XIX. Diverted from the notion of pursuing the Persians, the Grecian

allies, flushed with conquest, were yet eager for enterprise. The

isles which had leagued with the Mede were strongly obnoxious to the

confederates, and it was proposed to exact from them a fine; in

defrayal of the expenses of the war. Siege was laid to Andros, and

those islanders were the first who resisted the demand. Then was it

that they made that memorable answer, which may serve as a warning in

all times to the strong when pressing on the desperate.

“I bring with me,” said Themistocles, “two powerful divinities--

Persuasion and Force.”

“And we,” answered the Andrians, “have two gods equally powerful on

our side--Poverty and Despair.”

The Andrian deities eventually triumphed, and the siege was raised

without effect. But from the Parians and Carystians, and some other

islanders, Themistocles obtained enormous sums of money unknown to his

colleagues, which, however unjustly extorted, it does not

satisfactorily appear that he applied largely to his own personal

profit, but, as is more probable, to the rebuilding of Athens.

Perhaps he thought, nor without reason, that as the Athenians had been

the principal sufferers in the war, and contributed the most largely

to its resources, so whatever fines were levied on the seceders were

due, not to the confederates generally, but the Athenians alone. The

previous conduct of the allies, with so much difficulty preserved from

deserting Athens, merited no particular generosity, and excused

perhaps the retaliation of a selfish policy. The payment of the fine

did not, however, preserve Carystus from attack. After wasting its

lands, the Greeks returned to Salamis and divided the Persian spoils.

The first fruits were dedicated to the gods, and the choicest of the

booty sent to Delphi. And here we may notice one anecdote of

Themistocles, which proves, that whatever, at times and in great

crises, was the grasping unscrupulousness of his mind, he had at least

no petty and vulgar avarice. Seeing a number of bracelets and chains

of gold upon the bodies of the dead, he passed them by, and turning to

one of his friends, “Take these for yourself,” said he, “for you are

not Themistocles.” [90]

Meanness or avarice was indeed no part of the character of

Themistocles, although he has been accused of those vices, because

guilty, at times, of extortion. He was profuse, ostentatious, and

magnificent above his contemporaries and beyond his means. His very

vices were on a large and splendid scale; and if he had something of

the pirate in his nature, he had nothing of the miser. When he had to

choose between two suiters for his daughter, he preferred the worthy

to the wealthy candidate--willing that she should rather marry a man

without money than money without a man. [91]

XX. The booty divided, the allies repaired to the isthmus, according

to that beautiful ancient custom of apportioning rewards to such as

had been most distinguished. It was in the temple of Neptune that the

leaders met. The right of voting was confined to the several chiefs,

who were to declare whom they thought the first in merit and whom the

second. Each leader wrote his own name a candidate for the first

rank; but a great majority of suffrages awarded the second to

Themistocles. While, therefore, each leader had only a single

suffrage in favour of the first rank, the second rank was

unequivocally due to the Athenian.

XXI. But even conquest had not sufficed to remove the jealousies of

the confederate leaders--they evaded the decision of a question which

could not but be propitious to the Athenians, and returned home

without having determined the point which had assembled them at the

isthmus. But Themistocles was not of a temper to brook patiently this

fraud upon his honours. Far from sharing the petty and miserable

envies of their chiefs, the Greeks generally were loud in praise of

his wisdom and services; and, taking advantage of their enthusiasm,

Themistocles repaired to Sparta, trusting to the generosity of the

principal rival to compensate the injustice of many. His expectations

were not ill-founded--the customs of Sparta allowed no slight to a

Spartan, and they adjudged therefore the prize of valour to their own

Eurybiades, while they awarded that of wisdom or science to

Themistocles. Each was equally honoured with a crown of olive.

Forgetful of all their prejudices, their envy, and their inhospitable

treatment of strangers, that nation of warriors were dazzled by the

hero whose courage assimilated to their own. They presented him with

the stateliest chariot to be found in Sparta, and solemnly conducted

him homeward as far as Tegea, by an escort of three hundred chosen

Spartans called “The Knights”--the sole example of the Spartans

conducting any man from their city. It is said that on his return to

Athens, Themistocles was reproached by Timodemus of Aphidna, a

Belbinite by origin [92], and an implacable public enemy, with his

visit to Sparta: “The honours awarded you,” said Timodemus, “are

bestowed from respect, not to you, but to Athens.”

“My friend,” retorted the witty chief, “the matter stands thus. Had I

been a Belbinite, I had not been thus distinguished at Sparta, nor

would you, although you had been born an Athenian!”

While the Greeks were thus occupied, the Persian army had retreated

with Mardonius into Thessaly. Here that general selected and

marshalled the forces with which he intended to renew the war,

retaining in his service the celebrated Immortals. The total,

including the cavalry, Herodotus estimates at three hundred thousand

men.

Thus occupied, and ere Xerxes departed from Thessaly, the Spartans,

impelled by an oracle, sent a messenger to Xerxes to demand atonement

for the death of Leonidas.

“Ay,” replied the king, laughing, “this man (pointing to Mardonius)

shall make you fitting retribution.”

Leaving Mardonius in Thessaly, where he proposed to winter, Xerxes now

hastened home. Sixty thousand Persians under Artabazus accompanied

the king only as far as the passage into Asia; and it was with an

inconsiderable force, which, pressed by famine, devastated the very

herbage on their way, and which a pestilence and the dysentery

diminished as it passed, that the great king crossed the Hellespont,

on which the bridge of boats had already been broken by wind and

storm. A more abundant supply of provisions than they had yet

experienced tempted the army to excesses, to which many fell victims.

The rest arrived at Sardis with Xerxes, whence he afterward returned

to his more distant capital.

XXII. The people of Potidaea, on the Isthmus of Pallene, and

Olynthus, inhabited by the Bottiaeans, a dubious and mongrel race,

that boasted their origin from those Athenians who, in the traditional

ages, had been sent as tributary captives to the Cretan Minos, no

sooner learned the dispersion of the fleet at Salamis, and the retreat

of the king, than they openly revolted from the barbarian. Artabazus,

returning from the Hellespont, laid siege to Olynthus, massacred the

inhabitants, and colonized the town with Chalcidians. He then sat

down before Potidaea; but a terrible inundation of the sea, with the

sallies of the besieged, destroyed the greater number of the

unfortunate invaders. The remnant were conducted by Artabazus into

Thessaly, to join the army of Mardonius. The Persian fleet,

retreating from Salamis, after passing over the king and his forces

from the Chersonese to Abydos, wintered at Cuma; and at the

commencement of the spring assembled at Samos.

Meanwhile the Athenians returned to their dismantled city, and

directed their attention to its repair and reconstruction. It was

then, too, that in all probability the people hastened, by a formal

and solemn reversal of the sentence of ostracism, to reward the

services of Aristides, and to restore to the commonwealth the most

spotless of its citizens. [93]

CHAPTER 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.

I. The dawning spring and the formidable appearance of Mardonius,

who, with his Persian forces, diminished indeed, but still mighty,

lowered on their confines, aroused the Greeks to a sense of their

danger. Their army was not as yet assembled, but their fleet,

consisting of one hundred and ten vessels, under the command of

Leotychides, king of Sparta, and Xanthippus of Athens, lay off Aegina.

Thus anchored, there came to the naval commanders certain Chians, who,

having been discovered in a plot against the life of Strattis, a

tyrant imposed upon Chios by the Persians, fled to Aegina. They

declared that all Ionia was ripe for revolt, and their representations

induced the Greeks to advance as far as the sacred Delos.

Beyond they dared not venture, ignorant alike of the localities of the

country and the forces of the enemy. Samos seemed to them no less

remote than the Pillars of Hercules, and mutual fear thus kept the

space between the Persian and the Greek fleet free from the advance of

either. But Mardonius began slowly to stir from his winter lethargy.

Influenced, thought the Greeks, perhaps too fondly, by a Theban

oracle, the Persian general despatched to Athens no less distinguished

an ambassador than Alexander, the king of Macedon. That prince,

connected with the Persians by alliance (for his sister had married

the Persian Bubares, son of Megabazus), was considered an envoy

calculated to conciliate the Athenians while he served their enemy.

And it was now the object of Mardonius to reconcile the foe whom he

had failed to conquer. Aware of the Athenian valour, Mardonius

trusted that if he could detach that state from the confederacy, and

prevail on the Athenians to unite their arms to his own, the rest of

Greece would become an easy conquest. By land he already deemed

himself secure of fortune, by sea what Grecian navy, if deprived of

the flower of its forces, could resist him?

II. The King of Macedon arrived at Athens; but conscious of the

jealous and anxious fear which the news of an embassy from Persia

would excite among the confederates, the Athenians delayed to grant

him the demanded audience until they had time to send for and obtain

deputies from Sparta to be present at the assembly.

Alexander of Macedon then addressed the Athenians.

“Men of Athens!” said he, “Mardonius informs you, through me, of this

mandate from the king: ‘Whatever injuries,’ saith he, ‘the Athenians

have done me, I forgive. Restore them their country--let them even

annex to it any other territories they covet--permit them the free

enjoyment of their laws. If they will ally with me, rebuild the

temples I have burnt.’”

Alexander then proceeded to dilate on the consequences of this

favourable mission, to represent the power of the Persian, and urge

the necessity of an alliance. “Let my offers prevail with you,” he

concluded, “for to you alone, of all the Greeks, the king extends his

forgiveness, desiring your alliance.”

When Alexander had concluded, the Spartan envoys thus spoke through

their chief, addressing, not the Macedonian, but the Athenians:--“We

have been deputed by the Spartans to entreat you to adopt no measures

prejudicial to Greece, and to receive no conditions from the

barbarians. This, most iniquitous in itself, would be, above all,

unworthy and ungraceful in you; with you rests the origin of the war

now appertaining to all Greece. Insufferable, indeed, if the

Athenians, once the authors of liberty to many, were now the authors

of the servitude of Greece. We commiserate your melancholy condition

--your privation for two years of the fruits of your soil, your homes

destroyed, and your fortunes ruined. We, the Spartans, and the other

allies, will receive your women and all who may be helpless in the war

while the war shall last. Let not the Macedonian, smoothing down the

messages of Mardonius, move you. This becomes him; tyrant himself, he

would assist in a tyrant’s work. But you will not heed him if you are

wise, knowing that faith and truth are not in the barbarians.”

III. The answer of the Athenians to both Spartan and Persian, the

substance of which is, no doubt, faithfully preserved to us by

Herodotus, may rank among the most imperishable records of that

high-souled and generous people.

“We are not ignorant,” ran the answer, dictated, and, probably,

uttered by Aristides [94], “that the power of the Mede is many times

greater than our own. We required not that ostentatious admonition.

Yet, for the preservation of liberty, we will resist that power as we

can. Cease to persuade us to contract alliance with the barbarian.

Bear back to Mardonius this answer from the Athenians--So long as

yonder sun,” and the orator pointed to the orb [95], “holds the

courses which now it holds--so long will we abjure all amity with

Xerxes--so long, confiding in the aid of our gods and heroes, whose

shrines and altars he hath burnt, will we struggle against him in

battle and for revenge. And thou, beware how again thou bearest such

proffers to the Athenians; nor, on the plea of benefit to us, urge us

to dishonour; for we would not--ungrateful to thee, our guest and our

friend--have any evil befall to thee from the anger of the Athenians.”

