EARLIEST HISTORICAL VIEW OF PELOPONNESUS. DORIANS IN ARGOS AND THE
NEIGHBORING CITIES.
We now pass from the northern members to the heart and head of
Greece,—Peloponnesus and Attica, taking the former first in order,
and giving as much as can be ascertained respecting its early
historical phenomena.
The traveller who entered Peloponnesus from Bœotia during the
youthful days of Herodotus and Thucydidês, found an array of
powerful Doric cities conterminous to each other, and beginning
at the isthmus of Corinth. First came Megara, stretching across
the isthmus from sea to sea, and occupying the high and rugged
mountain-ridge called Geraneia; next Corinth, with its strong and
conspicuous acropolis, and its territory including Mount Oneion as
well as the portion of the isthmus at once most level and narrowest,
which divided its two harbors called Lechæum and Kenchreæ. Westward
of Corinth, along the Corinthian gulf, stood Sikyôn, with a plain
of uncommon fertility, between the two towns: southward of Sikyôn
and Corinth were Phlius and Kleonæ, both conterminous, as well as
Corinth, with Argos and the Argolic peninsula. The inmost bend of
the Argolic gulf, including a considerable space of flat and marshy
ground adjoining to the sea, was possessed by Argos; the Argolic
peninsula was divided by Argos with the Doric cities of Epidaurus and
Trœzen, and the Dryopian city of Hermionê, the latter possessing the
south-western corner. Proceeding southward along the western coast
of the gulf, and passing over the little river called Tanos, the
traveller found himself in the dominion of Sparta, which comprised
the entire southern region of the peninsula from its eastern to
its western sea, where the river Neda flows into the latter. He
first passed from Argos across the difficult mountain range called
Parnôn (which bounds to the west the southern portion of Argolis),
until he found himself in the valley of the river Œnus, which he
followed until it joined the Eurotas. In the larger valley of the
Eurotas, far removed from the sea, and accessible only through the
most impracticable mountain roads, lay the five unwalled, unadorned,
adjoining villages, which bore collectively the formidable name
of Sparta. The whole valley of the Eurotas, from Skiritis and
Beleminatis at the border of Arcadia, to the Laconian gulf,—expanding
in several parts into fertile plain, especially near to its mouth,
where the towns of Gythium and Helos were found,—belonged to Sparta;
together with the cold and high mountain range to the eastward,
which projects into the promontory of Malea,—and the still loftier
chain of Taygetus to the westward, which ends in the promontory of
Tænarus. On the other side of Taygetus, on the banks of the river
Pamisus, which there flows into the Messenian gulf, lay the plain
of Messênê, the richest land in the peninsula. This plain had once
yielded its ample produce to the free Messenian Dorians, resident in
the towns of Stenyklêrus and Andania. But in the time of which we
speak, the name of Messenians was borne only by a body of brave but
homeless exiles, whose restoration to the land of their forefathers
overpassed even the exile’s proverbially sanguine hope. Their land
was confounded with the western portion of Laconia, which reached in
a south-westerly direction down to the extreme point of Cape Akritas,
and northward as far as the river Neda.
Throughout his whole journey to the point last mentioned, from the
borders of Bœotia and Megaris, the traveller would only step from
one Dorian state into another. But on crossing from the south to the
north bank of the river Neda, at a point near to its mouth, he would
find himself out of Doric land altogether: first, in the territory
called Triphylia,—next, in that of Pisa, or the Pisatid,—thirdly,
in the more spacious and powerful state called Elis; these three
comprising the coast-land of Peloponnesus from the mouth of the
Neda to that of the Larissus. The Triphylians, distributed into a
number of small townships, the largest of which was Lepreon,—and the
Pisatans, equally destitute of any centralizing city,—had both, at
the period of which we are now speaking, been conquered by their more
powerful northern neighbors of Elis, who enjoyed the advantage of a
spacious territory united under one government; the middle portion,
called the Hollow Elis, being for the most part fertile, though the
tracts near the sea were more sandy and barren. The Eleians were a
section of Ætolian emigrants into Peloponnesus, but the Pisatans and
Triphylians had both been originally independent inhabitants of the
peninsula,—the latter being affirmed to belong to the same race as
the Minyæ who had occupied the ante-Bœotian Orchomenos: both, too,
bore the ascendency of Elis with perpetual murmur and occasional
resistance.
Crossing the river Larissus, and pursuing the northern coast of
Peloponnesus south of the Corinthian gulf, the traveller would pass
into Achaia,—a name which designated the narrow strip of level land,
and the projecting spurs and declivities, between that gulf and
the northernmost mountains of the peninsula,—Skollis, Erymanthus,
Aroania, Krathis, and the towering eminence called Kyllênê. Achæan
cities,—twelve in number at least, if not more,—divided this long
strip of land amongst them, from the mouth of the Larissus and the
north-western Cape Araxus on one side, to the western boundary of the
Sikyonian territory on the other. According to the accounts of the
ancient legends and the belief of Herodotus, this territory had once
been occupied by Ionian inhabitants whom the Achæans had expelled.
In making this journey, the traveller would have finished the
circuit of Peloponnesus; but he would still have left untrodden
the great central region, inclosed between the territories just
enumerated,—approaching nearest to the sea on the borders of
Triphylia, but never touching it anywhere. This region was Arcadia,
possessed by inhabitants who are uniformly represented as all of
one race, and all aboriginal. It was high and bleak, full of wild
mountain, rock, and forest, and abounding, to a degree unusual even
in Greece, with those land-locked basins from whence the water finds
only a subterraneous issue. It was distributed among a large number
of distinct villages and cities. Many of the village tribes,—the
Mænalii, Parrhasii, Azanes, etc., occupying the central and the
western regions, were numbered among the rudest of the Greeks: but
along its eastern frontier there were several Arcadian cities which
ranked deservedly among the more civilized Peloponnesians. Tegea,
Mantineia, Orchomenus, Stymphalus, Pheneus, possessed the whole
eastern frontier of Arcadia from the borders of Laconia to those of
Sikyôn and Pellênê in Achaia: Phigaleia at the south-western corner,
near the borders of Triphylia, and Heræa, on the north bank of the
Alpheius, near the place where that river quits Arcadia to enter the
Pisatis, were also towns deserving of notice. Towards the north of
this cold and thinly-peopled region, near Pheneos, was situated the
small town of Nonakris, adjoining to which rose the hardly accessible
crags where the rivulet of Styx[496] flowed down: a point of common
feeling for all Arcadians, from the terrific sanction which this
water was understood to impart to their oaths.
[496] Herodot. vi. 74; Pausan. viii. 18, 2. See the description
and print of the river Styx, and the neighboring rocks, in
Fiedler’s Reise durch Griechenland, vol. i. p. 400.
He describes a scene amidst these rocks, in 1826, when the
troops of Ibrahim Pasha were in the Morea, which realizes the
fearful pictures of war after the manner of the ancient Gauls,
or Thracians. A crowd of five thousand Greeks, of every age and
sex, had found shelter in a grassy and bushy spot embosomed
amidst these crags,—few of them armed. They were pursued by
five thousand Egyptians and Arabians: a very small resistance,
in such ground, would have kept the troops at bay, but the poor
men either could not or would not offer it. They were forced
to surrender: the youngest and most energetic cast themselves
headlong from the rocks and perished: three thousand prisoners
were carried away captive, and sold for slaves at Corinth,
Patras, and Modon: all those who were unfit for sale were
massacred on the spot by the Egyptian troops.
