[262] What is the language of Mr. Mitford at this treason? “We have

seen,” says that historian, “the democracy of Athens itself setting

the example (among the states of old Greece) of soliciting Persian

protection. Will, then, the liberal spirit of patriotism and equal

government justify the prejudices of Athenian faction (!!!) and doom

Hippias to peculiar execration, because, at length, he also, with many

of his fellow-citizens, despairing of other means for ever returning

to their native country, applied to Artaphernes at Sardis?” It is

difficult to know which to admire most, the stupidity or dishonesty of

this passage. The Athenian democracy applied to Persia for relief

against the unjust invasion of their city and liberties by a foreign

force; Hippias applied to Persia, not only to interfere in the

domestic affairs of a free state, but to reduce that state, his native

city, to the subjection of the satrap. Is there any parallel between

these cases? If not, what dulness in instituting it! But the

dishonesty is equal to the dulness. Herodotus, the only author Mr.

Mitford here follows, expressly declares (I. v., c. 96) that Hippias

sought to induce Artaphernes to subject Athens to the sway of the

satrap and his master, Darius; yet Mr. Mitford says not a syllable of

this, leaving his reader to suppose that Hippias merely sought to be

restored to his country through the intercession of the satrap.

[263] Herod., l. v., c. 96.

[264] Aulus Gellius, who relates this anecdote with more detail than

Herodotus, asserts that the slave himself was ignorant of the

characters written on his scull, that Histiaeus selected a domestic

who had a disease in his eyes--shaved him, punctured the skin, and

sending him to Miletus when the hair was grown, assured the credulous

patient that Aristagoras would complete the cure by shaving him a

second time. According to this story we must rather admire the

simplicity of the slave than the ingenuity of Histiaeus.

[265] Rather a hyperbolical expression--the total number of free

Athenians did not exceed twenty thousand.

[266] The Paeonians.

[267] Hecataeus, the historian of Miletus, opposed the retreat to

Myrcinus, advising his countrymen rather to fortify themselves in the

Isle of Leros, and await the occasion to return to Miletus. This

early writer seems to have been one of those sagacious men who rarely

obtain their proper influence in public affairs, because they address

the reason in opposition to the passions of those they desire to lead.

Unsuccessful in this proposition, Hecataeus had equally failed on two

former occasions;--first, when he attempted to dissuade the Milesians

from the revolt of Aristagoras: secondly, when, finding them bent upon

it, he advised them to appropriate the sacred treasures in the temple

at Branchidae to the maintenance of a naval force. On each occasion

his advice failed precisely because given without prejudice or

passion. The successful adviser must appear to sympathize even with

the errors of his audience.

[268] The humane Darius--whose virtues were his own, his faults of

his station--treated the son of Miltiades with kindness and respect,

married him to a Persian woman, and endowed him with an estate. It

was the habitual policy of that great king to attach to his dominions

the valour and the intellect of the Greeks.

[269] Pausanias says, that Talthybius afterward razed the house of

Miltiades, because that chief instigated the Athenians to the

execution of the Persian envoys.

[270] Demaratus had not only prevented the marriage of Leotychides

with a maiden named Percalos, but, by a mixture of violence and

artifice, married her himself. Thus, even among the sober and

unloving Spartans, woman could still be the author of revolutions.

[271] The national pride of the Spartans would not, however, allow

that their king was the object of the anger of the gods, and

ascribing his excesses to his madness, accounted for the last

by a habit of excessive drinking which he had acquired from the

Scythians

[272] Herod., l. 6, c. 94.

[273] Ibid., l. 6, c. 107.

[274] The sun and moon.

[275] In his attack upon Herodotus, Plutarch asserts that the

Spartans did make numerous military excursions at the beginning of the

month; if this be true, so far from excusing the Spartans, it only

corroborates the natural suspicion that they acted in accordance, not

with superstition, but with their usual calculating and selfish policy

--ever as slow to act in the defence of other states as prompt to

assert the independence of their own.

[276] Paus., l. 8, c. 5.

[277] The exact number of the Athenians is certainly doubtful.

Herodotus does not specify it. Justin estimates the number of

citizens at ten thousand, besides a thousand Plataeans: Nepos at ten

thousand in all; Pausanias at nine thousand. But this total,

furnished by authorities so equivocal, seems incredibly small. The

free population could have been little short of twenty thousand. We

must add the numbers, already great, of the resident aliens and the

slaves, who, as Pausanias tells us, were then for the first time

admitted to military service. On the other hand it is evident, from

the speech of Miltiades to Callimachus, and the supposed treachery of

the Alcmaeonidae, that some, nor an inconsiderable, force, was left in

reserve at Athens for the protection of the city. Let us suppose,

however, that two thirds of the Athenian citizens of military age,

viz., between the ages of twenty and sixty, marched to Marathon (and

this was but the common proportion on common occasions), the total

force, with the slaves, the settlers, and the Plataean auxiliaries,

could not amount to less than fifteen or sixteen thousand. But

whatever the precise number of the heroes of Marathon, we have ample

testimony for the general fact that it was so trifling when compared

with the Persian armament, as almost to justify the exaggeration of

later writers.

[278] Plut. in Vit. Aris. Aristid., pro Quatuor Vias, vol. ii., p.

222, edit. Dindorf.

[279] In his graceful work on Athens and Attica, Mr. Wordsworth has

well observed the peculiar propriety of this reference to the examples

of Harmodius and Aristogiton, as addressed to Callimachus. They were

from the same borough (aphidnae) as the polemarch himself.

[280] The goddess of Athens was supposed to have invented a peculiar

trumpet used by her favoured votaries.

[281] To raise the standard was the sign of battle.--Suidas, Thucyd.

Schol., c. 1. On the Athenian standard was depicted the owl of

Minerva.--Plut. in Vit. Lysand.

[282] Aeschyl. Persae.

[283] Ibid.

[284] Herod., l. 6., c. xii.

[285] Plut. in Vit. Aristid.

[286] Roos hespera. Aristoph., Vesp 1080.

[287] Justin, lib. ii., c. ix.

[288] According, however, to Suidas, he escaped and died at Lemnos.

[289] This incident confirms the expressed fear of Miltiades, that

delay in giving battle might produce division and treachery among some

of the Athenians. Doubtless his speech referred to some particular

faction or individuals.

[290] Plut. in Vit. Arist.

[291] These apparitions, recorded by Pausanias, l. i., c. 33, are

still believed in by the peasantry.

END OF THE ORIGINAL PRINT VOLUME I.

ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

VOLUME II.

CONTENTS.

BOOK III

CHAPTER

I The Character and Popularity of Miltiades.--Naval expedition.

--Siege of Paros.--Conduct of Miltiades.--He is Accused and

Sentenced.--His Death.

II The Athenian Tragedy.--Its Origin.--Thespis.--Phrynichus.--

Aeschylus.--Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus.

III Aristides.--His Character and Position.--The Rise of

Themistocles.--Aristides is Ostracised.--The Ostracism

examined.--The Influence of Themistocles increases.--The

Silver--mines of Laurion.--Their Product applied by

Themistocles to the Increase of the Navy.--New Direction

given to the National Character.

IV The Preparations of Darius.--Revolt of Egypt.--Dispute for

The Succession to the Persian Throne.--Death of Darius.--

Brief Review of the leading Events and Characteristics of

his Reign.

V Xerxes conducts an Expedition into Egypt.--He finally resolves

on the Invasion of Greece.--Vast Preparations for the

Conquest of Europe.--Xerxes arrives at Sardis.--Despatches

Envoys to the Greek States, demanding Tribute.--The Bridge

of the Hellespont.--Review of the Persian Armament at

Abydos.--Xerxes encamps at Therme.

VI The Conduct of the Greeks.--The Oracle relating to Salamis.--

Art of Themistocles.--The Isthmian Congress.--Embassies to

Argos, Crete, Corcyra, and Syracuse.--Their ill Success.--

The Thessalians send Envoys to the Isthmus.--The Greeks

advance to Tempe, but retreat.--The Fleet despatched to

Artemisium, and the Pass of Thermopylae occupied.--Numbers

of the Grecian Fleet.--Battle of Thermopylae.

VII The Advice of Demaratus to Xerxes.--Themistocles.--Actions off

Artemisium.--The Greeks retreat.--The Persians invade

Delphi, and are repulsed with great Loss.--The Athenians,

unaided by their Allies, abandon Athens, and embark for

Salamis.--The irresolute and selfish Policy of the

Peloponnesians.--Dexterity and Firmness of Themistocles.--

Battle of Salamis.--Andros and Carystus besieged by the

Greeks.--Anecdotes of Themistocles.--Honours awarded to him

in Sparta.--Xerxes returns to Asia.--Olynthus and Potidaea

besieged by Artabazus.--The Athenians return Home.--The

Ostracism of Aristides is repealed.

VIII Embassy of Alexander of Macedon to Athens.--The Result of his

Proposals.--Athenians retreat to Salamis.--Mardonius

occupies Athens.--The Athenians send Envoys to Sparta.--

Pausanias succeeds Cleombrotus as Regent of Sparta.--Battle

of Plataea.--Thebes besieged by the Athenians.--Battle of

Mycale.--Siege of Sestos.--Conclusion of the Persian War.

BOOK IV

CHAPTER

I 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.

II Popularity and Policy of Cimon.--Naxos revolts from the

Ionian League.--Is besieged by Cimon.--Conspiracy and

Fate of Pausanias.--Flight and Adventures of Themistocles.

--His Death.

III Reduction of Naxos.--Actions off Cyprus.--Manners of

Cimon.--Improvements in Athens.--Colony at the Nine Ways.

--Siege of Thasos.--Earthquake in Sparta.--Revolt of Helots,

Occupation of Ithome, and Third Messenian War.--Rise and

Character of Pericles.--Prosecution and Acquittal of Cimon.

--The Athenians assist the Spartans at Ithome.--Thasos

Surrenders.--Breach between the Athenians and Spartans.--

Constitutional Innovations at Athens.--Ostracism of Cimon.

IV War between Megara and Corinth.--Megara and Pegae garrisoned

by Athenians.--Review of Affairs at the Persian Court.--

Accession of Artaxerxes.--Revolt of Egypt under Inarus.--

Athenian Expedition to assist Inarus.--Aegina besieged.--The

Corinthians defeated.--Spartan Conspiracy with the Athenian

Oligarchy.--Battle of Tanagra.--Campaign and Successes of

Myronides.--Plot of the Oligarchy against the Republic.--

Recall of Cimon.--Long Walls completed.--Aegina reduced.--

Expedition under Tolmides.--Ithome surrenders.--The

Insurgents are settled at Naupactus.--Disastrous Termination

of the Egyptian Expedition.--The Athenians march into

Thessaly to restore Orestes the Tagus.--Campaign under

Pericles.--Truce of five Years with the Peloponnesians.--

Cimon sets sail for Cyprus.--Pretended Treaty of Peace with

Persia.--Death of Cimon.