“For you, Spartans! it may be consonant with human nature that you

should fear our alliance with the barbarians--yet shamefully you fear

it, knowing with what spirit we are animated and act. Gold hath no

amount--earth hath no territory, how beautiful soever--that can tempt

the Athenians to accept conditions from the Mede for the servitude of

Greece. Were we so inclined, many and mighty are our prohibitions;

first and chiefly, our temples burnt and overthrown, urging us not to

alliance, but to revenge. Next, the whole race of Greece has one

consanguinity and one tongue, and common are its manners, its altars,

and its gods base indeed, if Athenians were of these the betrayers.

Lastly, learn now, if ye knew it not before, that, while one Athenian

shall survive, Athens allies herself not with Xerxes.”

“We thank you for your providence of us--your offers to protect our

families--afflicted and impoverished as we are. We will bear,

however, our misfortunes as we may--becoming no burden upon you. Be

it your care to send your forces to the field. Let there be no delay.

The barbarian will be on us when he learns that we have rejected his

proposals. Before he proceed to Attica let us meet him in Boeotia.”

IV. On receiving this answer from the Athenians the Spartan

ambassadors returned home; and, shortly afterward, Mardonius, by rapid

marches, conducted his army towards Attica; fresh supplies of troops

recruiting his forces wheresoever he passed. The Thessalian princes,

far from repenting their alliance with Mardonius, animated his ardour.

Arrived in Boeotia, the Thebans endeavoured to persuade the Persian

general to encamp in that territory, and to hazard no battle, but

rather to seek by bribes to the most powerful men in each city, to

detach the confederates from the existent alliance. Pride, ambition,

and the desire of avenging Xerxes once more upon Athens, deterred

Mardonius from yielding to this counsel. He marched on to Attica--he

found the territory utterly deserted. He was informed that the

inhabitants were either at Salamis or with the fleet. He proceeded to

Athens (B. C. 479), equally deserted, and, ten months after the first

capture by Xerxes, that city a second time was occupied by the Mede.

From Athens Mardonius despatched a Greek messenger to Salamis,

repeating the propositions of Alexander. On hearing these offers in

council, the Athenians were animated by a species of fury. A

counsellor named Lycidas having expressed himself in favour of the

terms, he was immediately stoned to death. The Athenian women, roused

by a similar passion with the men, inflicted the same fate upon his

wife and children--one of those excesses of virtue which become

crimes, but for which exigency makes no despicable excuse. [96] The

ambassador returned uninjured.

V. The flight of the Athenians to Salamis had not been a willing

resort. That gallant people had remained in Attica so long as they

could entertain any expectation of assistance from the Peloponnesus;

nor was it until compelled by despair at the inertness of their

allies, and the appearance of the Persians in Boeotia, that they had

removed to Salamis.

The singular and isolated policy of Sparta, which had curbed and

crippled, to an exclusive regard for Spartans, all the more generous

and daring principles of action, was never, perhaps, so odiously

displayed as in the present indifference to an ally that had so nobly

preferred the Grecian liberties to its own security. The whole of the

Peloponnesus viewed with apathy the occupation of Attica, and the

Spartans were employed in completing the fortifications of the

isthmus.

The Athenians despatched messengers to Sparta, as did also Megara and

Plataea. These ambassadors assumed a high and reproachful tone of

remonstrance.

They represented the conduct of the Athenians in rejecting the

overtures of the barbarians--they upbraided the Spartans with perfidy

for breaking the agreement to meet the enemy in Boeotia--they declared

the resentment of the Athenians at the violation of this compact,

demanded immediate supplies, and indicated the plains near Thria, a

village in Attica, as a fitting field of battle.

The ephors heard the remonstrance, but from day to day delayed an

answer. The Spartans, according to Herodotus, were engaged in

celebrating the solemnities in honour of Hyacinthus and Apollo; and

this ceremonial might have sufficed as a plausible cause for

procrastination, according to all the usages and formalities of

Spartan manners. But perhaps there might be another and a graver

reason for the delayed determination of the ephors.

When the isthmian fortifications were completed, the superstition of

the regent Cleombrotus, who had superintended their construction, was

alarmed by an eclipse, and he led back to Sparta the detachment he had

commanded in that quarter. He returned but to die; and his son

Pausanias succeeded to the regency during the continued minority of

Pleistarchus, the infant heir of Leonidas [97]. If the funeral

solemnities on the death of a regent were similar to those bestowed

upon a deceased king, we can account at once for the delay of the

ephors, since the ten days which passed without reply to the

ambassadors exactly correspond in number with the ten days dedicated

to public mourning. [98] But whatever the cause of the Spartan delay

--and the rigid closeness of that oligarchic government kept, in yet

more important matters, its motives and its policy no less a secret to

contemporaneous nations than to modern inquirers--the delay itself

highly incensed the Athenian envoys: they even threatened to treat

with Mardonius, and abandon Sparta to her fate, and at length fixed

the day of their departure. The ephors roused themselves. Among the

deputies from the various states, there was then in Sparta that

Chileus of Tegea, who had been scarcely less serviceable than

Themistocles in managing the affairs of Greece in the isthmian

congress. This able and eminent Arcadian forcibly represented to the

ephors the danger of forfeiting the Athenian alliance, and the

insufficient resistance against the Persian that the fortifications of

the isthmus would afford. The ephors heard, and immediately acted

with the secrecy and the vigilance that belongs to oligarchies. That

very night they privately despatched a body of five thousand Spartans

and thirty-five thousand helots (seven to each Spartan), under the

command of Pausanias.

The next morning the ephors calmly replied to the angry threats of the

Athenians, by protesting that their troops were already on the march,

and by this time in Oresteum, a town in Arcadia, about eighteen miles

distant from Sparta. The astonished deputies [99] hastened to

overtake the Spartan force, and the ephors, as if fully to atone for

their past procrastination, gave them the escort and additional

re-enforcement of five thousand heavy-armed Laconians or Perioeci.

VI. Mardonius soon learned from the Argives (who, not content with

refusing to join the Greek legion, had held secret communications with

the Persians) of the departure of the Spartan troops. Hitherto he had

refrained from any outrage on the Athenian lands and city, in the hope

that Athens might yet make peace with him. He now set fire to Athens,

razed the principal part of what yet remained of the walls and temples

[100], and deeming the soil of Attica ill adapted to his cavalry, and,

from the narrowness of its outlets, disadvantageous in case of

retreat, after a brief incursion into Megara he retired towards

Thebes, and pitched his tents on the banks of the Asopus, extending

from Erythrae to Plataea. Here his force was swelled by such of the

Greeks as were friendly to his cause.

VII. Meanwhile the Spartans were joined at the isthmus by the rest of

the Peloponnesian allies. Solemn sacrifices were ordained, and the

auguries drawn from the victims being favourable, the Greek army

proceeded onward; and, joined at Eleusis by the Athenians, marched to

the foot of Cithaeron, and encamped opposite the Persians, with the

river of the Asopus between the armies. Aristides commanded the

Athenians, at the head of eight thousand foot; and while the armies

were thus situated, a dangerous conspiracy was detected and defeated

by that able general.

The disasters of the war--the devastation of lands, the burning of

houses--had reduced the fortunes of many of the Athenian nobles. With

their property diminished their influence. Poverty, and discontent,

and jealousy of new families rising into repute [101], induced these

men of fallen fortunes to conspire for the abolition of the popular

government at Athens, and, failing that attempt, to betray the cause

to the enemy.

This project spread secretly through the camp, and corrupted numbers;

the danger became imminent. On the one hand, the conspiracy was not

to be neglected; and, on the other, in such a crisis it might be

dangerous too narrowly to sift a design in which men of mark and

station were concerned. Aristides acted with a singular prudence. He

arrested eight of the leaders. Of these he prosecuted only two (who

escaped during the proceedings), and, dismissing the rest, appealed to

the impending battle as the great tribunal which would acquit them of

the charge and prove their loyalty to the state. [102]

VIII. Scarce was this conspiracy quelled than the cavalry of the

Persians commenced their operations. At the head of that skilful and

gallant horse, for which the oriental nations are yet renowned, rode

their chief, Masistius, clad in complete armour of gold, of brass, and

of iron, and noted for the strength of his person and the splendour of

his trappings. Placed on the rugged declivities of Cithaeron, the

Greeks were tolerably safe from the Persian cavalry, save only the

Megarians, who, to the number of three thousand, were posted along the

plain, and were on all sides charged by that agile and vapid cavalry.

Thus pressed, the Megarians sent to Pausanias for assistance. The

Spartan beheld the air darkened with shafts and arrows, and knew that

his heavy-armed warriors were ill adapted to act against horse. He in

vain endeavoured to arouse those about him by appeals to their honour

--all declined the succour of the Megarians--when Aristides, causing

the Athenian to eclipse the Spartan chivalry, undertook the defence.

With three hundred infantry, mixed with archers, Olympiodorus, one of

the ablest of the Athenian officers, advanced eagerly on the

barbarian.

Masistius himself, at the head of his troops, spurred his Nisaean

charger against the new enemy. A sharp and obstinate conflict ensued;

when the horse of the Persian general, being wounded, threw its rider,

who could not regain his feet from the weight of his armour. There,

as he lay on the ground, with a swarm of foes around him, the close

scales of his mail protected him from their weapons, until at length a

lance pierced the brain through an opening in his visor. After an

obstinate conflict for his corpse, the Persians were beaten back to

the camp, where the death of one, second only to Mardonius in

authority and repute, spread universal lamentation and dismay.

The body of Masistius, which, by its vast size and beautiful

proportions, excited the admiration of the victors, remained the prize

of the Greeks; and, placed on a bier, it was borne triumphantly

through the ranks.

IX. After this victory, Pausanias conducted his forces along the base

of Cithaeron into the neighbourhood of Plataea, which he deemed a more

convenient site for the disposition of his army and the supply of

water. There, near the fountain of Gargaphia [103], one of the

sources of the Asopus (which splits into many rivulets, bearing a

common name), and renowned in song for the death of the fabulous

Actaeon, nor far from the shrine of an old Plataean hero

(Androcrates), the Greeks were marshalled in regular divisions, the

different nations, some on a gentle acclivity, others along the plain.

In the allotment of the several stations a dispute arose between the

Athenians and the Tegeans. The latter claimed, from ancient and

traditionary prescription, the left wing (the right being unanimously

awarded to the Spartans), and assumed, in the course of their

argument, an insolent superiority over the Athenians.

“We came here to fight,” answered the Athenians (or Aristides in their

name [104]), “and not to dispute. But since the Tegeans proclaim

their ancient as well as their modern deeds, fit is it for us to

maintain our precedence over the Arcadians.”

Touching slightly on the ancient times referred to by the Tegeans, and

quoting their former deeds, the Athenians insisted chiefly upon

Marathon; “Yet,” said their orators, or orator, in conclusion, “while

we maintain our right to the disputed post, it becomes us not, at this

crisis, to altercate on the localities of the battle. Place us, oh

Spartans! wherever seems best to you. No matter what our station; we

will uphold our honour and your cause. Command, then--we obey.”

Hearing this generous answer, the Spartan leaders were unanimous in

favour of the Athenians; and they accordingly occupied the left wing.

