and a snake, which pursued and killed them. The Skirophoria was similar;
it included a rite of daubing the image of Pallas with the white clay
which was used as a dressing for olive-trees. There was another ceremony
in which young girls dressed as bears danced in honour of Artemis of
Brauron. There were the three sacred ploughings of Attic soil every
year. Besides snake-heroes and snake-kings, there was the wolf-god who
became identified with Apollo, and the goat-god Pan. It is possible that
Athena’s owl is a relic of those days of Nature-worship. Most of these
cults are Attic rather than Athenian, and are specially localised in the
country demes. They visibly belong to the same religious area as the
snaky figures of Cnossos; and, indeed, Crete figures largely in the
mythology of this period. Anthropomorphic religion probably began at
Athens with a rude female xoanon, or wooden pillar-like statue, who
received in due course the name of the warrior maiden as Athena Polias.
Athens thus comes rather late into Greek history. Only two facts stand
out with any clearness from the period before the sixth-century
tyrannies: the attempted tyranny of Cylon and the early law-giving. Both
these facts were recalled by events of subsequent history. The attempt
of Cylon involved a curse upon one of the greatest of Athenian families,
the Alcmæonids, to which belonged celebrated names like Megacles,
Cleisthenes, Pericles, and Alcibiades. The Law-givers of Athens are
indeed historical personages, which is more than we can say with any
confidence for the Spartan Law-giver Lycurgus, but they have served as
pegs for much legend and a good deal of deliberate falsification. Athens
undoubtedly possessed ancient wooden tablets of laws (though it is
rather a question whether they could have survived the two burnings of
Athens by the Persians), and some of these laws probably bore the names
of Dracon and Solon; but it is very certain that later orators lent
weight to any old law they wished to quote with approval, by giving it
one of these respectable names. On the other hand we know that when
Athenian writers began to take an interest in constitutional history,
which was not until two hundred years later, they used Dracon and Solon
to father their own theories, because it was possible to form the most
conflicting views of what those legislators had really done. One great
point was to make out that the democracy was as old as the hills, and in
this sense Solon was made the inventor of the Assembly, the Council, and
even the popular jury courts. Some ascribed to him the invention of the
old Council of the Areopagus. Others maintained that Solon was not a
democrat, but the author of a limited franchise on a property basis--in
fact, of just the system that Theramenes and his party were proposing in
404 B.C. Others, again, went one better, and attributed a democratic
system to Dracon, a still earlier Law-giver, in spite of the fact that
Solon had abolished all his laws except those about murder and
blood-guiltiness. Thucydides, however, being a scientifically minded
historian with an impartial love of truth, passes over this early period
with the remark that people will accept without testing any sort of
traditions even when they concern their own country. And that is the
right attitude for us. There were no historians until the fifth century,
no contemporary records whatever, except a very few ancient
inscriptions, and the work of the lyric poets who flourished in the
eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries. We have, indeed, a considerable
bulk of poetry which passes under the name of Solon. Some of it is not
above suspicion, for it includes a so-called prelude to a versified
edition of his laws, and other lines written in a tone very unsuitable
to a philosopher. But from the undoubtedly genuine portion we gather
that Solon, so far from being an impartial mediator, collected a popular
following, vehemently attacked the rich, and then “gave to the people so
much power as sufficeth, neither diminishing nor increasing their
honour.” His principal work was to codify the laws which had hitherto
existed only in the bosoms of the nobles. He did a great deal to fix the
existing social classes in Athens by arranging the people in four ranks
according to their property, reckoned, of course, on the basis of
land-holding. And he removed agrarian grievances by forbidding loans on
the security of the person, a custom which had led to the actual
enslaving of the poor by the rich landowners. In these ways he did an
immense service to the future liberty of his country. Even a cautious
estimate of his work makes him a very great man. But he was not the
inventor of democracy.
His personality is hopelessly involved in legend. He is one of the Seven
Sages, doubtless real personalities whose names have served as a peg for
the inventive faculties of the Greeks. Some of them were natural
philosophers, like Thales of Miletus, whose knowledge of astronomy was
so exact that he predicted the eclipse of 585 B.C. He is said to have
learnt his scientific knowledge, as Solon is said to have learnt his
legislative skill, in Egypt, where he measured the height of the
pyramids by their shadow. There is very likely a substratum of truth in
the stories which make the birth, or rather the revival, of learning in
Greece come from Egypt and Crete. Thales knew that the light of the moon
came from the sun. He was the first of those natural philosophers of
Greece whose main object was to find the “principle” of the universe.