V Change of Manners in Athens.--Begun under the Pisistratidae.--

Effects of the Persian War, and the intimate Connexion with

Ionia.--The Hetaerae.--The Political Eminence lately

acquired by Athens.--The Transfer of the Treasury from Delos

to Athens.--Latent Dangers and Evils.--First, the Artificial

Greatness of Athens not supported by Natural Strength.--

Secondly, her pernicious Reliance on Tribute.--Thirdly,

Deterioration of National Spirit commenced by Cimon in the

Use of Bribes and Public Tables.--Fourthly, Defects in

Popular Courts of Law.--Progress of General Education.--

History.--Its Ionian Origin.--Early Historians.--Acusilaus.

--Cadmus.--Eugeon.--Hellanicus.--Pherecides.--Xanthus.--View

of the Life and Writings of Herodotus.--Progress of

Philosophy since Thales.--Philosophers of the Ionian and

Eleatic Schools.--Pythagoras.--His Philosophical Tenets and

Political Influence.--Effect of these Philosophers on

Athens.--School of Political Philosophy continued in Athens

from the Time of Solon.--Anaxagoras.--Archelaus.--Philosophy

not a thing apart from the ordinary Life of the Athenians.

BOOK V

CHAPTER

I Thucydides chosen by the Aristocratic Party to oppose

Pericles.--His Policy.--Munificence of Pericles.--Sacred

War.--Battle of Coronea.--Revolt of Euboea and Megara--

Invasion and Retreat of the Peloponnesians.--Reduction of

Euboea.--Punishment of Histiaea.--A Thirty Years’ Truce

concluded with the Peloponnesians.--Ostracism of Thucydides.

II Causes of the Power of Pericles.--Judicial Courts of the

dependant Allies transferred to Athens.--Sketch of the

Athenian Revenues.--Public Buildings the Work of the People

rather than of Pericles.--Vices and Greatness of Athens had

the same Sources.--Principle of Payment characterizes the

Policy of the Period.--It is the Policy of Civilization.--

Colonization, Cleruchia.

III Revision of the Census.--Samian War.--Sketch of the Rise and

Progress of the Athenian Comedy to the Time of Aristophanes.

IV The Tragedies of Sophocles.

ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL.

BOOK III.

FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE BATTLES OF PLATAEA AND MYCALE,

B. C. 490--B. C. 479.

CHAPTER I.

The Character and Popularity of Miltiades.--Naval Expedition.--Siege

of Paros.--Conduct of Miltiades.--He is Accused and Sentenced.--His

Death.

I. History is rarely more than the biography of great men. Through a

succession of individuals we trace the character and destiny of

nations. THE PEOPLE glide away from us, a sublime but intangible

abstraction, and the voice of the mighty Agora reaches us only through

the medium of its representatives to posterity. The more democratic

the state, the more prevalent this delegation of its history to the

few; since it is the prerogative of democracies to give the widest

competition and the keenest excitement to individual genius: and the

true spirit of democracy is dormant or defunct, when we find no one

elevated to an intellectual throne above the rest. In regarding the

characters of men thus concentrating upon themselves our survey of a

nation, it is our duty sedulously to discriminate between their

qualities and their deeds: for it seldom happens that their renown in

life was unattended with reverses equally signal--that the popularity

of to-day was not followed by the persecution of to-morrow: and in

these vicissitudes, our justice is no less appealed to than our pity,

and we are called upon to decide, as judges, a grave and solemn cause

between the silence of a departed people, and the eloquence of

imperishable names.

We have already observed in the character of Miltiades that astute and

calculating temperament common to most men whose lot it has been to

struggle for precarious power in the midst of formidable foes. We

have seen that his profound and scheming intellect was not accompanied

by any very rigid or high-wrought principle; and placed, as the chief

of the Chersonese had been from his youth upward, in situations of

great peril and embarrassment, aiming always at supreme power, and, in

his harassed and stormy domain, removed far from the public opinion of

the free states of Greece, it was natural that his political code

should have become tempered by a sinister ambition, and that the

citizen of Athens should be actuated by motives scarcely more

disinterested than those which animated the tyrant of the Chersonese.

The ruler of one district may be the hero, but can scarcely be the

patriot, of another. The long influence of years and custom--the

unconscious deference to the opinion of those whom our youth has been

taught to venerate, can alone suffice to tame down an enterprising and

grasping mind to objects of public advantage, in preference to designs

for individual aggrandizement: influence of such a nature had never

operated upon the views and faculties of the hero of Marathon.

Habituated to the enjoyment of absolute command, he seemed incapable

of the duties of civil subordination; and the custom of a life urged

him onto the desire of power [1]. These features of his character

fairly considered, we shall see little to astonish us in the later

reverses of Miltiades, and find additional causes for the popular

suspicions he incurred.

II. But after the victory of Marathon, the power of Miltiades was at

its height. He had always possessed the affection of the Athenians,

which his manners as well as his talents contributed to obtain for

him. Affable and courteous--none were so mean as to be excluded from

his presence; and the triumph he had just achieved so largely swelled

his popularity, that the most unhesitating confidence was placed in

all his suggestions.

In addition to the victory of Marathon, Miltiades, during his tyranny

in the Chersonese, had gratified the resentment and increased the

dominion of the Athenians. A rude tribe, according to all authority,

of the vast and varied Pelasgic family, but essentially foreign to,

and never amalgamated with, the indigenous Pelasgians of the Athenian

soil, had in very remote times obtained a settlement in Attica. They

had assisted the Athenians in the wall of their citadel, which

confirmed, by its characteristic masonry, the general tradition of

their Pelasgic race. Settled afterward near Hymettus, they refused to

blend with the general population--quarrels between neighbours so near

naturally ensued--the settlers were expelled, and fixed themselves in

the Islands of Lemnos and Imbros--a piratical and savage horde. They

kept alive their ancient grudge with the Athenians, and, in one of

their excursions, landed in Attica, and carried off some of the women

while celebrating a festival of Diana. These captives they subjected

to their embraces, and ultimately massacred, together with the

offspring of the intercourse. “The Lemnian Horrors” became a

proverbial phrase--the wrath of the gods manifested itself in the

curse of general sterility, and the criminal Pelasgi were commanded by

the oracle to repair the heinous injury they had inflicted on the

Athenians. The latter were satisfied with no atonement less than that

of the surrender of the islands occupied by the offenders. Tradition

thus reported the answer of the Pelasgi to so stern a demand--

“Whenever one of your vessels, in a single day and with a northern

wind, makes its passage to us, we will comply.”

Time passed on, the injury was unatoned, the remembrance remained--

when Miltiades (then in the Chersonese) passed from Elnos in a single

day and with a north wind to the Pelasgian Islands, avenged the cause

of his countrymen, and annexed Lemnos and Imbros to the Athenian sway.

The remembrance of this exploit had from the first endeared Miltiades

to the Athenians, and, since the field of Marathon, he united in

himself the two strongest claims to popular confidence--he was the

deliverer from recent perils, and the avenger of hereditary wrongs.

The chief of the Chersonese was not slow to avail himself of the

advantage of his position. He promised the Athenians a yet more

lucrative, if less glorious enterprise than that against the Persians,

and demanded a fleet of seventy ships, with a supply of men and money,

for an expedition from which he assured them he was certain to return

laden with spoil and treasure. He did not specify the places against

which the expedition was to be directed; but so great was the belief

in his honesty and fortune, that the Athenians were contented to grant

his demand. The requisite preparations made, Miltiades set sail.

Assuming the general right to punish those islands which had sided

with the Persian, he proceeded to Paros, which had contributed a

trireme to the armament of Datis. But beneath the pretext of national

revenge, Miltiades is said to have sought the occasion to prosecute a

selfish resentment. During his tyranny in the Chersonese, a Parian,

named Lysagoras, had sought to injure him with the Persian government,

and the chief now wreaked upon the island the retaliation due to an

individual.

Such is the account of Herodotus--an account not indeed inconsistent

with the vindictive passions still common to the inhabitants of the

western clime, but certainly scarce in keeping with the calculating

and politic character of Miltiades: for men go backward in the career

of ambition when revenging a past offence upon a foe that is no longer

formidable.

Miltiades landed on the island, laid vigorous siege to the principal

city, and demanded from the inhabitants the penalty of a hundred

talents. The besieged refused the terms, and worked day and night at

the task of strengthening the city for defence. Nevertheless,

Miltiades succeeded in cutting off all supplies, and the city was on

the point of yielding; when suddenly the chief set fire to the

fortifications he had erected, drew off his fleet, and returned to

Athens, not only without the treasure he had promised, but with an

ignominious diminution of the glory he had already acquired. The most

probable reason for a conduct [2] so extraordinary was, that by some

accident a grove on the continent was set on fire--the flame, visible

equally to the besiegers and the besieged, was interpreted alike by

both: each party imagined it a signal from the Persian fleet--the one

was dissuaded from yielding, and the other intimidated from

continuing the siege. An additional reason for the retreat was a

severe wound in the leg which Miltiades had received, either in the

course of the attack, or by an accident he met with when attempting

with sacrilegious superstition to consult the infernal deities on

ground dedicated to Ceres.

III. We may readily conceive the amazement and indignation with

which, after so many promises on the one side, and such unbounded

confidence on the other, the Athenians witnessed the return of this

fruitless expedition. No doubt the wily and equivocal parts of the

character of Miltiades, long cast in shade by his brilliant qualities,

came now more obviously in view. He was impeached capitally by

Xanthippus, an Athenian noble, the head of that great aristocratic

faction of the Alcmaeonids, which, inimical alike to the tyrant and

the demagogue, brooked neither a master of the state nor a hero with

the people. Miltiades was charged with having accepted a bribe from

the Persians [3], which had induced him to quit the siege of Paros at

the moment when success was assured.

The unfortunate chief was prevented by his wound from pleading his own

cause--he was borne into the court stretched upon his couch, while his

brother, Tisagoras, conducted his defence. Through the medium of his

advocate, Miltiades seems neither vigorously to have refuted the

accusation of treason to the state, nor satisfactorily to have

explained his motives for raising the siege. His glory was his

defence; and the chief answer to Xanthippus was “Marathon and Lemnos.”

The crime alleged against him was of a capital nature; but, despite

the rank of the accuser, and the excitement of his audience, the

people refused to pronounce sentence of death upon so illustrious a

man. They found him guilty, it is true--but they commuted the capital

infliction to a fine of fifty talents. Before the fine was paid,

Miltiades expired of the mortification of his wound. The fine was

afterward paid by his son, Cimon. Thus ended a life full of adventure

and vicissitude.

The trial of Miltiades has often been quoted in proof of the

ingratitude and fickleness of the Athenian people. No charge was ever

more inconsiderately made. He was accused of a capital crime, not by

the people, but by a powerful noble. The noble demanded his death--

appears to have proved the charge--to have had the law which imposed

death wholly on his side--and “the favour of the people it was,” says

Herodotus, expressly, “which saved his life.” [4] When we consider

all the circumstances of the case--the wound to the popular vanity--

the disappointment of excited expectation--the unaccountable conduct

of Miltiades himself--and then see his punishment, after a conviction

which entailed death, only in the ordinary assessment of a pecuniary

fine [5], we cannot but allow that the Athenian people (even while

vindicating the majesty of law, which in all civilized communities

must judge offences without respect to persons) were not in this

instance forgetful of the services nor harsh to the offences of their

great men.