X. Thus were marshalled that confederate army, presenting the

strongest force yet opposed to the Persians, and comprising the whole

might and manhood of the free Grecian states; to the right, ten

thousand Lacedaemonians, one half, as we have seen, composed of the

Perioeci, the other moiety of the pure Spartan race--to each warrior

of the latter half were allotted seven armed helots, to each of the

heavy-armed Perioeci one serving-man. Their whole force was,

therefore, no less than fifty thousand men. Next to the Spartans (a

kind of compromise of their claim) were the one thousand five hundred

Tegeans; beyond these five thousand Corinthians; and to them

contiguous three hundred Potidaeans of Pallene, whom the inundation of

their seas had saved from the Persian arms. Next in order, Orchomenus

ranged its six hundred Arcadians; Sicyon sent three thousand,

Epidaurus eight hundred, and Troezene one thousand warriors.

Neighbouring the last were two hundred Lepreatae, and by them four

hundred Myceneans and Tirynthians [105]. Stationed by the Tirynthians

came, in successive order, a thousand Phliasians, three hundred

Hermionians, six hundred Eretrians and Styreans, four hundred

Chalcidians, five hundred Ambracians, eight hundred Leucadians and

Anactorians, two hundred Paleans of Cephallenia, and five hundred only

of the islanders of Aegina. Three thousand Megarians and six hundred

Plataeans were ranged contiguous to the Athenians, whose force of

eight thousand men, under the command of Aristides, closed the left

wing.

Thus the total of the heavy-armed soldiery was thirty-eight thousand

seven hundred. To these were added the light-armed force of

thirty-five thousand helots and thirty-four thousand five hundred

attendants on the Laconians and other Greeks; the whole amounting to one

hundred and eight thousand two hundred men, besides one thousand eight

hundred Thespians, who, perhaps, on account of the destruction of their

city by the Persian army, were without the heavy arms of their

confederates.

Such was the force--not insufficient in number, but stronger in heart,

union, the memory of past victories, and the fear of future chains--

that pitched the tent along the banks of the rivulets which confound

with the Asopus their waters and their names.

XI. In the interim Mardonius had marched from his former post, and

lay encamped on that part of the Asopus nearest to Plataea. His brave

Persians fronted the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans; and, in successive

order, ranged the Medes and Bactrians, the Indians and the Sacae, the

Boeotians, Locrians, Malians, Thessalians, Macedonians, and the

reluctant aid of a thousand Phocians. But many of the latter tribe

about the fastnesses of Parnassus, openly siding with the Greeks,

harassed the barbarian outskirts: Herodotus calculates the hostile

force at three hundred and fifty thousand, fifty thousand of which

were composed of Macedonians and Greeks. And, although the historian

has omitted to deduct from this total the loss sustained by Artabazus

at Potidaea, it is yet most probable that the barbarian nearly trebled

the Grecian army--odds less fearful than the Greeks had already met

and vanquished.

XII. The armies thus ranged, sacrifices were offered up on both

sides. It happened, by a singular coincidence, that to either army

was an Elean augur. The appearance of the entrails forbade both

Persian and Greek to cross the Asopus, and ordained each to act on the

defensive.

That the Persian chief should have obeyed the dictates of a Grecian

soothsayer is sufficiently probable; partly because a superstitious

people rarely despise the superstitions of another faith, principally

because a considerable part of the invading army, and that perhaps the

bravest and the most skilful, was composed of native Greeks, whose

prejudices it was politic to flatter--perilous to affront.

Eight days were consumed in inactivity, the armies confronting each

other without motion; when Mardonius, in order to cut off the new

forces which every day resorted to the Grecian camp, despatched a body

of cavalry to seize the pass of Cithaeron. Falling in with a convoy

of five hundred beasts of burden, carrying provisions from the

Peloponnesus, the barbarians, with an inhumanity sufficient, perhaps,

to prove that the detachment was not composed of Persians, properly so

speaking, a mild though gallant people--slaughtered both man and

beast. The provisions were brought to the Persian camp.

XIII. During the two following days Mardonius advanced nearer to the

Asopus, and his cavalry (assisted by the Thebans, who were the right

arm of the barbarian army), in repeated skirmishes, greatly harassed

the Greeks with much daring and little injury.

At length Mardonius, either wearied of this inactivity or unable to

repress the spirit of a superior army, not accustomed to receive the

attack, resolved to reject all further compliance with the oracles of

this Elean soothsayer, and, on the following morning, to give battle

to the Greeks. Acting against one superstition, he sagaciously,

however, sought to enlist on his behalf another; and, from the

decision of a mortal, he appealed to the ambiguous oracles of the

Delphic god, which had ever one interpretation for the enterprise and

another for the success.

XIV. “The watches of the night were set,” says Herodotus, in his

animated and graphic strain--“the night itself was far advanced--a

universal and utter stillness prevailed throughout the army, buried in

repose--when Alexander, the Macedonian prince, rode secretly from the

Persian camp, and, coming to the outposts of the Athenians, whose line

was immediately opposed to his own, demanded an audience of their

commanders. This obtained, the Macedonian thus addressed them: ‘I am

come to inform you of a secret you must impart to Pausanias alone.

From remote antiquity I am of Grecian lineage. I am solicitous of the

safety of Greece. Long since, but for the auguries, would Mardonius

have given battle. Regarding these no longer, he will attack you

early on the morning. Be prepared. If he change his purpose, remain

as you are--he has provisions only for a few days more. Should the

event of war prove favourable, you will but deem it fitting to make

some effort for the independence of one who exposes himself to so

great a peril for the purpose of apprizing you of the intentions of

the foe. I am Alexander of Macedon.’”

“Thus saying, the horseman returned to the Persian camp.”

“The Athenian leaders hastened to Pausanias, and informed him of what

they had heard.”

The Spartan does not appear, according to the strong expressions [106]

of Herodotus, to have received the intelligence with the customary

dauntlessness of his race. He feared the Persians, he was

unacquainted with their mode of warfare, and he proposed to the

Athenians to change posts with the Lacedaemonians; “For you,” said he,

“have before contended with the Mede, and your experience of their

warfare you learned at Marathon. We, on the other hand, have fought

against the Boeotians and Thessalians [opposed to the left wing]. Let

us then change our stations.”

At first the Athenian officers were displeased at the offer, not from

terror, but from pride; and it seemed to them as if they were shifted,

like helots, from post to post at the Spartan’s pleasure. But

Aristides, whose power of persuasion consisted chiefly in appeals, not

to the baser, but the loftier passions, and who, in swaying, exalted

his countrymen--represented to them that the right wing, which the

Spartan proposed to surrender, was, in effect, the station of command.

“And are you,” he said, “not pleased with the honour you obtain, nor

sensible of the advantage of contending, not against the sons of

Greece, but the barbarian invader?” [107]

These words animated those whom the Athenian addressed; they instantly

agreed to exchange posts with the Spartans, and “to fight for the

trophies of Marathon and Salamis.” [108]

XV. As, in the dead of night, the Athenians marched to their new

station, they exhorted each other to valour and to the recollection of

former victories. But Mardonius, learning from deserters the change

of position, moved his Persians opposite the Spartans; and Pausanias

again returning to the right, Mardonius pursued a similar manoeuvre.

Thus the day was consumed without an action. The troops having

resumed their former posts, Mardonius sent a herald to the Spartans,

chiding them for their cowardice, and proposing that an allotted

number meet equal Spartans in battle, and whoever conquered should be

deemed victors over the whole adverse army.

This challenge drew no reply from the Spartans. And Mardonius,

construing the silence into a proof of fear, already anticipated the

victory. His cavalry, advancing upon the Greeks, distressed them from

afar and in safety with their shafts and arrows. They succeeded in

gaining the Gargaphian fountain, which supplied water to the Grecian

army, and choked up the stream. Thus cut off from water, and, at the

same time, yet more inconvenienced by the want of provisions, the

convoy of which was intercepted by the Persian cavalry, the Grecian

chiefs determined to shift the ground, and occupy a space which, being

surrounded by rivulets, was termed the Island of Oeroe [109], and

afforded an ample supply of water. This island was about a mile from

their present encampment: thence they proposed to detach half their

army to relieve a convoy of provisions encompassed in the mountains.

About four hours after sunset the army commenced its march; but when

Pausanias gave the word to his Spartans, one officer, named

Amompharetus, obstinately refused to stir. He alleged the customs and

oaths of Sparta, and declared he would not fly from the barbarian foe,

nor connive at the dishonour of Sparta.

XVI. Pausanias, though incensed at the obstinacy of the officer, was

unwilling to leave him and his troop to perish; and while the dispute

was still unsettled, the Athenians, suspicious of their ally, “for

they knew well it was the custom of Spartans to say one thing and to

think another,” [110] despatched a horseman to Pausanias to learn the

cause of the delay. The messenger found the soldiers in their ranks;

the leaders in violent altercation. Pausanias was arguing with

Amompharetus, when the last, just as the Athenian approached, took up

a huge stone with both hands, and throwing it at the feet of

Pausanias, vehemently exclaimed, “With this calculus I give my

suffrage against flying from the stranger.” Pausanias, in great

perplexity, bade the Athenian report the cause of the delay, and

implore his countrymen to halt a little, that they might act in

concert. At length, towards morning, Pausanias resolved, despite

Amompharetus, to commence his march. All his forces proceeded along

the steep defiles at the base of Cithaeron, from fear of the Persian

cavalry; the more dauntless Athenians along the plain. Amompharetus,

after impotent attempts to detain his men, was reluctantly compelled

to follow.

XVII. Mardonius, beholding the vacant ground before him no longer

bristling with the Grecian ranks, loudly vented his disdain of the

cowardice of the fugitives, and instantly led his impatient army over

the Asopus in pursuit. As yet, the Athenians, who had already passed

the plain, were concealed by the hills; and the Tegeans and

Lacedaemonians were the sole object of attack.

As the troops of Mardonius advanced, the rest of the Persian armament,

deeming the task was now not to fight but to pursue, raised their

standards and poured forward tumultuously, without discipline or

order.

Pausanias, pressed by the Persian line, and if not of a timorous, at

least of an irresolute temper, lost no time in sending to the

Athenians for succour. But when the latter were on their march with

the required aid, they were suddenly intercepted by the auxiliary

Greeks in the Persian service, and cut off from the rescue of the

Spartans.

The Spartans beheld themselves thus left unsupported with considerable

alarm. Yet their force, including the Tegeans and helots, was

fifty-three thousand men. Committing himself to the gods, Pausanias

ordained a solemn sacrifice, his whole army awaiting the result, while

the shafts of the Persian bowmen poured on them near and fast. But

the entrails presented discouraging omens, and the sacrifice was again

renewed. Meanwhile the Spartans evinced their characteristic

fortitude and discipline--not one man stirring from his ranks until

the auguries should assume a more favouring aspect; all harassed, and

some wounded, by the Persian arrows, they yet, seeking protection only

beneath their broad bucklers, waited with a stern patience the time of

their leader and of Heaven. Then fell Callicrates, the stateliest and

strongest soldier in the whole army, lamenting, not death, but that

his sword was as yet undrawn against the invader.

XVIII. And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to forbid the

battle, when Pausanias, lifting his eyes, that streamed with tears, to

the temple of Juno that stood hard by, supplicated the tutelary

goddess of Cithaeron, that if the fates forbade the Greeks to conquer,

they might at least fall like warriors [111]. And while uttering this

prayer, the tokens waited for became suddenly visible in the victims,

and the augurs announced the promise of coming victory.