The distribution of Peloponnesus here sketched, suitable to the
Persian invasion and the succeeding half century, may also be said
(with some allowances) to be adapted to the whole interval between
about B. C. 550-370; from the time of the conquest of Thyreatis
by Sparta to the battle of Leuktra. But it is not the earliest
distribution which history presents to us. Not presuming to criticize
the Homeric map of Peloponnesus, and going back only to 776 B. C., we
find this material difference,—that Sparta occupies only a very small
fraction of the large territory above described as belonging to her.
Westward of the summit of Mount Taygetus are found another section
of Dorians, independent of Sparta: the Messenian Dorians, whose city
is on the hill of Stenyklêrus, near the south-western boundary of
Arcadia, and whose possessions cover the fertile plain of Messêne
along the river Pamisus to its mouth in the Messenian gulf: it is to
be noted that Messênê was then the name of the plain generally, and
that no town so called existed until after the battle of Leuktra.
Again, eastward of the valley of the Eurotas, the mountainous region
and the western shores of the Argolic gulf down to Cape Malea are
also independent of Sparta; belonging to Argos, or rather to Dorian
towns in unison with Argos. All the great Dorian towns, from the
borders of the Megarid to the eastern frontier of Arcadia, as above
enumerated, appear to have existed in 776 B. C.: Achaia was in the
same condition, so far as we are able to judge, as well as Arcadia,
except in regard to its southern frontier, conterminous with Sparta,
of which more will hereafter be said. In respect to the western
portion of Peloponnesus, Elis (properly so called) appears to have
embraced the same territory in 776 B. C. as in 550 B. C.: but
the Pisatid had been recently conquered, and was yet imperfectly
subjected by the Eleians; while Triphylia seems to have been quite
independent of them. Respecting the south-western promontory of
Peloponnesus down to Cape Akritas, we are altogether without
information: reasons will hereafter be given for believing that it
did not at that time form part of the territory of the Messenian
Dorians.
Of the different races or people whom Herodotus knew in Peloponnesus,
he believed three to be aboriginal,—the Arcadians, the Achæans, and
the Kynurians. The Achæans, though belonging indigenously to the
peninsula, had yet removed from the southern portion of it to the
northern, expelling the previous Ionian tenants: this is a part
of the legend respecting the Dorian conquest, or Return of the
Herakleids, and we can neither verify nor contradict it. But neither
the Arcadians nor the Kynurians had ever changed their abodes. Of the
latter, I have not before spoken, because they were never (so far
as history knows them) an independent population. They occupied the
larger portion[497] of the territory of Argolis, from Orneæ, near the
northern[498] or Phliasian border, to Thyrea and the Thyreatis, on
the Laconian border: and though belonging originally (as Herodotus
imagines rather than asserts) to the Ionic race—they had been so long
subjects of Argos in his time, that almost all evidence of their
ante-Dorian condition had vanished.
[497] This is the only way of reconciling Herodotus (viii. 73)
with Thucydidês (iv. 56, and v. 41). The original extent of the
Kynurian territory is a point on which neither of them had any
means of very correct information, but there is no occasion to
reject the one in favor of the other.
[498] Herod. viii. 73. Οἱ δὲ Κυνούριοι, αὐτόχθονες ἐόντες,
δοκέουσι μοῦνοι εἶναι Ἴωνες· ἐκδεδωρίευνται δὲ, ὑπό τε Ἀργείων
ἀρχόμενοι καὶ τοῦ χρόνου, ἐόντες Ὀρνεῆται καὶ περίοικοι.
But the great Dorian states in Peloponnesus—the capital powers in
the peninsula—were all originally emigrants, according to the belief
not only of Herodotus, but of all the Grecian world: so also were
the Ætolians of Elis, the Triphylians, and the Dryopes at Hermionê
and Asinê. All these emigrations are so described as to give them
a root in the Grecian legendary world: the Triphylians are traced
back to Lemnos, as the offspring of the Argonautic heroes,[499] and
we are too uninformed about them to venture upon any historical
guesses. But respecting the Dorians, it may perhaps be possible, by
examining the first historical situation in which they are presented
to us, to offer some conjectures as to the probable circumstances
under which they arrived. The legendary narrative of it has
already been given in the first chapter of this volume,—that great
mythical event called the Return of the Children of Hêraklês, by
which the first establishment of the Dorians in the promised land
of Peloponnesus was explained to the full satisfaction of Grecian
faith. One single armament and expedition, acting by the special
direction of the Delphian god, and conducted by three brothers,
lineal descendants of the principal Achæo-Dorian heroes through
Hyllus, (the eponymus of the principal tribe,)—the national heroes of
the preëxisting population vanquished and expelled, and the greater
part of the peninsula both acquired and partitioned at a stroke,—the
circumstances of the partition adjusted to the historical relations
of Laconia and Messenia,—the friendly power of Ætolian Elis, with its
Olympic games as the bond of union in Peloponnesus, attached to this
event as an appendage, in the person of Oxylus,—all these particulars
compose a narrative well calculated to impress the retrospective
imagination of a Greek. They exhibit an epical fitness and
sufficiency which it would be unseasonable to impair by historical
criticism.
[499] Herodot. iv. 145-146.
The Alexandrine chronology sets down a period of 328 years from the
Return of the Herakleids to the first Olympiad (1104 B. C.-776 B.
C.,),—a period measured by the lists of the kings of Sparta, on the
trustworthiness of which some remarks have already been offered.
Of these 328 years, the first 250, at the least, are altogether
barren of facts; and even if we admitted them to be historical, we
should have nothing to recount except a succession of royal names.
Being unable either to guarantee the entire list, or to discover any
valid test for discriminating the historical and the non-historical
items, I here enumerate the Lacedæmonian kings as they appear in Mr.
Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici. There were two joint kings at Sparta,
throughout nearly all the historical time of independent Greece,
deducing their descent from Hêraklês through Eurysthenês and Proklês,
the twin sons of Aristodêmus; the latter being one of those three
Herakleid brothers to whom the conquest of the peninsula is ascribed:—
_Line of Eurysthenês._ _Line of Proklês._
Eurysthenês reigned 42 years. Proklês reigned 51 years.
Agis ” 31 ” Söus ” -- ”
Echestratus ” 35 ” Eurypôn ” -- ”
Labôtas ” 37 ” Prytanis ” 49 ”
Doryssus ” 29 ” Eunomus ” 45 ”
Agesilaus ” 44 ” Charilaus ” 60 ”
Archelaus ” 60 ” Nikander ” 38 ”
Teleklus ” 40 ” Theopompus ” 10 ”
Alkamenês ” 10 ”
---
328
Both Theopompus and Alkamenês reigned considerably longer, but the
chronologists affirm that the year 776 B. C. (or the first Olympiad)
occurred in the tenth year of each of their reigns. It is necessary
to add, with regard to this list, that there are some material
discrepancies between different authors even as to the names of
individual kings, and still more as to the duration of their reigns,
as may be seen both in Mr. Clinton’s chronology and in Müller’s
Appendix to the History of the Dorians.[500] The alleged sum total
cannot be made to agree with the items without great license of
conjecture. O. Müller observes,[501] in reference to this Alexandrine
chronology, “that our materials only enable us to restore it to its
original state, not to verify its correctness.” In point of fact
they are insufficient even for the former purpose, as the dissensions
among learned critics attest.
[500] Herodotus omits Söus between Proklês and Eurypôn, and
inserts Polydektês between Prytanis and Eunomus: moreover, the
accounts of the Lacedæmonians, as he states them, represented
Lykurgus, the lawgiver, as uncle and guardian of Labôtas, of _the
Eurysthenid house_,—while Simonidês made him son of Prytanis, and
others made him son of Eunomus, of _the Proklid line_: compare
Herod. i. 65; viii. 131. Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 2.