Thales held that all things originated from water. Another of the Seven
was Bias of Priene, whose activities were mainly political, and who
invented maxims like “He is unfortunate who cannot bear misfortune,” and
“If thou hast done a good deed, ascribe it to the gods.” At least two of
the other four were tyrants. Solon is also associated with a curious
figure who went about expounding religion and conducting purificatory
rites, Epimenides the Cretan, who was supposed to have lived for fifty
years in a cave on nothing but asphodels and water, the father of all
hermits. Whatever constitutional enactments Solon did make never had
time to get into working order; for the tyranny of Peisistratus and his
sons followed almost immediately.
To return to the goddess: only two passages of Homer refer to Athens,
and both were probably interpolated at the editing of Homer in the days
of Peisistratus. Both allude to the connection between Athena and
Erechtheus. The goddess is described in one place as visiting “the
goodly house of Erechtheus,” which probably means the old Pelasgian
palace on the Acropolis; in the other she has received Erechtheus, the
son of Earth, into “her own rich shrine.” Modern criticism, however, is
apt to reverse the relationship of host and guest--Erechtheus the
earth-born was the prehistoric hero, Athena the Olympian interloper. The
early shrine of Athena upon the Acropolis has quite recently been
discovered on the north side of the plateau by Dörpfeld. It would seem
to have been a building of the sixth century or earlier, and to have
been surrounded with a peristyle of columns by a later hand--whose we
shall presently see. This is the “old temple” superseded for cult
purposes by the Parthenon. Our “Erechtheum,” so well known for its
caryatid porch, was built right up against this old temple, so that the
caryatid porch juts out over the stylobate of it. In the old temple was
the old cult image of the goddess afterwards replaced by the splendid
creation of Pheidias. It was a xoanon, or pillar statue, of olive-wood,
in a standing posture, its rude shape doubtless concealed with offered
drapery. It was armed with spear, shield, ægis, and helmet, and stood in
act to strike. As the illustration[31] shows, this became a favourite
motive in the portraiture of the goddess; she stands there as the
champion and protectress of the city. Athena Polias is her fitting
title. Pheidias idealised this type in his Athena Promachos. But it does
not seem to be very ancient. Probably Athens, like Troy, had possessed
an earlier seated Pallas, upon whose knees the women laid their
embroidered “peplos.” Nothing in art or ritual need make us doubt that
Pallas Athene was far from aboriginal in Athens, that she came in with
the Achæans, and that it was not until Athens became a real city-state,
with
[Illustration: PLATE XXVI. ATHENA POLIAS: BRONZE
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
civic worship of an idealised type, that the great vogue of the Virgin
began on the Acropolis.
TYRANNY AND CULTURE
All this time art has been slowly reviving. Lyric poetry and music had
found a patroness in the advancing city of Sparta. The Heroic and
Olympian cults which were fostered by the epic poets and by the
influence of the Delphic oracle undoubtedly gave an impetus to art,
partly by requiring temples and temple statues, and partly by fixing
certain artistic types for the principal deities. Even the potter,
though he is still where we left him in the Dipylon and Geometric styles
of ornament, begins to depict the heroic mythology, and to evolve types
which can be imitated and improved. This fixing of types or motives was
essential to the progress of ancient art. The Greek sculptor does not
carve a statue, as novel and original as possible, to send to an
exhibition of art. He is commissioned to make, we will say, an Athena;
in that case he has to express the armour, the ægis, the owl, perhaps
the snake. He tries, indeed, to make the goddess as lovely and strong
and benignant as he can. Perhaps he is allowed to choose between the
Polias type or the seated statue, but in any case the type is fixed for
him. Or he may be asked to make an athlete statue; in that case he will
have to carve a nude male figure as physically perfect as possible, in
an athletic attitude. He will not be asked, yet, to portray accidental
facts, such as the lineaments of the particular man the statue is to
honour. That is how, by concentrating on a limited number of motives,
Greek art succeeded in a few generations in approaching so near to
perfection.