Therewith the order of battle rang instantly through the army, and, to

use the poetical comparison of Plutarch, the Spartan phalanx suddenly

stood forth in its strength, like some fierce animal--erecting its

bristles and preparing its vengeance for the foe. The ground, broken

in many steep and precipitous ridges, and intersected by the Asopus,

whose sluggish stream [112] winds over a broad and rushy bed, was

unfavourable to the movements of cavalry, and the Persian foot

advanced therefore on the Greeks.

Drawn up in their massive phalanx, the Lacedaemonians presented an

almost impenetrable body--sweeping slowly on, compact and serried--

while the hot and undisciplined valour of the Persians, more fortunate

in the skirmish than the battle, broke itself into a thousand waves

upon that moving rock. Pouring on in small numbers at a time, they

fell fast round the progress of the Greeks--their armour slight

against the strong pikes of Sparta--their courage without skill--their

numbers without discipline; still they fought gallantly, even when on

the ground seizing the pikes with their naked hands, and with the

wonderful agility which still characterizes the oriental swordsman,

springing to their feet and regaining their arms when seemingly

overcome--wresting away their enemies’ shields, and grappling with

them desperately hand to hand.

XIX. Foremost of a band of a thousand chosen Persians, conspicuous by

his white charger, and still more by his daring valour, rode

Mardonius, directing the attack--fiercer wherever his armour blazed.

Inspired by his presence, the Persians fought worthily of their

warlike fame, and, even in falling, thinned the Spartan ranks. At

length the rash but gallant leader of the Asiatic armies received a

mortal wound--his scull was crushed in by a stone from the hand of a

Spartan [113]. His chosen band, the boast of the army, fell fighting

round him, but his death was the general signal of defeat and flight.

Encumbered by their long robes, and pressed by the relentless

conquerors, the Persians fled in disorder towards their camp, which

was secured by wooden intrenchments, by gates, and towers, and walls.

Here, fortifying themselves as they best might, they contended

successfully, and with advantage, against the Lacedaemonians, who were

ill skilled in assault and siege.

Meanwhile the Athenians obtained the victory on the plains over the

Greeks of Mardonius--finding their most resolute enemy in the Thebans

(three hundred of whose principal warriors fell in the field)--and now

joined the Spartans at the Persian camp. The Athenians are said to

have been better skilled in the art of siege than the Spartans; yet at

that time their experience could scarcely have been greater. The

Athenians were at all times, however, of a more impetuous temper; and

the men who had “run to the charge” at Marathon were not to be baffled

by the desperate remnant of their ancient foe. They scaled the walls

--they effected a breach through which the Tegeans were the first to

rush--the Greeks poured fast and fierce into the camp. Appalled,

dismayed, stupefied by the suddenness and greatness of their loss, the

Persians no longer sustained their fame--they dispersed themselves in

all directions, falling, as they fled, with a prodigious slaughter, so

that out of that mighty armament scarce three thousand effected an

escape. We must except, however, the wary and distrustful Artabazus,

who, on the first tokens of defeat, had fled with the forty thousand

Parthians and Chorasmians he commanded towards Phocis, in the

intention to gain the Hellespont. The Mantineans arrived after the

capture of the camp, too late for their share of glory; they

endeavoured to atone the loss by the pursuit of Artabazus, which was,

however, ineffectual. The Eleans arrived after the Mantineans. The

leaders of both these people were afterward banished.

XX. An Aeginetan proposed to Pausanias to inflict on the corpse of

Mardonius the same insult which Xerxes had put upon the body of

Leonidas.

The Spartan indignantly refused. “After elevating my country to

fame,” said he, “would you have me depress it to infamy by vengeance

on the body of the dead? Leonidas and Thermopylae are sufficiently

avenged by this mighty overthrow of the living.”

The body of that brave and ill-fated general, the main author of the

war, was removed the next day--by whose piety and to what sepulchre is

unknown. The tomb of his doubtful fame is alone eternally visible

along the plains of Plataea, and above the gray front of the

imperishable Cithaeron!

XXI. The victory won (September, B. C. 479), the conquerors were

dazzled by the gorgeous plunder which remained--tents and couches

decorated with precious metals--cups, and vessels, and sacks of gold--

and the dead themselves a booty, from the costly ornaments of their

chains and bracelets, and cimeters vainly splendid--horses, and

camels, and Persian women, and all the trappings and appliances by

which despotism made a luxury of war.

Pausanias forbade the booty to be touched [114], and directed the

helots to collect the treasure in one spot. But those dexterous

slaves secreted many articles of value, by the purchase of which

several of the Aeginetans, whose avarice was sharpened by a life of

commerce, enriched themselves--obtaining gold at the price of brass.

Piety dedicated to the gods a tenth part of the booty--from which was

presented to the shrine of Delphi a golden tripod, resting on a

three-headed snake of brass; to the Corinthian Neptune a brazen state of

the deity, seven cubits high; and to the Jupiter of Olympia a statue of

ten cubits. Pausanias obtained also a tenth of the produce in each

article of plunder--horses and camels, women and gold--a prize which

ruined in rewarding him. The rest was divided among the soldiers,

according to their merit.

So much, however, was left unappropriated in the carelessness of

satiety, that, in after times, the battlefield still afforded to the

search of the Plataeans chests of silver and gold, and other

treasures.

XXIL Taking possession of the tent of Mardonius, which had formerly

been that of Xerxes, Pausanias directed the oriental slaves who had

escaped the massacre to prepare a banquet after the fashion of the

Persians, and as if served to Mardonius. Besides this gorgeous feast,

the Spartan ordered his wonted repast to be prepared; and then,

turning to the different chiefs, exclaimed--“See the folly of the

Persian, who forsook such splendour to plunder such poverty.”

The story has in it something of the sublime. But the austere Spartan

was soon corrupted by the very luxuries he affected to disdain. It is

often that we despise to-day what we find it difficult to resist

to-morrow.

XXIII. The task of reward to the living completed, the Greeks

proceeded to that of honour to the dead. In three trenches the

Lacedaemonians were interred; one contained those who belonged to a

class in Sparta called the Knights [115], of whom two hundred had

conducted Themistocles to Tegea (among these was the stubborn

Amompharetus); the second, the other Spartans; the third, the helots.

The Athenians, Tegeans, Megarians, Phliasians, each had their single

and separate places of sepulture, and, over all, barrows of earth were

raised. Subsequently, tribes and states, that had shared indeed the

final battle or the previous skirmishes, but without the glory of a

loss of life, erected cenotaphs to imaginary dead in that illustrious

burial-field. Among those spurious monuments was one dedicated to the

Aeginetans. Aristodemus, the Spartan who had returned safe from

Thermopylae, fell at Plataea, the most daring of the Greeks on that

day, voluntarily redeeming a dishonoured life by a glorious death.

But to his manes alone of the Spartan dead no honours were decreed.

XXIV. Plutarch relates that a dangerous dispute ensued between the

Spartans and Athenians as to their relative claim to the Aristeia, or

first military honours; the question was decided by awarding them to

the Plataeans--a state of which none were jealous; from a similar

motive, ordinary men are usually found possessed of the honours due to

the greatest.

More important than the Aristeia, had the spirit been properly

maintained, were certain privileges then conferred on Plataea.

Thither, in a subsequent assembly of the allies, it was proposed by

Aristides that deputies from the states of Greece should be annually

sent to sacrifice to Jupiter the Deliverer, and confer upon the

general politics of Greece. There, every fifth year, should be

celebrated games in honour of Liberty; while the Plataeans themselves,

exempted from military service, should be deemed, so long as they

fulfilled the task thus imposed upon them, a sacred and inviolable

people. Thus Plataea nominally became a second Elis--its battle-field

another Altis. Aristides, at the same time, sought to enforce the

large and thoughtful policy commenced by Themistocles. He endeavoured

to draw the jealous states of Greece into a common and perpetual

league, maintained against all invaders by a standing force of one

thousand cavalry, one hundred ships, and ten thousand heavy-armed

infantry.

XXV. An earnest and deliberate council was now held, in which it was

resolved to direct the victorious army against Thebes, and demand the

persons of those who had sided with the Mede. Fierce as had been the

hostility of that state to the Hellenic liberties, its sin was that of

the oligarchy rather than the people. The most eminent of these

traitors to Greece were Timagenidas and Attaginus, and the allies

resolved to destroy the city unless those chiefs were given up to

justice.

On the eleventh day from the battle they sat down before Thebes, and

on the refusal of the inhabitants to surrender the chiefs so justly

obnoxious, laid waste the Theban lands.

Whatever we may think of the conduct of Timagenidas in espousing the

cause of the invaders of Greece, we must give him the praise of a

disinterested gallantry, which will remind the reader of the siege of

Calais by Edward III., and the generosity of Eustace de St. Pierre.

He voluntarily proposed to surrender himself to the besiegers.

The offer was accepted: Timagenidas and several others were delivered

to Pausanias, removed to Corinth, and there executed--a stern but

salutary example. Attaginus saved himself by flight. His children,

given up to Pausanias, were immediately dismissed. “Infants,” said

the Spartan, “could not possibly have conspired against us with the

Mede.”

While Thebes preserved herself from destruction, Artabazus succeeded

in effecting his return to Asia, his troop greatly reduced by the

attacks of the Thracians, and the excesses of famine and fatigue.

XXVI. On the same day as that on which the battle of Plataea crushed

the land-forces of Persia, a no less important victory was gained over

their fleet at Mycale in Ionia.

It will be remembered that Leotychides, the Spartan king, and the

Athenian Xanthippus, had conducted the Grecian navy to Delos. There

anchored, they received a deputation from Samos, among whom was

Hegesistratus, the son of Aristagoras. These ambassadors declared

that all the Ionians waited only the moment to revolt from the Persian

yoke, and that the signal would be found in the first active measures

of the Grecian confederates. Leotychides, induced by these

representations, received the Samians into the general league, and set

sail to Samos. There, drawn up in line of battle, near the temple of

Juno, they prepared to hazard an engagement.

But the Persians, on their approach, retreated to the continent, in

order to strengthen themselves with their land-forces, which, to the

amount of sixty thousand, under the command of the Persian Tigranes,

Xerxes had stationed at Mycale for the protection of Ionia.

Arrived at Mycale, they drew their ships to land, fortifying them with

strong intrenchments and barricades, and then sanguinely awaited the

result.

The Greeks, after a short consultation, resolved upon pursuit.

Approaching the enemy’s station, they beheld the sea deserted, the

ships secured by intrenchments, and long ranks of infantry ranged

along the shore. Leotychides, by a herald, exhorted the Ionians in

the Persian service to remember their common liberties, and that on

the day of battle their watchword would be “Hebe.”

The Persians, distrusting these messages, though uttered in a tongue

they understood not, and suspecting the Samians, took their arms from

the latter; and, desirous of removing the Milesians to a distance,

intrusted them with the guard of the paths to the heights of Mycale.

Using these precautions against the desertion of their allies, the

Persians prepared for battle.

The Greeks were anxious and fearful not so much for themselves as for

their countrymen in Boeotia, opposed to the mighty force of Mardonius.

But a report spreading through the camp that a complete victory had

been obtained in that territory (an artifice, most probably, of

Leotychides), animated their courage and heightened their hopes.

The Athenians, who, with the troops of Corinth, Sicyon, and Troezene,

formed half the army, advanced by the coast and along the plain--the

Lacedaemonians by the more steep and wooded courses; and while the

latter were yet on their march, the Athenians were already engaged at

the intrenchments (Battle of Mycale, September, B. C. 479).

