Themistocles was increasing with his
own power that of the state, the allies were bent on new enterprises
and continued retribution. From Persia, now humbled and exhausted, it
was the moment to wrest the Grecian towns, whether in Europe or in
Asia, over which she yet arrogated dominion--it was resolved,
therefore, to fit out a fleet, to which the Peloponnesus contributed
twenty and Athens thirty vessels. Aristides presided over the latter;
Pausanias was commander-in-chief; many other of the allies joined the
expedition. They sailed to Cyprus, and reduced with ease most of the
towns in that island. Thence proceeding to Byzantium, the main
strength and citadel of Persia upon those coasts, and the link between
her European and Asiatic dominions, they blockaded the town and
ultimately carried it.
But these foreign events, however important in themselves, were
trifling in comparison with a revolution which accompanied them, and
which, in suddenly raising Athens to the supreme command of allied
Greece, may be regarded at once as the author of the coming greatness
--and the subsequent reverses--of that republic.
XII. The habits of Sparta--austere, stern, unsocial--rendered her
ever more effectual in awing foes than conciliating allies; and the
manners of the soldiery were at this time not in any way redeemed or
counterbalanced by those of the chief. Since the battle of Plataea a
remarkable change was apparent in Pausanias. Glory had made him
arrogant, and sudden luxury ostentatious. He had graven on the golden
tripod, dedicated by the confederates to the Delphic god, an
inscription, claiming exclusively to himself, as the general of the
Grecian army, the conquest of the barbarians--an egotism no less at
variance with the sober pride of Sparta, than it was offensive to the
just vanity of the allies. The inscription was afterward erased by
the Spartan government, and another, citing only the names of the
confederate cities, and silent as to that of Pausanias, was
substituted in its place.
XIII. To a man of this arrogance, and of a grasping and already
successful ambition, circumstances now presented great and
irresistible temptation. Though leader of the Grecian armies, he was
but the uncle and proxy of the young Spartan king--the time must come
when his authority would cease, and the conqueror of the superb
Mardonius sink into the narrow and severe confines of a Spartan
citizen. Possessed of great talents and many eminent qualities, they
but served the more to discontent him with the limits of their
legitimate sphere and sterility of the Spartan life. And this
discontent, operating on a temper naturally haughty, evinced itself in
a manner rude, overbearing, and imperious, which the spirit of his
confederates was ill calculated to suffer or forgive.
But we can scarcely agree with the ancient historians in attributing
the ascendency of the Athenians alone, or even chiefly, to the conduct
of Pausanias. The present expedition was naval, and the greater part
of the confederates at Byzantium were maritime powers. The superior
fleet and the recent naval glories of the Athenians could not fail to
give them, at this juncture, a moral pre-eminence over the other
allies; and we shall observe that the Ionians, and those who had
lately recovered their freedom from the Persian yoke [133], were
especially desirous to exchange the Spartan for the Athenian command.
Connected with the Athenians by origin--by maritime habits--by a
kindred suavity and grace of temperament--by the constant zeal of the
Athenians for their liberties (which made, indeed, the first cause of
the Persian war)--it was natural that the Ionian Greeks should prefer
the standard of Athens to that of a Doric state; and the proposition
of the Spartans (baffled by the Athenian councils) to yield up the
Ionic settlements to the barbarians, could not but bequeath a lasting
resentment to those proud and polished colonies.
XIV. Aware of the offence he had given, and disgusted himself alike
with his allies and his country, the Spartan chief became driven by
nature and necessity to a dramatic situation, which a future Schiller
may perhaps render yet more interesting than the treason of the
gorgeous Wallenstein, to whose character that of Pausanias has been
indirectly likened [134]. The capture of Byzantium brought the
Spartan regent into contact with many captured and noble Persians
[135], among whom were some related to Xerxes himself. With these
conversing, new and dazzling views were opened to his ambition. He
could not but recall the example of Demaratus, whose exile from the
barren dignities of Sparta had procured him the luxuries and the
splendour of oriental pomp, with the delegated authority of three of
the fairest cities of Aeolia. Greater in renown than Demaratus, he
was necessarily more aspiring in his views. Accordingly, he privately
released his more exalted prisoners, pretending they had escaped, and
finally explained whatever messages he had intrusted by them to
Xerxes, in a letter to the king, confided to an Eretrian named
Gongylus, who was versed in the language and the manners of Persia,
and to whom he had already deputed the government of Byzantium. In
this letter Pausanias offered to assist the king in reducing Sparta
and the rest of Greece to the Persian yoke, demanding, in recompense,
the hand of the king's daughter, with an adequate dowry of possessions
and of power.