CHAPTER II.

The Athenian Tragedy.--Its Origin.--Thespis.--Phrynichus.--Aeschylus.

--Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus.

I. From the melancholy fate of Miltiades, we are now invited to a

subject no less connected with this important period in the history of

Athens. The interval of repose which followed the battle of Marathon

allows us to pause, and notice the intellectual state to which the

Athenians had progressed since the tyranny of Pisistratus and his

sons.

We have remarked the more familiar acquaintance with the poems of

Homer which resulted from the labours and example of Pisistratus.

This event (for event it was), combined with other causes,--the

foundation of a public library, the erection of public buildings, and

the institution of public gardens--to create with apparent suddenness,

among a susceptible and lively population, a general cultivation of

taste. The citizens were brought together in their hours of

relaxation [6], by the urbane and social manner of life, under

porticoes and in gardens, which it was the policy of a graceful and

benignant tyrant to inculcate; and the native genius, hitherto

dormant, of the quick Ionian race, once awakened to literary and

intellectual objects, created an audience even before it found

expression in a poet. The elegant effeminacy of Hipparchus

contributed to foster the taste of the people--for the example of the

great is nowhere more potent over the multitude than in the

cultivation of the arts. Patronage may not produce poets, but it

multiplies critics. Anacreon and Simonides, introduced among the

Athenians by Hipparchus, and enjoying his friendship, no doubt added

largely to the influence which poetry began to assume. The peculiar

sweetness of those poets imbued with harmonious contagion the genius

of the first of the Athenian dramatists, whose works, alas! are lost

to us, though evidence of their character is preserved. About the

same time the Athenians must necessarily have been made more

intimately acquainted with the various wealth of the lyric poets of

Ionia and the isles. Thus it happened that their models in poetry

were of two kinds, the epic and the lyric; and, in the natural

connexion of art, it was but the next step to accomplish a species of

poetry which should attempt to unite the two. Happily, at this time,

Athens possessed a man of true genius, whose attention early

circumstances had directed to a rude and primitive order of histrionic

recitation:--Phrynichus, the poet, was a disciple of Thespis, the

mime: to him belongs this honour, that out of the elements of the

broadest farce he conceived the first grand combinations of the tragic

drama.

II. From time immemorial--as far back, perhaps, as the grove

possessed an altar, and the waters supplied a reed for the pastoral

pipe--Poetry and Music had been dedicated to the worship of the gods

of Greece. At the appointed season of festival to each several deity,

his praises were sung, his traditionary achievements were recited.

One of the divinities last introduced into Greece--the mystic and

enigmatical Dionysos, or Bacchus, received the popular and

enthusiastic adoration naturally due to the God of the Vineyard, and

the “Unbinder of galling cares.” His festival, celebrated at the most

joyous of agricultural seasons [7], was associated also with the most

exhilarating associations. Dithyrambs, or wild and exulting songs, at

first extemporaneous, celebrated the triumphs of the god. By degrees,

the rude hymn swelled into prepared and artful measures, performed by

a chorus that danced circling round the altar; and the dithyramb

assumed a lofty and solemn strain, adapted to the sanctity of

sacrifice and the emblematic majesty of the god. At the same time,

another band (connected with the Phallic procession, which, however

outwardly obscene, betokened only, at its origin, the symbol of

fertility, and betrays the philosophy of some alien and eastern creed

[8]) implored in more lively and homely strains the blessing of the

prodigal and jovial deity. These ceremonial songs received a wanton

and wild addition, as, in order, perhaps, more closely to represent

and personify the motley march of the Liber Pater, the chorus-singers

borrowed from the vine-browsing goat which they sacrificed the hides

and horns, which furnished forth the merry mimicry of the satyr and

the faun. Under license of this disguise, the songs became more

obscene and grotesque, and the mummers vied with each other in

obtaining the applause of the rural audience by wild buffoonery and

unrestricted jest. Whether as the prize of the winner or as the

object of sacrifice, the goat (tragos in the Greek) was a sufficiently

important personage to bestow upon the exhibition the homely name of

TRAGEDY, or GOATSONG, destined afterward to be exalted by association

with the proudest efforts of human genius. And while the DITHYRAMB,

yet amid the Dorian tribes, retained the fire and dignity of its

hereditary character--while in Sicyon it rose in stately and mournful

measures to the memory of Adrastus, the Argive hero--while in Corinth,

under the polished rule of Periander, Arion imparted to the antique

hymn a new character and a more scientific music [9],--gradually, in

Attica, it gave way before the familiar and fantastic humours of the

satyrs, sometimes abridged to afford greater scope to their

exhibitions--sometimes contracting the contagion of their burlesque.

Still, however, the reader will observe, that the tragedy, or

goatsong, consisted of two parts--first, the exhibition of the

mummers, and, secondly, the dithyrambic chorus, moving in a circle

round the altar of Bacchus. It appears on the whole most probable,

though it is a question of fierce dispute and great uncertainty, that

not only this festive ceremonial, but also its ancient name of

tragedy, or goatsong, had long been familiar in Attica [10], when,

about B. C. 535, during the third tyranny of Pisistratus, a skilful

and ingenious native of Icaria, an Attic village in which the

Eleutheria, or Bacchic rites, were celebrated with peculiar care,

surpassed all competitors in the exhibition of these rustic

entertainments. He relieved the monotonous pleasantries of the

satyric chorus by introducing, usually in his own person, a histrionic

tale-teller, who, from an elevated platform, and with the lively

gesticulations common still to the popular narrators of romance on the

Mole of Naples, or in the bazars of the East, entertain the audience

with some mythological legend. It was so clear that during this

recital the chorus remained unnecessarily idle and superfluous, that

the next improvement was as natural in itself, as it was important in

its consequences. This was to make the chorus assist the narrator by

occasional question or remark.

The choruses themselves were improved in their professional art by

Thespis. He invented dances, which for centuries, retained their

popularity on the stage, and is said to have given histrionic disguise

to his reciter--at first, by the application of pigments to the face;

and afterward, by the construction of a rude linen mask.

III. These improvements, chiefly mechanical, form the boundary to the

achievements of Thespis. He did much to create a stage--little to

create tragedy, in the proper acceptation of the word. His

performances were still of a ludicrous and homely character, and much

more akin to the comic than the tragic. Of that which makes the

essence of the solemn drama of Athens--its stately plot, its gigantic

images, its prodigal and sumptuous poetry, Thespis was not in any way

the inventor. But PHRYNICHUS, the disciple of Thespis, was a poet; he

saw, though perhaps dimly and imperfectly, the new career opened to

the art, and he may be said to have breathed the immortal spirit into

the mere mechanical forms, when he introduced poetry into the bursts

of the chorus and the monologue of the actor. Whatever else

Phrynichus effected is uncertain. The developed plot--the

introduction of regular dialogue through the medium of a second actor

--the pomp and circumstance--the symmetry and climax of the drama--do

not appear to have appertained to his earlier efforts; and the great

artistical improvements which raised the simple incident to an

elaborate structure of depicted narrative and awful catastrophe, are

ascribed, not to Phrynichus, but Aeschylus. If the later works of

Phrynichus betrayed these excellences, it is because Aeschylus had

then become his rival, and he caught the heavenly light from the new

star which was destined to eclipse him. But every thing essential was

done for the Athenian tragedy when Phrynichus took it from the satyr

and placed it under the protection of the muse--when, forsaking the

humours of the rustic farce, he selected a solemn subject from the

serious legends of the most vivid of all mythologies--when he breathed

into the familiar measures of the chorus the grandeur and sweetness of

the lyric ode--when, in a word, taking nothing from Thespis but the

stage and the performers, he borrowed his tale from Homer and his

melody from Anacreon. We must not, then, suppose, misled by the

vulgar accounts of the Athenian drama, that the contest for the goat,

and the buffooneries of Thespis, were its real origin; born of the

epic and the lyric song, Homer gave it character, and the lyrists

language. Thespis and his predecessors only suggested the form to

which the new-born poetry should be applied.

IV. Thus, under Phrynichus, the Thespian drama rose into poetry,

worthy to exercise its influence upon poetical emulation, when a young

man of noble family and sublime genius, rendered perhaps more

thoughtful and profound by the cultivation of a mystical philosophy

[11], which had lately emerged from the primitive schools of Ionian

wisdom, brought to the rising art the united dignity of rank,

philosophy, and genius. Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, born at Eleusis

B. C. 525, early saturated a spirit naturally fiery and exalted with

the vivid poetry of Homer. While yet a boy, and probably about the

time when Phrynichus first elevated the Thespian drama, he is said to

have been inspired by a dream with the ambition to excel in the

dramatic art. But in Homer he found no visionary revelation to assure

him of those ends, august and undeveloped, which the actor and the

chorus might be made the instruments to effect. For when the idea of

scenic representation was once familiar, the epics of Homer suggested

the true nature of the drama. The great characteristic of that poet

is individuality. Gods or men alike have their separate,

unmistakeable attributes and distinctions--they converse in dialogue--

they act towards an appointed end. Bring Homer on the stage, and

introduce two actors instead of a narrator, and a drama is at once

effected. If Phrynichus from the first borrowed his story from Homer,

Aeschylus, with more creative genius and more meditative intellect,

saw that there was even a richer mine in the vitality of the Homeric

spirit--the unity of the Homeric designs. Nor was Homer, perhaps, his

sole though his guiding inspiration. The noble birth of Aeschylus no

doubt gave him those advantages of general acquaintance with the

poetry of the rest of Greece, which an education formed under the

lettered dynasty of the Pisistratidae would naturally confer on the

well-born. We have seen that the dithyramb, debased in Attica to the

Thespian chorus, was in the Dorian states already devoted to sublime

themes, and enriched by elaborate art; and Simonides, whose elegies,

peculiar for their sweetness, might have inspired the “ambrosial”

Phrynichus, perhaps gave to the stern soul of Aeschylus, as to his own

pupil Pindar, the model of a loftier music, in his dithyrambic odes.