Inspired not more by enmity than emulation, the Athenians urged each

other to desperate feats--that they, and not the Spartans, might have

the honours of the day. They poured fiercely on--after an obstinate

and equal conflict, drove back the foe to the barricades that girt

their ships, stormed the intrenchments, carried the wall, and, rushing

in with their allies, put the barbarians to disorderly and rapid

flight. The proper Persians, though but few in number, alone stood

their ground--and even when Tigranes himself was slain, resolutely

fought on until the Lacedaemonians entered the intrenchment, and all

who had survived the Athenian, perished by the Spartan, sword.

The disarmed Samians, as soon as the fortunes of the battle became

apparent, gave all the assistance they could render to the Greeks; the

other Ionians seized the same opportunity to revolt and turn their

arms against their allies. In the mountain defiles the Milesians

intercepted their own fugitive allies, consigning them to the Grecian

sword, and active beyond the rest in their slaughter. So relentless

and so faithless are men, compelled to servitude, when the occasion

summons them to be free.

XXVII. This battle, in which the Athenians were pre-eminently

distinguished, was followed up by the conflagration of the Persian

ships and the collection of the plunder. The Greeks then retired to

Samos. Here deliberating, it was proposed by the Peloponnesian

leaders that Ionia should henceforth, as too dangerous and remote to

guard, be abandoned to the barbarian, and that, in recompense, the

Ionians should be put into possession of the maritime coasts of those

Grecian states which had sided with the Mede. The Athenians resisted

so extreme a proposition, and denied the power of the Peloponnesians

to dispose of Athenian colonies. The point was surrendered by the

Peloponnesians; the Ionians of the continent were left to make their

own terms with the barbarian, but the inhabitants of the isles which

had assisted against the Mede were received into the general

confederacy, bound by a solemn pledge never to desert it. The fleet

then sailed to the Hellespont, with the design to destroy the bridge,

which they believed still existent. Finding it, however, already

broken, Leotychides and the Peloponnesians returned to Greece. The

Athenians resolved to attempt the recovery of the colony of Miltiades

in the Chersonese. The Persians collected their whole remaining force

at the strongest hold in that peninsula--the Athenians laid siege to

it (begun in the autumn, B. C. 479, concluded in the spring, B. C.

478), and, after enduring a famine so obstinate that the cordage, or

rather straps, of their bedding were consumed for food, the Persians

evacuated the town, which the inhabitants then cheerfully surrendered.

Thus concluding their victories, the Athenians returned to Greece,

carrying with them a vast treasure, and, not the least precious

relics, the fragments and cables of the Hellespontic bridge, to be

suspended in their temples.

XXVIII. Lingering at Sardis, Xerxes beheld the scanty and exhausted

remnants of his mighty force, the fugitives of the fatal days of

Mycale and Plataea. The army over which he had wept in the zenith of

his power, had fulfilled the prediction of his tears: and the armed

might of Media and Egypt, of Lydia and Assyria, was now no more!

So concluded the great Persian invasion--that war the most memorable

in the history of mankind, whether from the vastness or from the

failure of its designs. We now emerge from the poetry that belongs to

early Greece, through the mists of which the forms of men assume

proportions as gigantic as indistinct. The enchanting Herodotus

abandons us, and we do not yet permanently acquire, in the stead of

his romantic and wild fidelity, the elaborate and sombre statesmanship

of the calm Thucydides. Henceforth we see more of the beautiful and

the wise, less of the wonderful and vast. What the heroic age is to

tradition, the Persian invasion is to history.

BOOK IV.

FROM THE END OF THE PERSIAN INVASION TO THE DEATH OF CIMON.

B. C. 479--B. C. 449.

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.

I. It is to the imperishable honour of the French philosophers of the

last century, that, above all the earlier teachers of mankind, they

advocated those profound and permanent interests of the human race

which are inseparably connected with a love of PEACE; that they

stripped the image of WAR of the delusive glory which it took, in the

primitive ages of society, from the passions of savages and the

enthusiasm of poets, and turned our contemplation from the fame of the

individual hero to the wrongs of the butchered millions. But their

zeal for that HUMANITY, which those free and bold thinkers were the

first to make the vital principle of a philosophical school, led them

into partial and hasty views, too indiscriminately embraced by their

disciples; and, in condemning the evils, they forgot the advantages of

war. The misfortunes of one generation are often necessary to the

prosperity of another. The stream of blood fertilizes the earth over

which it flows, and war has been at once the scourge and the civilizer

of the world: sometimes it enlightens the invader, sometimes the

invaded; and forces into sudden and brilliant action the arts and the

virtues that are stimulated by the invention of necessity--matured by

the energy of distress. What adversity is to individuals, war often

is to nations: uncertain in its consequences, it is true that, with

some, it subdues and crushes, but with others it braces and exalts.

Nor are the greater and more illustrious elements of character in men

or in states ever called prominently forth, without something of that

bitter and sharp experience which hardens the more robust properties

of the mind, which refines the more subtle and sagacious. Even when

these--the armed revolutions of the world--are most terrible in their

results--destroying the greatness and the liberties of one people--

they serve, sooner or later, to produce a counteracting rise and

progress in the fortunes of another; as the sea here advances, there

recedes, swallowing up the fertilities of this shore to increase the

territories of that; and fulfilling, in its awful and appalling

agency, that mandate of human destinies which ordains all things to be

changed and nothing to be destroyed. Without the invasion of Persia,

Greece might have left no annals, and the modern world might search in

vain for inspirations from the ancient.

II. When the deluge of the Persian arms rolled back to its Eastern

bed, and the world was once more comparatively at rest, the continent

of Greece rose visibly and majestically above the rest of the

civilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains, the infant state of Rome

was silently and obscurely struggling into strength against the

neighbouring and petty states in which the old Etrurian civilization

was rapidly passing to decay. The genius of Gaul and Germany, yet

unredeemed from barbarism, lay scarce known, save where colonized by

Greeks, in the gloom of its woods and wastes. The pride of Carthage

had been broken by a signal defeat in Sicily; and Gelo, the able and

astute tyrant of Syracuse, maintained in a Grecian colony the

splendour of the Grecian name.

The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy of the world, was

permanently checked and crippled; the strength of generations had been

wasted, and the immense extent of the empire only served yet more to

sustain the general peace, from the exhaustion of its forces. The

defeat of Xerxes paralyzed the East.

Thus Greece was left secure, and at liberty to enjoy the tranquillity

it had acquired, and to direct to the arts of peace the novel and

amazing energies which had been prompted by the dangers and exalted by

the victories of war.

III. The Athenians, now returned to their city, saw before them the

arduous task of rebuilding its ruins and restoring its wasted lands.

The vicissitudes of the war had produced many silent and internal as

well as exterior changes. Many great fortunes had been broken; and

the ancient spirit of the aristocracy had received no inconsiderable

shock in the power of new families; the fame of the baseborn and

democratic Themistocles, and the victories which a whole people had

participated, broke up much of the prescriptive and venerable sanctity

attached to ancestral names and to particular families. This was

salutary to the spirit of enterprise in all classes. The ambition of

the great was excited to restore, by some active means, their broken

fortunes and decaying influence--the energies of the humbler ranks,

already aroused by their new importance, were stimulated to maintain

and to increase it. It was the very crisis in which a new direction

might be given to the habits and the character of a whole people; and

to seize all the advantages of that crisis, fate, in Themistocles, had

allotted to Athens a man whose qualities were not only pre-eminently

great in themselves, but peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of

the time. And, as I have elsewhere remarked, it is indeed the nature

and prerogative of free states to concentrate the popular will into

something of the unity of despotism, by producing, one after another,

a series of representatives of the wants and exigences of the hour--

each leading his generation, but only while he sympathizes with its

will; and either baffling or succeeded by his rivals, not in

proportion as he excels or he is outshone in genius, but as he gives

or ceases to give to the widest range of the legislative power the

most concentrated force of the executive; thus uniting the desires of

the greatest number under the administration of the narrowest possible

control; the constitution popular--the government absolute, but,

responsible.

IV. In the great events of the late campaign, we have lost sight of

the hero of Salamis [116]. But the Persian war was no sooner ended

than we find Themistocles the most prominent citizen of Athens--a

sufficient proof that his popularity had not yet diminished, and that

his absence from Plataea was owing to no popular caprice or party

triumph.

V. In the sweeping revenge of Mardonius, even private houses had been

destroyed, excepting those which had served as lodgments for the

Persian nobles [117]. Little of the internal city, less of the

outward walls was spared. As soon as the barbarians had quitted their

territory, the citizens flocked back with their slaves and families

from the various places of refuge; and the first care was to rebuild

the city. They were already employed upon this necessary task, when

ambassadors arrived from Sparta, whose vigilant government, ever

jealous of a rival, beheld with no unreasonable alarm the increasing

navy and the growing fame of a people hitherto undeniably inferior to

the power of Lacedaemon. And the fear that was secretly cherished by

that imperious nation was yet more anxiously nursed by the subordinate

allies [118]. Actuated by their own and the general apprehensions,

the Spartans therefore now requested the Athenians to desist from the

erection of their walls. Nor was it without a certain grace, and a

plausible excuse, that the government of a city, itself unwalled,

inveighed against the policy of walls for Athens. The Spartan

ambassadors urged that fortified towns would become strongholds to

the barbarian, should he again invade them; and the walls of Athens

might be no less useful to him than he had found the ramparts of

Thebes. The Peloponnesus, they asserted, was the legitimate retreat

and the certain resource of all; and, unwilling to appear exclusively

jealous of Athens, they requested the Athenians not only to desist

from their own fortifications, but to join with them in razing every

fortification without the limit of the Peloponnesus.

It required not a genius so penetrating as that of Themistocles to

divine at once the motive of the demand, and the danger of a

peremptory refusal. He persuaded the Athenians to reply that they

would send ambassadors to debate the affair; and dismissed the

Spartans without further explanation. Themistocles next recommended

to the senate [119] that he himself might be one of the ambassadors

sent to Sparta, and that those associated with him in the mission (for

it was not the custom of Greece to vest embassies in individuals)

should be detained at Athens until the walls were carried to a height

sufficient, at least, for ordinary defence. He urged his countrymen

to suspend for this great task the completion of all private edifices

--nay, to spare no building, private or public, from which materials

might be adequately selected. The whole population, slaves, women,

and children, were to assist in the labour.

VI. This counsel adopted, he sketched an outline of the conduct he

himself intended to pursue, and departed for Sparta. His colleagues,

no less important than Aristides, and Abronychus, a distinguished

officer in the late war, were to follow at the time agreed on.

Arrived in the Laconian capital, Themistocles demanded no public

audience, avoided all occasions of opening the questions in dispute,

and screened the policy of delay beneath the excuse that his

colleagues were not yet arrived--that he was incompetent to treat

without their counsel and concurrence--and that doubtless they would

speedily appear in Sparta.

When we consider the shortness of the distance between the states, the

communications the Spartans would receive from the neighbouring

Aeginetans, more jealous than themselves, and the astute and

proverbial sagacity of the Spartan council--it is impossible to

believe that, for so long a period as, with the greatest expedition,

must have elapsed from the departure of Themistocles to the necessary

progress in the fortifications, the ephors could have been ignorant of

the preparations at Athens or the designs of Themistocles. I fear,

therefore, that we must believe, with Theopompus [120], that

Themistocles, the most expert briber of his time, heightened that

esteem which Thucydides assures us the Spartans bore him, by private

and pecuniary negotiations with the ephors. At length, however, such

decided and unequivocal intelligence of the progress of the walls

arrived at Sparta, that the ephors could no longer feel or affect

incredulity.