Show me the patron, and I will show you the style of art which will
prevail. The horse-riding aristocracies of Northern ancestry, who
prevailed everywhere in Greece in the eighth century, cared little for
art. Poetry they could enjoy, if it sang the praises of their ancestors,
or if it cheered them at their cups. Hence the popularity of Homer and
the Homeridæ and Hesiod on the one hand, of Archilochus, Simonides, and
Alcman on the other. But these little “Basileis” were not kings enough
to keep courts where art could flourish without starving, and as yet
there were few cities great enough to supply the want of a patron. Once
more we must look to politics if we wish to understand the revival of
art.
The little states of old, with their natural citadels, provided a
splendid opportunity for any ambitious and unscrupulous person who
wished to make himself tyrant. All you had to do was to stand forth as
champion of the oppressed “demos” against the oppressive aristocracy,
declare that your life was in danger, acquire a bodyguard of a few score
stout knaves armed with spears, or even cudgels, then seize the citadel,
and, if you had not forgotten provisions, there you were. It was a
simple trick that was tried again and again in Greek history, and it
nearly always succeeded. For example, at Corinth there was a singularly
offensive aristocracy called Bacchiads. One of them had a deformed
daughter who was permitted to marry beneath her. Her son, Cypselus, was
not received in Bacchiad circles; he felt aggrieved, and he adopted the
programme I have indicated. He founded a little dynasty which lasted
more than seventy years, until it was put down by the Spartans in 581
B.C. The same thing had happened a little earlier at Sicyon; it was
repeated at Megara a little later, and at Epidaurus. At Athens the first
attempt by Cylon, about 621, failed; at Miletus a similar attempt
succeeded. In the sixth century tyranny broke out everywhere in Sicily.
In 560 Athens followed suit with the tyranny of Peisistratus. Polycrates
of Samos comes about thirty years later. Thus many states in Greece went
through the tyrannical phase about this time.
Although the Greeks, to their eternal honour, ever afterwards detested
the name of tyrant, and although they tried to expunge the benefits they
owed to them from the tablets of their history, yet we can see that
tyranny was a valuable, almost a necessary, stage in the progress of the
Greek state. Anything is better than aristocracy of the Bacchiad type:
even
[Illustration: Plate 27.--Corinthian Vases.]
a tyrant has the merit of possessing a single throat. As a matter of
fact, most of the Greek tyrants, with the exception of Phalaris of
Acragas, who had a habit of roasting his subjects in a brazen bull, were
intelligent and not oppressive rulers. They were able to form a
consistent foreign policy, which is always the strong point of
autocracies, to found colonies, acquire empires, form alliances, and
marry their neighbours’ daughters. We hear of tyrants having relations
with Egypt and Lydia, and importing copper from Spain. At home they
policed their cities and made them appreciate the benefits of order.
Above all, no doubt from sordid motives, they encouraged commerce. The
flourishing commerce of Minoan days had ceased with the end of the
thalassocracy. Piracy had become rife on the Ægean, as we see in Homer,
where no visitor thinks it impolite to be asked whether he is or is not
a pirate. For art and literature, here at last were the patrons. It is
under the tyrants of the late seventh and sixth centuries that the art
revival begins.