XV. The time had passed when a Persian monarch could deride the
loftiness of a Spartan's pretensions--Xerxes received the
communications with delight, and despatched Artabazus to succeed
Megabates in Phrygia, and to concert with the Spartan upon the means
whereby to execute their joint design [136]. But while Pausanias was
in the full flush of his dazzled and grasping hopes, his fall was at
hand. Occupied with his new projects, his natural haughtiness
increased daily. He never accosted the officers of the allies but
with abrupt and overbearing insolence; he insulted the military pride
by sentencing many of the soldiers to corporeal chastisement, or to
stand all day with an iron anchor on their shoulders [137]. He
permitted none to seek water, forage, or litter, until the Spartans
were first supplied--those who attempted it were driven away by rods.
Even Aristides, seeking to remonstrate, was repulsed rudely. "I am
not at leisure," said the Spartan, with a frown. [138]
Complaints of this treatment were despatched to Sparta, and in the
mean while the confederates, especially the officers of Chios, Samos,
and Lesbos, pressed Aristides to take on himself the general command,
and protect them from the Spartan's insolence. The Athenian artfully
replied, that he saw the necessity of the proposition, but that it
ought first to be authorized by some action which would render it
impossible to recede from the new arrangement once formed.
The hint was fiercely taken; and a Samian and a Chian officer,
resolving to push matters to the extreme, openly and boldly attacked
the galley of Pausanias himself at the head of the fleet.
Disregarding his angry menaces, now impotent, this assault was
immediately followed up by a public transfer of allegiance; and the
aggressors, quitting the Spartan, arrayed themselves under the
Athenian, banners. Whatever might have been the consequences of this
insurrection were prevented by the sudden recall of Pausanias. The
accusations against him had met a ready hearing in Sparta, and that
watchful government had already received intimation of his intrigues
with the Mede. On his arrival in Sparta, Pausanias was immediately
summoned to trial, convicted in a fine for individual and private
misdemeanours, but acquitted of the principal charge of treason with
the Persians--not so much from the deficiency as from the abundance of
proof [139]; and it was probably prudent to avoid, if possible, the
scandal which the conviction of the general might bring upon the
nation.
The Spartans sent Dorcis, with some colleagues, to replace Pausanias
in the command; but the allies were already too disgusted with the
yoke of that nation to concede it. And the Athenian ascendency was
hourly confirmed by the talents, the bearing, and the affable and
gracious manners of Aristides. With him was joined an associate of
high hereditary name and strong natural abilities, whose character it
will shortly become necessary to place in detail before the reader.
This comate was no less a person than Cimon, the son of the great
Miltiades.
XVI. Dorcis, finding his pretensions successfully rebutted, returned
home; and the Spartans, never prone to foreign enterprise, anxious for
excuses to free themselves from prosecuting further the Persian war,
and fearful that renewed contentions might only render yet more
unpopular the Spartan name, sent forth no fresh claimants to the
command; they affected to yield that honour, with cheerful content, to
the Athenians. Thus was effected without a blow, and with the
concurrence of her most dreaded rival, that eventful revolution, which
suddenly raised Athens, so secondary a state before the Persian war,
to the supremacy over Greece. So much, when nations have an equal
glory, can the one be brought to surpass the other (B. C. 477) by the
superior wisdom of individuals. The victory of Plataea was won
principally by Sparta, then at the head of Greece. And the general
who subdued the Persians surrendered the results of his victory to the
very ally from whom the sagacious jealousy of his countrymen had
sought most carefully to exclude even the precautions of defence!
XVII. Aristides, now invested with the command of all the allies,
save those of the Peloponnesus who had returned home, strengthened the
Athenian power by every semblance of moderation.