V. At the age of twenty-five, the son of Euphorion produced his first

tragedy. This appears to have been exhibited in the year after the

appearance of Aristagoras at Athens,--in that very year so eventful

and important, when the Athenians lighted the flames of the Persian

war amid the blazing capital of Sardis. He had two competitors in

Pratinas and Choerilus. The last, indeed, preceded Phrynichus, but

merely in the burlesques of the rude Thespian stage; the example of

Phrynichus had now directed his attention to the new species of drama,

but without any remarkable talent for its cultivation. Pratinas, the

contemporary of Aeschylus, did not long attempt to vie with his mighty

rival in his own line [12]. Recurring to the old satyr-chorus, he

reduced its unmeasured buffooneries into a regular and systematic

form; he preserved the mythological tale, and converted it into an

artistical burlesque. This invention, delighting the multitude, as it

adapted an ancient entertainment to the new and more critical taste,

became so popular that it was usually associated with the graver

tragedy; when the last becoming a solemn and gorgeous spectacle, the

poet exhibited a trilogy (or three tragedies) to his mighty audience,

while the satyric invention of Pratinas closed the whole, and answered

the purpose of our modern farce [13]. Of this class of the Grecian

drama but one specimen remains, in the Cyclops of Euripides. It is

probable that the birth, no less than the genius of Aeschylus, enabled

him with greater facility to make the imposing and costly additions to

the exhibition, which the nature of the poetry demanded--since, while

these improvements were rapidly proceeding, the poetical fame of

Aeschylus was still uncrowned. Nor was it till the fifteenth year

after his first exhibition that the sublimest of the Greek poets

obtained the ivy chaplet, which had succeeded to the goat and the ox,

as the prize of the tragic contests. In the course of a few years, a

regular stage, appropriate scenery and costume, mechanical inventions

and complicated stage machinery, gave fitting illusion to the

representation of gods and men. To the monologue of Phrynichus,

Aeschylus added a second actor [14]; he curtailed the choruses,

connected them with the main story, and, more important than all else,

reduced to simple but systematic rules the progress and development of

a poem, which no longer had for its utmost object to please the ear or

divert the fancy, but swept on its mighty and irresistible march, to

besiege passion after passion, and spread its empire over the whole

soul.

An itinerant platform was succeeded by a regular theatre of wood--the

theatre of wood by a splendid edifice, which is said to have held no

less an audience than thirty thousand persons [15]. Theatrical

contests became a matter of national and universal interest. These

contests occurred thrice a year, at three several festivals of Bacchus

[16]. But it was at the great Dionysia, held at the end of March and

commencement of April, that the principal tragic contests took place.

At that period, as the Athenian drama increased in celebrity, and

Athens herself in renown, the city was filled with visiters, not only

from all parts of Greece, but almost from every land in which the

Greek civilization was known. The state took the theatre under its

protection, as a solemn and sacred institution. So anxious were the

people to consecrate wholly to the Athenian name the glory of the

spectacle, that at the great Dionysia no foreigner, nor even any

metoecus (or alien settler), was permitted to dance in the choruses.

The chief archon presided, over the performances; to him was awarded

the selection of the candidates for the prize. Those chosen were

allowed three actors [17] by lot and a chorus, the expense of which

was undertaken by the state, and imposed upon one of the principal

persons of each tribe, called choragus. Thus, on one occasion,

Themistocles was the choragus to a tragedy by Phrynichus. The immense

theatre, crowded by thousands, tier above tier, bench upon bench, was

open to the heavens, and commanded, from the sloping hill on which it

was situated, both land and sea. The actor apostrophized no mimic

pasteboard, but the wide expanse of Nature herself--the living sun,

the mountain air, the wide and visible Aegaean. All was proportioned

to the gigantic scale of the theatre, and the mighty range of the

audience. The form was artificially enlarged and heightened; masks of

exquisite art and beauty brought before the audience the ideal images

of their sculptured gods and heroes, while (most probably) mechanical

inventions carried the tones of the voice throughout the various tiers

of the theatre. The exhibitions took place in the open day, and the

limited length of the plays permitted the performance of probably no

less than ten or twelve before the setting of the sun. The sanctity

of their origin, and the mythological nature of their stories, added

something of religious solemnity to these spectacles, which were

opened by ceremonial sacrifice. Dramatic exhibitions, at least for a

considerable period, were not, as with us, made hackneyed by constant

repetition. They were as rare in their recurrence as they were

imposing in their effect; nor was a drama, whether tragic or comic,

that had gained the prize, permitted a second time to be exhibited. A

special exemption was made in favour of Aeschylus, afterward extended

to Sophocles and Euripides. The general rule was necessarily

stimulant of renewed and unceasing exertion, and was, perhaps, the

principal cause of the almost miraculous fertility of the Athenian

dramatists.

VI. On the lower benches of the semicircle sat the archons and

magistrates, the senators and priests; while apart, but in seats

equally honoured, the gaze of the audience was attracted, from time to

time, to the illustrious strangers whom the fame of their poets and

their city had brought to the Dionysia of the Athenians. The youths

and women [18] had their separate divisions; the rest of the audience

were ranged according to their tribes, while the upper galleries were

filled by the miscellaneous and impatient populace.

In the orchestra (a space left by the semicircular benches, with wings

stretching to the right and left before the scene), a small square

platform served as the altar, to which moved the choral dances, still

retaining the attributes of their ancient sanctity. The coryphaeus,

or leader of the chorus, took part in the dialogue as the

representative of the rest, and, occasionally, even several of the

number were excited into exclamations by the passion of the piece.

But the principal duty of the chorus was to diversify the dialogue by

hymns and dirges, to the music of flutes, while, in dances far more

artful than those now existent, they represented by their movements

the emotions that they sung [19],--thus bringing, as it were, into

harmony of action the poetry of language. Architectural

embellishments of stone, representing a palace, with three entrances,

the centre one appropriated to royalty, the others to subordinate

rank, usually served for the scene. But at times, when the plot

demanded a different locality, scenes painted with the utmost art and

cost were easily substituted; nor were wanting the modern contrivances

of artificial lightning and thunder--the clouds for the gods--a

variety of inventions for the sudden apparition of demon agents,

whether from above or below--and all the adventitious and effective

aid which mechanism lends to genius.

VII. Thus summoning before us the external character of the Athenian

drama, the vast audience, the unroofed and enormous theatre, the

actors themselves enlarged by art above the ordinary proportions of

men, the solemn and sacred subjects from which its form and spirit

were derived, we turn to Aeschylus, and behold at once the fitting

creator of its grand and ideal personifications. I have said that

Homer was his original; but a more intellectual age than that of the

Grecian epic had arrived, and with Aeschylus, philosophy passed into

poetry. The dark doctrine of fatality imparted its stern and awful

interest to the narration of events--men were delineated, not as mere

self-acting and self-willed mortals, but as the agents of a destiny

inevitable and unseen--the gods themselves are no longer the gods of

Homer, entering into the sphere of human action for petty motives and

for individual purposes--drawing their grandeur, not from the part

they perform, but from the descriptions of the poet;--they appear now

as the oracles or the agents of fate--they are visiters from another

world, terrible and ominous from the warnings which they convey.

Homer is the creator of the material poetry, Aeschylus of the

intellectual. The corporeal and animal sufferings of the Titan in the

epic hell become exalted by tragedy into the portrait of moral

fortitude defying physical anguish. The Prometheus of Aeschylus is

the spirit of a god disdainfully subjected to the misfortunes of a

man. In reading this wonderful performance, which in pure and

sustained sublimity is perhaps unrivalled in the literature of the

world, we lose sight entirely of the cheerful Hellenic worship; and

yet it is in vain that the learned attempt to trace its vague and

mysterious metaphysics to any old symbolical religion of the East.

More probably, whatever theological system it shadows forth, was

rather the gigantic conception of the poet himself, than the imperfect

revival of any forgotten creed, or the poetical disguise of any

existent philosophy. However this be, it would certainly seem, that,

in this majestic picture of the dauntless enemy of Jupiter, punished

only for his benefits to man, and attracting all our sympathies by his

courage and his benevolence, is conveyed something of disbelief or

defiance of the creed of the populace--a suspicion from which

Aeschylus was not free in the judgment of his contemporaries, and

which is by no means inconsonant with the doctrines of Pythagoras.

VIII. The conduct of the fable is as follows: two vast demons,

Strength and Force, accompanied by Vulcan, appear in a remote plain of

earth--an unpeopled desert. There, on a steril and lofty rock, hard

by the sea, Prometheus is chained by Vulcan--“a reward for his

disposition to be tender to mankind.” The date of this doom is cast

far back in the earliest dawn of time, and Jupiter has but just

commenced his reign. While Vulcan binds him, Prometheus utters no

sound--it is Vulcan, the agent of his punishment, that alone

complains. Nor is it till the dread task is done, and the ministers

of Jupiter have retired, that “the god, unawed by the wrath of gods,”

bursts forth with his grand apostrophe--

“Oh Air divine! Oh ye swift-winged Winds--

Ye sources of the Rivers, and ye Waves,

That dimple o’er old Ocean like his smiles--

Mother of all--oh Earth! and thou the orb,

All-seeing, of the Sun, behold and witness

What I, a god, from the stern gods endure.

* * * * * *

When shall my doom be o’er?--Be o’er!--to me

The Future hides no riddle--nor can wo

Come unprepared! It fits me then to brave

That which must be: for what can turn aside

The dark course of the grim Necessity?”

While thus soliloquizing, the air becomes fragrant with odours, and

faintly stirs with the rustling of approaching wings. The Daughters

of Ocean, aroused from their grots below, are come to console the

Titan. They utter many complaints against the dynasty of Jove.

Prometheus comforts himself by the prediction that the Olympian shall

hereafter require his services, and that, until himself released from

his bondage, he will never reveal to his tyrant the danger that

menaces his realm; for the vanquished is here described as of a

mightier race than the victor, and to him are bared the mysteries of

the future, which to Jupiter are denied. The triumph of Jupiter is

the conquest of brute force over knowledge.

Prometheus then narrates how, by means of his counsels, Jupiter had

gained his sceptre, and the ancient Saturn and his partisans been

whelmed beneath the abyss of Tartarus--how he alone had interfered

with Jupiter to prevent the extermination of the human race (whom

alone the celestial king disregarded and condemned)--how he had

imparted to them fire, the seed of all the arts, and exchanged in

their breasts the terrible knowledge of the future for the beguiling

flatteries of hope and hence his punishment.

At this time Ocean himself appears: he endeavours unavailingly to

persuade the Titan to submission to Jupiter. The great spirit of

Prometheus, and his consideration for others, are beautifully

individualized in his answers to his consoler, whom he warns not to

incur the wrath of the tyrant by sympathy with the afflicted. Alone

again with the Oceanides, the latter burst forth in fresh strains of

pity.

“The wide earth echoes wailingly,

Stately and antique were thy fallen race,

The wide earth waileth thee!

Lo! from the holy Asian dwelling-place,

Fall for a godhead’s wrongs, the mortals’ murmuring tears,

They mourn within the Colchian land,

The virgin and the warrior daughters,

And far remote, the Scythian band,

Around the broad Maeotian waters,

And they who hold in Caucasus their tower,

Arabia’s martial flower

Hoarse-clamouring ‘midst sharp rows of barbed spears.

One have I seen with equal tortures riven--

An equal god; in adamantine chains

Ever and evermore

The Titan Atlas, crush’d, sustains

The mighty mass of mighty Heaven,

And the whirling cataracts roar,

With a chime to the Titan’s groans,

And the depth that receives them moans;

And from vaults that the earth are under,

Black Hades is heard in thunder;

While from the founts of white-waved rivers flow

Melodious sorrows, wailing with his wo.”

