The Successors of Theseus.--The Fate of Codrus.--The Emigration of
Nileus.--The Archons.--Draco.
I. The reputed period of the Trojan war follows close on the age of
Hercules and Theseus; and Menestheus, who succeeded the latter hero on
the throne of Athens, led his countrymen to the immortal war.
Plutarch and succeeding historians have not failed to notice the
expression of Homer, in which he applies the word demus or “people” to
the Athenians, as a proof of the popular government established in
that state. But while the line has been considered an interpolation,
as late at least as the time of Solon, we may observe that it was
never used by Homer in the popular and political sense it afterward
received. And he applies it not only to the state of Athens, but to
that of Ithaca, certainly no democracy. [94]
The demagogue king appears to have been a man of much warlike renown
and skill, and is mentioned as the first who marshalled an army in
rank and file. Returning from Troy, he died in the Isle of Melos, and
was succeeded by Demophoon, one of the sons of Theseus, who had also
fought with the Grecian army in the Trojan siege. In his time a
dispute between the Athenians and Argives was referred to fifty
arbiters of each nation, called Ephetae, the origin of the court so
styled, and afterward re-established with new powers by Draco.
To Demophoon succeeded his son Oxyntes, and to Oxyntes, Aphidas,
murdered by his bastard brother Thymaetes. Thymaetes was the last of
the race of Theseus who reigned in Athens. A dispute arose between
the Boeotians and the Athenians respecting the confines of their
several territories; it was proposed to decide the difference by a
single combat between Thymaetes and the King of the Boeotians.
Thymaetes declined the contest. A Messenian exile, named Melanthus,
accepted it, slew his antagonist by a stratagem, and, deposing the
cowardly Athenian, obtained the sovereignty of Athens. With
Melanthus, who was of the race of Nestor, passed into Athens two
nobles of the same house, Paeon and Alcmaeon, who were the founders of
the Paeonids and Alcmaeonids, two powerful families, whose names often
occur in the subsequent history of Athens, and who, if they did not
create a new order of nobility, at least sought to confine to their
own families the chief privileges of that which was established.
II. Melanthus was succeeded by his son Codrus, a man whose fame finds
more competitors in Roman than Grecian history. During his reign the
Dorians invaded Attica. They were assured of success by the Delphian
oracle, on condition that they did not slay the Athenian king.
Informed of the response, Codrus disguised himself as a peasant, and,
repairing to the hostile force, sought a quarrel with some of the
soldiers, and was slain by them not far from the banks of the Ilissus
[95]. The Athenians sent to demand the body of their king; and the
Dorians, no longer hoping of success, since the condition of the
oracle was thus violated, broke up their encampment and relinquished
their design. Some of the Dorians had already by night secretly
entered the city and concealed themselves within its walls; but, as
the day dawned, and they found themselves abandoned by their
associates and surrounded by the foe, they fled to the Areopagus and
the altars of the Furies; the refuge was deemed inviolable, and the
Dorians were dismissed unscathed--a proof of the awe already attached
to the rites of sanctuary [96]. Still, however, this invasion was
attended with the success of what might have been the principal object
of the invaders. Megara [97], which had hitherto been associated with
Attica, was now seized by the Dorians, and became afterward a colony
of Corinth. This gallant but petty state had considerable influence
on some of the earlier events of Athenian history.
III. Codrus was the last of the Athenian kings. The Athenians
affected the motives of reverence to his memory as an excuse for
forbidding to the illustrious martyr the chance of an unworthy
successor. But the aristocratic constitution had been morally
strengthened by the extinction of the race of Theseus and the jealousy
of a foreign line; and the abolition of the monarchy was rather caused
by the ambition of the nobles than the popular veneration for the
patriotism of Codrus. The name of king was changed into that of
archon (magistrate or governor); the succession was still made
hereditary, but the power of the ruler was placed under new limits,
and he was obliged to render to the people, or rather to the
eupatrids, an account of his government whenever they deemed it
advisable to demand it.
IV. Medon, the son of Codrus, was the first of these perpetual
archons. In that age bodily strength was still deemed an essential
virtue in a chief; and Nileus, a younger brother of Medon, attempted
to depose the archon on no other pretence than that of his lameness.
A large portion of the people took advantage of the quarrel between
the brothers to assert that they would have no king but Jupiter. At
length Medon had recourse to the oracle, which decided in his favour;
and Nileus, with all the younger sons of Codrus, and accompanied by a
numerous force, departed from Athens, and colonized that part of Asia
Minor celebrated in history under the name of Ionia. The rise, power,
and influence of these Asiatic colonies we shall find a more
convenient opportunity to notice. Medon’s reign, thus freed from the
more stirring spirits of his time, appears to have been prosperous and
popular; it was an era in the ancient world, when the lameness of a
ruler was discovered to be unconnected with his intellect! Then
follows a long train of archons--peaceable and obscure. During a
period estimated at three hundred years, the Athenians performed
little that has descended to posterity--brief notices of petty
skirmishes, and trivial dissensions with their neighbours, alone
diversify that great interval. Meanwhile, the Ionian colonies rise
rapidly into eminence and power. At length, on the death of Alcmaeon
--the thirteenth and last perpetual archon--a new and more popular
change was introduced into the government. The sway of the archon was
limited to ten years. This change slowly prepared the way to changes
still more important. Hitherto the office had been confined to the
two Neleid houses of Codrus and Alcmaeon;--in the archonship of
Hippomenes it was thrown open to other distinguished families; and at
length, on the death of Eryxias, the last of the race of Codrus, the
failure of that ancient house in its direct line (indirectly it still
continued, and the blood of Codrus flowed through the veins of Solon)
probably gave excuse and occasion for abolishing the investment of the
supreme power in one magistrate; nine were appointed, each with the
title of archon (though the name was more emphatically given to the
chief of the number), and each with separate functions. This
institution continued to the last days of Athenian freedom. This
change took place in the 24th Olympiad.
V. In the 39th Olympiad, Draco, being chief archon, was deputed to
institute new laws in B. C. 621. He was a man concerning whom history
is singularly brief; we know only that he was of a virtuous and
austere renown--that he wrote a great number of verses, as little
durable as his laws [98]. As for the latter--when we learn that they
were stern and bloody beyond precedent--we have little difficulty in
believing that they were inefficient.
VI. I have hastened over this ambiguous and uninteresting period with
a rapidity I trust all but antiquaries will forgive. Hitherto we have
been in the land of shadow--we approach the light. The empty names of
apocryphal beings which we have enumerated are for the most part as
spectres, so dimly seen as to be probably delusions--invoked to please
a fanciful curiosity, but without an object to satisfy the reason or
excuse the apparition. If I am blamed for not imitating those who
have sought, by weaving together disconnected hints and subtle
conjectures, to make a history from legends, to overturn what has been
popularly believed, by systems equally contradictory, though more
learnedly fabricated;--if I am told that I might have made the
chronicle thus briefly given extend to a greater space, and sparkle
with more novel speculation, I answer that I am writing the history of
men and not of names--to the people and not to scholars--and that no
researches however elaborate, no conjectures however ingenious, could
draw any real or solid moral from records which leave us ignorant both
of the characters of men and the causes of events. What matters who
was Ion, or whence the first worship of Apollo? what matter
revolutions or dynasties, ten or twelve centuries before Athens
emerged from a deserved obscurity?--they had no influence upon her
after greatness; enigmas impossible to solve--if solved, but
scholastic frivolities.
Fortunately, as we desire the history of a people, so it is when the
Athenians become a people, that we pass at once from tradition into
history.
I pause to take a brief survey of the condition of the rest of Greece
prior to the age of Solon.