Some excellent remarks on this early series of Spartan kings will
be found in Mr. G. C. Lewis’s article in the Philological Museum,
vol. ii. pp. 42-48, in a review of Dr. Arnold on the Spartan
Constitution.
Compare also Larcher, Chronologie d’Hérodote, ch. 13, pp.
484-514. He lengthens many of the reigns considerably, in order
to suit the earlier epoch which he assigns to the capture of Troy
and the Return of the Herakleids.
[501] History of the Dorians, vol. ii. Append. p. 442.
We have a succession of names, still more barren of facts, in the
case of the Dorian sovereigns of Corinth. This city had its own line
of Herakleids, descended from Hêraklês, but not through Hyllus.
Hippotês, the progenitor of the Corinthian Herakleids, was reported
in the legend to have originally joined the Dorian invaders of the
Peloponnesus, but to have quitted them in consequence of having slain
the prophet Karnus.[502] The three brothers, when they became masters
of the peninsula, sent for Alêtês, the son of Hippotês, and placed
him in possession of Corinth, over which the chronologists make
him begin to reign thirty years after the Herakleid conquest. His
successors are thus given:—
[502] This story—that the heroic ancestor of the great Corinthian
Bacchiadæ had slain the holy man Karnus, and had been punished
for it by long banishment and privation—leads to the conjecture,
that the Corinthians did not celebrate the festival of the
Karneia, common to the Dorians generally.
Herodotus tells us, with regard to the Ionic cities, that all
of them celebrated the festival of Apaturia, except Ephesus
and Kolophon; and that these two cities did not celebrate it,
“because of a certain reason of murder committed,”—οὗτοι γὰρ
μοῦνοι Ἰώνων οὐκ ἄγουσιν Ἀπατούρια· καὶ οὗτοι κατὰ φόνου τινὰ
σκῆψιν (Herod. i. 147).
The murder of Karnus by Hippotês was probably the φόνου σκῆψις
which forbade the Corinthians from celebrating the Karneia; at
least, this supposition gives to the legend a special pertinence
which is otherwise wanting to it. Respecting the Karneia and
Hyacinthia, see Schoell De Origine Græci Dramatis, pp. 70-78.
Tübingen, 1828.
There were various singular customs connected with the Grecian
festivals, which it was usual to account for by some legendary
tale. Thus, no native of Elis ever entered himself as a
competitor, or contended for the prize, at the Isthmian games.
The legendary reason given for this was, that Hêraklês had
waylaid and slain (at Kleônæ) the two Molionid brothers, when
they were proceeding to the Isthmian games as Theôrs or sacred
envoys from the Eleian king Augeas. Redress was in vain demanded
for this outrage, and Molionê, mother of the slain envoys,
imprecated a curse upon the Eleians generally if they should ever
visit the Isthmian festival. This legend is the φόνου σκῆψις,
explaining why no Eleian runner or wrestler was ever known to
contend there (Pausan. ii. 15, 1; v. 2, 1-4. Ister, Fragment. 46,
ed. Didot).
Aletes reigned 38 years,
Ixion ” 38 ”
Agelas ” 37 ”
Prymnis ” 35 ”
Bacchis ” 35 ”
Agelas ” 30 ”
Eudêmus ” 25 ”
Aristomêdês ” 35 ”
Agêmôn ” 16 ”
Alexander ” 25 ”
Telestês ” 12 ”
Automenês ” 1 ”
---
327
Such was the celebrity of Bacchis, we are told, that those who
succeeded him took the name of Bacchiads in place of Aletiads or
Herakleids. One year after the accession of Automenês, the family
of the Bacchiads generally, amounting to 200 persons, determined to
abolish royalty, to constitute themselves a standing oligarchy, and
to elect out of their own number an annual Prytanis. Thus commenced
the oligarchy of the Bacchiads, which lasted for ninety years,
until it was subverted by Kypselus in 657 B. C.[503] Reckoning the
thirty years previous to the beginning of the reign of Alêtês, the
chronologists thus provide an interval of 447 years between the
Return of the Herakleids and the accession of Kypselus, and 357
years between the same period and the commencement of the Bacchiad
oligarchy. The Bacchiad oligarchy is unquestionably historical; the
conquest of the Herakleids belongs to the legendary world; while the
interval between the two is filled up, as in so many other cases, by
a mere barren genealogy.
[503] Diodor. Fragm. lib. vii. p. 14, with the note of Wesseling.
Strabo (viii. p. 378) states the Bacchiad oligarchy to have
lasted nearly two hundred years.
When we jump this vacant space, and place ourselves at the first
opening of history, we find that, although ultimately Sparta came to
hold the first place, not only in Peloponnesus, but in all Hellas,
this was not the case at the earliest moment of which we have
historical cognizance. Argos, and the neighboring towns connected
with her by a bond of semi-religious, semi-political union,—Sikyôn,
Phlius, Epidaurus, and Trœzên,—were at first of greater power and
consideration than Sparta; a fact which the legend of the Herakleids
seems to recognize by making Têmenus the eldest brother of the
three. And Herodotus assures us that at one time all the eastern
coast of Peloponnesus down to Cape Melea, including the island
of Cythêra, all which came afterwards to constitute a material
part of Laconia, had belonged to Argos.[504] Down to the time of
the first Messenian war, the comparative importance of the Dorian
establishments in Peloponnesus appears to have been in the order
in which the legend placed them,—Argos first,[505] Sparta second,
Messênê third. It will be seen hereafter that the Argeians never lost
the recollection of this early preëminence, from which the growth of
Sparta had extruded them; and the liberties of entire Hellas were
more than once in danger from their disastrous jealousy of a more
fortunate competitor.
[504] Herodot. i. 82. The historian adds, besides Cythêra, καὶ
αἱ λοιπαὶ τῶν νήσων. What other islands are meant, I do not
distinctly understand.
[505] So Plato (Legg. iii. p. 692), whose mind is full of the old
mythe and the tripartite distribution of Peloponnesus among the
Herakleids,—ἡ δ᾽ αὖ, πρωτεύουσα ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις τοῖς περὶ
τὴν διανομὴν, ἡ περὶ τὸ Ἄργος, etc.
At a short distance of about three miles from Argos, and at the
exact point where that city approaches nearest to the sea,[506] was
situated the isolated hillock called Temenion, noticed both by Strabo
and Pausanias. It was a small village, deriving both its name and
its celebrity from the chapel and tomb of the hero Têmenus, who was
there worshipped by the Dorians; and the statement which Pausanias
heard was, that Têmenus, with his invading Dorians, had seized and
fortified the spot, and employed it as an armed post to make war upon
Tisamenus and the Achæans. What renders this report deserving of the
greater attention, is, that the same thing is affirmed with regard to
the eminence called Solygeius, near Corinth: this too was believed to
be the place which the Dorian assailants had occupied and fortified
against the preëxisting Corinthians in the city. Situated close upon
the Sarônic gulf, it was the spot which invaders landing from that
gulf would naturally seize upon, and which Nikias with his powerful
Athenian fleet did actually seize and occupy against Corinth in the
Peloponnesian war.[507] In early days, the only way of overpowering
the inhabitants of a fortified town, generally also planted in a
position itself very defensible, was,—that the invaders, entrenching
themselves in the neighborhood, harassed the inhabitants and ruined
their produce until they brought them to terms. Even during the
Peloponnesian war, when the art of besieging had made some progress,
we read of several instances in which this mode of aggressive warfare
was adopted with efficient results.[508] We may readily believe that
the Dorians obtained admittance both into Argos and Corinth in this
manner. And it is remarkable that, except Sikyôn (which is affirmed
to have been surprised by night), these were the only towns in the
Argolic region which are said to have resisted them; the story being,
that Phlius, Epidaurus, and Trœzên had admitted the Dorian intruders
without opposition, although a certain portion of the previous
inhabitants seceded. We shall hereafter see that the non-Dorian
population of Sikyôn and Corinth still remained considerable.