Hitherto the Grecian confederates had sent their deputies to the
Peloponnesus. Aristides, instead of naming Athens, which might have
excited new jealousies, proposed the sacred Isle of Delos, a spot
peculiarly appropriate, since it once had been the navel of the Ionian
commerce, as the place of convocation and the common treasury: the
temple was to be the senate house. A new distribution of the taxes
levied on each state, for the maintenance of the league, was ordained.
The objects of the league were both defensive and offensive; first, to
guard the Aegaean coasts and the Grecian Isles; and, secondly, to
undertake measures for the further weakening of the Persian power.
Aristides was elected arbitrator in the relative proportions of the
general taxation. In this office, which placed the treasures of
Greece at his disposal, he acted with so disinterested a virtue, that
he did not even incur the suspicion of having enriched himself, and
with so rare a fortune that he contented all the allies. The total,
raised annually, and with the strictest impartiality, was four hundred
and sixty talents (computed at about one hundred and fifteen thousand
pounds).
Greece resounded with the praises of Aristides; it was afterward
equally loud in reprobation of the avarice of the Athenians. For with
the appointment of Aristides commenced the institution of officers
styled Hellenotamiae, or treasurers of Greece; they became a permanent
magistracy--they were under the control of the Athenians; and thus
that people were made at once the generals and the treasurers of
Greece. But the Athenians, unconscious as yet of the power they had
attained--their allies yet more blind--it seemed now, that the more
the latter should confide, the more the former should forbear. So do
the most important results arise from causes uncontemplated by the
providence of statesmen, and hence do we learn a truth which should
never be forgotten--that that power is ever the most certain of
endurance and extent, the commencement of which is made popular by
moderation.
XVIII. Thus, upon the decay of the Isthmian Congress, rose into
existence the great Ionian league; and thus was opened to the ambition
of Athens the splendid destiny of the empire of the Grecian seas. The
pre-eminence of Sparta passed away from her, though invisibly and
without a struggle, and, retiring within herself, she was probably
unaware of the decline of her authority; still seeing her
Peloponnesian allies gathering round her, subordinate and submissive,
and, by refusing assistance, refusing also allegiance to the new queen
of the Ionian league. His task fulfilled, Aristides probably returned
to Athens, and it was at this time and henceforth that it became his
policy to support the power of Cimon against the authority of
Themistocles [140]. To that eupatrid, joined before with himself, was
now intrusted the command of the Grecian fleet.
To great natural abilities, Cimon added every advantage of birth and
circumstance. His mother was a daughter of Olorus, a Thracian prince;
his father the great Miltiades. On the death of the latter, it is
recorded, and popularly believed, that Cimon, unable to pay the fine
to which Miltiades was adjudged, was detained in custody until a
wealthy marriage made by his sister Elpinice, to whom he was tenderly,
and ancient scandal whispered improperly, attached, released him from
confinement, and the brother-in-law paid the debt. "Thus severe and
harsh," says Nepos, "was his entrance upon manhood." [141] But it is
very doubtful whether Cimon was ever imprisoned for the state-debt
incurred by his father--and his wealth appears to have been
considerable even before he regained his patrimony in the Chersonese,
or enriched himself with the Persian spoils. [142]
In early youth, like Themistocles, his conduct had been wild and
dissolute [143]; and with his father from a child, he had acquired,
with the experience, something of the license, of camps. Like
Themistocles also, he was little skilled in the graceful
accomplishments of his countrymen; he cultivated neither the art of
music, nor the brilliancies of Attic conversation; but power and
fortune, which ever soften nature, afterward rendered his habits
intellectual and his tastes refined. He had not the smooth and artful
affability of Themistocles, but to a certain roughness of manner was
conjoined that hearty and ingenuous frankness which ever conciliates
mankind, especially in free states, and which is yet more popular when
united to rank. He had distinguished himself highly by his zeal in
the invasion of the Medes, and the desertion of Athens for Salamis;
and his valour in the seafight had confirmed the promise of his
previous ardour. Nature had gifted him with a handsome countenance
and a majestic stature, recommendations in all, but especially in
popular states--and the son of Miltiades was welcomed, not less by the
people than by the nobles, when he applied for a share in the
administration of the state. Associated with Aristides, first in the
embassy to Sparta, and subsequently in the expeditions to Cyprus and
Byzantium, he had profited by the friendship and the lessons of that
great man, to whose party he belonged, and who saw in Cimon a less
invidious opponent than himself to the policy or the ambition of
Themistocles.