[Illustration: Coin of Corinth. Sixth century]
Corinth, with her mighty natural fortress, more than a mile in circuit
and 1800 feet high, her two seas and her command over a narrow isthmus,
was admirably situated for commerce. She was one of the earliest states
to develop a tyranny, to found an empire, and to revive the arts. Her
colonies were mostly towards the west, and in Corcyra she had a valuable
stepping-stone for Sicily and Italy. It is at Corinth that a new type of
vase-painting appears early in the sixth century. It is very obvious
that the motive was still derived from textile art, probably from
Assyrian embroidery. The result, with its rich purples, is very pleasing
from a decorative point of view, though the actual scenes and ornaments
are unmeaning, and therefore un-Greek.[32] The coin types of Corinth in
the sixth century are already beautiful designs. It was Cypselus, tyrant
of Corinth, who dedicated at Olympia that famous chest of which we have
spoken, with its parallel bands of mythological scenes. Periander, his
son, was originally one of the Seven Sages, though Plato wanted to cast
him out for a tyrant. The name of the third, Psammetichus, proves the
close intercourse of Corinth with Egypt. It was Corinth under her
tyrants that evolved a new poetical form, the dithyramb, and that first
erected a Doric temple in Greece proper. This grave and splendid style
of architecture was very probably based upon Egyptian models, but with
characteristically Greek modifications. The earliest Greek temples seem
to have been of wood and sun-baked brick. Such originally was the temple
of Hera at Olympia, but as the wooden columns fell down one by one they
were replaced with stone. In many features of Doric architecture it is
possible to trace development from wooden technique. The whole roofing
system is one of joists and beams, even when the roof is of stone. The
triglyphs are the ends of the beams, translated into stone. The metopes
were originally left open, then filled with terra-cotta reliefs, and
finally with slabs of stone carved in high relief. In the earliest Doric
temples the columns are very thick and heavy and the intercolumnar
spaces very narrow. These things indicate that the architect had not yet
fully realised the superior strength of stone. An ignorant or hasty
glance might suggest that there was no progress in Greek architecture,
but the close observer sees how the succeeding generations of architects
continued to make subtle improvements, rendering the shafts more
graceful, the mouldings more refined in their curves, correcting most
cunningly the optical illusions of a straight row of tall columns,
improving the lighting arrangements, improving the masonry, substituting
stone for wood and precious marble for stone, adding ornament where it
was appropriate, as on the frieze inside the peristyle, rejecting it
where it was unsuitable, as on the architrave, which, being a main beam,
_ought_ to look heavy and strong, reaching forward, in fact, to the
_telos_, the ultimate end of the type which his predecessors had set
him. That is the Greek way. The Parthenon is the goal at which this old
temple of Corinth had been aiming.
[Illustration:
DORIC STYLE
IONIC STYLE]
Seven columns of the Corinthian temple[33] have stood through the Roman
destruction of Corinth and all the subsequent batterings of history.
Their antiquity is shown by their clumsy strength. The height of the
columns is only about four times the diameter of the base. Each column
is a monolith of rough limestone covered with stucco and painted, in
height 23½ feet, in diameter tapering rather sharply from the base (5
feet 8 inches) to the top (4 feet 3 inches). The temple was
peripteral--_i.e._ it had a colonnade all round the nave, six columns at
each end, fifteen on each side. Already there is an attempt to correct
the optical illusion which makes horizontal lines seem to sink in the
middle and vertical lines seem to bulge outwards, the stylobate, or
floor from which the columns rise, being slightly curved, so that the
centre columns stand about 2 centimetres higher than those on the wing.
The interior building consists of two oblong chambers back to back,
without communication between them. The side walls are prolonged at each
end so as to form wings, and between each pair of wings stood two
columns “in antis.” Thus there is a porch at each end under the
colonnade. From the existence of the two separate chambers we conclude
either that the temple united two distinct cults, or that one of the
chambers was a treasury, for temples in Greece were always used as
banks. I have gone into some detail in describing this building, because
it is probably the oldest Doric temple in Greece, except the old wooden
Heræum at Olympia. Roof-tiles, which made a sloping roof possible, were
said to be an actual Corinthian invention. The Corinthian colony of
Corcyra (Corfu) can boast a similar temple about fifty years later (?
600 B.C.).
It was under these Cypselid tyrants that Corinth began to acquire her
historical character of a luxurious, sensual, and cosmopolitan city.
Aphrodite, as she was worshipped at Corinth, was none other than
“Ashtaroth, the abomination of the Sidonians,” and was imported along
with the Tyrian purple from Phœnicia. She had a famous temple on the
citadel of Corinth, which was thronged by her sacred slaves, the
courtesans. Their numbers grew to more than a thousand, and they were a
notorious snare to the commercial travellers of antiquity. You had to be
a rich man to visit Corinth, as the proverb said:
οὐ παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἐς Κόρινθον ἔσθ’ ὁ πλοῦς
“non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum.”