[506] Pausan. ii. 38, 1; Strabo, viii. p. 368. Professor Ross
observes, respecting the line of coast near Argos, “The sea-side
is thoroughly flat, and for the most part marshy; only at the
single point where Argos comes nearest to the coast,—between the
mouth, now choked by sand, of the united Inachus and Charadrus,
and the efflux of the Erasinus, overgrown with weeds and
bulrushes,—stands an eminence of some elevation and composed
of firmer earth, upon which the ancient Temenion was placed.”
(Reisen im Peloponnes, vol. i. sect. 5, p. 149, Berlin, 1841.)
[507] Thucyd. iv. 42.
[508] Thucyd. i. 122; iii. 85, vii. 18-27; viii. 38-40.
The separate statements which we thus find, and the position of the
Temenion and the Solygeius, lead to two conjectures,—first, that
the acquisitions of the Dorians in Peloponnesus were also isolated
and gradual, not at all conformable to the rapid strides of the old
Herakleid legend; next, that the Dorian invaders of Argos and Corinth
made their attack from the Argolic and the Saronic gulfs,—by sea
and not by land. It is, indeed, difficult to see how they can have
got to the Temenion in any other way than by sea; and a glance at
the map will show that the eminence Solygeius presents itself,[509]
with reference to Corinth, as the nearest and most convenient
holding-ground for a maritime invader, conformably to the scheme
of operations laid by Nikias. To illustrate the supposition of a
Dorian attack by sea on Corinth, we may refer to a story quoted
from Aristotle (which we find embodied in the explanation of an
old adage), representing Hippotês the father of Alêtês as having
crossed the Maliac gulf[510] (the sea immediately bordering on the
ancient Maleans, Dryopians, and Dorians) in ships, for the purpose of
colonizing. And if it be safe to trust the mention of Dorians in the
Odyssey, as a part of the population of the island of Crete, we there
have an example of Dorian settlements which must have been effected
by sea, and that too at a very early period. “We must suppose
(observes O. Müller,[511] in reference to these Kretan Dorians) that
the Dorians, pressed by want or restless from inactivity, constructed
piratical canoes, manned these frail and narrow barks with soldiers
who themselves worked at the oar, and thus being changed from
mountaineers into seamen,—the Normans of Greece,—set sail for the
distant island of Krête.” In the same manner, we may conceive the
expeditions of the Dorians against Argos and Corinth to have been
effected; and whatever difficulties may attach to this hypothesis,
certain it is that the difficulties of a long land-march, along such
a territory as Greece, are still more serious.
[509] Thucyd. iv. 42.
[510] Aristot. ap. Prov. Vatican, iv. 4, Μηλιακὸν πλοῖον,—also
Prov. Suidas, x. 2.
[511] Hist. of Dorians, ch. i. 9. Andrôn positively affirms that
the Dorians came from Histiæôtis to Krête; but his affirmation
does not seem to me to constitute any additional evidence of the
fact: it is a conjecture adapted to the passage in the Odyssey
(xix. 174), as the mention of Achæans and Pelasgians evidently
shows.
Aristotle (ap. Strab. viii. p. 374) appears to have believed that
the Herakleids returned to Argos out of the Attic Tetrapolis
(where, according to the Athenian legend, they had obtained
shelter when persecuted by Eurystheus), accompanying a body of
Ionians who then settled at Epidaurus. He cannot, therefore, have
connected the Dorian occupation of Argos with the expedition from
Naupaktus.
The supposition of Dorian emigrations by sea, from the Maliac gulf to
the north-eastern promontory of Peloponnesus, is farther borne out
by the analogy of the Dryopes, or Dryopians. During the historical
times, this people occupied several detached settlements in various
parts of Greece, all maritime, and some insular;—they were found
at Hermionê, Asinê, and Eiôn, in the Argolic peninsula (very near
to the important Dorian towns constituting the Amphiktyony of
Argos,[512])—at Styra and Karystus in the island of Eubœa,—in the
island of Kythnus, and even at Cyprus. These dispersed colonies
can only have been planted by expeditions over the sea. Now we are
told that the original Dryopis, the native country of this people,
comprehended both the territory near the river Spercheius, and
north of Œta, afterwards occupied by the Malians, as well as the
neighboring district south of Œta, which was afterwards called
Doris. From hence the Dryopians were expelled,—according to one
story, by the Dorians,—according to another, by Hêraklês and the
Malians: however this may be, it was from the Maliac gulf that they
started on shipboard in quest of new homes, which some of them found
on the headlands of the Argolic peninsula.[513] And it was from
this very country, according to Herodotus,[514] that the Dorians
also set forth, in order to reach Peloponnesus. Nor does it seem
unreasonable to imagine, that the same means of conveyance, which
bore the Dryopians from the Maliac gulf to Hermionê and Asinê, also
carried the Dorians from the same place to the Temenion, and the hill
Solygeius.
[512] Herod. viii. 43-46; Diodor. iv. 37; Pausan. iv. 34, 6.
[513] Strabo, viii. p. 373; ix. p. 434. Herodot. viii. 43.
Pherekydês, Fr. 23 and 38, ed. Didot. Steph. Byz. v. Δρυόπη.
Apollodor. ii. 7, 7. Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 1213.
[514] Herodot. i. 56.—ἐνθεῦτεν δὲ αὖτις ἐς τὴν Δρυοπίδα μετέβη,
καὶ ἐκ τῆς Δρυοπίδος οὕτω ἐς Πελοπόννησον ἐλθὸν, Δωρικὸν
ἐκλήθη,—to the same purpose, viii. 31-43.
The legend represents Sikyôn, Epidaurus, Trœzên, Phlius, and Kleônæ,
as all occupied by Dorian colonists from Argos, under the different
sons of Têmenus: the first three are on the sea, and fit places for
the occupation of maritime invaders. Argos and the Dorian towns
in and near the Argolic peninsula are to be regarded as a cluster
of settlements by themselves, completely distinct from Sparta and
the Messenian Stenyklêrus, which appear to have been formed under
totally different conditions. First, both of them are very far
inland,—Stenyklêrus not easy, Sparta very difficult of access from
the sea; next, we know that the conquests of Sparta were gradually
made down the valley of the Eurotas seaward. Both these acquisitions
present the appearance of having been made from the land-side, and
perhaps in the direction which the Herakleid legend describes,—by
warriors entering Peloponnesus across the narrow mouth of the
Corinthian gulf, through the aid or invitation of those Ætolian
settlers who at the same time colonized Elis. The early and intimate
connection (on which I shall touch presently) between Sparta and the
Olympic games as administered by the Eleians, as well as the leading
part ascribed to Lykurgus in the constitution of the solemn Olympic
truce, tend to strengthen such a persuasion.
In considering the early affairs of the Dorians in Peloponnesus, we
are apt to have our minds biased, first, by the Herakleid legend,
which imparts to them an impressive, but deceitful, epical unity;
next, by the aspect of the later and better-known history, which
presents the Spartan power as unquestionably preponderant, and
Argos only as second by a long interval. But the first view (as I
have already remarked) which opens to us, of real Grecian history,
a little before 776 B. C., exhibits Argos with its alliance or
confederacy of neighboring cities colonized from itself, as the great
seat of Dorian power in the peninsula, and Sparta as an outlying
state of inferior consequence. The recollection of this state of
things lasted after it had ceased to be a reality, and kept alive
pretensions on the part of Argos to the headship of the Greeks as
a matter of right, which she became quite incapable of sustaining
either by adequate power or by statesmanlike sagacity. The growth of
Spartan power was a succession of encroachments upon Argos.[515]
[515] See Herodot. vii. 148. The Argeians say to the
Lacedæmonians, in reference to the chief command of the
Greeks—καίτοι κατά γε τὸ δίκαιον γίνεσθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίην ἑωύτων,
etc. Schweighäuser and others explain the point by reference to
the command of Agamemnôn; but this is at best only a part of the
foundation of their claim: they had a more recent historical
reality to plead also: compare Strabo, viii. p. 376.