Themistocles met the remonstrances of the Spartans by an appearance of

candour mingled with disdain. “Why,” said he, “give credit to these

idle rumours? Send to Athens some messengers of your own, in whom you

can confide; let them inspect matters with their own eyes, and report

to you accordingly.”

The ephors (not unreluctantly, if the assertion of Theopompus may be

credited) yielded to so plausible a suggestion, and in the mean while

the crafty Athenian despatched a secret messenger to Athens, urging

the government to detain the Spartan ambassadors with as little

semblance of design as possible, and by no means to allow their

departure until the safe return of their own mission to Sparta. For

it was by no means improbable that, without such hostages, even the

ephors, however powerful and however influenced, might not be enabled,

when the Spartans generally were made acquainted with the deceit

practised upon them, to prevent the arrest of the Athenian delegates.

[121]

At length the walls, continued night and day with incredible zeal and

toil, were sufficiently completed; and disguise, no longer possible,

was no longer useful. Themistocles demanded the audience he had

hitherto deferred, and boldly avowed that Athens was now so far

fortified as to protect its citizens. “In future,” he added,

haughtily, “when Sparta or our other confederates send ambassadors to

Athens, let them address us as a people well versed in our own

interests and the interests of our common Greece. When we deserted

Athens for our ships, we required and obtained no Lacedaemonian

succours to support our native valour; in all subsequent measures, to

whom have we shown ourselves inferior, whether in the council or the

field? At present we have judged it expedient to fortify our city,

rendering it thus more secure for ourselves and our allies. Nor would

it be possible, with a strength inferior to that of any rival power,

adequately to preserve and equally to adjust the balance of the

liberties of Greece.” [122]

Contending for this equality, he argued that either all the cities in

the Lacedaemonian league should be dismantled of their fortresses, or

that it should be conceded, that in erecting fortresses for herself

Athens had rightly acted.

VII. The profound and passionless policy of Sparta forbade all

outward signs of unavailing and unreasonable resentment. The

Spartans, therefore, replied with seeming courtesy, that “in their

embassy they had not sought to dictate, but to advise--that their

object was the common good;” and they accompanied their excuses with

professions of friendship for Athens, and panegyrics on the Athenian

valour in the recent war. But the anger they forbore to show only

rankled the more bitterly within. [123]

The ambassadors of either state returned home; and thus the mingled

firmness and craft of Themistocles, so well suited to the people with

whom he had to deal, preserved his country from the present jealousies

of a yet more deadly and implacable foe than the Persian king, and

laid the foundation of that claim of equality with the most eminent

state of Greece, which he hastened to strengthen and enlarge.

The ardour of the Athenians in their work of fortification had spared

no material which had the recommendation of strength. The walls

everywhere presented, and long continued to exhibit, an evidence of

the haste in which they were built. Motley and rough hewn, and

uncouthly piled, they recalled, age after age, to the traveller the

name of the ablest statesman and the most heroic days of Athens.

There, at frequent intervals, would he survey stones wrought in the

rude fashion of former times--ornaments borrowed from the antique

edifices demolished by the Mede--and frieze and column plucked from

dismantled sepulchres; so that even the dead contributed from their

tombs to the defence of Athens.

VIII. Encouraged by the new popularity and honours which followed the

success of his mission, Themistocles now began to consummate the vast

schemes he had formed, not only for the aggrandizement of his country,

but for the change in the manners of the citizens. All that is left

to us of this wonderful man proves that, if excelled by others in

austere virtue or in dazzling accomplishment, he stands unrivalled for

the profound and far-sighted nature of his policy. He seems, unlike

most of his brilliant countrymen, to have been little influenced by

the sallies of impulse or the miserable expediencies of faction--his

schemes denote a mind acting on gigantic systems; and it is

astonishing with what virtuous motives and with what prophetic art he

worked through petty and (individually considered) dishonest means to

grand and permanent results. He stands out to the gaze of time, the

model of what a great and fortunate statesman should be, so long as

mankind have evil passions as well as lofty virtues, and the state

that he seeks to serve is surrounded by powerful and restless foes,

whom it is necessary to overreach where it is dangerous to offend.

In the year previous to the Persian war, Themistocles had filled the

office of archon [124], and had already in that year planned the

construction of a harbour in the ancient deme of Piraeus [125], for

the convenience of the fleet which Athens had formed. Late events had

frustrated the continuance of the labour, and Themistocles now

resolved to renew and complete it, probably on a larger and more

elaborate scale.

The port of Phalerun had hitherto been the main harbour of Athens--one

wholly inadequate to the new navy she had acquired; another inlet,

Munychia, was yet more inconvenient. But equally at hand was the

capacious, though neglected port of Piraeus, so formed by nature as to

permit of a perfect fortification against a hostile fleet. Of

Piraeus, therefore, Themistocles now designed to construct the most

ample and the most advantageous harbour throughout all Greece. He

looked upon this task as the foundation of his favourite and most

ambitious project, viz., the securing to Athens the sovereignty of the

sea. [126]

The completion of the port--the increased navy which the construction

of the new harbour would induce--the fame already acquired by Athens

in maritime warfare, encouraging attention to naval discipline and

tactics--proffered a splendid opening to the ambition of a people at

once enterprising and commercial. Themistocles hoped that the results

of his policy would enable the Athenians to gain over their own

offspring, the Ionian colonies, and by their means to deliver from the

Persian yoke, and permanently attach to the Athenian interest, all the

Asiatic Greeks. Extending his views, he beheld the various insular

states united to Athens by a vast maritime power, severing themselves

from Lacedaemon, and following the lead of the Attican republic. He

saw his native city thus supplanting, by a naval force, the long-won

pre-eminence and iron supremacy of Sparta upon land, and so extending

her own empire, while she sapped secretly and judiciously the

authority of the most formidable of her rivals.

IX. But in the execution of these grand designs Themistocles could

not but anticipate considerable difficulties: first, in the jealousy

of the Spartans; and, secondly, in the popular and long-rooted

prejudices of the Athenians themselves. Hitherto they had discouraged

maritime affairs, and their more popular leaders had directed

attention to agricultural pursuits. We may suppose, too, that the

mountaineers, or agricultural party, not the least powerful, would

resist so great advantages to the faction of the coastmen, if

acquainted with all the results which the new policy would produce.

Nor could so experienced a leader of mankind be insensible of those

often not insalutary consequences of a free state in the changing

humours of a wide democracy--their impatience at pecuniary demands--

their quick and sometimes uncharitable apprehensions of the motives of

their advisers. On all accounts it was necessary, therefore, to act

with as much caution as the task would admit--rendering the design

invidious neither to foreign nor to domestic jealousies. Themistocles

seemed to have steered his course through every difficulty with his

usual address. Stripping the account of Diodorus [127] of its

improbable details, it appears credible at least that Themistocles

secured, in the first instance, the co-operation of Xanthippus and

Aristides, the heads of the great parties generally opposed to his

measures, and that he won the democracy to consent that the outline of

his schemes should not be submitted to the popular assembly, but to

the council of Five Hundred. It is perfectly clear, however, that, as

soon as the plan was carried into active operation, the Athenians

could not, as Diodorus would lead us to suppose, have been kept in

ignorance of its nature; and all of the tale of Diodorus to which we

can lend our belief is, that the people permitted the Five Hundred to

examine the project, and that the popular assembly ratified the

approbation of that senate without inquiring the reasons upon which it

was founded.

X. The next care of Themistocles was to anticipate the jealousy of

Sparta, and forestall her interference. According to Diodorus, he

despatched, therefore, ambassadors to Lacedaemon, representing the

advantages of forming a port which might be the common shelter of

Greece should the barbarian renew his incursions; but it is so obvious

that Themistocles could hardly disclose to Sparta the very project he

at first concealed from the Athenians, that while we may allow the

fact that Themistocles treated with the Spartans, we must give him

credit, at least, for more crafty diplomacy than that ascribed to him

by Diodorus [128]. But whatever the pretexts with which he sought to

amuse or beguile the Spartan government, they appear at least to have

been successful. And the customary indifference of the Spartans

towards maritime affairs was strengthened at this peculiar time by

engrossing anxieties as to the conduct of Pausanias. Thus

Themistocles, safe alike from foreign and from civil obstacles,

pursued with activity the execution of his schemes. The Piraeus was

fortified by walls of amazing thickness, so as to admit two carts

abreast. Within, the entire structure was composed of solid masonry,

hewn square, so that each stone fitted exactly, and was further

strengthened on the outside by cramps of iron. The walls were never

carried above half the height originally proposed. But the whole was

so arranged as to form a fortress against assault, too fondly deemed

impregnable, and to be adequately manned by the smallest possible

number of citizens; so that the main force might, in time of danger,

be spared to the fleet.

Thus Themistocles created a sea-fortress more important than the city

itself, conformably to the advice he frequently gave to the Athenians,

that, if hard pressed by land, they should retire to this arsenal, and

rely, against all hostilities, on their naval force. [129]

The new port, which soon bore the ambitious title of the Lower City,

was placed under the directions of Hippodamus, a Milesian, who,

according to Aristotle [130], was the first author who, without any

knowledge of practical affairs, wrote upon the theory of government.

Temples [131], a market-place, even a theatre, distinguished and

enriched the new town. And the population that filled it were not

long before they contracted and established a character for themselves

different in many traits and attributes from the citizens of the

ancient Athens--more bold, wayward, innovating, and tumultuous.

But if Sparta deemed it prudent, at present, to avoid a direct

assumption of influence over Athens, her scheming councils were no

less bent, though by indirect and plausible means, to the extension of

her own power. To use the simile applied to one of her own chiefs,

where the lion’s skin fell short, she sought to eke it by the fox’s.

At the assembly of the Amphictyons, the Lacedaemonian delegates moved

that all those states who had not joined in the anti-Persic

confederacy should be expelled the council. Under this popular and

patriotic proposition was sagaciously concealed the increase of the

Spartan authority; for had the Thessalians, Argives, and Thebans

(voices ever counter to the Lacedaemonians) been expelled the

assembly, the Lacedaemonian party would have secured the preponderance

of votes, and the absolute dictation of that ancient council. [132]

But Themistocles, who seemed endowed with a Spartan sagacity for the

foiling the Spartan interests, resisted the proposition by arguments

no less popular. He represented to the delegates that it was unjust

to punish states for the errors of their leaders--that only thirty-one

cities had contributed to the burden of the war, and many of those

inconsiderable--that it was equally dangerous and absurd to exclude

from the general Grecian councils the great proportion of the Grecian

states.

The arguments of Themistocles prevailed, but his success stimulated

yet more sharply against him the rancour of the Lacedaemonians; and,

unable to resist him abroad, they thenceforth resolved to undermine

his authority at home.

XI. While, his danger invisible, Themistocles was increasing with his

own power that of the state, the allies were bent on new enterprises

and continued retribution. From Persia, now humbled and exhausted, it

was the moment to wrest the Grecian towns, whether in Europe or in

Asia, over which she yet arrogated dominion--it was resolved,

therefore, to fit out a fleet, to which the Peloponnesus contributed

twenty and Athens thirty vessels. Aristides presided over the latter;

Pausanias was commander-in-chief; many other of the allies joined the

expedition. They sailed to Cyprus, and reduced with ease most of the

towns in that island. Thence proceeding to Byzantium, the main

strength and citadel of Persia upon those coasts, and the link between

her European and Asiatic dominions, they blockaded the town and

ultimately carried it.