That this immoral state of affairs began under the tyrants we can be
sure, though Periander is said to have collected all the procuresses he
could find and drowned them in the sea. Pindar delicately sings of “the
hospitable damsels, ministers
[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII. OLD TEMPLE AT CORINTH
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
of Persuasion in wealthy Corinth.” And we are told that when the
Persians invaded Greece the courtesans flocked to the temple of
Aphrodite to pray for the deliverance of the land. In gratitude for
their patriotism bronze statues of them were erected, with an epigram by
Simonides. Lais, the most celebrated of all these erring females,
belongs to the time of the Peloponnesian war, though there would appear
to have been others who adopted her famous name. The other Greeks were
apt to speak of Corinth in much the same tone as a modern Englishman or
German speaks of Paris. The wealth of Cypselus is proved by his
dedication of a colossal gold (or gilt) statue of Zeus at Olympia.
Periander cut a canal through the promontory of Leucas, and projected
another through the isthmus of Corinth.
One of the tyrants of Sicyon won the chariot race at Olympia, and
dedicated two large model shrines of Spanish bronze. But Cleisthenes was
the most celebrated for his luxurious court, for his hostility to Argos,
which made him forbid the recital of Homer at Sicyon because it honoured
the Argives, and for the wooing of his daughter Agariste. Cleisthenes
had issued a general invitation to any one who wished to marry her to
come to his court, offering them hospitality for a year. All the rich
young gentlemen of Greece assembled. For a whole year Cleisthenes tested
their accomplishments. By that time two Athenians were the favourites,
Megacles, of the famous Alcmæonid family, and Hippocleides, who had the
most charming social graces in the world. At last came the final day of
decision. Hippocleides braced himself for a great effort. There had been
a banquet, and perhaps Hippocleides had poured too many libations to
Dionysus. After dinner the flute-players struck up, and Hippocleides
began to dance. Let Herodotus continue the story: “And he danced,
probably, for the pleasure of dancing; but Cleisthenes, looking on,
began to have suspicion about it all. Then Hippocleides, after a short
rest, ordered a slave to bring in a table: when it came, he began to
dance on it, first Laconian figures and then Attic ones; finally he
stood on his head on the table” (this was perhaps an old ritual dance)
“and gesticulated with his legs. But Cleisthenes, when he danced the
first and second time, revolted from the idea of Hippocleides as a
son-in-law on account of his indecorous dancing, yet he restrained
himself, not wishing to make a scene. But when he saw him gesticulating
with his legs he could not restrain himself any longer. ‘O son of
Tisander,’ he cried, ‘you have danced away your marriage.’ But
Hippocleides answered: ‘Hippocleides doesn’t, care!’ Hence this answer
became a proverb.” So Megacles married the lady, and lived happily ever
afterwards, becoming the ancestor of Pericles, while Hippocleides
probably took to drink and went to the bad altogether. But of this
Herodotus does not inform us.
The tyranny at Megara was a brief one, but we know that Theagenes built
an aqueduct for his city and made it a serious commercial rival to
Athens.
At Athens Peisistratus stood forth as champion of the poor shepherds of
the Hill against the wealthier parties of the Coast and the Plain. He
succeeded where Cylon had failed in gaining command of the Acropolis
with his bodyguard. Twice the Athenians managed to expel him, but each
time he got back, the first time by dressing up a tall and handsome
woman as the goddess Athena and driving into the city with her, and the
second time by hiring a contingent of horsemen from Eretria, with money
which he had obtained by prudent operations in the goldfields of Thrace.
From first to last he and his sons were in power from 560 to 510. It is
difficult to estimate his services to Athens, for later generations did
their utmost to deny and conceal them, giving some of his achievements
to Solon and some to Theseus, and some even to Erechtheus. He founded an
early Athenian empire. He won the island of Salamis from Megara, and
until she possessed Salamis Athens had no open road to the sea. Later
Athenians ascribed this feat to Solon. He regained Sigeum, on the Troad,
after a war with Mitylene. He established the elder Miltiades as tyrant
of the Thracian Chersonese. In these movements his policy was obviously
to open up trade with the Black Sea, the granary of Greece. He extended
olive-culture in Attica. He probably began to work the silver-mines at
Laurium, which were thenceforth the principal source of Athenian
revenue. He made the unfree tillers of the soil into peasant proprietors
by confiscating the estates of his noble opponents. He was allied with
Sparta and Argos, Thebes and Thessaly and Naxos. He introduced a police
armed with bows into the city of Athens.