How Sparta came constantly to gain upon Argos will be matter for
future explanation: at present, it is sufficient to remark, that
the ascendency of Argos was derived not exclusively from her own
territory, but came in part from her position as metropolis of
an alliance of autonomous neighboring cities, all Dorian and all
colonized from herself,—and this was an element of power essentially
fluctuating. What Thêbes was to the cities of Bœotia, of which she
either was, or professed to have been, the founder,[516] the same
was Argos in reference to Kleônæ, Phlius, Sikyôn, Epidaurus, Trœzên,
and Ægina. These towns formed, in mythical language, “the lot of
Têmenus,”[517]—in real matter of fact, the confederated allies or
subordinates of Argos: the first four of them were said to have
been _Dorized_ by the sons or immediate relatives of Têmenus; and
the kings of Argos, as acknowledged descendants of the latter,
claimed and exercised a sort of _suzeraineté_ over them. Hermionê,
Asinê, and Nauplia seem also to have been under the supremacy of
Argos, though not colonies.[518] But this supremacy was not claimed
directly and nakedly: agreeably to the ideas of the time, the
ostensible purposes of the Argeian confederacy or Amphiktyony were
religious, though its secondary and not less real effects, were
political. The great patron-god of the league was Apollo Pythaëus,
in whose name the obligations incumbent on the members of the league
were imposed. While in each of the confederated cities there was a
temple to this god, his most holy and central sanctuary was on the
Larissa or acropolis of Argos. At this central Argeian sanctuary,
solemn sacrifices were offered by Epidaurus as well as by other
members of the confederacy, and, as it should seem, accompanied by
money-payments,[519]—which the Argeians, as chief administrators
on behalf of the common god, took upon them to enforce against
defaulters, and actually tried to enforce during the Peloponnesian
war against Epidaurus. On another occasion, during the 66th Olympiad
(B. C. 514), they imposed the large fine of 500 talents upon each of
the two states Sikyôn and Ægina, for having lent ships to the Spartan
king Kleomenes, wherewith he invaded the Argeian territory. The
Æginetans set the claim at defiance, but the Sikyonians acknowledged
its justice, and only demurred to its amount, professing themselves
ready to pay 100 talents.[520] There can be no doubt that, at this
later period, the ascendency of Argos over the members of her
primitive confederacy had become practically inoperative; but the
tenor of the cases mentioned shows that her claims were revivals of
bygone privileges, which had once been effective and valuable.
[516] Ἡμῶν κτισάντων (so runs the accusation of the Theban
orators against the captive Platæans, before their Lacedæmonian
judges, Thucyd. iii. 61.) Πλάταιαν ὕστερον τῆς ἄλλης Βοιωτίας—οὐκ
ἠξίουν αὐτοὶ, ὥσπερ ἐτάχθη τὸ πρῶτον, ἡγεμονεύεσθαι ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν,
ἔξω δὲ τῶν ἄλλων Βοιωτῶν παραβαίνοντες τὰ πάτρια, ἐπειδὴ
προσηναγκάζοντο, προσεχώρησαν πρὸς Ἀθηναίους καὶ μετ᾽ αὐτῶν πολλὰ
ἡμᾶς ἔβλαπτον.
[517] Respecting Pheidôn, king of Argos, Ephorus said,—τὴν λῆξιν
ὅλην ἀνέλαβε τὴν Τημένου διεσπασμένην εἰς πλείω μέρη (ap. Strabo.
viii. p. 358).
[518] The worship of Apollo Pythaëus, adopted from Argos both
at Hermionê and Asinê, shows the connection between them and
Argos (Pausan. ii. 35, 2; ii. 36, 5): but Pausanias can hardly
be justified in saying that the Argeians actually _Dorized_
Hermionê: it was Dryopian in the time of Herodotus, and seemingly
for a long time afterwards (Herodot. viii. 43). The Hermionian
Inscription, No. 1193, in Boeckh’s Collection, recognizes their
old Dryopian connection with Asinê in Laconia: that town had once
been neighbor of Hermionê, but was destroyed by the Argeians,
and the inhabitants received a new home from the Spartans. The
dialect of the Hermionians (probably that of the Dryopians
generally) was Doric. See Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, pp. 2-12.
[519] Thucyd. v. 53. ~Κυριώτατοι~ τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἦσαν οἱ Ἀργεῖοι.
The word εἴσπραξις, which the historian uses in regard to the
claim of Argos against Epidaurus, seems to imply a money-payment
withheld: compare the offerings exacted by Athens from Epidaurus
(Herod. v. 82).
The peculiar and intimate connection between the Argeians, and
Apollo, with his surname of Pythaëus, was dwelt upon by the
Argeian poetess Telesilla (Pausan. ii. 36, 2).
[520] Herodot. vi. 92. See O. Müller, History of the Dorians, ch.
7, 13.
How valuable the privileges of Argos were, before the great rise of
the Spartan power,—how important an ascendency they conferred, in
the hands of an energetic man, and how easily they admitted of being
used in furtherance of ambitious views, is shown by the remarkable
case of Pheidôn, the Temenid. The few facts which we learn respecting
this prince exhibit to us, for the first time, something like a
real position of parties in the Peloponnesus, wherein the actual
conflict of living historical men and cities, comes out in tolerable
distinctness.
Pheidôn was designated by Ephorus as the tenth, and by Theopompus
as the sixth, in lineal descent from Têmenus. Respecting the date
of his existence, opinions the most discrepant and irreconcilable
have been delivered; but there seems good reason for referring
him to the period a little before and a little after the 8th
Olympiad,—between 770 B. C. and 730 B. C.[521] Of the preceding
kings of Argos we hear little: one of them, Eratus, is said to have
expelled the Dryopian inhabitants of Asinê from their town on the
Argolic peninsula, in consequence of their having coöperated with
the Spartan king, Nikander, when he invaded the Argeian territory,
seemingly during the generation preceding Pheidôn; there is another,
Damokratidas, whose date cannot be positively determined, but he
appears rather as subsequent than as anterior to Pheidôn.[522] We
are informed, however, that these anterior kings, even beginning
with Medôn, the grandson of Têmenus, had been forced to submit to
great abridgment of their power and privileges, and that a form of
government substantially popular, though nominally regal, had been
established.[523] Pheidôn, breaking through the limits imposed,
made himself despot of Argos. He then re-established the power of
Argos over all the cities of her confederacy, which had before
been so nearly dissolved as to leave all the members practically
independent.[524] Next, he is said to have acquired dominion over
Corinth, and to have endeavored to assure it, by treacherously
entrapping a thousand of her warlike citizens; but his artifice
was divulged and frustrated by Abrôn, one of his confidential
friends.[525] He is farther reported to have aimed at extending his
sway over the greater part of Peloponnesus,—laying claim, as the
descendant of Hêraklês, through the eldest son of Hyllus, to all the
cities which that restless and irresistible hero had ever taken.[526]
According to Grecian ideas, this legendary title was always seriously
construed, and often admitted as conclusive; though of course, where
there were strong opposing interests, reasons would be found to elude
it. Pheidôn would have the same ground of right as that which, two
hundred and fifty years afterwards, determined the Herakleid Dôrieus,
brother of Kleomenês king of Sparta, to acquire for himself the
territory near Mount Eryx in Sicily, because his progenitor,[527]
Hêraklês, had conquered it before him. So numerous, however, were
the legends respecting the conquests of Hêraklês, that the claim of
Pheidôn must have covered the greater part of Peloponnesus, except
Sparta and the plain of Messêne, which were already in the hands of
Herakleids.