By the advice of Aristides, Cimon early sought every means to
conciliate the allies, and to pave the way to the undivided command he
afterward obtained. And it is not improbable that Themistocles might
willingly have ceded to him the lead in a foreign expedition, which
removed from the city so rising and active an opponent. The
appointment of Cimon promised to propitiate the Spartans, who ever
possessed a certain party in the aristocracy of Athens--who peculiarly
affected Cimon, and whose hardy character and oligarchical policy the
blunt genius and hereditary prejudices of that young noble were well
fitted to admire and to imitate. Cimon was, in a word, precisely the
man desired by three parties as the antagonist of Themistocles; viz.,
the Spartans, the nobles, and Aristides, himself a host. All things
conspired to raise the son of Miltiades to an eminence beyond his
years, but not his capacities.
XIX. Under Cimon the Athenians commenced their command [144], by
marching against a Thracian town called Eion, situated on the banks of
the river Strymon, and now garrisoned by a Persian noble. The town
was besieged (B. C. 476), and the inhabitants pressed by famine, when
the Persian commandant, collecting his treasure upon a pile of wood,
on which were placed his slaves, women, and children--set fire to the
pile [145]. After this suicide, seemingly not an uncommon mode of
self-slaughter in the East, the garrison surrendered, and its
defenders, as usual in such warfare, were sold for slaves.
From Eion the victorious confederates proceeded to Scyros, a small
island in the Aegean, inhabited by the Dolopians, a tribe addicted to
piratical practices, deservedly obnoxious to the traders of the
Aegean, and who already had attracted the indignation and vengeance of
the Amphictyonic assembly. The isle occupied, and the pirates
expelled, the territory was colonized by an Attic population.
An ancient tradition had, as we have seen before, honoured the soil of
Scyros with the possession of the bones of the Athenian Theseus--some
years after the conquest of the isle, in the archonship of Aphepsion
[146], or Apsephion, an oracle ordained the Athenians to search for
the remains of their national hero, and the skeleton of a man of great
stature, with a lance of brass and a sword by its side was discovered,
and immediately appropriated to Theseus. The bones were placed with
great ceremony in the galley of Cimon, who was then probably on a
visit of inspection to the new colony, and transported to Athens.
Games were instituted in honour of this event, at which were exhibited
the contests of the tragic poets; and, in the first of these,
Sophocles is said to have made his earliest appearance, and gained the
prize from Aeschylus (B. C. 469).
XXI. It is about the period of Cimon's conquest of Eion and Scyros
(B. C. 476) that we must date the declining power of Themistocles.
That remarkable man had already added, both to domestic and to Spartan
enmities, the general displeasure of the allies. After baffling the
proposition of the Spartans to banish from the Amphictyonic assembly
the states that had not joined in the anti-Persic confederacy, he had
sailed round the isles and extorted money from such as had been guilty
of Medising: the pretext might be just, but the exactions were
unpopularly levied. Nor is it improbable that the accusations against
him of enriching his own coffers as well as the public treasury had
some foundation. Profoundly disdaining money save as a means to an
end, he was little scrupulous as to the sources whence he sustained a
power which he yet applied conscientiously to patriotic purposes.
Serving his country first, he also served himself; and honest upon one
grand and systematic principle, he was often dishonest in details.
His natural temper was also ostentatious; like many who have risen
from an origin comparatively humble, he had the vanity to seek to
outshine his superiors in birth--not more by the splendour of genius
than by the magnificence of parade. At the Olympic games, the
base-born son of Neocles surpassed the pomp of the wealthy and
illustrious Cimon; his table was hospitable, and his own life soft and
luxuriant [147]; his retinue numerous beyond those of his
contemporaries; and he adopted the manners of the noble exactly in
proportion as he courted the favour of the populace. This habitual
ostentation could not fail to mingle with the political hostilities of
the aristocracy the disdainful jealousies of offended pride; for it is
ever the weakness of the high-born to forgive less easily the being
excelled in genius than the being outshone in state by those of inferior
origin. The same haughtiness which offended the nobles began also to
displease the people; the superb consciousness of his own merits wounded
the vanity of a nation which scarcely permitted its greatest men to
share the reputation it arrogated to itself. The frequent calumnies
uttered against him obliged Themistocles to refer to the actions he had
performed; and what it had been illustrious to execute, it became
disgustful to repeat. "Are you weary," said the great man, bitterly,
"to receive benefits often from the same hand?" [148] He offended the
national conceit yet more by building, in the neighbourhood of his own
residence, a temple to Diana, under the name of Aristobule, or "Diana of
the best counsel;" thereby appearing to claim to himself the merit of
giving the best counsels.