But these foreign events, however important in themselves, were

trifling in comparison with a revolution which accompanied them, and

which, in suddenly raising Athens to the supreme command of allied

Greece, may be regarded at once as the author of the coming greatness

--and the subsequent reverses--of that republic.

XII. The habits of Sparta--austere, stern, unsocial--rendered her

ever more effectual in awing foes than conciliating allies; and the

manners of the soldiery were at this time not in any way redeemed or

counterbalanced by those of the chief. Since the battle of Plataea a

remarkable change was apparent in Pausanias. Glory had made him

arrogant, and sudden luxury ostentatious. He had graven on the golden

tripod, dedicated by the confederates to the Delphic god, an

inscription, claiming exclusively to himself, as the general of the

Grecian army, the conquest of the barbarians--an egotism no less at

variance with the sober pride of Sparta, than it was offensive to the

just vanity of the allies. The inscription was afterward erased by

the Spartan government, and another, citing only the names of the

confederate cities, and silent as to that of Pausanias, was

substituted in its place.

XIII. To a man of this arrogance, and of a grasping and already

successful ambition, circumstances now presented great and

irresistible temptation. Though leader of the Grecian armies, he was

but the uncle and proxy of the young Spartan king--the time must come

when his authority would cease, and the conqueror of the superb

Mardonius sink into the narrow and severe confines of a Spartan

citizen. Possessed of great talents and many eminent qualities, they

but served the more to discontent him with the limits of their

legitimate sphere and sterility of the Spartan life. And this

discontent, operating on a temper naturally haughty, evinced itself in

a manner rude, overbearing, and imperious, which the spirit of his

confederates was ill calculated to suffer or forgive.

But we can scarcely agree with the ancient historians in attributing

the ascendency of the Athenians alone, or even chiefly, to the conduct

of Pausanias. The present expedition was naval, and the greater part

of the confederates at Byzantium were maritime powers. The superior

fleet and the recent naval glories of the Athenians could not fail to

give them, at this juncture, a moral pre-eminence over the other

allies; and we shall observe that the Ionians, and those who had

lately recovered their freedom from the Persian yoke [133], were

especially desirous to exchange the Spartan for the Athenian command.

Connected with the Athenians by origin--by maritime habits--by a

kindred suavity and grace of temperament--by the constant zeal of the

Athenians for their liberties (which made, indeed, the first cause of

the Persian war)--it was natural that the Ionian Greeks should prefer

the standard of Athens to that of a Doric state; and the proposition

of the Spartans (baffled by the Athenian councils) to yield up the

Ionic settlements to the barbarians, could not but bequeath a lasting

resentment to those proud and polished colonies.

XIV. Aware of the offence he had given, and disgusted himself alike

with his allies and his country, the Spartan chief became driven by

nature and necessity to a dramatic situation, which a future Schiller

may perhaps render yet more interesting than the treason of the

gorgeous Wallenstein, to whose character that of Pausanias has been

indirectly likened [134]. The capture of Byzantium brought the

Spartan regent into contact with many captured and noble Persians

[135], among whom were some related to Xerxes himself. With these

conversing, new and dazzling views were opened to his ambition. He

could not but recall the example of Demaratus, whose exile from the

barren dignities of Sparta had procured him the luxuries and the

splendour of oriental pomp, with the delegated authority of three of

the fairest cities of Aeolia. Greater in renown than Demaratus, he

was necessarily more aspiring in his views. Accordingly, he privately

released his more exalted prisoners, pretending they had escaped, and

finally explained whatever messages he had intrusted by them to

Xerxes, in a letter to the king, confided to an Eretrian named

Gongylus, who was versed in the language and the manners of Persia,

and to whom he had already deputed the government of Byzantium. In

this letter Pausanias offered to assist the king in reducing Sparta

and the rest of Greece to the Persian yoke, demanding, in recompense,

the hand of the king’s daughter, with an adequate dowry of possessions

and of power.

XV. The time had passed when a Persian monarch could deride the

loftiness of a Spartan’s pretensions--Xerxes received the

communications with delight, and despatched Artabazus to succeed

Megabates in Phrygia, and to concert with the Spartan upon the means

whereby to execute their joint design [136]. But while Pausanias was

in the full flush of his dazzled and grasping hopes, his fall was at

hand. Occupied with his new projects, his natural haughtiness

increased daily. He never accosted the officers of the allies but

with abrupt and overbearing insolence; he insulted the military pride

by sentencing many of the soldiers to corporeal chastisement, or to

stand all day with an iron anchor on their shoulders [137]. He

permitted none to seek water, forage, or litter, until the Spartans

were first supplied--those who attempted it were driven away by rods.

Even Aristides, seeking to remonstrate, was repulsed rudely. “I am

not at leisure,” said the Spartan, with a frown. [138]

Complaints of this treatment were despatched to Sparta, and in the

mean while the confederates, especially the officers of Chios, Samos,

and Lesbos, pressed Aristides to take on himself the general command,

and protect them from the Spartan’s insolence. The Athenian artfully

replied, that he saw the necessity of the proposition, but that it

ought first to be authorized by some action which would render it

impossible to recede from the new arrangement once formed.

The hint was fiercely taken; and a Samian and a Chian officer,

resolving to push matters to the extreme, openly and boldly attacked

the galley of Pausanias himself at the head of the fleet.

Disregarding his angry menaces, now impotent, this assault was

immediately followed up by a public transfer of allegiance; and the

aggressors, quitting the Spartan, arrayed themselves under the

Athenian, banners. Whatever might have been the consequences of this

insurrection were prevented by the sudden recall of Pausanias. The

accusations against him had met a ready hearing in Sparta, and that

watchful government had already received intimation of his intrigues

with the Mede. On his arrival in Sparta, Pausanias was immediately

summoned to trial, convicted in a fine for individual and private

misdemeanours, but acquitted of the principal charge of treason with

the Persians--not so much from the deficiency as from the abundance of

proof [139]; and it was probably prudent to avoid, if possible, the

scandal which the conviction of the general might bring upon the

nation.

The Spartans sent Dorcis, with some colleagues, to replace Pausanias

in the command; but the allies were already too disgusted with the

yoke of that nation to concede it. And the Athenian ascendency was

hourly confirmed by the talents, the bearing, and the affable and

gracious manners of Aristides. With him was joined an associate of

high hereditary name and strong natural abilities, whose character it

will shortly become necessary to place in detail before the reader.

This comate was no less a person than Cimon, the son of the great

Miltiades.

XVI. Dorcis, finding his pretensions successfully rebutted, returned

home; and the Spartans, never prone to foreign enterprise, anxious for

excuses to free themselves from prosecuting further the Persian war,

and fearful that renewed contentions might only render yet more

unpopular the Spartan name, sent forth no fresh claimants to the

command; they affected to yield that honour, with cheerful content, to

the Athenians. Thus was effected without a blow, and with the

concurrence of her most dreaded rival, that eventful revolution, which

suddenly raised Athens, so secondary a state before the Persian war,

to the supremacy over Greece. So much, when nations have an equal

glory, can the one be brought to surpass the other (B. C. 477) by the

superior wisdom of individuals. The victory of Plataea was won

principally by Sparta, then at the head of Greece. And the general

who subdued the Persians surrendered the results of his victory to the

very ally from whom the sagacious jealousy of his countrymen had

sought most carefully to exclude even the precautions of defence!

XVII. Aristides, now invested with the command of all the allies,

save those of the Peloponnesus who had returned home, strengthened the

Athenian power by every semblance of moderation.

Hitherto the Grecian confederates had sent their deputies to the

Peloponnesus. Aristides, instead of naming Athens, which might have

excited new jealousies, proposed the sacred Isle of Delos, a spot

peculiarly appropriate, since it once had been the navel of the Ionian

commerce, as the place of convocation and the common treasury: the

temple was to be the senate house. A new distribution of the taxes

levied on each state, for the maintenance of the league, was ordained.

The objects of the league were both defensive and offensive; first, to

guard the Aegaean coasts and the Grecian Isles; and, secondly, to

undertake measures for the further weakening of the Persian power.

Aristides was elected arbitrator in the relative proportions of the

general taxation. In this office, which placed the treasures of

Greece at his disposal, he acted with so disinterested a virtue, that

he did not even incur the suspicion of having enriched himself, and

with so rare a fortune that he contented all the allies. The total,

raised annually, and with the strictest impartiality, was four hundred

and sixty talents (computed at about one hundred and fifteen thousand

pounds).

Greece resounded with the praises of Aristides; it was afterward

equally loud in reprobation of the avarice of the Athenians. For with

the appointment of Aristides commenced the institution of officers

styled Hellenotamiae, or treasurers of Greece; they became a permanent

magistracy--they were under the control of the Athenians; and thus

that people were made at once the generals and the treasurers of

Greece. But the Athenians, unconscious as yet of the power they had

attained--their allies yet more blind--it seemed now, that the more

the latter should confide, the more the former should forbear. So do

the most important results arise from causes uncontemplated by the

providence of statesmen, and hence do we learn a truth which should

never be forgotten--that that power is ever the most certain of

endurance and extent, the commencement of which is made popular by

moderation.

XVIII. Thus, upon the decay of the Isthmian Congress, rose into

existence the great Ionian league; and thus was opened to the ambition

of Athens the splendid destiny of the empire of the Grecian seas. The

pre-eminence of Sparta passed away from her, though invisibly and

without a struggle, and, retiring within herself, she was probably

unaware of the decline of her authority; still seeing her

Peloponnesian allies gathering round her, subordinate and submissive,

and, by refusing assistance, refusing also allegiance to the new queen

of the Ionian league. His task fulfilled, Aristides probably returned

to Athens, and it was at this time and henceforth that it became his

policy to support the power of Cimon against the authority of

Themistocles [140]. To that eupatrid, joined before with himself, was

now intrusted the command of the Grecian fleet.

To great natural abilities, Cimon added every advantage of birth and

circumstance. His mother was a daughter of Olorus, a Thracian prince;

his father the great Miltiades. On the death of the latter, it is

recorded, and popularly believed, that Cimon, unable to pay the fine

to which Miltiades was adjudged, was detained in custody until a

wealthy marriage made by his sister Elpinice, to whom he was tenderly,

and ancient scandal whispered improperly, attached, released him from

confinement, and the brother-in-law paid the debt. “Thus severe and

harsh,” says Nepos, “was his entrance upon manhood.” [141] But it is

very doubtful whether Cimon was ever imprisoned for the state-debt

incurred by his father--and his wealth appears to have been

considerable even before he regained his patrimony in the Chersonese,

or enriched himself with the Persian spoils. [142]

In early youth, like Themistocles, his conduct had been wild and

dissolute [143]; and with his father from a child, he had acquired,

with the experience, something of the license, of camps. Like

Themistocles also, he was little skilled in the graceful

accomplishments of his countrymen; he cultivated neither the art of

music, nor the brilliancies of Attic conversation; but power and

fortune, which ever soften nature, afterward rendered his habits

intellectual and his tastes refined. He had not the smooth and artful

affability of Themistocles, but to a certain roughness of manner was

conjoined that hearty and ingenuous frankness which ever conciliates

mankind, especially in free states, and which is yet more popular when

united to rank. He had distinguished himself highly by his zeal in

the invasion of the Medes, and the desertion of Athens for Salamis;

and his valour in the seafight had confirmed the promise of his

previous ardour. Nature had gifted him with a handsome countenance

and a majestic stature, recommendations in all, but especially in

popular states--and the son of Miltiades was welcomed, not less by the

people than by the nobles, when he applied for a share in the

administration of the state. Associated with Aristides, first in the

embassy to Sparta, and subsequently in the expeditions to Cyprus and

Byzantium, he had profited by the friendship and the lessons of that

great man, to whose party he belonged, and who saw in Cimon a less

invidious opponent than himself to the policy or the ambition of

Themistocles.