[521] Ephor. Fragm. 15, ed. Marx; ap. Strabo, viii. p. 358;
Theopompus, Fragm. 30, ed. Didot; ap. Diodor. Fragm. lib. iv.
The Parian Marble makes Pheidôn the eleventh from Hêraklês, and
places him B. C. 895; Herodotus, on the contrary (in a passage
which affords considerable grounds for discussion), places him at
a period which cannot be much higher than 600 B. C. (vi. 127.)
Some authors suspect the text of Herodotus to be incorrect: at
any rate, the real epoch of Pheidôn is determined by the 8th
Olympiad. Several critics suppose _two_ Pheidôns, each king
of Argos,—among others, O. Müller (Dorians, iii. 6, 10); but
there is nothing to countenance this, except the impossibility
of reconciling Herodotus with the other authorities. And
Weissenborn, in a dissertation of some length, vindicates the
emendation of Pausanias proposed by some former critics,—altering
the 8th Olympiad, which now stands in the text of Pausanias,
into the _twenty-eighth_, as the date of Pheidôn’s usurpation at
the Olympic games. Weissenborn endeavors to show that Pheidôn
cannot have flourished earlier than 660 B. C.; but his arguments
do not appear to me very forcible, and certainly not sufficient
to justify so grave an alteration in the number of Pausanias
(Beiträge zur Griechischen Alterthumskunde, p. 18, Jena, 1844).
Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. App. 1, p. 249) places
Pheidôn between 783 and 744 B. C.; also, Boeckh. ad Corp.
Inscript. No. 2374, p. 335, and Müller, Æginetica, p. 63.
[522] Pausan. ii. 36, 5; iv. 35, 2.
[523] Pausan. ii. 19, 1. Ἀργεῖοι δὲ, ἅτε ἰσηγορίαν καὶ τὸ
αὐτόνομον ἀγαπῶντες ἐκ παλαιοτάτου, τὰ τῆς ἐξουσίας τῶν βασιλέων
ἐς ἐλάχιστον προήγαγον, ὡς Μήδωνι τῷ Κείσου καὶ τοῖς ἀπογόνοις τὸ
ὄνομα λειφθῆναι τοῦ βασιλέως μόνον. This passage has all the air
of transferring back to the early government of Argos, feelings
which were only true of the _later_. It is curious that, in this
chapter, though devoted to the Argeian regal line and government,
Pausanias takes no notice of Pheidôn: he mentions him only with
reference to the disputed Olympic ceremony.
[524] Ephorus, _ut suprà_. Φείδωνα τὸν Ἀργεῖον, δέκατον ὄντα ἀπὸ
Τημένου, δυνάμει δὲ ὑπερβεβλημένον τοὺς κατ᾽ αὐτὸν, ἀφ᾽ ἧς τήν τε
λῆξιν ὅλην ἀνέλαβε τὴν Τημένου διεσπασμένην εἰς πλείω μέρη, etc.
What is meant by _the lot of Têmenus_ has been already explained.
[525] Plutarch, Narrat. Amator. p. 772; Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv.
1212; compare Didymus, ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 27.
I cannot, however, believe that Pheidôn, the ancient Corinthian
law giver mentioned by Aristotle, is the same person as Pheidôn
the king of Argos (Polit. ii. 6, 4).
[526] Ephor. _ut suprà_.Πρὸς τούτοις, ἐπιθέσθαι καὶ ταῖς ὑφ᾽
Ἡρακλέους αἰρεθείσαις πόλεσι, καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας ἀξιοῦν τιθέναι
αὐτὸν, οὓς ἐκεῖνος ἔθηκε· τούτων δὲ εἶναι καὶ τὸν Ὀλυμπιακὸν, etc.
[527] Herodot. v. 43.
Nor was the ambition of Pheidôn satisfied even with these large
pretensions. He farther claimed the right of presiding at the
celebration of those religious games, or Agônes, which had been
instituted by Hêraklês,—and among these was numbered the Olympic
Agôn, then, however, enjoying but a slender fraction of the lustre
which afterwards came to attach to it. The presidency of any of the
more celebrated festivals current throughout Greece, was a privilege
immensely prized. It was at once dignified and lucrative, and the
course of our history will present more than one example in which
blood was shed to determine what state should enjoy it. Pheidôn
marched to Olympia, at the epoch of the 8th recorded Olympiad, or 747
B. C.; on the occasion of which event we are made acquainted with the
real state of parties in the peninsula.
The plain of Olympia,—now ennobled only by immortal recollections,
but once crowded with all the decorations of religion and art, and
forming for many centuries the brightest centre of attraction known
in the ancient world,—was situated on the river Alpheius, in the
territory called the Pisatid, hard by the borders of Arcadia. At what
time its agonistic festival, recurring every fifth year, at the first
full moon after the summer solstice, first began or first acquired
its character of special sanctity, we have no means of determining.
As with so many of the native waters of Greece,—we follow the stream
upward to a certain point, but the fountain-head, and the earlier
flow of history, is buried under mountains of unsearchable legend.
The first celebration of the Olympic contests was ascribed by Grecian
legendary faith to Hêraklês,—and the site of the place, in the middle
of the Pisatid, with its eight small townships, is quite sufficient
to prove that the inhabitants of that little territory were warranted
in describing themselves as the original administrators of the
ceremony.[528] But this state of things seems to have been altered by
the Ætolian settlement in Elis, which is represented as having been
conducted by Oxylus and identified with the Return of the Herakleids.
The Ætolo-Eleians, bordering upon the Pisatid to the north, employed
their superior power in subduing their weaker neighbors,[529] who
thus lost their autonomy and became annexed to the territory of Elis.
It was the general rule throughout Greece, that a victorious state
undertook to perform[530] the current services of the conquered
people towards the gods,—such services being conceived as attaching
to the soil: hence, the celebration of the Olympic games became
numbered among the incumbences of Elis, just in the same way as the
worship of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr, when Eleusis lost its autonomy,
was included among the religious obligations of Athens. The Pisatans,
however, never willingly acquiesced in this absorption of what had
once been their separate privilege; they long maintained their
conviction, that the celebration of the games was their right, and
strove on several occasions to regain it. On those occasions, the
earliest, so far as we hear, was connected with the intervention of
Pheidôn. It was at their invitation that the king of Argos went to
Olympia, and celebrated the games himself, in conjunction with the
Pisatans, as the lineal successor of Hêraklês; while the Eleians,
being thus forcibly dispossessed, refused to include the 8th Olympiad
in their register of the victorious runners. But their humiliation
did not last long, for the Spartans took their part, and the contest
ended in the defeat of Pheidôn. In the next Olympiad, the Eleian
management and the regular enrolment appear as before, and the
Spartans are even said to have confirmed Elis in her possession both
of Pisatis and Triphylia.[531]
[528] Xenoph. Hellen. vii. 4, 28; Diodor. xv. 78.
[529] Strabo, viii. p. 354.
[530] Thucyd. iv. 98.
[531] Pausan. v. 22, 2; Strabo, viii. pp. 354-358; Herodot. vi.
127. The name of the victor (Antiklês the Messenian), however,
belonging to the 8th Olympiad, appears duly in the lists; it must
have been supplied afterwards.