Prometheus, in his answer, still farther details the benefits he had

conferred on men--he arrogates to himself their elevation to intellect

and reason [20]. He proceeds darkly to dwell on the power of

Necessity, guided by “the triform fates and the unforgetful Furies,”

whom he asserts to be sovereign over Jupiter himself. He declares

that Jupiter cannot escape his doom: “His doom,” ask the daughters of

Ocean, “is it not evermore to reign?”--“That thou mayst not learn,”

replies the prophet; “and in the preservation of this secret depends

my future freedom.”

The rejoinder of the chorus is singularly beautiful, and it is with a

pathos not common to Aeschylus that they contrast their present

mournful strain with that which they poured

“What time the silence, erst was broken,

Around the baths, and o’er the bed

To which, won well by many a soft love-token,

And hymn’d by all the music of delight,

Our Ocean-sister, bright

Hesione, was led!”

At the end of this choral song appears Io, performing her mystic

pilgrimage [21]. The utter wo and despair of Io are finely contrasted

with the stern spirit of Prometheus. Her introduction gives rise to

those ancestral and traditionary allusions to which the Greeks were so

attached. In prophesying her fate, Prometheus enters into much

beautiful descriptive poetry, and commemorates the lineage of the

Argive kings. After Io’s departure, Prometheus renews his defiance to

Jupiter, and his stern prophecies, that the son of Saturn shall be

“hurled from his realm, a forgotten king.” In the midst of these

weird denunciations, Mercury arrives, charged by Jupiter to learn the

nature of that danger which Prometheus predicts to him. The Titan

bitterly and haughtily defies the threats and warnings of the herald,

and exults, that whatever be his tortures, he is at least immortal,--

to be afflicted, but not to die. Mercury at length departs--the

menace of Jupiter is fulfilled--the punishment is consummated--and,

amid storm and earthquake, both rock and prisoner are struck by the

lightnings of the god into the deep abyss.

“The earth is made to reel, and rumbling by,

Bellowing it rolls, the thunder’s gathering wrath!

And the fierce fires glare livid; and along

The rocks the eddies of the sands whirl high,

Borne by the hurricane, and all the blasts

Of all the winds leap forth, each hurtling each

Met in the wildness of a ghastly war,

The dark floods blended with the swooping heaven.

It comes--it comes! on me it speeds--the storm,

The rushing onslaught of the thunder-god;

Oh, majesty of earth, my solemn mother!

And thou that through the universal void,

Circlest sweet light, all blessing; EARTH AND ETHER,

YE I invoke, to know the wrongs I suffer.”

IX. Such is the conclusion of this unequalled drama, epitomized

somewhat at undue length, in order to show the reader how much the

philosophy that had awakened in the age of Solon now actuated the

creations of poetry. Not that Aeschylus, like Euripides, deals in

didactic sentences and oracular aphorisms. He rightly held such

pedantries of the closet foreign to the tragic genius [22]. His

philosophy is in the spirit, and not in the diction of his works--in

vast conceptions, not laconic maxims. He does not preach, but he

inspires. The “Prometheus” is perhaps the greatest moral poem in the

world--sternly and loftily intellectual--and, amid its darker and less

palpable allegories, presenting to us the superiority of an immortal

being to all mortal sufferings. Regarded merely as poetry, the

conception of the Titan of Aeschylus has no parallel except in the

Fiend of Milton. But perhaps the representation of a benevolent

spirit, afflicted, but not accursed--conquered, but not subdued by a

power, than which it is elder, and wiser, and loftier, is yet more

sublime than that of an evil demon writhing under the penance

deservedly incurred from an irresistible God. The one is intensely

moral--at once the more moral and the more tragic, because the

sufferings are not deserved, and therefore the defiance commands our

sympathy as well as our awe; but the other is but the picture of a

righteous doom, borne by a despairing though stubborn will; it affords

no excitement to our courage, and forbids at once our admiration and

our pity.

X. I do not propose to conduct the reader at length through the other

tragedies of Aeschylus; seven are left to us, to afford the most

striking examples which modern or ancient literature can produce of

what perhaps is the true theory of the SUBLIME, viz., the elevating

the imagination by means of the passions, for a moral end.

Nothing can be more grand and impressive than the opening of the

“Agamemnon,” with the solitary watchman on the tower, who, for ten

long years, has watched nightly for the beacon-fires that are to

announce the fall of Ilion, and who now beholds them blaze at last.

The description which Clytemnestra gives of the progress of these

beacon-fires from Troy to Argos is, for its picturesque animation, one

of the most celebrated in Aeschylus. The following lines will convey

to the general reader a very inadequate reflection, though not an

unfaithful paraphrase, of this splendid passage [23]. Clytemnestra

has announced to the chorus the capture of Troy. The chorus, half

incredulous, demand what messenger conveyed the intelligence.

Clytemnestra replies:--

“A gleam--a gleam--from Ida’s height,

By the fire--god sent, it came;

From watch to watch it leap’d that light,

As a rider rode the flame!

It shot through the startled sky;

And the torch of that blazing glory

Old Lemnos caught on high,

On its holy promontory,

And sent it on, the jocund sign,

To Athos, mount of Jove divine.

Wildly the while it rose from the isle,

So that the might of the journeying light

Skimm’d over the back of the gleaming brine!

Farther and faster speeds it on,

Till the watch that keep Macistus steep--

See it burst like a blazing sun!

Doth Macistus sleep

On his tower--clad steep?

No! rapid and red doth the wild-fire sweep

It flashes afar, on the wayward stream

Of the wild Euripus, the rushing beam!

It rouses the light on Messapion’s height,

And they feed its breath with the withered heath.

But it may not stay!

And away--away

It bounds in its freshening might.

Silent and soon,

Like a broadened moon,

It passes in sheen, Asopus green, [24]

And bursts on Cithaeron gray.

The warder wakes to the signal rays,

And it swoops from the hill with a broader blaze,

On--on the fiery glory rode--

Thy lonely lake, Gorgopis, glowed--

To Megara’s Mount it came;

They feed it again,

And it streams amain

A giant beard of flame!

The headland cliffs that darkly down

O’er the Saronic waters frown,

Are pass’d with the swift one’s lurid stride,

And the huge rock glares on the glaring tide,

With mightier march and fiercer power

It gain’d Arachne’s neighbouring tower--

Thence on our Argive roof its rest it won,

Of Ida’s fire the long-descended son

Bright harbinger of glory and of joy!

So first and last with equal honour crown’d,

In solemn feasts the race-torch circles round.

And these my heralds! this my SIGN OF PEACE!

Lo! while we breathe, the victor lords of Greece,

Stalk, in stern tumult, through the halls of Troy!” [25]

In one of the earlier choruses, in which is introduced an episodical

allusion to the abduction of Helen, occurs one of those soft passages

so rare in Aeschylus, nor less exquisite than rare. The chorus

suppose the minstrels of Menelaus thus to lament the loss of Helen:--

“And wo the halls, and wo the chiefs,

And wo the bridal bed!

And we her steps--for once she loved

The lord whose love she fled!

Lo! where, dishonour yet unknown,

He sits--nor deems his Helen flown,

Tearless and voiceless on the spot;

All desert, but he feels it not!

Ah! soon alive, to miss and mourn

The form beyond the ocean borne

Shall start the lonely king!

And thought shall fill the lost one’s room,

And darkly through the palace gloom

Shall stalk a ghostly thing. [26]

Her statues meet, as round they rise,

The leaden stare of lifeless eyes.

Where is their ancient beauty gone?--

Why loathe his looks the breathing stone?

Alas! the foulness of disgrace

Hath swept the Venus from her face!

And visions in the mournful night

Shall dupe the heart to false delight,

A false and melancholy;

For naught with sadder joy is fraught,

Than things at night by dreaming brought,

The wish’d for and the holy.

Swift from the solitary side,

The vision and the blessing glide,

Scarce welcomed ere they sweep,

Pale, bloodless, dreams, aloft

On wings unseen and soft,

Lost wanderers gliding through the paths of sleep.”

But the master-terror of this tragedy is in the introduction of

Cassandra, who accompanies Agamemnon, and who, in the very hour of his

return, amid the pomp and joy that welcome the “king of men,” is

seized with the prophetic inspiration, and shrieks out those ominous

warnings, fated ever to be heard in vain. It is she who recalls to

the chorus, to the shuddering audience, that it is the house of the

long-fated Atridae, to which their descendant has returned--“that

human shamble-house--that bloody floor--that dwelling, abhorred by

Heaven, privy to so many horrors against the most sacred ties;” the

doom yet hangs over the inexpiable threshold; the curse passes from

generation to generation; Agamemnon is the victim of his sires.

Recalling the inhuman banquet served by Atreus to Thyestes of his own

murdered children, she starts from the mangled spectres on the

threshold:

“See ye those infants crouching by the floor,

Like phantom dreams, pale nurslings, that have perish’d

By kindred hands.”

Gradually her ravings become clear and clearer, until at last she

scents the “blood-dripping slaughter within;” a vapour rises to her

nostrils as from a charnel house--her own fate, which she foresees at

hand, begins to overpower her--her mood softens, and she enters the

palace, about to become her tomb, with thoughts in which frantic

terror has yielded to solemn and pathetic resignation:

“Alas for mortals!--what their power and pride?

A little shadow sweeps it from the earth!

And if they suffer--why, the fatal hour

Comes o’er the record like a moistened sponge,

And blots it out; _methinks this latter lot

Affects me deepest--Well! ‘tis pitiful!”_ [27]

Scarcely has the prophetess withdrawn than we hear behind the scene

the groans of the murdered king, the palace behind is opened, and

Clytemnestra is standing, stern and lofty, by the dead body of her

lord. The critics have dwelt too much on the character of

Clytemnestra--it is that of Cassandra which is the masterpiece of the

tragedy.