It is probable, however, that Themistocles would have conquered all
party opposition, and that his high qualities would have more than
counterbalanced his defects in the eyes of the people, if he had still
continued to lead the popular tide. But the time had come when the
demagogue was outbid by an aristocrat--when the movement he no longer
headed left him behind, and the genius of an individual could no
longer keep pace with the giant strides of an advancing people.
XXII. The victory at Salamis was followed by a democratic result.
That victory had been obtained by the seamen, who were mostly of the
lowest of the populace--the lowest of the populace began, therefore,
to claim, in political equality, the reward of military service. And
Aristotle, whose penetrating intellect could not fail to notice the
changes which an event so glorious to Greece produced in Athens, has
adduced a similar instance of change at Syracuse, when the mariners of
that state, having, at a later period, conquered the Athenians,
converted a mixed republic to a pure democracy. The destruction of
houses and property by Mardonius--the temporary desertion by the
Athenians of their native land--the common danger and the common
glory, had broken down many of the old distinctions, and the spirit of
the nation was already far more democratic than the constitution.
Hitherto, qualifications of property were demanded for the holding of
civil offices. But after the battle of Plataea, Aristides, the leader
of the aristocratic party, proposed and carried the abolition of such
qualifications, allowing to all citizens, with or without property, a
share in the government, and ordaining that the archons should be
chosen out of the whole body; the form of investigation as to moral
character was still indispensable. This change, great as it was,
appears, like all aristocratic reforms, to have been a compromise
[149] between concession and demand. And the prudent Aristides
yielded what was inevitable, to prevent the greater danger of
resistance. It may be ever remarked, that the people value more a
concession from the aristocratic party than a boon from their own
popular leaders. The last can never equal, and the first can so
easily exceed, the public expectation.
XXIII. This decree, uniting the aristocratic with the more democratic
party, gave Aristides and his friends an unequivocal ascendency over
Themistocles, which, however, during the absence of Aristides and
Cimon, and the engrossing excitement of events abroad, was not plainly
visible for some years; and although, on his return to Athens,
Aristides himself prudently forbore taking an active part against his
ancient rival, he yet lent all the influence of his name and
friendship to the now powerful and popular Cimon. The victories, the
manners, the wealth, the birth of the son of Miltiades were supported
by his talents and his ambition. It was obvious to himself and to his
party that, were Themistocles removed, Cimon would become the first
citizen of Athens.
XXIV. Such were the causes that long secretly undermined, that at
length openly stormed, the authority of the hero of Salamis; and at
this juncture we may conclude, that the vices of his character avenged
themselves on the virtues. His duplicity and spirit of intrigue,
exercised on behalf of his country, it might be supposed, would
hereafter be excited against it. And the pride, the ambition, the
craft that had saved the people might serve to create a despot.
Themistocles was summoned to the ordeal of the ostracism and condemned
by the majority of suffrages (B. C. 471). Thus, like Aristides, not
punished for offences, but paying the honourable penalty of rising by
genius to that state of eminence which threatens danger to the
equality of republics.
He departed from Athens, and chose his refuge at Argos, whose hatred
to Sparta, his deadliest foe, promised him the securest protection.
XXV. Death soon afterward removed Aristides from all competitorship
with Cimon; according to the most probable accounts, he died at
Athens; and at the time of Plutarch his monument was still to be seen
at Phalerum. His countrymen, who, despite all plausible charges, were
never ungrateful except where their liberties appeared imperilled
(whether rightly or erroneously our documents are too scanty to
prove), erected his monument at the public charge, portioned his three
daughters, and awarded to his son Lysimachus a grant of one hundred
minae of silver, a plantation of one hundred plethra [150] of land,
and a pension of four drachmae a day (double the allowance of an
Athenian ambassador).