Unfortunately, these scanty particulars are all which we learn
respecting the armed conflict at the 8th Olympiad, in which the
religious and the political grounds of quarrel are so intimately
blended,—as we shall find to be often the case in Grecian history.
But there is one act of Pheidôn yet more memorable, of which also
nothing beyond a meagre notice has come down to us. He first coined
both copper and silver money in Ægina, and first established a scale
of weights and measures,[532] which, through his influence, became
adopted throughout Peloponnesus, and acquired, ultimately, footing
both in all the Dorian states, and in Bœotia, Thessaly, northern
Hellas generally, and Macedonia,—under the name of the Æginæan Scale.
There arose subsequently another rival scale in Greece, called the
Euboic, differing considerably from the Æginæan. We do not know at
what time it was introduced, but it was employed both at Athens and
in the Ionic cities generally, as well as in Eubœa,—being modified at
Athens, so far as money was concerned, by Solon’s debasement of the
coinage.
[532] Herodot. vi. 127; Ephor. ap. Strab. viii. pp. 358-376.
The copious and valuable information contained in M. Boeckh’s recent
publication on Metrology, has thrown new light upon these monetary
and statical scales.[533] He has shown that both the Æginæan and the
Euboic scales—the former standing to the latter in the proportion
of 6 : 5—had contemporaneous currency in different parts of the
Persian empire; the divisions and denominations of the scale being
the same in both, 100 drachmæ to a mina, and 60 minæ to a talent. The
Babylonian talent, mina, and drachma are identical with the Æginæan:
the word mina is of Asiatic origin; and it has now been rendered
highly probable, that the scale circulated by Pheidôn was borrowed
immediately from the Phœnicians, and by them originally from the
Babylonians. The Babylonian, Hebraic, Phœnician, Egyptian,[534] and
Grecian scales of weight (which were subsequently followed wherever
coined money was introduced) are found to be so nearly conformable,
as to warrant a belief that they are all deduced from one common
origin; and that origin the Chaldæan priesthood of Babylon. It is to
Pheidôn, and to his position as chief of the Argeian confederacy,
that the Greeks owe the first introduction of the Babylonian scale of
weight, and the first employment of coined and stamped money.
[533] Metrologische Untersuchungen über Gewichte, Münzfusse, und
Mässe des Alterthums in ihrem Zusammenhange dargestellt, von Aug.
Boeckh; Berlin, 1838.
See chap. 7, 1-3. But I cannot agree with M. Boeckh, in thinking
that Pheidôn, in celebrating the Olympic games, deduced from the
Olympic stadium, and formally adopted, the measure of the _foot_,
or that he at all settled measures of _length_. In general, I
do not think that M. Boeckh’s conclusions are well made out, in
respect to the Grecian measures of _length_ and _capacity_. In an
examination of this eminently learned treatise (inserted in the
Classical Museum, 1844, vol. i.), I endeavored to set forth both
the new and interesting points established by the author, and the
various others in which he appeared to me to have failed.
[534] I have modified this sentence as it stood in my first
edition. It is not correct to speak of the Egyptian _money_
scale: the Egyptians had no _coined money_. See a valuable
article, in review of my History, in the Christian Reformer, by
Mr. Kenrick, who pointed out this inaccuracy.
If we maturely weigh the few, but striking acts of Pheidôn which have
been preserved to us, and which there is no reason to discredit,
we shall find ourselves introduced to an early historical state
of Peloponnesus very different from that to which another century
will bring us. That Argos, with the federative cities attached to
her, was at this early time decidedly the commanding power in that
peninsula, is sufficiently shown by the establishment and reception
of the Pheidonian weights, measures, and monetary system,—while the
other incidents mentioned completely harmonize with the same idea.
Against the oppressions of Elis, the Pisatans invoked Pheidon,—partly
as exercising a primacy in Peloponnesus, just as the inhabitants
of Lepreum in Triphylia,[535] three centuries afterwards, called
in the aid of Sparta for the same object, at a time when Sparta
possessed the headship,—and partly as the lineal representative
of Hêraklês, who had founded those games from the management of
which they had been unjustly extruded. On the other hand, Sparta
appears as a second-rate power. The Æginæan scale of weight and
measure was adopted there as elsewhere,[536]—the Messenian Dorians
were still equal and independent,—and we find Sparta interfering
to assist Elis by virtue of an obligation growing (so the legend
represents it) out of the common Ætolo-Dorian emigration; not at all
from any acknowledged primacy, such as we shall see her enjoying
hereafter. The first coinage of copper and silver money is a capital
event in Grecian history, and must be held to imply considerable
commerce as well as those extensive views which belong only to a
conspicuous and leading position. The ambition of Pheidôn to resume
all the acquisitions made by his ancestor Hêraklês, suggests the
same large estimate of his actual power. He is characterized as a
despot, and even as the most insolent of all despots:[537] how far
he deserved such a reputation, we have no means of judging. We may
remark, however, that he lived before the age of despots or tyrants,
properly so called, and before the Herakleid lineage had yet lost
its primary, half-political, half-religious character. Moreover, the
later historians have invested his actions with a color of exorbitant
aggression, by applying them to a state of things which belonged to
their time and not to his. Thus Ephorus represents him as having
deprived the Lacedæmonians of the headship of Peloponnesus, which
they never possessed until long after him,—and also as setting at
naught the sworn inviolability of the territory of the Eleians,
enjoyed by the latter as celebrators of the Olympic games; whereas
the Agonothesia, or right of superintendence claimed by Elis, had
not at that time acquired the sanction of prescription,—while the
conquest of Pisa by the Eleians themselves had proved that this
sacred function did not protect the territory of a weaker people.
[535] Thucyd. v. 31.
[536] Plutarch, Apophthegm. Laconic. p. 226; Dikæarchus ap.
Athenæ. iv. p. 141.
The Æginæan mina, drachma, and obolus were the denominations
employed in stipulations among the Peloponnesian states (Thucyd.
v. 47).
[537] Herodot. vi. 127. Φείδωνος τοῦ Ἀργείων τυράννου—τοῦ
ὑβρίσαντος μέγιστα δὴ Ἑλλήνων ἁπάντων. Pausanias (vi. 22, 2)
copies the expression.
Aristotle cites Pheidôn as a person who, being a βασιλεὺς, made
himself a τύραννος (Politic. viii. 8, 5).
How Pheidôn fell, and how the Argeians lost that supremacy which
they once evidently possessed, we have no positive details to inform
us: with respect to the latter point, however, we can discern a
sufficient explanation. The Argeians stood predominant as an entire
and unanimous confederacy, which required a vigorous and able hand
to render its internal organization effective or its ascendency
respected without. No such leader afterwards appeared at Argos, the
whole history of which city is destitute of eminent individuals:
her line of kings continued at least down to the Persian war,[538]
but seemingly with only titular functions, for the government had
long been decidedly popular. The statements, which represent the
government as popular anterior to the time of Pheidôn, appear
unworthy of trust. That prince is rather to be taken as wielding
the old, undiminished prerogatives of the Herakleid kings, but
wielding them with unusual effect,—enforcing relaxed privileges, and
appealing to the old heroic sentiment in reference to Hêraklês,
rather than revolutionizing the existing relations either of Argos
or of Peloponnesus. It was in fact the great and steady growth of
Sparta, for three centuries after the Lykurgean institutions, which
operated as a cause of subversion to the previous order of command
and obedience in Greece.
[538] Herodot. vii. 149.
The assertion made by Herodotus,—that, in earlier times, the whole
eastern coast of Laconia as far as Cape Malea, including the island
of Kythêra and several other islands, had belonged to Argos,—is
referred by O. Müller to about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 B. C.