XI. The story, which is spread throughout three plays (forming a

complete trilogy), continues in the opening of the Choephori, with

Orestes mourning over his father’s tomb. If Clytemnestra has

furnished would-be critics with a comparison with Lady Macbeth, for no

other reason than that one murdered her husband, and the other

persuaded her husband to murder somebody else, so Orestes may with

more justice be called the Hamlet of the Greeks; but though the

character itself of Orestes is not so complex and profound as that of

Hamlet, nor the play so full of philosophical beauties as the modern

tragedy, yet it has passages equally pathetic, and more sternly and

terribly sublime. The vague horror which in the commencement of the

play prepares us for the catastrophe by the dream of Clytemnestra--how

a serpent lay in swaddling-clothes like an infant, and she placed it

in her breast, and it drew blood; the brief and solemn answer of

Orestes--

“Man’s visions never come to him in vain;”

the manner in which the avenging parricide interrupts the dream, so

that (as in Macbeth) the prediction inspires the deed that it

foretells; the dauntless resolution of Clytemnestra, when she hears, in

the dark sayings of her servant, that “the dead are slaying the

living” (i. e., that through the sword of Orestes Agamemnon is avenged

on Aegisthus), calls for a weapon, royal to the last, wishing only to

“Know which shall be the victor or the vanquished--

Since that the crisis of the present horror;”

the sudden change from fierce to tender as Orestes bursts in, and,

thinking only of her guilty lover, she shrieks forth,

“Ah! thou art then no more, beloved Aegisthus;”

the advance of the threatening son, the soft apostrophe of the mother

as she bares her bosom--

“Hold! and revere this breast on which so oft

Thy young cheek nestled--cradle of thy sleep,

And fountain of thy being;”

the recoil of Orestes--the remonstrance of Pylades--the renewed

passion of the avenger--the sudden recollection of her dream, which

the murderess scarcely utters than it seems to confirm Orestes to its

fulfilment, and he pursues and slays her by the side of the adulterer;

all these passages are full of so noble a poetry, that I do not think

the parallel situations in Hamlet equal their sustained and solemn

grandeur. But the sublimest effort of the imagination is in the

conclusion. While Orestes is yet justifying the deed that avenged a

father, strange and confused thoughts gradually creep over him. No

eyes see them but his own--there they are, “the Gorgons, in vestments

of sable, their eyes dropping loathly blood!” Slowly they multiply,

they approach, still invisible but to their prey--“the angry

hell-hounds of his mother.” He flies, the fresh blood yet dripping

from his hands. This catastrophe--the sudden apparition of the Furies

ideally imaged forth to the parricide alone--seems to me greater in

conception than the supernatural agency in Hamlet. The visible ghost

is less awful than the unseen Furies.

The plot is continued through the third piece of the trilogy (the

Eumenides), and out of Aeschylus himself, no existing tragedy presents

so striking an opening--one so terrible and so picturesque. It is the

temple of Apollo at Delphi. The priestess, after a short invocation,

enters the sacred edifice, but suddenly returns. “A man,” she says,

“is at the marble seat, a suppliant to the god--his bloody hands hold

a drawn sword and a long branch of olive. But around the man sleep a

wondrous and ghastly troop, not of women, but of things woman-like,

yet fiendish; harpies they seem, but are not; black-robed and

wingless, and their breath is loud and baleful, and their eyes drop

venom--and their garb is neither meet for the shrines of God nor the

habitations of men. Never have I seen (saith the Pythian) a nation

which nurtured such a race.” Cheered by Apollo, Orestes flies while

the dread sisters yet sleep; and now within the temple we behold the

Furies scattered around, and a pale and lofty shape, the ghost of

Clytemnestra, gliding on the stage, awakens the agents of her

vengeance. They break forth as they rouse themselves, “Seize--seize--

seize.” They lament--they bemoan the departure of their victim, they

expostulate with Apollo, who expels them from his temple. The scene

changes; Orestes is at Athens,--he pleads his cause before the temple

of Minerva. The contest is now shared by gods; Apollo and the Furies

are the pleaders--Pallas is the umpire, the Areopagites are the

judges. Pallas casts in her vote in favour of Orestes--the lots are

equal--he is absolved; the Furies, at first enraged, are soothed by

Minerva, and, invited to dwell in Athens, pour blessings on the land.

A sacred but joyous procession crowns the whole. Thus the

consummation of the trilogy is cheerful, though each of the two former

pieces is tragic; and the poet artfully conduces the poem to the

honour of his native Athens and the venerable Areopagus. Regarding

the three as one harmonious and united performance, altogether not so

long as one play of Shakspeare’s, they are certainly not surpassed in

greatness of thought, in loftiness of conception, and in sustained

vigour of execution, by any poem in the compass of literature; nor,

observing their simple but compact symmetry as a whole, shall we do

right to subscribe to those who deny to Aeschylus the skill of the

artist, while they grant him the faculty of the poet.

The ingenious Schlegel attributes to these tragedies symbolical

interpretations, but to my judgment with signal ill-success. These

four tragedies--the Prometheus, the Agamemnon, the Choephori, and the

Eumenides--are in grandeur immeasurably superior to the remaining

three.

XII. Of these last, the Seven against Thebes is the best. The

subject was one peculiarly interesting to Greece; the War of the Seven

was the earliest record of a league among the Grecian princes, and of

an enterprise carried on with a regular and systematic design. The

catastrophe of two brothers falling by each other’s hand is terrible

and tragic, and among the most national of the Grecian legends. The

fierce and martial spirit of the warrior poet runs throughout the

play; his descriptions are animated as with the zeal and passion of

battle; the chorus of Theban virgins paint in the most glowing colours

the rush of the adverse hosts--the prancing of the chargers--the sound

of their hoofs, “rumbling as a torrent lashing the side of cliffs;” we

hear the creak of the heavy cars--the shrill whiz of the javelins,

“maddening the very air”--the showers of stones crashing over the

battlements--the battering at the mighty gates--the uproar of the

city--the yells of rapine--the shrieks of infants “strangled by the

bubbling blood.” Homer himself never accumulated more striking images

of horror. The description of Tydeus is peculiarly Homeric--

“Three shadowy crests, the honours of his helm,

Wave wild, and shrilly from his buckler broad

The brazen bell rings terror. On the shield

He bears his haughty ensign--typed by stars

Gleaming athwart the sky, and in the midst

Glitters the royal Moon--the Eye of Night.

Fierce in the glory of his arms, his voice

Roars by the river banks; and drunk with war

He pants, as some wild charger, when the trump

Clangs ringing, as he rushes on the foe.”

The proud, dauntless, and warlike spirit of Eteocles which is designed

and drawn with inconceivable power, is beautifully characterized in

his reply to the above description:

“Man hath no armour, war hath no array,

At which this heart can tremble; no device

Nor blazonry of battle can inflict

The wounds they menace; crests and clashing bells

Without the spear are toothless, and the night,

Wrought on yon buckler with the stars of heaven,

Prophet, perchance, his doom; and if dark Death

Close round his eyes, are but the ominous signs

Of the black night that waits him.”

The description of each warrior stationed at each gate is all in the

genius of Homer, closing as it does with that of Polynices, the

brother of the besieged hero, whom, when he hears his name, Eteocles

himself resolves to confront. At first, indeed, the latter breaks out

into exclamations which denote the awe and struggle of the abhorrent

nature; forebodings of his own doom flit before him, he feels the

curses of his sire are ripening to their fruit, and that the last

storm is yet to break upon the house of Oedipus. Suddenly he checks

the impulse, sensible of the presence of the chorus. He passes on to

reason with himself, through a process of thought which Shakspeare

could not have surpassed. He conjures up the image of that brother,

hateful and unjust from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood up to youth--

he assures himself that justice would be forsworn if this foe should

triumph--and rushes on to his dread resolve.

“‘Tis I will face this warrior; who can boast

A right to equal mine? Chief against chief--

Foe against foe!--and brother against brother.

What, ho! my greaves, my spear, my armour proof

Against this storm of stones! My stand is chosen.”

Eteocles and his brother both perish in the unnatural strife, and the

tragedy ends with the decree of the senators to bury Eteocles with due

honours, and the bold resolution of Antigone (the sister of the dead)

to defy the ordinance which forbids a burial to Polynices--

“For mighty is the memory of the womb

From which alike we sprung--a wretched mother!”

The same spirit which glows through the “Seven against Thebes” is also

visible in the “Persians,” which, rather picturesque than dramatic, is

tragedy brought back to the dithyrambic ode. It portrays the defeat

of Xerxes, and contains one of the most valuable of historical

descriptions, in the lines devoted to the battle of Salamis. The

speech of Atossa (the mother of Xerxes), in which she enumerates the

offerings to the shade of Darius, is exquisitely beautiful.

“The charms that sooth the dead:

White milk, and lucid honey, pure-distill’d

By the wild bee--that craftsman of the flowers;

The limpid droppings of the virgin fount,

And this bright liquid from its mountain mother

Born fresh--the joy of the time--hallowed vine;

The pale-green olive’s odorous fruit, whose leaves

Live everlastingly--and these wreathed flowers,

The smiling infants o’ the prodigal earth.”

Nor is there less poetry in the invocation of the chorus to the shade

of Darius, which slowly rises as they conclude. But the purpose for

which the monarch returns to earth is scarcely sufficient to justify

his appearance, and does not seem to be in accordance with the power

over our awe and terror which the poet usually commands. Darius hears

the tale of his son’s defeat--warns the Persians against interfering

with the Athenians--tells the mother to comfort and console her son--

bids the chorus (who disregard his advice) give themselves to mirth,

even though in affliction, “for to the dead riches are no advantage”--

and so returns to his repose, which seems very unnecessarily

disturbed.

“The Suppliants,” which Schlegel plausibly conjectures to have been

the intermediate piece of a trilogy, is chiefly remarkable as a proof

of the versatility of the poet. All horror has vanished from the

scene; the language is soft when compared with the usual diction of

Aeschylus; the action is peaceful, and the plot extremely simple,

being merely the protection which the daughters of Danaus obtain at

the court of Pelasgus from the pursuit of the sons of Aegyptus. The

heroines of the play, the Danaides, make the chorus, and this serves

to render the whole, yet more than the Persians, a lyric rather than a

tragedy. The moral of the play is homely and primitive, and seems

confined to the inculcation of hospitality to strangers, and the

inviolable sanctity of the shrine. I do not know any passages in “The

Suppliants” that equal in poetry the more striking verses of “The

Persians,” or “The Seven against Thebes.”

XIII. Attempts have been made to convey to modern readers a more

familiar notion of Aeschylus by comparisons with modern poets. One

critic likens him to Dante, another to Milton--but he resembles

neither. No modern language can convey a notion of the wonderful

strength of his diction--no modern poet, of the stern sublimity of his

conceptions. The French tragedians may give some weak reflection of

Euripides or even of Sophocles, but none have ventured upon the sacred

territory of the father of the tragic drama. He defies all imitation.

His genius is so near the verge of bombast, that to approach his

sublime is to rush into the ridiculous. [28]

Aeschylus never once, in the plays that have come down to us,

delineates love, except by an expression or two as regards the passion

of Clytemnestra for Aegisthus [29]. It was emblematic of a new state

of society when Euripides created the Phaedra and the Medea. His

plots are worked out by the simplest and the fewest positions. But he

had evidently his own theory of art, and studied with care such stage

effects as appeared to him most striking and impressive. Thus, in the

burlesque contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, in the comedy of

“The Frogs,” the former is censured, not for too rude a neglect, but

for too elaborate a cultivation, of theatrical craft--such as

introducing his principal characters, his Niobe and Achilles [30],

with their faces hid, and preserving long and obstinate silence, in

order by that suspense to sharpen the expectation of the audience.

Aeschylus, in fact, contrary to the general criticism, was as earnest

and thoughtful an artist as Sophocles himself. There was this

difference, it is true; one invented the art and the other perfected.