By the advice of Aristides, Cimon early sought every means to

conciliate the allies, and to pave the way to the undivided command he

afterward obtained. And it is not improbable that Themistocles might

willingly have ceded to him the lead in a foreign expedition, which

removed from the city so rising and active an opponent. The

appointment of Cimon promised to propitiate the Spartans, who ever

possessed a certain party in the aristocracy of Athens--who peculiarly

affected Cimon, and whose hardy character and oligarchical policy the

blunt genius and hereditary prejudices of that young noble were well

fitted to admire and to imitate. Cimon was, in a word, precisely the

man desired by three parties as the antagonist of Themistocles; viz.,

the Spartans, the nobles, and Aristides, himself a host. All things

conspired to raise the son of Miltiades to an eminence beyond his

years, but not his capacities.

XIX. Under Cimon the Athenians commenced their command [144], by

marching against a Thracian town called Eion, situated on the banks of

the river Strymon, and now garrisoned by a Persian noble. The town

was besieged (B. C. 476), and the inhabitants pressed by famine, when

the Persian commandant, collecting his treasure upon a pile of wood,

on which were placed his slaves, women, and children--set fire to the

pile [145]. After this suicide, seemingly not an uncommon mode of

self-slaughter in the East, the garrison surrendered, and its

defenders, as usual in such warfare, were sold for slaves.

From Eion the victorious confederates proceeded to Scyros, a small

island in the Aegean, inhabited by the Dolopians, a tribe addicted to

piratical practices, deservedly obnoxious to the traders of the

Aegean, and who already had attracted the indignation and vengeance of

the Amphictyonic assembly. The isle occupied, and the pirates

expelled, the territory was colonized by an Attic population.

An ancient tradition had, as we have seen before, honoured the soil of

Scyros with the possession of the bones of the Athenian Theseus--some

years after the conquest of the isle, in the archonship of Aphepsion

[146], or Apsephion, an oracle ordained the Athenians to search for

the remains of their national hero, and the skeleton of a man of great

stature, with a lance of brass and a sword by its side was discovered,

and immediately appropriated to Theseus. The bones were placed with

great ceremony in the galley of Cimon, who was then probably on a

visit of inspection to the new colony, and transported to Athens.

Games were instituted in honour of this event, at which were exhibited

the contests of the tragic poets; and, in the first of these,

Sophocles is said to have made his earliest appearance, and gained the

prize from Aeschylus (B. C. 469).

XXI. It is about the period of Cimon’s conquest of Eion and Scyros

(B. C. 476) that we must date the declining power of Themistocles.

That remarkable man had already added, both to domestic and to Spartan

enmities, the general displeasure of the allies. After baffling the

proposition of the Spartans to banish from the Amphictyonic assembly

the states that had not joined in the anti-Persic confederacy, he had

sailed round the isles and extorted money from such as had been guilty

of Medising: the pretext might be just, but the exactions were

unpopularly levied. Nor is it improbable that the accusations against

him of enriching his own coffers as well as the public treasury had

some foundation. Profoundly disdaining money save as a means to an

end, he was little scrupulous as to the sources whence he sustained a

power which he yet applied conscientiously to patriotic purposes.

Serving his country first, he also served himself; and honest upon one

grand and systematic principle, he was often dishonest in details.

His natural temper was also ostentatious; like many who have risen

from an origin comparatively humble, he had the vanity to seek to

outshine his superiors in birth--not more by the splendour of genius

than by the magnificence of parade. At the Olympic games, the

base-born son of Neocles surpassed the pomp of the wealthy and

illustrious Cimon; his table was hospitable, and his own life soft and

luxuriant [147]; his retinue numerous beyond those of his

contemporaries; and he adopted the manners of the noble exactly in

proportion as he courted the favour of the populace. This habitual

ostentation could not fail to mingle with the political hostilities of

the aristocracy the disdainful jealousies of offended pride; for it is

ever the weakness of the high-born to forgive less easily the being

excelled in genius than the being outshone in state by those of inferior

origin. The same haughtiness which offended the nobles began also to

displease the people; the superb consciousness of his own merits wounded

the vanity of a nation which scarcely permitted its greatest men to

share the reputation it arrogated to itself. The frequent calumnies

uttered against him obliged Themistocles to refer to the actions he had

performed; and what it had been illustrious to execute, it became

disgustful to repeat. “Are you weary,” said the great man, bitterly,

“to receive benefits often from the same hand?” [148] He offended the

national conceit yet more by building, in the neighbourhood of his own

residence, a temple to Diana, under the name of Aristobule, or “Diana of

the best counsel;” thereby appearing to claim to himself the merit of

giving the best counsels.

It is probable, however, that Themistocles would have conquered all

party opposition, and that his high qualities would have more than

counterbalanced his defects in the eyes of the people, if he had still

continued to lead the popular tide. But the time had come when the

demagogue was outbid by an aristocrat--when the movement he no longer

headed left him behind, and the genius of an individual could no

longer keep pace with the giant strides of an advancing people.

XXII. The victory at Salamis was followed by a democratic result.

That victory had been obtained by the seamen, who were mostly of the

lowest of the populace--the lowest of the populace began, therefore,

to claim, in political equality, the reward of military service. And

Aristotle, whose penetrating intellect could not fail to notice the

changes which an event so glorious to Greece produced in Athens, has

adduced a similar instance of change at Syracuse, when the mariners of

that state, having, at a later period, conquered the Athenians,

converted a mixed republic to a pure democracy. The destruction of

houses and property by Mardonius--the temporary desertion by the

Athenians of their native land--the common danger and the common

glory, had broken down many of the old distinctions, and the spirit of

the nation was already far more democratic than the constitution.

Hitherto, qualifications of property were demanded for the holding of

civil offices. But after the battle of Plataea, Aristides, the leader

of the aristocratic party, proposed and carried the abolition of such

qualifications, allowing to all citizens, with or without property, a

share in the government, and ordaining that the archons should be

chosen out of the whole body; the form of investigation as to moral

character was still indispensable. This change, great as it was,

appears, like all aristocratic reforms, to have been a compromise

[149] between concession and demand. And the prudent Aristides

yielded what was inevitable, to prevent the greater danger of

resistance. It may be ever remarked, that the people value more a

concession from the aristocratic party than a boon from their own

popular leaders. The last can never equal, and the first can so

easily exceed, the public expectation.

XXIII. This decree, uniting the aristocratic with the more democratic

party, gave Aristides and his friends an unequivocal ascendency over

Themistocles, which, however, during the absence of Aristides and

Cimon, and the engrossing excitement of events abroad, was not plainly

visible for some years; and although, on his return to Athens,

Aristides himself prudently forbore taking an active part against his

ancient rival, he yet lent all the influence of his name and

friendship to the now powerful and popular Cimon. The victories, the

manners, the wealth, the birth of the son of Miltiades were supported

by his talents and his ambition. It was obvious to himself and to his

party that, were Themistocles removed, Cimon would become the first

citizen of Athens.

XXIV. Such were the causes that long secretly undermined, that at

length openly stormed, the authority of the hero of Salamis; and at

this juncture we may conclude, that the vices of his character avenged

themselves on the virtues. His duplicity and spirit of intrigue,

exercised on behalf of his country, it might be supposed, would

hereafter be excited against it. And the pride, the ambition, the

craft that had saved the people might serve to create a despot.

Themistocles was summoned to the ordeal of the ostracism and condemned

by the majority of suffrages (B. C. 471). Thus, like Aristides, not

punished for offences, but paying the honourable penalty of rising by

genius to that state of eminence which threatens danger to the

equality of republics.

He departed from Athens, and chose his refuge at Argos, whose hatred

to Sparta, his deadliest foe, promised him the securest protection.

XXV. Death soon afterward removed Aristides from all competitorship

with Cimon; according to the most probable accounts, he died at

Athens; and at the time of Plutarch his monument was still to be seen

at Phalerum. His countrymen, who, despite all plausible charges, were

never ungrateful except where their liberties appeared imperilled

(whether rightly or erroneously our documents are too scanty to

prove), erected his monument at the public charge, portioned his three

daughters, and awarded to his son Lysimachus a grant of one hundred

minae of silver, a plantation of one hundred plethra [150] of land,

and a pension of four drachmae a day (double the allowance of an

Athenian ambassador).

CHAPTER 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.

I. The military abilities and early habits of Cimon naturally

conspired with past success to direct his ambition rather to warlike

than to civil distinctions. But he was not inattentive to the arts

which were necessary in a democratic state to secure and confirm his

power. Succeeding to one, once so beloved and ever so affable as

Themistocles, he sought carefully to prevent all disadvantageous

contrast. From the spoils of Byzantium and Sestos he received a vast

addition to his hereditary fortunes. And by the distribution of his

treasures, he forestalled all envy at their amount. He threw open his

gardens to the public, whether foreigners or citizens--he maintained a

table to which men of every rank freely resorted, though probably

those only of his own tribe [151]--he was attended by a numerous

train, who were ordered to give mantles to what citizen soever--aged

and ill-clad--they encountered; and to relieve the necessitous by aims

delicately and secretly administered. By these artful devices he

rendered himself beloved, and concealed the odium of his politics

beneath the mask of his charities. For while he courted the favour,

he advanced not the wishes, of the people. He sided with the

aristocratic party, and did not conceal his attachment to the

oligarchy of Sparta. He sought to content the people with himself, in

order that he might the better prevent discontent with their position.

But it may be doubted whether Cimon did not, far more than any of his

predecessors, increase the dangers of a democracy by vulgarizing its

spirit. The system of general alms and open tables had the effect

that the abuses of the Poor Laws [152] have had with us. It

accustomed the native poor to the habits of indolent paupers, and what

at first was charity soon took the aspect of a right. Hence much of

the lazy turbulence, and much of that licentious spirit of exaction

from the wealthy, that in a succeeding age characterized the mobs of

Athens. So does that servile generosity, common to an anti-popular

party, when it affects kindness in order to prevent concession,

ultimately operate against its own secret schemes. And so much less

really dangerous is it to exalt, by constitutional enactments, the

authority of a people, than to pamper, by the electioneering

cajoleries of a selfish ambition, the prejudices which thus settle

into vices, or the momentary exigences thus fixed into permanent

demands.

II. While the arts or manners of Cimon conciliated the favour, his

integrity won the esteem, of the people. In Aristides he found the

example, not more of his aristocratic politics than of his lofty

honour. A deserter from Persia, having arrived at Athens with great

treasure, and being harassed by informers, sought the protection of

Cimon by gifts of money.

“Would you have me,” said the Athenian, smiling, “your mercenary or

your friend?”

“My friend!” replied the barbarian.

“Then take back your gifts.” [153]