Perhaps it had ceased to be true at that period; but that it was true
in the age of Pheidôn, there seem good grounds for believing. What
is probably meant is, that the Dorian towns on this coast, Prasiæ,
Zarêx, Epidaurus Limêra, and Bœæ, were once autonomous, and members
of the Argeian confederacy,—a fact highly probable, on independent
evidence, with respect to Epidaurus Limêra, inasmuch as that town
was a settlement from Epidaurus in the Argolic peninsula: and BϾ
too had its own œkist and eponymus, the Herakleid Bœus,[539] noway
connected with Sparta,—perhaps derived from the same source as the
name of the town Bœon in Doris. The Argeian confederated towns
would thus comprehend the whole coast of the Argolic and Saronic
gulfs, from Kythêra as far as Ægina, besides other islands which we
do not know: Ægina had received a colony of Dorians from Argos and
Epidaurus, upon which latter town it continued for some time in a
state of dependence.[540] It will at once be seen that this extent
of coast implies a considerable degree of commerce and maritime
activity. We have besides to consider the range of Doric colonies
in the southern islands of the Ægean and in the south-western
corner of Asia Minor,—Krête, Kôs, Rhodes (with its three distinct
cities), Halikarnassus, Knidus, Myndus, Nisyrus, Symê, Karpathus,
Kalydna, etc. Of the Doric establishments here named, several are
connected (as has been before stated) with the great emigration of
the Têmenid Althæmenês from Argos: but what we particularly observe
is, that they are often referred as colonies promiscuously to Argos,
Trœzên, Epidaurus[541]—more frequently however, as it seems, to
Argos. All these settlements are doubtless older than Pheidôn, and
we may conceive them as proceeding conjointly from the allied Dorian
towns in the Argolic peninsula, at a time when they were more in
the habit of united action than they afterwards became: a captain
of emigrants selected from the line of Hêraklês and Têmenus was
suitable to the feelings of all of them. We may thus look back to a
period, at the very beginning of the Olympiads, when the maritime
Dorians on the east of Peloponnesus maintained a considerable
intercourse and commerce, not only among themselves, but also
with their settlements on the Asiatic coast and islands. That the
Argolic peninsula formed an early centre for maritime rendezvous,
we may farther infer from the very ancient Amphiktyony of the seven
cities (Hermionê, Epidaurus, Ægina, Athens, Prasiæ, Nauplia, and the
Minyeian Orchomenus), on the holy island of Kalauria, off the harbor
of Trœzên.[542]
[539] Pausan. iii. 22, 9; iii. 23, 4.
[540] Herodot. v. 83; Strabo, viii. p. 375.
[541] Rhodes, Kôs, Knidus, and Halikarnassus are all treated by
Strabo (xiv. p. 653) as colonies of Argos: Rhodes is so described
by Thucydidês (vii. 57), and Kôs by Tacitus (xii. 61). Kôs,
Kalydna, and Nisyrus are described by Herodotus as colonies of
Epidaurus (vii. 99): Halikarnassus passes sometimes for a colony
of Trœzên, sometimes of Trœzên and Argos conjointly: “Cum Melas
et Areuanius ab Argis et Trœzene coloniam communem eo loco
induxerunt, barbaros Caras et Leleges ejecerunt (Vitruv. ii. 8,
12: Steph. Byz. v. Ἁλικάρνασσος).” Compare Strabo, x. p. 479;
Conon, Narr. 47; Diodor. v. 80.
Raoul Rochette (Histoire des Colonies Grecques, t. iii. ch. 9)
and O. Müller (History of the Dorians, ch. 6) have collected the
facts about these Asiatic Dorians.
The little town of BϾ had its counterpart of the same name in
Krête (Steph. Byz. v. Βοῖον).
[542] Strabo, p. 374.
The view here given of the early ascendency of Argos, as the head of
the Peloponnesian Dorians and the metropolis of the Asiatic Dorians,
enables us to understand the capital innovation of Pheidôn,—the first
coinage, and the first determinate scale of weight and measure,
known in Greece. Of the value of such improvements, in the history
of Grecian civilization, it is superfluous to speak, especially
when we recollect that the Hellenic states, having no political
unity, were only held together by the aggregate of spontaneous
uniformities, in language, religion, sympathies, recreations, and
general habits. We see both how Pheidôn came to contract the wish,
and how he acquired the power, to introduce throughout so much of the
Grecian world an uniform scale; we also see that the Asiatic Dorians
form the link between him and Phœnicia, from whence the scale was
derived, just as the Euboic scale came, in all probability, through
the Ionic cities in Asia, from Lydia. It is asserted by Ephorus,
and admitted even by the ablest modern critics, that Pheidôn first
coined money “in Ægina:”[543] other authors (erroneously believing
that his scale was the Euboic scale) alleged that his coinage had
been carried on “in a place of Argos called Eubœa.”[544] Now both
these statements appear highly improbable, and both are traceable to
the same mistake,—of supposing that the title, by which the scale
had come to be commonly known, must necessarily be derived from the
place in which the coinage had been struck. There is every reason to
conclude, that what Pheidôn did was done in Argos, and nowhere else:
his coinage and scale were the earliest known in Greece, and seem to
have been known by his own name, “the Pheidonian measures,” under
which designation they were described by Aristotle, in his account of
the constitution of Argos.[545] They probably did not come to bear
the specific epithet of _Æginæan_ until there was another scale in
vogue, the _Euboic_, from which to distinguish them; and both the
epithets were probably derived, not from the place where the scale
first originated, but from the people whose commercial activity
tended to make them most generally known,—in the one case, the
Æginetans; in the other case, the inhabitants of Chalkis and Eretria.
I think, therefore, that we are to look upon the Pheidonian measures
as emanating from Argos, and as having no greater connection,
originally, with Ægina, than with any other city dependent upon Argos.
[543] Ephorus ap. Strabo, viii. p. 376; Boeckh, Metrologie,
Abschn. 7, 1: see also the Marmor Parium, Epoch 30.
[544] Etymologicon Magn. Εὐβοϊκὸν νόμισμα.
[545] Pollux, Onomastic. x. 179. Εἴη δ᾽ ἂν καὶ Φείδων τι ἀγγείον
ἐλαιηρὸν, ἀπὸ τῶν Φειδωνίων μέτρων ὠνομασμένον, ὑπὲρ ὦν ἐν
Ἀργείων πολιτείᾳ Ἀριστοτέλης λέγει.
Also Ephorus ap. Strab. viii. p. 358. καὶ μέτρα ἐξεῦρε τὰ
Φειδώνεια καλούμενα καὶ σταθμοὺς, καὶ νόμισμα κεχαράγμενον, etc.
There is, moreover, another point which deserves notice. What was
known by the name of the Æginæan scale, as contrasted with and
standing in a definite ratio (6 : 5) with the Euboic scale, related
only to weight and money, so far as our knowledge extends:[546] we
have no evidence to show that the same ratio extended either to
measures of length or measures of capacity. But there seems ground
for believing that the Pheidonian regulations, taken in their full
comprehension, embraced measures of capacity as well as weights:
Pheidôn, at the same time when he determined the talent, mina, and
drachm, seems also to have fixed the dry and liquid measures,—the
medimnus and metrêtês, with their parts and multiples: and there
existed[547] Pheidonian measures of capacity, though not of length,
so far as we know. The Æginæan scale may thus have comprised only
a portion of what was established by Pheidôn, namely, that which
related to weight and money.
[546] This differs from Boeckh’s opinion: see the note in page
315.
[547] Theophrast. Character. c. 13; Pollux, x. 179.