But the first requires as intense a study as the last; and they who

talk of the savage and untutored genius of Aeschylus, are no wiser

than the critics who applied the phrase of “native wood-notes wild” to

the consummate philosophy of “Hamlet,” the anatomical correctness of

“Othello,” the delicate symmetry of “The Tempest.” With respect to

the language of Aeschylus, ancient critics unite with the modern in

condemning the straining of his metaphors, and the exaggeration of his

images; yet they appear to me a necessary part of his genius, and of

the effect it produces. But nothing can be more unsatisfactory and

inconclusive than the theory of Schlegel, that such metaphors and

images, such rugged boldness and irregular fire, are the

characteristics of a literature in its infancy. On the contrary, as

we have already seen, Phrynichus, the predecessor of Aeschylus, was as

much characterized by sweetness and harmony, as Aeschylus by grandeur

and headlong animation. In our own time, we have seen the cold

classic school succeeded by one full of the faults which the German,

eloquent but superficial, would ascribe to the infancy of literature.

The diction of Aeschylus was the distinction of himself, and not of

his age; if it require an apology, let us not seek it in false

pretences; if he had written after Euripides, his diction would have

been equally startling, and his metaphors equally lofty. His genius

was one of those which, in any age, can form an era, and not that

which an era necessarily forms. He might have enriched his music from

the strains of the Dorian lyres, but he required only one poet to have

lived before him. The rest of the Greek dramatists required

Aeschylus--Aeschylus required only Homer.

The POET is, indeed, the creator, not of images solely, but of men--

not of one race of ideas and characters, but of a vast and

interminable posterity scattered over the earth. The origin of what

wonderful works, in what distant regions, in what various time, may be

traced, step by step, from influence to influence, till we arrive at

Homer! Such is the vitality of genius. The true spiritual

transmigrator--it passes through all shapes--losing identity, but not

life--and kindred to the GREAT INTELLIGENCE, which is the soul of

matter--departing from one form only to animate another.

CHAPTER III.

Aristides.--His Character and Position.--The Rise of Themistocles.--

Aristides is Ostracised.--The Ostracism examined.--The Influence of

Themistocles increases.--The Silver-mines of Laurion.--Their Product

applied by Themistocles to the Increase of the Navy.--New Direction

given to the National Character.

I. While the progress of the drama and the genius of Aeschylus

contributed to the rising renown of Athens, there appeared on the

surface of her external affairs two rival and principal actors, of

talents and designs so opposite, that it soon became evident that the

triumph of one could be only in the defeat of the other. Before the

battle of Marathon, Aristides had attained a very considerable

influence in Athens. His birth was noble--his connexions wealthy--his

own fortune moderate. He had been an early follower and admirer of

Clisthenes, the establisher of popular institutions in Athens after

the expulsion of the Pisistratidae, but he shared the predilection of

many popular chieftains, and while opposing the encroachments of a

tyranny, supported the power of an aristocracy. The system of

Lycurgus was agreeable to his stern and inflexible temper. His

integrity was republican--his loftiness of spirit was patrician. He

had all the purity, the disinterestedness, and the fervour of a

patriot--he had none of the suppleness or the passion of a demagogue;

on the contrary, he seems to have felt much of that high-spirited

disdain of managing a people which is common to great minds conscious

that they are serving a people. His manners were austere, and he

rather advised than persuaded men to his purposes. He pursued no

tortuous policy, but marched direct to his object, fronting, and not

undermining, the obstacles in his path. His reputation for truth and

uprightness was proverbial, and when some lines in Aeschylus were

recited on the stage, implying that “to be, and not to seem, his

wisdom was,” the eyes of the spectators were fixed at once upon

Aristides. His sternness was only for principles--he had no harshness

for men. Priding himself on impartiality between friends and foes, he

pleaded for the very person whom the laws obliged him to prosecute;

and when once, in his capacity of arbiter between two private persons,

one of the parties said that his opponent had committed many injuries

against Aristides, he rebuked him nobly: “Tell me not,” he said, “of

injuries against myself, but against thee. It is thy cause I am

adjudging, and not my own.” It may be presumed, that with these

singular and exalted virtues, he did not seek to prevent the wounds

they inflicted upon the self-love of others, and that the qualities of

a superior mind were displayed with the bearing of a haughty spirit.

He became the champion of the aristocratic party, and before the

battle of Marathon he held the office of public treasurer. In this

capacity Plutarch asserts that he was subjected to an accusation by

Themistocles, and even intimates that Themistocles himself had been

his predecessor in that honourable office [31]. But the youth of

Themistocles contradicts this statement; and though his restless and

ambitious temper had led him already into active life, and he might

have combined with others more influential against Aristides, it can

scarcely be supposed that, possessing no advantages of birth, he rose

into much power or distinction, till he won sudden and popular

applause by his gallantry at Marathon.

II. Themistocles was of illegitimate birth, according to the Athenian

prejudice, since his mother was a foreigner. His father, though

connected with the priestly and high-born house of the Lycomedae, was

not himself a Eupatrid. The young Themistocles had many of the

qualities which the equivocal condition of illegitimacy often educes

from active and stirring minds--insolence, ostentation, the desire to

shine, and the invincible ambition to rise. He appears, by a popular

tale, to have early associated with his superiors, and to have evinced

betimes the art and address which afterward distinguished him. At a

meeting of all the illegitimate youths assembled at the wrestling-ring

at Cynosarges, dedicated to Hercules, he persuaded some of the young

nobles to accompany him, so as to confound as it were the distinction

between the legitimate and the baseborn. His early disposition was

bold, restless, and impetuous. He paid little attention to the

subtleties of schoolmen, or the refinements of the arts; but even in

boyhood devoted himself to the study of politics and the arts of

government. He would avoid the sports and occupations of his

schoolfellows, and compose declamations, of which the subject was the

impeachment or defence of some of his young friends. His dispositions

prophesied of his future career, and his master was wont to say, “that

he was born to be a blessing or a curse to the commonwealth.” His

strange and precocious boyhood was followed by a wild and licentious

youth. He lived in extremes, and alternated between the loosest

pleasures [32] and the most daring ambition. Entering prematurely

into public life, either his restless disposition or his political

principles embroiled him with men of the highest rank. Fearless and

sanguine, he cared not whom he attacked, or what he adventured; and,

whatever his conduct before the battle of Marathon, the popular

opinions he embraced could not but bring him, after that event, in

constant opposition to Aristides, the champion of the Areopagus.

That splendid victory which gave an opening to his career sharpened

his ambition. The loud fame of Miltiades, yet unconscious of reverse,

inspired him with a lofty envy. He seems from that period to have

forsaken his more youthful excesses. He abstained from his wonted

pursuits and pleasures--he indulged much in solitary and abstracted

thought--he watched whole nights. His friends wondered at the change,

and inquired the cause. “The trophies of Miltiades,” said he, “will

not suffer me to sleep.” From these meditations, which are common to

most men in the interval between an irregular youth and an aspiring

manhood, he soon seems to have awakened with fixed objects and

expanded views. Once emerged from the obscurity of his birth, his

success was rapid, for he possessed all the qualities which the people

demanded in a leader--not only the talents and the courage, but the

affability and the address. He was an agreeable and boon companion--

he committed to memory the names of the humblest citizens--his

versatility enabled him to be all things to all men. Without the

lofty spirit and beautiful mind of Pericles, without the prodigal but

effeminate graces of Alcibiades--without, indeed, any of their

Athenian poetry in his intellectual composition, he yet possessed much

of their powers of persuasion, their ready talent for business, and

their genius of intrigue. But his mind, if coarser than that of

either of his successors, was yet perhaps more masculine and

determined; nothing diverted him from his purpose--nothing arrested

his ambition. His ends were great, and he associated the rise of his

country with his more selfish objects, but he was unscrupulous as to

his means. Avid of glory, he was not keenly susceptible to honour.

He seems rather not to have comprehended, than comprehending, to have

disdained the limits which principle sets to action. Remarkably

far-sighted, he possessed, more than any of his contemporaries, the

prophetic science of affairs: patient, vigilant, and profound, he was

always energetic, because always prepared.

Such was the rival of Aristides, and such the rising leader of the

popular party at Athens.

III. History is silent as to the part taken by Aristides in the

impeachment of Miltiades, but there is no reason to believe that he

opposed the measure of the Alcmaeonid party with which he acted, and

which seems to have obtained the ascendency after the death of

Miltiades. In the year following the battle of Marathon, we find

Aristides in the eminent dignity of archon. In this office he became

generally known by the title of the Just. His influence, his official

rank, the power of the party that supported him, soon rendered him the

principal authority of Athens. The courts of the judges were

deserted, every litigant repaired to his arbitration--his

administration of power obtained him almost the monopoly of it.

Still, however, he was vigorously opposed by Themistocles and the

popular faction led by that aspiring rival.

By degrees; various reasons, the chief of which was his own high

position, concurred to diminish the authority of Aristides; even among

his own partisans he lost ground, partly by the jealousy of the

magistrates, whose authority he had superseded--and partly, doubtless,

from a maxim more dangerous to a leader than any he can adopt, viz.,

impartiality between friends and foes in the appointment to offices.

Aristides regarded, not the political opinions, but the abstract

character or talents, of the candidates. With Themistocles, on the

contrary, it was a favourite saying, “The gods forbid that I should be

in power, and my friends no partakers of my success.” The tendency of

the first policy is to discontent friends, while it rarely, if ever,

conciliates foes; neither is it so elevated as it may appear to the

superficial; for if we contend for the superiority of one set of

principles over another, we weaken the public virtue when we give

equal rewards to the principles we condemn as to the principles we

approve. We make it appear as if the contest had been but a war of

names, and we disregard the harmony which ought imperishably to exist

between the opinions which the state should approve and the honours

which the state can confer. He who is impartial as to persons must

submit to seem lukewarm as to principles. Thus the more towering and

eminent the seeming power of Aristides, the more really hollow and

insecure were its foundations. To his own party it was unproductive--

to the multitude it appeared unconstitutional. The extraordinary

honours he had acquired--his monopoly of the magistrature--his

anti-popular opinions, could not but be regarded with fear by a people

so jealous of their liberties. He seemed to their apprehensions to be

approaching gradually to the sovereignty of the state--not, indeed, by

guards and military force, but the more dangerous encroachments of

civil authority. The moment for the attack arrived. Themistocles

could count at last upon the chances of a critical experiment, and

Aristides was subjected to the ordeal of the ostracism.

IV. The method of the ostracism was this:--each citizen wrote upon a

shell, or a piece of broken earthenware, the name of the person he

desired to banish. The magistrates counted the shells, and if they

amounted to six thousand (a very considerable proportion of the free

population, and less than which rendered the ostracism invalid), they

were sorted, and the man whose name was found on the greater number of

shells was exiled for ten years, with full permission to enjoy his

estates. The sentence was one that honoured while it afflicted, nor

did it involve any other accusation than that of being too powerful or

too ambitious for the citizen of a free state. It is a well-known

story, that, during the process of voting, an ignorant burgher came to

Aristides, whose person he did not know, and requested him to write

down the name of Aristides.

“Has he ever injured you?” asked the great man.

“No,” answered the clown, “nor do I know him even by sight; but it

vexes me to hear him everywhere called the ‘Just.’”

Aristides replied not--he wrote his own name on the shell, and

returned it to the enlightened voter. Such is a tale to which more

importance than is its due has been attached. Yet perhaps we can give

a new reading to the honest burgher’s reply, and believe that it was

not so expressive of envy at the virtue, as of fear at the reputation.

Aristides received the sentence of exile (B. C. 483) with his

accustomed dignity. His last words on leaving his native city were

characteristic of his generous and lofty nature. “May the Athenian

people,” he said, “never know the day which shall force them to

remember Aristides!”--A wish, fortunately alike for the exile and the

people, not realized. That day, so patriotically deprecated, soon

came, glorious equally to Athens and Aristides, and the reparation of

wrong and the triumph of liberty found a common date.

The singular institution of the ostracism is often cited in proof of

the ingratitude of a republic, and the fickleness of a people; but it

owed its origin not to republican disorders, but to despotic

encroachment--not to a people, but to a tyrant. If we look throughout

all the Grecian states, we find that a tyranny was usually established

by some able and artful citizen, who, attaching himself either to the

aristocratic, or more frequently to the popular party, was suddenly

elevated into supreme power, with the rise of the faction he had

espoused. Establishing his fame by popular virtues, he was enabled

often to support his throne by a moral authority--more dangerous than

the odious defence of military hirelings: hence necessarily arose

among the free states a jealousy of individuals, whose eminence became

such as to justify an undue ambition; and hence, for a long period,

while liberty was yet tender and insecure, the (almost) necessity of

the ostracism.

Aristotle, who laments and condemns the practice, yet allows that in

certain states it was absolutely requisite; he thinks the evil it is

intended to prevent “might have been provided for in the earlier

epochs of a commonwealth, by guarding against the rise of one man to a

dangerous degree of power; but where the habits and laws of a nation

are so formed as to render it impossible to prevent the rise, you must

then guard against its consequences:” and in another part of his

Politics he observes, “that even in republics, where men are regarded,

not according to their wealth, but worth--where the citizens love

liberty and have arms and valour to defend it; yet, should the

pre-eminent virtues of one man, or of one family, totally eclipse the

merit of the community at large, you have but two choices--the

ostracism or the throne.”

If we lament the precaution, we ought then to acknowledge the cause.

The ostracism was the creature of the excesses of the tyrannical, and

not of the popular principle. The bland and specious hypocrisy of

Pisistratus continued to work injury long after his death--and the

ostracism of Aristides was the necessary consequence of the seizure of

the citadel. Such evil hath arbitrary power, that it produces

injustice in the contrary principles as a counterpart to the injustice

of its own; thus the oppression of our Catholic countrymen for

centuries resulted from the cruelties and persecutions of a papal

ascendency. We remembered the danger, and we resorted to the rigid

precaution. To guard against a second tyranny of opinion, we

condemned, nor perhaps without adequate cause, not one individual, but

a whole sect, to a moral ostracism. Ancient times are not then so

opposite to the present--and the safety of the state may excuse, in a

republic as in a monarchy, a thousand acts of abstract injustice. But

the banishment of Aristides has peculiar excuses in the critical

circumstances of the time. The remembrance of Pisistratus was still

fresh--his son had but just perished in an attempt on his country--the

family still lived, and still menaced: the republic was yet in its

infancy--a hostile aristocracy within its walls--a powerful enemy

still formidable without. It is a remarkable fact, that as the

republic strengthened, and as the popular power increased, the custom

of ostracism was superseded. The democratic party was never so strong

as at the time in which it was finally abolished. It is the

insecurity of power, whether in a people or a king, that generates

suspicion. Habituated to liberty, a people become less rigid and more

enlightened as to its precautions.

V. It had been a saying of Aristides, “that if the Athenians desired

their affairs to prosper, they ought to fling Themistocles and himself

into the barathrum.” But fortune was satisfied at this time with a

single victim, and reserved the other for a later sacrifice. Relieved

from the presence of a rival who had constantly crossed and obstructed

his career, Themistocles found ample scope for his genius. He was not

one of those who are unequal to the situation it costs them so much to

obtain. On his entrance into public life he is said by Theophrastus

to have possessed only three talents; but the account is inconsistent

with the extravagance of his earlier career, and still more with the

expenses to which a man who attempts to lead a party is, in all

popular states, unavoidably subjected. More probably, therefore, it

is said of him by others, that he inherited a competent patrimony, and

he did not scruple to seize upon every occasion to increase it,

whether through the open emolument or the indirect perquisites of

public office. But, desiring wealth as a means, not an end, he

grasped with one hand to lavish with the other. His generosity

dazzled and his manners seduced the people, yet he exercised the power

he acquired with a considerate and patriotic foresight. From the

first retreat of the Persian armament he saw that the danger was

suspended, and not removed. But the Athenians, who shared a common

Grecian fault, and ever thought too much of immediate, too little of

distant peril, imagined that Marathon had terminated the great contest

between Asia and Europe. They forgot the fleets of Persia, but they

still dreaded the galleys of Aegina. The oligarchy of that rival

state was the political enemy of the Athenian demos; the ally of the

Persian was feared by the conqueror, and every interest, military and

commercial, contributed to feed the passionate and jealous hate that

existed against a neighbour, too near to forget, too warlike to

despise. The thoughtful and profound policy of Themistocles resolved

to work this popular sentiment to ulterior objects; and urging upon a

willing audience the necessity of making suitable preparations against

Aegina, then the mistress of the seas, he proposed to construct a

navy, fitted equally to resist the Persian and to open a new dominion

to the Athenians.

To effect this purpose he called into aid one of the most valuable

sources of her power which nature had bestowed upon Athens.

VI. Around the country by the ancient Thoricus, on the road from the

modern Kerratia to the Cape of Sunium, heaps of scoriae indicate to

the traveller that he is in the neighbourhood of the once celebrated

silver-mines of Laurion; he passes through pines and woodlands--he

notices the indented tracks of wheels which two thousand years have

not effaced from the soil--he discovers the ancient shafts of the

mines, and pauses before the foundations of a large circular tower and

the extensive remains of the castles which fortified the neighbouring

town [33]. A little farther, and still passing among mine-banks and

hillocks of scoriae, he beholds upon Cape Colonna the fourteen

existent columns of the temple of Minerva Sunias. In this country, to

which the old name is still attached [34], is to be found a principal

cause of the renown and the reverses of Athens--of the victory of

Salamis--of the expedition to Sicily.

It appears that the silver-mines of Laurion had been worked from a

very remote period--beyond even any traditional date. But as it is

well and unanswerably remarked, “the scarcity of silver in the time of

Solon proves that no systematic or artificial process of mining could

at that time have been established.” [35] It was, probably, during

the energetic and politic rule of the dynasty of Pisistratus that

efficient means were adopted to derive adequate advantage from so

fertile a source of national wealth. And when, subsequently, Athens,

profiting from the lessons of her tyrants, allowed the genius of her

free people to administer the state, fresh necessity was created for

wealth against the hostility of Sparta--fresh impetus given to general

industry and public enterprise. Accordingly, we find that shortly

after the battle of Marathon, the yearly profits of the mines were

immense. We learn from the researches of one of those eminent Germans

[36] who have applied so laborious a learning with so subtle an

acuteness to the elucidation of ancient history, that these mines were

always considered the property of the state; shares in them were sold

to individuals as tenants in fee farms, and these proprietors paid,

besides, an annual sum into the public treasury, amounting to the

twenty-fourth part of the produce. The state, therefore, received a

regular revenue from the mines, derived from the purchase--moneys and

the reserved rents. This revenue had been hitherto divided among all

the free citizens, and the sum allotted to each was by no means

inconsiderable, when Themistocles, at an early period of his career

(before even the ostracism of Aristides), had the courage to propose

that a fund thus lucrative to every individual should be appropriated

to the national purpose of enlarging the navy. The feud still carried

on with the Aeginetans was his pretext and excuse. But we cannot

refuse our admiration to the fervent and generous order of public

spirit existent at that time, when we find that it was a popular

leader who proposed to, and carried through, a popular assembly the

motion, that went to empoverish the men who supported his party and

adjudged his proposition. Privileged and sectarian bodies never

willingly consent to a surrender of pecuniary benefits for a mere

public end. But among the vices of a popular assembly, it possesses

the redeeming virtue to be generous. Upon a grand and unconscious

principle of selfishness, a democracy rarely grudges a sacrifice

endured for the service of the state.

The money thus obtained was devoted to the augmentation of the

maritime force to two hundred triremes--an achievement that probably

exhausted the mine revenue for some years; and the custom once broken,

the produce of Laurion does not seem again to have been wasted upon

individuals. To maintain and increase the new navy, a decree was

passed, either at that time [37], or somewhat later, which ordained

twenty triremes to be built yearly.

VII. The construction of these vessels, the very sacrifice of the

citizens, the general interest that must have attached to an

undertaking that was at once novel in itself, and yet congenial not

more to the passions of a people, who daily saw from their own heights

the hostile rock of Aegina, “the eyesore of the Piraeus,” than to the

habits of men placed in a steril land that on three sides tempted to

the sea--all combined to assist Themistocles in his master policy--a

policy which had for its design gradually to convert the Athenians

from an agricultural into a maritime people. What was imputed to him

as a reproach became his proudest distinction, viz., that “he first

took his countrymen from the spear and shield, and sent them to the

bench and oar.”

CHAPTER IV.

The Preparations of Darius.--Revolt of Egypt.--Dispute for the

Succession to the Persian Throne.--Death of Darius.--Brief Review of

the leading Events and Characteristics of his Reign.

I. While, under the presiding genius of Themistocles, Athens was

silently laying the foundation of her naval greatness, and gradually

increasing in influence and renown, the Persian monarch was not

forgetful of the burning of Sardis and the defeat of Marathon. The

armies of a despotic power are often slow to collect, and unwieldy to

unite, and Darius wasted three years in despatching emissaries to

various cities, and providing transports, horses, and forage for a new

invasion.

The vastness of his preparations, though congenial to oriental

warfare, was probably proportioned to objects more great than those

which appear in the Greek historians. There is no reason, indeed, to

suppose that he cherished the gigantic project afterward entertained

by his son--a project no less than that of adding Europe as a province

to the empire of the East. But symptoms of that revolt in Egypt which

shortly occurred, may have rendered it advisable to collect an

imposing force upon other pretences; and without being carried away by

any frantic revenge against the remote and petty territory of Athens,

Darius could not but be sensible that the security of his Ionian,

Macedonian, and Thracian conquests, with the homage already rendered

to his sceptre by the isles of Greece, made it necessary to redeem the

disgrace of the Persian arms, and that the more insignificant the foe,

the more fatal, if unpunished, the example of resistance. The Ionian

coasts--the entrance into Europe--were worth no inconsiderable effort,

and the more distant the provinces to be awed, the more stupendous,

according to all rules of Asiatic despotism, should appear the

resources of the sovereign. He required an immense armament, not so

much for the sake of crushing the Athenian foe, as of exhibiting in

all its might the angry majesty of the Persian empire.